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Chapter Text

Her forearms slammed down on the table, catching before her nose could crack against the wood. It didn’t stop Gwen's stomach from hitting the edge hard enough to wind her. She didn’t have a moment to feel the pain before the back of her shift yanked up. 

The hall was full of feasting fæ. Gwen grit her teeth. The handle of the wine jug was turned towards her. All she had to do was grab it, spin around and smash it into his face. It would be quick—

“Gryff.” The voice came from her side. “I wanted that one.”

She hated the lazy way they spoke. The few that bothered with the common tongue, when they needed to make themselves understood for the lowly humans, drawled through the syllables, but the knights accosting her saw no need to include her in their debate. They stuck to the language of the fæ.

“You should have been faster, dear friend.” A palm squeezed her rear, and Gwen’s hand ached for violence.

But then they’d know she wasn’t a whore. She’d be trapped in the Prince of the Mistral’s castle. They’d throw her in the dungeon with Anselm. Her finger dug into the wood hard enough to feel the grain in the sliver between skin and nail.

“You son of a whore.” Gryff’s dear friend growled.

There was the smack of a fist against bone, and the beast behind her was ripped away. Gwen dropped, scrambling from the table to the edge of the hall. The mess of columns that hid servants. The shadows were her first reprieve since she’d snuck in with the whores summoned for the feast. Her choice of disguise was feeling less clever by the moment. Gryff’s dear friend had him by the shoulder, his knee embedded in his diaphragm in a brutal blow that tinged his eerily symmetrical face green.

Gwen glanced to her side, her eyes fixed on the door not far to her left. A servant’s entrance, and her escape, right until an arm draped over her shoulders. Long fingers gripped her upper arm. Her head snapped up, eyes widening as she met the glittering gaze of a fæ. Green, the most vibrant green she’d ever seen. So bright, it looked like the forest canopy when the morning sunlight shone through. She dropped her gaze immediately.

“Knights.” Fingers gripped her chin. Soft skin that healed as fast as it was cut. Unless the blade was iron. Then it festered like a burn. “If you fight over the human, it gets taken away.”

Gryff’s dear friend stood straight, letting the other fæ go. It took Gryff a few moments longer, but he managed it, cheeks flushed and gasping for air.  

“Sir.” Both fæ’s heads dipped, eyes cast down. 

They were Knights of the Prince’s Guard; they bowed to very few fæ. The creature holding her was important. Granted, not Tristrian, Prince of the Mistral, Lord of Storms and the Firewinds important, but close enough to it that the difference hardly mattered. The weight of the fælord's arm around her burned as her eyes skimmed the high table. The ruler of Stormharth was at his throne. Most of the fælords and fæladies' seats were filled; there were two or three gaps. She couldn't tell them apart well enough to guess at the one who’d caught her.

“Well,” the fælord prompted.

The knights dropped to their knees, heads bowed.

“We are sorry, sir.” A chorus of regret.

“Don’t be too hard on yourselves,” he said. “The sow certainly has a base appeal. I can see how you were bewitched.” Long fingers gripped her upper arm hard enough to hurt. “As you were, soldiers.”

The fælord pulled her with him, his arm around her shoulders. The dresses the whores wore were flimsy, but the skirt at least shielded her shaking knees from the monster’s eye as he led her towards the high table. His chair was far from the king, between two fælords. Only one greeted him; the other had his elbow leant on the arm of his chair, his face hidden by his hand. The edge of a whore’s skirt peeked out from beneath the table, trapped under the leg of his seat.

It was almost a relief when his hand on her shoulder pushed her down, guiding her beneath the table. She hadn't known what to do next. Gwen slid to the very back. There was just enough space to kneel.

Two other women in the same position. The girl to her right had her eyes closed, her head resting on the thigh of the fælord who’d greeted her captor. Her lips parted, and her breath the even puffs of sleep. To Gwen’s left was an entirely different story.

The woman's shallow whines were trapped in her chest. Her lips stretched wide. A fælord’s fist in the back of her hair as she swallowed his—

Gwen’s gaze snapped in front of her as the fæ that had caught her settled into his seat. His legs spread wide, stretching the black leather of his breeches. His hand dropped between them, reaching. It took all of her will to move forward, to not cower at the very back, against the board that protected the high fæ's dignity from the view of their knights.

He caught her shoulder as soon as she was within reach, and Gwen settled between the enemy’s legs.

“You’ve caught a shy one.” The voice came from the right. 

The fælord the girl was sleeping on. She shifted when he spoke, nestling against his thigh. 

“An act, I’m sure,” her captor said. “One it will drop quickly if it knows what’s good for it.”

The other fælord sighed. “Cyr, be gentle with the poor girl—it’s not one of your prisoners.”

Gwen froze as the table runner lifted, and she looked up at those same virulent eyes. Set in an almost perfect face. Thick lips and a sharp nose, a jawline less strong than his high cheekbones. The only imperfection was the scar that cut through his dark brow, trailing to his cheek. Any deeper and he’d have lost one of the dazzling green eyes that were staring down at her. Her heart stuttered as her mind caught up. There were so many names for Tristrian’s torturer. The bastard who’d maimed a thousand mortal men. The dreaded Lord of Whispers.

He was examining her just as closely, eyes narrowed and his lips just barely pursed. Gwen watched his brow rise. Another head joined his, craning to peer down at her. She dropped her gaze. Twice she’d looked at his face. It was grounds for him to cut out her eyes.

“It looks half-starved,” the other fælord muttered. “Things must be getting desperate out there for it to be so thin in summer.”

The runner dropped back in front of her face. She was still blinking a moment later when his hand appeared under the table in front of her, a roughly torn piece of bread pinched between his thumb and finger. His skin was a little paler than hers, with a sheen to it that caught the light. Clean fingernails. No dirt trapped beneath the edge from daily toil. The bread was an offering. Gwen's fingers brushed his before he jerked his hand back. Was he taunting her? Her hand dropped back to her side.

His hand returned, knuckle brushing across her cheek before he found her lips. The fæ rested the bread against her closed mouth. It was still warm, fresh from the oven. 

Her lips parted, and the fæ slipped the bite into her mouth, withdrawing his fingers almost immediately. So soft! No sawdust or stones to pad out the flour. No risk of losing a tooth when she bit down. Gwen closed her eyes, and for the barest moment, as a thumb brushed across her lip, she was in ecstasy. 

“Where were you?” 

The fælord’s legs tightened around her shoulders.

“Talking with the newest arrest,” Lord Cyr said. 

“Talking or—”

“Talking, Makdara,” he repeated. “The knives will come out tomorrow, after he’s had time to sweat.”

Her heart started beating again as swiftly as it had frozen, relief painful in its intensity. Anselm hadn’t been tortured yet. There was still a chance she could get her older brother out in one piece.

Another morsel appeared in front of her—a berry this time. Gwen took the time to squint at it, identifying it as a blackberry before she opened her mouth. She wouldn’t risk eating a fæfruit. His thumb came with the berry, pressing down. The tart flavour burst across her tongue. His fingers curled to grip the underside of her jaw so she couldn't pull back. The pad of his thumb brushed the inside of her teeth. Running around both sides, as though he were counting. The sensation was strange, especially when he started moving his thumb in and out, spreading more of the squashed berry across her tongue. Spit pooled in her throat, and Gwen swallowed, the motion tightening her lips around his thumb like she meant to suck it.

“Rebel scum,” Lord Cyr said.

“Funny.” Lord Makdara didn’t laugh. “That’s almost the same word they use in their tongue when they speak of us.”

His thumb slipped past her lips. Gwen watched the trail of her spit that stretched between them as he pulled away. To her left, the girl whimpered, her hands scrambling against the ground. The fæ gripped the back of her head, holding her in place, lodged far enough down her throat that she was turning red. His hips bucked as the beast let out a growl.

The fælord held the woman there a few moments longer before he pulled her head back. She was still choking, her nose flaring wide and her throat working as she tried to swallow. The noise rang in Gwen’s ears. Her stomach twisted with the heaviness of dread.

“Took you long enough,” Lord Makdara said.

“You think it’s easy when I have you two nattering next to me.” His laugh was unpleasant. 

The fælord pulled his seat back, yanking the woman out from under the table by her scalp. She didn’t come back, and the seat pulled in; only the fælord's knees remained. Gwen almost wished she were her, then she’d have the chance to escape.

“How long do you think?” Lord Makdara asked. “Until the prince gets bored?”

She shivered, and the legs trapping her tensed. His hand came back, reaching. Gwen flinched before his hand covered her scalp, fingers gentle as he brushed through her hair. She felt the edge of his fingernails just behind her ear. A pleasant scratch.

“Another hour at least.” The fælord to her left said, his hands moving beneath the table to lace himself up.

Above her head, she heard the tinkling of wine being poured. The hand on her head shifted, fingers laced through her hair. A cup appeared before her face. She jerked her head back, but the hand caught her, grip tightening.

“You’re giving it wine now?” She didn’t know who’d spoken; when they started laughing, they sounded the same. “What next, let it sleep in your bed?”

“It looked hungry,” Lord Cyr said. “I thought I should feed it something, so it doesn’t bite.”

Gwen turned, her hair pulling painfully tight as she pressed her cheek against his thigh, rubbing her head from side to side. She dared to curl her hands around his calf, squeezing. If he fed her fæ wine, then she was done. It could take her hours to come back to herself. Hours Anselm didn’t have. 

He relented, pulling the cup away. It thumped against the wood above her head. His touch against her raw scalp was gentle again, stroking to soothe the burn his grip had caused when he stopped her pulling away. The relief was momentary, as she caught the movement of his other hand at his crotch, pulling at the laces there.

“If it’s another hour, I’m going to need to take the edge off,” Lord Cyr said. “I’m wound up.”

“Wound up?” The fælord to his left chuckled. “Makes a change.”

He’d finished with his breaches now, and Gwen’s gaze caught on the thing in front of her.

“Is the Lady of the Morning Mist not taking care of you?” Makdara asked.

“She’s sulking again.” All three of them scoffed. 

“What about the latest arrests?” The other fælord asked. “Any pretty rebels?”

“Pretty rebels, Cath?” Cyr’s tone dripped with disgust. “I’d rather fuck a pig. It’d be cleaner.”

Gwen didn’t know if his—endowment—was normal. She had only the memory of his companions to compare it to, and she had deliberately not looked too close. She didn’t know if all men were so long and thick. The only thing she was remotely sure of was what he wanted her to do with it. She’d just seen a demonstration firsthand. As horrific as it had been to witness, she suddenly wished she’d paid more attention.

She knew it had been too long just staring at him, but Gwen’s limbs wouldn’t move. It had been a mistake to impersonate a whore. But how else was she supposed to get into the castle? She couldn’t leave Anselm to be tortured by the monster in front of her. The beast whose cock was in her face.

He tugged her head towards his crotch, impatient. Gwen shifted forward, palms to the ground. Her tongue darted out, brushing the tip, and he twitched in front of her nose. He tasted strange, a soft musk, and a little salt. She brushed the side with her tongue. He twitched again, swelling more. Gwen regretted the lick. She didn’t want him to get any bigger. The fæ made a noise, a short huff.

“Stop playing coy.” He spoke in the common tongue, every syllable perfectly punctuated and only the softest lilt that marked him as fæ. “Do the work your master was paid for.”

He tugged at the back of her scalp; her lips parted as he pushed himself inside her mouth. Her tongue bucked, pressing upwards as he yanked her closer. His cock touched the back of her throat, deep enough to cut off her air, and Gwen’s nails scraped against the cold flagstones.

She heard the sigh that left him as he slumped in his seat. He let go of her hair, his hand disappearing above the table. Gwen pulled back barely enough to breathe. Her lips pursed around him. She adjusted her tongue as she pulled in air through her nose. It wasn’t so bad now that he was in there. She just had to get through it, then he’d yank her out from under the table. Dismiss her, and she could sneak out. Rescue her brother. All she had to do was bring the Lord of Whispers to completion. Sweet mercy preserve her.

Gwen’s cheeks hollowed as she sucked on him. Her tongue found the rough bump of a vein, teasing. His knees clenched. She let the tip of him push deeper, pressing for a second against the barrier of her throat before she pulled back. It wasn’t long until the spit in her throat escaped her mouth, dripping down her chin. Gwen wiped it off, wrapping a wet hand around the meat of him. He let out the faintest gasp, as if he’d caught and trapped a groan in his chest.

“Is it any good?” Lord Cath asked.

“Enthusiastic.” Lord Cyr’s voice was tighter than it had been, like he was in pain. She tried sucking harder to see if it would help. The edge of her tooth scraped him, and he hissed. “Sloppy enough you’d think it’d never done it before.”

Lord Makdara laughed. “Trust you to find the virgin whore.”

Gwen’s hand tightened around his cock as her whole body tensed up.

“Dara,” Lord Cath said. “There are no virgins left in Stormharth. The prince had them all.”

Gwen tried to force herself to do what she’d been doing, but she couldn’t. She was surrounded by monsters, with a fæ’s cock in her mouth, and he didn’t even think she was doing it well. It was the rawest humiliation she’d ever known. Her eyes snapped closed as the first tear escaped. Burning her cheek. If she wept, she wouldn’t be able to breathe, but the tears wouldn’t stop. Words rang in her ears, distant and strange, and she knew it was bad. She was panicking, and she couldn’t stop.

Fingertips touched her cheek, almost gentle as they caught her tears. His hand stayed there long enough to feel the shudder of the sob that ripped through her. For it to vibrate, the length of the cock trapped in her mouth.

The fæ tugged at her hair, pulling her back. His cock slipped out of her mouth as his other hand curled over hers, where she was still gripping his length. He moved their palms together, gathering the spit she’d smeared over his length. He pulsed in her hand, twitching and hot against her palm. The first spurt caught her by surprise, a rope of pale, thick liquid that splattered her cheek. She snapped her eyes closed again, her free arm wrapping around her middle, protecting her vulnerable stomach. Her other wrist went limp as he kept rubbing himself with her trapped hand.

The second spurt hit the corner of her mouth, a line down her chin and neck. His grip on her hair tugged her closer. Another hit splattered her forehead and closed eyelid. His laughter sounded distant. Her hand was still trapped beneath his as his cock brushed her unsullied cheek. He wiped off the last of his spend on her skin.

Wood screeched as his chair shifted back, and she was sure he’d cast her aside now. Lord Cyr tugged her up by her limp wrist. His other hand dropped from her hair to loop his arm around her waist. Gwen stumbled before she had the chance to stand, landing in his lap, her hand catching against his chest.

Lord Cath’s deep belly laughter rang in her ears. “You covered it.”

Gwen couldn’t open her eyes. His spend clung to her. She could smell the salt of it. It would burn. His thumb crossed her cheek, gathering the sticky trails. He pressed the digit to her lips, prodding like he had with the bread and the berry.

“Open.”

She didn’t know what language he spoke. Just that she really didn’t want to, but a whore would do it. Gwen opened her mouth, and his thumb slipped inside—the taste of him salty and bitter. Foul in every way.

“It must be starving,” Lord Makdara said. He almost sounded sympathetic. “Can you feel its bones?”

The pity made her closed eyes burn. Lord Cyr gripped her torso just under her breast, tracing her ribs through her stolen dress.

“It’s got some meat on it,” Lord Cath said. “A few places I could sink my teeth into.”

The sob caught in her throat, a broken, painful sound. Cloth brushed her face, wiping away the last of his spend. Gone save for the tacky residue it left behind, and Gwen was still shaking. Hot breath touched her ear.

“Look at me.” In the common tongue again.

She blinked, tears spilling onto her cheeks as she saw a green too bright to belong to a man. 

“It has pretty eyes.” Lord Cyr inspected her. “For a pig.”

His mouth twitched. His smile was soft at first before his lips pulled back to show his teeth. Gwen’s heart beat so fast she feared it might break. He snapped his jaws together. Close enough to the tip of her nose that she felt the breeze.

“You’re lost, little pig—run home before one of the wolves devours you.”

He let go of her, but Gwen couldn’t move; her legs wouldn’t work. Lord Cyr’s brow lifted, and her body came to life. Anselm, save her brother. It wouldn’t be hard to break the lock on his cell. She'd forged a thousand of them, put them together and taken them apart more times than she could count.

Rescue him from the dungeons. There was a gap in one of the grills of the castle walls that Daw’s sons used to use years ago to steal fæfruit from the Prince’s orchard. They’d both hung for it, but no one ever fixed the grate.

Her knee buckled, and Gwen almost fell. If it weren’t for the Lord Cyr’s hand at her hip, she’d have gone face-first into the pitcher of fæwine. He didn’t let go, holding her there, his hand drifting slowly to grip her—

“You’re right, Cath,” he said.

He let her go with a slap to her rear hard enough her teeth clacked together, catching the tip of her tongue. She tasted blood.

“It does have some meat on it.”

Gwen fled.

Chapter Text

The open cell door had been a puzzle. An infuriating one, but a puzzle nonetheless. The lock wasn’t broken; that would have been far too obvious. Simply undone. Anselm, son of Quinn, gone. Cyr’s palm pressed to the bark of the tree, his eyes on the creature before him. He’d meant to move before now, to grab it and take his knife to it, but well—

The woman stood at the edge of the riverbank, it’s hand tugging at the skirt of it’s dress. No longer the revealing garb of a whore. No, its clothing was so much poorer than even that. Homespun wool and boots veined with a thousand cracks. He’d come upon it when it was removing its shoes, rolling down its socks to reveal pink little toes. With the lift of its dress, he discovered the rest of it. Long thin legs, hairy like all its kind, but none so thick as the matte covering its mound. Coarse strands darker than its pale hair. A few freckles on its skin. Its belly had a slight softness, framed by the sharp bones of its hips. Ribs visible enough to show it ate little meat, but its breasts were lovely, small and pert. Round enough to squeeze. Relaxed pink nipples.

It didn’t know it had cause to fear as it dipped its toes in the river, letting out a soft gasp at the chill of the water that ran down from the mountain springs. It had a basket of laundry under one arm. The woman stepped deeper, crossing the rocky stream till the water reached mid-thigh. It carried a bucket and a basket, placing both on a rock in the middle of the river.

He ought to seize it now. Chain its hands and drag it back to the dungeons beneath the keep—

The speckled light that made it through the canopy caught the creature’s side. For the briefest moment, it glowed, a wild thing he’d stumbled on rather than a rebel he’d hunted down. All thought of movement fled; he could only watch. Bewitched as surely as if it were the fælady and he no longer a fælord, but a simple man, powerless to fight enchantment. There was a splash as it dunked itself, water droplets flying as it disappeared beneath the river. 

The woman reappeared a moment later, wet hair slicked back behind its ears and flesh reddened from the cold. Water dripped from it in rivulets. Its breast looked even firmer, nipples shrunk at their centre. It’s where his gaze fixed. He hardly noticed when it reached into the bucket on the rock. A lather of soap glistened on its bare skin as the woman scrubbed its body clean of dirt. The movement of its hands hypnotised him. Cyr didn’t know whether to move, to interrupt and end the spectacle. Or stay forever staring at glistening skin bathed in dappled sunlight. To wait till the woman was done, then force it down in the grass. Fuck the creature in the dirt by the riverbank. His cock ached, and his hand burned to grab, to touch and hold and taste.

