5. Rush Is Eager to Please
5. RUSH IS EAGER TO PLEASE
ELOWYN
And you all will watch.
Azariah was speaking again. I could hear his deep voice as it filled the cozy nook carved out of the larger salon, the decor so precisely orchestrated. But I couldn’t make out his words, not even the gist of them. Not even when it was vitally important that I absorb every rule and nuance of this twisted game the queen was playing.
Her declaration echoed through my thoughts until her slithery and clinging voice filled every recess of my mind. Not only did she intend to force Rush into her bed—surely violation enough, for fuck’s sake—but she’d invited spectators to whatever indignities she planned for him.
I struggled to absorb the all-too-real possibility that Rush would be forced to surrender his body as he’d warned me he would. As he’d resigned himself to do when he’d sent me off into the Sorumbra, hoping I’d somehow live despite my appearance otherwise.
How did we find ourselves here? How could I have been in the Wilds one moment, at the palace the next—so much magic at play, magic that could have been amazingly wonderful—only for the man I loved to be mistreated in such a profoundly personal way?
I couldn’t allow this to happen. I simply couldn’t.
But I could devise no way to prevent it that didn’t bring about the torture and likely death of the people and creatures Rush and I were working so desperately to protect, whom Rush had already sacrificed long years to keep safe. Did the goal of their well-being, and the well-being of countless other fae of the Mirror World, truly justify the methods? Could existence really be that awful?
One look at the queen and the satisfied grin she wore gave me the answer: yes, yes it could . She wouldn’t stop until everyone was a hollowed-out husk of who they’d once been.
Despite the threat to the connection between Rush and me—primal, ancient, and so fucking sacred it was regarded with awe by the entirety of faekind save one horrible person—I had to suppress the visceral urge to bash the queen’s head into the stupid, shiny gold plate set in front of her until it overflowed with her blood, drenched the tablecloth, and dripped to the floor in big, slippery gobs—until I could fucking swim in it.
West and Ryder had only just reminded me how important control was. I fully understood I needed to shove down the righteous anger that was surging through me with the speed of a wind-fueled fire.
But who protected him ? Who would keep her nasty claws away from him ?
His friends, the men I knew he considered his brothers, were excluded from the night’s entertainment. And even if they hadn’t been, they’d been making similar sacrifices for as long as Rush had. “The ends justify the means” might as well be etched across their collective foreheads. Each of them wore the haunted look of a man condemned by his fate.
I shot to standing, slamming my palms to either side of my place setting, upsetting plates, crystal goblets, and polished silver. Azariah trailed off in what I assumed was mid-sentence, and a chirp slipped out of Braque from where he sat beside me, his chair squeaking.
Just as quickly, Ivar also rose to his feet, leaning onto the table. His eyes narrowed at me, his lips pressed into the stark line of disapproval I’d seen many times already.
“Take your seat,” he hissed at me while Braque’s pudgy hands slid to his potions satchel, ready to defend his precious queen from me.
With no one but the tyrant herself in my sights, I opened my mouth—to protest, to vilify, to ask her how she fucking dared contemplate using Rush as her sex plaything over fizzy wine and fucking finger foods. Like she was actually civilized. Like the niceties of the formal salon had any kind of place in her vicinity. Perhaps to suggest she feel shame for how many lives she had ruined, tainted, and defiled as if the existence of others were some horrible cosmic joke.
But instead of the jumbled accusations that jostled to tumble free first, all that came out was a growl so ferocious, so vicious, I couldn’t help but think of the wolf West had likened me to.
It was the kind of warning—nay, a promise— that it would be the last thing heard before its target crossed over to the Etherlands. Or in the queen’s case, to burn for an eternity in the Igneuslands.
The growl vibrated my chest and throat. My skin. Feminine gasps punctuated the seconds as my threat drew out, and went on and on. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to stop. Not until her head replaced one of the dragons’ atop the pillars that surrounded Embermere, and its colors had faded with the passing of time.
“Sit. Down,” Ivar gritted through clenched teeth. “Or I shall make you.”
No doubt he’d try.
Glaring openly at the queen, I didn’t budge.
She stared right back at me. Her blue eyes were alight with … by frigid sunshine, was that … amusement ?
The mate bond that was still so new to me tensed, as if it understood a truth I hadn’t yet grasped.
In a tone that was unnerving for its calm, the queen said, “I suggest you listen to Ivar, Elowyn. If you mean to object to Rush’s involvement in my soirées, I assure you, there’s no need. He’s a most willing participant. Isn’t that right, Rush?”
