Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
T hree more days until the showcase.
Each passing day only increased my neurosis, which some of the luudthen thought entertaining.
Andrei indulged my nerves—equally entertained, but smarter in how he showed it. As long as I was eating and sleeping at night, he was content enough.
I was discovering the key to keeping Andrei content. Let him fuss, don’t do anything to surprise him, regular sex. . .shocker. . .and don’t wander off. Which fell under the auspices of no surprises. He liked schedules and order, and upsets in either brought out his High Lord.
“This is because children need routines or they throw tantrums, and have to be put down for naps,” Con had said.
Andrei’s response to that comment still rang in my ears.
On my more restless nights Andrei didn’t stop me from dancing in the courtyard, though he’d snatch me back into the house if he thought I was coming too close to what he called a “spiral.”
If he wasn’t home, the others would bully or bribe me, whatever my succubus felt like responding too. She liked both the carrot and the stick. Sometimes at the same time.
And they’d all continued teaching me how to. . .feed.
When I danced in front of others, I’d been inadvertently using my affinity for dance as a feeding tube. When I invited them to watch me, to yearn for me, to give me their love and energy, it was literal.
I couldn’t go more than a day without dancing because Fae couldn’t fast .
“It’s a trait of your ancestor’s sub-species,” Andrei had said after the night I’d almost eaten Vargas. Or enslaved her. I was hazy on the details. “And with your affinity for dance, you can spin yourself into your own kind of fairy circle if you aren’t careful.”
“I’ve never seen anything quite like her before,” Con had said. “Trust you to mate the peculiar one.”
“The beautiful one,” Andrei corrected as I punched the luudthen in the middle.
“Beware of the beautiful ones,” Con replied, voice dark. “They eat your soul every time.”
“I haven’t noticed you complaining,” I’d pointed out, pleased instead of insulted because like any woman I was a sucker for compliments. “Peculiar isn’t what you call me when I have your cock in my mouth. Besides, I’m not beautiful.”
Con stared at me as Andrei tilted his head, eyeing me with a kind of secret mirth.
“The way humans judge beauty is inexplicable,” Con said finally. “Your species gets so many things wrong.”
“Our word for it doesn’t really translate though,” Andrei murmured.
This morning I learned that unleashing the satin in my blood when I danced alone was like cannibalizing myself. I couldn't quite wrap my head around the fact that I was some kind of succubus.
“A sex demon, Andrei?” I demanded. “Really? Do I look like a sex demon to you? Never mind, don’t answer that.”
Considering the things we’d been up to in the bedroom, that was a stupid question.
He’d dragged me out of bed early because mornings before I headed to studio were often the only time we had together, and there was a lot I needed to be taught.
Lounging on the fainting couch in the courtyard, his loose robe fell open to reveal his chest. He didn’t remove the arm flung over his eyes to look at me—he was sunning, one of the rare instances he actually sat still. I stood staring down at him, my arms crossed.
But I heard the eyeroll when he responded. “Not a sex demon. A Dark Fae entity that feeds off energy, sexual energy being the easiest, and uses that energy to subvert others’ wills. You’ve proven you can do that a touch. You’re in my light. Move.”
I didn’t budge an inch. I also heard what he didn’t say. “That’s why you all keep playing whack-a-mole with me?”
“You’re manipulative. It’s not sporting, cygnet.”
Please.
If they thought I was actually going to stop using whatever advantage I could to stay a few toes ahead of them. . .well, bless their hearts and hope to die. Let them think that if they wanted. I’d just learn to be more stealthy.
My silence must have lasted too long. He lowered his arm and looked at me. “If you aren’t careful, and the servants you feed from have no defenses, you could bind them to you. Create an open bond between you that is a source of constant nourishment. Is that what you want?” he added pointedly.
I was still caught up on the word servants. “. . .no.”
He draped his arm back over his eyes. “Don’t sound so uncertain, darling. Of course, it doesn’t concern me if you drain a hundred servants dry. Feed as you wish. You are my bonded consort. Your pleasure is Casakraine’s law.”
