by Tasha Black
She poured tea into the cup and watched the steam rise in a delicate mist.
She added fresh milk and reached for the sugar.
But when she turned back to her cup, she could see the milk curdling on its surface.
The rancid chunks roiled in malevolent patterns, and she swore she saw battles fought and storm clouds gathering in the swirls.
She stood abruptly.
Aerin snorted and spooked a little.
“Oh, I’m sorry, girl,” Jessica crooned, feeling guilty. “It’s just a strange day.”
The pony minced back to her through the dewy grass.
“Shall we go pick flowers?” Jessica asked her.
The pony flicked her ears as if she understood.
And since their days were always the same, she probably did. Though she was used to watching her mistress eat breakfast with gusto first.
Aerin held angelically still as Jessica stepped onto a picturesque stump to mount her.
The pony trotted into the meadow and Jessica began to feel better as the air lifted her hair and the rhythm of the pony’s steps lulled her into her usual frame of mind.
A gorgeous field of wild flowers grew just a short ride from her home. Jessica picked a bunch each day to bring back to the cottage with her, since the brass vase in the library was always empty each morning, no matter how many times she filled it with blooms. The scent of the wildflowers was so lovely in that peaceful space. The walls were lined with books of fairy lore and history, Jessica’s favorite subject. It was impossible to be anything but happy there.
Generally, she spent most of her late morning studying, and then began the routine again in the afternoon - a light meal, a ride, and a study session in the library, teasing the pages until they blushed pink in the dying light.
Aerin cheerfully carried her on as she thought about the peacefulness of it all.
They arrived at the wild flower meadow just as the morning sunlight went warm and yellow.
Jessica dismounted and walked through the stems, admiring the brilliant blossoms. She selected a flower here and there as she walked, enjoying her stroll and feeling no need to hurry.
Aerin busied herself grazing on the lush grass and sweet clover.
A clump of buttercups, banana-yellow and perfect, caught Jessica’s eye. She bent to pick them, but felt a sharp, sweet pain on her hand.
She gasped and pulled her hand back.
“A bee sting,” she realized out loud, gazing down at the small red dot between her thumb and forefinger.
That had certainly never happened before.
She put her hand to her mouth and looked around. Things looked the same as always.
Except for the sky.
Dark storm clouds had gathered over the hills that bordered the meadow, and they were moving in her direction. A grey shadow darkened the land beneath them as they traveled.
“Aerin,” she called out.
But the little mare was spooked. She cantered away, leaving Jessica alone to face the storm.
4
Jessica
Jessica watched her pony flee.
She could see her cottage, but there was no way she would reach it on foot before the storm was upon her.
As the clouds rolled in, she noticed something else headed her way - a figure on horseback, his dark hair whipping behind him with the speed of his approach. He seemed to be outpacing the storm itself.
Her heart stretched taut at the sight, as if it were reaching across the meadow for him.
She knew she should seek cover form the storm, but she found herself spellbound as the earth shivered with each hoofbeat of his massive steed. She could only stand there, stone-still, waiting for him as if she had grown roots.
The familiar stranger drew closer and closer, his snow-white horse thundering relentlessly toward her.
“Jessica,” he called out as he reached her, his voice rough and raw.
How does he know my name?
The horse stopped barely a stride away from her, and the man gazed feverishly down at her for a moment before leaping off and landing right in front of her.
She lifted her chin to meet his gaze.
He was huge, wildly masculine, yet something about his tragic expression told her she had nothing to fear from him.
“Jessica,” he said again, reaching for her hand.
When he touched her skin, a surge of emotion overcame her, like something bubbling up from somewhere deep inside.
She closed her eyes and a long-forgotten memory surfaced.
She sits on a picnic blanket, her beloved journal in her hands, taking notes and trying not to be distracted by the giddy proximity of the god-like man who reclines beside her under the willow tree.
She is in love with him already.
But he is a wealthy man from the city, only visiting her small town for a short time.
Talking with her amuses him, but he will not return her love.
She knows this, and she doesn’t mind. Loving him is enough for her, even if she has to keep it a secret.
“What are you writing about?”
His deep voice is slow and lazy, teasing her senses.
“Just notes for my book,” she replies, feeling happiness rise in her like soda bubbles.
“Jessica,” he says her name like a prayer as he sits up.
Now his size is more apparent. He dwarfs her, though she is not a small woman.
“Give me your hand,” he murmurs in that deep, rough voice.
She acquiesces without a thought, lifting her hand and placing it against his, palm to palm.
“One day you will be my queen,” he tells her.
It is a strange choice of words, but something inside her unlocks and she is overcome with wonder.
Before her eyes, delicate inky black vines grow around her ring finger and his, binding them together like magic.
“Jessica,” he says again, bending to press his lips to hers for the first time.
