by Olivia Hart
“It’s fine, Rose.” My hand fell back to my side as I slowly adjusted in the bed. “Cara was just leaving. Is that venison I smell?”
Cara interrupted. “No Sebastian, I was not about to leave. If you care about her as you say you do, then she needs to understand what you require to maintain your strength. Do not refuse for her. Give her the choice. If she does refuse you, then seek me out and I will give you what you require to maintain your strength.”
She turned away from me and smiled at Rose. “You have beautiful wings, dear. They suit your power.” Her smile widened. “They remind me of your father.” She glanced at me again and said, “You weave quite the knot to untangle between the two of you.”
Then she walked out as Rose’s eyes went wide at the mention of her father. When the door closed behind Cara, Rose whispered, “How does she know my father?”
“Cara is a seer. She sees multiple timelines in both Realms. I don’t really understand how it works. No one but seers really understand, but it explains some of her eccentricities.”
Rose nodded, looking at the door for a few more seconds before she shook her head slightly. She turned to me and brought the tray of food to the bed. It was loaded down with things that smelled delicious.
Nothing smelled as delicious as Rose, though. I had a difficult time keeping my eyes on the food as the scenes from my fantasy ran through my mind unbidden. The hunger inside me made me want to do things that I would regret more than anything I’d ever done before.
I picked up a piece of venison, not worrying with a fork or knife, and put it in my mouth. It was good. Andryn’s food was always good. One of the only people from the Court of Light that had been invited to the village.
“What was she talking about, Sebastian,” Rose asked as she sat down next to me in the bed.
I sighed and ate another piece of venison, giving myself some time to think of how to put this. Rose just kept watching me, patiently waiting for her explanation.
I finished chewing and decided to be blunt. “I’m on the verge of starvation. My power reserves are drained to nothing. Between the chase with Nyx and then the fight, I’m out of power.”
“I do not constantly refill my internal power reserves like fairies. If I don’t feed, my body consumes itself to refill the power supplies, and I slowly die. A full-blooded incubus must consume sexual energy, or they’ll starve. I’m not quite that bad, and it’s why I’ve survived longer than most full-bloods. I can eat food and very slowly recover my power reserves if I eat enough.”
I looked Rose directly in the eye as I said the next part, “But it will take weeks before I’ll be able to jump into a warren with you and possibly a year before I’m back to the level I was before Nyx caught up with us.”
“Then what do you need, Sebastian? What is it that Cara was suggesting that I provide? Do you need to make me dream again?” She seemed to shiver, and I wasn’t even sure what it meant. I couldn’t feel her emotions at all.
“I can’t feed like that right now, Rose. I can’t pull you into the dreamscape. I’m too weak for even that. The only way I can feed right now is physically.”
A blush fell over Rose’s cheeks. “Why didn’t you feed on Cara, Sebastian? I need to know. She’s pretty. Probably prettier than me. I guess that you’ve done that with her lots of times.” I could see that she’d just realized the one thing that I’d never wanted her to find out. I had been with more women than all the men she’d ever met combined.
I had known it would come up, though. I just hadn’t ever found a way to talk about it. Honesty was my only option here. I couldn’t dance around it. It was too important.
“Yes. I’ve fed on Cara many times. Most times that I’ve been in this village. I’ve fed on thousands of women, Rose. And that’s exactly what it was. Feeding on them. Not for sexual gratification. In all the thousands of years that I’ve been alive, I’ve never found anyone who could make me feel anything more than a hunger for their life force. A hunger for power. For survival.”
“But for some reason, I don’t want that anymore. I don’t want to feed for power. I’d rather eat food and be weak than to be with other women.”
“Really?” she asked.
“I haven’t fed on anyone else since I found you, and that has to be a record. I don’t plan on breaking that streak.”
Rose had changed so much in the past few days. She’d been such a pain in my ass, but now… Well, now I cared about her in a way that I didn’t really understand. Incubi weren’t supposed to care about anyone except themselves. It was against our very nature. Even a full-blooded fairy couldn’t sustain an incubus by herself. Not if he were actively using his power for more than feeding.
But a Queen might, and that’s what Rose was. A High Queen with more than enough energy to keep me at full strength. More than that, something inside me seemed to sing when she was close.
She sighed. “You know I’m a virgin, don’t you?”
“That’s why I haven’t pressured you. Even though an intelligent Incubus would have. It seems that you’ve brought out the idiot in me.”
“Can you give me a little time?”
I nodded and picked up another piece of venison. Meat, especially the rarer cuts, had the most power in them.
Rose picked up a piece of bread coated in honey butter and took small bites as she stared at the wall. “All of this is so much to take in, Sebastian. You. Magic. I’m a freaking fairy Queen. Everything. I don’t know what to think about it all. I was just an ugly girl going to college a few days ago, and now you expect me to be the ruler of half a world.”
“My life consisted of class, trying not to embarrass myself in front of my sorority sisters, and trying to spend an hour running through the forest. That’s about it.”
“I just don’t know if I’m ready or strong enough to be the girl you and everyone else thinks I am. I’ve nearly died so many times in less than a week. How does anyone do this?”