The creature stilled, the soap still in its hand. Its gaze lingered on its shoulder, and even from his spot, shielded from its sight by the trees of the Prince's Forest, he could see the mark. The print of a palm against pale skin. His hand. Cyr hadn't thought he'd gripped it so hard. He tried not to be too rough with the whores.

The woman sobbed. Sudden and violent as its hand covered its mouth. The sound rang through the forest, louder even than the rush of the river, the chorus of the birds. A broken, awful cry as its knees buckled, palms catching on the rock, head bowed and shoulders shaking. A scared girl who’d run afoul of the fæ.

Gwendolen, daughter of Quinn, lived with its uncle. Parents dead of the plague that had struck the humans of Stormharth fifteen years past. Dutiful enough to help Gamel, son of Leofwin, at the forge. Its brother had been caught drunk with known rebels only two nights past. The man had protested innocence, but in the morning the cell had been empty. 

The weeping girl before him had snuck into the castle. Given him the worst cocksucking of his life. Then, most certainly, picked its brother’s lock. There was no sign of the man, but the woman had stayed. Snuck back to its home, foolish enough to think its presence would be forgotten. Or perhaps just too scared to run. 

Cyr pulled a piece of lichen from the back of the tree hiding him, rubbing the moss between thumb and finger as he considered his retaliation. The sounds of its sobbing bothered him. He’d learned centuries ago to think of the tears of humans as the whines of animals. Pigs. Dangerous beasts that needed putting down before they turned on their masters. But the creature before him was no rebel. A rebel would not have been fool enough to return home. The brother had been no true threat either. Anselm, son of Quinn, would have been hanged to make an example of sympathisers, but truly, the man’s greatest crime had been awful luck.

It shouldn’t matter. He should drag the little beast back, torture it until its mind broke, and then hang its body in the town square in its brothers stead. If his cock kept aching like it was, he could even fuck the woman a few times first, before its body was too twisted by the rack. He hadn’t had a rebel before; the sight of them usually repulsed him. He’d tortured so many of them to protect the Prince's lands, it was hard to consider them as anything but blood and inedible meat. The mouth of a human whore was good enough to serve a need, but he’d never had more than that. Intimacy he reserved for fæladies; they were the epitome of perfection. Beauty given form. For all the similarities between their peoples, humans were not the mortal mirror of the fæ; they were their palest shadow.

The woman brushed it’s palm across cheeks reddened from tears. It's breath laboured as it wiped away the trace of misery. A lance of sunlight caught its face, and it squinted, shading its eyes. Cyr intended to move then, to take the beast and have done with it. He didn’t. He watched as it rubbed soap into its hair. Stayed hidden as it reached for the laundry on the rock. Its skin drying in the summer heat. It dunked the clothing in the water, laying it out to scrub the fabric with the same soap it used for its skin and hair. If he strayed close enough, he’d smell hyacinth. The scent had lingered on his clothing the night before.

He could break the spell any moment, but as he watched, his thoughts drifted further from the cells beneath the keep. His mind lingered on the idea of catching the creature on the riverbank. Placing his cloak around it before he laid the woman down. Imagined the feeling of its chill skin against his, cold from the water, when he knew its cunt would be so warm around his cock. In his mind, the creature didn’t fight him. It came apart beneath him as he emptied himself inside its cunny.

The last splash of its feet as the woman pulled itself from the water drew him from his trance. Pulled its shift back on over sun-dried skin. Wet laundry in the basket it carried in one hand, and its boots and soap bucket in the other. It walked barefoot along the riverbank. Feet headed towards its home. He could follow. Full hands made easy prey. There were so many things he imagined doing to the human as Cyr watched it leave.

Yet he couldn’t seem to move.

Chapter Text

Gwen dropped the bundle of logs into the wood barrel. The forge was already lit. Gamel’s hammer pounded as though he were trying to break the metal rather than shape it. When she was a child, she’d loved watching him work. She’d thought he was the strongest man alive. But that had been then. Now he looked so much older, how her father would have looked if he’d survived the plague.

The design was spread across the table in the forge's corner. A detailed diagram covered in scrawled notes that made no sense to her, no matter how hard she squinted. Lord Firan always forgot she could not read.

“More notes?” Gwen asked.

Gamel’s hammer blows ceased. He grabbed the spoke with two tongs, dropping it into the bucket. A hissing cloud of steam was released when the heated metal met cold water. She blew into her cold hands, frozen from the morning she’d spent gathering wood in the barren forest. 

“Lord Firan’s boy dropped it off,” he said. “And a bag of marks.” He reached into the pocket of his apron, throwing the leather purse at her. Gwen snapped it out of the air. “If you have questions, ask his Lordship, and get some flour whilst you’re gone.” Gamel glanced up then, eyes tired. “Any mercy with the traps?”

Had she come back with meat? 

“They were empty.” 

His face didn’t change, but she could see the disappointment in his eyes. Gwen didn’t know how Anselm had always returned with a rabbit or a pheasant. Something to ease the knives of pain in their bellies. She checked the same traps daily, and as the long months of winter dragged on, she’d caught less and less. In the last week, there’d been nothing. The little of the forest that was common land was empty. They’d finished yesterday’s bread for breakfast. There would be no lunch.

“I’ll bring back dinner.” Whatever she could beg or barter. 

The castle gate was open during the day, the main square bustling with its mix of fæ and men, as she slipped round the back of Lord Firan’s forge. He preferred her not to enter through the armoury. The staircase up to his workshop was narrow and curling, but once there, the turret was airy. Enough glass that even in winter, the sun warmed the room. The fæ that apprenticed under him paid Gwen no mind. They were busy, hammers clanging as they armed Prince Tristrian’s knights. Forged the blades meant to split rebel skulls and the armour to blunt the enemies’ blades.

The metalsmiths were used to her slipping into the back. She came often enough that the craftsmen no longer marked her passage. Gwen knocked at the door of Lord Firan’s private workroom, entering at his call. He was standing by the window, poring over a set of designs. Long auburn hair, braided at the sides to keep off his face. Eyes as sharp as his brow. Each feature was as pointed and perfect as the rest. 

“Lord Firan.” Gwen dipped her head. “I had some questions.”

The fælord glanced up, his stern expression breaking into a smile. Ageless, like they all were. His eyes were as bright as liquid metal, and as like to burn her.

“Gwen.” He beckoned for her to join him. “Did you bring the designs?”

She slipped the hardened leather messenger tube from her shoulder, laying the curling papers flat over his desk. In truth, she’d barely looked at the new design. They’d been going over the same diagram for weeks now. He kept on challenging her on the weight of the bearings, accounting for every grain of the dangerous and precious metal needed to forge the piece. She pointed to his scrawled note, her finger touching just below his indecipherable writing. 

“What did you mean by this?”

Even if she could read, Gwen wasn’t sure she’d have been able to understand his hand. She found it faster to question him on the notes than to explain once again that she wasn’t allowed to learn to read, and yes, it was a shame, but that was the Prince’s law.

“The measurements are off; still a few grains too heavy,” he said. “You disagree?”

Gwen squinted. She'd given up arguing with him about it. If he wouldn’t allow her three more grains of iron, then she’d make do. It would be his problem when whoever commissioned him for the lock was unsatisfied. Her finger moved to the other scrawled sentence at the edge of the paper. So many curling words, she thought he might have been trying to write a book.

“And what was your issue with this?” she asked.

Lord Firan leant back, brow raised. “Is it not quite clear?”

She tried to read the glint in his eye, mocking or amusement. Her gaze returned to the page. What could be so obviously wrong with it that she hadn’t noticed? They’d been over the same diagram until she was sick of the sight of it. Gwen’s hands itched to forge the thing and be done. Then he’d pay her, and she’d finally be able to afford more than the cheapest flour to feed herself and Gamel.

“Gwen.” He sounded reproachful, lips pursed, and the same glimmer in his gaze as he stared at the side of her face. “I meant that the design for the mechanism was sound and to go ahead and make it, that one of my boys would drop round the ores for you to smelt in the morning.” 

Her cheeks stung. Why couldn’t the boy who’d dropped the design off have given Gamel that message? Why did he have to write it every time? So she ended up back in his forge, constantly forced to beg him to explain the simplest things.

“I keep forgetting you can’t read.” His smile turned forlorn. “Leofwin could. It seems a shame for your line to lose the skill.” His hand closed over her shoulder, giving a squeeze the fælord might have meant as comfort. “Though he wasn’t quite so artful in his designs. You have a sly mind, Gwen.” 

She forced herself not to pull away. Gamel would kill her if she offended their patron lord. Her family had been selling their work to him for centuries.

“Thank you, Lord Firan.” The words burned like heated coals.

His hand lingered. It wasn’t the first time he’d touched her. The designs he sent her would be covered in notes, and whenever she inevitably had to come and check their meaning, he’d stand at her shoulder. The smallest gap between her back and his chest as he leant over her to point out a flaw or a change that needed to be made. 

“Perhaps I might teach you?” The fæ’s thumb spread across the blade of her shoulder, testing the sharpness of her bones. “That way, you might teach your sons, too, when you bear them. So that we need not clarify every note I give them?” The words were too close to her ear. “Not that I mind explaining things to you, Gwen.” His grip tightened. “There are so many things I would like to teach you.”

The offer filled the air between them. To be allowed knowledge no human was granted, to understand the secrets of the fæ. Gwen had learnt their tongue at her mother’s knee. She didn’t think reading it would be so difficult, and then she wouldn’t be forced to beg Lord Firan to explain. Would no longer need to come here and endure his touches as he got bolder with every visit.

“The prince banned the teaching of letters to humans forty summers past, Lord Firan.” She would not risk being named a rebel, nor endure the time alone with him. “I am forbidden from learning.”

His fingers spread across the designs. He held them against the surface.

“A most inconvenient ruling,” he whispered. Even in private, it was not wise to speak against the Prince. “How are you at keeping secrets, Gwen?”

Her gaze fixed on the scroll, unblinking. His touch was a sharper knife in her stomach than hunger, but she couldn’t risk offending him by asking him to step back. Anselm used to deal with their patron. He hadn’t had quite so many notes to give when it was her brother he’d had to explain them to. Anselm had never complained to her of the fælord standing too close. Of his cornering him against his desk. 

“I’m not a rebel, Lord Firan,” she said. “I have no desire to break the Prince’s laws—”

Gwen was certain that Lord Firan had never sniffed Anselm’s hair. The soft sound of his inhale stayed her tongue more soundly than any word he might have spoken.

“If you are determined to remain ignorant,” he said. “Perhaps I ought to start charging you for your questions.”

What little pride she had recoiled. To save Anselm had been one thing, but she would not let another fæ use her body only to humiliate her. Her pride would not endure it a second time. Gwen leant forward to roll the papers. He let go of her shoulder, but the fælord didn’t move away. He remained close enough to crowd her. She slipped the rolled-up pages back into the leather messenger tube. Gwen reached into the purse she’d tied to her belt. Her fingers curled around the smallest mark within. She pulled it loose, dropping it on the design he’d been reviewing when she arrived. 

“For your answers, Lord Firan,” she said. “I would call a quarter mark a fair price for two questions.”

It hurt to part with. Gamel would be furious with her. But it was worth it for the step Lord Firan took back, for the shock that crossed his face. She knew what he wanted from her. He could not take it. There were few of Prince Tristrian’s laws that protected humans, but one edict had stood for six hundred years. If a fælord wanted a girl’s maidenhead, they must come to an agreement with her family for it. It was the thinnest shield, but Gwen had clung to it since she reached maturity.

For as long as she could delay the inevitable, she would. Silence lingered, deep enough she could hear the clang of the smiths in the workroom beyond. His silver eyes caught the light, glinting as their gazes held. Thoughts turning in his ancient mind. He knew she didn’t want him. Never once had she encouraged his touch; Gwen had never even smiled at him in case he took it for interest. Her distance had kept him at bay. Lord Firan did not want to force her, but she was not sure how long his patience would last, nor how much more hunger she could endure. This might well be the last time she had the strength to deny him. Before the desperation of starvation brought her to her knees.

“How is your uncle, Gwendolen?” Lord Firan finally asked.

Her chest tightened. “He is well, Lord Firan.”

“Perhaps you might send him over with the finished piece,” the fælord said. “I think he and I have a matter to discuss.”

The question was there on the edge of her tongue. To ask what he intended to offer. It was the law; whether the maiden was willing, the family must consent. Gwen had missed Anselm in the six months he’d been gone, but not once so fiercely as she did in that moment. He wouldn’t have agreed; her older brother would have refused the marks, even if it had been the Prince himself asking. Gamel was more practical. He’d tell her to get on with it. That life was hard, and her dignity meant nothing when they were starving.

“Of course, Lord Firan.”

The human was warm. Not that different from fair Ciel, Lady of the Morning Mist. His hand wound in its hair. The noises of their coupling, loud as his thighs slapped against the woman’s rear. The settee cushions were soft beneath his knee. He ought to have taken it on the floor, but it would have been as uncomfortable for him as for the whore to fuck it on the flagstones.

“Ouch,” it gasped. “Oh, Lord Cyr, please!”

“Silence!” Cyr didn’t want to hear its voice. 

Its terrible attempt at his tongue was grating. From behind, he could almost convince himself it was a different woman. One he’d visited too often during the long months between summer and winter’s depths. He’d caught it bathing a few times more before the weather grew too cold. Had found himself kneeling on the forest floor as he watched it. Had memorised the shape of it so that even now he could see it in his mind. When the weather grew too cold, he’d watched it walk the barren woods, gathering kindling for the forge. Seen it check empty traps, and debated leaving a gift. A pheasant, perhaps, to fill its stomach. But then he’d have had to devote the time to hunting, and he’d already wasted too many hours just watching. 

The creature’s hair was a shade similar enough to trick his eye. Focusing only on the feeling of his cock. The first few whores he’d had, he’d taken their cunnys. The woman’s back hole was less moist, but tighter.

It didn’t take him long. A few more thrusts and he felt the tingle in his knees. His stomach clenched as his member tightened. Cyr’s hand caught the back of the settee, letting out a grunt as the sensation ripped through him, almost painful. Like ringing blood from a stone. He gritted his teeth as he released. The whore’s face was screwed up, its teeth digging into its lip hard enough to draw blood. But its gaze was across from them. Fixed on the bars of the cage. Every whore he'd brought to his chambers had worn the same look on their face when they'd seen it. Raw terror. He held its scalp for a few moments longer, catching his breath, before he released it, stepping back off the settee.

Cyr wiped his member on the back of its dress before he tucked himself away. “Get out.”

It leapt at the dismissal, pushing its skirts down. The whore stumbled, knee catching against the edge of the table and nearly spilling the wine he'd had with his lunch, before it righted itself.

It made it to the door of his chambers, stumbled again out into the corridor beyond. He turned his attention to the laces of his breeches. Not bothering to glance up when the door reopened.

“You need to be gentler when you take them from the back.” The prince didn't sound pleased.

Cyr pulled the knot tight before he adjusted himself. “Triss?”

The Prince hadn't made it far into the room; his head was turned, staring at the same place the whore had been. “Cyr, what happened to your reading nook?”

The bars turned the shallow alcove he’d once filled with bookcases and an obscenely comfortable chair into a cage. There would be enough space there for a bed and to keep the chair, once he’d moved all the rest of the furniture out. His focus had been on the bars first, and getting the lock on the door exact. He was still waiting for the delivery from Firan.

“I decided I needed to protect something precious,” Cyr said.

Tristrian frowned. “Not one of the whores, please!”

Cyr scoffed. “I said something precious.” He turned to look at the prince. “To what pleasure do I owe your visit?”

Tristrian had reached his table. He picked the cup of wine resting there, taking a gulp before he spoke.

“You’ve been skulking.” He smacked his lips. “I have barely seen you in moons.”

The prince disliked it when he ignored him. A lifetime together, and for all the years they’d shared, he’d never stopped being the scared little boy he’d been when his father threw Cyr at his feet and told him he was allowed a friend. But only one.

“I have little to tell you,” he said. “Your subjects seem to be done with open rebellion for now.”

“Not for long, I’m certain.” Tristrian smiled, aware and resigned to the inevitability of it all. “I’m sure they’ll rise up within the next decade. There are too many of them to feed again.”

Cyr sat on the arm of his settee, arms folded as he waited for the Prince to make his intentions clear. “Another plague?”

Tristrian's eyes drifted over the bars of the cage. He sighed, handing the wine chalice to Cyr. He took a sip of his own. The fine bubbles of the sweet wine fizzed on his tongue. He rarely drank at lunch, but he was supposed to be having a day of rest.

“It’s too soon since the last.” The prince's lips twitched. “Besides, the old aren’t the problem. We have a surplus of orphans.”

Cyr sighed. “And angry young men are prone to rebellion.” He brushed his chin with his knuckles as he considered the shape of the next few years. Blood, torment and misery. “Why bother with it all?”

To keep sentient beasts came with constant complications. Every generation was fresh soil for dissent. 

“They’re difficult, aren’t they, humans?” Tristrian agreed. “As soon as you remember their name, they’re practically dead.”

It was a puzzle, certainly, one that had kept him busy since the rift formed the deadlands, and the fælords seized their fiefdoms.

“Why don’t we end this, Tristrian?” Cyr asked. Surely they could call it a failure by now. “It’s not working.”

Kill them all and be done with it. It would be a mercy.

“Why don’t we?” Tristrian’s lips twitched as he repeated it back. “Why don’t we feast on their flesh like our distant cousins in the Tuend?”

“Cousins?” Cyr shook his head at the idea. “The fæ of the Tuend would eat us if they were fast enough to catch us.”

Ancient monsters that most lords and ladies shuddered even to name.

“Or hunt them for sport like Prince Lorián to the west?” He laughed, and even for the prince it was mirthless. “Why don’t we just kill them all?”

Cyr waited as he smiled. “Did you have an answer, or are we playing riddles again?”

“I’ve never found their meat particularly sweet, for one,” Tristrian said. He took a seat, legs spread wide as he held out a hand for the chalice. Cyr passed it to him, and the Prince gripped the rim, gaze on the red liquid within. “And I’ve always found their women appealing.” He took a longer gulp like he were steeling himself. “Be gentler with the whores.”

The Prince was an unabashed tyrant, and he was telling Cyr off. He had to fight not to roll his eyes.

“Are you chastising me for being rough with your toys?” It was rich, but then the Prince had always been a hypocrite. “You bid me be their nightmare.”

He hadn’t failed in his charge. Their gazes caught, green eyes meeting glowing gold. His long, fair hair framing the perfect face of a prince of their people. As beautiful as he was cruel.

“Because you play the part so well.” Tristrian’s smile was mirthless. “Their lives might be brief, but they’re not beasts.” His brow rose. “Be nicer to the whores, or you’re not allowed to use them.”

The strangest urge gripped him to pout or stamp his feet. It was hardly fair.