I swiveled to face him.
His smile was immediate as he dipped his head. “Of course it is, Your Majesty. I’m eager to please.”
I gaped at him. “But … Rush. You … can’t.”
His gaze was slow to travel to mine. When it did, I saw none of the recognition I expected. The usual familiarity between us, the affection … the love … gone.
His eyes, currently flat and gray, suggested we were … strangers.
Whatever might have remained of my growl—of my bite—curled up into a ball, possibly to die.
“I ‘can’t?’” he asked me. “Of course I can. Who do you think you are to interfere with my agency?”
Even his voice was different. Wrong . Haughty, perhaps, when I’d never once before detected that kind of sense of superiority from him. Not even when we were enemies.
When he’d openly admitted to being the queen’s agent.
“See, Elowyn,” the queen said. “Rush is eager to please .”
“That’s right, Your Majesty. And I have no doubt that I will.”
What is this fuckery?
I searched his face for evidence that he was putting on a show to somehow save us. That none of what he said was real. That he felt the bond between us as strongly as I did, and that all he was doing was a much better job than I at concealing its effects from the last person in the world I should reveal them to.
But beyond the flatness of his eyes, usually so lively, I found none of the signs I was looking for.
Suddenly unsure, the mate bond muted. The wolf tucked its tail between its legs and hunched into itself.
“Rush?” I whispered.
Those eyes of his I so loved were disturbingly dull. “The Viscountess Elowyn Ashira, is it? From Forzantos?”
I felt my lips part but no sound slipped from between them.
“Well, is it or not?”
Still, all I could do was stare.
“Don’t mind her, Rush,” the queen interjected. “She’s only here as a favor to my husband. You know how I like to spoil him. There’s no chance she’ll actually win the trials. You don’t need to waste your time with her.”
Rush studied me for several beats.
It’s me! We’re in love. You must recognize me.
Eventually, without so much as a friendly smile, he looked away?—
Toward Natania.
All I could do was watch as his face—that stunning, gorgeous face I already could conjure from memory alone—transformed into open adoration?—
For the wrong woman.
The passing hours did nothing to improve my outlook, especially since they were so idly filled. Apparently the queen intended to whittle away the time with her ladies and the kind of idle gossip that had me agreeing with Zako.
The only matters you should concern yourself with are your own. Don’t waste your energy on the actions of others unless they directly impact your own , he’d tell me when I’d show interest in the dramatic flares between the passionate dragon protectors with whom I’d shared Nightguard.
Gladly, Zako. Fucking gladly.
But I couldn’t have been more trapped by my circumstances. I couldn’t leave for fear the queen would punish those I cared for, and if she didn’t, the magic would kill me for abandoning the trials before their conclusion.
Though the queen could have summoned dozens of goblins to clean up the evidence of the magic’s earlier displeasure at interference with the natural order of the proceedings, the blood remained untouched, impossible to ignore when the curtains, tablecloth, flowers, and every other possible accent was an otherwise impeccable white. The message couldn’t be clearer: remain or suffer the—bloody—consequences.
Unbelievably, just the day before I’d been in the Sorumbra facing down a dragon. Weeks of hard travel had separated me and my companions from the palace. I’d been fighting my way back to Rush—and the queen.
Now I was within reach of both, and neither wanted anything to do with me—unless torture counted.
Since the queen had decreed the first event would begin the next day, she’d ordered a luncheon for us to “celebrate each other’s company before we become bitter rivals.”
Though I’d tried very hard to focus on my blessings—among my friendships alone, I’d found several—I ultimately found nothing at all I wanted to celebrate.
While I churned with the desire to throttle Natania until my fingers left their mark upon her pale neck, she found endless ways to touch Rush. A coquettish swipe of a finger across his arm, a hand, a fucking thigh. A “careless” brush of her breasts, a good exhale from popping free of her corset, against one of his shoulders. A sweep of her skirts against his legs. Every time I looked, she was crowding him, batting her artificially lengthened lashes at him as if the act were a mating call. Thank dragons’ veins her hair had remained coiled atop her head through the magic’s upheaval or she’d have probably used it to rope him.
She giggled so often—sooooo fucking often—that my body had begun instinctively clenching each time. I developed a headache an hour into the event.
The other ladies were little better. If they weren’t competing with Natania for the chance to rub themselves all over Rush like dragons in heat, then they were ooh ing and ahh ing over super important facts, such as that Jolanda, the dowager countess of Etherantos and the mother of the backstabbing Lennox Heath, was “rolling around in the mud” by screwing a lord I hadn’t heard of, and if that was his choice in lovers, I didn’t want to. Or that Hiroshi had taken Malina from behind against one of the stables while an aroused stallion watched on, chuffing hotly—a lie of Malina’s, I’d wager.
