“I must tell you something,” Axel said one evening. “That last time when I saw the witch on the street, she indicated that she had a tonic that would give you a child.”
“Did she…make me barren?”
“She didn’t really say.” He frowned. “I know she was trying to trick me. That’s why I said nothing of it until now.”
“When she tried to lure you in with the spindle, she said she wanted you to join her in a new world…,” Augustus said. “So it is possible that she wants you to have this child. It sounds as if she has chosen you to be the queen of her new world, and queens need heirs.”
“What does she want? I haven’t heard this story,” Axel said.
“She wants the old ways back,” Augustus said. “The days before the Palace of the Sun. That’s why she wants Rose to sleep for a hundred years.”
“But you can’t go back. The world wouldn’t allow it. That was a more primitive time,” Axel said.
“Try reasoning with the Cobblestone Witch,” Augustus said. “Try finding the Cobblestone Witch.”
“I should have captured her that day.” Axel dropped his fist on the table. “She’s too powerful.”
“Enough of this! Who cares about the witch!” I crossed my arms. “I just need a child…” I clutched my head. “I want to go to Luminé to look for her. If she has a cure for me, I’ll demand she give it to me! Maybe I could lure her out for capture.”
“That’s much too risky,” Augustus said. “She surely expects that. I won’t lose you even if you never give me an heir.”
“But heirs are everything!” I snapped. My mother had always made that clear, and she had produced ten sons.
“No,” he said, touching my arm. “They’re not.”
I knew Augustus loved me, but I suppose some part of me still thought of every marriage as a business arrangement.
“My happiness with you is already so complete that I need nothing more,” Augustus said. “Never forget that. I don’t want to see you cry over this. I don’t care who is king after me. Elnora will soon have her child, and if we have no children of our own, I doubt there will any concern that the line will end with me. But what do I care?”
“Augustus…” I fell into his embrace, and he kissed my cheeks and dried my tears with his hand.
Still, on the day Josef’s wife delivered her firstborn, we all gathered in the room to watch the blessed event, as was the palace custom. I certainly didn’t pity her, screaming and swearing as she pushed, while hundreds of people jostled for their first sight of the newborn. But oh, how I envied her the beautiful little boy she soon held in her arms. He might have goblin blood like Julia; he was not the heir the court wanted. But Josef and Elnora didn’t care, to them he was perfect and the only child of the new generation.
I was getting older, and feeling more than ready to have something that had come from me and the man I loved.
I desperately needed a distraction.
Luckily, I was about to have one. That summer, a cart arrived with the piano, and the weavers and embroiderers of Luminé hung curtains on the beds. The backdrop of my theater was put into place.
The Lady’s Treat, shining and furnished, untouched since the day it was built, was finally ready for me.
Chapter Eighteen
Rose
I handpicked the servants for my new residence out of my favorites from the palace, and on the first night I held a Shepherd’s Ball, inviting only the people whose company I truly adored. We dressed as shepherds and shepherdesses, naturally, in simple clothing of linen and cotton and humble wool, and Augustus and his minster of finance had no complaint about that!
All the rules of etiquette were shed. No one had to stand when Augustus or I entered the room. Everyone was dancing and laughing, all the music coming from our own hands with no professional musicians. But who needed them? Louisa was as good as anyone we could hire, and Elnora played us rousing goblin songs. I had my harp and all of us sang. The billiards table got plenty of use and before the summer sun set, the ladies went out into the field and actually herded the sheep, with much laughter and chaos, as the real shepherd looked on in bewilderment. We came in with dirty hems and slaked our thirst with plenty of wine.
“I’ve never had so much fun in all my life!” Julia exclaimed around the dinner table. When had we ever enjoyed a supper without onlookers and an absurd number of servants?
“A toast to Your Majesties,” Josef said, standing. “You have out-delighted the Master of Delights, to be sure. To my brother, for reviving this poor old place, and my queen, for making it so welcoming.”