“I’m no rougher with them than Cath.”

“Lord Cathel isn’t known as the bastard who maimed a thousand men,” Tristrian said. “They expect the Lords to be rough, but they fear you.” He folded his arms, face stern as the chalice dangled from his hand. Cyr couldn’t help but wonder which whore had cried in his pointed ear. The prince was incapable of resisting a pretty face. “I want my subject to laugh, not weep.”

“And when they rebel because they’re starving?” Cyr asked, unable to stop himself from baiting the man.

Tristrian’s fingers tapped against the top of the chalice. “Then I want their rotting carcasses hung from the castle walls to feed the carrion.” 

A charming smile and a fair face that hid a heart far crueller than Cyr’s had ever been. Sometimes he wondered what the humans saw when they looked at them. Pitiless, beautiful gods. 

“Your father would be proud.” Cyr didn’t know why his smirk tasted bitter. “What a monster you are—the Laughing Prince.”

“He always said all the whippings he gave you strengthened you.” Tristrian’s smile turned sweet. “He’d be prouder of you, most certainly. ”

“Undoubtedly,” Cyr said. “I wasn’t the one who stuck an iron blade through his heart.”

The pounding of a fist on the door to his chambers snapped both their heads around. So much for a day of rest.

“Enter,” Cyr called.

The door opened, and a knight stepped in, his eyes on the flagstones. 

“There’s been a commotion in the market, Lord Cyr,” Gryff said, a flush crossing his cheeks as though he knew how ill-received the news would be. “You’re needed, sir.”

Cyr sighed. “Of course I am.”

He’d been looking forward to the rest of his afternoon. Another walk in the forest to see if he could spy a particular woman. He hadn’t intended to approach it, just to watch.

It was not to be.

His afternoon would be an interrogation instead. Blood and torment.

Chapter Text

It was early afternoon, but the sun had failed in its charge of warming the world. The only heat spread from the fresh loaf clutched to her chest. Gwen allowed herself the sweet pleasure of the smallest bite, a nibble at the very corner. It was burnt, but burnt bread wouldn’t hurt her. The sack of flour was heavy in her other hand, enough for a week, if she stretched it. The honey she'd bought with the last of the marks would sweeten their meals.

She stepped down from the baker’s entrance, crust crunching between her teeth, loud enough she almost missed the hammer of heavy boots against the cobbles. Gwen stepped back a second too late as a dead man running slammed into her side, palms pressed to her shoulders as he threw her out of his way. She spun, boots sliding across the frozen stone. The sack of flour burst from her hands. Dusting both her cloak and the runners.

The warm bread slipped from her hands, rolling into the path of the Knights. Her heart wrenched as glass shattered. A thousand thoughts slammed through her mind—painful, desperate pleas that did not pass her lips. Bronze-tipped leather raced through the spilt flour. One crushed the small loaf she’d brought by pure accident. Stamping it into the ground.

There would be no dinner.

She’d have to gather what could be saved. A few days of plain bread and no honey to sweeten it. The last set of racing feet sent up white puffs of flour dust in the knight’s wake.

Gwen could not force herself to stand. Gamel was welcome to beat her for this; she deserved it. She should not have wasted even the quarter she’d thrown back at Lord Firan for the sake of her pride. Should have smiled at him and let the fæ touch her. That way, she could have gone back to him now, pleaded her case and begged his mercy. If she had flattered him, he might well have been kind to her. A tear slipped from her eye, burning against her cold cheek as she realised she'd have to anyway. The luxury of her pride had run out. But without it, she could not force herself to stand. Lord Firan would not be kind, not after she’d insulted him.

“Maiden?”

Gwen’s gaze fell on booted feet as they stopped before her. Hardened, polished black leather, not capped with bronze. Her eyes continued slowly upward until she met the gaze of a fælord. The scar was less noticeable than it had been in the summer. The winter had paled his skin to match the bright white line.

“Are you hurt?” The Lord of Whispers asked. 

His brows were furrowed, lips tight; on a man, the expression might be called concern. Gwen did not trust that she could read the Lord's face. Her forearms shook as she pressed her palms against the wet cobbles, forcing herself to her seat.

“No, sir.” She dipped her head, her gaze at his feet where it belonged.

Lord Cyr’s hand appeared in front of her face. Black leather clad his skin. She envied him most fiercely that protection from the cold.

“Let me help you stand.” His palm held steady before her face.

It was never wise to owe a favour to a fæ, but it would be worse still to deny him. Gwen’s fingers curled over the back of his hand. Her throat tightened as he tugged her up, her head already light from the fall and the cold. She forced herself to believe him a stranger. It would do her no good to remember the awful day their paths had crossed. The past was dead, and she was not yet ready to perish with it.

His other hand caught on her shoulder, steadying her on the wet cobbles when the worn soles of her boots almost slipped again.

“That is much to lose.” His gaze was on the mess of ruined food. Perhaps the bread was salvageable. Only half squashed. The flour, she might rescue a fifth. “Will your family go hungry?”

His concern was suspicious in itself. The fæ were as likely to laugh at the misfortune of the humans under their rule as to help. There must be something he wanted from her, and to have something the Lord of Whispers wanted was the worst of luck.

“I’ll make smaller loaves.” She was not fool enough to meet his gaze again. “My uncle could stand to be a little less well-fed.”

Gamel was as starved as she; skin sagging from the fat he’d lost. But she could not say that. The fæ would not like to hear it. Better honey-dipped lies than face the punishment for speaking the truth.

“Perhaps.” She caught the edge of his smile from the corner of her eye. “But you’re all bones, girl. How old are you?”

“Twenty.” She debated whether she ought to smile at him.

Be sweet, as she should have been with Lord Firan, but then he might prefer her fear. Grow angry if he took levity for disrespect.

The Lord of Whispers did not converse with humans, not unless he was torturing them. Gwen thought it might well be the perfect end to a miserable existence. The thought was full of a melancholy she was not prone to. She’d always made the best, but there was nothing left to make it with.

“And your name?”

It was no secret. “Gwendolen, daughter of Quinn.”

“Gwendolen.” She flinched when the fæ’s finger touched the underside of her chin. “I don’t know Quinn.”

No apology came with the words, though it felt there ought to be one. Quinn had not lived so long. He had been little older than she was now when he and her mother passed.

“He is dead, Lord Cyr.” Gwen was as careful with her words as she could be, but she could not stop the shiver that prickled her skin.

The fæ’s brow rose, a dangerous interest in his eyes as he watched her lips. “Dead?”

“The plague took him and my mother both.” The thought no longer even hurt.

She had no misery to spare on strangers now long dead.

“It is a terrible thing,” Lord Cyr said. “To be so alone.”

Gwen hadn't been; she’d always had Anselm. Now her brother was gone, and the blame for that she could not even lay at the Lord of Whispers’ feet. He’d been fool enough to be seen. When he was first taken, she’d risked everything to save him. Now Anselm had been gone for months, and as dearly as she missed him, Gwen couldn't help the bitter sting of resentment in her chest. Whether he had a choice or not, he'd left her to the wolves.

“I have an uncle, Lord Cyr,” Gwen said. He was at least worth something, if only the thinnest shield. “He will worry if I'm gone too long.”

It was a lie she so wished were the truth. She trembled under the weight of his gaze. Gamel had never really cared. Anselm, at least, he’d liked, but not Gwen.

“You’re shivering.” He caught her wrist, frowning at her bare hand. “Where are your gloves, Gwendolen?” Spidery red lines covered her icy skin, the gaps between them bright white, flushed with cold. “Here.” He tugged at the cuffs of his leather gloves, swiftly pulling them off. “Take mine.”

Gwen yanked her hand free. A gift was a debt. 

“I cannot,” she said.

Mercy spare her; she did not want to be indebted to the Lord of Whispers.

“You cannot?”

She hadn’t realised he’d been soft with her until it dropped from him. His countenance turned stern. She stumbled, feet slipping on the cobbles. Lord Cyr’s hand snapped out, gripping her upper arm as he held her in place.

“It would be unwise to deny me, Gwendolen?” The edge in his tone was sharper than a knight’s sword.

Gwen quaked, shivering from so much more than cold. He took advantage of the limpness of her limbs to tug his gloves over her fingers. Pausing first on her left wrist to knot the laces tight enough it wouldn’t slip off. With the second glove, Gwen felt as though she’d been restrained. Shackles of leather rather than bronze. It made no sense! The Lord of Whispers was not kind. It must be a dream; she would awaken in her bed, or perhaps by the burnt-down embers of the kitchen hearth. If she'd slept there for the warmth.

“Now.” His green eyes glowed. “Wait here for me a moment.”

Even if it were a dream, Gwen didn’t dare move. To disobey the Lord of Whisper’s command was grounds for a swift execution. He turned from her, the wooden door of the bakery shuddering under his grip as he stepped inside. The shop fell silent. Every human within praying to Mercy that he wasn’t there for them. His voice echoed back before the door closed; her mind could not catch the words.

She'd waited for what felt an eternity in the bakery line, but Lord Cyr was not gone long. He returned with two full sacks held in one fist. The breeze ruffled her hair, lifting the pale strands around her face. All thought fled her mind. What need did a fælord have of bread and flour?

“Where is your home, Gwendolen?” he asked.

“I do not live in the town, Lord Cyr.”

His brow rose, and still she did not wish to tell him more. He should not care.

“The mill or the forge?” He knew too much, and so very little, if he could not guess. “Answer me, Gwendolen.” She flinched at the annoyance in his tone, dropping her gaze again. “You do not want to give me cause to believe you a rebel.”

“The forge,” she said.

“And your uncle’s name?”

“Gamel, son of Leofwin.”

“I remember Leofwin,” Lord Cyr said, his tone softening from the sharp demand of interrogation to hold the faintest amusement. “He was a sweet boy.”

He knew her grandfather when he was a child. The immortal fæ were the only gods she'd ever known. They demanded their worship in the toil, sweat and misery of human hands.

“Look at me, Gwendolen.” She ought not to, but she could not deny his command. “I will see you to your door.”

Confusion waged war on her terror. He should not ask she meet his gaze. He should not speak to her. Yet be it delusion or dream, Gwen prayed only that it might be a gentle one. She’d take any escape over the prospect of returning to Lord Firan to beg his mercy. Even the Lord of Whispers.

He insisted on walking her, and Gwen was fond enough of living that she did not dissuade him. With every step down the long road from the village, her scalp prickled. He kept pace beside her, holding his heavy purchase with ease. When the silence grew uncomfortable, she thought it better to break it rather than wait in suspense. He hadn’t been so awful to her, and it was difficult to continue to be terrified when he had yet to give her true reason to be.

Her gaze dropped to the sacks he was carrying. “What did you buy?”

“Flour,” he said. “A loaf of fresh bread, some honey and jam. Dried meat and a little cheese—”

“Cheese?” Her heart caught in her throat.

She couldn’t have said the last time she’d had some. It was more marks than she could justify spending. Lord Cyr glanced at her, a soft curl to his lips.

“Would you like to try some?”

Gwen snapped her gaze away, but it was harder this time. She would like nothing more than the smallest piece of the mild, nutty cheese the baker made. Her stomach rumbled at just the thought of the simple pleasure.

“I could not take your meal, Lord Cyr?” He’d already lent her his gloves.

Anymore would be too much.

“My meal?” He stopped walking, and she knew better than to continue without him. “Even a fæ could not eat all this at once. It is a week’s food.” She disagreed. Gwen would have made all that last at least two weeks, if not more. “This is for you, Gwendolen. My errands interfered with yours. I would not have your family starve on my account.”

Whatever she ought to have said was stolen at the thought of the feast in his hands. Flour and fresh bread, honey and jam. Dried meat and, for the love of mercy, cheese. Gwen could have wept. If it were a dream, she hoped never to wake. Her eyes caught his, and the moisture in them stung. It had been a long time since she'd had cause to weep for joy.

The chill of the cold dirt crept through the soles of her boots. She should not be ungrateful. Gwen should fall to her knees and kiss the polished leather cladding his feet. Pray to him, rather than mercy for the stay of execution he’d delivered her. And yet—

“What is it you want, Lord Cyr?” Her hands were warm enough inside his leather gloves to sweat. “In return for your kindness?”

His smile wavered. 

“Only to see you safely home,” he said. “Perhaps a conversation with your uncle.”

With only a few words, the dream made sense once again. For it was not a dream. He had seen her with fresh eyes today and decided he fancied her enough to buy her innocence. For all his kindness, her circumstances were no better than they had been before. The Lord of Whispers despised her kind. Referred to humans as pigs. Her gaze lingered on the dream before her, two sacks full to bursting with enough food to preserve both her and Gamel. Her entire being burned as she realised that she’d never taste a bite of it.

“Lord Firan is our patron.” What he wanted from her was not hers to give. It was Gamel’s, and Gwen closed her eyes as she was forced to admit the truth she’d tried so hard to ignore. Her uncle had already sold her. “What you seek from my uncle has already been—”

She had no words for it. Could not give it voice. It was the touch of the master smith’s hand on her shoulder. The way he leant over her. The feeling of his breath too close to her skin. Slow torture, because they both knew how it would end. It was only Gwen who clung stubbornly to her denial, and Lord Firan who indulged her for the sake of his own amusement.

“Firan?” Lord Cyr’s eyes glowed. A breeze tugged at her hair, lifting the strands around her face. “Has he touched you?”

Gwen shook her head; it did not seem safe to return his gaze.

“Do you want him to?” 

The choice had never been hers. 

“No.”

He cleared his throat, leaning away from her. Gwen could feel his scowl, though she did not dare check his expression.

“I’ll take care of it.”

And if he did, then Gwen would starve. Lord Firan could train another iron smith; he did not have to favour their line. 

“He is our patron.”

“And what a patron he is.” Lord Cyr's teeth snapped together, his lips tight with anger. “Generous enough to watch you starve.”

Gwen tested the words before she spoke. There were many cruelties she could lay at Lord Firan’s feet, but her hunger was not one of them.

“The harvest failed, Lord Cyr.” She dared glance up to hold his gaze. The winter’s short days had lingered, and they had been cruel. “We are all starving.”

His gaze didn’t leave hers. He breathed out slowly before placing the sacks down. Gwen watched the fæ bend as he rooted around inside, unsure if there was something she should say or do—

“Here,” Lord Cyr said, pulling a wrapped bundle free. He untied the sides of the cloth to reveal the large wheel of hard cheese within. He broke off a generous piece, holding it out to her. “So you do not perish before I deliver you to your door.”

Gwen's gloved hands were clumsy as she took the morsel from his fingers. He'd broken off a chunk too big for one bite. It was as strange a moment as she had lived. She ought to hate him. He'd arrested her brother and would have hanged him. Humiliated her.

Yet, in some ways, he’d been kinder to her than any fæ she'd ever known. Lord Firan's smiles had lessened none of his cruelties. Every payment less than the last, till Gwen had learned to make half the marks stretch twice as long. Every smile tinged with hunger. Each touch a reminder that he owned her.

Lord Cyr may have used her, but he'd fed her from his hand. Might have humiliated her and called her cruel names, but he’d removed himself from her mouth when he felt her tears. Of the two fælords, somehow she hated the Lord of Whispers less. Gwen broke the piece in half; they were even enough that she could not have judged the difference.

“As thanks.” Gwen dared to offer him the smallest smile. “For your kindness.”

He did not deny her, taking the piece from her hand. Returning her smile with a small one of his own. They ate them at the same time, and Gwen had to close her eyes at the taste. Her stomach flipped, almost in agony for the grumble it gave.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

The quiet question drew her gaze back to him. He'd finished his bite, but Gwen was holding hers on her tongue just to savour the taste. Grudgingly, she swallowed.

“Yes,” she said.

His gaze held an amusement that did not seem cruel. “Good.”

It was a strange day indeed when the Lord of Whispers did not seem so terrifying to her.

He washed the blood off his palms. Bright red and still warm, it made his hands itch, the way human blood always did. The trace of iron, enough to irritate his skin. The rebel had died too quickly, but then he’d been in a foul mood. His mind filled with pretty eyes. At one angle grey, at another lightest blue. Pale, and as colourless as the winter turned the woman’s skin. He’d walked it to its door, bid it goodbye without even taking back his gloves. Let it go once again. He had meant to do none of it. Been taken entirely by surprise when he’d seen it fall. Had watched the despair spread across its face, at the pitiful, spoiled food. Cyr hadn’t been able to stop himself from interfering. He couldn’t let it starve to death. Not before he’d had it.

There was no doubt in his mind anymore; he’d watched it too long. He needed to feel it, to taste it—

And then what? Drag the weeping creature down to a cell. Gwendolen broke the prince’s laws when it freed its brother, but the idea of hanging the woman sat ill. The cage was waiting; he liked the idea of it safe within his chambers far more. If only Firan weren't taking so long to deliver the damnable lock, it would already be there.

“Cyr.”

What now? He turned to see the Prince had both crept up on him and made himself comfortable, leaning, arms crossed, against the table that held the rebels’ remains. It was little more than meat now.

“Tristrian?” He couldn’t have guessed the reason for his visit. “What—”

“Firan is upset,” the Prince said. Fast enough to the point that the metalsmith must have made his anger clear indeed. “He seems to think you’re planning to take something that belongs to him?”

He must have been watching the woman as closely as Cyr. He’d only walked it home. Hadn’t even asked its uncle for a price. Nor had the conversation he’d been planning himself with Firan. He’d needed time to soften the burning edge of his rage. It's patron indeed. The lord’s game was obvious. Starve the girl until it would submit to anything he wanted just for the promise of bread.

“And if I am?” he asked.

“Don't deny—” Tristrian blinked, his lips parting as he realised Cyr hadn't.

No doubt the prince had expected more protest.

“Cyr,” he said, gathering himself quickly. “Firan is one of the greatest smiths amongst our kin. Of all the lands that would have him, he has chosen Stormharth to make his home—”

“I want the woman.” There was no dancing around it. “We can afford to lose Firan. He’s a conceited fop who’s stolen most of his best designs.”

Tristrian gripped the bridge of his nose. “You don’t even like humans. Let him have the girl, and I’ll order Ciel to talk to you again.”

Cyr said nothing. He could wait the prince out. Tristrian wouldn’t deny him.

“He’s had an agreement in place with her uncle for almost a decade,” he said. “Firan’s invested years in the girl. Trained her in his craft. Cyr—” his tone turned cajoling. “For mercy’s sake, let him have her maidenhead at least.” 

Cyr didn’t blink, and the Prince’s face fell. He knew when he was serious and knew better than to get in his way. Tristrian glanced down at the mess of skin and bone that had been a man earlier that afternoon.

“What did this poor creature do?”

“Got arrested when I was forcing myself not to drive iron nails through Firan’s finger, one by one, till his hands were too mangled to work his forge again.” And it had pushed Gwendolen to the ground.

Brought a look of misery to the woman's face that had enraged him to witness. The prince’s gaze lifted to the dark stones of the ceiling of the interrogation chamber. 

