Chapter 24 #2
It nearly broke both his hearts to see how she slept when she was alone.
Curled up in a tight ball, her favorite blanket tucked around her.
She made herself as compact as possible.
Slinky slept much the same, snoozing on Leita’s hip.
The marten stirred when Attalus leaned down to kiss Leita’s cheek and scrambled up onto his head.
He rose with her long body woven through his horns, and her twitching whiskers tickled his scalp as she rooted around in his hair.
The sight of it made Carenza giggle when Attalus stepped past the bed. Leita’s attendants had made good use of the lounging furniture since Attalus introduced it; as his mate slept, Carenza sat embroidering while Ondra read.
“She’s already had plenty of fruit and cheese this morning, so don’t let her tell you otherwise,” Carenza whispered.
“Slinky, or the Queen?”
Carenza laughed. “Slinky. The Queen hasn’t stirred.”
“Thank you both. I’ll watch over her now.”
The attendants took their dismissal easily, both standing with their things, bobbing their heads, and silently taking their leave. They did the same things, yet Attalus couldn’t help noticing subtle differences.
While Carenza’s smiles were warm and quick, Ondra would hardly meet his eye.
Whenever he saw the attendants waiting for Leita or watching over her, Carenza was usually keeping her hands busy, such as with embroidery or darning or shucking.
Ondra, meanwhile, read. And while Ondra went directly to the door and left, Carenza stopped to check over Leita, smoothing the sheets and ensuring her toes were covered.
These little things caught Attalus’s eye, though he didn’t know what to do with them.
As he understood it, Carenza had been a lifelong resident of Fallorian and her family were well-respected craftspeople.
Ondra was a younger cousin from House Meringor, brought in by Lady Idrisil because she was of a similar age to Leita.
Perhaps the differences could be explained by experience and geography, but that didn’t feel totally right to Attalus.
It could be the differences in their personalities, or that Leita clearly favored Carenza thanks to her warmer nature. Whatever the case, Attalus collected his observations for later. He hoped they wouldn’t be needed, but he had them if they were.
After a handful of grapes and cheese for himself, and one—all right, two—grapes for Slinky, Attalus returned to the bed. Climbing onto the bed, he crawled across the soft sheets to curl around his slumbering mate.
Gods, she truly took his breath away. As luminous as the moon and prettier than a pearl, her lilac skin and white hair struck him as otherworldly.
Surely nothing so beautiful could exist in this world.
Seeing the back of his red scaled hand against her softness almost felt like a desecration of such beauty, but he did it anyway.
With the curve of a claw, he pushed moonlit hair off her forehead and behind her pointed ear.
He’d learned since coming to Fallorian that long sleeps could be many lengths.
Leita had begun trying to sleep when he did, at least when the urge to rest took her.
During their sleep, fae resembled the dead, unmoving and cool to the touch.
He supposed it was something like torpor, blood flow, heartrate, and digestion slowing.
It terrified him how vulnerable she was like that. So much so, he’d taken to being with her throughout most of her long sleep.
“You don’t have to worry,” she’d assured him more than once. “We have strong instincts to wake up if our magic senses danger.”
While that did reassure him some, nothing was better at calming his nerves than ensuring she was safe himself.
He also took great pleasure in being the one to wake her. Attalus had indulged in all manner of waking, from his head between her legs to his cock sliding over her weeping cunt. He’d marveled and shuddered to find her respond so beautifully to him, even in her sleep.
Today, though, he woke her with kisses.
“It’s time, my love,” he crooned. “The day awaits.”
Attalus wasn’t entirely sure what triggered a fae to wake; whether it required a certain regeneration of magic and strength or something else intrinsic like for other creatures.
Leita usually came awake slowly, a breath deeper than the last his first sign.
Her eyes moved behind her lids, and her lips pursed, as though waking displeased her.
He kissed that away, coaxing her to open her eyes.
One finally cracked to peer at him. “Attalus?”
“Good afternoon, agae. Did you sleep well?”
“Mmhmmm.” So well, it seemed, she didn’t wish to wake. Rather than stretch or yawn, Leita turned her head into the bed and curled up tighter.
“Ah ah, not this time. You said you wanted to go to the grotto today, remember?”
“No,” she grumbled.
“No, you don’t remember or no, you don’t want to go to the grotto?”