Sneaky. “And I’m the manipulative one?” Except if he was able to say it, it must be true. More proof that what lurked in my bonded wasn’t the gooey marshmallow center he tried to project. I chewed my bottom lip. “This was why Lord Iliweh was pissed.”
“Hmm, yes. They were highly displeased by your poaching. That almost started a feud—you really need to control that disconcerting little habit of yours. Now, regular proximity keeps the bond open, though time and absence may close it. So you haven’t left a bevy of zombies in your wake, or a line of broken hearts, if that’s your fear.”
Evidently the lackadaisically moral nature of this discussion moved Mathen to intervene. He shifted his weight and I glanced over to where he stood near the living room threshold. He gave Andrei a thin-lipped look, then turned to me.
“You will hurt people, Anali,” he said, gaze unflinching. “You have some power. You must learn to leash it. As all of us must, who wish to cause no more harm than necessary. . . my Lord .”
I was still figuring out the “necessary” bit, though. When or how I might ever use my nature in self-defense. But I doubted it would ever come to that.
Andrei fluttered his fingers and sighed. “Yes, yes. Listen to the noble one, Anah. He’s so much better at this than I. I do try, but people are always testing me. Who am I to deny them the opportunity to try their mettle?”
Mathen sighed. “Anali, you will be late.”
I picked up my bag and followed him out of the house, Andrei’s, “Behave, cygnet,” trailing me.
He was really one to talk. Who knew what he got up to during the day? I’d heard whispers about the ongoing investigation into Ixnie, but I steered clear of him and the luudthen when they discussed it. I didn’t want to be dragged into tattle-telling, and for now they seemed content to keep me out of it.
“Don’t dance holes into your slippers,” Mathen said, the corners of his eyes creased with amusement as he escorted me to my solo practice room.
“Obviously you don’t know me very well.”
He kissed my forehead. “I have hope. We are here if you need us.”
Mathen stepped back, fingertips brushing my cheek and I entered the room with a smile, dropping my bag at the door.
As I rehearsed, I tried to separate my succubus nature from my affinity, so I wasn’t eating myself for lunch.
Sigh.
This was why no one liked the Fae.
One of whom was a not so distant ancestor. Five or six generations removed, at most.
Dancing, I sank into my mind, calling on the affinity that gave me the extended bursts of strength and grace and timing to execute immortal choreography.
Calling it my affinity had also sparked debate, because they weren’t entirely certain it wasn’t the wild magic—a Skill. Evidently it would take time and experimentation and observation to determine that too.
Whatever. All of that was way too much Fae esoterica for me. Let them dissect me, I didn’t care. I only cared about ballet.
I suppressed the satin but sank into my mind, the stage I went where I released myself into the dance. Became my story, the choreography as instinctive as breathing. I lost track of count, of time, of strain.
Lavender mist filled the room, a scent of cotton candy and jasmine in the air underlaid with a woodsy musk.
The lavender sparkled, darkening in the corners of my vision and I laughed, giving myself over to the dream state as I spun, leaped, danced through the clouds as voices whispered in my ear, urging me to greater heights.
Leap higher, spin faster, dance until my veins opened and spilled my light onto the ground.
I was no longer Hasannah, called consort by a High Fae Lord, but a more primal creature made of wind and light.
But even wind and light requires a master , a voice whispered in my ear.
Hands on my waist, hair falling over my shoulder.
I opened my eyes; I hadn’t realized I’d closed them.
“My Prince,” I whispered.
He stood in front of me, cloaked in the mist that was now more gray than lavender, and I struggled to remember something important.
But there was nothing more important than him.
He danced with me, spun me, flung me into the air and when I drifted back down it was into his arms.
Yes. He was the one. How could I have not known before? It had always been him.
Arms wrapped around me, fingers caressed my eyelids, closing them. My head spun and the ground fell away. I was floating again, heat pressing from above me, enclosing my body, silk on my face and shoulders.
You were always mine, my Prince said.
Was I? I must have been lost.
Mist on my lips, on my skin, coiling around my body and slithering between my thighs, slipping inside. I opened my mouth, my back arching, and the mist slid between my open lips, down my throat.
Hasannah.
The cold pierced the mist, throwing me into confusion. That voice. I should know that voice.
Anah!
