I passed through the grove of silver, into a grove where the trees had leaves with a golden shimmer. I could hear the music getting louder and closer. Here, another faery woman waited for me. She had golden hair that fell to her waist, and a blue dress adorned with fresh flowers.
“Good evening,” she said. “Well, well. A new princess to dress. It’s been a while. I thought Alexandra was the last. I was surprised when the King said we would bring the revels back to this gate.”
“The revels travel around?” I asked.
“Yes, the revels go where they are needed. And you certainly need some reveling, if anyone ever did, I’d say.”
“Am I dreaming?”
“You’re not exactly dreaming.”
I could tell she wasn’t going to give me a real answer to any of my questions.
“What is your name, Princess?”
“Evaline. Or, just Eva.”
“Princess Eva. I am here to adorn you with jewels so you will gleam like the stars.”
She walked behind me, and draped a heavy gold necklace around my throat. As with the dress, the jewelry seemed to appear out of nowhere. Gold bands fit close to my neck like a collar and draping stones fell across my collar bones and down, almost between my breasts. Gold bangles followed, adorned with tiny bells, so every movement of my hands made a small jingling sound.
She slipped my feet through anklets that were just the same. And then, she let my hair down. She put a wreath of tiny golden vines in my hair and her fingers reached under my locks, up to the nape of my neck, and gently pulled down, shaking my hair out. She wove little trailing golden vines through my hair. I stood stiffly, the gold heavy on my body, but at the same time, I felt lighter than I had ever felt.
“I’ll bet you have never looked so much the princess as you do now,” she said. “Go on. They’re waiting.”
It was the same thing my first attendant had said.
I kept getting a little tickle down my spine, a small urgent voice saying, Maybe you shouldn’t do this.
But the music tugged me onward. And the second faery was right. For the first time in my life, I felt like a princess. My gold and jewels gleamed, my skirts rustled, and even my steps and movements grew more graceful, more conscious of myself. My entire body felt transformed into something tantalizingly free. I wished I had a mirror to see myself. If I was an obedient daughter, I would turn back, but my feet carried me forward.
Past the golden grove, I reached a forest where all the trees had translucent leaves that shimmered like diamonds. I was getting impatient to reach the music, but a third faery was waiting.
She was darker than the others. Her hair was jet black and very long, well past her waist. Her eyes were an uncanny pale shade in the moonlight, although the darkness washed everything out, so I couldn’t guess how they would look by daylight. She was holding a mask, with edges shaped like leaves. They were leaves, actually, I realized now, but they were very soft, carefully formed into the proper shape to fit around my face.
“Princess,” she said. “I am here to give you your mask.”
The way she said it would have made me nervous, even if I hadn’t remembered Alexandra’s words to me. They were finally starting to make sense.
“When you are here, your mask is your self,” she said. “if you give away your mask, you will belong to the king.”
“Oh…”
She lifted her hands to tie the mask around my face.
“But, no one can take my mask from me?” I confirmed. “I can only give it?”
“No. It absolutely must be your decision. You will be perfectly safe and come to no harm as long as you never give up your mask. That is the rule of the revels.”
I nodded. “I’m just here to dance to the music.”
“Then, you are ready.”
I walked forward, leaving the grove where the leaves sparkled like diamonds. The path now led to the bank of a wide, lazy river. Across the river, I could see lights in the trees and sometimes the flutter of a dancing figure. A small boat was waiting for me, tied to a stubby tree near the shore. Standing inside the boat was the most gorgeous man I had ever seen.
He was all slender muscle, his body shown off by a trim jacket that fastened with gold buttons. He didn’t look like any human man I had ever seen. Clearly, he was a faery. I had never seen a faery man before, and yet I would’ve known, even if his ears hadn’t had slight points. He had a head of thick dark curls that I instantly wanted to touch, and his lovely golden eyes drank in the sight of me like I really was the most beautiful girl who had ever been born, although I knew I was no faery. I suppose, with the mask, it didn’t matter as much. He bowed at the waist and then held out a hand to me.
“Princess,” he said. “I’ve been waiting so long to see you.”
“You have?”
“Oh, yes. I thought you would never grow up. I have danced with all of your sisters, but I’m hoping the best has been saved for last. Climb in. You like the music, don’t you? I can see you cocking your head to hear it, even while I’m speaking to you.”
“Yes,” I admitted. “My mother never lets us listen to any music except in church.”
He laughed. “You are in for the night of your life.”
I took his hand and stepped into the boat. It swayed under my feet, but he was steady. He was very tall and sturdy, and seemed even larger up close. As long as I gripped his hand, I didn’t stumble. He lowered us both down, onto two bench seats that faced each other. My knees were between his knees; there wasn’t quite enough space to avoid it. I felt the warmth of his skin brushing mine, and I smelled some exotic scent—an unknown spice. He took up the oars and started to row us to the opposite shore.
A cold breeze blew across the water. The dark points of my breasts stood out against my white dress.
His eyes raked over me, and he was intensely beautiful. He took my breath away, looking at me that way, as if he already knew me and treasured me. “What is your name, Princess?”
