I stripped down bare except for the necklaces.
“You can give me back the charm,” he said. “We won’t encounter any bears or wolves while we’re riding. Just wear the choker. You have the most exquisite neck.”
I took off the charm and handed it back to him. He picked up his wand and stroked the tip back and forth across my wet sex just long enough to quicken my breath, then sucked the tip clean. “Put on your new dress,” he said.
I dropped it over my head and slid my arms through, pulling the bodice down over me. The fabric was soft, but nevertheless it scratched my nipples as it brushed by.
He took the ribbons of the bodice in his own hands. I stood still as he tightened them, one by one, with an air of such careful concentration. The Magus was a man who could pour such a singular focus into the smallest moment, whether it was tightening a lace or squeezing the perfect dollop of cream into the hollow of a pastry. I had a wave of unbearable anticipation, thinking of the day when he could touch me, when all the careful intensity of his hands and eyes was trained on me alone, with nothing in the way.
As the bodice tightened, my breasts were pushed up higher into soft, round mounds with my nipples hard and pointed. He tied the lace in a little bow at my waist.
“You can put your boots on now,” he said. “And then, come with me.”
I pulled on my stockings and laced up my boots, and we walked outside. He whistled several long, wispy notes.
“It takes a little time,” he said, as we stood there together under the cover of the forest. “We’ll only be able to take a short ride, and maybe a short ride is all you can manage anyway.”
“I haven’t had much experience riding,” I said, a little confused as to why he didn’t think I could manage the ride. “We never had money for horses. We had to borrow them from the neighbors for things Hansel simply couldn’t do himself.”
“It doesn’t matter, with these horses,” he said. “They are smarter than human horses, and very attuned to you. They won’t spook or ride faster than you can manage or go off in the wrong direction. If you can keep your feet in the stirrups, you’ll be fine.”
I felt their hoofbeats pound the ground a second before I heard them, and several long seconds passed before we saw them charging down the path, two beautiful white horses that seemed larger than I expected.
“Maybe you should take off your apron,” I said. “Even though it’s cute on you, you will look so elegant all in black on a white horse.”
“Cute on me?” he said, distastefully.
“You don’t like being cute?” I asked, delighted to have found a way to tease him. “Too bad.”
He frowned and tugged the knot free behind him, hanging the apron on the nearest tree branch. “Wait a moment while I saddle them.”
While he walked off toward a shed standing a little ways away from the house, one of the horses came up to me and lowered its head like it wanted to be petted, with the other one following a step behind. Horses usually made me a little nervous because back in Aupenburg, the men always dealt with them, and I could count on one hand the number of ladies who rode their own horses. But these seemed like another species. They approached me slowly and calmly like they identified my anxiety and didn’t want to frighten me. I ran my hands along their noses and manes.
“You’re softer than I expected,” I said. “Soft, faery horses…”
The Magus came back with saddles and got our mounts ready for us while he told me to bring them some apples from the house.
“How will I get up into the saddle?” I asked. “They’re so tall and you can’t lift me up.”
“I can touch your waist through the dress for a moment or two before it burns me,” he said. “We’ll hurry.”
He put his hands on me and practically tossed me up onto the horse like a hot potato as I managed to fling my leg over and grab the saddle awkwardly. The horse was very patient with our clumsiness; she didn’t move a hair except to glance back as if to check on me.
But once I was up there settling into the saddle I realized that my saddle was specially made. It held me firmly in place with just a little wiggle room, supporting the curve of my buttocks and pelvis, and was made out of very soft leather that was comfortable against my naked skin—except where my clit rested. Here, there was a panel of soft pointed bumps that were formed precisely to tease me with every movement of my horse. I don’t know how on earth they were made. When I tried to adjust away from them they only seemed to worm their way deeper into my folds. I could lift myself off the saddle but that was hard to maintain for more than a few seconds.
