of the dance and the blood-boiling magic of the wild hunt, the silence of the castle halls was soothing. I may have appreciated the peace if turmoil was not boiling in my guts and twisting my mind into tangled Euclidian knots. We stopped outside the bare wall of our cell, and Harl pressed one paw hand against the bark. Wood fibers slid backward and into themselves until the door appeared.
Manannán walked us into the cell and unclasped the collar from Aris’s neck. Aris nodded in respect, and though he didn’t rub the red marks away, he clearly wanted to. I did not blame him.
“I believe this belongs to you now, lady,” Manannán said, and carefully placed the chain on my palm. “Thank you for accompanying me. I hope you found the experience enlightening.”
Enlightening? Was that the word to describe my current state of near collapse?
He winked, then floated out of the cell like a retreating storm cloud. The door grew back. Aris and I stood in silence as I gripped the chain so tightly the links bit into my palms. For days after arriving in the Sunset Lands, the abyss of grief had claimed me. What reached for me now was something else, something darker and more dangerous.
If I did not tip into despair, anger was my only outlet, and I’d fought far too long to let despair win. I turned to Aris and pinned him to the spot with my eyes. When I spoke, the words came rasping up my throat, dry and raw.
“You will accept any other punishment than being stuck here with me?”
“Gwen—“
“Don’t try to tell me you did not mean it. You must speak the truth, must you not?”
“Our chances of escape are better if—“
“Must. You. Not?”
Aris’s jaw muscle clenched, and he flexed his fingers as if they were claws. “The truth about what? About whom? Do you have any idea how the truth can be twisted? Did I not warn you not to believe anything you saw or heard?”
I was brittle, and my voice cut the words into glittering shards I threw at him like daggers. “Don’t pretend you said it to protect anyone but yourself.”
“I don’t have to pretend, you stubborn fool. Of all the things you could blame me for, and the list is long, this is the only one I will not accept.”
“I blame you for lying to me!” I screamed. “For keeping all of this from me for…god’s breath! You have known my sister was alive, known where she was for years, and said nothing! You’ve let me drink myself into stupors when you could have told me she was…that she was…”
She was, what? Not the girl I remembered? A powerful, angry woman who wanted nothing to do with me? An enemy? With a few simple words, he could have saved me from this pain. And he’d chosen not to.
“How could you?”
Aris winced, his lashes flinching as if I had slapped him. He dropped his eyes, swallowed, and clasped his hands behind his back.
“How can you refuse me an answer now, when I already know the truth?” I asked, bewildered.
His gaze lifted, and the pain in his eyes stopped the breath in my throat. Aris looked like a man falling and watching as the ground rose to meet him. His jaw worked as if wanted to speak but could not.
Perhaps…he truly could not.
I stumbled backward a few steps as the combined knowledge of half a lifetime of searching and study smashed into what I had just experienced like a wrecking ball. Everything shattered, and my brain scrambled to pick up the pieces and put them together into something resembling the truth.
Hesitant, not daring to believe it, I asked, “Aris, are you under a geis?” Hope flashed in his eyes but he didn’t answer, so I changed my question. “If a faerie were under a geis, could they speak of it?”
“No.”
“Not even to confirm or deny it?”
“Not even then.”
“If I were to ask a faerie questions adjacent to their geis, could they answer them?”
“That depends upon the question.”
“Does the geis extend to every form of communication or only speech?”
He didn’t answer, which was answer enough. Perhaps I should approach the question even more obliquely.
“You used to work for my sister?”
“Yes.”
“In her capacity as general, or for another reason?”
A moment of silence. “I was her chief spy…and assassin.”
I paused. Assassin? My mind whirled, and some emotion I did not care to inspect slammed against what was left of my insides until I was tender and bruised. If I examined that too long, I’d find myself back in the pit of grief that yawned hungrily beneath my feet.
Better to focus on things I could use to get us out of here, and to cling to them like a lifeline until the worst of this passed.
