The Court of Mortals (Stariel Book 3)

by AJ Lancaster

  “That’s a rather terrifying thought,” she agreed. “Though I’m finding I don’t really have much thought for politics right this moment.” She had laced her fingers together as if to stop herself from reaching out, but her gaze roved where her fingers would not, tracking water droplets as they rolled from his collarbone, down to his chest, to the waterline. Lower.

  The tub was nearly full now, and he leaned forward and twisted the taps off. The bathroom echoed with small sloshing sounds, and clouds of steam rose from the water, scented faintly with the honeysuckle of the soap. It was strange again not to taste any magic. He’d thought his energy levels drained down to their dregs, but awareness sparked through him as he felt her gaze on him, until he imagined he could feel every tiny hair on his body, every vein and sinew.

  Hetta gave in, perching on the lip of the bath and smoothing a hand over his shoulders. The touch lit up his nerve endings like the many braided paths of a lowland river as she followed the line of muscle around to the nape of his neck. He leaned into it, half-closing his eyes.

  “Do you?” she asked, scooping up a handful of water and running it through his hair.

  “Hmmm?” It was hard to focus on anything except the sensation. He wanted to lose himself in it, but at the same time it wasn’t nearly enough. He wanted skin against skin, to kiss his way in a long line down to—

  She laughed and prompted: “Do you have much thought for politics right now?”

  He gestured at the evidence of his distraction. “Probably as much as you do.” His voice came out deeper than usual.

  Hetta’s eyes were very dark. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this—but shouldn’t you, well, rest?”

  “I’ve heard that beds are very good for resting.”

  “Wyn!” She laughed, splashing water at him. “Behave!”

  “Do you want me to?” he asked seriously.

  Her lips curved. “Well, no, but I felt that someone ought to make an effort to be reasonable.”

  “I feel distinctly unreasonable.” He twisted around to embrace her, but she extricated herself with a squawk of outrage. “You’re all wet!” she protested.

  “A risk associated with bathing,” He widened his eyes. “See how wet and bedraggled I am! Don’t I deserve some coddling?”

  She backed away, wise to his tricks. “Oh, no, I’m not going to be pulled into the bath with you. These are silk pyjamas!” The vulnerability he’d seen in her earlier was washing away, replaced with something warm and full of sensual mischief.

  He sighed. “Hand me a towel then.” Her eyes sparkled but she did as he bid as he stood, dripping water. “Perhaps you should check whether I’m hiding any other injuries?” he asked, twisting this way and that. He couldn’t resist. The way she looked at him—it was like a flood of magic rising up through his toes, a rush of energy and sensation. Since his identity had been revealed, so many people had looked at him with distrust or unsettling fascination. But Hetta didn’t look at him as if he were a monster or curiosity. There was only heat in her expression, and a tenderness that made it hard to draw a full breath.

  She smirked but didn’t come closer. Instead she opened the bathroom door, letting out billows of steam.

  “Perhaps you should come out so I can do so properly,” she said over her shoulder as she left.

  He clambered out of the tub, wrapped the towel around his waist, and followed her out into her bedroom. This was the moment before a dive, where he could still change the angle of his wings, but he didn’t want to alter course. Selfish, the word murmured in the back of his mind. He was being selfish, but he didn’t care. Hetta wanted this. He wanted this. They were alone and safe, and no one need know what happened here. Why not finally give in to this reckless, lightning-soaked desire?

  He felt drunk on anticipation, thick and heavy as treacle. It was too much and not enough all at once, and his magic shifted restlessly within its confines. He stroked the boundaries of his magic, feeling the cool metal at his wrists, reassuring himself. I am safe.

  Hetta sat on the edge of the bed, a temptress in a dressing gown. The humidity had twisted her hair into interesting shapes, damp against her forehead. He paused, looking down at her, and smoothed the curls back. The pulse at her throat fluttered like a hummingbird’s wings, but her eyes were a clear, penetrating grey. She flicked a fingernail at the metal dismae, and it vibrated slightly against his wrist, cold and unbending.