I wept. The mist tightened, constricted. Why wasn’t I dancing? Why was I still? What was confining me?
My Prince?
No, Anah. Grasp the rope.
What—I saw it then. A shimmery rope of a thousand writhing tendrils. It reached for me, viciously pierced my core because I belonged to it and it would never let me go to another, and I screamed.
It ate me from the inside, tore the mist out of my body, purged it from my veins.
Hard, cold beneath me. Hard, hot above me.
I opened my eyes and screamed.
“You were always mine,” Dartanyon said, and touched my cheek. “I know who you really are.”
“Anali.”
I shuddered, flailing.
“You’re safe. I have you.”
Cold, crisp voices surrounded me, not just Mathen’s furious, frigid tone.
I opened my eyes. My guard cradled me where I lay on the floor of the rehearsal room.
“What happened?” I croaked.
Mathen’s arms tightened. I looked up into a face thin with an expression I’d never seen in his eyes before—implacable death.
“You were attacked, Anali,” Mathen said.
“My Prince came,” I said, confused. “I was dancing, and he came.”
Mathen closed his eyes. “Lord Dartanyon created a fairy circle and spun you into it. We were almost too late to draw you out.”
“I. . .remember.” My thoughts were clearing, aided by the pulsing connection leading to an enraged Andreien. The High Lord was coming. “He. . .beguiled me? How did he get into the room?”
Mathen flinched. “We are investigating now to determine if he was already in the room and glamoured, or if he somehow created an entrance.”
I touched his cheek. “I don’t blame you.”
“I’m sorry, Anali. I’ve failed you again.”
“No, you haven’t. I’m dead weight. I need to learn to protect myself, at least well enough to give you time to get to me.”
I closed my eyes, exhausted. My feet and thighs ached, my throat felt raw as if I’d been screaming. I shifted in Mathen’s arms, wincing.
Remembered the mists and how they’d touched me, and stilled. “Was he gone when you got here?”
“Yes.” So Mathen wouldn’t know if. . .if the touching had been a spell, my imagination, or real. “Something must have alerted him.”
I shuddered, turning my face against his chest. “Where’s Andrei?”
“I’m here, Anah.”
Mathen rose, hefting me in his arms, and transferred me to the High Lord. I twined an arm around his neck.
“Lady Hasannah.” That was Mistress Vargas’ voice. “Heir. We did as you asked, and the additional security measures are being implemented and should be complete by evening.”
My face buried in Andrei’s neck, I felt him turn.
“Our staff doctor should examine her,” Vargas said. “If she was in a fairy circle, there may be injuries.”
Nausea roiled in my stomach.
I nodded. “Let them check me.” I almost didn’t care about the possibility of. . .the other kind of injury. As long as I could still dance. Still, I needed to know.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Andrei asked the next day.
I'd exited the exam feeling both heavy and lightweight with relief. Mathen and Esseum escorted me home and redirected any attempts to leave. Andrei, Constin, Philea and Theland went hunting. Or so I’d been told.
“He’s gone to ground,” Mathen told me when I asked. “But my Lord will find him, and bring you his head for his offense. Dartanyon has gone too far.”
I didn’t need Dartanyon’s head. Assurances that he was on a permanent vacation wouldn’t go amiss, though.
After the exam I’d been declared free of injury of either kind. When I’d requested a rape kit, the physician hadn’t even blinked—which worried me. The lack of surprise revealed something I didn’t want to examine right now. But whatever Dartanyon had done, whatever touch I’d felt, either it had been in my mind or it had been magical in nature. I wasn't certain that made the possible violation any less.
No, if they thought I was going to back away from whatever ability my nature afforded me, they were idiots. I was going to learn to leash this thing—but also to unleash it.
If I could bond someone to my will, drink their energy, eat their soul, and it would save my life or bodily integrity?
I’d get out the damn knives and forks and feast.
My bonded’s gaze bored into the back of my neck as I exited the bathroom, slipping into one of his shirts.
He’d taken to leaving one out on the bed in the evening, giving tacit permission. Not that I’d asked in the first place. What? He’d destroyed whole swathes of my original wardrobe without asking, because his vain and fastidious nature deemed my clothes unworthy of his consort. I could purloin a few of his shirts without saying pretty please first.