That anyone there might believe this was what it took to become a crown princess of an entire kingdom said all the things that went un said in the queen’s reign of terror.
While I tried very hard not to notice how Rush appeared interested in Natania’s advances, and not to be bothered by anyone else’s, I’d mulled over the facts as I knew them.
The queen had summoned Rush from my chambers to hers before the start of the Nuptialis Probatio. Afterward, he seemed nothing like the man who’d kissed me goodbye this very morning as if he wanted to imprint himself upon me. As if he never wanted to leave my side.
Braque was both the queen’s loyal lapdog and the royal alchemist. He’d cast a spell on me that had transformed my appearance so that I looked and sounded nothing like me. If he could do that, what else was the portly man with the dour attitude capable of? Could he have performed an enchantment on Rush that excised me from his memory? That made him believe Natania was the best thing to come along since weapons holsters?
Not only was it possible, I figured it was downright likely.
That didn’t make it much easier to bear the constant flirtations, the endless commentary suggesting Rush would end up with Natania or a choice few of the other hopefuls. I got scornful, sidelong glances from practically all of them, save Octavia Lily Rose, whose pretty face was twisted into a constant state of distress, reminding me of a skittish colt. I guessed she would have preferred my company to that of any of the others but was too afraid to do anything about it. I hoped she’d be disqualified from the trials quickly and painlessly and be freed from any more of the queen’s manipulations.
No amount of the fae’s golden wine, served in quaint, tiny glasses I wished were twenty times bigger, numbed my headache or the edge that ground at my nerves like a file. And when the queen finally released us to freshen up for the evening’s festivities, AKA Rush’s violation, we were led to shared quarters. Though the room was elegant in a way befitting of future royalty, and large enough for all twenty-two of us to have our own beds, partitioned off from the others with more of those same shimmering curtains, I recognized it for what it was: yet another prison. Only this time I was trapped with my would-be murderers.
The magic of the trials might prevent the queen from killing me directly, but Azariah had offered no such assurances for the competitors. An insubstantial curtain wasn’t exactly protection. In addition to the torments I could easily foresee in my immediate future, I tacked on lack of sleep.
When, thanks to my new she-goblin, I found myself stuffed into yet another stifling dress, and then summoned to the queen’s chambers along with the other contestants, my many concerns—for Rush, for Saffron, Pru, Xeno, Roan, Reed, Finnian, Bolt, every other dragon and goblin at the queen’s mercy, and Rush’s sister Larissa too—distilled into only one.
Rush .
How could I save Rush?
Especially now that he appeared unaware he needed saving at all, the responsibility landed on me alone.
And yet … when a fairy half my size led me along two even rows of chairs to one in front, the one closest to the queen’s sizable bed, I sat. At the luncheon, the queen had directed me as far away from Rush as possible. Now, she put me nearest.
Without a doubt, that wouldn’t be good. In fact, I’d bet the kingdom it would be bad—very, very bad. The kind of bad I might never recover from.
The kind Rush might never recover from.
My headache raged. My mate bond, which I’d only so recently begun to sense inside as a warm cocoon of comfort, was silent, as if it were cowering away from the torment that was soon to come .
And it would. Fuck, it would. How was I to stop it? Should I endanger all Rush fought to save to spare him?
The other females filed in around me and took their seats. Octavia Lily Rose was guided beside me. Again, not good. She was the most innocent of them all.
Several fairies half my height flitted among us, offering us more of the golden fae wine. I clutched full-sized goblets in each hand, certain their soothing effects weren’t capable of the comforting I’d need.
The recessed lights dimmed. A dozen orbs glowing a soft, silver light bobbed around the bed, making it the center of attention. Our chairs were left in the dark. None of the queen’s bloody spies joined us, and why would they? She’d know everything that happened here.
The bed was large enough to accommodate a handful of men. Draped in a minimalist black silk coverlet, it oozed an elegance its owner did not.
When the queen entered the room, it was from a frameless door that vanished seamlessly into the wall around it—no accident, I was sure. I wondered if my father was aware this room existed. Perhaps he did and didn’t care about his wife’s endless indiscretions.
Vases I hadn’t noticed before, lit from within with a soft glow, hovered along the walls at arm’s-length intervals. They bloomed with palm-sized, blood-red flowers I would have called beautiful, mayhap even stunning, if not for the tentacles wiggling at their centers like umbracs. The flowers, like the queen, weren’t friendly.
