27. Chapter 27
Chapter 27
M y anger did not settle in the hours after he left me there to hang. It only burned brighter and brighter until I was incandescent with rage. There were even times I would swear the shadows recoiled from a spark that flew from me. It simmered and crackled away within me.
When I heard the Maw open again, I was ready to take whatever he threw at me and burn the two of us down with it. I was, however, not ready for the strap of leather that was slipped down the center of my head, across my face, and a clump of it stuffed into my mouth. I was mumbling my shocked recriminations into the hunk when I felt the other straps wrench down around the sides of my head, pressing my naked tipped ears flat against my skull. It was too tight for me to spit it out, but I had caught the bit right in time not to have it slide too far back into my mouth.
“Open your mouth, Cricket. Or I will force it, and that will probably chip your teeth.” Even the threat was mild and steady in that deep rumbling bass of his. I flailed, trying to kick him away from me, using the chains as leverage. He dodged me easily, not even trying, and my foot sailed past him with ease. Two fingers wriggled in between my cheek and teeth, hooked there as he controlled my head. “Open.”
I thrashed as much as I could against the bit, but it was no use. Even if I could get him away from me, it was stuck on my head. So, I relented, letting the large wedge of leather slide back and press flat onto my tongue. My lips were spread wide to the point of immobility. I felt the straps tighten once more and then he come around in front of me to adjust the gag that kept me from speaking.
“I will not tongue lock you, but this is just as good. At the front of this bridle is a ring. I will be leading you on a leash. You will follow, or you will be dragged by your head. You will behave and do as you are told, or you will be corrected with the leash. You will do more damage to yourself than you will to me. Do you understand?”
I hated the soft, even tone he used. I thrust a foot out, aimed for around where I expected his balls to be, but encountered nothing but a protective knee.
“You wanted to see the beast, little bug. I won’t keep you from him any longer. If I have poisoned what could have been between us with the whole truth of me, then it was never meant to be.”
The last part was whispered and sounded almost . . . regretful, as if he had lost something he wished he could keep hold of.
Something snapped to the front of the gag and then the shackles released me, and I crumpled to the floor. The warmth of a cloak was spread around me, laying heavy and painfully across my back full of slashed cuts. The leash pulled up on the gag, and I had no choice but to rise or be dragged along by the face. When I had come to stand fully, I felt him moving around me, doing up what I assumed were buttons that covered the cloak’s face from throat to floor.
My hair was stuffed back into the deep hood and then it was pulled over my head. It was warm, at least, and as much as I wish I could hate it, the warmth felt good on my aching body.
I didn’t have long to enjoy it, though. The back of the cloak was flipped over my head, and he was kneeling behind me, his breath hot on the globes of my ass as he drew my arms back and shackled them together. The supple leather of his gloves roamed over the captive flesh of my arms as if exploring them for the first time. I felt ice drip into the inferno of my fury and jerked away, feeling him stiffen with shock.
Deciding he was done with his bindings, he let the cloak fall to my feet and came back around to reclaim the lead.
The leash was gently tugged, and I took hesitant, careful steps toward where it was leading. “Good. Now, raise your left foot and step up and over the lip. Then your right. Good.”
He guided me over a threshold, and light flooded back in. It wasn’t much, wasn’t daylight, but the torches that burned around me felt like the surface of the sun compared to the abyssal darkness that I had come from. It was but a second of inconvenience, though, as he cupped his hands around my eyes, metering in the light to ease me into the transition.
I hated how tender even in this brutality he was being. I gritted my teeth as much as I could, letting my eyes adjust once more until I could see the dank, stagnant, moldy water-covered black stone in front of me. I tried to turn my head to look back, to see what The Raven had been able to this entire time, but he flicked the leash to prevent me from doing so.
“Keep your eyes on the ground. It will keep you from stumbling. And I will keep a short leash on you. You will hurt yourself if you stumble.”
I could hear it now, the slight razor that undercut the previously gentle thunder that rolled across thirsty plains. It had not been there before, I was sure of it. It set my skin on fire and cast ice down my spine. It was danger incarnate, and had I heard it, I would have handled him differently. I would have avoided him, for there was no surviving a person who could pirouette on the edges of extremes with agile grace like this. They would be the undoing of any who found themselves in their path, and I had been fool enough to not notice it.
I had not feared something or someone in a very long time, but that tone in The Raven’s voice was terrifying. I didn’t know who he was anymore. I didn’t know what he was capable of anymore. I didn’t know how easily he could slip from one extreme to another. And yet I felt as if I had always seen it at the edges lurking, like moss threatening to overtake the trunk of a tree. I wanted to see a soft man, a man I could rely on to be sweet and tender with me. I had ignored the careful ease he had used in his threats. I had seen them at the time and let them fall by the wayside as I slowly let him wriggle bit by bit under my skin.
