By the Horns

by Jeanette Lynn

  “I was kidding, Yhem,” I assured him after I’d swallowed the wad of roll in my maw, adding with a mischievous smile and an elbow in Kvigor’s rock hard side, “though now that we’ve got to talking about it...” Another roll found its way into my flappin’ trap. “OMPH! May. Mop hit.”

  “You like round, warm things in your mouth,” he grunted out, watching with malicious delight as my cheeks flushed pink. When he would have leaned in for a smooch I mashed the palm of my hand into his face.

  “Fum now hon, who can khiss hor hown hock and halls, who herk.” My eyes flashed, darkening. It was then I knew when they’d turned black, everything growing so much brighter suddenly.

  “The village, Yhem,” Adelric prompted, his hand sliding to my knee to stroke the spot through my skirt while I chewed like my life depended on it, glaring at Kvigor, the white bull smirking all the while like I’d just done the cutest thing. “What of our men? Bainan’s mission?”

  Yhem nodded, though he continued to give Kvigor and me funny looks. “Word has spread of Ekodar’s... eccentricities. There are those who’ve come to call him the Mad King. They worry his madness might be the result of a sickness, like blue belly or hossops fever. We have less travel through the village than ever before. Words travels fast. Bainan returned,” he hesitated, “giving his king the message.”

  Adelric nodded. “He is...?”

  When he didn’t answer, Kvigor snorted. “Missing a limb or left to the whipping trees?”

  Yhem blinked. “The trees.”

  Kvigor grunted, unsurprised. “Thought I heard screaming down that way, just before the storms.” The white bull’s eyes took on an odd look and he cocked his head, eyeing the Tauran like he knew something he didn’t. “He’s part of your party that took and tortured my Addie, yes?”

  Adelric’s hand on my knee tightened, but not before I felt it starting to shake. My hand slid over his, laying atop it. He’d be haunted by what he’d agreed to for the rest of his days, much as I’d be tortured with the pain of it.

  The tall male’s eyes dropped to the table where they stayed. “Yes.”

  “Good. You all deserve more than that for what you did. Lucky she didn’t die.” His lips pulled back in a teeth baring, ugly smile. “Be glad she’s not bloodthirsty or you lot would be the first to go when I take the throne.”

  When I looked to Kvigor, his killing glare softened. A thick finger came up to dust my cheekbone. “Don’t,” I muttered, knowing he was thinking about his actions leading up to what had transpired. We weren’t going to think on it anymore.

  Yhem glanced around worriedly. “I’m wary Ekodar does not have ears in here,” he said slowly. “Speaking of such things-”

  “Would be no surprise.” Kvigor sat back in his seat. “Puck knows his time is nigh. I come for him.”

  Fitting, I thought, the Mad King to Titania’s Mad Queen. If ever there was a grand insult, the insult of insults in Tauran society, that was it.

  Speaking of oddities in Tauran society... Popping up like someone had just pulled my tail, I looked from the temple’s waters to Adelric. “The sword.” My hands slapped to my head, smacking the base of my horns. “Where is it?” I couldn’t believe I’d managed to completely lose track of everything so badly I’d forgotten about that blasted sword.

  “It’ll hold,” my golden-eyed lover promised.

  “Okay, but hold where?”

  “There.” He pointed to the water, frowning when I hopped up and skedaddled to the water’s edge. “No one has touched it, save you.”

  “Afraid to,” Kvigor chimed in. “We weren’t chosen. What would it do to us, if it did that,” he jerked his chin towards my hands and their new ink dipped look, “to you?”

  Blunt, he had a point, though it still stung a bit.

  “Thanks, luv, don’t coat it in sweetness for me.” My hand went to the black track marks marring one of the newly hairless sides of my head. I swore I still smelled like burnt hair, if only faintly, but Adelric swore I smelled the same as I ever did, heat and woman and a hint of musk and sweetness, and now him, which I took to mean he liked the natural smell of a woman, or, erm, his woman, and meant to reassure me he liked O de Riadne.

  Adelric came up beside me then, taking my hand away to kiss the back of it. “You are the demon pixie you were always meant to be, vacha. Come,” he tugged on my hand. “Eat. Discuss. Then we will go and retrieve your weapon of destiny.”

  He grinned, cheeky, when my nose crinkled and I gave him a funny look.