Aris was under a geis, a magical injunction that could not be broken on pain of death, which meant I would learn nothing helpful from that angle. When I had asked him earlier why he helped me, he’d said, because you are a good person. That had to have been the truth because faeries could not lie, but as he said earlier, that did not mean it had been the whole truth.
And he was plenty talkative until I asked him why he had not told me about my sister, so the geis extended to her. But he had spoken of her earlier, so it didn’t extend to her purely as subject matter. Or, rather, he had shared possibilities related to her. Which meant the geis was more specific.
If my reasoning was sound, someone made Aris swear a magical oath that he would tell me nothing of my sister or why he had come, or been sent, to me. But he’d been a spy: Lia’s spy. An assassin for my human sister, who had become a general of the fae King. She wielded magic unlike anything I had ever seen. My sister, who once held me when I cried and told stories with me in the dark beneath our blanket forts.
She had spies and assassins and used magic to hurt and control people. Thoughts and emotions spiraled like debris hurled by a cyclone, and while I tried to catch them as they flew by, they slipped through my fingers and left me empty-handed.
If I could not focus on something other than the pain, it would kill me. I knew it. Yet the storm would not be held at bay by anything so simple as trying to save my own life.
Because, it turned out, there wasn’t much to save. Not my sister. Not my best friend. Not even my ancestry.
“Everything has been a lie,” I breathed.
All the air whooshed from my lungs, squeezed out by the building whirlwind inside me. Ophelia—my Lia—was a lie I created to deal with the disappearance of my sister, and the real woman was nothing like I imagined her to be.
Aristotle was not my friend, but a fae spy sent to me for reasons I could not even pressure him to reveal.
Percy was not a talented elvin hat maker, but a selkie who escaped the Sunset Lands.
And, if I were to follow the threads of several circumstances I brushed off, from the vampire to the Cutthroat King, and add them to Lia’s magic and position in the court—not to mention the title they used in relation to me—everything would reveal another truth I did not want to confront.
My mind shied away from it, pushed it far back into a dark room, and closed the door as the storm picked up and flung all of my carefully rebuilt fortifications to the far corners of my soul, leaving me bare.
To rescue myself from paralyzing grief, I’d hung onto the hope of escape, of bringing Lia home. But my fingers were bare and bloody. I was losing my grip.
“Gwen,” Aris said. He sounded almost as tortured as I felt.
I held up one hand to keep him away and choked out, “Don’t.”
My legs wobbled. He lunged forward to catch me, and I attacked him. There was nothing else to do. I had to act, and violence felt better than whatever slimy blackness was wrapping around me. But there was no cohesion, no technique in my attack, just flying fists, sobs, and tears that burned down my cheeks to my neck.
“Gwen, stop,” he said, fighting to grab my wrists and pin them together at the small of my back. The motion pressed me hard against his chest, so I jerked my knee up between his legs. He turned his hips, and the blow fell ineffectually on his thigh. He sank down, dragging me with him, and I hit the moss floor on my knees, straddling his thighs with my arms pinned behind my back. Strands of hair stuck in the tear streaks on my cheeks.
“You are right,” Aris said, his chest heaving from the exertion of trying to capture my arms without hurting me. “I have seen you drink yourself into a stupor. I have watched you study late into the night, and sip laudanum to chase away the memories, knowing I could do nothing to help. Stars, the helplessness was the worst. I could not comfort you or even pick you up and carry you to your bed.”
He brushed the hair off my face with his free hand, dark eyes tracing the tracks of my tears as he wiped them away with the pad of his thumb. “So many times I thought death might be a worthy price to pay to take away your pain. But, and I must be honest with you…I could never bring myself to do it because you might send me away if I did and…torturing Mrs. Chapman was simply too much fun. I could not give her up.”
An unwilling laugh that was also a sob broke through my trembling lips. How could he tease me now, when a storm of conflicting, uncontrollable emotion raged inside me? When that storm broke, it would either destroy me or turn me into a person I did not recognize.
I had nowhere to run and I could not sit here and wait it out, or I would go mad. My body, my very soul, shuddered with the force of it.
