by Ella Fields
“Changers are thought to be nothing but fable. So rare, they’re more rumor than flesh.” But even as I spoke, images of her face, her hair, and darkness knew what else, changing in the foyer of Zad’s home snuck in.
You never told me you were a changer.
I didn’t know until I reached breaking point, you ignorant ass.
“Nothing in this goddesses’ forsaken continent is ever merely a rumor,” Raiden said vehemently. “You should know that by now. Six or seven months after I’d arrived, I accidentally saw her true form, but instead of bailing, I hung around, curious. Eventually, I told her I knew who she was, and we worked together.”
“The marriage.” My eyes flitted between his. “A setup.”
“It worked,” he said, dropping his lips to my forehead. “It worked.”
I closed my eyes, dizzy from the revelations, the regret and embarrassment and alarm. That I’d been fooled in this way, and he’d so easily called my bluff… “I hate you.”
“I love you.”
“You had sex with her too?”
“I’ve been with no one else since meeting you. Only you.” His lips rubbed across my skin, the sound of his deep inhale flattening my resolve as he groaned, quiet and rough. “Nova just wanted her old life back, and I wanted my new one.”
A throat cleared, but Raiden tipped my head back, his lips brushing over mine before he turned to Eline. “Yes?”
She stared at me as she said, “The prisoner is asking for you.”
I shoved Raiden off, marching to Eline. “Where is she?”
She hummed, eyes laughing. “Being prepared for the party in her pretty little cage.”
Raiden cursed. “Eline, fuck off.”
Hurt danced through her eyes, but I ignored him and snatched her wrist when she made to leave. “Party?”
She shrugged me off, a lone tear leaving her jeweled eye. “You didn’t hear?” She smiled at Raiden over my shoulder. “So your precious queen doesn’t know about your penchant for parties?”
She walked away before he could reach her, and Raiden raked his hands over his freshly cropped hair.
I wasn’t sure I could handle any more surprises. I wasn’t even sure how I managed the energy to ask, “Care to tell me what she was talking about?”
His teeth grazed his lip. “The harem, as well as some high royals of my court… they celebrate every full moon with a party. To aid in feeding the land.”
That was but a folly faerie tradition, but I refrained from informing him so. The chances of him already knowing were high, and he likely didn’t care. Sex was sex, and many people, both his and mine, had their fetishes.
But Truin would be there. That was all I needed to know, all the incentive I needed. “Have a proper dress brought to me,” I said, and then I returned to his rooms.
After all he’d just dumped on me, I needed more than a minute to digest.
Zad knew. He had to have known by now that his wife had been in cahoots with Raiden.
Yet he’d sent me away without telling me the debilitating truth. My chest squeezed, each expelled breath colder than the last the longer I thought about the lord and the king.
“And they call me the monster,” I said beneath my breath, dragging a wide-toothed comb through my tangled hair.
Raiden had sent handmaidens to help ready me for tonight, but I’d sent them away. I might’ve been embarrassingly blind when it came to matters of the heart, but I knew better than to trust anyone in this foreign, hostile land. One of them might have the urge and mettle to gouge a hidden dagger through my back, straight into my heart. Decapitation via a sharp, spelled necklace, perhaps. The hewn handle of a brush through the eye.
No, thank you.
For as miserable as I might’ve been, I rather liked being alive. Not to mention, I’d loathe to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing me bested or dead.
I’d been humiliated enough. If I was to enter the darkness, it would be at my own choosing, and I’d see it coming, or not at all.
Female laughter began to flood the stairwell outside Raiden’s rooms. I wasn’t sure where the king had been, but it hadn’t involved his own bed chamber. I’d been in here all day. Alone and stewing on every betrayal and best kept secret.
“Majesty,” a little voice said from the doorway.
Braiding the front of my hair, I knocked my eyes that way briefly. A little girl, no older than ten or twelve, curtsied in a cream tunic dress.
“Yes?” I said. My fingers were busy, but I still kept one eye on the golden-haired girl in the mirror.
She might’ve been just a child, but I was once a child capable of great destruction.
Packaging meant nothing.
Her voice shook a little, but she took one step forward. “His royal highness requests your presence in the ballroom.”
I finished braiding my hair, inspecting the way it crossed from ear to ear, the rest of my hair a flowing river of black waves. Turning on the stool, I gave the girl my attention. “And who are you?”
“My name is Denae.”
“Your affiliation to the king?” I stood, my deep blue gown of glittering silk flowing from the tops of my breasts to the tips of my toes.
My feet were bare, but no one in this wretched place seemed to wear shoes inside, and my boots would ruin the dress. It wasn’t what I would have picked, given the choice, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever worn either.
Denae chewed on her lip, her large blue eyes rounding as they traveled over my dress and gazed up into my face. “My mother works for him.”
He was a conniving, despicable, sneak of a male, yet I couldn’t keep my next heartbeat from dropping. “He’s your father then?”
She giggled. “I wish.” Dragging a dirty toe across the sandstone floor, she said, “My father works in the stables.”
I snuffed the relief that threatened to quake my knees. He could sire as many illegitimate heirs as he pleased. I’d need to get over it, just as I was getting over him.