She turned to me, her eyes asking me the questions that I had no answers for.
“No one expects you to become Queen tomorrow. That’s why I brought you here instead of the Dark Court. You need training. You need time. You need to get your bearings.”
I groaned as I shifted. A pain in my back shot lightning through my body. “Eventually, you’ll need to make some decisions. They won’t be easy decisions.” I put my hand on hers and said, “But you’ll make the one that you feel is right, and everyone will just have to deal with it. Either way, I’ll support you.”
Rose gave me the best smile she could muster as she looked me over. I knew that look. She was trying to decide how badly I was hurting. I’d seen it enough times, though. Most of the time it was to determine if I was going to die anytime soon.
“Do you want to go out to the fire?” she asked changing the subject. “Enivyn said that they’re going to tell stories.”
“You’d like to listen to them?” I asked.
She nodded. “Enivyn sounded like they were the best part of the night.”
“They usually are. Unlike mortals, we don’t have all of your entertainment options. Our stories are told, not watched on television.”
“I think that might be better. Like a book with other people.”
“I’ll go to the fire with you,” I said, handing her the tray with shaking arms. “I can eat out there as easily as I can in bed.”
She set the tray down and stood up, reaching her hand out to help pull me to my feet. I took it gratefully, but when I pulled on her, she couldn’t keep her balance and fell on top of me, forcing us both backward onto the bed, her on top of me.
“I’m so so so sorry,” she said as she tried to roll off me.
“Wait.” The words came out as a whisper. Everything in my body ached, but having her weight on top of me felt incredible. Her warmth. My body buzzed with hunger, but it didn’t seem to matter. I stared into her eyes and couldn’t stop myself.
My hands went to the back of her head, and
I rose up to meet her, my lips touching hers. Softly, tentatively. Nothing like in a dreamscape. Nothing like I’d ever done before. This wasn’t the kiss of a man who was giving a woman her fantasy. This was the first kiss between a man and a woman, and for the first time in my life, I felt nervous touching someone like this.
She gasped but didn’t pull away. My lips pressed against her harder, and my tongue found hers to begin the dance of lovers. A heady sensation ran through me as I stared up at her. Lust for another person. Not her power.
She pulled back, panting softly. “Not yet, Sebastian. Soon, but not yet. I’m not ready.”
I nodded to her and smiled, the sensation of her lips against mine still making my heart race. “I can wait.”
She climbed off me, and as she turned around, I looked at her, seeing those wings made of shadow made manifest. Then, my eyes ran over her body, and I felt a stirring between my legs. A stirring for her body and not her power. Even when I was starving.
She grinned at me as she faced me. “I can try to help you up again, but I think you’ll just pull me on top of you.”
“How else am I supposed to woo you, little fairy?”
“Most of the time, men are supposed to woo with dinner and a movie. At least that’s what I’ve heard since I’ve never been wooed before. Though, I guess rescuing me from an assassin, nearly dying to save me, and then taking me to meet all of your friends might work. And, I think I may enjoy stories around a campfire more than a movie.”
“I’m glad that sacrificing my body and power for your safety is at least as impressive as buying you a dinner.”
Her lips curled in a real smile and said, “Come on. You’re going to have to get out of bed on your own.”
I groaned as I pushed myself off the bed. “You carry the tray, and I’ll do my best to get to the fire.”
“You need to get healed up so that you can be chivalrous again. It might be worth crawling into bed with you just so that I didn’t have to carry heavy things anymore.”
She grinned at me, and I tried to smile back at her, but the pains that ran through my body were almost too much to take. She saw through my façade and didn’t joke anymore as I hobbled out to the bonfire that had been prepared.
There were two spots on the logs that had been made into benches around the fire for us, and I tried to smile at everyone as they waved to me. I sat down on the ground, needing something to support my back, and I sighed as some of the pains receded for the moment.
Even though everything hurt, it felt just a little bit better. Had that kiss actually given me a touch of power?
John the half-gnome stood up and said, “Tonight, I’m going to tell the tale of how Sebastian, Prince of the Dark Court and only son of the late Dark Queen Catarina, saved my brothers and myself from slavery under the Court of Light.”
Chapter 23
Rose
Something stirred in my mind. Something that I should remember but didn’t.
“My brothers and I lived in the Mortal Realm at the time. My mother refused to go to the Immortal Realm, and my father accepted this.” He began walking around the fire as he talked, drawing the eyes of the listeners.
I pushed myself a little closer to Sebastian, picking food off the tray and eating it slowly as we listened to the story. Sebastian wrapped his arm around me, and I shivered at his touch. Even now when I knew that there was no way that he was using magic, his touch made my body crave more.
“We were happy for the most part, living in a small town outside a larger city.” He nodded to me and said, “A suburb is what the humans call it. We weren’t able to live underground as my father wished, as all gnomes desire, but we lived near a forest. My father would take us through the forest nearly every day foraging for food. Mushrooms, nuts, bird eggs, and the like.”