I blushed, grinning. “I have hardly done anything.”
“Exactly. That’s why it’s so wonderful,” Julia said.
A vase in the center of the table held flowers we had gathered in the field. The table was cluttered with dishes still being picked at and flagons of wine; I had told the servants to leave the table alone until we had all left it.
“What play should we put on?” I asked.
“We haven’t practiced anything!” Louisa said in some genuine distress.
“That will make it more fun.”
“The Lord and the Farmer?”
“But who can Elnora play?”
“Oh, I’ll be Madame Biddy, I don’t care. I know I’m ugly.”
“You’re not ugly,” Louisa said, eternally kind. Elnora really had the worst of her goblin lineage; sickly skin, a hooked nose, beady eyes—but she was good company.
“Why don’t you ladies do all the parts?” Josef said. “We’ve all talked amongst ourselves—“ He gestured at the men. “And we’ve agreed we’d rather see some of you put on trousers and make a fool of yourselves than anything else.”
“We’re already a little too drunk for this much thinking,” Augustus agreed, although he didn’t seem very drunk at all.
My stage was much more humble than the royal opera, with seating for thirty people. The servants were allowed to rest their feet and watch in the back row. I was so used to onlookers that the presence of a few tired maids and footmen hardly even registered. The royal brothers, Lord Merdon, and Axel took up the front row.
The play was a raucous affair. At one point Julia dashed out in a frock coat and britches but no shirt. She had simply forgotten to put it on in her rush to play the scene with Lord Dudley on his horse after tearing herself out of a gown to play the middle spinster sister. The men hooted and Lord Merdon threw some peanuts at her.
I poked my head out from behind the curtains. “I shall eject badly behaved audience members, don’t think I won’t!”
“Now we see the real queen, eh? Did you know this side of her, your grace?” Lord Merdon laughed. “Maybe those rumors have a grain of truth.”
“I have long suspected,” Augustus said. “She is my Queen Marianna. Soft on the outside, steel on the inside. Go on, Rose, kick this rabble out.”
“Behave yourself, man!” Julia said, in the posh accent of Lord Dudley, pointing her riding crop at her paramour.
We didn’t exactly reach the end of that play.
Before long, the night had reached the hour of candles burning low, Louisa softly playing the piano, Augustus’ brothers caressing their wives in shadowed corners, the smell of smoke as Axel and Lord Merdon lit pipes. Axel offered Augustus a taste from the long-handled pipe and we were soon gathered together on a sofa, me between the two men.
“That smells so sweet,” I murmured. It seemed more like a subtle incense than tobacco.
“Do you want some?” Augustus asked. “It’s elven stuff.”
“Halur’alon,” Axel said, the musical tones of his accent coming forth in the word. “And I have been smoking far too much of it as of late…” He shifted toward us, resting his head in his chin, elbow against the back of the sofa. “It calms my mind and helps me to sleep…as I wait and wonder for what purpose I am here.”
“Your purpose is past due,” Augustus said. “Far past due…” He took some dice out
of his pocket. “Shall we make one more bet? Winner takes all. Whatever you want out of tonight…”
Axel took the dice from him while looking at me with all the weight of nearly a year—a year!—of yearning in his eyes. I wondered what he would do if he won the bet. And what would I do, if I won the bet?
I was chagrined when Augustus rolled a twelve.
“Did you rig these dice?” I asked. “I didn’t think you would want to win.”
“Alas,” he said. “It looks like we will have no break with precedent tonight.”
I don’t know that Augustus would truly have rigged the dice, although I noticed that he didn’t answer my question, and since faeries didn’t lie, I always did notice when they left a question unanswered. I wondered if he was getting a bit accustomed to being in control.
“Go to the king’s bedroom,” Augustus told Axel in a low voice. “Remove your clothes, get in the bed, and shut the curtains.”