  He raised his arms. “Do you know, there is a singular benefit to these? They keep my magic under control, regardless of…provocation.”

  “I’ve never been as worried as you are about losing control.” She grinned, unexpectedly wicked. “You do know some loss of control is required in order to achieve satisfaction?”

  There was only one possible answer to that. He leaned down and kissed her. The cold echo of the iron melted, and everything grew hard and desperate with wanting.

  “Yes,” he whispered against her skin. “I know.” He stroked a fingertip over her quivering pulse, soft as thistledown. “I want this.”

  She let out a throaty laugh. “Good, because I certainly do.”

  “Ah…” He paused. “I realise that in my haste I did not ask you about precautions—”

  “Fortunately, I have been taking precautions for months in the hope of tempting you into bed.” She put her palms flat against his chest, the warmth thrilling through him. He found the ties to her dressing gown and undid them, pushing the material off Hetta’s shoulders. The material swished gently as it fell. It landed on his feet, and he kicked it aside absently.

  “They are very nice pyjamas,” he said diplomatically.

  “Are you suggesting they might look better elsewhere?” She lifted her arms obediently.

  “The floor,” he agreed, drawing the top garment over her head and tossing it somewhere in the vicinity of the dresser.

  She laughed, her eyes full of sultry teasing, and lust blazed up in him like wildfire. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen Hetta bare-breasted. Last time had been under a snow moon, when the wintertide magic had risen up and threatened to drag them both under. His memories of that night were slightly fogged at the edges.

  This was much better than a magic-drunk memory. It was more than the call of flesh to flesh, more than magic. It was sheer concentrated Hetta-ness, the essence of her vibrantly alive and fiercely attractive.

  She raised her eyebrows, utterly unselfconscious, and pointed at his towel. “Fair is fair.”

  He chuckled and removed the offending item before joining her on the bed. The mattress gave slightly under his weight. For a moment, neither of them moved, the potential humming between them holding them in place. Hetta watched him with darkly sensual eyes.

  And then they both shifted at the same time and met in the middle. It sparked an entirely new level of sensation, kissing skin-to-skin, like the difference between humidity and a rainstorm.

  “Henrietta Isadore Valstar,” he said into the dip of her collarbone, using her full name giving him a little shiver of pleasure.

  “So formal,” she gasped as he traced his hands over her skin, over the curve of her breasts. Leysight notwithstanding, she felt like pure magic.

  “It’s a fae thing,” he said. “Later.” He hadn’t the coherence to string enough words together for an explanation just now, not when Hetta’s hands were performing their own exploration, each touch setting off a tiny starburst of sensation.

  He’d worried that it would matter, his inexperience, but after all, this was Hetta, who understood him even when he didn’t always understand himself, and that worry fell away as they learnt each other in teasing caresses and guided hands and small, urgent words like there and yes and more.

  He’d known Hetta Valstar for more than ten years now, but this was a different kind of knowing, the shape of something growing between them that was more than their sum—something raw and physical and yet somehow more. The contrasts between their bodies sharpened. He followed the war
m curves of her, enthralled, as she did the same to him.

  When, panting, she pulled him towards her, he resisted, holding his weight above her as she arched in frustration. “Wyn!”

  “Is there something you wanted?” He nuzzled at her neck.

  She gave a low, throaty laugh. “Not as innocent as all that, are you?” She wriggled provocatively, and he groaned.

  “You’re debauching me thoroughly,” he agreed roughly.

  Exhilaration burned through his blood, as if he was riding the air currents above a hurricane. When he bridged the final space between them, the world fell away, as if he’d emerged suddenly into the perfect eye of the storm.

  “Hetta,” he said, his voice unrecognisable, sweat a slick line down his spine. Her eyes blazed dark as winter skies and caught him in their hold. He’d never been so wholly aware of the entirety of his being down to the last straining sinew, of her flesh and his, joined.

  She rocked her hips, and then there was no more thought. Control surrendered to the instinct of rhythm, spiralling them higher and higher until the world fractured, and he with it.

