by SM Reine
But she had seen orgies while a minor. That wasn’t a comfortable line of thinking. “You’ve known me so long that I have to ask. Have you ever heard me talk about Seth Wilder before?”
“You’ve never mentioned him to me. I’d remember that. I prefer to keep men away from you, princess—far away.” He said that with the faintest smile, like it should have pleased her.
That intense look did give her chills. It stirred places deep within her body, within her heart.
Marion liked Konig getting possessive of her on some level.
“Who’s Seth Wilder?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I woke up with his name on my mind, so I think he could help me with my memory problem.”
“I’ve never heard of him,” Konig said. “Probably for the best. I’d hate to have to murder a man for getting too close to you when we’ve almost reached the summit.” Marion couldn’t tell if he was joking when he said that.
“I’ll get dressed for the dinner orgy, then,” she said. He didn’t immediately move, and she ventured, “Alone.”
“I’ve seen you naked before,” Konig said with a low chuckle. “But I understand. I’ll be waiting outside…princess.”
Konig left. Marion ensured the door was shut firmly before stripping. She tossed the scrubs that Charity Ballard had given her into the trash.
If Marion had any doubts about her sexual proclivities with Konig, then searching her drawers for underwear banished them: she had lingerie. A lot of it. Some of it leather. Marion could only imagine what she might do with Konig while wearing that lingerie. Hopefully that was something that she only did with Konig, not the entire Autumn Court.
She seemed to have a preference for comfortable underwear when dressed normally, though. More like boy shorts and t-shirt bras.
Marion picked a comfortable pair of underwear and a strapless bra, as they were the only things that would work under a semi-transparent dress. She matched the gown with a pair of heeled shoes that stretched her legs into long, shapely lines.
She missed the scrubs a little bit. Or maybe she missed the person the scrubs reminded her of.
“Traitor,” she muttered.
Marion pinned half her hair atop her head and left the other half dangling around her shoulders. The filmy dress made her look more ethereal, as though the low-cut back were making room for wings. She would also be a little too colorless to blend in among the jewel-like sidhe.
She figured out how to put the contact lenses in and only poked herself in the eyeball twice. Then she selected lipstick in matte red, a bold splash of color that offset her eyes and dark eyebrows.
Marion looked every inch the Voice of God.
Konig was waiting in her bedroom when she emerged from the closet. His eyes heated with lust when he looked Marion over. He didn’t have to say a word for her to know he approved of her semi-transparent dress.
Even so, she craved the verbal validation. “What do you think?”
“Perfect,” he said. “This is my princess. Not the scraggly thing that I found on a boat.”
The back of her neck prickled. Oliver Machado had called her a “thing” too.
He stepped behind her so that they were reflected in the mirror together, her lips dark against her flesh, his long fingers resting on her shoulders. “What do you think you were doing at the archery range this afternoon?” Konig asked in a tone of silken danger.
Her smile faded. With the way he’d been standing against her back, she’d expected words of affection. “I don’t understand.”
“The way you were flirting with that doctor before he left,” Konig said. “You know how bad that makes me look in front of my people?”
Marion dropped her hair and turned to face him. “It’s not like that. Luke’s a friend.” An incredibly good-looking friend who had made it clear that his interest in her ended as soon as she’d been delivered to the Autumn Court.
“You were hitting on him,” Konig said. Darkness simmered under the surface of his eyes. “Did you screw him?”
“My gods, of course not,” Marion said. “He helped me. He saved me.”
“Damn it, Marion.” Konig gripped her wrists, his fingers shackling her so tightly that it ached. “Don’t you have any idea how scared I was when you went missing right before the summit? And then to see you come back like this—with some other man—”
“But I did come back.”
“Damn it all.” He embraced her tightly, pinning her against his chest, nose buried in her hair. “What would I do without you, princess?”
“I’m not going anywhere again. I promise you that.”
“It’s terrifying to think of all that time you spent alone with that doctor. When he left…” Konig shook his head. “I shouldn’t tell you.”
Her heart froze within her chest. “What? What happened?”
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Please, Konig.” Marion licked her lips, and added, “My prince.” It felt strange to say that. She didn’t seem like someone who would go swooning over princes, even ones as gorgeously well formed as ErlKonig of the Autumn Court.
“Dr. Flynn asked if there was a reward for returning you.” When she opened her mouth to speak, he pushed on, silencing her. “He was in it for the money. I didn’t want to say anything, but…he had ulterior motives.”
The confession hurt as though Konig had plunged a blade between two of her ribs.
“There’s more,” Konig said. “When he shot at me in Port Angeles, he was using iron bullets. Iron’s the only thing that kills the sidhe. It’s illegal to possess iron bullets. Where in all the Middle Worlds could a doctor get something like that?”
Now she felt really queasy. “I see. Did you give the reward to him?”
“I wanted him gone,” Konig said. “And I know, as you said, that you’re grateful. Yes. I gave him a reward. I gave him every ounce of gratitude that the Autumn Court has for his service, and, hopefully, he won’t come back for more.”
Marion’s eyes were burning and her throat was thick. “Good. Thank you.”
