by Carter, Mina
“Gonna need you to back it up a few steps there, handsome,” she ordered, her expression unimpressed. “Or I’m gonna have to make you.”
His lips quirked at her little threat. Okay, so his queen-to-be wanted to play hard to get, did she? Love games he could play.
“Of course, my love,” he murmured, setting her on her feet and then beaming down at her. She was so tiny and delicate. He would have gowns made for her, beautiful gowns to highlight her delicate stature and a crown to match his.
“I will have my throne made larger,” he declared. He didn’t want her sitting on a separate one. That would be too far away. If she shared his, he could sit her in his lap all the time. A deep growl of male approval rolled through him at the idea.
“Hang fire on the throne idea for a moment, okay?” She wriggled from his hold, approaching the others in the room. For the first time he paid attention to their surroundings.
There were...
“Are these...”
“Human children,” a voice announced. “Disgusting, aren’t they?”
Oberon whirled around, unable to locate the owner of the voice. He raised his axe. “Show yourself, beast!”
“Look down, dipshit. Not everyone’s built on gargantuan lines.”
He blinked and looked down as ordered.
A creature sat by his ankles, watching him with eyes of fire. At least, it was cat shaped. It was silver grey and floofy, with a tail that could have doubled as a feather duster. Yes, definitely cat-shaped, but if it was an actual cat, he’d eat his own throne. Without ketchup.
“What are you?” he demanded, not lowering the axe.
The thing grinned, its mouth filled with way more teeth than should be there. “You’re not as dumb as you look. Are you?”
“I am king of the fae! How dare you speak to me in that manner!”
The cat-thing flicked an ear. “You’re a king without a crown at the moment, muscles, so I’d keep it shut if I were you.”
“Foul beast.”
“Air-headed fairy.”
The conversation devolved into name calling. It was familiar and Oberon grinned.
“You are acceptable. I like you.”
The cat would have arched an eyebrow if it had them. “You have low standards, don’tcha? We can work with that.”
They both turned to watch his queen-to-be dealing with the children. Oberon slid his axe away. She was good with children, quickly reassuring them and, when one wouldn’t stop screaming about the dragon, quickly erasing their memories of the incident.
“Good with children and a powerful witch. She will make a wonderful queen and an excellent mother for my heirs.”
“Might want to ask the lady before decorating the nursery,” the cat muttered as the last of the kids filed out of the room and his bride-to-be walked back toward them. The dragon was buzzing angrily near the ceiling, trying to set the crude drawings on the ceiling on fire.
“Wifey!” Oberon bellowed in welcome, offering her his arm.
“Stop calling me that,” she hissed.
“Quite right,” he agreed, looking down at her. “We’re not married yet so... future wifey!”
There was a suspicious sniggering around his ankles. His little wife-to-be shook her head and started to bundle him across the room. He let her, grinning. Her small hands on him were just glorious.
“I look forward to our wedding night,” he told her.
She went a funny shade of red.
“Dream on, handsome,” she whispered as she opened a small door. A sound somewhere else in the building made her look over her shoulder and seem worried. “You need to get in here. Quickly!”
His grin broadened. She found him handsome. He puffed up with pride, flexing all his muscles for her. “Oh, I will definitely be everything your dreams desire.” How could he not be? He was Oberon, king of the—
She pushed him in the closet and shut the door in his face.
He blinked and then grinned.
“I do not know what this game is!” he called out through the door. “But if we are to play games, this is good! I will think of some of my own!”
4
“We’ve always done it that way.”
They were the six most dangerous words in the English language, and ones that got right on Daffi’s last nerve. They reeked of the unyielding march of time, on foot and in hobnail boots... when the rest of the world had moved onto motorized transport and high-speed rail.