“Did you find him?” I asked.
“Not yet,” was the cold reply.
I wanted to tell him to leave and not come back until Dartanyon was. . .gone. “Do you have Court today? Or work.”
“No,” he said. “As you know, I’m occupied with other matters.”
Nothing was perfect. But perfection led to complacency. And complacency was just another word for corpse.
By the Dark, I was even beginning to think like a High Fae.
I turned to him. “You don’t have to let this Dartanyon thing interrupt your schedule. Let Con handle it.”
“Do you think Court is more important than an attack on my consort?” he asked in his quiet, even voice that always heralded one of his spurts of temper.
It was so funny. He kept insisting he was a mild-mannered, even-tempered man, when he was almost exactly the opposite. What he was, was a bomb at the end of a long fuse. That wasn't the same thing as having an even temper.
But I wasn't going to argue with it. At his age, if he wanted to delude himself into thinking he was a sweet little lamb, more power to him. Maybe that was part of how he coped. Everyone needed an aspiration.
“No,” I said. “But your life is important too.” I turned to the chest of drawers, rifling through lingerie to find plain cotton panties. “Andrei, please stop replacing everything with silk and lace. Women need moisture wicking down there.”
Was I going to have to have a secret practical underwear drawer? This was getting ridiculous. At least he understood the function of sports bras, though he’d swapped some of those out too.
“Mathen is yours, but he isn’t your bonded consort. He isn’t your Lord.” Andrei came up behind me, his hands sliding around my hips as he pulled me into his arms. “Tell me. Don't make me take what I want.”
I sighed, leaning the back of my head against his chest. “When I was in the fairy circle, I felt Dartanyon touching me.” Andrei stiffened. “I thought he might have assaulted me, and I had them check for that along with other injuries.”
He didn't move, his chest didn't even rise or fall with breathing.
I turned in his arms, looking up into his face, the whites of his eyes stained with incandescent teal. It didn't frighten me as much anymore.
“I’m fine. There was no evidence he touched me in that way.”
“Perhaps not physically, but I doubt you were imagining things, Hasannah.”
I shivered.
“He wants to die.”
I frowned. “Come again?”
Andrei’s arms tightened around me. “His actions make no sense otherwise. He's taken dancers, toyed with them, broken them, but he's never attempted his games with one who belongs to a Lord who could utterly crush him. Who belongs, by one degree of separation, to the High Lord. He wants to die.”
“So what, suicide by Sahakian-Casakraine?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head. “You know you’re all sick, right? Why hurt me if he just wants someone to shove a blade in his gut? Why not just walk up to you and ask you to do it?”
“Because it's more fun this way, Hasannah. And because there's also something in you he wants to taste before I take him out.”
“Do you know the worse part? He made me like it. I was so. . .happy. As if there were no cares in the world, no pain, and whatever he wanted I wanted.” I tried to smile. “It felt like a rollercoaster ride from my childhood. I could even smell the cotton candy in the air.” I shuddered again, completely creeped out. “I don't want to talk about this. I have to dance for your mother in two days, and I’ve been warned it had better be good. I don't need this mess.”
Andrei drew me tighter in the circle of his arms, lowering his chin to rest on the top of my head. “I'm sorry. Mathen said you were only in there for minutes before they broke through the illusion, but mere minutes is all it takes.” He paused. “From now on, someone will be in the room with you.”
I shrugged one shoulder, resigned, and didn't say what we were both probably thinking. That if Dartanyon was that determined to die, he'd get to me, eventually.
“He made Taima an offer,” I said.
Andrei sighed. “I’ll have her watched. And the lovely boy.”
“Samuel?”
“Yes, him. The Ninephene female can take care of herself.”
“Cora? Yes. I think she can.”
I started to tell him that Cora was indirectly connected to Lord Ashlyun, but then remembered. She was also the creator of my little exit plan. An exit plan I was in no way convinced I didn’t still need.
I kissed his chin. “Where are the boys? They probably need cuddles after today.”
“You mean you need cuddles, and?—”
“The more the merrier,” I said cheerfully. “Summon my cavaliers, Lord Andreien.”