by Sofia Daniel
“Father used to heal sick horses with life-water all the time,” said Flora.
“What happened to him?” The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them.
She turned to me, her dark eyes flashing. “You mean, why didn’t he drink that water himself?”
Wincing at the anger in her voice, I raised both palms. “Sorry for sounding so insensitive. It’s just that Healer Tarax told me there was no cure for nightsbane, and I wanted to know if there were instances where the water wouldn’t work.”
“Please don’t take offense,” said Mr. Whittaker. “We’re all worried about Pokeweed.”
Flora walked ahead with her shoulders up to her ears, leaving Mr. Whittaker and me trailing after her. A copse of trees stood at the end of the meadow of garlic flowers, and she snapped a low branch off a tree and swished it with the sound of a whip.
“It’s like he said.” Bitterness traced Flora’s voice. “The water’s only available to those in the Prudence district.”
We continued through the forest, waiting for Flora to elaborate. Dappled sunlight shone through the gaps in the canopy, heating up my skin. I scratched at my arms and wiped a bead of sweat off my brow.
While we caught up, Flora slashed her branch over the trunk of a dogwood tree, sending bits of bark flying everywhere.
“You’d think they’d let a horse breeder live near the stables, but we lived in Courage, the fourth level of the Mound. That’s where Father got bitten by a draconope that had been attacking the foals.”
I chewed on my lip, wondering if Lady Gala’s portal to the Otherworld had let this monster slither into our realm. Draconopes were a type of faerie cursed with the body of a snake and used to devour human children in the days of Queen Maeve.
Shaking off a sense of impending dread, I asked, “Did your father have an apprentice that could have gone up to Prudence to get the life-water?”
“It was supposed to be me.” Her voice broke, and she rested a palm on the trunk of the dogwood tree. “I took a flying horse to the palace, but the guards wouldn’t let a half-blood through the wards without a chaperone.”
“Oh no,” I said with a pained sigh.
The hand holding the branch curled into a fist. “It’s why I hate this regime so much. Everything is stacked against those who aren’t members of the Royal Court, and no one cares about half-bloods, even when they’re trying to help a full-blooded faerie.”
Mr. Whittaker placed a comforting arm around Flora. I reached out and squeezed her bicep. Now her hostility toward Helen made sense. With Helen’s father being the head of the King’s Guard, it was no wonder some of her resentment seeped through to the remedial class.
We continued through the forest, offering Flora support until our path meandered toward a wall of two-story-high bushes with tiny, rose-pink berries in the distance. The sound of running water made my heart skip a beat.
“The well is behind the pepper trees,” said Mr. Whittaker. “Their secretions are toxic, but a sip of the water will take care of the poison.”
I spluttered. “What?”
“How much do you love me?” drawled a familiar female voice from behind the dense foliage.
I crept forward to a gap between the pepper trees and held my breath. Kneeling on the ground were three naked males. I recognized Prince Bradwell’s long, crimson hair. Next to him knelt Prince Caulden, who bowed his powder-blue head, and it looked like someone had hacked Prince Rory’s beautiful, russet hair.
Lady Gala paced up and down in her school uniform, staring down at them with the kind of contemptuous sneer she’d once reserved for me.
“More than the moon.” Prince Bradwell sounded desperate, making me wonder if he’d gotten himself poisoned, and she was withholding the life-water.
“I love her more,” said Prince Caulden.
“It’s me who loves her the most,” added Prince Rory.
Lady Gala chuckled, but there was no joy in the sound. “You’re loathsome creatures, slave to your pathetic swords.”
All three of them bowed their heads.
“August couldn’t help sneaking each morning out to paw at that repulsive organ. Someone took advantage of his weakness, and now he’s missing, presumed dead.”
My brows drew together. Since when was it wrong for a guy to touch his own dick in private?
“He was unfaithful.” She stopped pacing and placed her hands on her hips. “For your protection, I’m going to encase your traitorous appendages in ice.”
My stomach dropped. What the bloody fuck did that even mean?