While I considered this new development, the Magus had gotten onto his horse and rode up alongside me with the most devilish grin. “You didn’t think I would suggest an ordinary afternoon, did you? You thought I’d give you a break? I have to keep surprising you to keep the magic potent. Especially when you’ve been such a defiant girl, speaking with great sympathy to the family who usurped me…”
Strangely, I had a feeling I had actually made him think. If he was truly upset, he wouldn’t be grinning at me and making conversation about it while I was so vulnerable. I lifted my chin high and cast my eyes away from him. “It isn’t so much that I sympathize with people I barely know, as that I think you’re making a mistake. I don’t think we will ever be happier doing something else as we are right now, you and I, making magical things together.”
He gave my horse a little smack on the rump and she started cantering down the path.
I could only shudder forward and clutch at her mane. Every movement of the horse rippled up into my tender sex and sent an absolutely agonizing pleasure through my spread legs until my toes were clenching in my boots. I hated him and I loved him for doing these things to me. He drove me out of my mind.
He rode up beside me and made a low whistle that seemed to signal my horse to slow back down into more of a trot, which I’m not sure was any better for me.
“Sit up straight,” he said. I forced my spine upward. I wanted to double over. I wanted to clutch the neck of this horse and claw its skin. Shudders of pleasure kept passing over me and my hands were shaking.
He admired my pert bare breasts, briefly tracing the outline of them with his wand. Feeling his eyes on me made it all the worse. “Please…please, Magus…” I gasped, burning with heat, trying to wriggle away from the constant little brushing sensations stimulating me at multiple angles.
“Are you going to come, Gretel?”
“I—“ I choked out a sob. “I need to.”
“But do you think you will?”
“No…” Like everything else he did to me, it was not quite enough. I hunched over again, sobbing with torture as the teasing sensation just continued on and on and there was nowhere I could go unless I flung myself off a moving horse. “Please, Magus…please!”
He drew close enough to me that our boots bumped against each other, and he tapped my chin with the tip of the wand. “Can you bear it, Gretel?”
I swallowed back a lump in my throat, tamping down the sharpest edges of what I felt. I knew what I had to say. “Yes…”
“It gets more difficult,” he said, “as the time draws closer. That is to be expected. We will ride again before Samhain.”
“If it turns out that you have to die on Samhain night,” I said, “I want to bloody kill you myself.”
He laughed and spurred his horse ahead of me.
Chapter Twelve
Gretel
When we got back, he started boiling water. “You did very well today, my sweet Gretel. I know these final days will test you, most especially.”
“It’s worth enduring…if I get you at the end of it. But I want you. Not the King of the Revels. Just you.”
He rapped his fingers on the table. I knew by now that this gesture meant I was saying something he didn’t want to hear. “The King of the Wicked Revels and me…they were one and the same for fifteen years, Gretel.” He paused. “I’ll finish the wor
k today. Take a nice warm bath.”
I had never known it before, but there was a little room off of the kitchen with a clawfoot tub. I could have sworn that door led to the backyard. I soaked there and he made me a cup of hot chocolate and brought more hot water now and then, so despite the chilly autumn air, it stayed comfortable. My nerves wound down and I started to relax so deeply I almost nodded off in the tub.
I had never felt so wonderfully spent, if not quite satisfied. No matter what he did to me, even if it was torturous at the time, in hindsight I wanted more of it. The idea that we would ride again brought a sense of dread, and the idea that we might never ride again was far, far worse.
Indeed, every two or three or four days (he never told me when it would happen, just to keep me in suspense) we would take a break and he would summon the horses. We rode until I could do nothing but beg him to touch me. Every day, I lasted a little longer and at the end of it I always had a hot bath and chocolate. In the evening I started working on embroidering my dress with two white horses on the back of the skirt.
I was counting the days until Samhain, the day when we would sneak into the Wicked Revels.
Aramy came one afternoon when I was in the bath. The Magus shut the door on me. “Stay here,” he said.
