War of Hearts(91)

“No beauty could eclipse yours,” I answered.

She gave me an amused smile and turned to Eirik.

He stared stonily up at her.

“What say you, Eirik Mortensen?”

“Your captain is torturing a human female out in the Royal Square while his men fuck another against her will. An interesting way to announce that the queen is in residence.”

I could feel the disapproval of the queen’s subjects at my brother’s lack of deference.

Yet I was not surprised when Aine scowled. “How vulgar of him.”

The queen of the fae was an odd, complex being. She could be benevolent and kind and then wicked and cruel within the space of a mere thought.

Suddenly, Captain Lir appeared at my side. Outside his shirt had been unbuttoned, sweat dotted his brow, and his hair had been askew. Blood had flecked his face. There was not a trace of that in his immaculate appearance. He bowed low. “My queen.”

Aine dragged her eyes down his body and back up again. “We do not visit Réalta only to make a spectacle of ourselves in their marketplace, do we, Captain?”

He inclined his head, a flick of a dangerous look at Eirik.

“Do you have a reason for your attentions upon the human females?”

Lir shrugged. “They refused to pleasure me and my men. So we took our pleasure from them.”

“They are not slaves to your every whim,” Eirik bit out.

Lir raised an eyebrow. “Are they not?”

“No,” Aine answered.

The room hushed.

Lir straightened, his expression flattening. “My queen?”

She stood. The golden dress she wore clung to her beautiful body, but the train flowed around her feet like golden water and as she moved down the dais, the sound of it was like a gentle stream.

Aine drew to a stop before Lir. “Humans are not slaves to your every whim, Captain. They are my guests in this world and therefore friends who bow to my every whim. I did not give you leave to take your pleasure from them.”

He bowed his head deferentially. “My queen.”

“You have embarrassed me, Lir. To be scolded by a vampire for your behavior is not at all how I envisioned my visit to the lands of eternal night. What say you?”

“My apologies, My queen.” His gaze flicked to Eirik again. “Do you wish me to cut down the vampire who would scold you?”

“No,” she answered immediately. She smiled at Eirik, devious and wicked, beautiful and sparkling. “He amuses me greatly.” She turned her golden eyes to the watching crowd and pouted prettily. “Pity he does not want me.”

The room gasped at the idea, outraged on behalf of their queen.

“I know.” Aine gave a dramatic little sigh. “I must take comfort in the fact that it is merely a case I am not equipped”—her eyes dropped deliberately to Eirik’s groin—“to satisfy him.”

The court laughed at her joke as she moved back up the dais. Instead of sitting on the throne, she halted beside Fionn, staring up at the large warrior king. He stared straight ahead, ignoring her. Aine placed her hand on his bare chest. Whatever she whispered to him, it caused the muscle in his jaw to tick before he turned to offer his hand.

The surrounding air shimmered, and then they were gone.

We all knew why and where.

Eirik stared at the space they had stood with envy tightening his features.

I finally looked at Andraste.

There were no words for how much I needed her. Sometimes I feared the extent of my feelings because they were infinite, never ending, like the stars themselves. Too much feeling. Too much love. It hurt as much as it pleasured. I feared I would die without her. The hunger, the need for her, did not seem to abate. It was stronger than my need for blood. No matter how many times I found bliss between her pale thighs, it was never enough.

I wanted more.

It felt like hours before I could be with her. Eirik disappeared as I spoke with friends we had made among the supernaturals and fae. The human guests were treated much better within the court than those who wandered outside of its protection, like the human girls Lir had tormented.

At last Andraste and I made it out of the room without detection, no words passing between us, so eager were we to be alone. She led us to a set of stairs used only by the servants. We hurried up the coruscate marble, the servants we passed turning a blind eye to our appearance. Andraste scolded me for watching a fair maid hurry past us, but I assured her, I was as ever merely caught up in my wonder. The fae, whether aristocrat or servant, were lustrous in their attractions.

“There is not a crow among you,” I once teased Andraste.

“Oh, there are,” she assured me. “However, they dwell in parts of our world that no one ventures. Nasty, horrible creatures.”

“Are they kept separated because they lack beauty?” The thought had troubled me.

“No. Because they despise beauty and once upon a time sought to destroy it.”

“There was a war?”

“Millennia ago. Yes. They wielded weapons that could kill us but Aine was too powerful for them. We won the war, Aine destroyed any trace of the weapons and was benevolent enough to let most of the challengers live. There is another continent on Faerie, across vast, dangerous waters. We have not seen or heard from them in centuries. Thank goodness.”

My curiosity on the subject had grown, and Andraste had allowed me use of the royal library to read of the war. There I read that during the war, Aine discovered what she called the cauldron. It had the power to strip a fae of their memories so they could be reborn, something the fae required now that they were truly immortal. In their newly eternal evolution, fae children became rarer and rarer until only one or two fae children were born every century.