All three of their heads snapped up, but it was Prince Rory who spoke first. “Gala, please don’t—”
“You’re the filthiest,” she snapped. “You betrayed me twice with that whore.”
“But you burned her,” whispered Prince Rory.
“And now I’m putting your sword on ice until my heat.”
She flicked her fingers and produced a penis-sized cage of ice consisting of about a dozen transparent cock-rings curving around toward a transparent cock-head. She had even included a little insert to go into the slit.
I tilted my head to the side and peered at the loop she had created to hold the testicles. For someone who thought dicks were disgusting, she had an alarmingly accurate knowledge of male anatomy.
Prince Rory gasped. “Gala, no—”
“Silence,” she roared.
I skittered back to take a deep breath and wrapped my fingers around Flora’s branch, ready to charge through the bushes and whip some sense into Lady Gala, but Mr. Whittaker grabbed my arm.
“What are you doing?” I hissed, just as Prince Rory cried out.
Lady Gala snapped at him to stop whining.
“The princes won’t hesitate to hurt you if you attack.” Mr. Whittaker pulled me back toward a tree filled with songbirds.
Opening my mouth to protest, I glanced in the direction of the voices.
“And you might not survive the poison long enough to escape and drink any of that water,” said the remedial teacher. “Mistress Ellyllon is aware of the hold Lady Gala has over the princes. She raised her concerns with Queen Titania’s secretary, who said the queen was happy her sons had chosen a girl with such good breeding.”
“That doesn’t sound suspicious at all,” muttered Flora.
I turned back to the pepper trees, wincing at Prince Rory’s moans and shuddering breaths. “What should I do? Pokeweed’s going to die if I don’t get that water.”
“We’ll return after dark,” said Mr. Whittaker. “I expect Lady Gala brought the princes here to cure them in case something went wrong with her ice enchantment.”
Frustration fizzled through my veins and made the surface of my skin prickle. If Lady Gala still couldn’t trust the princes after the loyalty enchantment, and after burning my supposed body, she had to be desperately insecure.
“He’s right,” whispered Flora. “The longer we linger out here, the higher the risk of us being caught sneaking about by invisible guards.”
With a reluctant nod, I turned on my heel and walked back to the orchard.
Mr. Whittaker wrapped a comforting arm around my shoulder, the same way he had done with Flora when she had talked about her father’s death. His silent strength brought tears welling up in my eyes.
Even though I’d absorbed Prince August’s magic, I was still powerless. Powerless to break his curse, powerless to help Pokeweed, and powerless to stop a maniac from freezing the brothers’ beautiful dicks. I blinked, and tears streamed down my cheeks.
“We’ll come back in a few hours,” whispered Flora.
Mr. Whittaker squeezed my shoulder.
As Flora walked ahead, I stared up into his kind features. Apart from his golden hair and sea-blue eyes, he looked more human than faerie but was as handsome as the Lumberjacks of Switzerland.
He didn’t have the exotic features of Elijah, but his kind and gentle personality made up for his lack of extreme good looks. Bes
ides, who wanted to mate with a guy with such a track record for betrayal?
“Are you alright?” Mr. Whittaker’s deep voice made my nipples tingle.
We walked through a clearing of daisies that reflected the sun’s heat. Sweat broke out across my brow, and my nerve endings tingled with the need to be touched. “Not really.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I slid my hand up his broad chest. “Everything feels so itchy.”
Stiffening, Mr. Whittaker sniffed at my hair. “Perhaps one of the curses that hit Pokeweed affected the fabric of your garments. You should remove them at once.”
Flora turned around, resting her hand on the trunk of a pair of intertwined kissing trees. “What are you two talking about?”
Her voice grated against my eardrums. She sounded just as screechy as Lady Gala.
I shook my head. “Could you just walk ahead and leave me here with Josiah?”
“Jo—” She reared back. “Mr. Whittaker. You need to step away from Unity. Now.”
