Chapter 13
Thirteen
Timur
Finding clients for Elaine had become much easier. I no longer had to go through my short list of acquaintances or beg, guilt, and coerce the few people in Kalmena who still talked to me.
Now, the nobles came all the way to the edge of the desert to find me, begging me to name my price and take their gold.
They paid us a fortune just to have dinner with Elaine.
And they paid even more if I was at dinner with her.
According to them, Elaine enjoyed everything far more acutely in my presence.
“Oh look, halva!” she’d exclaimed the other night.
She was sitting on my lap while a servant of a highborn lady and her husband who paid for the dinner that night brought a tray of food to us.
“I haven’t had it in ages,” Elaine marveled. “I had a craving for it just a day ago.”
I knew she did because she’d mentioned it to me, and I made sure to pass her wish on to our clients.
Everything Elaine ever wished for, she got.
She should be used to it by now. Yet she still looked so adorably surprised squinting at the dessert on the platter.
She’d said once that squinting while looking at things through her eyelashes sometimes brought objects into sharper focus for her, marginally improving her impaired vision.
“Hmm,” she moaned, after taking a bite of halva. “It’s even better than I remembered. You have to try it.”
She brought a piece to my mouth. I’d told her many times that I felt no pleasure from food, but I obliged because I knew it’d bring pleasure to her, which was what really mattered. I took a bite, tasted the sweetness, sensed the texture that melted on my tongue, then swallowed it.
“And?” She gazed at me expectantly, waiting for my verdict.
“It made me thirsty,” I said.
She laughed, tossing her head back before leaning her forehead against my temple.
“You’re so adorable. Well, thanks for trying anyway.” She kissed my cheek, then gestured for a servant to refill my glass of water.
I derived no pleasure from food and felt no joy during our evenings together.
But when she sat on my lap like this, laughing and kissing me, there was no other place I’d rather be.
The complete and utter absence of worries, fear, and sorrow was the closest a shadow fae could come to feeling happy, and that was exactly what I felt when Elaine was with me.
In the comfort of her arms, I felt content.
I refused to allow anyone to enter Ashgate in search of me, afraid to reveal Elaine’s exact location. But while dealing with all the potential clients as well as Ray’s people, I left her alone far more often than I felt comfortable with. Every moment I had to spend away from her, worry racked me.
Elaine was the dearest, rarest treasure not just to me but in the entire city of Ashgate.
I had managed to keep her safe only because the inhabitants of this city had no idea how uniquely rare she was, but that was a weak protection.
One word about her said to the wrong person could put her in grave danger.
She was not safe in the flimsy shack on the beach. I needed to find something better for us to live in, even if it cost more.
Because of Elaine and her unique pleasure that had brought high paying clients in droves, my debt to Ray had been paid in full now, much faster than we’d planned.
As of last week, Elaine had been earning money for herself.
We had to save, but we could also afford to spend a little, especially for something as important as her safety.
For the entire four weeks since the auction, I’d been trying to move us into a cave in the Wall, but Zayr had been putting off my meeting with Ray.
“Ray isn’t doing any business for the time being,” he had said again and again.
Since I no longer owned Ray money, even getting a meeting with Zayr became difficult. Yet I was not giving up. When it came to Elaine’s safety, I couldn’t rest.
As the sun rose the next day and the busy life in the city had retreated into the shadows of the caves, I got ready to leave our shack.
The dwelling looked even more pathetic as we’d slowly been buying things to improve Elaine’s comfort.
The plush mattress, the colorful blankets, and the grass-woven basket with her toiletries and clothes by the worn, crumbling wall seemed painfully out of place.
Elaine unfolded her fluffy blanket, laying it out over the bedding on her mattress.
The days were hot in Ashgate, just like everywhere else in the Alveari Kingdom.
She didn’t need the blanket to keep warm, but she liked sleeping with it anyway.
I often found her hugging it in her sleep upon my return.
She clearly enjoyed the soft texture of that thing.
“Ready for your nap?” I asked.
She smiled at me. “Time goes faster when I sleep. Hopefully, you’ll be back by the time I wake up.”
“Hopefully,” I echoed.
I took off my left bracer and hung it on the door.