As the woman stalked toward the bed, a thick cord of smoke followed, sentient, like an obedient snake, cousin to the flowers. When she kicked off her high heels, the smoke bifurcated, and then bifurcated again and again, until tendrils of it wove around the base of the bed to wait. To strike? I didn’t know. I didn’t think I wanted to know.
Fairies delivered a chair to Ivar and Braque each, and positioned them against the wall, where they’d apparently keep watch. Braque sank into his immediately with a soft grunt. Ivar stood next to his, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
Though I doubted she could see much of us, the queen glanced at the rows of us, found my eyes precisely, and smirked, her red lips widening into something predatory. With slow, exact movements, she unwrapped her robe, a matching black silk, and let it shudder down her body to the floor. A fairy sprinted to retrieve it, nearly getting kicked in the face as the queen climbed onto the bed like a cat, on all fours with her ass in the air. She wore a negligee that covered only enough for her not to be naked.
“Rush,” she purred, and I gulped some of the wine. How had I already nearly drained one of the goblets?
The secret door opened and he stepped in. My insides found their voice, and for the first time ever, in unison they screamed. Every part of me bellowed and thrashed and struggled.
Outwardly, I seethed, still unsure what I was to do: honor Rush’s wishes and let him do what he felt was his duty for the greater good? Or smack some sense into his idiotic ass and prove there was another way, even if I hadn’t found it yet?
Again, I drank. Rush pulled the door shut behind him with a nearly silent whoosh . Unlike the slutty queen, he was dressed in a modest tunic, breeches, and boots. I hoped they were fucking glued to his body.
His attention went first to the queen. With her crown perfectly shiny and perfectly perched atop her head, her behind in the air stood out, discordant. His gaze skimmed across the skirt of her lingerie and how it barely covered the swell of her ass. The pale, smooth skin was bright in the silver light.
Next his gaze traveled across the lines of chairs. In this lighting, I imagined we were muddled silhouettes. Like the queen’s, I could have sworn his attention landed on me and held there for long enough that my heart squeezed, daring to hope the lack of interest I felt from him before had been a highly convincing act.
But, too soon, his focus drifted back to the queen, to the expectations she had for him, which if she hadn’t made abundantly clear before, there’d be no missing now.
Rush was to perform like a stallion sent to stud, as if that were his reason for being.
A pair of orbs bobbed along with him so that I could make out every one of his features. The way they were so tight they could string a damn bow. His eyes were so dark, there was no indication they were usually bright enough to suggest their very own light source. And then …
And then his face slackened. His eyes, already darker than I’d ever seen them, appeared to deaden and go blank, too still, as if he were no longer there—as if he had the ability I’d been wishing for all day long to abandon his body and his heart and its many pains.
Something grazed my arm, above where I clutched the wine like a lifeline, and I jerked, whipping my head to the left. It was Octavia Lily Rose, and her hand squeezed my arm in silent commiseration. Perhaps compassion, even, if there was such a thing from acquaintances at this damnable court. I leaned my head toward my shoulder in all the thanks to her I could muster, then studied Rush again.
With those empty, empty eyes, his chest rose and fell with an obvious inhale and exhale, meant to steady him, I guessed, and then his fingers tucked beneath the hem of his tunic.
Natania was on my right, Malina, Coretta, and Eliana beside her, and they, along with several of the other females, murmured their approval as Rush lifted his tunic to reveal tight, defined abs and a gloriously sculpted chest.
I knew already. Everything about his body was perfect.
When he tossed his tunic to the floor, a goblin ran to fetch it while his audience hummed in appreciation at those muscled shoulders.
His tattoos, the one tell of his emotions that he hadn’t mastered, were oddly absent.
The queen craned her neck to peer at him. Her crown still perfect, her ass still in the air, waiting for him. For the stud to get to it.
Bile bubbled up my throat. If I was going to be sick, I was going to puke all over the queen. If I had leftovers, I was pointing them at Natania.
Rush unlaced his boots and kicked them off to more appreciation, but when his hands traveled to the waist of his pants, naturally framing the muscled V that pointed to that magnificent bejeweled wand that was meant only for me, Malina let out a breathy, “By dragonfire, Her Majesty is the most incredible queen ever. I could do with some of that .”
“I will do with some of that. If Her Majesty wills it, of course,” said Natania.
I passed my goblet to Octavia Lily Rose with a silent, “Hold this,” freeing up my right hand—and elbowed Natania in the throat.