“Nonsense.” The arm around my shoulder slipped down to my waist, and he pulled me into his hard body. “She’s just feeling faint. Once she lies down and loosens her clothing, I’ll give Unity what she needs.”
Flora grabbed my arm and tugged me out of Mr. Whittaker’s comforting grip.
“What are you doing?” I tried pulling away from her, but she tugged harder.
Mr. Whittaker clenched a fist. “Now, see here—”
“Stay away.” Flora swished her whippy branch at the remedial teacher.
“What are you doing?” I shoved Flora on the shoulder, but she wouldn’t let go of my arm.
“Prince August is missing.” She sprinted through the trees, pulling me along with her. “Did Pokeweed hide him away?”
“No.” I tried dragging my feet, but Flora had the strength of a girl used to wrangling with wild horses. One hard yank of my arm had me stumbling forward. If I didn’t keep up, she would drag me out of the woods and through the field of garlic flowers.
I glanced over my shoulder to find Mr. Whittaker, but Flora pulled me through a thicket of hazel, blocking my view of the path.
“You’re in danger,” she said as she darted through the tall stems of garlic flowers. “If any guards catch you in this state, you’ll end up their weeks’ entertainment.”
Her words drenched my heated skin like a bucket of ice water. I picked up my pace and jogged alongside Flora. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re in the first stages of a faerie heat. If you don’t find a suitable male within the next few hours, you’ll emit a scent that will carry through the wind.” She broke into a sprint, making me run faster. “At first, only the most powerful of faeries will smell it, but if none of them mate with you, your scent will become strong enough to attract weaker males.”
The tip of a giant dandelion leaf brushed over my arm, and I tried not to shudder. “What happens then?”
“My father once told me about what Queen Maeve did to her rivals.”
I gulped, wondering if she locked them in a room with satyrs or something.
Flora raced toward the edge of the garlic meadow, where a row of apple trees stood like sentinels. “She would keep them imprisoned for days until her scent reached even the lowest levels of the mound. Every male would go crazy with the urge to mate.”
“Then what happened?”
“After a week, the Queen released the rival into the wild. She and her ladies-in-waiting would watch the males fight to reach the faerie.” Her expression turned grim.
“So, the strongest male won?” I asked through gasping breaths.
“The poor female never survived the frenzy.”
A jolt of terror seized my spine, making my feet stumble over a garlic root protruding through the earth. I fell onto the ground, pulling Flora down with me. If I didn’t get out of these woods and back to the safety of Pokeweed’s tree, every single male in the academy would catch my scent, and Lady Gala would watch them tear me apart.
Flora let go of my arm and pulled herself to her feet. By now, she’d already nailed the importance of staying out of sight in my head. I wanted to reach the treehouse before my heat attracted the worst kind of faeries. My breaths calmed, and I stood.
As we approached the last clump of garlic flowers, she hissed, “Fucking hell.”
“What?” my voice trembled.
“A bunch of guardsmen are standing outside Pokeweed’s apple tree. One of them looks like the Duke of Medietas.”
Chapter 11
My legs collapsed. I landed on my knees behind the tip of a giant garlic root, my hands scrambling over its papery surface. Pokeweed’s treehouse stood several feet away, and the males in their pristine, white uniforms contrasted with its burned exterior.
Flora ducked behind the tall stalks. “Shit. If they catch a whiff of your scent…”
Between us stood multiple apple trees, including a row containing huge, golden fruit that had been grown into a low fence. Purple and white spheres made up the meadow’s canopy, each consisting of hundreds of smaller flowers and each pungent enough to disguise my smell.
A breeze blew through the meadow of tree-sized garlic flowers and into the orchard. One of the guards raised his head into the air like a hunting dog and turned in our direction.
Our eyes met. It was Helen’s father in all his white and gold finery. The thick canopy of Pokeweed’s tree placed his face in shadow, but there was no mistaking the snarl of white teeth.
Terror clenched at my heart, but my clit throbbed with the excitement of having caught the attention of a powerful male. A force I couldn’t control rooted my legs to the spot, and warmth gathered along my aching slit.
