Queens of Thorns and Stars

by Elle Cross

  “Lyser,” I say.

  “My queen?”

  “I find I am not yet tired enough for sleep and that the bramble wine has left me giddy. Perhaps you can think of a way to exhaust me?” My tone is laden with suggestion.

  His amethyst eyes deepen to a vivid violet. “I would be happy to oblige. I live to serve.”

  He slips out of his uniform, revealing the body I love so well. It is a warrior’s body, long and lean, honed by training and battle. His hands are rough, his fingers nimble—deft enough to nock any arrow, strangle any neck, and bring my body to life. He steps behind me, a broad wall, and with his lips on my neck, begins to divest me of my garments.

  When I am bared, he cups my breasts, those talented fingers already plucking and teasing my nipples. I lean against him with a moan, enjoying the feel of hot, hard flesh at my back. One large hand slides down my torso and between my legs, coaxing wetness from me. He teases me expertly, one blunt finger dipping inside me while his thumb works my sensitive bud, stroking and sliding and slipping until I’m gasping.

  He sweeps me up, lifting me easily, and places me on the bed. His violet gaze is both reverent and hungry, and he shoves my knees apart with delicious force. Then his mouth is on me, licking, stroking, sucking, teasing. I’m a writhing mass of sensation, all tingling, puckered nipples and needy wetness.

  “Lyser,” I gasp, nearly begging.

  He merely chuckles, the sound vibrating against all my sensitive parts, heightening my desire.

  I know from experience he won’t let me have my release. Not yet. He will draw it out, bring me to the edge again and again, until I’m mad with pleasure. His talented mouth never stops, and I let my eyes close to enjoy the waves of sensation. Without meaning to, I arch my back, pressing myself more firmly against him, and pinch my own achy nipples.

  At last, when I’m trembling and mewling, with tears of pleasure tracking down my cheeks, he takes pity on me. With a growl, he slides inside me, thick and long and deep. I gasp, clenching around him, feeling the beginnings of uncontrollable flutters where he’s pressed tight inside me.

  He feels them too. “Not yet, Sitara. Not until I say. You hold out for me.” He nibbles at my nipples, using the twinge of pain to distract me from my need for release.

  I grip his muscular backside, trying to force him to go deeper, harder, faster. Anything to tip me over the edge. But he merely laughs again and clasps my wrists, pressing my arms above my head. His strength dwarfs mine; I could never overpower him physically. He only bends to my will because I am his queen, a role I leave behind in the bedroom. And so I am pinned, desperate and drowning in sensation, utterly at his mercy.

  “Please,” I beg, grinding my pelvis against him. I’m so close, but he knows it and won’t let my body get where it wants to go. Instead, he releases my wrists and slides a hand between us, pressing and plucking at my most sensitive spot. A light graze here, a sharp pinch there. Every movement designed to enhance my pleasure without letting me come.

  I’m clenching around him uncontrollably, my body trying to milk his. He grunts at the sensation, driving harder into me, my breasts bouncing with each thrust. Moans and whimpers pour from my throat, an incoherent stream of need. “Yes, please, more. Like that, harder, deeper, please, please, please.” As a queen, I’m not prone to begging—except in the bedroom, when Lyser breaks me with such exquisite skill.

  He shifts his hips, changing the angle of his driving thrusts, and I know there’s no turning back. He knows it too, settling into the smooth rhythm that always sets me off. “Now, Sitara,” he growls. “Come hard on my cock. Make me feel it.”

  He pinches my swollen bud one more time and I tip over the edge, toppling into a waterfall of sensations. I’m quivering, and long, grinding moans are ripping their way out of me as I come over and over. Spasms wrack my entire body; my fingers and toes quaking. And at the center of contact, explosions are detonating, waves that feel so good I don’t know if I can stand it. I’m clenching around him so hard that it sets him off; with a roar, he finds his own release. The intensity of his pulsing heat inside me just triggers me again, leaving me shaking and whimpering and absolutely, completely sated.