“Mercy, spare me.” His sigh was deep and long-suffering. “Fine, the girl’s yours. Just don’t kill her. Maybe he’ll still want her when you get bored, and I can salvage something from this idiocy.”

Chapter Text

Gwen folded the cloth, laying it neatly beside the lock. Unpickable—that had been the demand. A lock no thief could trick. She’d designed and forged it, and even Gwen wasn’t certain she could have unlocked the mechanism with anything but the key. 

Its silver casing caught the amber candlelight. She’d been slow. Spent days alone, refining and smelting the strictly regulated iron ore Lord Firan had sent. It would have made his smiths sick. So the work was given to Gwen and Gamel. They would not cough blood from traces of the element in the air.

The ring of Gamel’s hammer ceased. He placed it down, and though he did not look at her, Gwen could feel him watching. The food Lord Cyr had given them had lasted almost two weeks. She had drawn out every hour, and Gamel hadn’t rushed her.

“You need to deliver it to him.”

Gwen could see her own eyes reflected in the polished metal. The silver alone was worth ten times the marks that Lord Firan paid them to forge it. But the metal was his; he’d sent her only enough for the piece and even then, not quite. The weights exact, just a precious few grains too light. The only flaw in a perfect design.

“Tomorrow.” When Gwen told him two weeks ago that Lord Firan had asked to speak with him, Gamel had looked away. He never seemed to meet her eyes anymore. His lack of response had been response enough. An agreement, he was too much of a coward to lend his voice. “Please, we don’t need the marks just yet. I’ll check the traps—”

“Fine.” Gamel’s fist curled around the handle of his hammer. “Fine, Gwen.” He cleared his throat, jaw tight from his gritted teeth. “Tomorrow.”

A fine layer of snow dusted the ground. It clung to the barren trees. Hard dirt clustered at the base of their frozen trunks. The forest was silent as she stared down at the empty trap. Twine and sticks bound together to create a cage. The piece of cheese she’d left was gone. Some lucky forest creature had stolen its meal. She could not even resent it.

“Mercy.” She was so tired of the misery.

Gwen kicked the tree with the edge of her ragged boot, and a drift of snow dropped from the branch above her, smattering the forest floor.

“My eyes did not deceive me; it is she—fierce Gwen, the dragon slayer.”

Gwen's head snapped up, a smile breaking across her face. It was the barest moment of levity. Relief where there had been so little of late.

“Thora,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

Thora, daughter of Mor, looked in a far sorrier state than even Gwen. She stood not far. Her cloak was ragged and patched, and her dark curls as wild as her.

“Can I not visit my little sister?” she asked.

Not siblings by blood, but by heart all the same.

“Anselm has been gone for six months.” Gwen folded her arms. “And I have not seen you for almost two years.”

“Gwen.” Her eyes widened. “I have been busy—”

“Busy?” It was hard to keep her mouth pursed when her lips so wished to smile. “Do not tell me you have finally resigned yourself to honest work.”

She dipped her head. “There is no profession more honest than mine.”

“You’re a thief, a rogue and now a rebel to boot.” Gwen's gaze darted to check the trees, to be certain they were alone.

Thora’s hand pressed to her chest. “But I do it all for the children.”

Gwen's breath misted as she huffed. She should turn away now, leave, and forget she’d ever seen Thora. She could hang for even a conversation with the rebel. Anselm almost had. Her cheeks burned from the chill of the air.

“Did he find you?” She’d said her last farewell to him long before dawn that night so many months ago. He’d fled into the Prince’s forest, and she had prayed to mercy he would find Thora. She was the reason he’d been taken. “Is he with you?”

“I have been far away, Gwen.” Thora’s cheeks flushed. “Anselm did not find us.”

Gwen swayed slightly on her feet, her breath catching in her chest. “He didn’t?”

He hadn’t made it. If he hadn’t got to the rebels—

Thora caught her shoulder, closing the gap between them to hold her steady before her knees could buckle.

“He may well have found another of our groups.” There was no hope in her eyes, only denial.

Gwen nodded. Their gazes held, and she examined the familiar face before her. Blue eyes, the colour twilight turned the forest. A smattering of freckles across her upturned nose, and incisors that ran sharp. Her teeth made her smile seem a little dangerous. Fierce Gwen and Thora the Brave. Anselm had never had a title; he’d needed no introduction. 

She’s always thought Thora was so clever. When she ran away to join the rebels, Gwen declared Thora was the stupidest woman alive. She still believed both things truth.

“You should not be here.” Gwen glanced down. “They took Anselm when you last came. If anyone were to know I’d spoken with you—”

“Gwen.” Her eyes beseeched her. “I need your help.”

“My help?” She repeated it back, her tongue heavy.

She felt at once an idiot and deeply flattered.

Thora and Anselm had let her follow them around when they were young. But neither of them had ever truly needed her. Thora slipped a hand into the inside of her cloak before pressing a cold rock between Gwen’s palms. She glanced down, her hands opened of their own accord as she dropped it, stumbling away.

“No!” she gasped.

“We found a seam, Gwen.” Thora’s brown eyes burned with the spark of rebellion. “I can bring so much more, but we need a smith to forge it—”

“No!” She covered her ears so she would hear no more.

“Iron blades, Gwen!” Thora bent to grab the ore from the frozen ground, speaking louder. “Weapons we can use to slay them. We could kill those fæ scum—”

“Stop!” Gwen held up a hand, warding her off. “Just stop! I will not hear it!”

“Would you prefer to starve?” Thora scowled, as if Gwen were the fool. “To watch your people slaughtered? If you help us, we could arm—”

“Do you think Gamel would just sit by and let me make swords for rebels?” Gwen’s hand flew out towards the trees. “I will not be a part of this madness.”

Thora's face fell, the fire dying, replaced by frozen flint.

“They killed Anselm.”

How dare she! Her hand came up, jabbing the woman’s collarbone. 

“You killed Anselm!” If he were truly dead, then Gwen could only lay the blame at one door. “You snuck up to his table at the tavern—you were seen talking to him, and gone by the time they arrested him. Disappeared like you always do and let him face the trouble you caused. You didn’t stick around to see the knights drag him through the town square, but I was there. I watched when they beat him because he wouldn't beg mercy.” Her palm itched to slap her for it. “Your damned rebellion killed him! Not every human who lives in Stormharth has starved. But every rebel they catch has hung!”

“Anselm didn’t.” Thora folded her arms, not backing down. “And neither have I.”

They glared at one another.

“Only because they haven't caught you yet!” It broke her heart to say it, but to Thora she could never lie. “One day they’ll hang you too.”

“What happened to fierce Gwen?” she asked, knuckles white as she gripped the cursed ore. “The dragon slayer—”

“I’ve slain no dragons!” It was the name they’d given her as a child. 

A joke amongst them, because she was the small one, but when the bigger children cornered them to steal what food they’d begged, she fought like a wildcat to keep it. Always so calm until someone pushed her too far. Then she’d fight with teeth and nails until even the strongest of their tormentors learned not to bother her. They’d only spent a few months at the orphan house before Gamel took them in. But they’d been hard months.

Thora took a step back, her head tilting up at the break in Gwen's tone. Her gaze sharpened, as though she could see beyond the argument they were having now, which truly bore no difference to the thousands they’d had before, that something was wrong. When they were friends, they were the best of friends, and when they clashed, they were even better enemies. Could scream at one another until Anselm had to step in and separate them. He’d once picked up Gwen mid-argument and put her up a tree. He hadn’t let her come down until they’d both apologised.

“What’s wrong, Gwen?” Thora asked, her scowl softening. “Why do your eyes look broken?”

Gwen’s gaze dropped to the slush of dirt and dirty snow. The woman knew her too well for her to hope to lie.

“Lord Firan.” The name misted in the air before her like a curse. “Gamel sold him my maidenhead.” Thora took a step back, her fingers covering her lips. “Tomorrow I will have to deliver him his commission, and I think he means to—to take it.”

Thora’s palms brushed over her face, not shocked. It could surely be a surprise to no one—

“Run away with me.” She grabbed Gwen’s hand in hers; they were as cold as each other. “Come with me, Gwen. There is nothing here but hunger and suffering.”

She yanked her hand back, taking a step away. “Can your rebels promise me anything else?”

“Gwen.” Thora’s voice broke on her name. “For love of me—”

“If you loved us, why did you leave?” She folded her arms, her glare hot enough it ought to steam in the cold air. “Why did you not marry Anselm like you promised instead of running away to join the rebellion?”

The wind rushed through the trees, a sharp gust that made the bare branches claw at one another. They both shivered; her eyes darted, searching the forest for an enemy that was not there. It was silent, too cold even for the birds.

“And if I had?” Thora chin tilted, lips a thin line. “What life would we have had?”

“At least we would have had something to make the best of,” Gwen said. “Rather than the misery you’ve brought on us all with your foolish dreams.” She nodded to the rock, still clutched in Thora’s shaking hand. “I’m not doing it—”

She moved to push past her, but Thora caught her arm. 

“Gwen.” Just her name, one word that was so much, and so little. “Please.”

Being around her felt just the same. The sly glance of a shared joke. Foolishness and hope. She was supposed to be her sister, to marry Anselm. 

“Run away with me, Gwen, please?” The same request she’d made of her three years ago. “Fight with me.”

Gwen gave her the same answer.

“I will not die for a doomed rebellion.” Not even for Thora.

Her eyes sharpened, the same hurt burning within. “I never thought you’d end up a coward.”

Gwen's palm slapped across the woman’s cheek, hard enough to burn her skin. Thora let go of her, stepping back. Her lips parted, a moment she regretted striking her, meant to apologise. But the words would not come. If she’d just married Anselm, like she’d been supposed to, none of it would have happened. They might not have had much, but they would have had each other. Now they both had nothing.

They spotted the rebel in the forests south. The woman had yet to realise it was being followed, but it would be a matter of minutes. Cyr regretted not grabbing it at first sighting; all the hunt had brought was trouble.

Gwendolen’s gaze dropped, its head turned down. The woman looked pitiful, but he felt no sympathy. A ball of fury curled in his gut; not only was it talking to a rebel. It had wandered into the forest without the gloves he’d given it. He couldn’t have said which act infuriated him more.

“Lord Firan.” Its breath misted in the air. “Gamel sold him my maidenhead.” The rebel flinched, stepping back as though it had been struck. “Tomorrow I will have to deliver him his commission, and I think he means to—to take it.”

The rebel scratched the skin of its face, like it would rather peel it off, then face the words it had just heard.

“Run away with me.” The rebel grabbed Gwendolen’s hand, and Cyr knew he would have to hang it. “Come with me, Gwen. There is nothing here but hunger and suffering.”

Gwendolen had the good sense to shy away. “Can your rebels promise me anything else?”

“Gwen.” The woman’s voice cracked. “For love of me—”

Cyr’s hand went to the pommel of his blade.

“If you loved us, why did you leave?” Gwendolen folded its arms, glaring at the woman. “Why did you not marry Anselm like you promised instead of running away to join the rebellion?”

The wind rushed through the trees, a sharp gust that made the bare branches claw at one another. He glanced at Cath, wondering which of them had lost control of their fælight. He’d have them whipped if they gave them away.

“Cyr,” he whispered. “Do we go now?”

Cyr shook his head. “Not yet.”

He forced himself to still; if he moved too much, he’d break the glamour hiding them. It put a dampener on the world, an eerie silence that the rebels had yet to learn to identify.

“And if I had?” The rebel tilted her chin back, lips a thin line. “What life would we have had?”

“At least we would have had something to make the best of,” Gwen said. “Rather than the misery you’ve brought on us all with your foolish dreams.” It nodded to the rock, still clutched in the other woman’s shaking hand. “I’m not doing it—”

Gwendolen was right. It would not be committing high treason any time soon.

The rebel caught its arm. “Gwen, please—”

Cyr bared his teeth. The rebel had no right to his woman’s name, and even less to touch.

“Run away with me, Gwen, please—fight with me!”

There was a moment, while the blood rushed in his ears and the fury tinged the corners of his vision. Cyr feared it might say yes. It would be an even bigger mess if Gwendolen agreed to join the rebellion in front of so many knights. He'd have to arrest it. The thought of its eyes bright with terror bothered him more than it should. He did not want the first time he truly touched the woman to be in a cell beneath the keep.

“I will not die for a doomed rebellion,” Gwendolen said.

His relief was so strong it left him in a slow breath that lightened his chest.

“I never thought you’d end up a coward.”

The cold air rang with the sound of the slap, the woman laid across the rebel’s cheek. Cyr smiled. Good. 

Gwendolen said nothing else, and as she moved to leave, Cath’s voice filled his ear. 

“Shall we arrest it?”

“No.” His answer was immediate. 

Cath took a step back, and a twig snapped beneath his feet. The rebel’s head whipped around, fear in its eyes.

“It’s a rebel—”

“Hardly.” Cyr waved a dismissive hand. “I’ll deal with it.”

He’d hesitated too long, spent another two weeks just watching the girl. The cage wasn’t finished yet. He’d been waiting for the damned lock. It was time for Cyr to make good on his claim. He’d have it at least once before he dragged it back to the castle.

 The rebel had sense enough to finally note the danger it was in. It twitched, glancing around like a rabbit scenting a fox. The woman ran, and the chase began.

“After it, Cath,” Cyr said. “Follow the rebel scum and see if it leads you back to any of its fellows.” His gaze was already drifting to the path Gwendolen had taken. “Give it till the morning, and if it gives us nothing, drag it back to the keep.”

“And you?” Cath asked.

“As I said.” Cyr grit his teeth. “I’ll deal with the other one.”

He took a step, but Cath’s hand covered the centre of his chest, holding him back before he could take another.

“Gryff, Ander.” Cath beckoned the knights. “Eudes and Gal, go with Lord Cyr.” His voice dropped, an undertone meant only for Cyr. “There could be others. Take the knights to guard your back.”

It was good sense; if the rebels had iron, they posed a true threat. His lips pursed as he tried to think of a reason good enough to deny him. Cyr did not want an audience for the half-formed plan turning in his head. Cath must have read the denial in his eyes; his brows drew together.

“The prince would kill us both if I let you walk into danger alone,” he said.

And that, unfortunately, Cyr could neither deny nor argue with.

Chapter Text

Gwen did not return to the forge. She would check the empty cupboards one more time, see if there were any scraps she could pull together for the thinnest stew. Her eyes were already burning as she hung her coat by the door. She started the fire first in the hearth. Brushed the wood dust off her hands when she was done. Tomorrow she’d sweep the ashes. Her hand pressed to the hearthstones. The wood crackled as it burned, heat bathing her skin and drying her misery before it could fall.

She sniffed once, allowing the melancholy, but only for a moment.

Tomorrow, Lord Firan would give her a fat purse of marks, enough to see out the winter. All she had to do was give him the lock and Gamel’s answer. Her uncle wouldn’t do it himself.

He was the coward, not Gwen.

Her breath caught as she realised she would rather be hungry tonight than feed him. Let his stomach ache like her heart did.

The door opened, and she stood straight. Gwen could not bring herself to look at him. 

“The traps were empty.” She was out of excuses, and he’d let her make them no longer. His debt was due, and she’d be the one to pay it. Her hands curled into fists. “I’ll go to Lord Firan tomorrow.”

His footsteps were heavy, deliberate—the rap of thick-soled boots against tile, a chair pulled out from the table, before Gamel sat.

“I thought I told you—I’d take care of it.”

Not Gamel.

Gwen’s skin prickled; her eyes caught on the flames as the voice filled her mind. The fæ sat at her table, his palm laid flat across the rough wood so old now that polish no longer shined it. It had drunk too much wax over the long years and grown immune to it.

“Lord Cyr?” He’d closed the door behind him.

The wooden planks her grandfather shaped had kept out the cold for so many long years. Sheltered them. If she made it outside, it might protect her still. She could trap him inside. There were no windows for him to climb out of. The only escape would be through the chimney.

The fæ offered her no smiles today. Their last encounter seemed a dream, the kindness he’d shown hiding the face of the creature before her now.

“What a busy day you’ve had, Gwendolen.” His tone was colder than the ice that clung to the river’s edge in winter’s depths.

The Lord of Whispers knew Thora had asked her to forge iron blades.

Gwen dropped to her knees, her palms and head pressed to the ground. There was dust and dirt encrusted between the tiles she ought to have mopped. The faintest flicker of shame fought her fear. That he should see the dirty misery in which they lived. How could he not judge her when he'd known only stone and satin? No wonder the fæ called them pigs.

“I said no, Lord Cyr.” Mercy—she was dead already. “I refused, I would never—”

“Get off the floor.” The words were harsh.

Gwen did not know what to do. If her grovelling infuriated him, then how could she beg for pardon? Her eyes closed, burning as she realised she couldn’t. Her world swayed, head light. A day without food, and she was fainting. She'd lived for weeks on only scraps. Was it truly so terrible if it ended tonight, Gwen wouldn’t have to face Lord Firan. Wouldn’t have to keep going when there was so little left to give. Her knees shook as she pressed her palms into the cold floor tile. Forcing herself to stand.

His index finger slid slowly across the table before he pointed to the floor before him. “Come here.”

What choice did she have but to force her legs to approach him? If she obeyed him, then perhaps he’d be merciful. There was nothing for torture to pry from her lips. Gwen had no secrets.

Anselm didn't beg for his life when the knights arrested him, and she would not either. She’d only ask he kill her before they hung her from the castle walls. Her eyes did not see the steps she took, her mind too full and yet so empty as her feet stopped before him. Her eyes fixed on the floor as she fought not to let her tears fall.

“You share few features with your brother.”

Her breath caught. Tight and painful. He knew she’d freed Anselm. It would be the noose. Maybe it would be quick; her neck might snap, and she’d die without dancing for the fæ.

“Gwendolen, look at me.” The snarl was gone, but Gwen knew how little that meant. “Why do you look so different from him?”

The fæ laughed as they split open a man's belly. Sang the sweetest music at hangings, and danced when humans wept. Why was Anselm tall and dark and broad and Gwen small and fair and pale? Why had she not been born a son, to better work the forge? If she’d been a boy, then maybe Gamel would have loved her, rather than sold her. But none of those were answers, only questions.

“I take after our mother, Lord Cyr.”

He sighed, and she risked meeting his gaze. Gwen was dead anyway.

“Pig, though you are. I prefer how you turned out.” The wood of the table creaked as he pushed himself up, standing slowly enough it felt a dare for her to flee. “My knights are in the forge with your uncle.” 

The bronze bars of her cell door slammed closed beneath the keep. Even if she ran, there were more fæ outside, waiting to drag her to the noose. Lord Cyr circled her, and it took everything in her not to turn with him. She failed at the last, her feet bolting.

He caught her arms before she made it one step, yanking her back against him. She cried out. Wisps of the fear clenched in the grip of her chest, escaping her throat.

“Disobey me, Gwendolen.” His lips touched her cheek. “And I’ll hang him.”

She was already dead. It would be cruel to take Gamel with her. His hand didn't stay on her arm; it moved, brushing her stomach, exploring her form through the rough material of her shift. It was not the touch of a man considering murder, but that made it no less cruel.

