“Are you saying she’s better off asleep!?”
“No, I’m just saying…she was always sad before. As much as we made her laugh…she was sad.”
“I know they’re happy,” Axel said. “And they’re together.”
“And they left you behind?” Julia demanded.
“I think I actually left them behind,” he said. “But sometimes when I dream, I see them in the distance, watching over me as I watch over them. And it’s not a bad life here, you know. I see pretty girls every day, and they bring me fresh goat cheese and bread. It’s the best military post a soldier could have.”
As years turned to decades, the nation of Ellurine grew calm once again. Government was now based in the city, and the Sun Palace became a place of pilgrimage for the people of the country, and before long, even the other nations. Elves, humans, goblins and darklings all paid a visit to the grand palace when they came to Lumine.
Every single one of them, without fail, asked to see the sleeping king and queen.
“You’re welcome to see them, if you can find them,” Jeanne would say.
Around the Lady’s Treat, brambles and thorns had grown into thick walls protecting the royal family. The girls of the Sun Palace knew where they could slip through, like a maze, to bring food and books and company to their handsome soldier.
If a visitor was very pure of heart, they might slip through the enchanted brambles and get close enough to see the locked doors of the Lady’s Treat and the soldier standing guard there.
At this point, no one ever dared to go any farther, sensing that it was a sacred place and to approach the elf who guarded his lovers would be like treading on the grave of a legend. They might return and write down an account of what they had seen: a beautiful, fair elf in an impeccably kept uniform, who somehow lived alone in the forest, with birds so tame they would eat out of his hand. Axel’s soul wove into the forest, as elves have always had a gift. Eventually, no living person knew where to find him in the tangle of brambles, but by then it didn’t matter. The forest kept him company, and the forest kept him fed.
By the time Julia was dying, mostly from old age (but also, perhaps, from drinking a little too much) she told her two beloved granddaughters that the queen would soon wake up, and would need dear friends.
“Could you imagine if that was actually true?” Eloise whispered as she left the bedroom.
“It’s absolutely true! I’m just dying, not senile!” Julia cried, and the girls ran away, smothering laughter.
Chapter Thirty
The Palace of the Sun was the place of my dreams, but it was very real to me. It had four seasons, but spring was very long, and the short winter brought beautiful snowfall on the garden every day that never seemed to melt into muck.
The years passed by so fast.
One night, we were all gambling, a game Lord Merdon invented with dice and tokens, and as he rolled the dice, we heard the room grow very quiet. The ghostly denizens of the Palace of the Sun rose, and we knew that someone was coming to us.
Someone real.
Someone dear.
“Well, well…what are we betting tonight? What have I missed?”
Julia walked into the room, smiling, looking as if she had never left.
“Julia! Julia!” I stood up, but I held back so that Lord Merdon could go to her and slip his arms around his old love. And then, so Julia’s husband could do the same.
“Oh, I like this world,” she said. “You can both love me at once and there’s no one to tut about it. Countess Noria isn’t here, is she?”
“No,” I said. “Julia…”
“You look worried about me. Darling Rose, it’s been eighty years!”
“Eighty years! I can’t even seem to keep track of time.”
“Dreams are not known for their strict adherence to calendars,” Josef said. “That’s the good thing about it.”
“And what of Louisa?” I asked.
“I suppose she’ll join me one day,” Julia said. “Maybe not for a while yet. She is sewing a quilt, and you know Louisa, she wouldn’t die in the middle of a project. Then again, maybe you don’t. She took up that sort of thing after the royals lost their titles.”
I didn’t have to ask about Axel. I knew where he was. I visited him, peering in through the windows, every day.
Chapter Thirty-One
“I won the game tonight.”
“Don’t look so smug. I let you win,” Augustus said.
“You always say that, but I know you’re just saving face. I won fair and square tonight. You were laughing over that joke Josef was telling and not paying attention when I swept the field.” I smacked his ass. “You’re mine tonight, sir.”
“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” he said, pinning me against the door to our bedroom. “I’m not in the mood to submit to you tonight.”
“Too bad. Those are the rules. You lost.”
My skin tingled with excitement. This was part of the game we played with each other, a game that left us both in a constant state of tension, wondering who would have the upper hand.
“Can I bargain?” He slipped a hand down my bodice, tweaking my hard nipple roughly.
I swatted him away, even though his touch sent sparks down my body and lit every nerve on fire. “No.”
I reached behind me and turned the doorknob so we both fell into our bedroom. Vines were tangled around the bed. Unlike the King’s Vine, these vines were ready to follow either of our commands.
“Take off my clothes, oh so gently and tenderly,” I said. “And then…get into the bed.”
Augustus was an absolute master of removing my clothes in such a way that I could hardly contain myself by the end of it. There were no more corsets to unlace here, but the way he slowly unbuttoned my gown, peeling it off me, kissing and caressing my skin, and then moved on to untie the ribbons of my stockings while he knelt before me…
All the while, he made sure to brush my nipples and my sex with his fingers, teasing touches that made me sigh.