“I’m Eva. Evaline. Princess Evaline.” I was stumbling over my own tongue, between the music and the barest touch of his legs against my bare knees. I had never even been so close to a man with a chaperone, much less all alone in a small boat.
“Princess Evaline…soon we will begin, and we won’t stop until your shoes are worn through.”
“How long will that take?” It sounded a little like a threat, I thought.
“You won’t even notice the time going by, I promise.” He laughed again. “I was warned about the princesses of Torina,” he said. “You are so very careful. Your sisters told me that your mother is averse to all delights.”
“Well…sort of,” I admitted. It didn’t seem right to complain about my mother to a stranger, but I didn’t have my sisters to complain to anymore either, and I was tired of being expected to be a saint who never complained and never had any fun. “I don’t see what’s so bad about dancing. It’s just plain cruel of her to make us stay in our rooms when the rest of the court gets to dance. At least…she could let us watch.”
“Watch? No, it is never enough just to watch. I’m glad I get to introduce you to the pleasures of music and dance and perhaps…other things.” He brought the boat to the opposite shore, and then he leaned forward toward me. I thought he was going to touch me, or even kiss me, and I went rigid. I certainly should not let him do anything like that.
Then he grabbed the rope that was behind me and jumped out, tethering the boat again.
He offered me his hand again. “Milady. Welcome to the revels.”
He kept hold of my hand as he led me through an archway of vines and to a broad clearing where the ground was packed hard by all the dancing feet. My eyes hardly knew what direction to go. Several hundred of the fair folk were dancing to the music. The ladies wore all sorts of beautiful clothing, from gossamer silks that flowed to their feet to elaborate dresses adorned with flowers and ribbons. Long hair flowed free. A few high elves were there, in fine court dress, not dancing but
just watching the proceedings haughtily while sipping wine. Goblins, too, looking like vagabonds in their shabby clothes and dirty bare feet, with laughing mouths full of fangs.
But most of them were faeries, and although some might favor the elves, I thought faeries were the most attractive of all people. They had wild beauty in their eyes, strong slender bodies, grace in every movement.
They could also get you into a lot of trouble. But as long as I kept my mask, I thought, I would be safe, because faeries can’t lie.
Many of the women wore masks, while none of the men did. But I was pretty sure I was the only human, male or female.
“Why am I only the human?” I asked the king.
He grinned. “Because humans don’t come to the revels unless we invite them. They don’t know how to get here.”
“Why did you invite me?”
“Because you needed us. Don’t you?” He swung me over to a table with numerous bottles of drink and poured me some wine. The dance was enough of a spectacle, but the food and drink were also something to behold. Of course, if my mother didn’t like us to dance, she was even more strict about us drinking alcohol. And she liked our meals to be humble as well, but here was a table spread with fruit and desserts drenched in syrup and honey, roasted meats dripping with fat, cheese tarts and bowls of olives from the southern coast. Some of the dancers stopped to nibble on the food, but one faery man was feeding olives to a girl, dangling them above her head so she had to lift up to bite them like a begging cat. All the while, his hand was beneath the edge of her dress, fondling her breast.
My eyes widened and I looked away. The king pulled me toward him with a laugh. “Too soon, eh? The cicada has just woken up from its long sleep?”
The musicians were close to the liquor, and they were what I really wished to see. I took the wine glass, but my eyes were on them. The deft hand pounding the drum, the fingers dancing the length of a flute, the man blowing on the pipes, the bow dancing on the strings of the fiddle. The fiddler stepped forward to take a solo, the other dancers pausing to give him the center of the wooden stage. They clapped; the dancers shrieked with glee as the music grew almost too fast for them to keep up with.
My feet were already tapping. Some of the other faeries were looking at me with approval. As they danced by, they cried, “Welcome, Princess! Join our dance!”
“You waste no time, do you?” the king asked.
“Can’t we dance now?”
“Anything you wish. This will wait.” He put my wine down again and took me into his arms.
My body responded immediately to his. He was easily a foot taller than me, his body warm and protective and so very solid. There was just a slip of fabric between my naked skin and his strong form.
So this is what it’s like to dance with a man. I had been a little chilled before, but now I was instantly warm.
His eyes swept over me again.
“You are different from your sisters, aren’t you?” he whispered.
“I’m my mother’s only blood child. She was a stepmother to the rest of them.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean—you feel the music…” His hand slid down my bare back and rested there, in the slight hollow, as he spun me around. “I wonder if you are the one I’ve been waiting for…”
“Waiting for…what?”
“Close your eyes, Princess.”
I did. I let him lead my body through the motions while my ears drank in the wild, merry music. It was the best thing I had ever heard in my life. I felt like I was physically drinking it, like the wine itself, feeling it slide down and burrow into my heart and gut. He moved me faster and faster, in a swirl of dizzying motion.
“Feel that?” he asked. “Feel the energy inside you loosening? It radiates from the core of your soul. Anyone who looks at you can see it, and my people are admiring you tonight. It feeds us, to see your joy.”
I opened my eyes. “It’s like all my dreams have come true.”
“And so they have…for tonight.”