His kiss fills her senses and she forgets the magic she has just seen. The pleasure of his mouth on hers is the only thing left in her world.
He pulls back.
“I love you,” he tells her.
Universes seem to form and disintegrate in his eyes.
She is drowning in love, so happy that she can’t even speak to tell him she feels the same.
Jessica opened her eyes.
Vines were growing over their fingers again now, the magic as wondrous now as it was the first time.
“Our rings,” she breathed.
“I thought I’d lost you forever when mine disappeared,” he murmured. “But it was only a temporary separation.”
“We’re together again,” she whispered.
“Why did you leave me?” he asked.
She reached back to the memory, but nothing followed it.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I was in a ballroom and I hated it. The queen came and took me away, and I’ve been living in that little cottage.”
She pointed at her cottage just downhill from the meadow.
The storm wind whipped through his hair as he gazed down at her pretty little home, unimpressed.
“I didn’t have any memories before that,” she told him. “Until now.”
He clenched his jaw and she could sense his fury.
“So she trapped you here in the countryside,” he growled, “and took your memories away?”
“No,” she said. “She was so kind. I was unhappy in the ballroom, but now I have everything I could ever want.”
“Can you leave?” he asked.
“I-I’ve never tried,” she admitted. “I’ve never wanted to.”
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
The words echoed strangely in her head.
How long had she been here?
She glanced back over the meadow. Her unchanging days here melted together, making it impossible to judge the passage of time.
“The seasons haven’
t changed,” she thought out loud. “So it can’t have been more than a few weeks. But it feels like maybe it’s been longer than that.”
He closed his eyes, looking troubled.
“How long has it been?” she asked, trying to understand what was upsetting him.
He looked the same as he had in her memory. His hair was dark and his face unlined. It couldn’t have been that long.
Thunder rumbled close by, rumbling to her bones.
“Let’s get out of here,” he told her. “We can talk while we ride.”
She allowed him to help her up onto the pale stallion.
The big horse pranced and snorted, but calmed when he leapt on after her.
She closed her eyes as he wrapped his arms around her, soaking in his heat and the shivers of awareness his touch awoke.
He urged the horse on, and the wildflowers began to blur past them.
They headed for the hills, leaving the little cottage far behind as a cold rain began to pound down. Jessica realized that she hadn’t seen rain since she had arrived in the valley.
The cold drops felt like kisses on her cheeks, contrasting deliciously with the warm arms of the man who held her tight to his hard body as they thundered away from the only life she fully remembered.
5
Cullen
Cullen let the rain slide down his cheeks like tears.
Jessica was safe in his arms. He would never let her go again.
It pained him to see his clever beloved turned into someone lost and child-like by this world. But he would help her recover her jaunty spirits and bring her back to whole again.
And then he would rain down his vengeance on the Queen of Silence and every fae foolish enough to let this happen.
Jessica made a satisfied humming sound and leaned her head back against his chest.
Waves of joy and hunger coursed through him. He pressed his lips tenderly to her ear.
“Soon,” he murmured to her.
Soon he would claim her properly again and watch the tattoo of vines crawl up around her wrist.
They rode for hours in silence, Cullen lost in his thoughts of what had been and what would soon be.
They were finally approaching the woods as the sun began to dip below the line of the distant mountains. On the first leg of his travels, Nyx had scaled the cliffside, bypassing the trees as they made haste toward Cullen’s beloved.
But now that they had Jessica, he decided it would be better to take a little extra time and use the winding path through the woods. There was no point exhausting his mount with two riders.
“Easy, boy,” he told Nyx.
Nyx snorted, but he did as he was commanded and slowed to a trot as they entered the shadows between the trees.
They followed the path at an easy pace until the only lights were the slivers of moonlight that wove a silver tapestry among the branches overhead.
Jessica shivered.
“Are you cold, my love?” Cullen asked, wrapping his arms more closely around her.
She shook her head, but didn’t answer.
Jessica sensed it too, then. Something was in the woods with them. He caught a hint of a familiar, unsettling scent that he couldn’t quite place.
Nyx continued, surefooted even on the slippery carpet of wet pine needles.
Just ahead of them, a shaft of moonlight cut through the canopy, illuminating something soft and lavender that snaked up the trunks of the trees.
Valeria’s grace vine.
“Oh hell,” he said. “Go, Nyx.”
He felt the horse’s muscles contracting beneath him, leaping forward, crashing through the branches that overtook the path.
But they were too late.
Jessica’s body was going limp in his arms.
“Stay awake,” he moaned, even as he felt his own eyelids drooping.
They just had to get past the area where the purple blossoms grew. Then they would be safe.
But Nyx stumbled, his mighty gait interrupted, muscles gone slack.
Cullen had just enough time to pull Jessica and himself off the stallion before he heard Nyx’s big body hit the ground.
“Cullen?” Jessica asked softly.
She sounded so confused.