It was the kind of comment uttered by wearers of cardigans with pursed lips and a surgically attached disapproving look. All three were currently being worn by Ms. (Not Mrs. Or Miss, thank you very much) Whipsnide, the museum manager. She looked down her nose in very much the same way Sybil Bulcock, who was attached to her boss at the hip, did. It was like being looked at by twin velociraptors. Three if you added Whipsnide’s familiar, a lizard that appeared to do nothing other than sleep on Whippy’s desk.
She’d been called into The Office (with capital letters). It hadn’t changed in the three years she’d worked at the museum. Whipsnide’s desk faced the room, and a large fireplace sprawled behind her with a painting of the museum’s founder, a plaque beneath naming him as a Whipsnide, Allard Norman Kenneth Elijah Robert. Aka (among the museum staff) Wanker. This had the unpleasant effect of being looked at down the same nose by two different generations of Whipsnide—one of whom had apparently been a close personal friend of Merlin himself.
“Any and all incursions from the fae realm must be reported immediately, and the area cordoned off,” Ms. Whipsnide stated imperiously. “Museum regulations dictate that only those trained in fae communications and contact must interact with any being from the fae realms.”
“Yes, but...” Daffi tried to argue, ready to point out that children had been present and in danger. If anything, she’d saved those kids. Or, at the very least, saved the museum a shit-ton of legal action.
Ms. Whipsnide held a skinny hand up, cutting her off. A tall woman without a spare ounce of fat on her, a generous person would have called her birdlike. Anyone else would have called her a vulture. She even had the hook nose, and her dark hair was scraped flat to her skull, her black eyes fixed on Daffi.
“Are you trained in fae communications, Miss McGee?” she demanded.
“No, but...” Daffi didn’t get more than two words out before Ms. Whipsnide’s hand sliced through the air again.
“Then you should not have interacted with the fae creature. Miss Bulcock, put another mark on Miss McGee’s permanent record please.”
“Of course, Ms. Whipsnide,” Sybil trilled, obviously taking great pleasure in summoning the personnel record book with a wave of her hand. It popped into existence, almost squashing the cakes on the sideboard under the window. Ms. Whipsnide took afternoon tea. It was a three o’clock ritual. Everyday. Sybil usually joined her.
Daffi’s gaze collided with the record book. A leather-bound tome, it was almost as big as she was, only the tip of the feather quill showing above the top edge as Sybil added an entry.
“Being consistently late, breaking museum rules... tsk tsk, Miss McGee,” Whipsnide shook her head. “You need to be very careful or I may have to reconsider your employment here with us. Although, with these offenses, one could begin to wonder if you even want to be here anyway...”
The blood drained from Daffi’s face. She couldn’t lose this job. She loved it, and it was all she knew how to do. Jobs in the city were scarce for witches like her... a middling ability kitchen witch who couldn’t find her away around a kitchen.
Sure, her mom and gramps had tried, but after she’d set fire to the stove for the third time, they’d let her retreat to her books. So if she lost this job... she’d either have to wait tables, a horror all its own... or go home in disgrace. Her parents would welcome her, of course, but she could already see the concealed disappointment in their smiles.
“No, no,” she said hastily. “I love it here. I love working at the museum... i
t’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
Ms. Whipsnide gave a harrumph… or possibly it was her imitation of the mating call of the long-extinct Cornish pygmy water buffalo. It was hard to tell sometimes. Daffi, sensibly, kept that opinion to herself. The last thing she needed was to exacerbate the situation.
“Well… take this as a warning,” Ms. Whipsnide advised condescendingly. “I want to see a marked improvement in attitude and timekeeping.”
“Yes, Ms. Whipsnide, of course.”
“Good.” She sniffed, picked up the paper from her desk, and unfolded it with a snap. The headline screamed, “Second La Fay daughter found!”
“You are dismissed.”
Daffi left the room like all the hounds of hell were on her tail, finding Garlick outside waiting for her. For a moment she was sure she’d caught an expression of concern on her familiar’s face. Then he went back to washing his ass.