I recognized Aramy’s voice from my first night in the Magus’ house. I heard them whispering. I crept quietly out of the tub, bundling myself in a towel but still shivering, and pressed my ear to the door.
“Everything is set,” I heard Aramy say. “On Samhain night, they will all wear masks. No one will notice you in the crowd. Your nephew is already on the march and he’s supported by the Swift River faery clan.” Softer murmuring between them. It was quite nefarious to murmur, I thought.
“Yes,” Aramy said then, more emphatically. “The people want you. Your plan has worked beautifully. I never thought you’d find a girl who was willing to go through with it all. I can’t imagine how she must feel. Every bite of those cakes and chocolates is infused with such delicate yearning and temptation. You should see their faces when they eat them. They want more of what you can give them.”
The Magus hesitated. “I know this magic,” he said. “I understand my people. A man like Will—”
“Could never truly manage the Wicked Revels,” Aramy said. “Never doubt that you are the true king, my lord. The humans will leave if we have to put their heads on spears!”
My chest clenched.
“Hush,” the Magus whispered sharply. “It won’t come to that.”
“It would serve them—“
“Hush!” the Magus was fierce now. “Mind your place. I told you it won’t come to that.”
“Will murdered you.”
“I might have done the same, in Will’s shoes.”
“My lord—“ Aramy laughed uncomfortably. “I didn’t make a deal with the Trickster Mage just to go soft on the people who killed you.”
“I am sure, deep down, the humans might be relieved to return to their own lands. They will leave in peace. I know it. We are not tyrants. They will leave with their heads intact and their hearts still beating.”
“Of course. I serve you, my lord...”
They moved toward the front door and I couldn’t hear them anymore. I heard the door shut but several more long moments passed before the Magus opened my door. I was back in the tub now, but it was getting cold and I was too anxious to enjoy it.
He tested the water temperature with his finger, and sighed. “I apologize. I’ll heat up more water.”
“I know Aramy saved your life, but I hope you can really trust him,” I said.
“Snooping at doors, are we?”
“You can’t blame me.”
“He talks big, but there is no need for a violent coup. That’s why I’ve taken the time to win favor with my desserts. And although Aramy’s had to organize the operation, I will be leading the charge when the time comes. They will all listen to me.”
“I hope so,” I said, grabbing the towel. “No need to heat up more water. I’ve turned into a prune while you were talking. Anyway, I’d rather work in the bake shop while I still can.” He hadn’t said anything to Aramy about wanting to stay a baker with me, and so I knew I hadn’t changed his mind.
I dried off and went to fetch my clothes.
“No, don’t dress,” he said. “Go to the rack.”
“You need my help to finish the icings,” I said.
“I managed without you for a long time.”
“You’re punishing me?” I picked up my clothes anyway. “Why? Because I told you not to trust Aramy? Because I like running a bake shop with you?”
“You don’t love the real me,” he said. “The King of the Wicked Revels is the real me. You love whatever this is. It’s time you moved past it.”
My mouth snapped open in annoyance before I said, “I don’t know ‘the King of the Wicked Revels’. I love this and you, because it’s wonderful. We’re wonderful together, and I just can’t believe that you don’t see it. Oh no, I think you do see it. You know that you’re a better baker than you were a king.”
He flinched.
I seized on this moment of weakness. “You’re just being proud. You can’t stand that someone else took your place, but in the end, what does it matter? You messed up the Revels; you said so yourself.”
“Hush, girl!” he barked at me, and the wand he usually flicked so delicately was now picked up from the table and swung with as much vigor as Hansel cutting down the wheat. Some unseen force of magic shoved my body backward and the arms of the rack swung down to catch me in bonds. I felt almost like a person was snatching me up from behind and plucking my feet right off the ground as the wood snapped around my ankles. I shrieked, disoriented.
Then I struggled. For once, this wasn’t what I wanted and he knew it. He was glaring down at the table.
