by L. V Russell
I moved my lips to his neck, and he arched up against me, a wonderful moan slipping from his mouth, his whole body turning to press against mine. I could feel the Glamour swirl around us, teasing the flames, touching Laphaniel in light, feather-like touches.
“You don’t have to do this…” he murmured.
“Do you want me to stop?” My lips grazed over his cheek. “How drunk are you?”
Laphaniel sniggered. “Worried you’re taking advantage of me?”
Glamour eddied around us, the anger, the fury, the hurt all gone. It lifted around my hair, curling around Laphaniel with barely a thought, as if some part of it still wanted to be close to him.
He closed his eyes while threads of glimmering light teased at him; his heartbeat quickened, an erratic song. I remembered how it felt to have the press of Glamour around me, to have it coax feelings I had no words for from my body, to have my head swim with the delights of it, to be held within someone’s arms as they made the world implode for you.
“Does it feel weird to you?” I began. “For me to use your Glamour on you?”
“Yes,” he breathed. “But I don’t want you to stop.”
His kiss swallowed up the gasp he enticed from my mouth, his laugh rumbling against me as I made the candles snuff out.
“Should I try to control it?”
Laphaniel shook his head. “No.”
We made love upon the remains of the broken bed deep into the night, my Glamour around us like a tangible thing, winding around us to set every bared nerve alight. We kissed goodnight, one last kiss, one last embrace that moved us together again as if our very souls couldn’t bear to be parted.
It was near dawn before an exhausted sleep dragged us both down, still entwined, into a dreamless black.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I woke to the delicious smell of fresh coffee, the bed empty beside me. Laphaniel sat at the cracked table, his head in his hands while he rubbed his temples. A mug of half-finished coffee rested beside his arm, steam curling upwards.
“Be careful of the glass on the floor,” he murmured, not looking up as I joined him.
“Sore head?” I enquired, surveying the damage I had wreaked upon the room with no small amount of satisfaction.
“It feels like something crawled into my mouth and died.” Laphaniel poured more black coffee into his mug, then heaped sugar into it.
“Is this your first hangover?”
He nodded and winced, hands curling around the mug as he brought it to his lips. “And my last.”
“Everyone says that,” I said with a smile. “You’ll feel better if you eat something, trust me.”
I passed him a piece of toast while he looked like he was fighting just to keep his coffee down. “A greasy bacon sandwich works wonders, but this will have to do.”
Laphaniel groaned.
“Or a big cooked breakfast.”
“Please stop.”
“With the egg all runny, and jiggly…”
He darted to the bathing room, knees slamming on the marble as he retched into the toilet. I rubbed his back, sitting down beside him.
“I promise you’ll feel better once it’s all up,” I began. “There’s no point waiting around feeling rotten.”
“So, this isn’t payback for the things I said?” He rested his head against the bowl.
“I said some awful things too.”
“I didn’t mean them,” Laphaniel said, taking the damp washcloth I passed him. He ran it over his face and sat back. “None of it.”
“The words maybe, but the frustration was real. I think some of the anger too.”
“I’m not angry at you.”
He got up from the floor, and I followed him back to the table, where he poured a large cup of fresh orange juice and gulped it down. I helped myself to the glistening pastries that were still warm from the oven, waiting for him to continue.
He sighed, picking at a cold piece of toast. “I still think that perhaps it could have been different.”
“If you had kept me Glamoured?”
“No. No, I will always regret that, Teya. Always. I will never forgive myself for doing that to you.”
“I forgave you.”
He gave me a tight smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I sometimes think what would have happened if I had just been honest with you, right at the beginning. If I hadn’t tried to force you to stay.”
I reached for his hand across the table. “We would end up here. I would still have gone looking for Niven, and you would still go with me. She would still shove that knife…that knife through your heart.” I faltered, swallowing quickly. “You would still end up dying in my arms, and the curse would break. We would end up here. It’s okay to feel angry and bitter about it, because I do too. It’s okay to wish for something other than this, it’s okay to vent to me because you’re my best friend and I love you.”
His eyes met mine, still wary. “I want the life I promised you all those months ago, but no matter how this all ends, I can no longer give that to you. It’s a dream that no longer exists, but I can’t just let it go.”
I ran a finger over his wedding band and smiled. “It was my dream, too, in the end. More than I ever realised.”
Laphaniel continued to pick apart his breakfast, looking tired, but the tension that plagued him seemed to have lifted slightly. It made me wonder if his outburst hadn’t only awakened my Glamour but been a much-needed release for him too.
The sound of the door slamming open, startled both of us. Laphaniel was instantly in front of me, still inhumanly quick. I was on my feet before I knew I was moving, Glamour sparking unsteadily at my fingertips.
“What the fuck happened in here?” Niven demanded, storming in, her eyes darting around the room before settling upon me.
Laphaniel met her furious look with his own. “Teya is learning how to control her newly acquired gifts.”
Niven swept a hand through the air, gesturing at the destruction I had created. “Does this look like control?”
“It looks as if she is going to tear Luthien down,” Laphaniel answered. “With more time…”
“Oh, it looks like you found time for other things.” She nodded over to the rumpled bed before sneering at my barely covered body. That look…she made me feel ashamed. And dirty.