“What did the evil queen want?” he asked as he nibbled a particularly stubborn patch behind his balls.
“Shhh, don’t call her that,” Daffi hissed as the door opened behind them to reveal Sybil. The other witch swept them with a cold look, sniffed, and walked off in the opposite direction.
“Come on,” Daffi murmured. “We need to get back upstairs.”
Garlick bounded after her.
“So, I gather the conversation with her high bitchiness didn’t go well?”
“Another mark on my record,” she admitted unhappily, heading for the back stairs. Hidden behind a statue of the Pendle witches, she was forced to wait for a gaggle of tourists to move out of the way before slipping behind Mother Demdike’s skirts to reach the stairs. “Apparently I shouldn’t have shrunk the dragon. I should have ‘cordoned off the area’ and fetched someone with the appropriate staff training.”
“Huh. Crispy fried kid. Plural.”
She hopped onto the gently rotating stairwell, Garlick at her heels.
“What do we do?” she whispered as the cat hopped up a couple of steps to bring him to eyelevel with her.
“Do?” He swished his tail, blinking at her. That was the thing she’d always found fascinating about him. He didn’t have green eyes like most of the feline familiars in her family, but more a golden color that reminded her of burning embers.
“Yeah… about?” She jerked her thumb up toward their floor and its hidden fae king. The one who’d announced she was his queen. Right before she’d locked him in the broom cupboard.
“Burn it down. The whole place.”
“What?” she squeaked, grabbing onto the guard rail as the stairs changed direction and spun them up toward their floor.
“What?” Garlick blinked. “No evidence that way. Whipsass can’t pin anything on you then. Can she?”
He had a point. “Well no... but that’s not the point. How about something a little less... arsony?”
He grumbled, like a train running through a tunnel. “You never take my advice.”
“You need snuggles? You’re always grumpy when you need snuggles.” She leaned forward, hiding her smile as she reached out and scooped him up.
“For crone’s sake, I do not need...” His eyes crossed as she scratched behind his ears. “Oh, go on then.... yes, just there, mortal slave.”
She paused. “What?”
“What?” Garlick blinked and just for a moment, she saw flames in his eyes.
“Can you keep the demonic stuff down a little?”
“Will you just keep scratching? Just there, behind the ear?”
“Of course.” Daffi smiled and scratched again.
Garlick rattled like a broken engine. “I suppose it’s a deal. Don’t suppose I could get you to sign to that effect. Could I?”
She just chuckled and scratched his ears more. He was such a funny little cat.
Her section was quiet by the time she got back, and with a sigh, she set the “closed for cleaning” sign up in the open doorway. In the best traditions of British museums everywhere, it was not enchanted or be-spelled to deny entry but relied on the innate politeness of visitors to obey the rules. So far, it had a hundred percent success rate.
She shrugged to herself. That could also be because the staircase to the Doggerland section was hidden behind “Magical Traffic Signs through the Ages” and so far up in the eaves that most visitors got altitude sickness before they got halfway up here.
“Think tall, blond and Wingy stayed in his box?” Garlick asked, struggling from her arms to trot across the floor, his tail waving like a fluffy banner.
The magical circle was partially burned away and nowhere near its former glory. For a moment pride filled her. She had gotten those sigils right. They were interdimensional portal ones… which she so would not be repainting. There was no way she wanted to risk a second fae incursion. Once was bad enough, had been contained and… overall seemed to be innocuous.
“I’m sure he’s been perfectly well-behaved,” she replied to Garlick, biting her lip as she approached the broom cupboard she’d locked the fae king in.
It could have been so much worse. She could have released a horde of wild redcaps into the museum. The very idea sent a shudder down her spine like centipedes in hobnail boots doing the conga. Fairy doors and circles were strictly monitored and only those with visas were allowed through, which meant they had to agree to the rules of the mortal realm. No rampaging, no carrying human babies off, no tricking humans into deals they had no idea they were making. And those visa rules were binding.
