by Amy Sumida
The Dragon King surfaced, water sluicing off his sculpted body as he stood. With casual movements that were nonetheless breathtaking, he slicked back his hair and wiped the water from his eyes. Gleaming, golden-yellow eyes open, Arach stepped forward, muscles rippling as more of his magnificent body emerged. He climbed the steps. Sunlight gleamed off his wet skin. I made a pathetic sound. Then I attempted the impossible: to track every drop of water as it slid down his body. But there were too many of them, going to too many glorious places. I finally gave up and focused on Arach's tight abs. Gleaming, hard, begging for me to—
“Vervain?” Arach asked as he leaned down to look in my face. “Are you all right?”
“Huh?” I blinked, coming out of my daze. “Yeah, sure, just fine.”
“I'm so glad you talked me into building this pool. It's like the hot springs but with room enough to swim. Just glorious.”
You'd think that swimming in what was basically a gigantic Jacuzzi in the heat of Summer would be torture, and it would be if you weren't a Fire Faerie. For us, it was bliss. Hey, Arach and I are dragons; we enjoy taking a dip in molten rock—a bubbling pool on a hot summer day is a cool dip by comparison.
“I'm glad you're happy with it,” I said.
And Arach wasn't the only happy faerie. Several members of our court were out there with us, either lounging on the wooden furniture or swimming. Fionnaghal and Taog had brought their three children, one of whom I'd named Dexter's daughter after. I'd thought it was only fair since Fionnaghal had named her other daughter after me. Deidre, the Hidden-One girl, had been so excited to learn that the nurial shared her name. Hidden-Ones love nurials because they're one of the few animals who aren't afraid of them. A fact that Dexter exhibited by jumping into the pool near the Hidden-One children.
Yeah, the pool was going to have to be cleaned anyway. At least the heat would keep it fairly hygienic. Or turn it into bacteria soup. I frowned at the thought. Thank goodness faeries can't get sick.
The children shrieked gleefully when Deidre, the nurial, jumped in after her father. Little Vervain wasn't so little anymore, she was the tallest of her siblings, taller even than my boys. She had four arms, two legs, and a tail, all covered in golden-brown fur. She swam after the doggy-paddling nurials—their six legs speeding them through the water—while her stockier siblings chased after her.
Deidre, the Hidden-One child, had six legs just like the nurials, but her legs were thick like an elephant's and covered in greenish-gray skin. She didn't swim too well and had to cling to the sides when she ventured into the deep end, but she could float. Then there was Daoir, the single boy in the brood. He only had two arms and two legs, and his hands bore three fingers apiece, but he had an impressive pair of tusks that swept out of his wide mouth and horns that went down the center of his head to the ridge of plates on his back. His yellow eyes were bright against the dark green of his skin.
“Daoir, be careful with your tusks-s-s,” Taog, Daoir's father, called out from his lounger. Yellow fluid dripped from his teeth as he lisped past them. “Don't hurt the nurials-s-s.”
“I know, Dad,” Daoir grumbled as he made it to the shallow end.
“Don't give me that tone,” Taog chided. “With great tusks-s-s come great res-s-spons-s-sibility.”
I blinked. Did Taog just quote Spiderman?
Then a pack of Phookas ran by, whooping and hollering.
“No running!” Neala, their mother, shouted after them.
The pups were only eight-years-old but they were the size of teenagers and had attitudes to match. This meant that they pretended not to hear their mother and went straight to the deep end of the pool to cannonball en masse. The Hidden-One kids growled at being splashed, then went after the Phookas. A water battle ensued.
Neala sighed and shook her head as she joined Arach and I. “Perhaps you should make a separate pool for the children, My King. It looks as if they're taking over.”
Arach frowned at the churning water. “Perhaps I should.”
Then he roared to get the children's attention. They all went silent and turned to stare at their king.
“There will be no rough-hiding in the pool!” Arach declared.
“It's roughhousing,” I whispered.
Arach looked over at me with a confused frown. “Why would it be roughhousing? There is no house involved. There are, however, ample hides in danger.”
“A rough house was a place where brawls broke out a lot,” I explained. “Originally, it meant: to behave as a person who inhabits a place like that. Then it was altered to mean boisterous play.”
Arach grimaced at me, then turned back to the children, who were waiting patiently for him to continue. Not even children rush the Dragon King. “There will be no roughhousing in the pool or pool area. That is water you are in. Water! Do you understand that you are risking your immortal lives by swimming in it? If one of you should go under and no one noticed because of this unacceptable behavior, that child could die.”
The children gaped at him.
“Way to take the fun out of swimming, babe,” I muttered.
“Risking eternal death on a battlefield is admirable, but in a swimming pool it's simply idiotic,” Arach continued undeterred. “And if one of you dies, I will be very angry!”