And this man who was leading me on a leash, gagged and cloaked in darkness, was not the man I had conjured up in my own mind. He was so much more, and it thrilled me. A thrill I neither wished to acknowledge nor accept as truth.
We walked up the spiral of stairs that wound up into the light above us in perfect silence. It was not until we stopped at the door that had led me into this horror that he turned to me. I had been told to keep my head down, but I was looking directly at him when he did. The smile that curled across his face was so complex I couldn’t peg it, first adoring, then devilish, then desirous, then sweet. It cycled so many emotions I could not track all of them. And then it twisted to doting adoration as he stroked the small bit of my cheek that was exposed between the straps with his thumb.
“I thought you looked beautiful coming undone on my fingers. This is the peak of your beauty,” he whispered before pressing an adoring kiss to the top of my cloaked head. “Be a good girl for me, Cricket.”
I didn’t want the twist of a knot within me drawing tight with the excitement that statement bore. I fought it, and it laughed at me.
And then he was leading me out of the door. I wanted to spit on him. I wanted to claw his eyes out. I wanted to stomp on his balls until they exploded. I didn’t want to feel the ooze of honey that dripped down my core to sweeten the aching burn of need he had planted there. I wanted to hate him with every fiber of my treacherous body. But I was all alone in that desire. Everything in me leaned into him, longed to be touched and tasted by him.
I hated it.
I watched the bare stonework of this section of the palace give way to the intricate woodwork of the palace proper, then to the simple polished wood floors of the courtier’s wing and then into a section of the castle I hadn’t explored. These floors were tiled with pale, white-grey marble inlaid with warm orange, brown, and yellow leaves. They scattered along the tile work like confetti after a party with seemingly no pattern at all to them .
We traversed hallway after hallway as The Raven led me. There was no point in trying to memorize the path. It was a simple impossibility. Not only could I not raise my head, but even if I could, The Raven’s broad back was directly in front of me, and he had not afforded me enough leash to move beyond him to see around his hulking frame.
“Slow. And stop,” he whispered as we drew up to where a crest was laid into the marble.
Two greyhounds on their back legs facing each other with a black bolt of lightning between them on a background of muted ochre. It was beautiful in a way, outlined in shining brass and surrounded by a flurry of the leaves. I had noted the occasional crest here and there, but I hadn’t yet connected what each of them meant. Who belonged to which crest seemed to be a maze in and of itself.
The Raven gathered the leash and drew me around him to tilt my chin up with a curl of his finger. His beautiful forest eyes met mine and held me in the palm of his hand as his glove stroked my cheek. He watched me for a long moment, as if memorizing every single feature of my face, like it would be the last time he saw it.
“You asked me in the Maw why I didn’t touch you, Cricket.” His voice was a soft whisper of thunder. “I ache to touch you. Since the first moment I saw you, I have wanted nothing more than to touch you in every way a Fae can touch a woman and some that have not even been thought of yet. I have been tormented by it, dreamed of it, needed it like the very air we breathe. You are my drug, Cricket. I do not touch you because I know if I do, I would never be able to stop. I cannot touch you yet, but . . .” He broke eye contact but kept a firm hold on my chin. His attention was gone but for a short moment before returning to my eyes. “The time will come . . . eventually. For now, I will do as I can.”
I wanted to run naked through the tall redwoods of his eyes. I wanted to roll headlong down the mossy rolling hills and let the soft bed of them caress my skin. His words meant little to me if he was looking in my eyes, and I into his. That moment of connection had a sliver of golden thread working through me to tie knots around my heart. I needed more. I needed everything.
He worked the hood of my cloak back down over my head and pushed open a door behind me, taking me with him. The marble floor fell away to rich carpets woven to look like the most lavish of nature’s display of turning leaves, cut through with raised pile shaped and trimmed to resemble roots to a great oak tree.
“Captain,” a man’s voice I had not heard before called from some distance away.
“Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear,” The Raven replied in a flat tone.
I was noticing more and more the way his voice became guarded with others. My time in the dark had heightened my attention to the small changes in his demeanor. Once, it was a child’s book of rhymes but now was a lavish epic tale with nuances and textures I had not noticed before.
“And who do you bring calling with you, Captain?”
The sound of a thick book closing and being set aside proceeded the soft creak of a wooden chair and the crunch of leather boots easing into the weight of a man standing. Muffled boot falls took an unhurried journey toward us, as if the speaker, Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear, was in no hurry at all to join the two of us on the oak and leaf strewn carpets.
The Raven closed the door behind us, the sound a deep hollow thud that rolled through my muscles with a sense of unease as its partner. “The Golden Pearl of The Warrens.”
