Page 21 of The Fae Queen's Captive
“Okay, fine,” I concede. “I do know where I want to go. I want to go to her.”
The leaves start moving, like they thought I’d never ask, and soon we’re moving through the castle again. Again, it’s almost all unfamiliar to me, and I know if I were to attempt an escape, my best shot would be while I was outside the castle walls. I don’t know if I can even find my way to the front door on my own—and I feel like the enchanted leaves are probably not enchanted to help the queen’s prisoners escape.
After a long climb, I find myself in another tower, standing in front of a door lacquered to a red gleam. I hesitate a moment, feeling stupid in my see-through robe and having no good reason to knock on her door.
But the leaves brush against the wood, as if saying,Stop being such a coward, this is the right door—and then the door swings open of its own volition, revealing a chamber much like my own, but much larger, and much more…well, much moreher.
Rather than roses, the room is carved, stitched, and painted with stags and antler motifs, to the point where some of the stools and chairs have legs made of antler and bone. The tester of her canopy bed is likewise made of antlers, and the silk curtains hanging from them are the rust-red color of the hills in autumn.
A large desk is set below one of the windows, and shelves and shelves of books line most of the space—enough to make me wonder how there are still more to fill the library downstairs. Roses climb up the walls on the far side of the room, full-blown and weeping dark petals onto the floor, and near the desk I see the denuded stem of a single rose, its shredded petals withered on the loose papers scattered across the desk. Like someone had plucked the living rose from the wall for the sole purpose of tearing it apart.
It’s the large copper tub in the center of the room that snares my attention in the end. A twin to the one in my room, it’s also dotted with rose petals, and it makes me wonder if the petals in my own tub had come from here, from this room.
If maybe the queen herself had chosen the roses for my bath.
And even more than the tub itself, it’s the woman sitting inside it that draws me to a halt. The only other person in this room. Her dark hair is piled atop her head and secured in place with two pins of bone. Damp tendrils curl at the nape of her neck, and water glistens along the elegant curve of her shoulders. And her back…
I draw closer without meaning to, not sure I’m seeing correctly at first. The light from the fire only does so much, and the single candle flickering on the table next to the copper tub creates tricks of shine and shadows.
But no, as I step forward, I see the light hasn’t betrayed me: just below the wing of her scapula, her pale skin goes clear and translucent, like glass. And after a feathering of trapezius muscle, the muscle too turns clear, so I can see the articulation of her spine and the graceful arcs of her ribs. And past them, the red bellows of her lungs.
I can seeinsideher body.
I’m frozen, staring at her back, at this so very inhuman part of her, when she speaks without turning around.
“Come here, Janneth,” says the queen, and I obey, hoping she’s not absolutely furious with me for walking in on her naked and bathing.
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” I say, sinking to a knee when I reach her, making sure to bow my head too. “The leaves opened the door, and I know I shouldn’t have come inside, but I didn’t notice you at first—”
“But you did notice me, and you still stayed,” the queen observes mildly. “Well, if you’re here, I may as well put you to use.”
I think of the way she looked at my mouth in the hall, and I flush hot.
“Yes,” I whisper, half eagerness, half fear. “I’ll be of use.”
“You may look up, Janneth,” the queen says, sounding amused. “I’m not a Gorgon.”
“Are Gorgons real too? Like fairies?” I ask, looking up to see we’re nearly at eye level like this. Tiny water droplets hang in the hair that’s come loose from the knot on her head and slide down her collarbone and chest, and I can’t help but be aware of how naked she is below the petal-strewn water of the bath.
I want to look so badly, I want to touch, and perhaps she knows what I’m thinking, because she gives an imperial tilt of her head to the edge of the table, where a small cloth is folded next to the soap.
“Wash me,” the queen orders, and I move to obey, rolling up the sleeves of my robe and settling myself behind her. My hand trembles a little as I dip the linen in the water and then ready it with soap. And it’s ridiculous given the things I’ve gotten up to before now. Washing someone’s back shouldn’t rob me of breath.
But here I am, shaking and practically panting, while the air smells of soap and there’s metal and gallons of water separating my body from hers.
I press the wet, soapy cloth to her back and drag it up, carrying warm water with it, and she lets out a sigh that’s so human I nearly drop the cloth.
And then I find myself eager to hear it again. And again.
“Yes, Gorgons are real,” she says after a minute. “As real as you or me. Most things are real, nightmares and dreams both. Sometimes,” she says, a wet, slender hand toying with a floating petal, “the dreams become nightmares.”
I’m watching the water sluice down her back, over a tableau of things never meant to be seen: muscles rippling, lungs swelling and shrinking, bones still pink with blood.
It should be horrific, it should be wrong, and yet it is so beautiful that I find myself speechless. Except to say: “Sometimes the opposite is true, Your Majesty.”
She doesn’t speak at that, and the only answer is the crackling of the fire and the drip of the water. The wind buffeting the castle from outside. And then she finally replies, “This is true.”
I begin washing an arm, moving to the side so I can wash all the way down to her fingertips, and then I do the other side as well, wondering howmuchshe’d like me to wash her, because the innocent places are dwindling.