“Just be more careful.” I laid a hand on Arach's arm and pushed him back with a glare. “You can play but you need to remember that you can't be as wild as you are on land. Okay?”
A chorus of, “Yes, Queen Vervain,” and “Sorry, King Arach,” came from the children.
Arach nodded crisply.
The children went back to playing, just not so violently.
“Well done,” Neala commended.
“Thank you,” Arach and I both said, then grimaced at each other.
“I was speaking to both of you,” Neala clarified. “King Arach, you scared them, which they needed, then, Queen Vervain, you calmed them enough to allow them to return to their fun.”
“In the Human Realm, we call that God Cop Bad Cop.” I chuckled.
“Perhaps I should have made the pool bigger,” Arach noted as he reclined on a lounger.
“There's plenty of room for swimming.” I waved a hand at the adults who were still in the water, completely unaffected by the children or the roughhousing.
“I think I'll just lie here awhile with my wife until the waters are calmer.” He extended a hand to me. “Why haven't you removed your robe yet?”
Neala secretly grinned at me and headed for Fionnaghal.
I slipped out of my robe, revealing my one-piece bathing suit.
Arach frowned. “I thought you were going to wear the one that tied on?”
“I'm not wearing a string bikini in public,” I said for the hundredth time. “That's for when we go to the hot springs or have a midnight swim when no one's around.”
“I have no idea why you're so shy about your body,” he grumbled as he drew me down onto the lounger beside him. “You're a shifter. You get naked every time you shift.”
I had to lean half on him, which wasn't such a tragedy. I hooked my leg over one of his and snuggled against his warm, wet body. “Years of negative programming, I suppose.”
“What does that mean?” His finger trailed over the mounds of my breasts, then sank into my cleavage.
“That television, magazines, and movies have presented me with an image of the perfect female body since I was a little girl, and that perfect body is not my body.” I fished out his fingers. “You shouldn't paw at me in front of our people. It's not becoming of royalty.”
“Our people are pawing at each other.” Arach glanced around pointedly. “Why must I deny myself if they don't?”
I took a look around. Sure enough, several Fire Faeries had paired off to revel in the skimpy attire that swimming required. Hands were wandering and grasping as if they were behind closed doors. Another glance at the children showed that they couldn't care less. Still...
“If s
wimsuits start coming off, I'm going to say something,” I growled. “This is not appropriate.”
“A Thaisce, it's a warm, beautiful day and we're lying outside in barely any clothing. This is completely natural behavior. Please, get over this negative programming and let your husband touch you since you've denied him the joy of seeing more of your body.”
“You just saw all of my body a couple of hours ago. You tasted it too.”
“As if that would satisfy me,” he huffed and pinched my nipple through the spandex.
“Hey!” I slapped at his hand. “When did you become a dragon pervert?”
Arach sighed deeply. “There is nothing perverted about wanting to touch my wife, no matter where we are. I'm not trying to copulate with you in front of the court, Vervain. I just want to lay my hands on you as only I am allowed to do—at least, here, in Faerie.”
He's right, Faerie spoke into my mind suddenly. This is nothing. Before you came, they used to fornicate in the fields in front of each other.
“What?” I blinked in surprise: both at her sudden interruption and her revelation.
“We did,” Arach confirmed, letting me know that I hadn't been the only one to hear Faerie's voice. “Sex is natural, A Thaisce. And there's nothing like having sex in the sun-warmed grass while other faeries do the same nearby. The air becomes charged with eroticism.”
It's also good for the land, Faerie added.
“Excuse me? How is that good for the land?”
“It's similar to the way our lovemaking in the magma pool brought fertility back to the kingdom,” Arach explained. “Our people can add their magic to the land directly.”
Stop slut-shaming, Vervain, Faerie chided.
“First of all, I'm going to have words with Roarke about teaching you things like that,” I huffed. “Second, slut-shaming implies that the person being shamed is a slut. I don't get it. If you want to say it's wrong to call someone a slut for being sexually promiscuous, there should be a term for it that doesn't include the word slut. In short, don't say that again.”
Fine, Faerie grumbled, but you know what I mean. There is nothing wrong with their behavior. Get over yourself.
“I've lived here for years and no one has ever told me there used to be orgies in the woods,” I muttered.
There weren't orgies. Orgies are when everyone has sex with each other, Faerie argued. The Fey just had lots of sex in public.
“Okay.” I rolled my eyes. “If people want to have sex near each other, out in the open, that's their prerogative. I, however, am not going to do that.”
No, you'll just have sex with multiple men at one time, Faerie countered.
“Now, that was shaming,” I pointed out. “Not slut-shaming since I'm not a slut, but you were trying to shame me for having sex with my husbands just to make your point. Bad form, Faerie.”