“If I’m a pig—” her voice shook, but she still forced her chin high. “Then surely you don’t want to touch me?”

The only relief in her arrest was that Gwen would not have to face Lord Firan on the morrow. If she were to be executed, then could she not be spared the indignity of violation?

“But I do.” The nails of the hand he still gripped her with dug into her arm as his other palm flattened against her stomach, trapping her against him. “I find you to be the most enchanting little piglet. One I yearn to hear squeal.”

He was nothing like the Lord who’d given her food when she was starving. Gifted her his gloves because her hands were cold. Gwen could not believe she'd been fool enough to think him kind. A trick, it must have been; he was looking for evidence of rebellion. Today, Thora had handed him high treason.

“I refused to forge them.” She knew she was doomed, but she could not stay her lips. “Have mercy, please, Lord Cyr. Just hang me.” Gwen knew better than to plead for her life. “I know nothing of what they’re planning—”

“Mercy from the Lord of Whispers.” His cheek brushed against hers, skin so smooth where a man's would have been rough. “Do you think this is a fairytale, Gwendolen?”

“A fairy tail?” What in mercy's name was a fairy, and what did its tail have to do with anything?

For a moment, she was too confused to be scared. But only for a moment, when his breath touched her neck with his lips, her terror returned. 

“Where is your bed, Gwendolen?”

She could not show him that. The mess of blankets where she slept under the eaves. Like the den of an animal, the burrow of a forest beast. It would be a humiliation too far.

“There are blankets in the hayloft,” Gwen said. “Or I can put one down by the hearth. There’s more space, and the hearth will be warmer. I sleep there often—”

“By the hearth?” She felt his smile against her skin. Wide and cruel. “How neglected you are. My Cinderella snuck into the prince’s ball, freed a dangerous prisoner and ran away again all before the stroke of midnight.” She didn’t ask who Cinderella was—the confirmation he knew her crimes crushed the last small thread of hope left to her. She would be tortured before the noose. Her limbs broken into so many pieces, the knights would drag her to her hanging. “Since you ask so nicely, I’ll have you by the hearth. Stain the tiles of your hovel with your virgin blood.”

Gwen barely heard his words. “I’ll get a blanket—”

“No.” The words resonated in his chest, setting her teeth on edge. “A bed is for a lady.” His hand rubbed her stomach—tone as sweet as it was cruel. “You’re not a lady, are you? You’re a sow, and I’ll have you in the dirt like the beast you are.”

Gwen's tears escaped her; there was no reason to hold them in. They slipped hot down her cheeks when she'd been cold for so many months. Lord Cyr was slow to unlace the ties of her dress, tugging her shift free to bare her to the cold air. Gooseflesh covered her, raw as plucked carrion. The marrow in her bones turned to ice as his fingers traced over her naked skin, following the lines of her ribs. He stroked her belly again now that she was bare to him. Fingers lingering on the slight softness above her mound, where her body kept what little fat it could cling to. He brushed the bones of her hip, a strained noise leaving his throat.

“Are you afraid, Gwendolen?” His voice was low as he stole the heat from her with every touch. 

The last of her pride filled her chest, a ball of heat in the very centre of her frozen heart. “I won’t squeal for you.”

Anselm hadn't, and Gwen could not be more a coward than her brother. Tonight, she would lose everything but her pride. Her pride alone she would take with her to mercy’s arms.

“Stoke the hearth for us,” Lord Cyr said. “You’re frozen.”

He let her go, and her eyes burned as she crossed the room. She took a log from the barrel beside the fire, placing it in the centre of the kindling she'd lit so recently and in a different life. Her eyes slipped to the poker. If it were iron, she’d skewer him with it.

A breeze ruffled her hair. The small gust fanned the coals, and a lick of bright flame bit the log, casting a red glow over the stone. The tiles were cold beneath her bare calves as she sat back; even the heat of the coals couldn’t stop her shivering.

When the fæ was done with her, he'd kill her. All that remained now was pain. Torture for every moment of the rest of her short life. Gwen faced her death in the fire's flickering light, and with it she burned.

“Lie down, sweet maiden,” he said.

She grabbed for the fire poker—

He caught her wrist, wrenching her around. Her leg twisted beneath her, sending a lance of pain through bone and muscle. She bucked against him as he pinned her. The leather and silk of his courtly clothing scratched at her bare skin as if it were goat hair. Her fist slammed against his chest.

“No!” Gwen couldn’t have said how many times she cried the word. 

How long she twisted and snarled at him. Fought with all the strength left in her starved limbs. Each time she tried to hit him, to claw at his face and give him another ugly scar, he caught her hands. He pushed her back down against the cold tiles every time she found the strength to rise. Patient in his torment. It was his smile, the soft twist of his lips as he stared down at her as though her misery were endearing, that broke her.

The defeat drowned her in a wave of tears. Gwen turned her head, hiding her face. She could feel his cock between them, as merciless as the rest of him. She sobbed. Her chest heaving. The Lord of Whispers knew his craft well. He drew out her misery, letting her fight until the weight of her own despair crushed her.

“You did well, Gwendolen.” His lips burned as he kissed her wet cheek. “You can tell the other pigs how hard you fought me.”

His tongue lapped at the column of her throat as his hips pushed hard against her centre. She could feel the bulge against her cunny. Harder after her struggles than it had been before. All her fight had done was inflame him.

“I will never speak of this.” The rough grain of dust and dirt beneath her itched her skin as the fine strands of his silky hair tickled her nose. “No one can know what you have—what you have made me do.”

She’d take the shame of it with her to the noose. When he drew back, Gwen did not move. There was no escaping it. No choice but to endure. It could not be worse than hunger.

His smile dropped away as he regarded her. Lord Cyr’s lips pursed.

Why wouldn’t he just do it? Why must he be so cruel as to draw her agony out?

“If you behave now.” The words were hesitant, like he himself was unsure of them. “I will not arrest you.”

Gwen’s breath caught, the focus returning to her eyes as she searched his face for a lie. A flame filled her, the desperate pain of hope kindling when the last ember had guttered.

“You won’t?”

His lips parted, brows drawn as if the confusion she felt was shared. Lord Cyr cleared his throat, expression turning stern.

“If you give me your body with no further struggle,” he said. “Then I will forget your crimes. You may consider yourself both forgiven and pardoned.”

It was mercy from the Lord of Whispers.

The moment held between them, as vulnerable as it was strange. There was no escape from his touch, yet the hope quickened in her chest, the smallest sliver of it burning as bright as wildfire as it brought her back to life. She would face neither the keep nor the noose. Just him.

Lord Cyr would only take what Gamel had sold to Lord Firan anyway, and for the barest breath, Gwen would have called it fair. If he had her maidenhead, then maybe the metalsmith wouldn’t want her anymore. She could not see what interest beyond her innocence the fælord could hold for her. Without it, she was just another woman, as much a whore as any of them. No, he would not want her. She’d repulse him, but he'd pay her for the lock. Then Gwen could see out winter on the marks of his commission.

Hope filled the space where there had been only defeat, a choice to make the best of. Gwen almost smiled, the faintest warmth filling her at the thought of thwarting one fælord, before her gaze focused on the other. The smile was banished before it could form, hiding from the glow of his green eyes. The heat in his gaze.

“You can have me,” Gwen said. “I won’t fight.”

He made no further offers, taking the time only to unlace his breeches. She felt the press of his heat against the most vulnerable piece of her. He pushed. Her teeth dug into her lip at the lance of agony at her centre. He was in, but not far. Gwen struggled to draw breath, her hands fisting as she fought herself rather than him. Held back the impulse to kick at him and scream.

Still, he did not force his way further. His eyes fixed on hers as she caught her breath.

“Whores are usually easier to breach.” There was no malice in the words. The frown on his brow was a stranger to anger. “What is wrong with you?”

She lay beneath him, her mind exhausted and her body tense. Yet the fæ stared at her as though she were reacting strangely to his invasion.

“How many women have you raped?” Gwen didn’t wince at the word.

The moment was too surreal for anything but honesty.

“Admittedly,” he said. “You are my first.”

And how hideous her luck must be, to have caught the eye of a monster who thought her kind were little more than animals. His thumb brushed her cheek, catching her tears, as though he would have preferred her skin dry. Wished for her to smile and pull him closer. Gwen could not do it. It took all her will not to push him away.

“I do not couple with rebels.” His voice was softer than a confession. “And whores are always eager.”

It seemed the cruellest of mockeries that she must explain such things to him. That Gwen must guide him through her ruin. She knew so little of what they were doing herself. Only what Thora had told her, and even then, she had not wished to hear of the things the woman shared with her brother.

“Fæladies—are they always eager for you too, or do you—” Her cheeks burned. She gathered her will. Forced herself to breathe before she could continue. “Must you sometimes convince them?”

His chin tilted back, a flash of heat in his eyes.

“I would have thought your life would be incentive enough.” Despite the annoyance in his tone, his gaze turned thoughtful.

Gwen swallowed, her stomach tensing, the muscles of her cunny pushing back against even the smallest piece of him inside her.

“If I were fæ—”

“You are not.” His tone made her flinch.

Lord Cyr's head dipped, his teeth clenched as he took a breath as uneven as her own. Her flinch had hurt him.

“But if I were?” She could not let herself think. Gwen reached up, fingers brushing his cheek in a touch gentle enough to call a caress. It was not pulling him closer, and yet his eyes burned so brightly at her touch. The hunger painful to witness. “How would you make me ready to take you?”

He stilled, and she watched the thoughts warring in his mind. Earnest confusion, so ill at ease with the position he’d forced her into. He looked almost innocent. His fingers trailed across her chest, circling the edge of her breast, the touch light enough that it was somewhere between a tickle and a burn.

“If you were fæ.” His voice was hushed, like he hardly dared whisper the words. “I might tell you how soft your skin is. How I hunger to press my lips to you.” His hips pulled back, slipping out of her, and Gwen could have wept with relief. His member was trapped between them. He pressed it hard against her mound, deliberate movements that filled her stomach with heat. The movement of him rubbing against her cunny was firmer than his fingers but not faster. “I might say that you were uncommonly beautiful, even amongst our kind.” 

His touch trailed across her shoulder, lingering on the seam of her elbow before he ran a fingertip down her inner arm. Gwen made a noise she didn’t mean to, a stifled little moan, and he smiled. She couldn’t fight him, so she gave in, giving him the warmth he so clearly craved.

His gaze dropped to her lips, his focus painful to behold. The heat in her belly deepened until she felt it in her bones, thawing the lingering ice as she surrendered. She'd pretend, tell herself he was her lover, that it wasn't such a terrible, humiliating thing to do this with him. If he didn’t hurt her, then she could almost convince herself of it.

“If you were fæ,” he said. “I might seek to kiss you until you gasped for breath, pleaded and moaned into my mouth. I might—”

Gwen caught his lips, lifting her head to kiss his closed mouth. He turned rigid, and she knew she'd made a mistake.

She dropped back, head falling to the cold tile as the heat that had grown in her stomach banked. As his eyes hardened, she understood there would be no pretending.

“I ought to have you whipped for that.” His words sliced through her as his lips twisted in disgust. “I do not kiss swine.”

She'd forgotten; let the heat of his gaze enchant her. Given herself to the moment. Now the truth faced her again, and she could not blind herself to it. Her eyes stung; the tears that she'd conquered released again.

His hips shifted back, his member at her centre, and this time it didn’t hurt as much as he found her opening. Both less painful and somehow a far greater agony.

Her legs shook as he hit a point inside her that was too tense for him to pass. Lord Cyr hissed like an angry cat, and her muscles clamped tighter around him. Gwen bit her lip, trying to keep her cry inside. Her chest shook as the sobs tried to fight their way free. The tears she could not hold ran thick down her cheeks. She was no more to him than an animal. A dirty, disgusting pig.

“Quiet.” The gentleness of his tone was purest poison. A trick, like every other word he spoke. “Quiet now, don’t weep.”

Could she even trust that once he was finished, he would not arrest her? What was a promise made to a pig worth?

Lord Cyr took one deep breath before his hips thrust forward. The movement sent a shock of bright agony through her. A pain she felt in her bones. Gwen's sob broke free of the cage she'd made in her chest. A cry as broken as her as his hips pressed hers into the dirt.

“Quiet, sweet maiden.” His fist curled beside her head as he steadied himself.

Lord Cyr’s head dropped, his face caught in her hair, drawing his hips back before he speared her burning insides again. The sting from where he’d broken her sharpened with every thrust.

A breeze rustled her hair, stirring the dust on the floor. The flames grew taller in the hearth, dancing like sprites. Her breath came harsh with tears and pain. He embedded himself in the depths of her. Of course, the Lord of Whisper’s touch would be torture. Pain was all he had to give.

Lord Cyr's head lifted, his throat bared to her as his eyes glowed the brightest green. Lit from the inside like he was aflame. Gentle tendrils of wind brushed over her, so much softer than his cruel touch. Her skin prickled with the chill, and her wet cheeks felt colder still.

He shuddered, palm landing on her shaking chest as he pinned her against the floor. Her breath came shallow, for fear of his weight cracking her ribs. His skin glowed, eyes squeezed closed as he groaned. Lord Cyr’s touch echoed within her, his palm slipping beneath her skin. It felt like a hand curling around her heart. Finding purchase somewhere deep, deep inside her. Claws digging into her very soul.

The heat of his release shocked her. Stinging what was already broken, burning her from the inside. He dropped, and Gwen’s arms lifted, pressed to his chest to keep what little distance she could so his weight couldn't crush her. The racing beat under her palm steadied, slowing. The pounding in her ears matched the thump of his heart. It was strange that this one bit of them could be the same when they were so unutterably different. Unfathomable that their hearts could share a beat, when his was forged of cruelty and hers crushed by fear.

Lord Cyr groaned again, his cheek rubbed against hers. As needy as a kitten. Exploring fingers brushed her sides as he touched her and touched her. His hands ran over her skin as if he were memorising the feel.

Gwen wasn’t certain if she’d ever speak again. Words felt too painful, sobs too loud. She wanted it over, needed it to stop now.

Silence and darkness were cravings in her bones. Somewhere safe and warm where she could curl small enough to disappear. Lord Cyr's eyes were unfocused as he stared down at her. Hazy as any drunk for the single moment before his gaze sharpened.

He pulled away from her fast enough that she broke her silence. Gwen cried out at the pain of his withdrawal. The fæ remained on his knees, eyes wide as he pulled a hand through his mussed hair. His lips parted, mouth gaping. Panic was as sharp in his eyes as cruelty had been.

“It’s alright.” Gwen’s voice didn’t feel like her own; she brushed the back of his hand with her fingertips. “It’s over now.”

He didn't flinch from her; his tense wrist softened under her gentle touch.

“Over?” Lord Cyr repeated.

As though he didn’t understand the word.

Gwen nodded, tears still bathed her cheeks. Her vision blurred as sorrow spilt over the rims of her aching eyes.

“You’ve taken what you wanted,” she said. “You can—” her breath caught. It hurt. Agony spread from her centre through her entire being. “You can leave me alone now, as you promised.”

“Leave you alone?” Lord Cyr repeated the words again.

Gwen found the strength in her arms to pull herself away. To sit up and shift back until her frozen skin touched the tiles of the hearth. She wrapped a shaking arm around her knees.

“You’ve had me, so now you can go.” He could want no more from her now he'd soiled the only pure thing that had ever belonged to her. Stained her innocence with her blood and his spend. “Leave and forget I ever existed.”

“Leave?” His pupils were so wide they sucked in the firelight, snuffing it out.

Lord Cyr reached for her face, and Gwen hid her head between her knees, both arms over her crown. She did not cry out.

“Leave?” he repeated.

She heard the shuffle of his movement, the step he took before he stumbled, catching himself hard enough that the table legs screeched as they scraped the floor tile. He seemed almost drunk. A few steps later, he caught his hands on the wall, laughing softly.

He had to go. Why wouldn't he just leave?

Gwen risked looking up to see his palm resting on the door, pressed to the wood her grandfather had cut and sanded.

“Where do I go?” Lord Cyr asked.

The question didn’t sound a taunt; he looked lost.

“Back to the castle.” The anger inside her was as sharp as the pain in her belly, as raw as the wounds across her soul. Gwen didn’t know if she had ever hated anyone so much as she despised him. “To torture and torment my people.” Her breath ached with the weight of her hurt. “And you forget me.”

“Forget you?” He smiled, like it was the finest joke he’d ever heard. “I could forget you?”

She wasn’t certain if it was a question. The door closed moments later, and he was gone. An awful memory, but no more or less than that.

The worst of it was that Gwen was grateful. Grateful to have escaped arrest. Grateful to have not been hanged for the trouble Thora had brought to her door. Violated to her core, yet still she thanked Mercy to have escaped with her life.

The winter air burnt his lungs, heavy with cold.

Leave and forget her?

Stop tormenting the human woman, who wept at his touch. He was drunk, dazed from the feeling of her skin.

The fælight had burst from him. He’d lost control of it for the first time since he was a child. She was lucky he hadn’t destroyed her hovel. Hadn’t ripped the building to pieces in a storm of pure elemental chaos. Brought the roof down on both their heads.

Cyr had never known anything like it. The best fuck he’d had in a thousand years, and she hadn’t even done anything. She'd lain beneath him weeping, whilst her body welcomed him like a sheath. A home made just for him, where the whispers of his mind quieted. The bliss of a peace he'd never known.

Forget her?

Cyr laughed outright as his palm shook against the wooden beams of her home. A filthy little hovel in the woods.

“Gwendolen.” The name was so sweet on his tongue.

The urge lingered to forget the mercy he'd promised her. To go back now and drag her out.

But the guards would see her. They’d know what he’d done. His thoughts burned as he took another shaking breath.

What had he done?

Something he shouldn’t have. He had to hide her. Tristrian couldn’t find out—

“Gryff!” His head spun before he caught the edge of the tree in front of him. “Ander come, both of you.”

There was a rustle as two of the men he’d brought slipped out of the forge. Moving on graceful feet. They were good knights, loyal. Discreet.

“Sir?” Gryff’s gaze darted to the hovel. “Is something wrong?”

Everything was wrong.

He dropped his voice low enough that the other fæ wouldn’t overhear. 

“Guard her,” he said. “Don’t let her know you’re watching.” His hand came up, finger pointing. “And don’t touch her, either of you. If you put so much as a finger on her, I’ll cut your hands off.”

The knights stared at him, eyes wide, as though he were speaking madness. Cyr had to swallow, grab hold of the sudden violence of his rage. The growl in his throat demanded blood. 

“Understood?” It was too late.

The words had been said, and he gave no apologies.

“Yes, Lord Cyr.” They saluted in unison.

“Good.” He waved towards the bare trees. “Make yourself scarce.”

“Sir.” Gryff stayed when he should already be gone, his eyes soft with worry. “Do you need help?”

He must truly be a state if the knights would risk his temper by disobeying his command. Cyr needed to get out of there before he did something more reckless and stupid than he already had.