“Good,” I said, digging my hand into his hair and tugging. “Go to the bed now and kneel.”
His cock was already tight in his trousers, and I could see his anticipation of the slow torment I would offer him tonight.
This was why he won so many games. Oh yes. He liked it when I was absolutely starved to take control of him. He would spend two weeks teasing and tormenting me, only to hand all the control back to me.
Or maybe he had just genuinely lost the game. I wasn’t entirely sure. I suppose that was part of the fun of it all.
He climbed onto the bedspread embroidered with our initials, and knelt there on the letters. The vines immediately snaked down and snapped up his wrists, lifting his arms, making his muscles strain for my pleasure. It was a wonderful sight, to see his arms and chest spread out for me, the muscular shafts of his thighs supporting him. Even with all his strength, I would wear him out.
I came to bed with him and stood up, the mattress slightly springy under my feet.
“My beautiful Augustus…” I unbuttoned his shirt, and let my palms and fingers dance over the muscular planes of his chest and abdomen while he tensed under my light touch. I freed his cock from his trousers and pumped my hand up and down a few times, as he strained and groaned for me. I could see the tension coiling in him with every touch and stroke, and I savored the sight of his exquisite body.
Then I wrapped my hands around the vines and climbed onto his shoulders, putting one leg and then the other over him and wrapping my feet around his back, sitting on him like he was a swing. I could feel his strength holding me up.
“Show me how much you love me, Augustus.”
“Yes, my queen.”
His neck bent forward, his tongue parting the lips of my sex and finding the one particular inner fold that culminated in the center of my desire. He flicked his tongue across it, caressed it with his lips, and even nibbled on it very gently with the edge of his teeth.
&nb
sp; “Ohhh—stop! It’s too much! Slow down.”
“You told me to show you how much I love you. And I love you…quite intensely.” He sucked on my clit, sending me straight into pulsing, agonizing satisfaction.
Shuddering, I climbed off of him and slumped onto the bed in front of him. “That wasn’t quite what I told you to do, so I’ll have to punish you now…”
I went to the chest of drawers at the side of the room and took out a length of enchanted ribbon, wrapping it around his cock and then under his balls. I snapped my fingers and the ribbon vanished—or so it appeared.
I let his arms free of the vines and wrapped my fingers around his shoulders, whispering in his ear, “Now you know what happens next.”
I could already feel him shivering with the pain and pleasure of surrendering to me. I licked his ear and rubbed my smooth cheek against his rougher one, while sliding my hands all over his skin, down to his cock, which I stroked. I felt it getting hard and there were tears in his eyes. He felt the magical restraint and I didn’t. The ribbon would keep him from coming until I gave him a command.
Now I crawled around to the front of him and pressed him down onto the pillows, finishing the job of tugging off his trousers. I wrapped my hands around his buttocks and sucked on his cock, up and down. I made him scream. I took his balls in my mouth and felt how they must ache for me. I relished my power. He relished it too.
This pleasure was ours to trade back and forth however we wished.
Then I lowered myself onto him and used him. I made him my toy, riding his rigid shaft until the friction made my core clench and pulse, and then I asked him to caress my nipples and sex until I was ready to take him again. I tortured him until he was exhausted.
“Come for me,” I purred into his ear, releasing the spell.
He roared with relief, pumping into me, filling me with his hot seed, and even though I already had come so many times, I was sent over the edge again from watching him.
When we were in the real world, this was his greatest desire, utterly forbidden until we seized it for ourselves.
Here, we were free. But some part of our minds was still trained as if we were in the Sun Palace, and it hadn’t lost a bit of its luster.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Interlude
Axel knew when the day had come. He had counted them, precisely, throughout his long and peaceful life.
One hundred years ago today and the hour will soon be here, he thought, and he got to his feet.
Axel was old, handsome as high elves were always handsome—that is, you never see a hideous elf, not even near the end of their lives. But his hair was white, and his face was lined, and he was very tired.
His king and queen were young and beautiful, and now they had their lives ahead of them.
Axel finally left his post and worked his way through the brambles to the Palace of the Sun. At this point, even though he had been just a short walk away the entire time, he hadn’t seen the palace in years. He was protected from it by thick briars and brush and mature trees that surrounded the little house.
He was pleased to see that it was well kept, but surprised to see how many people were walking the grounds. Lovers strolled hand in hand, and a young red-headed faery girl had set up an easel to paint one of the fountains. A father was taking his son around and telling him stories about the history of the place, and when he saw Axel he looked at him twice and then tipped his hat. “I’m sorry, sir, for a moment, I thought you were—“
“Is Madame du Bariel here? Or Merry?” Axel asked.
“Do you mean the Guardians of the Sun Palace? I guess they must be! Do you know them?”