“I have you. I’m here,” he whispered. “Try to stay awake.”
He could hear the sound of a creek burbling just ahead. He could wet his cloak, then cover their faces with it to keep the pollen out of their systems long enough to get safely away.
There was no danger in the slumber itself. It would most likely be quite refreshing. The trouble with such a large concentration of Valeria’s grace was that any foul beast that knew its effects might be using the area as a hunting ground. To fall asleep in these woods would mean death for them all.
Or worse.
As if on cue, he heard something moving toward them from the direction of the creek.
It was making plenty of noise, which told him it wasn’t afraid.
He hoped he could leverage that mistake against it, whatever it was. Cullen Ward was prey for no beast.
He moved Jessica over to Nyx and hid her as well as he could behind the gigantic form of the sleeping horse.
“What’s this?” a raspy female voice asked teasingly. “A sleepy traveler?”
The rain suddenly seemed to be falling harder and louder.
The owner of the raspy voice stepped between the trees and the moonlight hit her. Her thundercloud of hair told him all he needed to know.
They had been discovered by a storm hag. And they were horrifyingly vulnerable.
“Hello, hag,” he said, careful to sound casual, confident.
His capacity to stay awake was increasing, now that it was raining hard enough to dampen the pollen of those wretched flowers.
“Hello, princeling,” she replied. “It’s been a long time since you’ve shown your face in faerie.”
He inclined his chin slightly, glad she recognized him. However bloodthirsty she might be, she would have to think twice before harming the King of Order.
“It’s King, now,” he corrected her mildly. “King of Order.”
“King maybe,” she rasped. “But not of order. Not anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone knows you now as the King of Pain,” she replied with a sharp-toothed grin.
The words stung, though he felt the truth of them.
“Stand aside, hag, and let us pass,” he said, growing impatient. “And I will forget your impudence.”
“Us?” she echoed. “Who is with you?”
He didn’t have time to regret his words, she was already picking her way through the trees, heading toward Nyx.
And Jessica.
Cullen pushed his weary body toward the hag, but she blinked out and reappeared like lightning, a few paces away from Jessica.
“What have we here?” she crooned. “A tasty mortal girl.”
“She is my queen,” Cullen roared, launching himself toward her on rubbery legs.
“I see no glove of vines,” the hag replied in delight. “You may have marked her for later, but I can eat her now with no reprisal from the crown.”
“Wait,” he said, raising his hands and hoping to buy some time to think. Surely there was something this hag wanted that he could grant.
But she blinked out again and appeared hunched over Jessica’s prone form, sliding a jagged green fingernail down her pale forearm.
Jessica moaned in pain.
Time slowed for Cullen.
A rainbow of pleasure shivered through him at Jessica’s low cry of agony. He felt parts of himself lighting up and awakening.
In a single guilty heartbeat, he shrugged off the effects of the Valeria’s grace, his powers returning to him in waves.
He lifted his hand and three shadows came forth, tall as the trees, black as midnight.
They fell on the hag, suckling power from the thunderstorm that was her hair as she screamed for mercy.
Her pain lent him strength too, but it was a flavorless gruel compared to the feast he had tasted at Jessica’s muted moan of agony.
He quickly tired of the hag’s misery, and with a flick of his wrist sent his minions into the trees with her.
The moment she was gone, he moved swiftly to Jessica. She lay on the forest floor, a trickle of blood running down the inside of her left forearm.
“Jessica,” he said softly. “I’ve got you.”
He smoothed back her hair from her forehead and felt that same intoxicating rush of power. It was stronger now than before, pulsing in his blood and filling his chest.
She looked tired, but not badly injured. At least he had acted swiftly enough to save her, even if he’d fed on her anguish to do it.
The King of Pain…
He tried not to think about it as he turned his attention to Nyx.
The big horse was already stirring. The muted effects of the flowers in the storm were a help, but the hag was gone now and the rain could let up at any moment.
“Come on, boy,” Cullen said. “Let’s get up.”
The pale stallion allowed himself to be coaxed to his feet.
Cullen lifted Jessica in his arms and placed one hand on the horse’s withers before heading into the trees, past the flowers, past the place where the hag had nearly taken them.
He walked for what felt like forever, thoughts of his power tormenting him.
How his veins had sung with the glory of his queen’s misery. As much as it shamed him, the flavor of it kept creeping back into his consciousness.
He loved Jessica, more than his own life.
But how could he be with her when he took such exquisite pleasure from her pain? The thought of it frightened him.
Jessica began to stir as the trees before them thinned.
“We’re almost out of the woods, my love,” he murmured to her.
She clung to him, burying her face in his neck.
The light coming from between the trees ahead was too bright to be moonlight.
He strode slowly forward until the trees parted at last.
The valley below them was bright with wildflowers in the morning sun.
Beyond it, the little cottage waited for them.