“Neara,” he murmured. “We don’t know the extent of the intruder’s capabilities. If we can’t destroy what’s in that chamber, you must trap it within the stones.”
My posture straightened, and I turned to meet his concerned eyes. “Alright.”
I filled my lungs with air, steadying myself for whatever was lurking in the chamber, and squeezed my eyes shut. I was no longer the frightened human girl surrounded by enemies. I was the queen of this palace and I had allies who wanted to help me cleanse Bresail of Queen Melusina’s corruption.
“Stand back, everyone.” I sealed the arch that led to the mess hall and ordered the palace to open up a doorway into where I’d trapped the intruder.
The yellow-eared doe bounded out, a wail tearing from her mouth. Drayce’s shadows wrapped around her like giant constrictors and pinned her to the ceiling.
My mouth dropped open, and I gaped at the long-limbed creature writhing within her bindings. Before I could even think of what her presence meant, when heavy footsteps echoed from the other chamber.
“Get ready,” I said.
A pair of bull-shaped horns emerged from the doorway, looking like they’d been carved from onyx and filed into dagger-sharp points. They belonged to a creature with the broad muzzle and drooping ears of a hound. The massive head pushed its way into our chamber, followed by a cloven hoof.
I stepped back as it opened wide jaws, exposing a pitch-black mouth filled with needles for teeth. Drayce’s shadows wrapped around the muzzle, only for the creature’s face to melt into a substance that reshaped and struck out like a whip.
A thick rope of cold slime wrapped around my waist and yanked me toward the second chamber. My breath stuttered. I skidded on the slippery floor, but the ooze only dragged me further. With all my power, I commanded the palace to cleave it in half. The doorway closed, slicing through the creature, making the substance fall away and reshape into a smaller version of the monster.
“What is that thing?” I snarled.
“Something designed to be impervious to my shadows.” Drayce unsheathed his sword and stepped between me and the monster.
As the guards attacked with blasts of flame and ice, I skittered to the back of the room, out of the monster’s reach. My back hit something trembling and warm. I spun around to meet the doe’s frightened, green eyes.
She parted her jaws, let out a mournful cry, and struggled within the confines of Drayce’s shadows.
Realization hit me upside the head, and I bared my teeth. “You did this.”
Her eyes widened, and she tried to duck her head behind the shadows.
I unsheathed the Sword of Tethra from my belt and poised it at the doe’s belly.
At the top of my voice, I yelled, “Stand down or I’ll kill the doe.”
The monster’s form melted into liquid and retreated to the corner of the room. I squeezed the hilt of my sword, breathing hard as realization after realization flashed through my mind. The doe’s presence in the dreamscape, its convenient appearance the moment we left the Palace of Bóinne, its attempt to escape into the darkness of the Summer Court.
Everything made sense.
That wretched doe was working for the Fear Dorcha.
Chapter 19
With one eye trained on the ooze retreating to the corner, I pointed the tip of my sword at the doe’s neck. Every muscle of her body stilled, save for her yellow tail that thrashed from side to side against the shadows pinning her to the flint wall.
The bright lights shining down on us reflected an incandescent yellow in the doe’s bulging eyes, and her jaws parted, letting out rapid, panting breaths.
“Are you controlling that thing?” I snarled at the doe.
She gave her head a minute shake.
“The Fear Dorcha?” I asked.
Another shake of her head.
I turned back to the ooze. A pair of soldiers with outstretched hands streamed white light over its surface, covering it with frost. I wasn’t sure if ice was enough to restrain its powers or if it was playing dead to protect the doe.
“Who are you and what is that thing?”
The doe stiffened.
“Don’t pretend you’re a dumb animal.” I pointed the sword between her eyes.
Despite having communicated with me via gestures, she stared into my eyes, acting as though she was just a regular deer.
I turned to the soldiers, who were raising a four-foot-wide mass of frozen ooze off the stone floor with their outstretched hands. The soldiers wielding white magic continued to freeze the ooze, while Drayce wrapped his shadows around it.