  Normal awareness slowly returned. He was trembling, little forks of lightning shivering under his skin. A fog of magic filled the room, drifting in lazy eddies. They stared at each other, each of them still breathing hard. He felt raw and vulnerable and yet still filled with a deep want he had no name for. Hetta’s eyes were wide and dark as the night, and he felt as if she could see through him, down to the burning emotion he was struggling to express. The intimacy was unbearable. He wanted to break away from it. He wanted it to go on forever.

  Hetta reached up and stroked his hair without breaking the eye contact.

  “I love you,” he told her. He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips. “I love you.” Inadequate words, but all he had.

  “I love you too,” she said, a little shyly. She smiled in a very satisfied way. “Did the act meet your expectations, then?” she teased.

  He struggled to find his levity, something shaken loose in his chest. “Yes. No.” Both truth. Something dark and fierce clutched at him, almost like terror. Rakken’s mocking repetition of the old saying hit him with sudden crystal clarity: Love is for fools and mortals. He’d dismissed the words as irrelevant—obviously fae were capable of love—but now he wondered if Rakken had meant it as a warning. Perhaps fae hearts weren’t designed to bear this much feeling. How did mortals live like this? “Perhaps we ought to repeat the experience in order to make sure that wasn’t a mere fluke. I’m certainly in favour of as much repetition as possible.”

  She chuckled. Her focus flickered away from his for a moment, and her eyes widened. “Wyn…” Amusement quivered in her voice. “Your fae is showing.”

  He frowned. But abruptly he realised what she meant; he was in his fae form. His wings rose behind him, draping across the bed in great shimmering sheets of indigo. She reached up to curl her fingers around one of his horns, and he held still under the touch, frozen with shock. When had he changed? How could he have failed to notice?

  Wait. He could see the magic in the room. He rolled to the side, feathers rustling against the bed, and looked down at his wrists. Both the dismae were black and cracked. He pulled at one, and it came free, the metal crumbling under pressure. He tore the other off, not quite daring to believe it until he stretched out with his leysight and met no resistance.

  He held the broken dismae up to Hetta.

  She blinked, then giggled. “Well, that’s a convenient side effect.”

  I lost myself, he wanted to say. I lost control again. What would that have meant without the dismae to stop me? Abruptly he couldn’t bear to be here like this, exposed in his fae form, and changed.

  39

  Pillow Talk

  Hetta could tell Wyn was trying to reconstruct his careful walls. She would’ve been more annoyed, but it was hard to feel very annoyed by anything just now, with her limbs gone soft as pudding. Aftershocks of pleasure had her curling like a cat around the object of her affection. The object of her affection absently stroked circles over her stomach, his gaze unfocused, hair tufted into disarray.

  “Am I imagining it, or does that look better than it did?” She stroked a line next to the gash across his torso, careful not to touch.

  “Quite possibly,” he agreed. “Since I should heal faster without the dismae.”

  “You’re welcome, then.”

  He chuckled, and she wriggled up to rest her head on his shoulder. The moment stretched soft and long as taffy, the sound of his heartbeat a murmur of reassurance. She wanted to wallow in the languor, but the political thoughts she’d pushed aside earlier kept intruding. “Wyn?”

  “Hmmm?” he asked sleepily.

  How much responsibility did one owe to the wider world, set against one’s own needs and wants? She thought of piskies, and the nightwyrm, and a train station held in thrall to a single greater fae. Even if they stopped Aroset, that wouldn’t stop every future problem stemming from Faerie. She thought of Alexandra’s pale face, fearing she might be compelled once again.

  “You said ThousandSpire was one of the most powerful courts in Faerie. Could its ruler control what fae do in the Mortal Realm?”

  He tensed under her cheek, and all signs of sleep had gone from his tone when he spoke, low and careful. “Some fae—yes. But many fae—no. DuskRose and its allies would certainly not heed any directive given by ThousandSpire, at least. And no one really controls the wyldfae, outside the boundaries of faelands.” He turned towards her, his eyes dark and worried. “I don’t know how to stop Aroset, as Queen of the Spires, except perhaps to petition the High King himself.”