“Let me go,” I said.
He rapped the table with his fingers. Then he looked up at me slowly.
“This conversation isn’t part of our game,” I said.
He seemed to drift far away even as he looked at me, and then he walked up to me. I locked on his eyes, still struggling, getting more annoyed the longer he kept being so silent and moving so slowly. It was seductive when I wanted to be seduced. It was irritating when I wanted to discuss our future.
He half-smiled. “You’re not afraid to defy me even a little, are you?”
“Maybe a little. You did just fling me backward and trap me and you have a history of surprising me. But I’m not letting it stop me.” I lifted my chin. “I have this feeling no one’s given you any outside perspective on your life in a long time. Well, you gave me some perspective on mine. So it’s only fair.”
He reached for a wisp of hair that would never stay in my braid, but always popped out above my ear, and pulled it gently between his fingers. I felt his touch through that little strand of hair. Even this made him snap his fingers back and rub them. My hair left pink lines on his skin. “In Ellurine,” he said, “the queen submits to the king in all things. That is her role on the stage of my homeland. I used to watch my mother play it perfectly. And I told myself, never. I never wanted that. And yet, it is so easy to become the thing we never wanted to be. It sneaks up on us when we’re not looking.”
“But it’s not too late to change back,” I said.
He tapped my bonds and I stepped down.
“I apologize, my Gretel…I could use help with the icing, after all. I can’t decorate the cakes half as well.”
I slipped on my dress and picked up a bowl and we said no more about it. But he still hadn’t addressed the real issue at hand.
Maybe it won’t be so bad to be a queen, I thought. I can still embroider and make cakes in my idle hours if I wish, can’t I? But if he wasn’t there at my side, it wasn’t the same. Maybe I was the one wishing for too much. Hansel said I always wanted my potential husband to be perfect. I suppose the Magus was perfect in every other way, and soon he woul
d be able to touch me, and maybe I would forget all about the time we spent in this kitchen, after all.
I watched him juggling a pan of toasted nuts and then a pot of melting chocolate and finally a bowl of whipping cream in short order, and I knew—I would miss this forever.
Chapter Thirteen
The Magus
That night, I put a little sleeping draught in Gretel’s wine. While she was sleeping, I slipped out of bed. I paused to admire her peaceful face, her cheeks pink and rosy from good food and sunshine. Her long golden hair was bound in a loose braid that fell across the layers of blankets that kept her safe and warm. She had changed so much since she first came to me. Every day, she looked healthier and more confident.
Before Gretel, I only knew the human girls that I lured to my fleeting dance. I seduced them in the dizzying chaos of the Revels.
I had never known this. A domestic life: calm, quiet, companionable. I had never been so attuned to the girls I danced with and held in my arms, as I was to this girl whom I could never touch. She always seemed to know what I needed.
Except this.
She wanted me to stay here, in this house that wasn’t my own, in this life that wasn’t my own. She wanted me to let Will remain king. I was downright offended when I pondered it, that she would consider this life worthy of me. That she had even suggested I should apologize to him. I might have made mistakes, but this was my world, not Will’s. I deserved to take it back.
She has no idea, I thought.
I had never seen the Wicked Revels under the rule of these humans. Tonight, I decided, with Samhain mere nights away, I would take the risk of scouting the situation.
Clad and cloaked in plain black garments, so different from the beautiful clothes I had worn as king, I summoned one of the horses and rode down the path I had not taken in three years. My eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness. I missed all of this; the brisk smoke-scented air of an autumn night and the moon high and bright in a clear sky. My pulse quickened as I drew closer. I assumed I would reach the Revels at the back of the forest, the king’s entrance, but instead I came upon the Three Precious Groves, the gateway to our realm where humans would normally enter, with leaves of silver, gold, and diamonds. I left my horse behind and continued on foot, skirting around the groves so I wouldn’t run into the handmaidens.
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