  When he catches his breath, he kisses me deeply, then rolls to my side. Lazily, he tweaks my breasts, keeping the aftershocks in my body alive. Every time I think my body is finished, another orgasm sneaks up on me, sending me moaning and trembling all over again. When I can no longer take the pleasure, I shift and curl against him, enjoying his heat.

  Exhausted, at last we sleep, a tangled mess of sheets and limbs.

  I’m awakened abruptly when my chamber door is thrown wide and light from the corridor spills across my face.

  “What is the meaning of this?” I’m squinting, struggling to untangle myself from both the bedding and the guard. Lyser is already sitting up, dagger in hand.

  “Sitara.” Azibat hurries into the room, urgency in both her stride and her voice—and her use of my name. “You must wake.”

  I frown at her. “I am awake. As if anyone could sleep through that.” I gesture at my chamber door, still flung wide where it bounced—loudly—against the wall.

  “I apologize for my entrance, but it is a matter of great importance. We’ve just had news.”

  “And?”

  She shifts, the light from the corridor shining on her horns. Even in the dark, her golden cat eyes gleam, telling me she can see more than most.

  “The King of Thorns is dead.”

  Chapter Two

  Raze

  Long live the queen.

  The echoes of those words still ring through the halls. How many are still alive in the Court of Thorns?

  I use the little bit of power that I gained from feeding and flex my will over the darkness. A mere ripple of shadows heeds my call, but it is enough. I send the shadows out into the abyss and wait. This simple trick of long-distance listening has earned me my reputation as a mind reader. I let the rumor remain. When living among those who hoard secrets as a precious commodity, it makes my job easier if they assume I know everything.

  I don’t have to wait long before harried whispers echo back to me. The emotions are so potent, I can practically see what’s happening.

  The queen scours through the dungeon. At every cell she stops. At every one she asks a simple question. "Will you serve me?"

  No matter the answer, whomever she asks is cut down. Whatever she gets from these people, it isn’t what she seeks. Unless a pile of corpses is in fact her end goal, which I highly doubt. There are easier ways to enact genocide.

  I should know. I’ve been asked to do just that a time or two.

  Maybe this facade of near-mercy is an echo of her life as a human? Or perhaps King Bramb managed to break his plaything completely after all?

  No, there is something going on here, something that I have missed in all these years wasting in the pits. The last time I was in Queen Acanthe’s presence, she was still clinging to her humanity.

  A humanity that made no sense in the Court of Thorns. Weak and often mewling like a sniveling pet, it was no wonder she was treated like one.

  Plucked from the mortal world of Earth to satisfy the king’s whims, who found beauty in her tears. Her brokenness. Acanthe was a plundered treasure that Bramb twisted into his idea of perfection.

  She has been by his side ever since. It’s a wonder she has any sanity left.

  She has power, though. With the death of the king, his power and sovereignty over the Court of Thorns were hers to take. How she summoned the power to kill him in the first place, though, that’s the mystery I get to solve.

  By default, Bramb was the most powerful being in the Court of Thorns. He reigned for countless millennia because he was powerful. That’s the way it’s always been, the way it is for all the courts of Inara. You can't just inherit the crown—you have to prove that you can keep it. That's where Acanthe comes into the equation. No one would cower before an upstart girl, no matter h
er title. She has to earn the court's allegiance, which might explain the raft of bodies in her wake.

  But the real question is, how did a little human girl kill a faerie king?

  The air is pungent with the smell of blood and corpses. I’ve seen enough. In an exhale of will, I release my hold over the darkness.

  My hands shake from that little bit of effort. I curl my fingers into fists in an attempt to make them still. Not good. I’m not strong enough to face whatever Acanthe plans to do.

  I move to the darkest corners of my cell as the queen’s procession continues. The light from the scepter she carries does not penetrate the heavy blackness that shrouds this depth of the oubliette. Only the slithering drag of the hem of her heavy dress marks her progress. Each weighty step is a harbinger of a coming doom.