“Very well then, Denae.” My dress scraped behind me over the floor as I met her in the doorway. “Would you care to show me where to go?” I could find it just fine on my own, but I found myself enjoying the way her eyes sparkled when she looked at me.
A little awe in a kingdom riddled with people trying to stare you dead went a long way.
“Yes, my queen.” She bobbed out of the way, curtsying toward the stairs outside.
I led the way, and she skipped behind me, racing in front once we’d reached the bottom.
“That dress sure is beautiful.”
“It’s not hideous, I’ll give your king that much.” She giggled again, stubbing her toe when I said, “I’ll have it taken to you when I’m finished with it if you’d like.”
Wincing, she glanced down at the graze on her big toe, then up at me. “Really?”
My lips wriggled. “Really.”
Her lashes fluttered, her freckle-lined mouth opening and closing. “But I won’t fit it.”
“It will not be long before you do.”
Dimples dented her cheeks as she grinned, displaying a crooked front tooth.
“Denae?” a brown-haired female called, coming around the corner. “Where have you been? It’s time for you to join the other children in the pool hut.” When she saw me, she raced over, coming to an abrupt stop. With a curtsy she shouldn’t have even bothered with, she muttered, “Majesty.”
I flicked my hand, then crouched down before Denae. “I shall leave it at the top of the stairwell.”
The brunette frowned at me as I rose and left them both behind, following the sound of laughter and the haunting strain of violins to the ballroom.
I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting. Champagne, ale, merriment, couples pairing off. There was all that, but there was also so much more.
Feeding the land indeed, and to the extreme those old stories suggested.
Naked males and females and men and women were lounging, dancing, eating,
and fucking.
Some in groups of three, others in clusters with any given number.
The musky scent of sex permeated, and I backed up, positive I had the wrong room. Raiden couldn’t mean to meet me here in what seemed to be the thick of this… celebration.
A strong set of hands landed upon my shoulders, my hair moved aside for Raiden’s lips to meet the skin of my cheek. “Not the party you were expecting?”
I struggled to remove my gaze from a group of males taking turns with a woman, and when I did, it fell on three females who were laughing and feasting on one another. “It’s fine,” I croaked.
“If you leave now, they’ll think you don’t approve of our customs.”
Of course, they would.
His teeth nipped at my earlobe, his breath too hot. “Come. Sit with me. We don’t have to take part.”
Left with little choice, I placed my hand in his, and allowed him to escort me across the room to an empty chaise. A chaise that had probably seen a variety of bare backsides and its share of bodily fluids. I tried not to cringe as the dress I’d promised Denae separated my ass from it.
Raiden lounged back, pulling me with him. “Try to at least appear relaxed,” he said through a crack in his lips, his eyes soaking in all the sights before him.
“Sure,” I said as though it were the easiest thing to do in a room filled with people fucking like insatiable beasts.
My breath quaked when I remembered the experience I’d had with my own. Perhaps I couldn’t judge much after all. That didn’t mean I wanted to take part.
Raiden smiled at a passing server, taking an ale from a gilded tray. “You disapprove?”
I shook my head when the server lowered the tray to me, and he moved on to another couple who were watching. Watching with their hands in each other’s undergarments.
Swallowing, I turned away. “I wouldn’t say that.” I settled deeper into the seat, into the curve of his muscular arm and side. “I simply prefer privacy when having my holes filled.”
Raiden coughed on his ale, beating at his chest. Setting it down, he turned to me, his eyes dancing.
“What?”
“You.” He gripped my face, bringing it to his. “I should like to fill them.”
“It’s too late for that,” I said, my voice all breath, my lips hovering too close to his.
“It’s not, and you know it.” His mouth met mine, the barest hint of a touch. “I’m so hard for you.”
“You’re in a room filled with sex,” I murmured. “You’d need to be dead not to be hard.”
His chuckle tickled my lips. “But I want you.”
Remembering my friend, and all the green-eyed asshole had done, the lies and the deception, I turned away and searched the room. “I thought Truin would be here.” Though I’d hate to think of how she’d react. She was only ten summers older than I was, but I was certain she was still a virgin.
“Later,” Raiden said, his fingers skipping across my bare arm. “I thought it best to wait until it… calmed down.”
A woman screamed as two men impaled her, her head thrown back as one licked the column of her throat. One was beneath her on a red rug, the other behind, and it was impossible to keep my expression neutral when I glimpsed the size of them.
We sat in silence, the tension between us burning hotter than the sun that scorched this kingdom with each minute that passed.
“Walk with me,” Raiden finally said, standing and taking my hand.
I wasn’t sure we’d stayed long enough to leave, but I didn’t care. Grateful to escape the moans and grunts and scents, I followed Raiden out of the room and onto a balcony.
People were out here, too. All males, judging from the quick glance I gave them as they fooled around in the shadows.
“Have you ever been with a male?”
“Once,” Raiden said, tugging me around the corner onto another balcony, and around and around we went until we eventually reached a set of stairs.
We climbed them, and I shouldn’t have, but I kept trying to picture it. “When?”
“I was seventeen summers, drunk, and it just kind of happened. It wasn’t bad, but I find I prefer females.”