I’d take the right one with me. The magic that connected them would keep the door impossible to pry open, which would keep Elaine safe in my absence.
I trusted the Gorgonian magic not to fail.
These old, shaky walls, however, gave me little reassurance.
“I’ll be quick,” I said, lingering by the door.
“I’ll be waiting.” She blew me a kiss.
Still, I wouldn’t leave. I just couldn’t.
Her smile grew wider. She walked away from her bedding and stopped in front of me, twirling a stand of her hair between her fingers.
“Are you waiting for a proper goodbye kiss?” she asked sweetly.
Last week, she told me that it was customary for humans to give their loved ones a goodbye kiss when leaving home. It sounded like a bizarre habit to me at the time. But she’d since kissed me every time I left our hut. And now, it felt like something was missing without her kiss.
“You said it’s important,” I muttered, carefully shifting my knees apart to give her space to get closer, if she so wished.
Such was the limitation of my life in the chair. I couldn’t grab her, hug her, or bring her closer whenever I felt like it. I had to rein in my impatience and wait for her to make that first step toward me. I had to make her want to make that step too.
“Customary,” she corrected. “I said the kiss was customary where I came from. If you think it’s important, it’s on you.”
“It’s important,” I said, my voice turning raspy for some reason, forcing me to clear my throat. “It is important to me.”
Her smile softened, the expression in her eyes warmed. Placing her knee on the chair between my legs and her hands on my shoulders, she brought her face to mine.
“Then it’s important to me too…” she exhaled.
Her warm breath fanned over my skin like the softest breeze as she touched my cheek with her lips.
I hadn’t tasted her pleasure, but I knew it was exquisite.
Hers was the kind of pleasure that even the Joy Vessels of the royal sarai couldn’t match.
As word of my treasure had spread, I’d been getting requests from the members of the queen’s court, too, from the nobles who had free unrestricted access to the royal sarai whenever they wished.
And still, they preferred the joy of my Elaine to the pleasure of all the queen’s Joy Vessels.
By now, I’d learned her moods without having to connect to her emotions.
I knew by the shine in her eyes, by how soft her breathing suddenly grew, and by how subtly she raked her teeth over her lower lip that the kind of pleasure she was feeling right now was the kind that made our noble clients moan and melt into their silk cushions.
“I’ll see you soon,” she exhaled, gently brushing the tip of my nose with hers. “Please, don’t be long.”
I didn’t want to leave at all, already hating every moment I’d spend away from her. Now that she was within my reach, I hugged her and kissed her back. My lips brushed the soft skin on her cheek, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to have her closer still.
I found her lips with my mouth, stealing her breath and swallowing her moans. I had to be closer to her…inside of her…
But then I would never leave.
“Go,” she said, pressing her hands into my chest. “The sooner you leave, the sooner you come back. The sooner we…” She pressed her forehead to mine, raking her hands through my hair.
“The sooner we can do all those things we do without being paid,” she finished with a smile, taking my breath away in turn.
Fuck.
It wasn’t just my cock that reacted to her words. My entire body felt like it was soaring up from my chair and my mind reeled, making it impossibly hard to focus.
Since that first bath paid for by Lord Arnaf, I’d given Elaine a few more baths in our clients’ tents. Some of them ended with my hand between her thighs as she moaned in my ear while I kissed her neck.
We didn’t sell a specific kind of pleasure, however.
All agreements I made with the potential clients guaranteed nothing but their time with Elaine for a predetermined price.
It was up to her afterwards what more she felt like giving to them.
Often, she didn’t even know what mood she’d be on any given night until she walked into the tent and met the client or the clients, as it might be.
Sometimes, Elaine limited her interaction with them only to dinner and conversation.
Other times, she was in the mood for more.
She’d let me kiss her and even touch her while their tendrils drank her pleasure.
Then, we adjusted the payment amount as the night went on.
And so far, no client left unhappy after meeting Elaine and tasting her pleasure.
My left arm itched just below my shoulder, over the spot where I might still have a tendril left. I hadn’t tried releasing any of them for years, ever since the first one disappeared under the scales and I lost the ability to disperse into shadows.
What was a shadow fae if he couldn’t turn into a shadow?