“Truly?” That had piqued the interest of the Ard Tiarna, and his steps held a little more urgency. Well-oiled, buffed black leather riding boots came into my view of the carpet as he came to stop before me. “I had thought we were friends, Captain, but I hadn’t imagined we were this endeared to each other. May I touch her?”
The Raven grunted. “She’s declawed for the moment.”
That brought a good-natured chuckle from the Ard Tiarna. “My lady Pearl, I am going to push back your hood and look upon you. I haven’t yet had the pleasure, but I have heard so many tales throughout the court of your beauty and viciousness.”
I held still as the weight of the cloak hood was pushed back from my head and then the soft silken skinned finger of the Ard Tiarna found my cheek, where it delicately and furtively danced across it. “Lift your head for me, beautiful Pearl?”
His voice wasn’t unpleasant. It was gentle, tender, like one might speak to a cherished cat.
I raised my head and took him in as he took me in.
He was as beautiful as all the other Fae in the court. His hair was a deep russet that danced with the light of a fireplace across the room, casting copper and bronze highlights throughout its length and sparkling off the various rings, cuffs, stones, and charms that adorned it. Most of it was pulled back, out of his way, but the rest draped over his chest and drew the eye to the elegant bead work that was at the collar of his linen shirt. His eyes were shocking, though. Unlike The Raven’s or the King’s, or even the Bandrui’s eyes, his were a night sky from corner to corner. Dark navy melted in with midnight purples and twinkled with a thousand glittering stars. They were haunting. They were dreadful. And yet they were everything the night sky truly was, all its nightmares, all its dreamscapes cast behind deep-red lashes.
We watched each other for a long time, taking each other’s measure. It was different than with The Raven, though. Where The Raven’s gaze drew me in and made me feel like I was falling, Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear’s eyes were just another beautiful painting in a gallery of other beautiful paintings. It made you stop and want to look, but it did not make me feel dizzy.
“Even with this punishment upon your face, you are still stunning,” he whispered with awe in his voice. “I have never seen a Fae or a human so gifted. She positively radiates with strength and power. Do you not feel it when you are near her, Captain?”
He looked away from me. The movement drew my attention to the notched tips of his ears that were being hidden by an ornate ear cap. A brass oak tree whose roots wound down the shell of his ear, its branches disappearing into his hair. He could hide them with his adornments, but this man was once a soldier or a warrior of some sort. Only those Fae that had seen battle had ears that were notched like that .
I made a mental note to ask The Raven about it the next time I was so inclined to speak with him. Probably after I had a chance to kick his ass for whatever this all was.
“It’s one of her many charms, Highness.”
There was a taste of bitterness in his voice. Was he upset that he had to admit to my charms, or was he bothered by another finding me charming?
“I take it the scold’s bridle is for my protection. I’ve heard that she wields a wit as sharp as daggers.” He looked back to me and smiled. “My lady Pearl, please excuse my brutish manners for speaking of you as if you are not in the room with us. A foolish habit of mine when I am overwhelmed by the beauty and radiance of another being. It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear of Tromluí údramáil, the seat of the Fómhar, Keeper of the Leaves of Autumn, and you are in the royal wing of my court. These are my receiving chambers, and I am most humbled and delighted to welcome you to them. Would you and your, er . . . escort like to sit with me by the fire?”
His smile should have been oily. I had never seen someone who was genuinely pleased to meet me let alone someone who was so candid with their enjoyment of my presence. But the way his well-defined lips curled into it was too easy, too comfortable and well-worn to be false.
I cast my gaze to The Raven, and before he could decide for me, I nodded and looked over Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear’s shoulder to the fireplace. Though the palace was usually warm enough, I noticed that, since we stepped foot into the marble halls, with their beautiful leaves, the temperature was crisp and bordered on chilly. The cloak kept most of the cold at bay, but standing still on the carpet had let some of it creep up and under the deep folds of my protective layer.
The Raven let go of the leash but did not unhook it. The Ard Tiarna, for what it was worth, did not take hold of the lead as I expected him to. He watched it fall and eyed it, a single brow raising as if to ask if it would be a tripping hazard for me. Hazard or not, no one was taking that leash up again just to lead me the thirty paces to the fireplace. I walked there on my own, my head held high and my eyes trained on the crackling fire burning merrily in the massive hearth. I didn’t wait to be shown my seat. I sat on the one that looked the most comfortable and made myself at home.
The Ard Tiarna looked to The Raven and smiled indulgently. “I like that she has a mind of her own. So few, these days do. It is an intoxicating feature. I see what you meant about her many charms.”
The Ard Tiarna joined me next to the fire, sitting across from me as The Raven brooded in a dark corner near the door and watched us. “I would normally offer you some refreshments, my lady, but unfortunately . . .” He smiled, and I couldn’t help but feel my own mouth try to curl around the leather into a matching smile.
