by Elle Cross
I feel him smile against my flesh and then he’s lifting me, pressing me against the nearest wall. In the near-dark, my eyes meet his, which have deepened to that violet that suggests either violence or desire. Sometimes both. With a feral grin, he grips the neckline of my soiled travel gown and yanks, tearing the delicate fabric from top to toe. It spills open like a robe, leaving nothing to his imagination. Already my nipples are hard and my inner thighs damp.
A frisson ripples through my belly, low and hot. Nothing in all the worlds is sexier than Lyser deciding to take charge.
“Tell me what you want,” he growls.
“I want to forget. Those foolish men, this gods-forsaken journey, all of it. Drown me in pleasure until I can no longer think, Lyser.”
He follows my command perfectly.
Chapter Eight
Raze
Representatives of the royal houses of Inara have been arriving since last night. I watch the latest arrivals through the looking glass in Acanthe’s chambers. Even though they were bedecked in finery that showed off their respective courts, they were all the same spoiled, shallow nobles, hungry for intrigue.
Shit and shadows, Acanthe may well be doing Inara a favor by slaughtering these little lambs.
As if pulled by my thoughts, Acanthe stands up from the desolation that we’ve made of her bed, and walks to where I stand. Though my back is to her, my hackles rise at her approach.
She’s still naked from when I serviced her. I shift my face to a neutral mask as she rests her head on my shoulder. “Has anyone interesting arrived?" she asks, absently caressing my arm as if we are lovers.
"Very few senior royals have arrived thus far,” I answer. “It seems many of our guests are young. Untested. Representatives of their courts, rather than the rulers themselves. I wonder if they will be enough to sustain you at all."
Her hands travel down my body. I think she's fascinated with my limp dick. She can force me to get hard, use the geas she has on me, but she can’t arouse me naturally, without magic. It used to be the very thing that governed her relationship with Bramb. He wanted her to yield without compelling her, but knew she never would. She wanted to be loved and knew that the only way he would respect her at all was for her to defy him, which only led to more punishment.
Tears.
Sadness.
All the things that King Bramb valued as beautiful.
Acanthe is unperturbed. “The kings and queens will come, I’m certain. They have a few more days before the festivities begin in earnest. What else do you sense?”
I listen to the shadows, but I learn nothing interesting.
Until I hear something distinctly hilarious. A hellcat of a queen telling off her advisors, because they want her to meet Acanthe and she wants to take a bath. I like that. I like that a lot. And that queen. She is young, but not lacking in depth. Just lacking in good advisors.
I tap the mirror and pierce through the veil that hides her and her quarters from view.
This spy technology from Earth really is something. No wonder their various governments liked to use it on their people so often.
I zoom in. Yes, she’s feisty and smart. And not bad to look at. Not bad at all.
Even as I watch, she wraps herself around her guard like a vine, nuzzling at his ear. I can’t make out the conversation, but I imagine dirty words slipping from her lips as the guard tears the dress from her body, throws her legs over his shoulders, and buries his face between her legs. The young queen’s head tips back against the wall and her face contorts with pleasure. Through the shadows, I hear her throaty moans.
Acanthe coos, distracting me, and I wonder what she wants to talk about now. And then I realize that she has dropped to her knees and taken my semi-erect cock into her mouth, determined to seduce me without using her power.
Spying on the other queen has caused me to stiffen almost painfully. I disconnect the spy technology before Acanthe catches on.
She moans at my hardened state, delighted to have brought me to this place. It’s been hundreds of years since I have felt this mix of pleasure and arousal, this excitement. If only she knew that another queen was the true source of my lust.
Never mind that it’s only Acanthe here. I can work with a fantasy.
I bury my fingers into her hair and thrust hard into her mouth, pretending it’s the other queen’s velvet tongue sliding along my cock. Acanthe’s fingers dig into my hips, wanting more, and I’m more than happy to give it to her.
She pulls back slightly and meets my gaze. “Oh, what we can accomplish when we are aligned.” Her eyes flutter closed again and she resumes her enthusiastic sucking.
I don’t deign to answer that, focusing instead on how I can get off for the first time in for-fucking-ever. I throw my head back, letting my body be controlled by whatever Acanthe wants me to do.
It isn't enough. Not nearly enough.
I pull her up and bend her over in front of me. She hisses a yes and makes my hands clamp down on her hips. I don't have to check to see if she is ready for me.
I sink my hard length into her and I don't even think about the fact that it's her.
I keep going, imagination fixed on a nubile queen fucking her bodyguard with reckless abandon.
I plow into Acanthe like I might drill through her body and tear her in two. I make her come so loud and so often, she's dripping down my thighs, and still I don't stop until every last ounce of come is drained from me.
I was in the oubliette for a long time, among the filth and scum. But this is the first time in recent memory that I feel dirty.
Chapter Nine
Sitara
It’s well past midnight when I summon a page to take me to the queen. I’ll pay my respects and get the lay of things, and hopefully she’ll be too busy to pay me much attention. It will make surveying the situation much simpler.
