Page 36 of The Fae Queen's Captive
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We catchup to Morgana and her small retinue, and she gestures for me to ride beside her. I fight the urge to ignore her, to storm off and ride back to the castle, because I don’t want her to know how devastated I am. I don’t want her to see the sprawling, grasping neediness I’ve allowed to bloom in just two days here.
Insatiable.
Insatiable enough to think I could have a queen of fairyland for my very own.
She seems preoccupied too, and I wonder if she’s thinking of the Thistle Queen. Of her future bride. I wonder if this was why my bargain was amenable to begin with—a willing mortal pet for a few days, packed off in time to start planning a nuptial feast.
That’s fine. It’s fine. I’m leaving anyway, I’m going home tonight, and Iwantto go home tonight, and so it’s all fine. Someday this will all be a joke to me. Remember that time I fell in love with a fairy queen, ha ha? Remember that time when I almost felt like I was exactly where I belonged? Hilarious. Now back to the student loan website that crashes every time I try to load it.
Everything in Faerie is larger, farther apart, but even so, I recognize the way we’re taking to the market. We ride past a massive loch, up a twisting road to the crest of a hill, and then down to a fielded plain. Just to the west, there’s a twisting grove of trees that leads all the way to the sea, cliffs of sheer stone pockmarked with caves, and the dun-gray teeth of some standing stones. There’s even a castle.
From all other directions, fog creeps, fluttering like a veil in the wind, and in the middle of it all sits the market. A sprawling village of stalls, tents, pavilions, forges, kitchens, jousting lists, and stores that sell mortal wares like peanut butter and cell phone chargers and T-shirts that sayEat the Rude.
And it’spacked.Packed like Walt Disney World in July. Packed like a grocery store before a snowstorm—or a pub on Tuesday nights when you can get half off drinks with your student ID. Crimson demons with black horns and claws, piratical centaurs, and foxes with many tails crowd the spaces between the stalls, jostling horned fae, tailed fae, courtly fae in magnificent dresses, and many others. As we dismount our horses and hand them off to Morgana’s servants, I hear an unearthly wail and wonder if it’s a banshee. We pass a bird-headed creature pulling a tank of water on a rickety wagon; a slender merperson waves from inside. There are people who don’t have any nonhuman appendages or features but who are nonetheless dressed in clothes so strange that I think they must be magical too. Chitons and long black robes and armor that seems to shimmer and move even when the wearer is standing stock-still.
“How do mortals not notice this is here?” I wonder aloud. It’s beyond noisy, with music, shouting, haggling, cheering, and it’s a huge place. Already I feel lost, and we’ve only just begun wending our way through its alleys.
The queen doesn’t answer, but Idalia does. “They see a glamoured version,” she tells me as her moths bob around us. “Or rather, a special section of the market, just for them. A human carnival.”
The carnival! No wonder it gave my fellow grad students weird vibes.
“So there aren’t any mortals in this part of the market?”
“In theory, that’s how it’s supposed to work,” Idalia says. “But some mortals come to trade or to buy. Others are lured in.” She gives a toothy smile. “It’s technically not supposed to happen, but the market is full of hungry folk…”
Something tells me she’s not talking about french fries.
The Sanctuary is in the heart of the market, a tent the size of a circus big top, made of flapping white silk with foxgloves carpeting the space around it. I feel something charged and air-crackling—the wards enforcing the treaty, Idalia tells me—and then we’re inside. Except it doesn’t look likeinside, it looks like a Highland glen: a high, rocky waterfall spilling into a pool and then a small burn, trees and ferns and fog. Birds and breeze and afternoon sunlight from…somewhere.
Fae and other folk mill about, some sitting, some standing, and I quickly note that it wouldn’t take long for me to disappear in this fake wilderness.
I should try to leave now.
The thought comes quickly and then lingers, like the ring of a bell. This would be the perfect time, the perfect chance. And why would I stay? To play the queen’s pet while she plans a royal wedding? To service her needs while she plans her honeymoon with someone else?
I have a masochistic streak a mile wide, but even I have my limits.
I just wish it didn’thurtso much. I wish I hadn’t fallen in love or hoped for—well, even now, I don’t want to admit what I’d hoped for. The plan had always been for me to leave Faerie tonight anyway. The plan is unchanged.
No harm, no foul.
“You’re upset,” the queen says as we walk toward the waterfall. Idalia and the others in the retinue have fallen back, so I’m the only one who can hear her.
I want to be petulant as fuck and not answer her at all, but I also wantso badlyto be the kind of person who bears heartbreak stoically and with great dignity. “I’m not,” I say, chasing that dignity so hard that I forget Felipe’s advice. I’ve lied.
The queen stops, her eyes flashing. The retinue stops too, well enough behind us that there’s at least the pretense of privacy.
“Donotlie to me,” she says. “You’ve been upset since the castle, and I will discover why, although I cannot do it here. In the meantime, I will remind you that you need to play the part of pet now and play it well.”
Well, now my pride is wounded on multiple fronts. “I’ve already proved I’m a great pet, haven’t I?”
Her long lashes block most of the light from getting to her eyes, and they’re like wells of night. “This is not a game, Janneth. I do not wish to be separated from you, and so I’ve brought you with me, but there are those in the market who will not hesitate to snatch you away once you’re outside the Sanctuary, and the Court of Thistles will see you as a threat if they understand what you mean to me.”
“And we wouldn’t want your future bride knowing what I mean to you,” I put in, unable to resist, but I want to fling myself into the magical tent-river the minute I say it. It shows my hand too much. My neediness.
Those dark eyes soften. “Is that what this is about? Janneth—”