  When she stops, she spares a glance at the emaciated bodies in front of my cell that bear the armor and sigils of the Court of Thorns. More importantly, she notes the star stone, waving her newly acquired thorn scepter over it as if to determine what it is.

  She might not have been interesting before. But now...she is very interesting.

  Acanthe calls out into the black void before her. "Hello darkness, my old friend."

  There’s a wisp of old humor there and I smile despite myself. She doesn’t see me, but she somehow knows I’m here. She keeps her distance, minding the interlocking lines of the spells that contain me.

  At least she still has the good sense to be afraid of me. Not that she would have forgotten her lesson.

  After all, I am the darkness that took her. The monster under the bed, the ogre in the forest. The bogeyman she feared throughout her whole childhood.

  Those fairy tale bedtime stories became her grim reality.

  Except for the part about living happily ever after.

  No handsome prince rescued her. No goose gave her a golden egg.

  There was no hero, no magical ticket to freedom. No joy in her fate as a fairy princess.

  Just darkness, pain, and fiends, her happily-never-after.

  I wonder if she still curses her human parents in her head, the way she did out loud when she first arrived here. She cursed them for not listening to her, for not believing her, for not protecting her. Over and over again she told her imaginary parents that she was right.

  Monsters existed.

  If only she had asked, I would have gladly shown her parents exactly what they should have feared in the dark.

  Of course, I had a lot more mobility back then, even bound by the king’s edicts. But the more I killed, the more power I gained and the more I strained against the king’s geas. Soon, I, the king’s favored weapon, became more curse than blessing.

  He plunged me into deeper and deeper pits until I became too much of a hassle for him to pretty up and polish. And then he too forgot about me. The oubliette lived up to its purpose.

  I stay back in the farthest corner of my cage as I take in her measure for the first time in centuries. Fine, sloping forehead. Sculpted nose. High cheekbones. Rippling black hair, speckled with blood drops that shine like jewels.

  Acanthe had been pretty for a human. Nothing compared to fae royals, of course, but still a beauty by most standards.

  Yet that wasn’t what caught King Bramb’s attention. It was how every inch of her reeked of human frailty.

  Soft. Delicate. Weak.

  Everything that this creature now standing in front of my cage isn’t.

  Oh, she is Acanthe, all right. Leaner, sharper, perhaps. As is expected from someone who has been the object of King Bramb’s tender mercies for countless centuries.

  But there is something...else. Something decidedly not Acanthe.

  I inhale, and she smells different now. Older than the millennia she is. Older than this place, definitely older than the king whose essence she has ingested.

  Her eyes.

  Instead of the mud brown that once reminded me of a passive doe, they’re cold with an alien intelligence. Like faceted gems, they reflect the torchlight as her gaze penetrates the shadows that hide me. Surprising me by pinning down my exact location.

  A flicker of amusement graces her face and for a moment I see the girl she once was before the alien chill settles on her features once more.

  She steps closer to the bars in measured steps. Not too close. Calculation in her every move. She remembers how quickly shadows move. Like thought.

  Acanthe tried to kill me once. To put out the darkness she secretly feared. But it was as pointless as killing night.

  I never told the king what his mewling pet tried to do, but he found out anyway. The lesson must have stuck with her, because she never came after me again.

  Until now.

  "You look well, Acanthe, Queen of Thorns." I speak her name to remind her of who she is.

  "And you…Well, I can already see you look like shit."

  I bark a laugh that echoes throughout the oubliette. It makes me realize how utterly quiet it is now without the constant chorus of the damned. So many voices silenced.

  Does she intend for me to be next?

  My gaze flicks to the stone that secures me in my prison. If it wasn’t for the damn star stone, I would no longer be here.

  She kneels down, and as if my thoughts directed her, looks at the stone embedded into the floor. She knows the star stone. She knows that King Bramb split the stone into two pieces and used it to amplify his power. One keeps me bound to this cell, while the other half rests in the scepter in her hand.