“At one of those parties?”
“Yes.”
“Did your parents ever take part?” I couldn’t imagine that.
He laughed. “No.”
I didn’t understand how it was custom then. Surely, it would’ve been something I’d heard of long before now if so. “How did this become some type of tradition?”
Scratching the back of his neck, Raiden sighed when we reached a balcony. The balcony to his rooms, I realized belatedly. “Me. Eline and I were… rebellious teens, and I guess it just stuck.”
At the mention of her, I remembered. “She wasn’t there.”
“She no longer participates.” His voice was firm. Firmer than I’d have liked.
With a tug, I found myself plastered to his bare chest, my hands spreading over it. “My queen.”
Those words coming from his mouth sounded wrong.
But his hands crawling up my back, undoing the ties of my dress, felt deliriously right.
After a dragging moment of staring, his head lowered, and our mouths collided.
With a groan I thought I might never hear again, he walked me backward inside, my dress falling in a puddle near the doorway, and we fell over his bed.
He climbed over top of me, his lips greedy on my neck. A moment later, he paused, a low grumble leaving him as his head lifted. Eyes aglow with disgust, he rasped, “He’s marked you.”
They would’ve been faint, Zad’s puncture marks from when he’d fed from me, if they’d remained at all. Still, I’d known he could scent it, and I’d forgotten. I hadn’t planned to let him get this close. At all.
“You can waste time complaining, or you can do what you brought me in here to do,” I said, my voice breathy.
His jaw gritted. He stared down at me, his brows low and his eyes hard. “How many times?”
“Enough to make you a distant memory.”
His brows jumped, his grin menacing as he reached between my thighs. It soon fell, his lips slack as he ran his fingers through me. “You’re extremely aroused.”
“Just because I do not wish to be passed around like a good pipe does not mean it didn’t affect me.” I licked my teeth, rocking onto the finger he inserted inside me. “Your plan worked.”
He stopped moving. “It was not a plan.”
“I don’t care for your lies right now.” I wriggled my hips. “Let’s go already.”
He removed his finger, his eyes sinking into mine. “I’m trying, I really am, but these…” He touched the skin where Zad’s canines had pierced. “Why?”
“He needed…” I stopped. “No. I don’t need to explain anything to you.”
Raiden’s nostrils flared. “He fed from you then? After the battle?”
I didn’t answer, couldn’t. The haze had broken, and in the aftermath, every bruised part of me awoke, screaming.
His eyes softened a little. “Are you okay?”
I swallowed thickly. “Perfect.” But my lungs emptied as I remembered how it felt to be encased in his arms.
Cherished, protected, vital, and loved.
I pushed Raiden off me, drawing in breath after breath. My hands tore into my hair, ripping at the braid.
Zad’s continued and increased presence in the city. In the castle. All these years, all this time, I’d ignored that primal, magnetic force. I’d accepted him with careful distance, thinking he was just another sly royal in search of more.
I’d thought so very wrong. He hadn’t been searching.
He’d been waiting.
“Audra? What is it?” Raiden’s hand touched the small of my back, and I launched off the mattress, stumbling into the bathing chamber.
Eternally my queen.
His.
To him, I’d been his, and darkness only knew how long he’d been waiting fo
r me to make him mine.
Staring at the pale face in the mirror, I counted each breath, willing my heart to beat properly. To slow down. It couldn’t, not while accepting what I shouldn’t. Like a steaming poker had been shoved inside my chest, everything burned and swelled and threatened to incinerate.
Painted paler from fear and sorrow, the face that stared back at me was one I failed to recognize.
I knew what I had to do. I knew, and still, it felt impossible—unfair that what I needed wasn’t easily attained or kept.
And how I’d even so much as allowed Raiden to touch me filled me with a shame so hot, I wanted to scream. The lies built upon more lies, the black tunnel of confusion he continuously swept me into with just the right look, a caress of his fingers… I’d never loathed myself or the male more.
Walking back into the room, resolved to end this charade already, I found Raiden sprawled on the bed, hands tucked behind his head, brows drawn as he watched me near. “What was that?”
“Me,” I said. “Remembering.”
“Remembering what?” he asked, impatient.
“That I shouldn’t be here.” I kicked the dress out into the doorway, then slipped into my own, which had been laundered and folded neatly on the wicker bureau.
“Audra, stop.”
A bloodcurdling scream, followed by another and another, clawed at my ears, my soul, and I grabbed my boots, racing down the stairs and through the winding halls.
Each twist of a corner stole my breath, my feet unable to move as fast as I willed them, as I needed them to.
Another scream, fainter this time, coming from the ballroom. I turned back, skidding and shoving past people into the room. “Truin?” I panted out, my eyes frantic as they searched.
Some mating couples stopped, confused, and others didn’t bother.
She screamed again, the sound cut off as I turned and backtracked, my hands shaking so hard I dropped my boots.
Raiden was already there with six of his guards when I finally found her on one of the balconies outside the ballroom. Bound and gagged, Truin laid upon the sandstone, and my heart turned to ash at what surrounded her.
Five males and blood. So much blood, she wasn’t even conscious.