A young woman overheard and looked at Axel with shock. “Count Farren?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“They said you would appear today. I hardly believed it! Come with me.” She took his hand and led him inside the palace, up the stairs, all the way to the rooms that were once the quarters of King Emriel’s Favorite.
Now, they were the living quarters of Jeanne and Merry, the rooms where Jeanne bottled spells to hand out to women who needed them, and Merry wove enchantments when they were needed, and they had raised three boys and entertained eight grandchildren.
They were also very old now, of course, and they looked it. They were mages so everyone expected it of them.
“Count Farren,” Jeanne said. “Is it time?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “It is.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
I opened my eyes.
“Oh…” My voice croaked out. “Oh…”
I sat up, my limbs leaden, and put a hand on my belly. I squinted at the sun coming in through the tall panes.
I was inside the Lady’s Treat, and that was how I knew—this was real. I was inside the real world, which had become my dream while the dream was my world.
My head spun.
Augustus stirred awake beside me.
“Rose?” He put his hands on my cheeks. “Rose…is this our old world?”
“Look where we are…”
I saw the rooms of my beloved little house for the first time in a century. There was no dust anywhere. Everything was perfectly clean, as if I had been here just yesterday, and there were freshly cut roses on the mantel.
I drank in their scent with tears in my eyes. “Axel…?”
We opened the door. I saw the tangled forest grown around the house, but there was a cleared area of meadow in front of it, and a few lambs and chickens roaming around.
And people. There were two young women who looked like Julia. There was the well-lined face of my dear Louisa, whom I would know anywhere and had yet to join us in the dream. There was Jeanne and Merry, and while Jeanne was an old woman now she looked so much more vital and happy than when she was my nemesis in the Sun Palace.
And there was…
There was Axel.
Our Axel.
“Welcome home,” he said. He spread his arms and we both moved into his embrace. I drank in the smell of him, the same as it was in my memories, and tears flooded my face.
“I’ve been waiting for you so long,” I cried, and I clung to his jacket with a grip I never wanted to release.
Because I knew…
I had always known.
I couldn’t hold onto Axel against time and fate.
“This…is the Lady’s Treat as I saw it…in the dream,” I murmured. “Axel…you waited—you watched over us. All of you waited…”
“We didn’t wait so much as we simply lived a long life,” Louisa said with a wry smile.
“Speak for yourself,” Jeanne said. “Why else would we live so damned long? We have a lot to tell you, and, I hope, a good world to leave you, although your place in it is indeed different. The palace is as beautiful as it ever was, and cherished by everyone who lays eyes on it. And the country of Ellurine is a land that hopefully embodies the best of the faery race—art, music, sex, freedom and strength.”
“Our grandmother told us to wait for you!” one of Julia’s granddaughters said.
“You didn’t even think she was telling the truth!” the other one said.
“You didn’t either!”
“But we’ll be handmaidens for you, my lady!”
“I’m Eloise and this is Farisia.”
“I won’t be here much longer myself,” Louisa said. “But you will have plenty of company, I know. The palace is still full of life.”
My heart swelled with the bittersweetness of their words. I had always known this day would come, and it wasn’t as painful as I feared, because I could see the pride in all their faces in having waited for us, and giving us a new world.
Indeed, we woke into a world that saw us as legends. Our palace was a museum, and anyone could come there anytime and walk through its halls. Balls were still held on many occasions in the halls. It was not actually much different from when we left, except that no one expected anything of us anymore. No one demanded to see us eating our di
nner or to see Augustus bring me to a silent release on the ballroom floor. They were happy just to see us alive and well and in love.
We danced with the granddaughters and grandsons of our friends in the garden late into the night.
But it was Axel I couldn’t tear my eyes away from. He didn’t dance much now; his vital beauty had turned into the frail perfection of a tree nearing the end of its life, brittle but still structured. I barely saw his age, however. I had watched him age; now and then I went to the Lady’s Treat and looked in the windows until he appeared. We had all lived the same life. He would always be beloved to us.
He already seemed so far away.
I couldn’t tear my eyes from him, until suddenly I whirled around in the dance and he was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Interlude
“Do you want us to tell them goodbye?” Louisa asked Axel gently.
“There is no need for that,” he said. “All I needed was see them wake. All they needed was to know I lived my life well. Now, my work is done. I wish to spare them my mortality in this place. I know just what sort of life they’ll have now. I’ve already seen it in the Waters of Truth. Augustus will hunt in the wild forests, and Rose will raise her babies herself. But when they go to sleep…I’ll be waiting.”
“Will you?”
Merry handed him a drink. “I think he knows, my dear.”
“Yes,” Axel said.
Axel accepted the drink and slipped off into the forest, where elves are at their most content, and no one in the mortal plane ever saw him again.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Our home was now the place where my heart had always been, the home that King Emriel built for his beloved mistress, and that Augustus gave to me. Our home was in the woods, with the animals and trees.
The Surrender of Sleeping Beauty Page 42