  “Weapon of destiny? Laying it on a little thick, Ferdinand,” leaning towards him, I bumped my shoulder with his, leaving the black looking shape of what might be a sword to the bottom of the pool, “but I’ll bite.”

  When we reached the chairs I gripped the back of mine, too nervous to sit. My gaze kept going to the water, no matter how hard I tried.

  “What of Vachel’s impending nuptials?” I asked Yhem.

  “That is what I came to tell you about.” Yhem leaned forward on his elbows, whispering, “It would appear he is under the impression a bargain has been struck,” his gaze strayed to my horned head yet again, “he has called it off, claiming a new, ah, arrangement is to be had.”

  “What?!” I exploded. “He’s called off her arranged marriage to the smithy to assign her a new one? She’s not a sack of wheat. She can’t just be passed around like-”

  “It is not Vachel who has been, ah, assigned,” he mumbled uncomfortably.

  “Kvigor, then? I thought they weren’t coming, those arrangement, fellow far-flung Taurans? And he’s mated to me! So he can’t.”

  The chair cracked as I snarled, bits crumbling beneath my clawed fingertips.

  Kvigor took one hand, Adelric the other, and together they pried my claws loose.

  Kvigor tugged me towards him, but it was Adelric who jumped in my seat and jerked me into his lap. Kvigor looked annoyed at being thwarted but let it go, for now. His hand settled on my thigh, where he rubbed the spot.

  “Not Kvigor.” Yhem shook his head.

  “Who then?” I burst out.

  “You,” he blurted, clearing his throat, looking anywhere but at me. “He has claimed... you.”

  “Wait. What?” Blinking at him stupidly, I swore I hadn’t heard him right. “He has claimed me? For what? And what purpose?” Hah, but I already knew, didn’t I?

  My mates’ twin snarls of displeasure told me I had in fact heard right.

  “As his, ah, queen?” Yhem murmured weakly, wincing when teeth clacked on either side of me, steam pouring out of pissed off Tauran nostrils, mine joining the bunch.

  “No.” I would have made a run for it, tried to escape this conversation, this pure madness, but for the arm banding around my waist. “No.” My head shook, voice so small I had to wonder for a moment if I was about to burst into tears, laughter, or steam and roar right along with my men. “This is madness.” This was a nightmare.

  “Aye,” Yhem agreed. “And he be calling ye the demon queen, eh, meanin’ how’s he knowin’ ‘bout the changes and such? If not from an insider talkin’ outside.”

  “But that’s- I just got these!” My hand smacked my full set of horns, then I wiggled my fingers. “And these, and about a million other things. A dick tail and a hairy arse, for one...”

  “It’s not that hairy,” Kvigor cut in, beginning to look contrite, realizing just how much it truly bothered me. “It’s soft and short, like... like a mookling’s. I like it.”

  I grimaced, glancing sheepishly to Yhem. “Ugh. Pretend I never spoke.” Lips pursed mulishly, I peeked at Kvigor. “What’s a mookling?”

  “Tiny git, fluffy like the fuzz on a bajmer nut’s shell. Soft as-”

  “Is a mookling a duck and a bajmer like a peach? Speak human! I don’t know Tauran!”

  “What’s a duck? A peach? Can you eat them? What do they taste like?” Kvigor queried.

  “You’re just trying to distract me,” I pointed to him, then Yhem, “but that look on
his face, I’ll never forget.”

  “Yhem,” Kvigor barked, “stop looking at her.”

  “Ye’ve a hairy arse?” Yhem looked beyond interested at the mashed tuber roots piled high in a bowl.

  “Humans don’t expose their arses,” Adelric snapped at his friend, his hand going to my bum protectively. “So don’t be askin’ ta see it, and wipe that look off yer face. She’s not like those broken meexlings you collect, Yhemen.”

  “Never said she was,” Yhem said with a grunt.

  “I didn’t mean to say that.” Hands slapping to my face, I groaned. “My ass is normal. It’s a perfectly fine arse. Nothing ta see. Nothing at all.”

  “Except for that wee stubby tail. Think it’ll grow out?” Vachel popped her head around the corner, clearly eavesdropping.

  “You have horrible timing.” My eyes narrowed to tiny little slits. Adelric’s arm tightened around me.

  “I know.” She smiled, like the suns had shone on her favorably, sailing into the room to plop down next to Yhem.