Axel took this calmly. Before he departed, he took my hand and kissed it.
Augustus finished the pipe. “We’ll give him a minute.”
Suddenly my heart was hammering inside my chest. “Could I have a taste of the halur’alon?”
“Of course.”
I took a drag of the sweet smoke, and coughed. Ladies didn’t smoke and I wasn’t used to it. I handed it back. The moments seemed to tick by very slowly. I watched Julia lean back on the couch with a sigh as Lord Merdon kissed her breasts. Louisa was losing herself in a slow melody.
“Come with me now,” Augustus said.
Our departure went unacknowledged by our friends, as I preferred it. We climbed the stairs to the bedroom. The sight of the bed with the curtains shut and Axel’s clothes neatly folded on the seat of a chair made my heart beat even faster. Augustus started to take off my clothes without a word, his gaze very focused. He stripped me down to my stockings and brocade heeled shoes and the diamond necklace and earrings I wore. He bent to suckle my nipples, as the King’s Vine spread my pussy and teased my entrances until I let out a little cry.
“Now, go to him and do anything you like,” Augustus said. He brushed the tender, exposed flesh of my sex with his fingers.
“Yes…”
I walked over to the curtains, trying not to let my heels click on the floor too much. I opened them to the sight of Axel’s beautiful body spread out on the bed, caught in the vines.
I could hardly breathe for how handsome he was, as if he had been created and tailored layer by layer like a gown so that nothing was out of place. The perfection of his bones, the skin taut against every perfect muscle, the golden hair tousled on the bed, the soft lips that I suddenly wondered how I had ever been able to look at every day without kissing them constantly.
He looked like he was almost in pain, his chest falling with sharp breaths. I straddled him and took his face between my hands. Elves had such smooth skin I could barely even feel stubble.
“My lady, please—after all this time—“
I kissed him, feeling crazed with desire, grinding my sex against his hard stomach. My tongue dipped into his mouth and tasted him deeply, sucked and licked and nibbled as his erection grew painfully stiff. Now I slid a hand down his chest and took his cock in my hand, deep strokes up and down as he moaned and struggled.
Augustus stood behind me, slowly removing his clothes button by button.
“Let him taste your sex,” Augustus said. “And you may come.”
A bit awkwardly as I tried to find the right position, I perched myself over him, and Axel immediately started to make love to my spread lips and entrance. I let out a squeal of agonized desire; I’m not sure Augustus had ever claimed me so thoroughly this way. Augustus kissed my mouth and quickly I toppled into a climax so swift and strong that I could have called it a night right then and there. My entire body went limp, my head swirling. I collapsed against Axel.
He was still breathing tensely and straining against his bonds. I knew how he felt. There was a certain terror in surrendering control that was not enjoyable, even as I found myself craving it. He had waited for this moment a long time and I wondered if it was worth the wait.
“Axel…,” I said gently, as Augustus opened a cabinet.
“Your grace,” he replied stoically. “Your pleasure is my own.”
Augustus walked over to us with a bottle. “Take this oil, and ready him for you.”
The moment was heavy with anticipation. This is what Augustus had been promising and readying me for for months. He wanted me to take them both. I thoroughly slicked Axel’s cock with the oil as it throbbed under my hand, seeming much larger when I considered what was about to happen.
“Th—there.” I offered Augustus the bottle back.
“Rose…what a face. Are you truly scared?” he asked.
“I’m—“ I paused. “No, I’m not scared at all.” That was true. But I couldn’t sort my feelings just then. I was struck by one of my strange yearnings for normalcy, that was always quickly followed by the realization that I hardly knew what normal was anymore.
“Take him for your own,” Augustus said, holding one of my hands.
I was glad he was allowing me to have control of this. I straddled Axel facing away from him now, and I gripped Augustus’ hand as I nudged my nether hole against the head of his cock. I heard Axel groan with pleasure as soon as I began, and that helped to spur me on to take all of him, every inch…slowly, slowly, as deep as I could go until I was filled with him.