“It wasn’t because my mother couldn’t provide food for us. She was a nurse at the local hospital and made plenty of money. No, gnomes need to hunt and find their food. At least part of it. It’s as important to them as gold is to goblins or running is to centaurs. They cannot ignore that side of themselves.”
“This wasn’t a dangerous thing because my father had already taught us how to hide in the forest. We foraged in places that we weren’t supposed to go, but gnomes are excellent at staying hidden.”
His voice, even as human as it sounded, still had a rhythmic quality to it, and his movements matched it. It made John’s story entrancing.
“We were happy even as odd as it sounds. My father was able to teach us about being gnomes, and my dear mother taught us about the human world. We all learned to read and do mathematics as human children did, though we did it at home. As humiliating as it sounds, she dressed us up as children even after we were nearly adults. It was the only way to let us walk around in the world without fear of someone noticing us.”
“We all shaved every day, and we kept our voices high pitched. It wasn’t unusual for us, though. It was all that we’d known, and a person will do what it takes to be able to walk outside their door without fear.”
“My father was the only one of us who refused to act like a human child. He had no desire to go to zoos or shops. He never wanted to get into any of the human vehicles. He was content to forage and come home to tell us stories of a world where magic was real.”
“Until the day that everything changed.” John’s voice became more somber, his words more staccato.
“We were riding home from a shopping trip when we were in a car accident. This was many many years ago, and Sinivyn ran to the nearest pay phone to call for an ambulance. He also called our father.”
“The ambulance took my mother and us to the hospital. She was hurt badly. The car door had crushed her arm, and the doctors thought that they would have to remove it due to the excessive damage.”
“They wanted to give her the option, though, so they didn’t operate immediately. My father arrived at the hospital before she’d woken up, and he did the one thing that he’d told us never to do.”
John the gnome paused, building a tension in the air. Then the words came flying out. “He took her arm and healed it. Gnomes can heal wounds, though it takes almost all of their power to do so.”
“We had lived safe and simple lives for many years at this point. We’d enjoyed everything that humans and gnomes enjoyed. We’d never drawn attention to ourselves, and our ability to hide what we were kept us safe.”
“Now… Now, my father had risked it all to save my mother’s arm. I wouldn’t have done anything differently. Neither would my brothers. We didn’t have access to our magic yet because we’d never been to the Immortal Realm to claim it.”
“We were released from the hospital as her arm had miraculously been healed. No one could explain it, yet no one tried to question it either. When we arrived home, the soldiers were already there waiting for us.”
“So was Sebastian.” John glanced at Sebastian with a smile. “Climbing out of a shadow, he slipped through the group of four soldiers standing in their gleaming golden armor. Those black daggers of his laying waste to them. As we stood in the doorway of our family home, we watched the four of them die in our living room.”
“My father recognized him as the Prince. Sebastian told us about how the soldiers had come to take us into the army and use us for our ability to hide troop movements.”
“He offered us a solution. He could take us to the Immortal Realm and set us up in a safe place. My father declined, knowing that my mother would be unhappy in the Immortal Realm. We accepted the offer and have lived here since. Every year or two, we each spend a week in the Mortal Realm visiting my parents.”
“We would have been enslaved by the Court of Light or dead if Sebastian hadn’t saved us that day. He risked himself to save a few half-bloods and a human loving gnome that he’d never met.”
“And that is the story of how we became the first citizens of this village. More were rescued by Prince Sebastian and brought here after that. Each person has
their own tale of how he saved them.”
Trust the Prince. The words echoed in my mind. The old woman. The day of the bus crash. That was what she’d said. Trust the Prince.
Sebastian was the Prince. He’d found the secret. Now, he had saved my life at the risk of his own. She had known all of this would happen. I looked at him and realized that if there were ever a man to be vulnerable with, Sebastian was the one. I took a breath. I would give him what he needed.
I looked up at Sebastian who had closed his eyes again. He was slowly chewing as he had been from the beginning of the story. Bite after bite, he was devouring the tray of food.
John sat down, and Kasia stepped into the ring of logs beginning a tale of a hunt she had gone on. One by one, stories were told until the fire was burning low. Still, Sebastian continued to slowly eat the food on the tray until I looked down and it was all gone.
Sebastian’s eyes were still closed, but he had a smile on his face. “Want to go lay down now that you’re done with your food?” I asked.
He opened his eyes and nodded to me. “Enivyn can show you to the visitor’s hut,” he said.
“I had hoped to share your bed as we did in your cottage.” He raised an eyebrow, but he slowly got to his feet.
“I enjoyed the stories,” I said, “but it’s been a very long day and I need some sleep.”
There were no chuckles or laughter as there would have been if I’d said that in the sorority house. In the house, I would have had to endure catcalls and all types of humiliation. Here, everyone was just worried about whether I would help Sebastian get better.
And I would. This man was not the cruel creature that I’d thought him to be. He was the epitome of nobility in the Dark Court. Cruel, hardened, and strong, yet fair and caring for those who deserved his protection.
I followed after him, leaving the tray on the ground by the fire. As he moved, I saw that he was already feeling a little bit better. He limped just a little less. His head was held just a bit higher.