  Yhem looked between my mates, his eyes brimming with questions. The male looked about to bounce out of his seat.

  “No,” Kvigor answered for us as a whole.

  Yhem’s whole demeanor dropped. “Not even the wee stub of a tail?”

  “It looks like a penis,” I admitted, hoping that would be a deterrent.

  “A cock, eh? How big?” Yellow eyes flushed with happy curiosity.

  I’d clearly underestimated the male’s inherent interest in anything other. “For someone so eager to study a freak, you sure did give in to stringing me up quick.”

  “No apology will suffice, lad- ah...” Large eyes blinked, bobbing between my mates, drawing a blank.

  “Riadne. Just Riadne. Or, hmm...” My finger tapped my chin. “Demon. Lady Demon.” My hand waved. “But we’re not going to worry about that, any of it, because you’re going to help us, allowing me to forgive you.”

  “I- Alright,” he said quickly.

  “Good.” A niggle was still nagging, so I looked to Vachel. “You know the handmaidens.”

  Vachel nodded. “I do.”

  “Who among them is new or from somewhere else?”

  Or, Adelric added, “Has lain with the chief?

  “Ah. The ear inside the temple.” Yhem nodded along with Adelric, but then the giant of a male frowned. “But how does that make... Ekodar has not left since he began his new, uh, quest. He also claims he’ll take the bounty off Kvigor’s head, should Adelric rejoin the guard.”

  “A bounty?” I snarled. “There’s a bounty?”

  “How much?” Kvigor could not have cared less his father had decided to paint him a perpetrator. I should say, Puck amongst his father.

  A quest to torture the female who bonded herself to him, I thought with a sick twist of my guts.

  Kvigor stared at me, then his sister, his head cocked.

  “You’re not faking your own death for coin, so don’t even think about it.” Turning to Adelric, I shook my head. “You won’t be rejoining his guard, either. No silly ideas, you two.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it, vacha,” Adelric said too easily. There was a slickness to the lie that gave truth to the boldness. A lie that wasn’t? And he knew it.

  “I mean it,” I sniped at him, making him smile.

  “Of course, vacha,” my dark-furred Tauran fairly purred.

  I chuffed, huffing, but let it lie.

  “What of this usurper?” Yhem, always good for steering the conversation back to topic.

  “If she worships the Queen...” I started, letting my words trails off.

  “If she is worshipping the Queen,” Kvigor began slowly, cottoning on, “she wouldn’t be barred entrance to temple, and be able to give information to Puck and or her queen when she returns to the village.”

  “Maybe she merely thinks she’s reporting to her queen,” Adelric mused. Another clever trick of the trickster’s, as his lover has already abandoned him, but others wouldn’t know that.

  “Who’s left since all this,” I gestured at my person, “went down.”

  Vachel grimaced as if she didn’t like the idea. “Lashi, Ryda, and Dae. Lashi returned alone, stating the others had chosen not to return. We just assumed they took part in a joining.” Her eyes swirled from maroon to a bright, reddish pink with a hint of gold. “But none of them are welcome now.” She stood, stomping towards the hall. “We can’t take chances. Worry not, I will be handling this.”

  “I have to- It doesn’t- How long was I floating in the temple pool after I fell to the flames?”

  “Fell aflame,” Adelric elaborated. “No more than half a day’s light.”

  “Half a day’s?” My eyes bugged.

  “After the gold and green fire engulfing you extinguished and we deemed it safe to fish you out, that is,” Kvigor felt the need to add.

  I was aflame... literally. “And how long was that?” I heard as well as felt that squeak in my voice.

  Adelric’s hands were already trying to soothe me, scrubbing up and down my arms to get all the blood that had just dropped to my feet back into my limbs.

  Kvigor glanced to his brother. “No more than...”

  “You know what?” My hands shot up and I made a cutting motion. “Forget I asked. It’s past, done. I don’t want to know.” Half a day’s light?! Gah! Which explained their sudden truce a lot better than waking up thinking it had been a sudden thing. They’d had more than enough time watching over my prone form to come to some kind of understanding, should they both wish to be happy and keep me happy along with them.

  This all left things at loose ends, though, Puck’s bold new move, getting rid of him, my place in all of this, which got me to thinking... “I need that sword,” I said suddenly.