He dipped his head toward hers, brushing their lips against each other. “Anything for you, my princess.” His breath was colder than the first touch of winter.
* * *
Night fell over the Autumn Court with gossamer shadow. Marion lingered in her bedroom while Konig went to the courtyard ahead of her, and she could hear music playing from her bedroom—the silken wail of stringed instruments, the primal throbbing of drums, even the faint shifting of bodies like trees in the wind. The unseelie sidhe were gathering for dinner, and she was expected to arrive as a guest of honor.
Heather Cobweb waited in the hallway, wearing a formal guard uniform with billowy pants and a snug leather bodice. Her hair was in thin braids hanging down either side of her face. A bow was slung across her back.
“You look wonderful, Heather. How do I look?” Marion asked, spreading her arms so that her body would be outlined by the shimmering fabric.
“Excellent,” Heather said. It sounded more like an automatic response than a studied one, as though she wouldn’t have dared to answer in any other way.
She escorted Marion to the courtyard. They emerged at the top of a grand staircase. When Marion took the top step and looked over the party, a hush fell over the crowd. They turned judging eyes upon her in a thousand different gem colors.
Konig was amongst them. His coppery skin glimmered as he strode through the crowd to meet her at the bottom of the stairs.
“You look perfect,” he said, brushing his lips over her knuckles. There was no sign of the anger he’d shared with her in private. Now Konig was all smooth, sunny charm again.
He escorted her to the far end of the courtyard, where a table had been raised above all others. Two of the chairs were sprawling affairs of gold, brass, and vines. The king and queen waited there. They smiled to see Marion.
This was where she belonged. She should have been happy.
&nbs
p; Konig was seated beside his mother, and Marion to the left of him. That put her just as high as royalty—higher than the rest of the court. The sidhe sitting at all the other tables in the hall didn’t look thrilled.
“Do you guys have dinner like this very often?” Marion whispered.
He laughed at her incredulity. “On most nights.”
Her jaw dropped. The food that servants were bringing out on platters was the stuff of legend. Entire pigs, stews and fine cheese, sliced fruit drenched in molasses and honey.
And they did that on “most” nights.
“How do you get anything done?” Marion asked.
“We’re sidhe,” Konig said. “This is what we do.”
A servant offered to fill Marion’s goblet with wine. She put her hand over the glass. “No thank you.”
“No wine? For my princess? I don’t think so.” He gestured, indicating that the servant should fill it, which she did. The wine was an aromatic red that filled Marion’s nose with a pleasantly spicy scent. “Try it. It’s your favorite.”
Marion lifted the glass by the fragile neck. “I don’t think I want to drink.” But she did inhale the scent deeply, and that was nearly enough to render her drunk on the spot.
“A toast,” Konig murmured. “To celebrate my princess coming back to me.”
She couldn’t refuse him that. Not when she’d already put him through so much. And she didn’t want to incite another angry outburst like the one in her bedroom.
They clinked their goblets together, and Marion sipped while Konig watched.
The wine was somehow even stronger than she expected. It was fantastic. She wasn’t sure she’d describe it as a “favorite” though. Her mind drifted back to the Long Island Iced Teas at the Salty Barnacle, and the drippy clam chowder.
The orchestra played through dinner as everyone ate. Marion watched more than she talked. Konig was engaging his father in a lively conversation about a band called Black Death, so it freed her to allow her attention to wander.
Most of the sidhe didn’t eat with utensils. They used their fingers. It didn’t look like a barbaric thing, though; it was more sensual, as though they wanted to feel the food with their fingertips before consuming it. They often didn’t feed themselves, either. They were feeding each other, leaning across the tables so that the breasts of the female sidhe swung beneath them and plastering their bodies against those of their companions.
At one of the nearer tables, a masked woman was straddling the lap of a female companion, sliding grapes into her mouth one at a time. She noticed Marion watching and smiled shamelessly.
Marion smiled back, somewhat more hesitantly.
“I could have them brought to you,” Konig said. “The women you’re watching. We could invite them to our room later.” His breath smelled of wine. His cool hands guided Marion’s goblet back to her mouth, encouraging her to take another sip.
Her head buzzed with warmth. “I thought you liked to keep me to yourself.”
“With men,” he said.
Marion took a longer drink of the wine. The burn was enough to make her start coughing. “No, thank you.”
“You might change your mind. Once dinner finishes, the next phase of the night will begin.”
Marion knew that he meant the aforementioned orgy because this feast was obviously foreplay. The way that the sidhe licked one another’s fingers was so blatantly sexual that she was uncomfortable watching it.
She’d have been lying if she said she wasn’t enjoying herself, though. She didn’t want to join the sidhe in their sexual play, but it was just so colorful. There were so many different colors of hair and skin and eyes, so many bodies in different shapes and sizes, and they created fireworks of magic where they contacted. Minds opened as legs and lips spread, allowing Marion to peer into the briefest glimpses of their thoughts.
Marion drifted through their fantasies of food, sex, and music, like trailing her fingers through drapery while passing a window.
Half of her wine was gone. Had she drunk all of that?
Violet leaned around Konig to speak to Marion. “How did things go exploring the castle grounds earlier today?”