The page leads me down the black marble hallways, giving me a better glimpse of this Dark court. Like my own palace, the corridors are lined with fountains, but instead of the merry tinkle of perfumed water, I hear the sluggish splash of blood. Misshapen skulls decorate the peaks of the archways through which we pass, and there are thorny branches everywhere. We pass through a courtyard filled with elaborately potted plants, all of them poisonous, prickly, dead, and decaying. And not from neglect. By design.
The throne room is as severe and strange as the rest of the palace. Interspersed among the courtiers are boggarts and brownies, goblins and ghouls. Horrid, insectoid guards man all the doorways, their carapaces glinting and their many arms loaded with spears.
Off to one side, in a sort of sunken area, a group of changelings lolls, laughing, kissing, and puffing on hookahs. Their eyes are wide and tilted, with no discernible irises. Instead they are filled with odd, too-bright colors: grass green, murky yellow, vivid orange. Changelings aren’t blessed with proportional bodies; these all have too-long arms and too-short torsos, willowy necks and small heads. One lissome girl has a single translucent wing sprouting from her back, while the boy next to her is graced with a tusk that juts from the left side of his jaw. Aside from eyes, arms, and legs, none of them have physical attributes in pairs. I spy a boy with three large, useless insect legs sprouting from the right side of his torso, waggling absently. Another has a lone antler springing from his brow, and next to him sits a girl with what seems to be some sort of raptor talon in place of her left hand.
They are abominations.
Opposite them is a raised dais, a sort of stage where dancers perform. Rather than monstrous fae, the dancers are enchanted millipedes, upright and nearly six-feet tall, their infinite legs undulating to the music. The band is set up behind the dancers. Twin girls with haunted black eyes play panpipes, and behind them, a massive ogre beats a drum. The drum’s hide is made from the stretched skin of a dead prisoner—I can tell, because his head is still attached, resting carelessly on the floor between the ogre’s massive feet.
In the center of it all s
its the Queen of Thorns.
She lounges in an elaborate bronze throne, looking bored and irritable. Acanthe wears a severe ebony gown; coupled with her snowy hair and waxy skin, she seems almost colorless, a queen rendered in black and white. However, the near-illusion is ruined by her blood-red lips and her crown, a gilded affair of twisted branches, all capped with sharpened thorns. A single golden leaf rises above her brow.
In the shadows behind her, nearly invisible, lurks a figure. I can’t make him out well, other than he’s tall and dark—seemingly made of dark—and his skin is overlaid with elaborate tattoos. His eyes, liquid and black, meet mine for just a moment. I feel a jolt, as if the contact were physical, similar to what played over my spine when I realized Lyser and I were being watched. The Mad Queen may rule this court, but something tells me the true danger lies in the man behind her.
Was he the one who killed the king? Is he her lover or her guard or her assassin?
Or all three?
The page announces me. “Please allow me to present her royal highness, Queen Sitara of the House of Stars.”
“Blessings be upon you,” I say.
Acanthe flicks her gaze in my direction. “And on you,” she says, her voice like ice cracking on a frozen pond.
I offer the expected pleasantries, which she accepts with an air of disinterest. As I finish, the man behind the chair leans forward and whispers something in her ear. For the first time, I get a good look at him and he reminds me of a shadow. Dark, mysterious, vaguely threatening. Appealing all the same. His jaw is strong, his cheekbones cutting. His hair is cropped close to his scalp, as though recently shorn. And his teeth are sharp.
Whatever he says to Acanthe lights her up like a struck match. Gone is the bored, cold queen, and in her place is a woman both fiery and haughty.
“You are all dismissed!” she announces, rising from her chair.
Under other circumstances, I might find myself offended by her actions. But I’ve no great desire to remain in her company. I file out with the others, but a glance over my shoulder confirms two things: Acanthe wants the dark man in her bed—it’s clear by the way she’s already twining herself around him—and he seems to have little interest in being there. Because his gaze never leaves me and there’s something in those black eyes, some sort of heated promise, that says his interests lie elsewhere.
A tingle heats my belly at the prospect.
Chapter Ten
Raze
I see her first. She is Sitara, Queen of the Court of Stars. And just as the first time I saw her, she is as irreverent as she is regal.
I have to meet her, this young queen that made me lust and laugh for the first time in ages.
Acanthe, as is her nature now, keeps me close to her side. As if I would be her shadow. It’s not enough that she forces me to heat her bed and promises to break my will slowly, like a crumbling wall that finally collapses from the pressure.
Now that she thinks she got me hard all on her own, that I somehow find her attractive, it’s as though she wants to parade me about as her consort. All because I willingly fucked her once. Doesn't she know that I would never have touched her were it not for Sitara's presence, words, and image lingering in my mind?
Of course she doesn’t know that. If she did, she would flay me.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"To be the eyes and ears of the court. Wasn't that the job you assigned to me when you decided to take on all of Inara and destroy it from within?"
I don't wait for an answer before I walk away. I like to piss her off.
I don't mean to find Sitara, but I get pulled to her anyway—or is it she to me? Either way, she’s suddenly at my side.
She takes in our surroundings, one pearlescent brow raised. "Is this a party or a funeral? Because I certainly didn’t travel all this way for a celebration. I thought it was supposed to be grief and a solemn changing of the guard, so to speak."