  “Now?” Adelric murmured, his chin resting atop my shoulder.

  “Yes.” My hand tapped his arm. “Right now.”

  “You’ve an idea?” Kvigor, stood, offering a hand up.

  “Erm, sort of,” I muttered cryptically, glancing at Yhem. “Don’t know how long this will take, though.”

  Adelric, following my gaze, stood, offering his brother in arms a short nod. “You will stay with us? Make use of one of the guest rooms?”

  Knowing when he’d just been dismissed, Yhem collected his knife and axe and stood, making his way to the hall that led to Adelric’s room as we headed straight for the pool. “I will. Thank you.” Yhem stopped at the end of the hall. “It is good to have this Kvigor back,” he called over his shoulder with a wave. “I knew he was in there somewhere.”

  “You may thank my mate for that,” Kvigor called after him, right as we stood before the water’s edge. Then to me, “She is, after all, my reason for living.”

  My breath caught and I felt a swoon brewing. “You know, you say the sweetest things, and then you-” Bending down, he swiped that tongue across my face, chuckling when, cringing at him from my unlicked eye, the other squinting as if to stave off the slobber, I lifted my finger to poke him in the chest, muttering, “Then you do stuff like that and I want to brain you.”

  “Love you too, Addie-mine.” He pressed my hand to his chest. “With all of this.”

  “Aww, that’s- Ah!!”

  Grinning, he pushed me into the pool with a quick shove, snagging the corner of my sweater to send it flying over my head as I fell, tangling on my horns. “Now go get your sword, my little demon wife!”

  “She’s going to maim you,” Adelric retorted dryly, watching impassively, I heard as I surfaced. “Permanently.”

  “Perhaps,” Kvigor admitted with a shrug. “But now that sweater is ruined, and we shan’t have to see it again.”

  “Think you not she’ll beg Vachel for another, just to torment you?” Adelric’s eyes gleamed at the idea. These two were rivals ‘til the end. I’d never get a handle on them. I couldn’t rightly say I wanted to, all things said and done.

  Kvigor grimaced at the idea. “She wouldn’t.” Wet, balled up s
weater smacked him in the face. “She would,” came his muffled reply as he wrestled the sweater monster from his face.

  ˜˙˜*˜˙˜

  I’d been at this for hours, diving, grabbing the rather dull looking, blackened bit of metal, the shiny gold bits peeking out nothing to waggle a brow at.

  I’ve broken it, I lamented. Stood up to the blasted thing and I’ve broken it.

  Snarling as I dove back down, air bubbles releasing as I screeched to my little heart’s content, I cursed the damn Mad Queen and her lackey lover and spies. Did they not see they were ruining my life? Lives? And those I claimed? Of course they did, and they didn’t give a single shite.

  What torments was he doling out, sending his best minion to their version of the stockades. Did Bainan live? He was young and foolish, and while I despised the twit, the punishment, whipping for returning with a message, of no fault of his own, the crime didn’t fit the sentencing any more than mine did. It was wrong, period.

  Hands gripping the hilt of the charred remains of Adelric’s—no, mine, it somehow felt wrong to say it was his and his alone when I felt a strange connection to the ruined piece—our sword, I lifted it up and brought it back down. It clanked along the pool’s bottom but nothing more, a bit of rubbish at this point.

  If only it flamed like it had that first time. I’d show that fae jokester a claim then! Spies, treacherous, cheating queen, these supposed gifts from a false god and what I was supposed to do with them I knew not, and who knew what else that Robin of Puck had employed. Anger and frustration bubbled until I seethed.

  Off with their heads, I screamed in my mind. Off with all the heads of those who’d play false on these people, now my people.

  Water bubbling around me, growing warmer and warmer, the sword, newly retrieved, clenched tightly in my hand, I realized I was doing it.

  Blinking down at the sword, a hint of gold peeking from between my bubble rage, it was the shadow I cast along the water’s bottom that left me speechless. Gaping, I shook myself out, kicking off towards the surface.

  A garbled shout left me as my face hit the open air. “What the fuckin’ fae!” Dragging the sword behind me, legs kicking, paddling one-armed, I headed straight for Kvigor and Adelric. “Did you see that?” Lifting the heavy arsed thing up and out, I slapped it down to the ground at their feet, sliding it towards Adelric, who now gave his weapon a wary look. “The shadow, on the water!”