“No.”
Attalus chuckled and settled for petting her lovely hair. He let her rise in her own time.
Or, he meant to, but Slinky had other ideas. And probably wanted her warm place in bed. Sliding down his arm, the marten slithered between them to lick Leita’s nose, whiskers twitching.
Leita exhaled loudly, her face scrunching. “You smell like cheese.”
“That’s likely a compliment to a marten.”
Even as his mate continued to grumble and yawn, his and Slinky’s mission was complete. They had an awake Leita, and eventually they had an upright and dressed Leita.
“A few options for you,” Attalus said as he popped grapes into Leita’s mouth. “We can check over the stock from the orcish territories, we can go see the elders to practice magic, or we can go to the grotto like you wanted.”
Her glower was absolutely adorable, and he couldn’t resist stealing a grape-flavored kiss.
“Grotto it is,” he said with a smile.
The grotto was just as dark and dank as it’d been before, the air carrying an unpleasant woolliness that invaded the nostrils and wasn’t easily dislodged. Attalus didn’t care for the space at all, but he knew that whatever he felt, it was far worse for Leita.
He wished he could better understand the bond the fae shared with their land. It was unlike anything anywhere else on the continent as far as he knew. The fae were symbiotic with their homeland in a way that other folk couldn’t comprehend.
Attalus supposed it might be like the instinct to shift.
He didn’t have to think about his other form; when the feeling came, his body transformed.
It was similar, he believed, with manticores, although they apparently possessed an inner beast self.
Shifting to another form reeked of intrinsic magic, but dragons, manticores, and all other folk had lost the ability to communicate with it.
The language wasn’t a dead one to the fae, though. They were the last to speak it fluently.
So while Attalus couldn’t fully understand Leita’s plight, he did see her struggle and wished to lighten her load. If that meant accompanying her to this damp place, so be it.
Although she’d chosen new, comfortable pieces to wear today, including a light skirt and a low-backed bodice with stay strings in the front, Leita had forgone shoes.
While Attalus never wore the things, seeing his mate step on the muzzy rocks with her delicate bare feet had his gall rising.
His palms twitched to pick her up and carry her across the grotto floor.
He gritted his fangs against the instinct, doubting she’d appreciate the gesture.
“Do you feel it more strongly here?” he asked quietly, wincing at the sound of his own echo. He hardly knew what he meant by it, but Leita nodded.
“Yes, the magic is here with us. Watching us. But it’s like it hides behind a rock, just out of sight.”
A troubled frown, an expression Attalus had come to know well, gathered at her brow.
“Don’t push yourself. You’ll scare it away.” He didn’t know that, of course, but Attalus assumed the faelands acted like any other scared, traumatized creature. Its trust had to be earned; no simple feat when it was already wary and beaten down by centuries of abuse.
He’d hoped she’d made a breakthrough the last time they were there.
Talking about her past unlocked something in Leita.
Not only did he feel closer to her, knowing more of what made her Leita, but giving voice to memories long buried seemed to ease her spirit.
As she’d spoken, both of them swore little plumes of blue light had begun to glow around the grotto—gone if they looked but there in the periphery.
Whatever progress had been made, though, appeared fleeting. Or, at least, they’d made the faelands curious but not convinced.
“Shall we tell it about yesterday’s council meeting?” Attalus proposed.
Leita pulled a face before finally shrugging. If what the fae believed about their land and its magic was true, it had to already know everything that’d happened, right? But then again, perhaps it liked feeling included. Or perhaps it just liked the sounds of their voices.
Whatever it was, Attalus didn’t imagine the blue wisps teasing the edges of his vision as Leita spoke. He held her gaze, both of them trying not to grow too eager.
Attalus motioned for Leita to continue, silently urging her to keep talking. He doubted it truly mattered what she said, just that she was there to say it in a friendly manner.
He had to bite his tongue to keep his excitement in check.
He’d rather pull out all his scales than be the reason the faelands fled from Leita.
Attalus didn’t dare move, not even letting his tail swish, as his mate continued to talk about everyday goings-on.
How many households were growing vegetables now, and how they hoped for a bountiful yield come autumn.
How shipments had just arrived from the orcs, including a letter from her friend.
How the cooks from the hinterlands had begun to win over the skeptic fae of Fallorian.