“How many times will I be allowed to come here?”
“Every night, if you like.”
Until I get married. Father hadn’t mentioned it yet. But now that I was eighteen, I knew he would be trying desperately to marry me off quickly, to whisk me away from this enchantment that wore holes in my shoes, although I’d heard him grumbling that there were not many good prospects on the market right now.
That didn’t sound promising for me.
I wasn’t looking forward to marrying some foreign prince, but the only alternative was giving my mask to the king and letting him possess me. The idea gave me a forbidden thrill, but I would never act on it. I loved it here, but it was a dream. In the faery realm, time could stop, and dances could last forever. I would never give up my real world and the people I loved to live in a dream.
Chapter Three
Evaline
When the servants presented my mother with my scuffed and torn slippers, she questioned me with tears streaming down her face.
“Eva, please—when your sisters went dancing, I was already in fear for their immortal souls, but they were not my own flesh and blood! I beg you, tell me how this happened!”
I had just had the best night of my life, and now here I was again, all laced up and covered from head to toe. My sleeves were so stiff that I couldn’t even lift my arms above my head. But last night, the King of the Revels had entwined his fingers with mine and lifted my hands to the stars.
I knew that if I wanted to see him again, I would have to do the unthinkable, and lie to my mother.
All my sisters have lied before me, and they turned out all right.
“Mother,” I said. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I’m not the one dancing? That maybe the faeries are stealing my shoes?”
She knelt on the ground in front of me, her drab gray skirt spread around her like a wilting flower. She clutched my hands. “Do you swear that, Eva?”
Her huge eyes pierced me to the core, but if I faltered, I would never hear the music again. “I swear,” I said. Forgive me.
I had never given her cause not to believe me, but she looked at me with a moment of uncertainty. Then she slowly got to her feet. “I know you would never lie to me, Eva. But I’m still very worried. Your father is trying to find someone to marry you as soon as he can, but currently the options are not ideal. I don’t want you to go to a kingdom that has a reputation for being rife with debauchery or will do nothing for our connections. I would much rather you joined the convent.”
I was horrified. “The convent? But—then I would never see anything of the world.”
I knew that plea fell on deaf ears. “You don’t need to see the world,” Mother said. “If you could only learn to be content with the world you have been given!”
What kind of world would a convent be?
I was certainly not content with the world I had been given. I needed more. Much more. Even if it was wrong.
Before long it was midnight. I was dancing to that marvelous music in the king’s arms, trying to forget the dreadful fate that threatened my daily life.
On the second night, I noticed that a girl without a mask slipping off down a forest path. And then, a little after that, a man followed her, with her mask in his hand.
I realized that was where you went if you gave up your mask, into the darkness of the forest. But what happened there?
The king caught me looking.
“You are more curious than your sisters, aren’t you?” he asked. “I see your eyes roving there… What do you think happens?”
I flushed. “I would belong to you.”
“What do you think that means?”
“I—I really don’t know.”
He ran his fingers along my jaw line, from one edge of the mask to the other.
“You are beautiful, Evaline,” he said. “And I don’t think you know it, which is the best kind of beauty. I would love to make you my princess. And once you gave y
our mask to me, you would be allowed to venture down that path. The handmaidens of the forest would prepare you for me. Your body would be forced into submission, all control surrendered, waiting and ready for my claim. Oh, you will find it a bit dreadful, I must admit.”
I felt a rush of wet heat between my legs, and shifted my position nervously, hoping he couldn’t tell. I shouldn’t feel this way, I knew I shouldn’t…
“I wouldn’t keep you waiting for long, but it would be the longest wait of your life,” he said. “And when I finally come…when I come to you, Evaline, it will be to give you all the pleasures you can imagine, and many more. And that would be the first day of countless days, all devoted to your desires. Pleasure is all you would ever know.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, battling against a shameful rush of wanting like I had never felt. I should have shoved him away. I shouldn’t listen to a man who said such corrupting things.
“I’ll have to marry a human prince,” I said. “I can’t—“ I faltered.
He arched his brows. “Your sisters must be very happy,” he said.
“I think they are,” I said, unsure why he was bringing them into the conversation. “They write me letters sometimes.”
“Oh, well, I just thought you would be very certain,” he said. “Considering you are very certain want to follow their path and marry a human prince. You seem so sure you’d be happier married to a human man you have never even met, and shut the door to the revels.” He gazed down at me. “I had hoped you would be the one to stay. There is so much more I want to share with you.”
“But—this isn’t the life I was meant for,” I said. I was trying to be polite, but I was also starting to feel just a little bit uncertain.
“Who dictates what life you are meant for?” he asked. “In the end, no one but yourself. You could have this for your own. Music and song and feasts…you could be the Queen of the Wicked Revels. Someday.”
“The Queen of…” I looked around. “What would I do? Just this? Where do you live?”
“We live here,” he said. “Of course, I have a very finely appointed home with all the luxuries you would need. There is an every day world here too. But it’s hidden from the revels. This is meant to be an escape from mundane concerns.”
These Wicked Revels (Fairy Tale Heat Book 2) Page 2