“Did we disturb you?” Laphaniel said, voice cold. I knew he noticed me shrink beneath Niven’s gaze.
“I was hunting in the Broken Wylds,” the Unseelie King began, pushing past Niven to look upon the chaos surrounding us.
He was soaking wet, copper hair plastered against his face; trails of blood seeped from a deep wound on his cheek. From the look on his face, I couldn’t tell if he was impressed or livid.
The shadows began their slow dance for him, inching away from the walls, the nooks, to gather at his feet.
“Six of my horses bolted in the storm you created,” he continued, stirring the shadows into two giant wolves. “I was riding one of them.”
“Oh.” I reached for my clothes, slipping a black silken dress over my head, so I was no longer the only one in the room half-naked. “I’m sorry. Were you hunting deer or pheasant?”
The Unseelie King clenched his fists, and the wolves at his side snarled, hackles rising, lips curled up, revealing very real looking teeth. He took another step towards me, muddied boots crunching upon the shards of glass. “Would you really like to know, Teya?”
My heartbeat quickened, the flames around me flaring. The shadows flickered, withdrawing back to their master. The King of Nightmares smiled, and it was terrifying.
“Is it tied to your emotions?” he asked, head tilting while he ran a hand over the beasts beside him. “How much control do you have?”
“Not much,” I answered, holding onto the Glamour buzzing at my fingertips, afraid to let it go. “I’m not ready yet, I need more time.”
The Unseelie King’s smile widened on his bloody face as he snapped his fingers. The wolve
s tore forwards, lunging for Laphaniel with cruel teeth and mad eyes. They sprang up at him, made from more than shadows and darkness. They were things of hatred and nightmares, made real by a desire to hurt…to draw blood and create misery.
I leapt forward, dragging Laphaniel back as I spun in front of him, my hands coming up in defence as a surge of energy and power burst from me, turning the wolves back into nothing but mist.
“You leave at sunrise,” the King said, swirling his hand around the candlelight, calling more wolves from the shadows.
I still had my arms shielding Laphaniel while I stared up at the Unseelie king, my chest heaving. I had no doubts that he would not have called off the wolves if I had failed.
“I’m not ready.”
“I don’t care,” he replied, and for one stupid moment, I looked to Niven for help. Her cool eyes remained impassive.
Laphaniel gripped my shoulder. “She needs to practise; what if she faces Luthien and freezes? We will lose, you will lose…”
“I am not waiting any longer,” the Unseelie King hissed with deathly calm. The shadows stilled, the darkness waited, even Niven flinched. “I know how long it can take to control this.” He raised his hands, sending the skies into chaos again. “I will not wait while Luthien gains strength. You go tomorrow, and you take my knights and destroy her.”
Laphaniel untangled himself from me and faced the Unseelie King without an ounce of fear. “What will you do if Teya fails?”
“I’ll go to war and butcher her myself.”
With a movement too quick for me to stop, Laphaniel launched forward and cracked his fist across the king’s face. “You’re sending her to test Luthien’s hold on the Seelie court? To see if you can dispatch her without dirtying your own hands?”
The Unseelie King struck back, the blow rocking Laphaniel on his feet, but he kept his balance, spitting blood at the King’s feet.
“I have turned your whore into a weapon. She has but one task, kill Luthien and take the throne, else I will bring war upon this land and bathe in the blood of those you love.”
“You are a coward,” Laphaniel hissed, red staining his teeth, straining against my hand as I pulled him back.
“And you are nothing,” the Unseelie King said, a breath away from Laphaniel’s face. “Not fey, not human, not quite alive but not yet dead. A filthy mongrel. One day, I will have you pay for striking me.”
I held Laphaniel firm, my fingers digging into his arm while Phabian goaded him. I tried and failed to use my Glamour to calm him like he used to do to me. I didn’t achieve anything except to gutter out the candle beside me.
The Unseelie King turned his back on us, outstretching his hand for Niven, who curled her fingers around his without a word.
“Sunrise, Teya,” he called over his shoulder. “Live or die. I have no other choices for you.”
I stared after him, open-mouthed as they left. I still held onto Laphaniel. I could hear the furious sound of his heartbeat, scent the anger whirling around him, a strange bitterness against the familiar spice.
“He threw those words at you to get you to react. It’s all a game to him.”
“They’re true, though. I don’t even know what I am anymore.”
“You’re mine.”
I pressed my forehead to his, allowing him to be angry, to feel helpless and lost because he needed to, because even if I could…I shouldn’t control what he felt.
“I shouldn’t have hit him.”
“No, probably not.”
Laphaniel sighed, taking a steadying breath. “You need to practise calling your Glamour.”
“I know.”
I did need to be better, much better if I was going to defeat Luthien and save our court…our friends. My thoughts shifted to Oonagh and then to Nefina, wondering if they were still safe, if they still lived at all. I thought of Nefina, of everything she and Laphaniel had endured as children, my heart twisting for the cold and vindictive faerie.