And there was no pause, no rest for me. Augustus now took both my hands in his and urged them over my head, leaning me back against Axel’s chest, shifting his cock inside me as I let out shuddering little sounds. As soon as I was canted fully back, resting against Axel, my body rising and falling with his breath, Augustus slowly slid inside me until I was full of him as well. He made sure I felt every inch of him too.
The sensation of having both of them inside me was so overwhelming that my shuddering was almost turning to sobbing and begging, but it was…incredible.
“We’re hurting her,” Axel said.
“No,” I moaned. “No…no…I don’t want you to stop…I want this forever…”
“Really?” Augustus purred in my ear.
“Please,” I begged him.
Axel groaned beneath me. “I have waited so long…”
“Don’t worry, Count Farren. You belong to my queen now, and my queen belongs to me, and both of you will have no end of satisfaction now that we have a place of indulgence,” Augustus said. “Do you like having a treasure of your own, Rose?”
“Yes!” The word ripped out of me. “Oh, yes…”
“Should we untie him next time?”
“Only if he wins the bet.”
Augustus laughed and kissed my forehead and then he began to fuck me in earnest, Axel straining under me to fuck me as well. He was strong enough that even with the bonds restricting his movement he could flex his pelvis under me. I was completely lost to the sensation, the dual stimulation reducing me to cries and pleas and moans. Pleasure built within me like someone stacking bricks on my chest until I could hardly breathe for all the tightness winding up in my center, and then all the heat and the weight of it exploded at once and Axel growled, shaking the bed as he battled against the vines to break free.
There were tears in his eyes, I saw as I finally dragged myself away from them, dripping with their seed. I flopped onto the covers and stroked Axel’s chest.
“Can we release him now?”
“Yes.” Augustus waved a hand and the vines drew back, Axel drawing his shaking arms down to hold me close.
Augustus dipped a few cloths in the wash basin, wrung them out and handed them to us, shifting abruptly to a more nurturing role that reminded me there were other sides of his nature, no matter how well he played his part. He climbed into the bed beside me and drew the covers over us both. Within seconds, I was fast asleep between them.
Chapter Nineteen
Augustus
While Rose quickly fell asleep, Axel was awake, looking at her peaceful face before we looked at each other. I couldn’t read him at all.
“She is so beautiful it brings me pain to look at her,” he said after a moment, breaking the silence.
“That’s a good way of putting it.”
“I have waited all this time to feel her,” Axel said. “And now I realize that it will never matter. I will never feel satisfied.”
I felt vaguely insulted. “You were not satisfied?”
“Tell me, your grace, you can have as much of her as you like. Is it ever enough?”
“I suppose it’s not.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she says the same thing about you.”
“Sometimes,” I said, candid in the shadows, “I think she might be glad to get rid of me.”
“I think it’s more likely that you would be relieved to be rid of her.”
“What? No—you vastly overstep.” It seemed to me that a man who had been dominated in bed should be more subordinate.
“I know,” he said. “I shouldn’t say things like that. To a king, no less.” He almost laughed. “But I fear no one. I have already seen things much worse than kings. Gods, when I came here I thought I would hate this place. I never thought I would be caught in the center of the spider’s web. Well, I can bear it but I don’t know how you do.”
“I’ve never known anywhere else.”
“We’ve all known somewhere else, unless we have no imagination.” Axel sat up a little more. “Can I ask you something?”
“I suppose.”
“Am I your proxy?”
I grimaced. “You know, I hardly know anymore. I hardly know what I really want; I just know this. I think I realize now why all the kings after Enri, they all gravitated toward the Mistress of Many Loyalties. My life revolves around her so thoroughly. There’s the concerns of the kingdom, and then there’s her, and even the former seems less important sometimes.”
“I can see that,” Axel said.
The Surrender of Sleeping Beauty Page 24