Yeah, okay, that was rude, she conceded. Still, give the Dragon King a grope, girl. What's wrong with you? I know he's making you wet in all sorts of ways.
Arach chuckled. “Am I now?”
“I can't believe we're having this conversation,” I whined. “Fine, go ahead and grope.”
“I think I'll wait,” Arach said contrarily. “I find that I don't want an audience after all.”
“Oh for goodness sake,” I muttered as I stood up.
“Where are you going?” Arach's hand hung in the air, reaching after me.
“To swim.” I headed to the pool. “And don't be talking in my head while I'm underwater,” I added to Faerie. “You could make me choke.”
You should be choking on—
“Don't you dare finish that sentence!”
Chapter Eighteen
“Are there pheromones in the air?” I asked Arach as we rode to the Castle of Eight later that afternoon.
“Are there what?”
“Pheromones,” I repeated. “You know, that stuff people ooze that makes other people horny.”
“People ooze horny stuff?” Arach asked, aghast. “How big are the horns?”
“Oh, don't act as if you don't know what horny means.”
Isleen, on the seat across from us, chuckled under her breath. “I believe the Queen is talking about a chemical that humans and some animals produce; it inspires intercourse.”
“How could it possibly do that?” Arach asked in a dubious tone.
“I believe through smell but I'm not certain,” Isleen said. “We Fey don't produce it. Frankly, we don't need it.”
Arach smiled smugly at me. “See, A Thaisce, we don't need to ooze chemicals to arouse each other.”
“Then why are you randier than normal and why is Faerie bugging me about letting you grope me in public?” I demanded.
Arach frowned thoughtfully, then murmured, “I don't know.”
“Faerie?” I asked.
Nothing.
“Faerie?”
I don't know either, okay? Faerie growled. It's probably just a coincidence.
Something shivered in my belly and not in a good way. “I wonder if this has something to do with the meeting we're heading to?”
“Faerie?” Arach asked.
I don't know that either. I've been a little distracted lately.
“Distracted by what?” I asked in shock.
Things. It was a verbal shrug. Life. The Fey are flourishing. Every kingdom is doing well. Babies who were born this Spring are thriving, everything is peaceful, and my realm is in full bloom. There is so much beauty here that I can't stop admiring it.
“That's true,” Arach said to me. “The Faerie Realm is doing better than it has in centuries, millennia even.”
I frowned and stared out the window at the Forgetful Forest. It looked the same as it always did to me: enormous trees moving gently with their breaths, the echoes of unusual animals, and the fecund scent of both living and dying things. We were approaching the Castle of Eight, with its curtain wall of living trees, their trunks extended magically to merge and form a circle around the largest tree in the forest. The extended trunks were topped by battlements and manned by soldiers from every elemental kingdom. Even the Dark Kingdom had begun sending their people to serve; I noted a Farinne-Sidhe on the wall, his wings like shadows behind him.
We passed beneath the raised portcullis and through the long passage into the courtyard. The seven trees that formed the outer wall were as hollow as the central one, serving as housing for soldiers and castle staff, and the courtyard between those trees and the main one held gardens to help those various faeries feel more at home. Each garden had an elemental theme and grew plants from a specific kingdom. There used to be four of them but now, there were five. King Cian had added a Dark garden to the collection; a gleaming, onyx obelisk stood at its center.
The courtyard was full of faeries as usual. Beautiful Bean-Sidhe with hair flowing down to their knees glided by on the arms of handsome men with butterfly wings. Dryads twirled their twig hair with long, slender fingers as they slithered around on their root-like legs. A Leanan-Sidhe paused to curtsy to us as our carriage rolled by, her vicious nails clutching at the sleeve of the Selkie man escorting her. His large, seal eyes watched us curiously for a moment but his attention was rapidly regained by the lovely Leanan-Sidhe.
Our carriage came to a halt before the steps of the central tree—steps formed of the tree's roots. Most of the architectural details inside the tree were made in a similar fashion—bits of living trunk magically coerced into shapes that suited the inhabitants. I'd stayed in a branch once—my suite was literally inside a tree branch—where the furniture grew from the floor.
“It looks like we're getting a royal escort,” I noted when I spotted the man on the steps.
Whenever we visited the Castle of Eight, a guide would be waiting on the steps to escort us to wherever we needed to be. Since the central tree was the size of a skyscraper, this was probably done out of necessity and not simply royal etiquette. Except for this time, our escort was royal—the High Prince Lugh. He stood
with his hands behind his back, looking very princely with his snow-white hair streaming down his broad shoulders and his golden eyes gleaming eagerly—belying his calm pose. When that metallic stare landed on Isleen, Lugh grinned and gave up on the pretense to run down the steps. He opened the door before the waiting attendant could and held a hand out to Isleen.