"That's the way of things, I'm afraid. A royal dies, and this is the only way the court gets to have any fun."
She purses her lips, nearly smiling. "I see. So King Bramb did us a great favor and allowed himself to die in order for us to celebrate on his behalf?"
"Fun and completely surprising, is it not?"
We laugh together.
She whispers to me. "You seem quite cozy in this court, which suggests you know most of what goes on. So, what is her story? Is she as mad as they say? Or is it something more?”
I know without looking that she means Acanthe. I don't voice it, because that would alert the Queen of Thorns to the fact that she’s being talked about. A trick of King Bramb’s that I’m fairly positive has transferred to his widow.
Instead, I answer her with a question. “What do you mean?”
She chuckles and gestures around the ballroom, with its bleeding fountains and changeling waiters, then nods subtly at Acanthe, whose face is grim with that alien coldness she so often wears now.
"Merely that it seems if one were to inherit a powerful kingdom and court, one might be a bit happier about it. Particularly if the rumors of her origins are to be believed."
"Like you, Your Majesty?"
"Meaning?"
I rake my gaze over her body to test and evaluate her. I let the silence between us linger. No one likes silence. People always, always, want to fill it. It is their biggest tell, and I use it to my advantage a lot.
She crosses her arms. Seems she is in on the trick too. But I have the advantage of age and patience, so I wait.
She raises a brow at me, but smiles, summoning her most regal tone. "Must I command you to speak?”
There’s that feistiness. Seeing it in person is infinitely more satisfying than just observing from a distance.
"Your advisors,” I say smoothly, with enough evasion to let her wonder if that was what I had intended to say. “I don't have to know you and your court, or be in your inner circle, to know that you are not happy with them one bit. I also know that even though you inherited a court with all its attendant powers, you find yourself constrained by what you are supposed to be doing, versus what you want to do and what you think is best."
She blinks at me. It is quite possibly the cutest expression I've seen on anyone.
"And what in all the worlds could have given you that impression?"
I smile in such a way that I flash a hint of fang. "I can read minds."
She rolls her silvery eyes, as if I’ve disappointed her. I’m surprised by how much the idea of it bothers me. It drives me to candor.
I make a show of checking for eavesdroppers, and lean in close as if I’m about to tell her a secret. Scents of jasmine and rich, smoky spice radiate from her skin. I lick my lips and I swear I can almost taste her. “All right, I can't read minds. Can you imagine a true mind reader in a court full of sovereign rulers? They would have my head for sure. No, I know what I know for the same reason that I know most things: observation and experience.”
Something flickers over her face, disbelief or relief. Perhaps both. Either way, she doesn’t know what to believe. Or who. For a young queen, that healthy bit of skepticism could very well save her life. It would have changed my life choices, that’s for damn sure.
“I have seen many royals come into power and claw their way to become sovereign of their courts. The first hundred years are always filled with the same insecurities, pitfalls, and overall mistakes. If you survive them, you'll be fine."
"Lucky for me, I’ve been on the throne a lot longer than that. And what do you mean, ‘if’ I survive? I’ve done quite well so far. Shouldn’t you be encouraging and reassuring? Something like, ‘Don't worry, keep doing what you’re doing and you'll survive?’"
"Well, I can't guarantee that, now can I? I mean, look at what happened to the King of Thorns."
"What exactly did happen to the King of Thorns?"
She asks as if I have the answer she seeks. Even if I did, why would she think I would be able to tell her?
"I don't know, Your Majesty. That's a question for the Queen of Thorns."
"Thank you, but no. She already looks like she wants to kill anyone who approaches her. And a bit like she wants to kill me, specifically."
I glance at Acanthe over my shoulder. She abandoned her throne and now dances in a lazy rhythm among a circle of fear gorta, whose skeletal hands are spread wide as they sway to a song only they can hear. It seems a curious ritual for all the visiting courts, but I know that it’s yet another stratagem that Acanthe has devised.
Hunger grass appears beneath the fear gortas’ feet, weaving an intricate carpet that encircles the throne. Anyone who steps on it will be cursed with eternal hunger. The Thorn’s courtiers know this and melt into the shadows, away from Acanthe’s immediate reach.
A poor nokken isn’t so lucky. It steps on a stray blade of grass, and the waterlogged sprite desiccates immediately. It fights for air, mouth gaping even as its lips curl away from its teeth. Milky white eyes retreat into its skull, until the sockets are empty. Its flesh shrinks into itself until it is nothing more than skin stretched over bone.
Not a whimper escapes as it dies in place, reduced to dust before its knees even hit the floor. The brownies sweep the offending dirt pile away.
“What the fuck?” Sitara’s murmur is low, but I hear her incredulous whisper all the same.
As the visiting dignitaries focus on the unfortunate demise of one of the lowest members of the Court of Thorns, I look to its sovereign. While others’ attentions were elsewhere, Queen Acanthe’s sights centered on Sitara.
Yes, the Queen of Stars is right: Acanthe wants her dead.
Does she know that this is the woman who lingered in my fantasies while I was fucking her senseless? I bury that thought deeper than my cell in the oubliette.