Page 34 of The Fae Queen's Captive
But she doesn’t. She doesn’t speak. She shakes her head instead, like she’s silently chiding herself. “Let’s get ready for bed,” she says after a moment and pushes back her chair to stand. “Tomorrow brings the negotiations—and the Sanctuary—and some things are better faced with rest.”
Chapter14
When I wake, I’m in the queen’s arms with my pulse racing and her thigh between my legs. I’ve just come, I think, in my sleep. I blink my eyes open to see her watching me with an amused expression.
“I would tell yougood morning, but I believe you’ve made sure your morning is good regardless,” she murmurs, and I press my lips to her collarbone.
“Let me lick your cunt before we go,” I say, sleepily batting my eyelashes, and she laughs. I love her laugh, rich and dark as it is, and I love it all the more for the sense that it’s a very rare thing.
“There will be time enough at the Sanctuary,” she says, unwinding her arms from me and sitting up. Her dark hair tumbles around her shoulders and back, mussed and intimate.
I look at the visible slivers of her glassed back through her hair as I sit up too. “And what is the Sanctuary again?”
“It’s a meeting place,” she says. “Anchored by fae magic, bound by fae treaties. It’s the one place by law where one cannot be attacked or killed.”
“And we’re doing your negotiations there?”
“We are,” she says, swinging her legs and climbing easily out of her bed. Even though this is a pavilion and not a castle, her bed is still fit for a royal, massive and piled with silk and soft wool.
“Then how will there be time for sex?”
She’s naked, and I admire the strong lines of her thighs, the taut curve of her backside as she searches out a robe. Her stomach is as flat as mine isn’t, her breasts slight and pert, and I sigh unhappily as it all gets covered up with a robe. How, in a world where time stretches and bends, is there always so much to do?
“The Sanctuary—and the Shadow Market as a whole—is a very carnal place,” Morgana says, belting the robe and finding a silver comb. “You will be there as my pet, and as my pet, it would be expected for you to attend to me the way a pet should. And you need to know this: the more obvious it is that you belong to me, the safer you will be.”
I can be a pet all day, and as I proved to the queen the other night, I have no issue fucking in public. But…
“Safer? Is the market unsafe?”
“As I mentioned, the Sanctuary itself is bound by a treaty, so no harm comes to anyone there. But what happens there can have ramifications outside its boundaries…as well as after the Shadow Market closes tonight.”
She explains a bit more as we dress to ride back to the castle. The Shadow Market is hosted by the fae—what the people of Faerie call themselves—every year, and it is a druid embodying the spirit of Cernunnos who lowers the veil between realms so the market is possible. And it is a different fae court’s task to raise the veil again once the festival of Samhain is over. Last year the Court of Harps closed the market; next year it will be another, because Faerie is made of hundreds of courts, large and small. I suppose that’s why something like the Sanctuary is necessary—a place outside the territorial wars and grudges all these courts seem to have with each other.
I’m also surprised to hear there are other realms besides my own and Faerie, but I’m not as surprised as I was two days ago when I learned fairies are real in the first place.
Never underestimate the human capacity for accepting weird shit, I guess.
“So what is the tithe?” I ask as our horses clatter up to the barbican.
The queen takes a minute to answer, and she doesn’t look at me as she does. “That word is rarely spoken aloud and considered to be the greatest secret Faerie keeps. Where did you hear it?”
“When Maynard and Idalia took me,” I say. “At the cairn. ‘If the tithe fails, we will all pay the price.’ Idalia said that.”
We’re coming through the barbican now and into the stone-and-grass courtyard. We bring our horses to a stop.
“It is a tax,” Morgana says finally. “A price the fae pay to renew themselves. Every seven years. Seven years ago, it was the Thistle Court’s turn to pay it. Now it is my own court’s turn.”
“It can’t be that much of a secret. There are human stories about it,” I say as we dismount and hand off our horses to the grooms. We will change into clothing worthy of the queen’s diplomacy and then ride fresh horses to the market. “The tithe. ‘At every seven years, they pay a tithe to Hell. And I’m so fair and full of flesh, I’m feared ’twill be myself.’ That’s from a poem about Tam Lin,” I add.
“Yes, I know it,” says the queen.
“It sounds kind of human sacrifice-y,” I point out, looking at her. “Does that mean when the Thistle Court paid the tithe…?”
“The mortal stories are missing some key details,” the queen replies. “And I should not be speaking of this to you as it is. We need to get ready for the market before we’re late, anyway.”
* * *
An hour later,and we’re back in the courtyard. Morgana wears a white gown without a back, its raw silk edges revealing the delicate glasswork of her body. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her wear something that exposes her glass, and I wonder if it’s to impress whoever will be at the negotiations. Or maybe it’s to show them she’s unafraid.
