Page 27 of The Fae Queen's Captive
“Yes.”
I wonder how fairies aren’t stoned all the fucking time, then. Kissing? Orgies? They have to be “eating” fairy fruit constantly.
Felipe seems to know what I’m thinking, because he adds, “It doesn’t affect the fairies nearly as much as it affects mortals. It’s more like wine to them. Only in its most concentrated form does it approach what mortals feel after lying in a fairy’s bed.”
“Wait. Sex isn’t the most concentrated?”
“Blood is the most potent,” Felipe says with a flat kind of finality, and I remember the revelers dragging their fingers through the Thistle courtier’s blood last night. I shiver.
Ahead of us, I see Morven turned fully toward the queen, as if trying to convince her of something, and I see her shake her head. The short, curt shake of someone saying no.
Morven jerks his reins and wheels away, thundering back down the line of riders with his face set in a murderous expression. When he passes me and Felipe, he gives me a look like he’d happily throw me into a pit of alligators, and then he’s gone.
“He hates her,” Felipe says quietly, after Morven is long past us.
“Why?” I look ahead at the queen, who’s still riding with a proud, impeccable seat. She’s imperious, yes, with a streak of cruelty that can’t be denied, but it doesn’t seem out of place here in Faerie. Not to the point where it would earn a sibling’s hatred.
“There’s a prophecy about the Nightglass twins,” Felipe says. “Morven and her. That since they were born under the same stars, to the same powerful queen, great rulers they both could grow to be, but the throne of the Stag Court will only know a single Nightglass. She took the crown upon her mother’s death, which means Morven will never be ruler here. And he’s never forgiven anyone for it, though he is more blessed than he thinks. Following in his mother’s footsteps in no small feat, as his mother was strong, feared, and cruel. Deeply cruel by Seelie standards, I suppose, but her cruelty kept the Stag Court first among the courts of the folk. The new queen is struggling, I think, to hold the other courts at bay.”
“Like the Thistle Court?” I ask.
Felipe nods. “Their lady is also a great queen, but as an Unseelie queen, she has no limit to what she’ll do for chaos or for power. I think…” He pauses for a moment. “I think our new queen is finding shedoeshave limits. But they are not limits permitted to true rulers of Elphame, not if they want to keep their people safe.”
“You called her and Morven the Nightglass twins,” I say. “Is that their name? Like a family name?”
“It isaname. They were born partly glassed,” Felipe says, as if that’s a thing I should know about. “I’m sure you saw when you were, ah,withthe queen last night.”
I think of her clear back, the red and pink of her muscles and lungs and bone. Delicate and hale, all at once. And there for the entire world to see, something that’s the most private of things. The living insides of her.
Glassed.
“Morven has to be more careful of his glass,” Felipe tells me. “If he is unclothed, you can see straight to his heart.”
No wonder he’s careful to always wear black—no gauzy, ruffly shirts for Morven. For him, guarding his heart might be more literal than any mortal can ever imagine.
I think of his bitter laugh in the hall earlier. “What were you talking about?” I ask Felipe as I dodge a branch hanging low over the road. “In the hall when I came in.”
Felipe gives me a small smile, but his answer is blunt. “You,” he says.
“Me?” I’d guessed as much given Sholto’sa hundred mortalsremark, but I don’t like the sound of this at all.
“There is a tradition of keeping mortals here in Faerie,” he explains. “Against their will. It’s a very old thing, that kind of keeping. Mortals are beloved in Faerie, and treated well, as you can see from me and my long life. But not every mortal is ready for it—only the bravest and most creative, I think.”
My pride prickles a little at that, as if he’s just issued a challenge. “Were you ready for it?” I ask. “Were you willing?”
“I was,” he says. And there’s a certainty in his voice that pokes a quick hole in my umbrage. I can’t deny I’m quickly becoming infatuated with the queen, and I can’t deny Faerie is the only place I’ve been that seems like a match for my appetites—not just carnal but intellectual too. A world that can meet my curiosity with layer after layer of magic.
But it’s dangerous too, and alien, and no matter how sexy the queen is when she’s calling me her pet, I don’t think I could stay forever. Right?
That would be bananas. I have a whole life back home. With eye-watering amounts of student loan debt. With a love life that’s at turns nonexistent and depressing. With friends I keep at arm’s length and a vocation that seems ready to disillusion me at a moment’s notice.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, convincing myself as much as him. “The queen promised I’d be able to go home tomorrow.”
“Well, then,” Felipe says, “the matter is settled anyway.”
“Right,” I say, and then we ride along in relative silence, with only the breeze rippling through the forest and the chatter of the fairies to break it.
Chapter11