“No,” he said, and Gryff had the sense to leave it at that. “Eudes, Gal.” He raised his voice, shouting to be heard. “Pay the pig its marks and get out here.” Cyr had taken a maidenhead tonight. He would pay the debt he owed. “And one of you, bring me my horse.”

Chapter Text

Gwen knocked softly on the door to Lord Firan’s workroom. The smiths were busy at work, not one of them deigning to look at her. Why would they? She was a lowly human. A pig. The door clicked open under her hand. She slipped inside, pressing it closed behind her.

Lord Firan stood by the window. He’d known she was coming, watched her through glass panes so clear she still marvelled at the wonder of the craftsmanship. Her footsteps echoed in the silent room as she brought the sack to his worktable. It had been heavy to carry, but the burn of her arms had given her something to think of, a focus that wasn’t her twisting stomach. Metal thunked as she placed it down.

“It’s—” his head turned at the sound of her voice. “It’s finished, Lord Firan.” 

Why did she feel like weeping when he looked at her? His eyes glowed like melted silver. An assessment that felt impossible to read.

“He let you go?”

Gwen flinched, her arms wrapping around her stomach. For such a short time that morning, she’d thought Lord Cyr’s purchase of her maidenhead would buy her more time. She’d begged Gamel to bring the lock to Lord Firan. He’d been silent as she pleaded, and at the end, he’d handed her the sack. The lock she’d built already bundled inside.

‘He is our patron.’

It was all Gamel had needed to say. Gwen was forced to accept the inescapably of it. They owed the fælord a debt worth lifetimes of gratitude, and he owned them. But mercy, she wished he didn’t—that she did not have to face this moment. Not when her soul already ached. When her body felt exhausted, cold and broken and wracked with shivers that came from something bleaker than the winter chill.

“If I could have the rest of the payment now, Lord Firan—”

He moved then. A single step, and her throat closed. The motion was deliberate as he shifted in front of her, body blocking the door, bringing the fine weave of his cloth tunic too close to the end of her nose.

“My fair Gwen.” His thumb caught the edge of her jaw, firm enough to force her chin up. “I’ve paid enough for you.” She couldn't look up. Gwen didn’t understand, and she did. Lord Cyr had taken her maidenhead, but Lord Firan had wanted it. “He’s done with you then, is he?”

It took a moment for the question to make sense. Her recollection of the night before was formless in her head, a twisted mess of terror and pain.

“I—” Gwen tried to make words, tried to explain that she didn’t want to speak of it, never again. “Your commission—”

“My commission.” His hand curled around the back of her neck, thumb digging into the base of her skull. “What a lovely piece you were!” His other palm slapped on the surface of the table, trapping her there. “Until you were soiled by that bastard’s hands!”

His lips pulled back, teeth bared. Gwen closed her eyes, her hands fisting at her sides.

“Please don’t—” her voice broke. She could not raise it higher than a whisper. Gwen was not brave enough. “Don’t hurt me.”

He was silent, his breath hard. For a length of time that stretched too long in her mind, she feared he would punish her for Lord Cyr’s touch. Blame her for drawing the attention of another fæ. Gwen might even prefer it. Better he beat her than make her do that painful thing again.

Lord Firan’s arms surrounded her, and it hurt. Somehow worse when he pressed his body to her, his palm covering the back of her head, than it would have been if he had slapped her.

“No.” He breathed in, cheek pressed to her crown. For all the softness of his tone, the coo that pretended reassurance, she could feel him. His member trapped between them, digging into her stomach as it grew rigid. “No, never that. It’s my fault too.” His lips touched the top of her head, and Gwen flinched. “I was waiting for you—but that’s done now.” His palm covered the middle of her back, with not an inch of give for her to push him away. “You’re still so lovely, why a maidenhead hardly counts. We can pretend it never happened.”

Gwen couldn’t move. The edge of the worktop dug into her rear, and his body her cage. Her choices hadn’t changed; it was still him or starve. The fæ withdrew only enough to lean down, his lips pressing to hers.

He stole a kiss. Not her first; that had been given to one of Daw’s sons, so long ago she hardly remembered it. His mouth was warm, his breath fresher than she'd expected. It wasn't unpleasant to let him kiss her. She parted her lips, and he shuddered against her. Lord Firan didn’t seem to mind kissing a pig, and Gwen hoped he would want only that. Just a kiss that tasted fresh and smelled of washed linen.

He had servants to clean his clothes. Smiths to work his forge, and he had Gwen now. Gwen to kiss. Just a kiss—

He pulled at her skirts searching for flesh, and Gwen cried into his mouth. A high-pitched whine, he swallowed with a low growl of warning. His grip turned harsher again, like a reprimand.

She just had to let it happen. Then he’d give her the marks for the commission, and she could buy food, though her stomach was too sick to eat. Gamel would be pleased that Lord Firan’s offence wasn’t so great that he trained another ironsmith in their stead. If she let him do it, they’d still have a patron. And Gwen—Gwen just had to—she had to—

“Mercy, you’re warm.”

His breath was rough as he released her lips. Hands calloused from centuries of metalwork touched her centre. The place that still burned from the night before.

“Next time,” Lord Firan said. “Next time, I’ll make it good.” He parted her limp legs, pulling her up, so she slipped back onto the worktop. A design for him to scrawl over, to leave corrections and comments in her margins that she would never decipher. “Once I’ve pounded every trace of him out of you.”

Gwen lost time, a few precious moments, when the world blurred and she couldn't breathe. She hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t considered that this would happen again and again—

“Next time?” 

He’d released himself, and his member pressed against where she was already hurting. Her chest twisted. It was unbearable. Again and again. His hands pushed her thighs wide, movements rougher than Lord Cyr's had been. She tried so hard, but Gwen couldn't hold back the sob. It ripped itself from her chest, and he shuddered, holding them both on the painful edge.

“Gamel didn’t explain?” She wasn’t sure if it was a question. His head tilted back, gaze falling on the sack she'd brought him. Lord Firan’s eyes narrowed. “He sent you to give me the lock?”

Annoyance, frustration, when she shouldn't make him angry. But Gwen couldn’t stop the tears.

“I made the lock for you—I did as you asked.” Her shoulders shook, her whole body shivering as she pleaded without thought or direction. Driven only by the desperation to make it stop. He said she was warm, but she felt cold. So cold. “Please, Lord Firan, I need the marks I—”

“No.” There was a snap in his tone, a growl as he gripped her shoulder, thumb digging in between the muscle and bone. She cried out at the pain. If he gripped her any tighter, he'd break her. “No more of that, no more weeping and no more starving.” He shook her, and Gwen's cry cut off. “You’re not going back to your uncle!”

Her face scrunched up, eyes squeezed closed. “But Gamel—”

“Gamel sold you to me a decade ago!” Her eyes opened as she turned her face to the side, caught between retreating from his rage and being too terrified to take her gaze off him. “You’ve been mine since you were ten years old, and I waited for you to reach maturity.” His face was as pitiless as his grip. “Then for two years I had to put up with your damned brother hiding you from me.” His chin tilted back, spitting pure frustration. “I ought to have got him out of the way sooner!” His voice dropped, turning from spite to heavy warning, a growl at her to behave. “But now I’m done waiting for you to want me.” His silver eyes glowed. “I’ve been patient enough! You’ll just have to learn to take what I give you.” He gripped her thigh, cock half bent where it pressed against her cunt. “You’ll take it, and you’ll like it!”

Got him out of the way sooner—

The statement echoed in her empty mind as his nails dug into her thigh. The tip of him touched her insides, poking into her dry channel as her stomach flipped. She arched her back, her spine curling, and his gaze dropped to her breasts. The hunger, as base as any beast. Her arms stretched with her spine, reaching—

Lord Firan had Anselm arrested. 

Her hand closed around the burlap; her bicep tensed as she gripped it tight.

“So soft,” he murmured, eyes distant as he stopped trying to push forward. He placed a palm over her breast, the touch turning gentle as he rubbed her through her shift. Enamoured with the flesh in his grip. “My lovely, Gwen.”

She slammed the lock as hard as she would a hammer into the side of his skull. Lord Firan’s knees buckled. He hit the floor face-first, arms not even lifting to break his fall.

Despite the strange pit in his stomach, the burn of a misery he’d been steadfastly ignoring, Cyr was in an excellent mood. He felt a little lethargic, hungry though he’d just had lunch, but finally satisfied. His shoulders cracked as he stretched. He felt a pinch, a stab of pain in his shoulder, where the muscle met bone. A cramp from sitting in the same position for too long.

He rolled up the scroll, throwing it down as he reached for another. News from a spy in Loriàn’s fiefdom. His eyes skimmed the words, but his mind kept drifting. A little more meat on Gwendolen would suit her well.

He still remembered how her mouth had felt around his thumb all those months ago. The phantom of the sensation haunted him. Strange that it should be the part that he remembered, not the heat of her mouth around his cock. Not the sight of her covered in his spend, but her eyes staring up at him from beneath the table, bright and scared. She’d looked desperate enough that he hadn’t been able to resist tearing off a piece of his own bread for her. It would amuse him to feed her the same way again, to press morsels past her lips, lean in and follow it with his mouth—

No, that was wrong. He couldn’t kiss her. 

It. He couldn’t kiss it.

Cyr grit his teeth, scowling at the scroll before him. His gaze had travelled halfway down the missive, and he hadn’t read a word of it. He started at the top again.

‘The prince is massing forces on the southern border with the Tuend—’

He’d enjoyed visiting it in the wild, but the time had come to bring the woman home. The cage was ready. The lock would arrive later that day, and then he’d finally have a safe place to put it. Somewhere, it couldn’t hurt itself. If he was careful when he brought it up, Tristrian wouldn’t even need know it was there. He’d find out eventually, but maybe he could hide Gwendolen for a few weeks, months—maybe half a year. 

How might Gwendolen react to the cage?

The bedsheets finer than any she’d have ever touched. Maybe he’d welcome her with a plate of food. Fruit and cheese. She liked cheese; her eyes had lit up when he’d told her he’d bought her some. Maybe Gwendolen would want to lie back on the bed, to feel how soft the mattress was. He wondered if, when she did, she might be grateful enough to let him lift her skirt. Spread her legs for him so he could nestle his head between her thighs. Brush his tongue the length of her hairy little—

“Lord Cyr.” Sir Gryff darkened the doorway of his dungeon office. The candlelight cast ominous shadows across his brow. “It stole a horse, sir.”

He blinked, pulled rudely out of his imaginings. His lips parted. Cyr opened his mouth, then closed it and then opened it once again. 

“What?”

The knight’s hand brushed through his fair locks. “The woman stole a horse and rode it into the Prince’s forest. Ander followed it—”

“Followed it?” Cyr pressed his hands to his desk, his mind turning as he stood. “Why didn’t he stop it?”

Gryff shifted on his feet, moving like a scolded child. “You ordered us not to touch it, Lord Cyr, or you’d cut off our hands.”

The words he’d spat the night before came back immediately to haunt him. It was impossible, ridiculous!

He spoke through gritted teeth, holding his temper on a tight leash. “Whose horse did it steal?”

Gryff glanced to the side, his teeth catching his lower lip. Afraid to speak.

“For mercy’s sake, knight!” The leash on his temper snapped with the slap of his hand against the desk. “I’ll cut out your tongue if you don’t spit it out.” 

“Lord Firan’s.”

His blood froze. She’d visited Firan—and then fled the realm on horseback.

“Send someone to check he’s alive.” He would have preferred it were the master smith dead, but it would cause complications.

Cyr kicked his chair out of the way, his limbs burning. Couldn’t she have waited one day? He’d given her time to gather herself. She’d looked so small. Cheeks stained with tears as she huddled by the hearth. Terrified and yet calm. Her eyes set with a quiet dignity more potent than any fælady he had ever known. She'd bid him go. He’d left her because—

Why in mercy’s name had he left her? It felt like the stupidest thing he’d ever done.

Because she asked.

The idiocy of it all enraged him. The foolish stupidity that he could lay the blame for at no feet but his own.

No, that wasn't right! The fault was Gwendolen’s; it had to be.

“Saddle my horse.” If the woman wanted to run from him, he’d let it enjoy the mercy of the forest. Maybe a night in the frozen woods would make it a little more grateful for this kindness. “We’ll need supplies for a few days’ ride.”

Chapter Text

The horse’s reins ripped from her palms. The riders surrounding here were silent. They glared at her. The traitorous beast had stopped running at the knight’s whistle; it had backed them both into a corner.

“Woman.” The knights struggled to speak the human tongue. “Off horse, not run.”

Her head turned, gaze darting towards the cliff. It wasn’t so steep; there were handholds, roots sticking out. She could climb it. They were talking among themselves, their words less laboured in the language of the fey.

“Just bash its head—”

“No,” the knight said. “Lord Cyr will cut off your hands if you touch it.”

Gwen’s muscles tensed as she considered her options. The horse wouldn’t obey her; it had come at the knight’s whistle. She pulled up her leg, clutching the side of the saddle as she swung down. Her foot thumped against the hard dirt, the other still in the stirrup as she unhooked it. The beast’s musk was heavy in the cold. No horse, but then so far it had been more hindrance than help.

She ought to be terrified, but as the knight kept his hands up, in front of him, she realised they were holding back. The Lord of Whispers did not make idle threats. Gwen’s gaze darted to the side, a gap between the mounted fæ. The knight followed her gaze.

“No—”

Gwen threw herself between two horses, and the knights pulled them to the side, shying out of the way as though she were cursed. The frozen mud pounded beneath her as she raced through the trees. Heading to the narrow thicket, where the trees grew thicker, and she could go where a rider could not. 

Gwen slid down the bank, her side scraping through the dirt. Lucky enough to avoid root and rock, or she would have cut herself open. Her body felt lithe, as if all the aches in her limbs were gone. The desperation that had been caught, trapped like a scream, drove her onwards. Forced her into the depths of the Prince’s forest.

There was no thought; every step focused on the next, the ground ahead of her, the shape of a tree to be dodged. A rock or root in the way. Until the forest grew silent. Not even the breeze whispered. No beat of hooves or call of the knights raised voices. There was no one else, just her gasping breath misting in the air as she finally stopped running. 

Gwen peered through the barren trees. The night would bring beasts, wolves as hungry as she was. The sky was darkening, the bright white that so often preceded snowfall, and the wind held the bitterest chill she’d ever known. She needed shelter, somewhere to sleep. The wood was too wet to burn. Fire was too great a risk. If she didn’t find shelter, she’d have escaped the knights only to die of the cold. Her eyes dropped to her hands. Her clothing covered in drying mud, her skin streaked with dirt, and on her palms—

“Fæblood.” It was brownish-green now that it had dried on her shift.

Gwen stared; despite the cold, her hands were steady. She hadn’t stopped to check Lord Firan’s wound. He could well be dead. Gamel would kill her—

She pressed her palm to her side. The world twisted around her as she took one deep breath, and then another.

Gwen laughed.

To hell with Gamel!

Her uncle was the least of her problems. If she’d killed Lord Firan, she’d hang. Even if he were alive, she may well still be for the noose. 

“Fierce Gwen,” she said. For the first time, with Fæblood on her hands, she truly felt it. “The dragon slayer.”

What else had the metalsmith been? An ancient beast that had always intended to add her to his hoard. She’d made him bleed for it. Her heart lifted.

“Mercy, Thora!” The rebel had a day’s head start on her, but her best hope was to find her.

She took a step, not running.

Walking.

Walking away from Stormharth, away from everything she’d ever known.

“You'd better not have been caught!”

Whether or not she intended to be, Gwen was a rebel now. As always, she’d just have to make the best of it. 

She slept that night in a cave; her cloak was only just warm enough to stave off the chill, and in the morning she woke with aching bones. Her body was so stiff, it took an eternity to force herself to move, to get up and keep going. The fine layer of snow dusting the forest made her feel as cold inside as out. 

Every step would show her path, but Gwen had no choice but to keep going. Her hands hidden in the depths of her cloak to stave off the bite in the cold air. The stream she passed was fresh enough to fill her waterskin, but she had no weapon to hunt, and even if she had, there was nothing to catch. 

The second night, she slept in the hollow of a fallen tree, and when she awoke, a little of the snow had thawed. The woods were the same as the day before—frozen hell. Only the desperate or the stupid would brave the prince’s forest in the winter’s depths. 

It was late morning when she found the cave, and though she had not been awake long, Gwen’s only thought was sleep. To lie down and gather her strength. To hope that the nearby stream would draw some creature she could catch later. It would have to be later, because she was too cold now. The stone at least was dry, even if the breeze sent chills across her skin. Wet dirt, stone and pine needles drenched from the melting snow filled the air. Pleasant enough, when it was too cold for rot to sour the scent of the forest. She called a rock her pillow; her cloak spread over her, and her knees pulled tight to her chest. 

The world spun as the darkness crept in. Gwen supposed it would not be such an awful way to pass. Far better than the Prince’s Mercy. Better than being tortured and then hanged from the castle walls. Sometimes they didn’t kill the prisoners first; sometimes they chained them alive for the ravens to finish.

The crackle of the fire drew her from her sleep. It was still light beyond the entrance to the cave, but Gwen’s focus was far from that; it was on the copper pot bubbling over the flames. Broth, thick steam rising from its surface, carrying the scent of herbs she couldn't name. The scent drew a soft whine from her lips. Her right hand moved to reach for it, and her left came with it. Slipping from the cover of a cloak far thicker than her own, to discover her bound wrists. Her forearms bear to the air beyond the safety of the thick fur-lined fabric. The metal clanked as she stared at it. Bronze. The inside of the cuffs padded with softened leather. 

A wooden spoon tapped against the side of the pot. Gwen’s gaze lifted further, to the sleeve of a black shirt and above that. Eyes a green she had not seen elsewhere since autumn turned the leaves red and gold, and the shade was lost from the world. Her hunger fled as exhaustion flooded her. She should have screamed, but she was warm, and so very tired. Their gazes held, and Gwen half thought a thousand questions. She asked none of them. It was no longer a rock beneath her head, but a bundle of rolled-up cloth. 

Another dragon guarded the entrance to her tomb, one she didn’t have the strength to slay. She slipped her arms back inside the safety of the cloak. Closed her eyes instead, letting sleep drag her under once again.

He poured the thick stew into the bowl. He’d have to wake her soon. For two nights, he’d tracked her through the forest. Cyr had meant to hunt her longer. Let her feel the sting of true desperation before he showed her there was no escape. She was a fool to have run from him, and he'd wanted her to bitterly regret her stupidity. To see for herself that there was no escape, and beg him for his mercy.

Then she’d collapsed. He’d watched, hidden from her sight by his fælight as she dropped to her knees. He'd been close enough to catch her, but he'd let her fall. Yet she'd looked so small in the cave, curled into a tight little ball of exhaustion and hunger.

She’d given up and picked a place to make her tomb. 

He’d touched her cheek, and her skin had been cold enough to bank the fury boiling in his gut. The rage he’d felt as he stalked her through the trees disappeared. He’d had to end it. Her clothes were too poor to stave off the chill much longer, and he had no wish to lose any pieces of her to winter’s teeth.