“It went well,” Marion said, swirling the remaining wine in her goblet. The crimson fluid clung to the sides of the crystal. “I got into archery again. I have the muscle memory for it.”
“She’s as good as ever,” Konig said. “She puts many of my guards to shame.”
Violet’s eyes creased at the corners when she smiled, much the same way that Konig’s did. “What of your actual memories?”
“Little progress,” Marion said. None since Luke had left her.
“Too bad,” Violet said. “I haven’t been able to reach the Hardwicks over the listing on the darknet, either. I’ve sent one of my girls into the Winter Court to see if we can find them like that. Hopefully—”
Dismayed shouts from the crowd cut her off.
Marion followed the gazes of the crowd up to the sky. The velvety black was interrupted by a shocking lance of white.
“A ley line is open,” Konig said, shooting to his feet. “Mother—”
“Wait.” Violet grabbed his arm. “I recognize them.”
Much to Marion’s surprise, she did too. She had seen them on the news at the Salty Barnacle.
Three people descended from the ley line. They were statuesque figures framed by wings that looked like they should have been on glossy, oversized hawks. Each wing was twice as tall as the bearer, which made for impressive wingspans. Not faerie wings, but feathered wings.
Angels.
The trio descended, dragging wisps of the ley lines behind them. They landed lightly on the carpet of dried leaves and their wings vanished, leaving only hints of glitter and a few downy feathers at their feet. They didn’t have the flaming swords that Marion had seen on the news, but they were every inch as intimidating without them.
Rage suited his name for the first time. He shivered with carefully withheld fury that showed in the weft and warp of reality haloed around him. “Raven Knights,” he said softly, dangerously.
Motion stirred around the edges of the courtyard as the royal guard rallied. Heather was positioned on the second level, her bow aimed at the angels. A few feet down, there was another guard, and then another beyond that. At a quick count, Marion saw at least a dozen deadly sidhe guards waiting for a sign from Rage.
The angels must have realized they were surrounded, but they looked terribly calm.
Marion drank in the sight of them—the first of her species she’d seen in person. Where sidhe were things of the Earth and elements, angels were alien, alabaster perfection. They might have passed as any mundane person on the street of Ransom Falls if not for the sculpted lines of their faces.
“What do you want?” Rage asked. Marion caught the edge of his thoughts. He knew these angels, and he was furious to see them.
“We caught rumors on the wind and wanted to see if they were true,” said the central angel. “Is this how you welcome us to your court?”
Violet gathered her ruffled skirts and descended into the crowd. “Welcome to Myrkheimr.” She kissed each angel on the cheek. When the sidhe queen got that close to the angels, the Autumn Court warped around her. The trees died, regrew, lost their leaves. The sky turned black. Marion swayed on her feet, pressing a hand to her temple.
When she blinked, everything was back to normal.
“We came as quickly as we could when we heard.” That came from a tiny angel with Japanese features and a flat Californian accent. She must have been a good foot shorter than Marion. She seemed weirdly short for an angel.
“That’s Suzume, a friend of the sidhe. It’s a good sign that she’s here,” Konig whispered into Marion’s ear. He pointed to the auburn-haired angel at the center. “Leliel, the leader from the Ethereal Levant.” And then he pointed to the third. “Jibril, a messenger. Sort of a delegate, like you.”
“Join us for dinner?” Violet asked, s
weeping a hand toward the table.
In a flurry of motion, servants brought three more chairs up.
The music resumed, followed by an audible sigh of relief from the court.
Suzume settled into the chair that had been placed in front of Marion. The angel was dressed in a fashion that was almost masculine, with slacks, loafers, and minimal makeup.
“I knew the rumors weren’t true,” Suzume said. “There’s no way someone like you would go missing, Marion. You’re way too obnoxious for that.” She lifted her goblet. “Hey! I don’t have wine!” A servant materialized to serve her. She swigged the entire thing in a moment, then lifted the goblet for a refill. “Who kidnapped you? Get chatting. I want all the juicy gossip.”
Konig wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her against his body. “You can see with your own eyes that our girl hasn’t gone anywhere.”
Leliel settled beside Suzume. “We’ve also heard tales of repeated attacks on your life.” Her pale eyes glimmered with unidentifiable emotion. “If you’re experiencing trouble, you should be protected in the Ethereal Levant. It’s what her father would have wanted.”
Marion’s heart skipped a beat. “You knew my father?”
Leliel turned her cool eyes on Marion. “Unfortunately.”
“You’re wasting your time if you came here to retrieve Marion,” Violet said. “We’re protecting her until her memory returns.”
The angels all turned to stare at Marion simultaneously. Her cheeks lit with flame.
Until her memory returns.
She hadn’t planned on telling the angels that it was gone in the first place.
Suzume laughed and took a big drink of wine. “No memory. Funny! Someone casting a memory spell on Marion Kavanagh, of all people.”
“Not a memory spell,” Violet corrected. “I didn’t see anything like that in her head and would have easily dismantled it if I had. No—whatever has happened is more severe than that. She’s been practically lobotomized. Look at her. She’s a shell of her former self.” Violet’s wave toward Marion was painfully dismissive.
