Page 13 of The Fae Queen's Captive
Chapter6
Idon’t have long to digest this, however, because the scene in front of me is a tangle of wild indulgence, and I’m not even sure how I’m supposed to make my way through it.
The hall is lofty, although its recesses doesn’t disappear into darkness like so many ceilings do here. Instead, I can see it high above us, ribbed with hammer beams, rafters, braces. Each hammer beam is carved with the figure of a running stag so that it looks as if the entire roof of the castle rests on their cobwebbed backs. Just as in the library, threads of mycelium twist around the rafters and the chains of the chandeliers, glowing a pale silver in the gloom.
The walls are made of dark wood but are covered in living heather and gorse, the gorse blown butter yellow with red and orange leaves caught among its thorns. Moss clings to corners, and a low fog swirls just above the flagged floor, which is mostly covered in rush mats and strewn with fresh herbs.
The hall is filled with revelers feasting, toasting, and dancing, and I see immediately that they are not mortal, that they are impossible, that they are figures from children’s stories and art prints purchased at renaissance festivals. They are at turns horned, winged, hoofed—some have hair the color of jewels and flowers—some have extra joints, others have too-long limbs—some have eyes that are too large and teeth that are too sharp. Some lookalmostmortal, like Morven and Maynard and Idalia, but they are so beautiful that a feeling of inhumanity lingers about them nonetheless.
And at any rate, this is no human banquet, at least not one I’ve ever seen or studied the likes of, because there is a real, honest-to-godorgyhappening in front of the queen.
My pulse kicks up as we approach, and I get a good look at the array before us. Seven or eight fairies are knotted into a skein of spread limbs and arched necks, and the music of their fucking rivals the eerie music of the musicians. One fairy’s wings shiver in pleasure as she sits atop another fairy’s face. Something shimmering falls from her wings as she does, dusting her partner and the people fucking behind her too.
I shiver along with those wings. I want to be her, with her, under her. I want to see if an insatiable girl could get enough on that platform with them all.
The queen for her part seems unmoved by the display of hedonism in front of her or by any of the ancillary displays happening at the long tables and in the fog-bathed corners of the room. Her posture is gracefully erect, and her hands rest without either stiffness or restlessness on the arms of her throne, but she’s as still as the rest of the room is not, and her gaze is remote and cool, as if her mind is on other things. I don’t see how it could be—I’ve only been in this hall for ten seconds, and already I want to plonk down and watch everyone cavort and play for the next hundred years—but perhaps she’s used to it. Or perhaps she expects it. It is her court to hold after all.
Bright but haunting music plays from a corner—played by instruments I’ve seen more often in manuscripts than I have in real life: lutes and crumhorns and tabors.
I never imagined I would see them in real life next to a flippingfairy orgy, but there you are.
“Tonight begins the feast of Samhain,” Felipe says in a low voice as he escorts me deeper into the hall. We pass a table with a horned fairy bent over its surface, his partner’s hand on the back of his head to hold him down. His horns scratch the glossy wood as he’s rutted into from behind, but when he catches me looking at him with concern, he gives me a feral smile. My heart kicks up another beat.
“Magic is stronger at Samhain,” Felipe continues as we keep walking toward the throne. “And so are they. More dangerous too. More”—he seems to search for the right word—“avid. Take care.”
Avid.
I glance around at the drinking and eating and dancing and fucking. Especially the fucking. It’s as present as the smell of delicious food, as persistent as the music filling the hall.
I don’t think I’ll mindavidso much. It seems a lot likeinsatiable, and hell, if I have to be an abductee in fairyland, maybe I’ll at least get to indulge myself a little. Or a lot.
My eyes slide back to the platform and then to the horned fairy being taken from behind.
Yes,a lotsounds very good at the moment.
“And I forgot to mention,” Felipe says, and his voice is quicker now, more urgent, “that the fairy fruit that’s written of in our world—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” I say. “Don’t eat the fruit.”
Although when I glance around the hall again, it’s hard to see what fruit the stories are talking about. There are piles of apples, bright red and shiny, and heaps of sloe berries, blackberries, raspberries, and plums. There are currants and hazelnuts and roasted chestnuts, and wines and meads in clear pitchers, all in familiar shades of red and pink and pale gold. It all looks delicious, fruits and fruit drinks perfect for a harvest festival, but none of it looks remotely magical. Definitely not like the fairy-MDMA the stories make fairy fruit out to be.
“If only it were that simple,” Felipe says, his voice getting even lower as we skirt the platform currently occupied with a fairy sex fest. But he sounds no less urgent. “The fairy fruit is not…”
But he stops, and when I glance over at him, I find the ancient Spaniard isblushing.
“Salt,” he manages after a moment. “Mortal salt will fix almost anything.”
I sense that he wants to say more but can’t or won’t find the words, and it doesn’t matter now, because we’re almost to the edge of the sex platform and to the dais where the queen sits.
Her throne is made of the same dark wood as the walls of the hall and is carved into the likeness of two stags standing amidst waving ferns, their proud wooden heads studded with real antlers, which twist and stretch into a web of bone above the queen’s head. The queen’s crown too is made of antlers, although they are far slenderer than the ones mounted on the throne. They twist once above her brow, and there are only a few thin branches spraying off from the main circle of the crown. I notice the tines are sharp enough to promise blood.
“Your Majesty,” Felipe says as we finally clear the orgy and come to the foot of the throne. Letting go of my hand, he sinks to one knee with his hand over his heart, just as Maynard and the others did earlier in the library. A second too late, I follow, not nearly as practiced, but the long gown I’m wearing hiding the worst of it, I think.
“I hope you are having a good Samhain,” the Spaniard continues. Out of the corner of my eye, I see his gaze is cast politely to the ground. “I found your guest and have brought her to you.”
“My many thanks,” the queen says in Latin. “And you may rise.”
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to keep my eyes on the ground even after coming to my feet, but American that I am, my instinct is to make eye contact. Although when I do, I wish I were kneeling again.