“Shh,” Aris said and brushed a cool palm over my forehead. “It will be alright, Gwen. We will find a way out of this somehow.” His touch was tender, consoling, and not enough. Not nearly enough.
Maybe I did not have to weather the storm alone. “Aris?”
“Hmm?”
I swallowed and blurted before I could stop myself, “Will you kiss me?”
He jerked away as if I had slapped him, releasing my arms and dislodging me from his thighs. “Don’t ask me that.”
“Why? What is wrong with me? Is this something else you cannot do? Are all your flirtations and sideways glances just another lie you don’t tell?”
“No,” he rasped, scooting away.
I watched him go, feeling the loss of his presence like a physical blow, leaving me alone against the storm. Alone, again. Unsure whether I spoke to him or myself, I asked, “Are you such a coward?”
“Yes! Yes, damn you, I am a coward.” He surged to his feet and glared down at me, eyes burning. I felt in memory his body jerk as the lash fell, saw Aris hit the standing stone as Cassandra hurled him through the air, and remembered the comfort of his small body as I cried myself to sleep. I was being unfair to him and I could not bring myself to feel sorry for it. I was past feeling anything besides the turmoil. But Aris did not seem to notice.
He was too angry.
“For years I wished I could speak to you, or touch you. I accepted the crumbs of your kindness as if they were ambrosia because I knew you could never see me as anything other than a pet.” His mouth twisted around the word as if it tasted sour. “And now that I stand before you in my own skin, I find that I do not have Tony’s strength. He is a better man than I will ever be. If anyone ever deserved your affection, it is him.
“But I cannot turn you away, not even for your own good or my pride. If you tell me you need to cut me to ribbons with the broken pieces of your heart, I will let you do it. I cannot watch you destroy yourself. I am not strong enough for that. So do not ask it of me. Not unless…”
Somehow, between the beginning of his speech and the end, he closed the distance between us and pulled me to my feet. We stood facing one another, chests touching with every breath, the air between us alive with heat. My body shook to the rhythm of my heart, telling me to attack, or run, or scream, the adrenaline demanding that I do something—anything—to release what was building before it destroyed us both.
Aris cupped my face with both hands, his thumbs brushing my jaw as his fingers tightened on the back of my neck. “Is that what you need, Gwen? Someone to hurt? Or—“ His eyes dropped to my lips, and he took a shuddering breath. “Someone to punish you?”
Warmth flooded my body, a shocking and distracting counterpoint to the storm of emotions battering my insides. Had there been a bottle available, an herb, a potion, a spell, a knife, anything other than moss and wood, I would have used it gladly. But I had none of those things.
I had only Aris. If he offered an escape, I would take it.
“Yes,” I heard myself say. “Can you…can you take me away from myself? I can’t stand to be alone inside my body anymore.”
His hands slid from my face to my neck, then down until he gripped my upper arms, as if he could trap me or keep me still while his eyes searched my face for something. “Once more,” he said, his voice raw. “You must ask me once more.”
His hands shook.
I could not form words, so I threw myself at him, wrapped my arms around his neck, and kissed him blindly.
Aris froze in shock. For a moment I thought he would not respond, but he growled into my mouth, reached down to grip my bottom, and lifted me from the ground. I wrapped my legs around his hips and squeezed, wanting to be closer, to get outside myself and as far into him as I could. My back hit the wall, and he pinned me there with his chest and hips, his tongue dipping into my mouth, not to sensually tease, but to demand a response.
I answered, throwing myself into the kiss with tongue and teeth, curling my fingers into the silk of his hair and locking him in place. He rolled his hips against mine and the thin fabric of our fae clothing did nothing to stop the hard length of him from pressing against my sensitive flesh, making pleasure shimmer down my legs in a liquid promise.
I moaned as need pooled low in my belly. He pulled his head away from mine, tearing out some of his hair in the process, and bit my neck hard enough to make me gasp. The contrast of the pain and pleasure heightened every sense, dragging me away from the last vestiges of my conscious mind until nothing existed but a desperate, slick need between my thighs and a hunger that made me wild.