“They’ve seen us.” Flora yanked on my arm. “Get up!”
My legs parted, and my body jerked forward. I held onto the garlic bulb, my hips moving in a strange, music-less twerk. “I can’t move.”
In the distance, all the guards at Pokeweed’s apple tree turned, seeming to have caught my scent.
A human part of me that felt like it was drowning in a sea of lust screamed at me to get up and run, but the faerie instincts that took control of my body bit down at my lip and moaned.
“Come on.” Flora scooted down, shoved her shoulder beneath mine, and heaved me up.
As I rose, a flare of heat surged across my skin, and sweat trickled down my brow and into my eyes, blurring my vision. But that was nothing compared to the heat between my legs or the molten slickness of my folds.
We ran together through the meadow. Garlic and dandelion stalks blurred as we moved, and our panting breaths filled the air. The friction of my thighs rubbing against my sex only added to my heat, and in moments, my ears filled with the wet slapping sounds of my arousal.
I stumbled over a fallen stalk, but Flora steadied me before I fell.
“Keep going,” she whispered. “They might not have seen us.”
She was wrong.
She was too close. Everything about Flora grated against my nerves, from her cloying scent to the way her frantic breaths filled my ears. I pulled away to steal another glance at the powerful males by the apple tree, but her arm wrapped around my waist and held me to her side.
“Where are we going?” I whispered.
“Far from here,” she whispered back. “The last person you want to mate with is the Duke of Medietas. He disowned Helen the moment she lost her magic and didn’t lift a finger to get her out of the Dark Fae Prison.”
A beam of light shone through the tall flower stalks, and I ducked. “What about the others?”
“Do you really want to mate with one of those bastards?”
My mind rolled back to the guard in the palace dungeon, who had held his tiny penis between his thumb and forefinger while glamouring it to appear monstrous. “Come on, let’s go.”
Flora gave me an approving nod. “I doubt the duke would be pleased to have a mate already in so much trouble, especially one who’s mag
ic-less.”
“Right.” I picked up my pace. “We’ve got to find the nearest tree?”
“Why?”
“I’m going to Pokeweed’s.”
Flora stumbled over her feet. “To mate with him?”
“No.” If I told her about Prince August and any of the guards overheard, there was no telling the severity of my punishment. Queen Titania seemed the type to lock me up in a cage until my heat turned every male to a frenzy. A shudder ran down my spine. I had to get out of here.
We continued loping through the meadow to the rustling of stalks and the crackling of dried garlic skins underfoot.
“There’s a pear tree close to the edge of the meadow,” Flora whispered. “Will you be able to enter it?”
“Yes.” I tripped over a fallen stalk and landed with my ass in the air.
Flora yanked me to my feet. “I would stay and take care of your fever, but it’s dangerous.”
My mind raced over possibilities, including one where I pounced on my friend and tried to hump her leg.
Things hadn’t gotten that desperate yet as I had a plan. If I could reach the safety of a tree, I could offer myself up to Prince August and absorb more of his magic. By the time my heat had finished, I might be strong enough to rescue his three brothers.
“You can’t leave your hiding place until the heat is over,” she said.
“Alright.” I glanced out into the distance, where a tree about six-feet wide stood at the end of the orchard. Its branches hung low, laden with golden-brown pears the size of an adult’s head.
Flora stiffened. “They’re getting close!”
“Let’s bolt across the orchard.”
“And have them see you?” She gripped my arm. “We need the cover of the garlic flowers.”
The Duke of Medietas shouted for the guards to spread out, sending alarm ringing through my heart.
“They’re going to find us,” I whispered.
“Not if we keep running,” she snarled.
The more we dashed through the orchard, the more the stalks thinned, and the ground became hilly with the outline of clumping garlic. The distant sound of footsteps pounded through my ears, setting my nerve endings alight. I couldn’t keep running like this. Not when my core cried out to be filled and stretched by the powerful males at our heels.