She’d made it further than he expected. It was still many leagues until she’d have reached the deadlands. No supplies but water. Nothing to forage in the barren wood. Another day, and Gwendolen, daughter of Quinn, would have died. 

Ander and Gryff waited outside. A camp of their own, and a fire. This deep, there were beasts worse than he; they'd need to guard against. Her skin was warmer to his touch now, her nose wet. She’d opened her eyes a few times, stared at him with the blank confusion of the feverish. He kept expecting her to show fear, to panic at the sight of him, but the moment recognition filled her eyes, her limbs would relax. She’d fall back into her uneasy sleep. The sight of him was a relief rather than a horror.

He put her bowl on the floor in front of her before he stood. It was easy enough to lift the corner of his cloak. He’d laid hers on the stone when he’d stripped her, had spent long enough rubbing warmth and faelight into her bare skin to banish the chill from her. Not once had she woken. She made a noise now, a soft groan as he pulled her up against his chest, his back to the boulder behind him, and her head curled into his neck.

Cyr lifted the bowl to her lips and felt the breath she took. The pull of the stew to her starving stomach. Meat dried and ground to a powder, and a little flour to thicken it. Salt, herbs and honey to flavour the broth. A knight’s rations. Rich enough to fill a warrior’s belly.

“Drink.” He kept his touch gentle, fingers parting the strands of her hair to stroke her scalp.

The bumps of her skull beneath, a pattern for him to trace. Her nose twitched, nostrils flaring wide as she stirred enough to take a sip, and then another. Food to rouse her. The heat of his cloak and the fire thawed her. Gwendolen pulled back, her lips away from the edge of the bowl as she took a slow breath.

“More.” Cyr pressed the bowl to her lips; she'd barely touched it.

“Will you kill me?” 

He’d heard the words many times before, but her tone made it for once a question, not a request. The twigs of the fire crackled, shifting enough to release a few sparks.

“Not tonight.”

She didn’t relax; if anything, she tensed.

“Will you—” her breath was rougher, laboured. “Are you going to—”

The woman couldn’t say it, but she didn’t have to. She was bare underneath the cloak. He’d stripped her to let the heat of his body warm her frozen limbs.

“Not tonight.” He lifted the bowl a little higher, pressing it back to her lips. “Drink.”

She fell asleep again before she’d finished, and Cyr took the last gulp before he put the bowl down. He sat instead, watching the entrance to the cave, listening to the murmur of the knight’s conversation outside as the woman slept against his chest. Her body curled against his. Small and soft. As the evening grew late, she even grew warm. 

Tomorrow, he’d dress her in the clothing he'd brought for her. Woollen leggings and a fleece-lined tunic to better stave off the cold. He’d put her on his horse, tie her hands to the pommel of the saddle, and walk them back through the forest. Tomorrow she’d be his trophy. A prisoner who knew him only as her captor. Thought of him as her tormentor. Tomorrow night, when they made camp, he’d hide her in his bedroll. If she were stronger, he might even have her once again.

She’d weep when he touched her. He turned his head, nose buried in her hair. She smelt different from the night he’d taken her. Dirt and cold had seeped beneath her very skin. The chains clinked around her wrists as her fingers curled against his shirt. Her eyelids twitched as some cruel dream tormented her. A vision in her feverish mind that she sought protection from in his touch.

Tonight, she didn’t flinch from him or cower. Tonight, as the fever gripped her, Gwendolen clung to him like he was her saviour, and Cyr discovered he liked it.

Chapter Text

Gwen’s head felt heavy when she woke, but she was warm, the heat at her back, and the silky fur surrounding her a balm to her skin. The softest light bathed the cave's entrance, water droplets dripping from the melting snow. Weight shifted behind her, the arm around her stomach tensed. She didn’t need to turn to know who was there; the scent of his cloak was hint enough.

His hand slid from her stomach to her side, stroking down her hip as he explored her naked skin. She cleared her groggy throat, sniffing.

“Was I close at least?” Her eyes burned as she stared at the entrance to the cave.

His palm changed direction, dragging back up her side, fingers slipping across her ribs to trace the underside of her breast. Back down the line of her belly to grip her stomach.

“Close?” Lord Cyr’s voice was throaty.

Still half asleep as his cheek rubbed against her neck.

“To escaping the Prince’s forest?” Gwen had to know.

It mattered a great deal to know the distance by which freedom had slipped through her fingers. The journey would have been easier in the summer. Anselm would have got far further.

“No.” His words sharpened as he woke. The weight of his attention made her shiver. “You were going in the wrong direction if you intended to find the rebels. Hopelessly lost! If I hadn’t found you, you wouldn’t have survived the night.” His lips touched the lobe of her ear, and she felt the heat of his breath there. “Your attempt at flight was pathetic.”

Gwen curled smaller under his cloak, the words more cutting than if he’d laughed outright. His fingers spread across her belly, holding her against him as he pressed his body against hers. He’d removed his shirt, but she felt the leather of his breeches against her bare legs.

“Is Lord Firan alive?” She wasn’t sure whether she felt guilt for her crime.

His grip tightened before he released her. “Why did you attack him?”

It was hardly an interrogation; he didn’t need to cut the reasons out of her.

“He had Anselm arrested.” Her eyes burned as she stared at the trees beyond. The forest was as merciless as the fæ that held her. “He said he was in the way. He admitted when he was—” 

Mercy, why was it so hard to give it words?

“When he was what?” The question was as whisper-soft as the stroke of his fingertips against her skin.

Gwen closed her eyes, her knees curling. 

“He was trying to—” Why couldn’t she just say it? It wasn’t like the beast holding her was any different. He’d done the same thing; worse, he’d succeeded. “He was—”

His arm curled tight against her chest, pulling her to him.

“He was trying to fuck you?” Lord Cyr asked. Gwen flinched, her lips a tight line. It took every bit of her will just to nod. “And you split open his skull?” 

She nodded again; there was no denial. Gwen would hang for it. Better to just admit it, and then maybe the torture wouldn’t be so—

“Good.” Lord Cyr’s lips pressed to her temple in a kiss tender enough to make her chest ache. “My little dragon slayer.”

Her shift was no match for the horse’s saddle. The fabric puddled at her thigh, draped over only her right leg. It left the thick wool leggings covering her left on display. A gift from her captor. He'd fussed over her in the cave, wrapped her in layer after layer of thick cloth, like he feared she'd perish from the mere touch of the winter air. Gwen supposed there wasn't much point in hanging a dead rebel. Though she would not complain about the warmth, even if she was sweating a little beneath all the wool.

Riding was uncomfortable. The beast’s movements rubbed her inner thighs, and she found it hard to balance with her chains hooked to the pommel of the saddle. If the beast bolted, it would take her with it. Though Gwen doubted the beast would dare when Lord Cyr held its reins. Hoofbeats crunched and clopped across the frozen ground. The layer of snow was already turning to slush, clumped with patches of ice. 

She recognised one of the knights. The fæ who’d stolen the reins of the last horse she rode as he stumbled through his words in her tongue.

“Lord Cyr.” The knight was riding on their left. His pace slowed as his companion scouted the forest on their other side. “I see prints in the snow. There is a wolf pack near.”

Gwen stiffened, her eyes searching the trees.

Lord Cyr nodded. “They won’t come close, Ander.”

He glanced back at her; when he spoke, it was in the human tongue. “Do you fear wolves, Gwendolen?”

She could look down on him from horseback. Though it made no difference to the power between them, nor to the haughtiness of his expression. She'd confess her crimes, but she would give him no fears to torture her with.

Gwen tilted her chin. “They would do no worse to me than you intend.”

He stumbled a single step, eyes widening enough to show the whites. “Have you not seen how a pack of wolves hunts? They’d rip you apart.”

She could have laughed. What other fate awaited her in the keep? He'd cut her up, pull the nails from her fingers and break her limbs. By the time she hung, she'd likely beg for the mercy of death.

“I have seen the results of your work.” Gwen looked away, her gaze pointedly on the trees beyond him. “They could do no worse than what you will inflict on me beneath the keep. At least if the wolves get me, my death should serve a purpose.”

He stopped walking, and the beast beneath her stilled, bucking enough to jostle her as it settled. She could feel the weight of his gaze on her, painfully hard to ignore.

“A purpose?” Lord Cyr prompted her.

She took a breath, steeling herself before she turned a glare upon him as sharp as the knives he would use to peel her skin. “If they are starving, then who am I to resent them their meal?”

If Gwen had caught a wolf, it would have suffered the same fate she would were one to catch her. 

Meat was meat.

“Gwendolen.” His tongue clicked as he softly chided her. “Do not look so desolate; you haven’t even seen your cage yet.”

The hiss of her sharp breath whistled through her teeth. She’d seen Anselm’s. Dripping walls and a stone floor crusted with dirt and blood. The bucket in the corner rancid with his leavings, and the gaps between the bars for the guard to peer at him, like he were an animal.

Gwen had seen the hell beneath the keep. The prince’s forest did not compare.

She held the gaze of the lord that would kill her, past the point of staying her tongue. He’d take it soon enough.

“Better to feed the wolves than the ravens.”

His eyes hardened. Burning with the same green flame as wet wood in early spring.

“A good thing, then, that it is not for you to decide!” He turned his back to her, tugging hard on the horse’s reins.

The beast's step jolted her, and Gwendolen grit her teeth, her chained wrists clanking as she clutched the pommel of the saddle to steady herself.

As the day wore on, Lord Cyr's temper softened, and the knights took up an easy cadence of conversation to fill the cold air. They sought to call his attention to the dangers that stalked the forest. Gwen had thought it empty, but it was clear now she had been wrong.

“Did you hear that?” Sir Gryff spoke her tongue far better than Sir Ander. 

Gwen flinched before she turned her head. Listening for the awful sound of a beast’s call. 

“Most certainly a fireraven.” Lord Cyr glanced where the knight was pointing.

She had thought the winter forest barren. But so far that day, she’d heard tell of wolves, bears, razor-tailed foxes, harpies, a lightning snake—

“Apologies, Lord Cyr,” Sir Gryff said. “But I think it sounded more like a thunderhawk.”

Gwen's wide eyes flew to the sky, scanning the bows of the trees towering above them. What in Mercy’s name was a thunder hawk? She’d never even heard of it.

“A thunderhawk.” Lord Cyr’s tone dropped. “Those are very rare, Sir Gryff, and known to be particularly skilled hunters.”

His head turned, and she caught the edge of his smile. The smallest one. It lit inside her like the flame that rose off burning metal. That did it! 

“You’re making it up!” She was almost certain of it now. Gwen would not endure their mockery. “There’s no such thing as a thunderhawk!”

Lord Cyr turned to look at her, eyes wide and innocent as his hand covered his heart. “Of course, there is such a thing; this forest is full of great dangers—”

But Sir Ander’s snort belied his words.

The knight understood the human tongue better than he spoke it. He barely suppressed his laughter. Sir Gryff failed. Lord Cyr pursed his lips as the knight let out a belly laugh loud enough to shake a drift of snow from the closest tree. It splattered the floor as he muffled his mirth in his elbow.

“What next?” Gwen asked. “A snow falcon that feasts only on human eyes. A unicorn that steals human toes to make nests for its eggs?”

Ander’s snort turned into outright laughter. Sir Gryff leant in his saddle, recovering himself enough to speak.

“It has you there, Lord Cyr,” he said.

Lord Cyr’s lips pursed, but his eyes weren’t truly angry. If he were, Gwen doubted the knights would still be chuckling.

“Do not encourage it, Sir Gryff,” he said, his tone rich with conspiracy before he turned his gaze back to Gwen. His expression was full of a severity she knew to be mockery. “And if you should ever meet a unicorn, Gwendolen, seek higher ground. They are useless at climbing, but if they run you down, they’ll feast on your bones.”

Her scowl deepened as she glanced away from him. Determined to waste no more words on them. The wind was chill, and every so often there’d be a crack, as falling patches of snow dropped to the ground from the branches above.

“Aye,” Sir Gryff said. “Unicorns are nasty beasts, ill-tempered too.”

Yet it seemed the fæ were not yet done with their game.

“Unicorn eat maidens.” Sir Ander strung together enough words to bait her.

Her intention to rise above their teasing dashed on the rocks of their mockery.

“Then they are one of your imaginary monsters; I should have no cause to fear.” Gwen’s cheeks burned, but what did she have left to lose? “If this forest were so full of creatures that hungered for human flesh, I would have been devoured many winters past. I assure you, sirs, these trees are as empty as your hearts.”

Gryff let out a soft whistle, his tongue clicking between his teeth. “Your woman has a tongue of sharpened iron, my lord.”

Lord Cyr laughed, glancing back at her with something close to warmth in his eyes. “That it does, Sir Gryff.”

Her wrists jolted as she tried and failed to raise her chained hands to catch the stutter of her heart. The words felt colder to her than the chill air.

They called her neither prisoner nor rebel. His woman. As though she belonged to Lord Cyr. Her lips parted, mind turning. Her cheeks, already burning from the frozen air, felt colder still. He truly did not mean to hang her—her fate was to be something far worse than the noose.

His smile dropped at the realisation in her eyes. Had he hoped for some other reaction than terror? Lord Cyr's brows drew together, and Gwen dropped her eyes. She feared what she would find lurking in his gaze.

“Was that a storm—”

“Enough, Sir Gryff.”

Both knights stilled, falling silent at the growl in Lord Cyr’s tone. There were no more jests after that. They travelled in silence as deep as the one that gripped the winter woods.

They were less than an hour from the castle when Cyr called them to a stop. They laid bedrolls down in the dirt, lighting a fire beneath the barren trees. The stars already glittered in the cloudless sky.

The Knights did not question his decision. They'd wait till the dark of the night. It would be easier to sneak Gwendolen in unobserved in the hours after the revelry ended, but before the servants rose. The guards at the back gates would let him through no matter the hour.

She sat on his bedroll, a bowl of broth in her hands, eyes fixed on the thick stew. It had been hours since she’d spoken. Likely believing every step closer brought her nearer to her torture and death. He ought to tell her it was not so, but he was uncertain the truth would make her any happier.

His chest burned, heat licking up his neck as sharp as the scratch of a cat’s claws. 

It was a lovely cage; she ought to be grateful for it.  

“Some music, Sir Gryff?” Lord Cyr meant it as a suggestion, but the clench of his teeth made it an order that had the knight fumbling for his pipes.

Gryff’s motions were careful as he pulled the small instrument from his bag. Cradling them in his palms with a soft smile before he brought them to his lips. The first ringing note echoed through the trees. They were in no danger here, so close to the castle. Gwendolen’s head lifted at the sound of the song. There was no enchantment in it, only skill, and still her eyes widened. The glint of golden firelight caught within them was an enchantment all its own. It called to him as much as the soft curve of her cheek, the pink of her lower lip turned red by the fire’s glow.

“In merry town and olden way,” Sir Anders sang well, his voice high. “The ladies danced both night and day—”

Gwendolen shivered, and Cyr shifted without thought. He laid his arm over her hunched shoulders. She stiffened, but he did not mind her being tense, so long as he could hold her to him.

“In marrow bone and fulcrum core,

Is where they mined their iron ore.

With castles tall, they scraped the skies.

And choked the earth with blinded eyes.

Those wicked men who broke the stars

And left the ground so dead and scarred.”

She shook the chains at her wrists, letting out a soft clink as the last note of the pipes filled the air, wavering as it became nothing. It was a sad song Sir Gryff had picked, one suited well to winter nights. A reminder of the sins of the past. The monsters that had destroyed so much of what had once been.

“How did they break the stars?” Her voice was little more than a whisper; her eyes nervous as her head turned towards him. “The wicked men?”

Realisation stayed the reply, hovering on his tongue. She understood the language of the fæ. Few humans did. It was not forbidden, but neither was it encouraged. Her head was tilted. So very close he could lean in and take her mouth. Kiss her plump lips. Cyr wasn’t certain her understanding pleased him; he would have to watch his words around her.

“I think it’s time for you to sleep.” Her fingers tightened around her empty bowl as he tugged it from her chained hands, placing it beside the fire. “Lie back.”

She glanced once at the knights before she obliged him, curling onto her side, her back to the fire.

The night would be long. He nodded his head to the question in Sir Gryff’s eyes, gesturing for the knight to continue. He brought the pipes to his lips, and another song began.

It took a while for her breathing to settle. Exhausted though she was, the woman was scared. He let her rest a short while—long enough for her sleep to deepen—before he nodded to the knights.

“Scout the forest.” He kept his words soft, but they were no less of an order. “Be sure nothing sneaks up on us.”

Sir Ander’s face was blank as he rose, but Sir Gryff did not hide his grin. Neither were surprised by the order. They were silent in their departure. Too well trained to snap a twig in the dark as they melted into the forest. For the barest of moments, all he did was look at her. Her lips parted in sleep as the firelight kissed the edge of her jaw. A human woman ought not to be so fair.

He was careful as he pulled her onto her back, letting his cloak cover them. She sighed, sleeping deeply enough to nestle closer to him. A cold little creature seeking warmth. He could have waited, brought her back to the castle first, but it had been three long nights since he’d first had her. The craving itched under his skin.

Gwendolen did not rouse. Not until he tugged down the wool encasing her legs. Likely, it was the feel of the leather of his unlaced breeches against her inner thighs that had her eyes flying open. Purest panic as he pressed against her cunny.

“No!” Her chained hands clutched at his chest. Arms shaking as she tried to push him away from an angle that gave her no leverage. “Lord Cyr, please!”

He really ought to have taken her from behind; it would have been easier to trap her, but he enjoyed seeing her face. Watching the emotions fill her eyes.

“I’m cold, Gwendolen.” He kept his voice low. The knights weren’t far, but they need not hear this. “And so are you; let us warm each other. "

“No—” she cried out as he forced his way forward.

Breaching her cunny, though she was not ready for him. She was almost as tight as the first time. Sinking inside her, ready for him or not, was purest bliss. Like coming home. He wanted more, deeper, to slip inside her skin. She fluttered around him. Muscles squeezing so tight that his eyes rolled.

He’d been disappointed when she collapsed. Cyr had intended to chase her, catch her and wrestle her down. Fuck his little beast in the snow and dirt where she belonged. But Gwendolen bucked under him now, pinned and writhing, feet kicking and hips twisting enough he barely had to fuck her. Just hold on as she cried out. Squealing for him.

“That’s it.” He let her shift back, escaping him a few inches, so he was only halfway in before he gripped her arms, trapping her to the ground as he slammed back inside her. “Mercy, sweet mercy.”

Too much, too fast, and he couldn’t stop. His hips bucked, each movement surrounded by her heat. Her slippery silk encased him. He forgot words, became as much a beast as her, as the sensation of their coupling overwhelmed him. Tightened his stomach and drove his relief closer and closer to the edge.

She tried again to push at his chest, and Cyr gripped the back of her head. Held her tight against his shoulder as his release flooded from him. Aching, wonderful relief as his cock pulsed. She cried out under him, and he felt the softest flutter, her back arched, stomach pressing against his. He pulled back only enough to meet her gaze, to see the flush cross her cheeks, and the terrified confusion in her eyes. Her release had been nowhere close to the depths of his, but she’d felt something.