His teeth raked against my skin, the caress hot and demanding as his fingers curled into a fist at the base of my skull. He twisted my head to the side and bared more of my neck. His other hand supported me from beneath, fingers splayed wide enough that the tips brushed against the most sensitive parts of me.
I had no restraint or self-control left, nothing but the need to feel anything that wasn’t my pain. Writhing against his hand, against his mouth, I raked my nails down his back in a warning and a command. Aris pulled me away from the wall and fell to his knees on the moss floor, with me sitting astride his thighs. He ran his hands down my shoulders and to my chest, at first cupping my breasts so gently that I barely felt the touch.
His eyes were heavy-lidded, and the pulse at the base of his neck beat almost as fast as my own. His sensual mouth opened as he stared at me for so long that I thought I might burst into flame. When he bent to pull my nipple into his mouth, I cried in relief and arched against him, my head falling back and my hips grinding against his.
He froze, released me, then dragged me upright to look at him. “Say that again,” he ordered.
What? Had I spoken?
He must have seen the confusion in my eyes because he tightened his fist in my hair and repeated, “Say it again. My name. Say it.”
“Aris,” I breathed.
For a moment he seemed spellbound, his eyes on my breasts, my throat, my swollen lips…and then he broke. He jerked up the hem of my dress to bare my thighs and slid his thumb along the wet length of me, circling the knot of my need with one finger as he lifted and positioned me with the other hand.
I hadn’t realized he was naked, but he must have released whatever glamour allowed him to manifest clothing because, when I looked down, there was nothing to hide his body from me. I reached between us and wrapped my fingers around him, sliding from base to tip and testing his fullness. He bucked against my hand, making a deep sound of need that nearly dragged me over the edge.
I couldn’t wait any longer, despite the growing tension of his thumb circling and teasing. I gripped him at the base, pulled myself forward, and sank down in one smooth motion that filled me so deeply I gasped and threw my head back.
Aris groaned and surged upward in an involuntary spasm that seated him to the hilt. I felt the throbbing of his need in the center of me, full and finally not alone. Cradling his face in both hands, I kissed him as I rocked my hips back and then forward, feeling the silken pressure of him slide all the way out before he filled me again.
Tension built as I rode him, coiling tighter and urging me faster. I bit his shoulder till he gasped in pain, then lifted myself and dropped back onto him hard, once, twice, until his head fell backward and he had to brace himself with his hands to stay upright.
There was nothing tender in our joining, nothing loving in our caresses, merely pure need and desire so sharp it made each stroke and pleasure an agony I held onto with every shard of my consciousness.
In a dizzying move, he twisted and dragged me beneath him, pinning me with his chest and thrusting once, hard enough to make our bodies slap together.
“You cannot know how many times I imagined this,” he said against my lips. He raised himself to grab my wrists and pinned them above my head. But he wasn’t moving, and I could not stand it. I pulled at him with my legs, locking them around his hips and dragging myself against him.
“I dreamed of making love to you,” he said as he looked down at our joined bodies, hair falling over his forehead, lips wet from my mouth. “I wanted to cherish you, dreamed of the moment I entered you, and imagined watching your eyes widen as I filled you. But that’s not what you want, is it?”
My eyes were wet with frustrated tears as I writhed, desperate for more of him, but he held himself still and watched, eyes hot. I turned my head to bite his wrist, but he pulled our arms farther to the side until I was splayed beneath him and locked in place.
“Please,” I begged.
“Sun and moon,” he breathed. “You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”
Had I been more than a mindless ball of need, I could have disputed that fact. But he was still inside me and if he didn’t move soon, I would kill him. I just could not force the words out to say so.
“You don’t want my tenderness, do you? You want this.“ He pulled out and thrust home in a powerful stroke that tore an incoherent noise from my throat. He bared his teeth in a feral smile before repeating the motion again and again, setting a punishing rhythm and driving himself so far into me that I began to break under the strain.
