Page 26 of The Fae Queen's Captive
Sholto sputters. “This is a council meeting! Which you were not invited to, nor are you privy to the matters we must discuss. I insist you leave—”
“The council meeting is adjourned,” says the queen, standing up and closing the matter. “It’s time for our hunt. And Sholto, I recommend you adjust your expectations about what Janneth is privy to. She’ll be by my side until Third Night. Yes,” she adds at Sholto’s mutinous expression, “even at the treaty negotiations tomorrow.”
This is the first I’ve heard of any treaty or its negotiations, but if it gets me one over on this Sholto asshole, then treaty negotiations are my new favorite thing. I give him a smug look, and he returns it with a fuming one of his own—which is cut short when the queen steps off the dais and he and the others sink into their obeisances. I kneel too, but the queen touches my shoulder.
“Come, Janneth. We have a hunt to ready for.”
Chapter10
The whole court, it seems, is out for the hunt, including Felipe, Morven, Idalia, and Maynard, but not Sholto. I don’t know if this is because Sholto is cranky about me being near the queen, or if he’s not really the outdoorsy type. He does give off big “reading spy reports by candlelight”energy, so maybe it’s the latter.
But it’s hard to worry about Sholto when the day is like something out of a story—misty and moody, bright orange and yellow leaves dripping, the gray sky so low that the hills scrape against it, carding away scraps of cloud like wool. And the queen is upright and magnetic on her white horse, her braid bouncing on her shoulder as she leads the party from the castle at a trot.
Though she made sure I’m atop a horse (that I sort of know how to ride, thanks to a few weekends at Alfie’s country pile in Buckinghamshire) and that I’m equipped with a crossbow (that I have no idea how to shoot), she’s been whisked away by one person or another since the hunting party began to gather, to the point where the entire crowd now separates us.
I hate it. I feel like I’m in high school again. I want to be next to her, and at the same time, I’m terrified of being close to her, and it’s not the terror of knowing she can make rose petals flutter from thin air or knowing she’ll happily watch someone bleed at her feet. It’s the terror of wanting someone so much that it feels like my bones are about to punch their way out of my skin.
I stay at the back of the party, riding slowly down the sloping lane to the forest, where the real action will happen. I scan the terrain as I go, a distant voice reminding me that if I were to escape, this would be the ideal situation. If I hang back at the next twist in the road, if I wait until we’re scattered in the trees…
But then what? I somehow make it back to the mortal world without any help? I mean, I’m pretty sure we came through the tomb last night, but I don’t knowhow.I don’t know how Maynard could use the tomb as a way into Faerie when I’ve been inside it hundreds and hundreds of times and never saw anything but dirt and stone and darkness.
And that’s assuming I can find the tomb at all. The shape of the hills around the castle vaguely matches with what I know from my world, but everything ismorehere. Taller, steeper, craggier. The valleys and lowlands aren’t the nearly bare grasslands and fields they are back home but are covered in old-growth forest burning in the colors of autumn. From the castle, I thought I’d seen a loch and the silver line of the sea, but I’m almost certain we’re headed east, away from the water, and now that I’m down in the trees, the strangeness and largeness of Faerie is disorienting.
Only the narrow, half-sunken way through the forest provides any sort of clue where we’re going—and as the lane grows twistier and the trees arching overhead hide more and more of the sky, those clues evaporate.
Even if I managed to get away, I’d be lost. Lost in a place where I still don’t know all the rules, lost in a place where I can’t trust someone not to haul me right back to the Stag Court.
But I could stay. Stay here, with the queen.
It’s only one more day after today, I reassure myself. A long-ass fairy day, maybe, but still. If I hang out here until tomorrow night, then I have the queen’s promise she’ll let me go, and I’ll be back in my world and none the worse for wear.Betterfor wear, really, if I consider all the good sex I’ve had, all the beautiful and curious things I’ve seen, including getting to see one of de Segovia’s companions in the flesh and solving the mystery of the missing castle.
And if the idea of leaving and never seeing the queen again makes something knot tight in my chest, then that doesn’t matter. It’s not like it changes anything. It’s a good bargain, and that’s that.
“I wouldn’t, if you’re thinking about it,” someone says in Latin from beside me, and I turn to see Felipe. He’s hung back too, riding next to me at my beginner’s pace.
“Wouldn’t what? Escape into a mysterious forest that’s maybe full of monsters?” I say, sliding him a smile.
He seems a little startled by my easiness, and then he frowns. “I take it you tasted fruit last night.”
I flush a little to remember that he probably saw me in full Janneth panoply last night. I’ve done some brazen things before but usually among other brazen people. Not in front of solemn-eyed, should-be-dead Spanish gentry.
He must see my expression, because he says, almost gently, “This is an unchaste place. I do not think less of anyone for what they do here. But at any rate, I do not mean what you did in the court. I’m thinking you went to someone’s bed afterward.”
Ahead of us, I can make out the form of the queen, only visible now and again as the riders in front of me move and shift. She’s riding next to Morven—predictably all in black—and he seems to be saying something she’s not thrilled with, judging by her tense posture.
The glimpses I catch of her thighs on either side of her saddle arrest me.
“Ah,” Felipe says, following my gaze. “The queen. Heady fruit indeed, then.”
It takes its time becoming clear, but once it does, the truth feels as obvious as a standing stone in the middle of a moor.
Fruit.Tasting. The salt this morning.
“The fruit isn’t fruit,” I say. I feel suddenly very, very human and dumb.
“No.” It’s his turn to flush, looking down at his reins for a moment. “It’s everything of a fairy’s body—sweat, tears, the taste of their mouths. But in some…versions…it’s more potent.”
“Sex,” I state, remembering sucking my fingers clean next to the queen’s bath.