“I saw what happened with you and your sister,” I said quickly. Laphaniel instantly began to shut down, closing me off before I could even begin. “I know you don’t want to talk about it…”
“I don’t.”
“But I don’t think Nefina hates you, I’ve seen her look at you and…”
His eyes darkened, not with black, but with a sharper blue that flashed cold. “Not now, Teya.”
“I saw what happened,” I continued, knowing too well how guilt and shame ate away at everything good. “You were so young and alone. What happened was not your fault.”
“My sister was raped, Teya, because I was out of my mind elsewhere.”
“You came for her,” I said, needing to lift some of the lingering darkness in his eyes. “You still came for her.”
His face hardened. “What did you see after that?”
“Nothing, I woke up.”
“Do you think we escaped out the back? Ran off into the night to beg for shelter elsewhere? That we fell into Luthien’s lap and were welcomed with open arms in the castle?”
I shook my head, but a part of me, a foolish part of me, hoped the story had a happier ending.
“I didn’t leave,” he continued. “I couldn’t.”
“You went back to the red woman?”
Laphaniel nodded. “And so did Nefina.”
“Did you give her Ember?” I asked, remembering the cloying smell of the drug, the thickness of the smoke. I could still taste it from the dark blur of Laphaniel’s memories.
“She took it from me,” he said, the deep blue of his eyes chilling. “And I nearly killed her for it.”
“Laphaniel…”
He snatched his arm back as I reached to comfort him. “I don’t want to do this now, Teya. Stop digging through my head, you won’t like what you find.”
“I just want to be there for you, to understand.” I held my hands up, not wanting another fight. “Talk to me.”
“You can’t absolve this for me. I couldn’t look after Nefina, and I can’t look after you. I even tried to find her a safe place within Luthien’s court, I failed at that, and I am failing at this.”
“Laphaniel…”
“Just leave it. I am asking you because I can’t deal with this right now. You need to practise using your Glamour, not picking apart my memories.”
“I’m not judging you on your past,” I said softly as he continued to back away from me, physically and mentally distancing himself. “You have centuries on me, Laphaniel; that’s a huge amount of history you have that I am not a part of.”
“Right now,” he gritted out. “Your Glamour is swarming around the room, and you haven’t even noticed. It’s wrapping around everything I am not ready or willing to talk about and is dragging it all up. My head is aching from it all. Stop it.”
“I didn’t even know I was using it.” I held out a hand, searching for the threads I had unwittingly sent out. They were scattered around me, knotted and taut, searching and poking. I pulled them back, and they snapped away from Laphaniel with more reluctance than I would have liked.
Laphaniel closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath. “Thank you.”
“Do you have any Glamour left?” I asked gently.
He looked down at his fingers and splayed them out, turning them over as if searching for any glimmer of magic. “There’s an echo. Nothing I can reach or use.”
“You never created storms with it, or shattered rooms.”
Laphaniel perched at the edge of the rumpled bed. “I was not a king. Our Glamour is tied to Faerie itself. It gives only what is needed. What it wants.”
“Is that why Luthien is so powerful?”
“As a true princess of Faerie, her gifts always were stronger.”
“And if you had married her?”
“I guess we’ll never know.”
“But you are a king of Faerie now,” I said, confused. “You married me.”
“In name only, Teya,” Laphaniel said, lifting his hand, so his
wedding band caught the candlelight. “I no longer have the Glamour needed to conjure storms.”
“Then why can Niven?”
He said nothing for a moment, looking troubled. “I don’t know.”
“I never wanted to take this from you.”
“You took nothing from me,” he replied, firm. “I gave it to you. I knew what I was getting into.”
“Neither of us knew what we were getting into,” I replied, sitting beside him.
His lips twitched into a barely-there smile as he rested his head against my shoulder. “See if you can make me jump out of the window.”
I snorted a laugh. “You once told me a faerie couldn’t make you do something that deep down you didn’t want to do. Unless you really do want to throw yourself out?”
“You’re my queen,” he began, a teasing smile erasing the haunted look from his face. “You should be able to make me whether I want to or not. You command me, and I’ll try to resist.”
“No.”
A wickedness danced across his face. “No? Afraid you won’t be able to do it?”
“I’m not going to ask you to jump, Laphaniel.”
“You may not even be capable of doing it.”
I heard the challenge in his voice, and I bristled with the need to prove him wrong. “Jump, then.”
He grinned at me but didn’t move.
“You’re able to resist because you married me,” I accused, and he laughed.
“You wouldn’t have been able to throw me across the room or mess with my head if that were true. I’m your consort, Teya. You do what you want with me.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
He shrugged. “Because you can’t.”
I laughed, the warmth of Glamour slipping across my hands. “That’s not going to work this time. Go on, then, get up.”
He tensed slightly, barely a movement, but I heard the breath he took and the sudden quick dip of his heartbeat.
“Get up,” I whispered, and this time he jerked. Glamour swirled around us, dancing close like tiny fireflies. It wrapped around us in a fog, changing my voice into something softer and lilting and tempting. Oh, I remembered that tone. How it felt to listen and give in. More threads reached out to dispel fear and reason, to replace caution with a sense of misplaced trust.