Shit. Oberon had come over without making those magical oaths.
Any of them.
“Fuck…” she hissed, causing Garlick to roll an interested eye her way.
“I wouldn’t have said he was that attractive, but… whatever floats your boat I guess.”
She shot him a look and opened the closet.
It was empty.
“Fuck!”
“If that is what my queen-to-be wishes, then I am, of course, onboard with this plan. Very onboard,” a deep voice murmured by her ear as large hands closed around her hips.
She squeaked in surprise, reacted instinctively, and teleported six feet to the left, behind the curtain where her “office” was. Because Oberon had been touching her, and Garlick was walking by, his tail clinging to her leg at that precise moment… she, the over six-foot hulk of a fairy, and one pissed off feline ended up crammed into a space that barely fit her, a shelf she laughingly referred to as a desk, and a tiny folding chair.
“OhmyfuckingmasterofdarknessgetthisluciferdamnedfuckingfairyOFFme!”
Garlick was stuck between them, wriggling like a fury to escape, and Daffi ended up with a furry paw in her ear.
“Would you… just… hold on,” she hissed, trying not to overbalance as she juggled the panicked cat and the curtain over her office space. She managed to thrust the heavy drape aside and the familiar shot free like a bullet. He landed on the floor, all his fur sticking up at odd angles.
“I do not like casual touching!” he hissed, starting to wash himself furiously. Every so often he glared at Oberon. If looks were daggers, the fae king would have more metal in him than a steel works. “I stink of fae now. It’s disgusting!”
“Oh behave, you big baby!” she told him. The cat washed so furiously he was in danger of licking his own fur off, spitting it out in little silver clouds all around him.
“Mhhhfffph,” he said through a mouthful of fur. “Go slobber over the winged freak.”
“I’d rather you didn’t slobber over me,” Oberon said by her ear as he reached out and pulled the heavy drape closed, shutting them in together. “But I have some ideas for these games you like…”
She turned and was captured by bright periwinkle eyes that smiled down into hers. He barely fit into the small cubicle, his back flat against the wall and the very tips of his wings peeking out over the tops of his shoulders.
Ignoring the fact she was pressed up close and personal, their hips practically mashed together, she reach
ed up in fascination to stroke the top edge she could see. At the last moment, she paused and looked at him. He was watching her the way she eyed up cake. With longing, lust and a shedload of intent.
“You can touch,” he told her, his voice low and raspy.
“They are so cute,” she murmured. “How do they work… I mean,” she blushed as she clarified. “How do they keep you up in flight?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but then she ran a fingertip along the edge of his wing and he lost focus, a shiver running through his large body.
Something stirred south of his belt and her eyes widened.
“Oh…Ohhh!”
Garlick sniggered on the other side of the burgundy velvet.
“Did wing boy tell you his dick and wings are linked yet?”
5
The mortal realm was not at all as Oberon had expected. It was louder, brighter and altogether dirtier than the fae realms. And crowds did not get out of his way automatically like they did back at home. After he’d almost trampled the seventh mortal to cross his path, Daffi sighed and grabbed his hand, yanking him to walk behind her.
He didn’t mind, ogling her ass as they wove their way through the crowded streets.
“You are my absolute favorite mortal,” he told her, grinning when she looked over her shoulder and caught him eyeing up her assets.
She arched an eyebrow. “Cute.”
He blinked, steps stalling in surprise. No one had ever called him cute before. No one would dare.
“I am not cute.”
He was not cute… he was the best warrior, handsome and fit, a king…
The cat-shaped… thing with them chuckled.
“Bunnies are cute. I am king. Not cute.”
A small smile flirted with the edges of her lips. “Okay, King Not-Cute it is.”
Obstinate female! He wanted to growl at her but couldn’t help a small smile at the wordplay. His bride was not only a powerful sorceress, but she had wit as well.