Page 16 of The Fae Queen's Captive
“I’m sorry,” I say, still numb. “I’m sorry they tried to hurt you.”
“Do not be,” says the queen dismissively. “I’m yet unafraid of the Thistle Court and its lady. Although I am insulted that she thought I wouldn’t see through that little trick of hers. But perhaps returning the bracelet to her with her servant’s severed hand inside it will remind her to try harder to kill me.”
The remark about the servant’s severed hand is so casually, effortlesslycruelthat I have a moment where I don’t fully understand it, where I think I must have misheard.
But I know I didn’t.
And I know I’m not imagining that the queen is in a slightly better mood now. Her mouth is softer, as if her smile might return, and I see her long fingers move in time with the music. She’s happy. There’s blood on the floor and on the mouths of her people, and she’s happy.
I take a deep breath and look down at my own hands. They are attached to my body, and they aren’t covered in thorns or blood. For now. It’s becoming very clear to me that I don’t have any way to predict the caprice and cruelty of this place. Of the fairies here. Ofher.It could be me screaming on the floor next, and as I look around the room at the banquet, I feel the creeping sense that any one of these people could be the ones to do it, to make me scream. Even if they didn’t hurt me, they would watch. They would do nothing to help.
You should not feel safe.Message received, Felipe. Loud and clear.
The folk here love a bargain above all else; they love price.
You might be able to buy some safety that way.
I see the necessity of it even more now. If a bargain is what it takes to keep me safe until I figure out how to escape or Samhain ends and I’m sent back home, then a bargain is what I shall strike.
Although, fuck me, what can I offer? Sex? I’m not averse in the least to bargaining with sex—I like to have it, and being in the queen’s bed soundsamazing. But the orgy platform in front of me is full of fairies flexible enough to put circus performers to shame, and sex is free for the taking everywhere else in the room. I can’t see how sex with me would be a very tempting offer. Like offering a nickel to a billionaire.
Think, Janneth. Think.
I could talk to her about excavation strategies, I guess. Demonstrate how to make tea on a dig site with nothing but a camping stove and a willingness to get burned. What a fairy queen would want with that information, I don’t know, but it’s all I’ve got. I don’t know how to fight or enchant bracelets; I don’t know how to do anything other than like history and sex and crave more from life than life can possibly give me. I’m just a mortal girl in fairyland, with nothing but myself to offer.
But maybe that’s it? Morven had said mortal toys were more fun, after all, and the way the queen had looked at me when we were talking of consorts…
Well, I will never know if I don’t try, and if I don’t try, I might end up bleeding on the floor. So.
“Your Majesty,” I say, knowing I sound a little clumsy saying the courtly words but forging ahead anyway, “I want to make a bargain with you.”
This catches her attention, because for the first time at the banquet, she truly looks at me. “A bargain, Janneth Carter?”
Her voice is soft, dangerous even, but I continue, “Surely better than a stolen mortal consort is a mortal happy to be one. Guarantee me that you will add my safety to the promise you made in the library, and in return, I’ll promise my willingness to you. To be your companion, your consort. To be whatever you wish until Samhain is over.”
“Even if what I wish for is not a companion or consort?” Her voice is silky. “Even if I wish for a toy or a pet instead?”
I have the sudden image of being curled naked at her feet, her long fingers stroking my hair. I swallow.
“Then I will be your pet.”
“And remind me of this promise I made in the library?”
“That I will stay here for two nights, and then on the third, you’ll let me leave Faerie. All I’m asking for is that you promise my safety too.”
The queen gives me an appraising look, as if sifting through my words. Then she turns and gestures at her court, at the sex and excess, at the glinting jewels and sweat-shimmered skin. “And what, Janneth Carter, can you give me that I do not already have at a wave of my hand? You say you will offer me your willingness, but that is not in short supply here. Do you think the people at my court would be unwilling to come to my bed?”
“No, Your Majesty.”
“So again, I ask: What can you truly offer me for this additional promise?”
I know that it’s important that I do not lie, so I can’t make up an answer for her. I can’t invent something out of thin air. It needs to be the truth, but now I’m right back where I started, because the truth is that I have nothing at all to offer a queen like this one—
My eyes land on the orgy in front of me, on the twisting, moving bodies. But now I’m looking past the moving hands and hips, past the spread thighs and braced knees. I see the fairies’ faces: their glazed eyes, their bored expressions. And with that in mind, the slow caresses and even slower kisses take on a new meaning. Notsavoringslow butdesultoryslow. Not lingering but uninterested.
Maybe an immortal lifetime filled with every kind of pleasure does that to someone; maybe it’s possibly to eventually become blasé about what some people crave beyond all reason.
But I think I’m personally a very, very long way from thatmaybe. So long that it might take an eternity for me to be sated.