Creating a narrow, horizontal opening six feet above the ground, I let them rid this chamber of the ooze. Once it clanked into the other chamber, I turned back to the doe, who flinched.
“If you insist on acting like an animal,” I snarled. “You’ll be treated like one.”
I opened a doorway to the kitchens. Drayce released the shadows around her front, freeing her neck and forelegs. “Who wants venison sausages for breakfast?”
“Wait!” A melodic voice spilled from the doe’s lips.
Satisfaction lightened my chest. I pressed my lips together to suppress a smile and folded my arms across my chest. “A talking doe? I heard they were especially delicious.”
“But I’m not a beast,” she said. “I’m Erin, the consort of Prince Calor of the Summer Court.”
Some of the guards bowed, and Drayce walked to my side and frowned. I was about to ask if he knew her but then remembered that Drayce had been brought as a child from the Otherworld long after Queen Melusina had cursed the four princes.
I placed my hands on my hips. “You opened the door and let that thing into my castle.”
“Please, Your Majesty,” the doe wailed. “I didn’t have any choice.”
“Explain yourself,” Drayce said.
“The Fear Dorcha has taken my son. He said I won’t see him until I return to my true form and become his lover,” she said through sobs. “He lost interest in me when Queen Melusina arrived and he offered me my son in return for bringing you to the Summer Court.”
I clenched my teeth and snarled. Queen Melusina and the Fear Dorcha had been scheming ahead of me from the very start. First they sent the tree sprite with the poisoned needle and now the doe. I glanced at Drayce, who raised a brow.
“At least we know for sure where she’s hiding,” he said.
“What was that doorway?” I asked.
Erin licked her lips and panted. “They planted a sigil on my right hoof and said it would open into the Summer Court. All I needed to activate it was a drop of your blood.”
“Do you know about this?” I asked Drayce.
He shook his head. “Your secretary might be able to explain how Queen Pressyne moved around the four courts.”
I turned back to the doe. “What are they planning?”
She dipped her head. “I try to stay away from the Fear Dorcha, Your Majesty. He doesn’t bother me so much when I’m with his dogs, so I spend my time in the kennels.”
Erin continued her story, telling me how she had first met the Fear Dorcha. She had been away from the Summer Court to see a healer about her pregnancy and returned to find the forests still, the guards’ bodies picked over by crows, and her mate and the Summer Court asleep.
“The Fear Dorcha startled me in the hallway.” Tears ran freely down her fur. “He trapped me in his shadows, and I turned into a doe.”
I glanced over my shoulder to the empty spot where the ooze lay. “That was a shadow?”
“It’s a corrupted form of death magic,” said Drayce.
“Please, let me go,” she said. “I promise not to come after you again.”
Frustration simmered in my gut. There was a time for compassion—I understood the gut-wrenching pain of losing a loved one, but I felt in my bones that Erin would help the Fear Dorcha again if given another chance.
“Do you know what they would have done if that thing had
captured me?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I just want to go home.”
“And what about the Summer Court?” I asked, feeling like I was repeating myself. “What about the faeries in the other Courts of the Living suffering under curses? Queen Melusina would either use my blood to free the Fomorians or wear my body like a gown.”
Erin didn’t reply but something in her steady gaze told me that she had given up on ever seeing her mate again and had come to see the Fear Dorcha as her master.
Drayce squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll tether her to my shadows so she won’t escape again.”
“Your Majesty?” she asked.
“Don’t.” The words ached as I said them because I wasn’t sure how far I would have gone to rescue Drayce. “I won’t release you.”
I opened a window to the other chamber, where the Fear Dorcha’s shadow covered the walls, presumably looking for a way out. It looked like the frozen piece had also melted and rejoined the rest of the disgusting mass. Willing the chamber to close in around the shadow to form an airtight enclosure, I threaded my fingers through Drayce’s and created an opening into the mess hall.
Afterward, I thanked the soldiers for their help, who bowed and returned to their colleagues, and followed them out with Drayce toward the exit.
“If you’re keeping me here, then I expect you’ll carry out your threat to cook me.” The doe’s voice shook.
Pausing at the doorway, my skin bristled at her assumption. I shot her a parting glower. “You’re staying because I don’t trust you.”
Erin threw her head back and wailed. “Please, Your Majesty!”
I opened a ventilation hole and let the moonlight stream into what would be her new prison. Drayce and I walked through the dining hall, past the glass windows that now depicted me with flowing red hair, holding hands with a faceless male.
“Have you seen that?” I asked Drayce.
He glanced from the window and down to the ring I had placed on his finger. “The palace hasn’t fully recognized me as your mate.”
We continued across the mess hall in silence. I opened a doorway into the queen’s writing room, where Destry waited at a candle-lit table with two dishes covered in metal domes.
She dipped into a curtsey, her transparent wings fluttering.
“Thank you,” I said with a smile. “I’m going to have a bath before eating.”
Destry rose and headed toward the bathroom, but Drayce raised a hand. “I’ll run Queen Neara’s bath.”
The silent faerie inclined her head and disappeared behind a doorway.
I turned to Drayce with a smile on my lips. “You know your way around a queen’s bathroom?”
He grinned. “I used to run my own baths.”’
I raised my brows and smirked. “Fine words coming from a male who had seven-year bargains with servants.”
He reached behind my back, unbuckled my sword belt, and placed it, swords and all, on a nearby table. “They were mostly around for pleasant company.”
All my amusement drained away, leaving my heart aching with sympathy. In the time I spent with Drayce while Queen Melusina had ruled the faeries, I had been shocked that the soldiers didn’t give him the respect due for his rank and power. When Father escaped with me, it must have left Drayce desperately lonely.
I pressed my palms on Drayce’s broad chest. “I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t all gloom.” He ran his fingers down the sides of my bodice, frowned, and moved his hands around the back. “She allowed me tutors and a limited amount of freedom to explore the Free Folk territory. With all that time in the palace, I also got to know a lot of the lower faeries who worked in the Royal Court.”
Picturing the little inn with the white berries growing on its roof, I rested my head on his shoulder and inhaled his leathery scent. “Did you spend all your time in that tavern?”
“Many of the servants who fled the palace after Queen Pressyne died congregated there.” He unhooked the tiny clasps at the back of my bodice and stroked my spine with his fingertips.
Pleasure rippled across my skin, erasing the question on my lips. “Drayce?”
“Part of running the queen’s bath is getting her ready.”
My gaze darted to the door. “But Destry—”
“Has retired for the night.” His hands wandered down to the fastenings of my leather skirt. With a few deft movements, he unhooked the garment, letting it fall to the floor with a soft thud. “I, however, am here to take care of Her Majesty’s needs.”
Cool air swirled around my legs, free at last from the confinement. Drayce kissed one eyelid with a touch as gentle as a butterfly’s caress.
“It’s been an eternity since you visited me in that room.” He kissed the other and ran his hands over the curve of my buttocks. “I’ve missed you so much.”
Pleasure pooled low in my belly, swirling, heating, spreading its heat between my thighs. I whispered, “How long?”
“Time lost meaning in that realm.” He hooked his fingers beneath my leather bodice and eased the armor off my skin with a gentle ripping sound.
“Are you peeling off my scales?” I asked with a smile.
He grinned back. “It’s only right, since the night fowl crowed.”
“When?” I nuzzled his neck.
“While you were talking to Osmos.” He scooped me up in his arms, making my heart giddy with delight. “Didn’t you hear it?”
I threw my head back, a giggle bubbling up to my throat. Drayce had returned to me at last. I wrapped my arms around his neck and slid my fingers beneath the silk of his nightshirt. Before I could unwrap him, shadows crept from beneath his shirt and pulled it off his shoulders.
“But I wanted to undress you.” I glided my arms over the smooth skin of his broad, muscular shoulders, enjoying the way the tendons beneath his flesh bunched under my fingertips.
“Next time.” Drayce rubbed his nose over mine, our lips barely touching. It was as though he was committing the sight and scent of me to memory. His warm breath fanned over my skin, sending tingles of anticipation skittering over my spine.
I yearned for our lips to touch.
As he carried me across the room and through to the door that led to the bath chamber, he pressed a gentle kiss on my lips and murmured, “Do you promise not to drown me in the bath?”
I drew back. “What are you—” I caught his twinkling eyes, and realization struck. The last time we had made love, I had set his skin on fire. To make things worse, I’d only recently stabbed him through the heart. “That isn’t funny!”
He chuckled, gave me another peck on the lips, drew back, and smirked.
A smile curved my lips. “Although if breaking the curse on the Spring Court requires me to drown my mate, I could consider holding you underwater.”
Drayce drew back and frowned. “Not funny.”
I threw my arms around him and burst into a fit of breathless laughter. When was the last time I had felt like this? I couldn’t remember. Certainly not since arriving in the realm of the fae, and certainly not since that horrific Samhain. Since that night, I had lived with the fear and guilt and shame of having brought the fae to my village.
Drayce opened the bath chamber door, letting out the roar of running water and a cloud of warm, jasmine-scented air. I turned to find a cascade streaming down one of the marble walls.
A breath caught in the back of my throat. “Is that a waterfall?”
“An aqueduct,” he said, carrying me toward the water. “It’s modeled after a bathhouse in the Spring Court.”
As we approached the wall, a fine spray of droplets misted against my skin, and my heart quickened with anticipation for what would happen next. In the blink of an eye, Drayce and I stood beneath the aqueduct’s full force. Water hit my head and shoulders in a drumbeat quicker than my pulse. It was hot and loud and invigorating.
I clung onto Drayce’s neck and squeezed my eyes shut as the relentless flow cleansed me of everyt
hing—dirt, guilt, despair. His strong arm around my back and the other beneath my legs held me in place, and I yielded to the water’s purifying effects.
Thoughts of the Dearg Due, the demon dog, the Dagda, the deaths on our disastrous drive through the Summer Court washed away under the flow. With Drayce free, I felt like I could face the Fear Dorcha.
When I thought the water would shatter me into a million pieces, it lessened in intensity to a heavy rain. Leaning back into the embrace, I opened my eyes to meet Drayce’s hungry stare.
“Neara,” he said, his deep voice curling around my senses.
“Drayce, I…” The words died on my tongue.
Drayce cradled the back of my head as we kissed under the warm spray, sending the sensation of ghostly hands caressing my skin with touches so gentle that I thought they were my overactive imagination. But when slippery tendrils wrapped around my breasts and thighs, I drew back to find his shadows wrapping over my skin.
“They felt like hands,” I murmured.
“I can shape my shadows in any way I wish.”
Licking my lips, I trailed my fingers down his muscled chest. “Have you ever used them to pleasure a woman?”
“I’ve never made love with a human.” He kissed my neck.
“You know what I’m trying to say.” I rolled his nipple between my thumb and forefinger.
Drayce hissed through his teeth, the sound making my insides ripple with delight. “Have I ever used my shadows to do this?”
The shadow stroking my leg snaked up the inside of my thighs, sending a blaze of heat in my core. I clung onto Drayce’s neck and whimpered.
“Do you like that?” he murmured as the shadow inched further up with tight, teasing circles.
It was molten fire and white lightning, sending a quickening deep in my core. A moan tore from my lips, which Drayce swallowed with a deep kiss.
I was lost. Lost in a haze of cascading water, questing shadows, and his lips and teeth and tongue.
Drayce devoured me with a passion that burned hotter than the steam, a fierce hunger that melted me from the inside-out. My heart pounded so hard that I felt its reverberations in my marrow, and my breaths turned hot and heavy as the cascade.
Mate of the Fae King (Dark Faerie Court Book 2) Page 17