  “Your oldest sister hasn’t been claimed by the faeland,” she said quietly, meeting his gaze. “No one has bonded to the faeland.” She told him about Marius arriving with the twins, about the attack at the theatre.

  He absorbed this, going so still that only the rapid beat of his heart gave him away. “They think the Spires wants me.” There was a plea in the russet of his eyes. He wanted her to tell him he was wrong. But she thought of dust and metal, arrowing towards him across the grass at the Standing Stones.

  “Yes,” she said instead. “What would it mean, if you were King of Ten Thousand Spires?”

  “I’d have to leave Stariel.”

  Cold began to weave its way into her heart, and she wrapped her arms around him to ward it off. “You could visit though, couldn’t you?”

  The room filled with the threat of rainstorm, and he remained stiff under her touch. Eventually he said: “You’re probably feeling it already, a pull back to Stariel, a sense that you’re not where you ought to be in the world. The longer you’re away, the stronger that feeling will become. I don’t know how long it would take before you had to return, but eventually you would or else risk dire consequences. For you and Stariel both.”

  Hetta frowned. That put her yearning for home in a different light. “I wish you’d told me this before we left home! Am I about to keel over unexpectedly with pining, then, or will I get some warning?” The bond was wafer-thin without the ring, but she gave it a suspicious tug anyway. So I really can’t escape my lordship, she couldn’t help thinking.

  “I don’t know how long you could stretch your bond for. A month? Six months? A year? You are mortal, and every faeland is different. Besides, I suspect Stariel is more accustomed to mortal comings-and-goings than ThousandSpire. But, no, it would not be a sudden thing in any case.”

  “So you could still visit Stariel. If you were king.” Why was she trying to argue with him about this? She didn’t want him to rule ThousandSpire either.

  He flinched slightly at the word king, the movement apparent only because she was draped over him. “Yes, I could visit,” he told her. “But it isn’t just the faelord that suffers when the bond is stretched. The land suffers as well. How absent could I be from it, how often, before it would be detrimental to the Spires?”

  “We could alternate,” Hetta p
ointed out. “That would share the burden, at least.”

  “Stop being practical!” he growled at her. “Is that what you want? Half a life together?”

  “And stop being so unnecessarily dramatic!” She poked him in the ribs. “I’d rather that than nothing at all. Of course I don’t want you to have to leave Stariel,” she said more calmly. “But I’d rather know what our options are than fear unknowns.”

  Wyn stared unseeing into space, and Hetta didn’t say anything more, even though she could feel the thoughts sliding between them.

  “The palace guards,” he said, after a long silence. “There were a pair of them unconscious, before the nightwyrm came. Someone had planted feathers on them.” He gave a hollow laugh. “White feathers. The guards were very keen to interrogate me about it before the nightwyrm’s arrival. Someone wanted them to have an excuse to do so.”

  Hetta sucked in a breath. “Whoever wanted to frame you based it on out-of-date information, then. Oh, I wished I’d asked to see those feathers! Though I don’t know if it would’ve made much difference—the queen didn’t believe me when I defended your honour.” She told him what she’d learnt, watched him work through the same calculations she had.

  “There are not so many people who’ve seen me in my fae form.” He ticked them off. “The Valstars, the staff, the bank manager and his wife.” He hesitated. “Lord Penharrow—though he didn’t see me with my old plumage.”

  “Satisfying as it would be to pin this on Angus, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t him.” She walked her fingers down his chest, thinking. “I found out last night that the Earl of Wolver owns Lady Peregrine’s, though I don’t know what his motives would be in this. But I guess he’d have access to the palace guards as well. He could’ve drugged them or arranged for someone else to do so. He could’ve planted those feathers.” She told him about her encounter with the reporter. “I don’t think I did much good there—they’re going to continue to do their best to besmirch your name, from the sounds of it.” She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder.