Page 15 of The Fae Queen's Captive
“Yes, Your Majesty. A very long time ago, I believe.”
“More than centuries,” says the queen. “More than ages, if the stories are to be believed. My great-grandmother had not yet been born, and the mortals outside our veil had not yet had their Christ.”
The servant, while perhaps not expecting this digression, pivots smoothly. “And yet the Thistle Court will always and with great feeling remember the time our courts were as one.”
“Oh,” says the queen mildly, “I believe it. Put on the bracelet, please. I should like to see my gift on display.”
For the first time, I see uncertainty hiccup through the servant. “Your Majesty, it would not be becoming for a lowly one such as myself to think of wearing such a—”
“Put on the bracelet,” says the queen again, her voice still mild. But from nowhere, I see several fairies in russet-and-gold livery step forward. They have swords at their hips and pikes in their hands. The pikes are currently pointed straight at the ceiling, but the message is clear. The queen is not making a request.
The man from the Thistle Court swallows a final time. “Your Majesty,” he whispers, but he seems to know his protests will get him nowhere but poked full of pike holes.
For my part, I’m not sure why he’s so hesitant. Maybe it’s some baroque court etiquette thing to not wear someone else’s gift? But it’s a simple enough choice: put on some jewelry, or get run through by a bunch of guards with very mean faces. Not that I understand why the queen is threatening him with pikes at all.
I shift uneasily on my seat, remembering once again Felipe’s warnings about bargaining for safety.
With a shaking hand, the servant lifts the bracelet out of the silk and drapes it over his wrist. He’s trembling so hard that the bracelet shivers over his skin, and then when he finally clasps the bracelet shut, he stumbles to the ground. At first I think it’s because he’s lost his balance or that he’s perhaps thrown himself to the ground as a plea for mercy, but then a low tearing noise claws its way out of his throat, and I see he’s gone taut with some kind of wordless agony.
The noise turns into a scream as thorns slowly push through his flesh, not big curved ones that grow on the stems of roses but thin ones growing as close together as barbs on a feather. Green liquid runs in narrow rivulets down his face, stains the white shirt pulled through the slashed silk of his jacket sleeves, drips off the long leaves of his collar.
It’s his blood, I realize, far too late. He’s bleeding all over from thousands of these thorn wounds, and it’s because of—
The bracelet. The bracelet somehow did this.
I stand to—well, I don’t know what I’m going to do—but a guard steps in front of me and gives me a forbidding look. I am not allowed to help. To interfere.
Shocked, I turn to stare at the queen. For her part, she seems completely unmoved, her expression unchanged by the man writhing in unimaginable pain before her feet. She watches him scream and bleed with almost nothing on her face, nothing at all, and there’s no compassion at all in the slow, deliberate way she raises her hand.
One of her court guards goes to the servant and removes the bracelet from the servant. The thorns retreat, leaving so, so much viridian blood behind. It pools beneath him.
“Take the bracelet away from here,” says the queen, voice as even as ever. “And takehimto the dungeons.”
The guards obey, expressions neutral as they heave the now-whimpering man from the floor and grab him by the wrists and ankles. The bracelet is carefully collected and carried behind the man it nearly killed. His blood is left there, shining slick and green.
The court—which had paused to watch the show—now returns to feasting with gusto, the music striking up even louder, the dancers laughing, the lovers moaning. It’s not as if it hasn’t happened. It’s as if it happening energized them. It’s as if it happening was exciting and good.
And that’s when the fear comes back, a wave of it so heavy that I think I might drown. I sit, stunned and sick.
“You knew something was wrong with it,” I say numbly to the queen, who’s now settled back on the throne. A small smile haunts her lips—the first smile I’ve seen from her.
It’s beautiful. And terrifying.
“Of course, I knew,” replies the queen, looking out at her reveling court, reveling all the harder with blood spilled on the floor. Some even come forward and drag their fingertips through it before sucking their hands clean with relish or offering their fingers to lovers to lick clean. Green smears their mouths and drips down their chins.
The fear is a thousand tiny bugs crawling on the inside of my skin now.
“But how? He said—” I think back to the servant’s words, trying to filter through exactly what he said and how he phrased it. “He spoke of friendship. And Felipe told me fairies can’t lie.”
“Thefriendshipbetween my court and the Court of Thistles is one marked by cairns and crow-circled battlefields. A token of their lady’s feelings would only be something meant to make me suffer. You look surprised, Janneth, but I suppose it’s good that you see this now: there are more ways to lie than just with words.”
I can’t believe she’s talking to me so calmly, so levelly, after watching that fairy screaming and punctured on the floor. I can’t believe I’m talking back to her.
And that’s not the worst of it, actually. The worst is that I’m not sure how I feel about watching that fairy bleed, because if the queen had not asked him to put on that bracelet—if she had not seen through the trick—then it would have been her bleeding. Her screaming.
And I do not like that thought either.
I like it even less.