  “You know, Acanthe. As the ruler of the Court of Thorns, you can do whatever you want. Rule as you want. You've already killed the king, and I'm guessing those who were loyal to him as well. You can go home. Isn't that what you've wanted this entire time? Home?"

  I promised her freedom, once upon a time. Now that I’m free of Bramb, I can give her the peace she needs.

  King Bramb once said that I could leave this place under my own power. Basically, over his dead body.

  The king did not have the gift of prophecy, but I recognized it when I heard it. I knew when he said it that one day, he would die, and when he did, my freedom would soon follow.

  Hope surges through my veins. Soon, I will be free of this place. And then this realm. I’m so close I can almost taste it.

  No more words of binding on my skin.

  The only thing standing in my way is Acanthe, a broken girl who would be queen. Someone who once tried to kill me as a way to ensure her own destruction.

  Her eyes glitter with malice. “Home? This is my House, my court. I will shape it in my image.”

  The fleeting hope that surged within me curdles in my gut. “Fine. This is now your home. Now you can free me, and I will be on my way and let you enjoy your home in peace.”

  Acanthe tilts her head to the side, as if listening to something only she can hear. It’s an inhuman gesture and fills me with dread. Her eyes narrow onto me, and she licks her lips.

  In this moment, I’ve become her prey. I speak quickly to redirect her. “Acanthe, you were never Bramb, so why don't you just use the words of opening and let me walk out of here."

  The thing inside her quickens. Whatever it’s saying fuels her bloodlust. Her hunger.

  Whispers spill into the shadows of the oubliette, and I sift through the rambling words I hear.

  Power. It wants power. It's hungry. Everything that it has experienced so far has only whet its appetite.

  I have been wasting my breath. I wasn't speaking to Acanthe just now. Not really. Whatever I spoke to is an ancient power, something strong enough to kill an old king.

  Moreover, the magic I feel from it is darker than anything I’ve ever worked with. I think I know what it is, and if I work things right, I’ll shift its attention off of me and onto bigger game.

  The first thing I need to do is stop acting like prey and start acting like her equal.

  I need to change tactics and direct the part of her that is gorging on power to a better target. A targe
t like another faerie court. After all, it liked what it snacked on, didn't it? It will certainly become stronger if it's able to ingest more of what it liked.

  And the perfect opportunity has just presented itself: the king is dead. "Queen Acanthe, why not invite the courts of Inara to King Bramb’s funeral? Royal funerals are rare, and those who would attend are usually the ones packing the most power, all the better to show off.

  "What do you say? Wouldn't it be so much easier for you, so much simpler, to just bring those people here? A royal funeral would be a difficult invitation to decline. I doubt the other courts would show you such disrespect. Besides, with the royals of Inara assembled here, you would have a grand opportunity to hold your formal coronation.”

  She bows her head, as if weighing the offer. The thorn scepter in her hand twirls. “You’re right, Dark Mage. Now is the time to do things differently. Bramb liked to hoard his power and magicks behind closed borders. Now is the time to expand. And you will help us with this.”

  Acanthe clenches Bramb's spinning hawthorn scepter and directs it toward the star stone in the floor. The stone briefly melts into a primordial ooze, and like a snake, winds around the thorn scepter until it resettles as a burnished filigree.

  In its absence, the lines of spells that worked to keep me in my cell fade completely. My skin no longer itches with the prickly touch of its magic.

  I look at my hands, and then I raise them to touch the bars. The metal no longer hurts me. My chest expands for the first time in centuries. Since the first time that I decided to take flesh, I can remember what my skin looks like.

  It is a blackish blue. With golden runes on it that are faded now. They were the old words that had bound me to King Bramb and his will.

  Acanthe’s gaze seeks mine, her eyes ebon dead pools that mirror the darkness I project. I should thank her. I knew that she would free me.

  Eventually.

  I never thought it would be so soon, nor so suddenly.

  Too late, I see what she holds in her hand, what has been hanging on her neck. As if casting a net out to sea, she tosses a chain necklace over my head. It’s heavy despite its delicate links, and the enchanted charm around my neck feels like a noose.