Aris freed one of my hands, which I immediately used to sink my fingernails into the straining muscles of his chest. He growled, leaned back, and said, “Wrap your legs around my hips again.”
I obeyed without thinking. He gripped my hip with one hand to keep me in place, then raised himself on his knees until only my shoulder blades touched the ground. With his opposite thumb, he began the torturous teasing once more, holding my body rigid, impaled, as he circled the bundle of nerves, watching me come undone with strained cries.
Shimmering waves of pleasure tightened every muscle until I saw stars and my breath sawed in ragged, sobbing gasps. Finally, I broke, shuddering as a tidal wave of pleasure swamped me, my legs shaking so hard I couldn’t keep them locked in place.
For a moment I sank into darkness, my strength spent. I could have slept then, and gladly. But Aris wasn’t done. When I opened my eyes, he stared down at me with possessive satisfaction and unspent hunger, our bodies still joined as he held my hips locked against his.
“Now it is my turn.” He grabbed one leg from where it lay limp and twisted it across his body so that I lay on my side with him still inside me. “That is a beautiful sight,” he said, almost to himself, and moved experimentally.
The change in angle dragged him against me unexpectedly, making me gasp. He thrust a few more times just to watch me squirm, then grabbed my hips again and turned me. I went willingly as the need built once more, shifting until I was on my hands and knees before him. He spread my knees farther apart, baring me to his gaze, and made a little noise of approval before sinking his fingers into my hips hard enough to add a frisson of pain to the pleasure.
“Now I’m going to take what you offered me,” he said through his teeth, squeezing harder. “Because that’s what you want, isn’t it?”
He retreated and thrust.
“Yes!”
One hand fisted in my hair, dragging my head back, the other controlling my hips, Aris thrust hard, harder, driving himself into me as if he could split me up the middle. I cried, grunted, made noises of need I had never heard myself make, and still wanted more. I needed him to take me away from myself until I was so far from Gwen and her troubled thoughts that I did not remember my own name.
I pushed back against him, and when he let go of my hip to slide his fingers around my throat, holding just firmly enough to make me feel the pressure, I gave myself up for lost. I took everything he had to give until I was bruised from it and still wanted more.
He arched my body back like a bow, reached one hand around until his fingers again found the center of my pleasure, and teased me as he thrust.
“One more time,” he said. “Come for me, Gwen.”
He sped up, sliding in and out, fingers circling, hand squeezing, until there was nothing left—no Lia, no Sunset Lands, no feeling but the tension and the pleasure and his body. Something terrifying built inside me, something wild and feral, a part of myself I’d kept under control for years. Aris stripped away the careful facade I built one thrust at a time, until the lady, the heiress, the woman was gone and all that was left was a creature I barely recognized.
I bared my teeth and arched my hips backward, meeting him thrust for thrust. My vision blurred as the creature inside me roared to life, ready to kill or die, desperate for the pleasure that shimmered just outside my reach.
When I looked over my shoulder, Aris was behind me, his face a mask of desire, sweat dripping from his temples, his muscles flexing in a sensual dance that sucked the rest of the breath from my lungs. He was so beautiful it hurt.
But it was his eyes that flayed me, dark as the night sky and hot as burning coals. The possession in them was as wild and feral as the need driving me.
“Fuck,” he grunted, leaning back and sinking deeper, as if he’d grown inside me, stretching beyond what I thought my body was capable of. Blackness teased the corners of my vision and reality blurred until Aris grew raven’s wings and trapped me with claws that drew beads of blood from my hip.
“Yes,” I whimpered as my body tightened impossibly and oblivion tugged at me with velvet fingers. “Please.”
“Now,” Aris commanded.
I flew apart into a thousand pieces as he arched into me with a cry, his body tensing in long, wracking spasms that locked us together as we shook and panted.
We fell onto the moss, loose-jointed, spent, breathing hard, and too tired to move. The world spun in a kaleidoscope as gravity pulled me down, and down. Aris cradled me against his chest and curled around me as I fell headlong into the empty, blissful darkness of exhaustion and slept without dreaming or feeling.