Drool had begun to pool behind my gag, and I struggled to keep it from leaking out the sides of my stretched mouth. I wrestled with it, swallowing as much as I could as quickly as I could.
“It seems that our dear Captain has been outmatched by your wit one too many times to trust that you would not turn that rapier against an unarmed opponent,” he said, leaning in with a conspiratorial wink. “Truly, though, my lady, I do not know what I have done to deserve such an introduction, but I will say that I have been most curious about you. You know my sister, and she has spoken at length with me about your long list of accolades. Tell me, is it true that you vexed the Ard Rí so much that he succumbed to fits of violence upon your person for weeks on end?”
I narrowed my eyes at him, my bristles rising as he leaned forward. “Please, at ease, my lady. I do not mean to insult you. I was most impressed with your mettle. So few people are willing to stand firm against him that to hear a human had done so was even more impressive.”
I watched him, watched the stars dance in his cosmos eyes as he spoke. He had mentioned I knew his sister. And as I watched him speak, I saw the same features in a more masculine arrangement as the Bandrui. That made more sense. She had sent bread and had been as close to a friend as I had found in the Fae.
My shoulders relaxed as he watched me, his knee scooting forward to press against mine. “I see that you see the resemblance. I didn’t wish to name drop. She does hate when I do that, but, yes. Our Venerated Bandrui is my twin sister. Though she serves at the temple and has no family but the gods, I still count her leaves among my tree. She has told me so much of you and the time you spent with her. I have felt like a young child listening to our governess weave tales of far-off lands. I was almost sure you didn’t even truly exist.”
The Raven shifted behind me as if uncomfortable, but I paid him no attention.
“May I touch you, my lady?”
The question was soft, almost reverent, like a supplicant asking to touch the hand of a saint.
“I don’t think that’s a—”
I cut The Raven off with a terse nod to Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear.
The Raven didn’t get to tell me he couldn’t touch me and then get precious about it when someone else wanted to.
The Ard Tiarna’s keen midnight eyes twitched toward The Raven and then back to me. He understood the measure of it as quickly as if I had spoken, and a conspiratorial smirk played across his features. His hand, sun-kissed like his sister’s, reached across the small divide between us and drew the long golden braid from within the cloak. It was a given that the gap at the collar of the cloak revealed that there was nothing below it, but the Ard Tiarna had the good sense to not say or indicate anything about it. He merely toyed with the silken length of my hair, with indulgent wonder playing over his lips.
“My gods, my lady Pearl. Even your hair is a gift.” His eyes flicked up to mine, smoldering, with barely banked desire that was plain to read, even though there were no irises. “I am sorry for the way you came by it, but you are an amazing creature. Your spirit shines through all the layers of gilding they have placed upon you, and I sit as a penitent in your presence.”
The Raven moved behind me, leaning down and whispering in my ear, his hot breath filling me with a desire that matched Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear’s. “I cannot fuck you, little bug. But he can. He can fill up that dripping, aching pussy in ways I cannot. Decide if you want him.”
The words sat on me, pressed into me, and taunted me. Memories of the way my body sang under his hand, even with the leather gloves between us, flitted past my mind’s eye, and Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear’s thumb moved to caress small circles into my knee. There was no way he could have heard The Raven, though we were mere feet apart. If he had, the look of need burning in his gaze would have burned that much brighter.
“I hope he does not whisper that you must go. I would have more time with you if it is possible.” He laughed softly to himself. “Maybe one day, I could even hear your voice. My sister says that to hear you speak is to hear Ailbhe’s own voice, power, and rage intertwined with the song of beauty that you truly are. Will you grant me more time with you, my lady?”
I nodded. Though I wasn’t entirely sure to which I was agreeing. Was it The Raven’s debauched proposal or to Brittle Spear’s request? Neither. Both. All of them and more.
My heart was suddenly racing. I didn’t remember it, even getting up from its bed, yet it was pounding at the bars of its cage as Brittle Spear watched me. He did not ask again to touch me but merely reached out and dragged the back of his hand across my cheek, murmuring soft words that sounded like praise.
The Raven gripped my shoulder, weaving his strength into the gentle caress.
I let my eyes slip shut and let myself fall into the sensations. It was no longer Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear caressing my cheek and whispering how beautiful I was. It was The Raven.
I felt his calloused fingers brushing at the soft skin of my cheek, drifting lower to caress my throat. Goose bumps rose as the tip of his finger toyed with the lobe of my ear. It was his voice that murmured how my skin felt like sun-kissed pearls. It was him who traced a line up the edge of my ear and danced across the sensitive tip, winding small hairs back behind it. It was his breath that gusted over the shell of it .
I could fool myself as long as my eyes were closed and the ragged breathing was my own. But when the Prince whispered in my ear, the illusion was shattered. “Will you do the honor of coming to my chambers with me, my lady?”