His grin tasted like the sweetest victory as he stared down at her flushed face. The sheen of her wet cheeks. Cyr leant in, nose catching in her hair as he inhaled. He’d imagined this moment too many times, taking her in the forest with only the sky as witness. Granted, he hadn’t expected the knights to be so close, but this would likely be her last night outside the castle. He wouldn’t be letting her out of her cage again anytime soon.

“How prettily you squealed for me,” he whispered, tracing the rounded tip of her ear with his nose just for the joy of her skin.

In the summer, he’d let her run from him through the trees again. Tire herself out before he fucked her beneath the dappled sunlight of the forest canopy. Gwendolen’s breath caught in a broken rattle. Her face scrunched up as she sobbed beneath him. In so much distress, his own heart raced a little faster.

“My poor sweet beast,” he said, wishing his touch would stop her weeping. “What a miserable little creature I’ve caught.”

She cried out beneath him, a sob sharpened by despair. Cyr took a shallow breath, his fingers still entwined in her hair as he pressed his lips to her glistening cheeks, the taste of her misery bitter. He sighed against her skin as he let his fælight fill the air; the breeze tugged at their hair, feeding the flames of the fire. One day, he'd touch her and she wouldn't weep.

She'd smile for him, like Myrie did for Dara. She'd see all he'd done for her and be grateful.

“Sleep, Gwendolen.” 

The enchantment took her slowly, calming her tears and slowing her breathing until she was once again still. As deep asleep as she had been before he woke her. His cock was still buried in her. Cyr had no wish to remove it. If he'd intended to sleep that night, it would have been as he was now.

In Morpheus's grasp, she softened to him, head turning into his neck as she sighed. His Gwendolen.

His sweet little beast.

Chapter Text

Gwen wasn’t sure she had ever been so comfortable. The sheets against her skin felt softer than lambswool. She sighed, stretching as she opened her eyes. There was a canopy of cloth above her. Thick green fabric threaded with gold so close to the summer trees that for a few confused moments she thought she’d fallen asleep in the forest. But the dirt had never felt quite so comfortable. When she turned her head, she saw a padded leather chair that looked sinful. To the side of it—

An open slop bucket.

Her stomach flipped as she sat up. There were bars in front of her. Her focus caught on the thick bronze, as her mind caught up with her sight.

“A cage.” He’d spoken of it to her, but it was far from the prison Gwen had expected.

A low wooden table faced the bars. Behind it was a padded chair wide enough to seat two. Beyond were thick glass windows. The panes were too deep to see what lay beyond, but bright enough, she knew it could only have been sky. The light of the afternoon filled the stone chamber so softly that every surface seemed to glow. With so much stone, it shouldn’t have been warm.

Her hand pressed to her chest, and she felt fabric under her fingers. When she pulled the covers back, she discovered that the white tunic she wore only reached her mid-thigh. Neither leggings nor socks covered her legs. Her bare skin felt like an accusation. It was indecent. Whores wore more. Yet the garment bothered her less than the pattern of darkened skin that littered her inner thighs. Gwen closed her eyes, forcing her gaze not to linger on the bruises.

When her mind calmed, Gwen slipped to the side of the bed. Her bare foot touched the floor, and she drew it back. Shocked at the sensation of warm stone beneath her feet, like sunbaked dirt on a summer evening. Gwen took a shallow breath, careful as she let her toes test the stone before she let her soles rest against it.

“Fælight?” It must have been some trickery of their kind.

The world had never been so gentle to her, nor so dreadfully cruel. Gwen stood, her steps careful as she reached the bars. The room was as empty as she had believed it to be. There was no sign of the fælord who had caught her. The last she remembered was the clear night sky, the stars she had silently pleaded with for mercy. An ache inside her at her own powerlessness, no less painful than the roughness he’d taken her with. Gwen didn’t know if Sir Ander and Sir Gryff had witnessed their coupling. At the time, she hadn’t been certain if Lord Cyr would throw her to their mercy once he was done.

His eyes had changed, glowing with a heat close to madness as his caresses shifted from bargaining to brutality. He’d laughed, and then he’d snarled, teeth snapping as he’d taken her with a harshness that had made him feel more beast than Lord. The only certainty she had that it hadn’t been a nightmare was the lingering pain and the marks littering her skin. Her gaze swept down herself, catching on the edge of the yellowing bruise across her upper chest and shoulder peeking from beneath the neckline of the tunic. That she couldn’t even blame on him. It had been Lord Firan’s workmanship.

Gwen rested her forehead against the cool metal of the bars, taking a long, pained breath to steady herself. She traced the pad of her finger down the cold metal. Bronze, she was sure. Another breath and she was close to calm. Metal, she could read far better than the letters denied her. Knew it by its colour, scent and song. She’d taken comfort so many times in the warm orange glow of heated ore. As dangerous when it was molten as when it was cooled and sharpened to its finest point. She reached the fixture that held the lock, leaning down to inspect it. Her stomach twisted as she stared at the casing. The betrayal of her oldest friend turned against her.

Unpickable. An unpickable lock. Gwen knew her own work.

A cry left her lips, breaking from the depths of her chest. She covered her mouth with her palm as she squeezed her eyes closed. She could not despair. Yet her knees gave out. She sank onto the warm stone, resting the back of her head in the gap between two bars. She’d seen her cage now, and as her eyes fell on the slop bucket in the corner, reality reordered itself into a shape she had been too blind to even suspect.

“Two months.” That was how long she’d worked on the lock for Lord Firan.

Since the trees lost the last of their leaves.

Lord Cyr had planned to take her. Had her forge the lock to her own prison, to ensure she could never break free. The cruelty of it soured her mouth. She’d thought him kind when he replaced the food she’d lost. He’d taken her maidenhead and, as cruel as he’d been, she’d been grateful he'd left it at that. Excused her crime rather than dragging her back to the keep. When he’d caught her in the prince’s forest, he’d saved her life. He was right; she would have been dead by morning.

As awful as it was, her arrest had been fair. She’d attacked a lord. Expected. But this—

The cage meant it had all been a game, that every moment of kindness had been false and only the cruelty true.

“Mercy,” Gwen whispered, though she suspected there would be none.

She could not say how many hours had passed. Long enough for her fear to ebb, and boredom to settle beneath her skin like an itch. She’d already moved the slop bucket to the furthest corner of her cage. Had grit her teeth at having to use it. It had felt raw when she passed her waters. Stung her pride as much as the smell had disgusted her. The only mercy was that the emptiness of her stomach meant there was nothing else. When she heard the door, Gwen gripped her knees, her head turning to peer through the bars. She’d taken the padded chair; it felt safer since there was room enough for only one.

Lord Cyr did not approach her. He moved deliberately around the chamber, bringing light to each candle in the wall sconces. One by one, bringing back the light the windows had lost as dusk settled in. Though the room was far from cold, Gwen was shivering by the time he put his candle down on the table opposite the cage. He turned then to regard her.

“There is only one key.” Lord Cyr reached into his shirt, metal glinting in the candlelight. “I’m keeping it around my neck, for now. It should be rather inconvenient to lose.”

The lock clicked as he turned the key. The weights within, letting out a series of familiar soft clicks.

“Firan has many flaws,” he said. “But he assured me this lock was unpickable, and I am inclined to believe him.” Gwen did not tell him she already knew. “Iron forged as well, so no fæ might tamper with it.” Bronze shuddered as he pulled the door wide. “You are the safest you have ever been inside this cage.” He stepped inside, leaving the door open behind him. Two short steps, and his fingers ran along the grooves wooden board at the end of the bed. “Do you like your new quarters?”

The pit of fury grew hot in her belly as Gwen glared at him. “I take no pleasure in being added to your menagerie.”

Lord Cyr sat on the bed, leaning forward as he faced her. “But your cage is so much nicer than the conditions of the rest of the humans I keep locked up.” His palm flattened, fluffing the mess of cushions by the headboard. “I don’t let any of them have duck-feather pillows.”

The fæ looked proud of himself. His head tilted as he inspected the enclosure he’d created for her. He smoothed the bed cover beside him, and Gwen was uncertain if he was straightening the sheets or taking joy from the softness of the fabric beneath his palm. Their gazes caught, and he smiled at her. There was a warmth in the expression that had no place between them.

“Come.” His fingers twitched, beckoning her to him. “Join me.”

Gwen didn’t move. His face fell at her silent denial, his smile slowly dropping.

“I’ve been patient with you.” The words were quiet, with an edge sharper than any blade. “Don’t test me.”

Patient? He had been so far from patient that the word itself was laughable.

“Afraid you’ll fail?” Gwen asked.

His green eyes glowed. “Gwendolen, come.”

She felt a brush against her skin, the stirring of a breeze in the sealed chamber. It was familiar to her now, the same fælight that had stolen her consciousness the night before. Forced her into the darkness after he’d savaged her.

“I’m not a hound!” Her eyes burned as she glared at him. One day, locked in the awful cage he’d built for her was already enough. Silk and miserable silence. “You cannot expect me to be pleased by the sight of you when you are torturing me just as surely as if I were in your dungeon.”

His chin jerked back as he flinched. The shock in his eyes turned too quickly to anger.

“Perhaps,” he said, the word sharp as his glare. “I should acquaint you with torture, so you better understand the things you accuse me of?”

Gwen didn’t flinch. The windows were closed, and the room well sealed, and yet the charge of his power disrupted the very air, pulling at her hair, ruffling the fabric of the wall hangings and biting at her skin. Candles flared, growing tall and hungry like the tongues darting from a pit of hissing snakes. The fury between them fed itself. If he sought to torment her, then he would not find her an easy victim.

“I have spent enough time in your presence to consider it more than familiar.”

He rose from the bed, and Gwen made her move. She pressed her hands on the chair, pushing herself up fast enough that its legs screeched across the stone. They faced one another with the same rage in their eyes. He took a step, and she darted, bare feet slapping stone as she threw herself toward the open door of the cage.

He caught the back of her tunic as Gwen grabbed the bronze bars of the cage, fingers wrapping around the metal and arms straining as she dragged herself away from him. The fabric tore as he yanked, but she didn’t let go. Lord Cyr crowded behind her, pressing her against the bars.

“I give you food to fill your starving belly, a cage bigger than the hole you slept in, and you say I am cruel to you.” His face buried in her hair, lips grazed the tip of her ear. “You know not what cruelty is, Gwendolen.”

He pressed his chest against her back, forcing her body against the metal she clung to.

“If you keep me here all alone,” Gwen said, her eyes stinging. She could hear his anger in the roughness of his breath, but the hands he touched her with were gentle. Fingers gripped the curve of her hip. His other palm found the swell of the top of her breast trapped against the bars. Lord Cyr explored curves like he couldn’t stop himself pawing at her. “If you return in the evenings only long enough to have my body and to sleep, and leave me with nothing to do all day, no one to speak to, I’ll go mad.”

He stilled, the words sinking into his mind as his fingers ceased their squeezing, resting on her hip instead as his thumb brushed the side of her stomach. There was silence between them as he considered her reasoning. She could feel the moment the anger inside him calmed. Her own rage ebbed as the ache of defeat replaced it. Gwen rested her forehead against the bars.

“Would you like me to take you with me to the dungeons?” He asked; her flinch was answer enough. “You could watch me as I work.” She shuddered, and his laughter was soft in her ear. “No?” He kissed her neck, still chuckling against her skin. “What of joining me at the feast then?” She closed her eyes, the burn of fury turning to the ache of misery. “Would you like to sit at my feet beneath the table?” His breath tickled the fine hairs of her cheek as his thumb again brushed the side of her belly. “I could hand-feed you scraps from my plate, and you could sleep with your head on my knee like Dara’s girl does?”

“No,” Gwen whispered.

She wanted none of that. His hands lifted from her body, curling instead over hers where she gripped the bars, prying her away from the metal.

“Then come to your bed, Gwendolen,” he said. “And for once, be grateful for the cruelties I have spared you.”

His lips touched her cheek, and the fight she’d stoked within her felt such a fragile thing. All but banked with a few miserable words. The cage was awful, but there were so many worse things he could force upon her. Gwen let him lead her back to sheets softer than any she had ever touched. Let him tug the ripped tunic from her body. Slide the fabric slowly down as his hands traced her skin. Greedy. He pulled the cover aside, and at the nudge of his hand at her lower back, Gwen sat. Lord Cyr’s tongue clicked a soft sound close to reprimand as his palms covered her shoulders, pressing until she lay back. His tongue traced the hollow of her throat before he kissed her clavicle. His hand found her centre, thumb brushing the heat of her, pressing to her entrance as he explored the still tender skin.

“Mercy,” she said, turning her face into the pillow.

Gwen pitied the poor duck that had had its feathers stolen.

“Do you have all the same pieces as a lady?” He sounded curious again, like he was determined to search for some proof of her inadequacy.

Some physical sign that she was lesser.

“I do not think so,” Gwen said.

“No?” He drew back. Fælight bright in his eyes. “How are you different?”

“I have a conscience.”

His smile spread, widening to show his teeth as he traced her opening so gently. “How bothersome that must be for you.”

His finger smeared the mess that had gathered from his touch. “Will you squeal for me tonight, Gwendolen?”

“No.” She swore to herself then that no matter what he did, she would not make a sound.

Gwen bit her lip as he forced his way inside her. It stung, but she couldn’t say it was truly painful. The ease with which he filled her made it no less an invasion. He paid no mind to her silence, seeming to care little that she was limp beneath him. She had fought him the night before, and it had only galvanised him. Turned him into a snapping, snarling creature. His hands dug into her body, gripping and squeezing as he panted above her. The soft sheets itched her skin as his thrusts ground her body into them.

The prickle of her cheeks as they caught the breeze told Gwen she was weeping. With or without his presence. She was alone. He groaned as he found his end. His weight fell on hers as his mouth brushed her cheek. Gwen felt the slightest flutter of warmth inside her that sent a shiver from the arch of her foot to the pit of her stomach. Teeth caught her skin as he licked her tears away, his hips still gently bucking as he eked out the last few moments of his completion.

Gwen thought of nothing, focused only on the canopy above. It had been better than the night before, less painful. She could feel his gaze on her, but she did her best to ignore it. He had used her body, sated his need. He would leave her be now. Leave her in her gilded prison to face the silence and her misery alone.

His thumb gathered her tears.

“Dara’s girl, Myrie,” he said. “It is happy?” Gwen heard the question in his tone, but she could not understand it. She blinked, her gaze barely focusing on him. His lips pursed as he searched for the right words. “It smiles when it sees him. Sits on his lap and clings to him?”

A suggestion or a question. Gwen could hardly stand to be close to him. She had no wish to cling to him.

“Maybe Dara is kind to her,” she said.

He paused, and Gwen hardly marked him; her eyes were fixed on the sheet, trying to find the strands that wove it together.

“I am kind to you.” The confusion in his voice could have been called innocent.

The anger she’d lost flared bright and hot. It was infuriating that he could deal such cruelty to her and dared to call it kindness.

Gwen let her eyes fill with the emotions inside her. The hate and the despair.

“You have taken everything from me.” Her voice shook, but no more of her tears fell. “You are my worst nightmare given form.” She didn’t drop his gaze, impressing every inch of her hatred into it. “When I see you, my heart drops and my skin chills. When you touch me, my stomach turns. Your presence is my misery. I do not want to sit on your lap nor cling to you. I wish an end to your long existence, so I might have the satisfaction of dancing on your shallow grave!”

The fælight dulled from his gaze. She expected anger. The snarl of his fury and the slap of his hand.

“What could I have done?” The question was just as genuine as the rest. Their bodies were still joined, and his weight was enough to pin her, but not to crush. “What way could I have taken you that did not make you despise me?”

“You could have let me be.” Her voice was raw. “If you had to have me, then you could have just taken my maidenhead and left it at that? Why did you drag me back to this hell? Could you have not forgotten me? I asked you to—I—”

The sob took her, and she pushed at his shoulders, trying to force him away from her. Gwen would do anything for him to be gone.

“Gwendolen!”

She shook her head, lips pulled closed as she twisted beneath him, face pressed into the pillows as she hid her gaze. He had taken enough of her misery, and yet her sobbing would not stop.

“Quiet now.” Cyr detangled himself from her, his arm catching around her waist as he pulled her shaking body into his chest. “Sweet maiden, do not weep.”

Her whole body shuddered, racked by her misery. He shushed her, kept shushing her when her weeping did not stop. Fælight prickled the air, stirring the drapes of the bed, and she tensed. Familiar now with the pull.

“No,” Gwen begged. “Please, not again. Don’t—”

“Sleep,” he breathed the words across her lips, a command filled with the bitter sting of fælight.

A force that turned her own body against her, adding lead to her limbs and darkening the corners of her sight.

“Please,” she said. “Don’t force me back there.”

His hand smoothed across her brow, brushing her messed hair away. “There is nothing to be afraid of.”

“It’s dark.” Her eyes closed, lids painfully heavy. “And I can’t get out.”

She tried so hard to fight it, but the battle was lost as oblivion dragged her from her waking nightmare to darker dreams.

Cyr was not so heartless that he could not understand her misery. He’d liked the thought of her in the wild. His secret, he could visit when he wished. Steal moments just to watch her. Captivity suited her as ill as her tears, but what could he do?

She ran. Fled into the depths of the Prince’s forest, searching for a way to escape. Somewhere beyond the Realm of Stormharth. If she’d travelled too far, she’d have reached the deadlands, or the Tuend. Both dangerous. He rubbed his cheek against her head, nuzzling the hair of her crown. She was warmer now, flushed from her tears. Her breathing was rough from a blocked nose, and even that did not disgust him.

He wanted her again; his body ached with a hunger he struggled to quench. But it would be cruel to take her. He had been too rough with her the night before; the marks he’d left against her wan skin were an accusation she need not give voice. Cyr didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want her to weep or beg. He wanted the sweet, shy creature who'd ignored the burn of her own hunger to share the gift he'd given her with him.

The catch of her breath drew his attention back to her closed eyes. It would have been easier to have her in her sleep. When she was as soft and pliant as she’d grown now.

Yet the thought held little appeal. He needed her gaze, glazed with tears or bright with anger. He yearned for the sounds she made, the softest catch of her breath when she was fighting as hard to be silent as she had to escape him. The woman had the soul of a warrior and a body too weak to carry it.

His thumb traced her lower lip. Her breath so warm against his skin. He would have to be careful with her. He knew better than any how fragile her kind were. Their weakness had always been convenient. Every blade cut them as harshly as sharpened iron. An ill-timed blow could shatter one of their limbs. Cyr knew exactly how easily she could break. It haunted him.

He never wished to see her soft skin ruined by scars. Nor hear her howl of agony as he snapped her bones.

Gwendolen was not meant for that. She was meant to be wrapped in silk. Kept warm, with a full belly and no fear of the monster’s teeth. And now that he finally had her safe, Cyr would show her every kindness that was his to bestow, until mercy wore his face for her and it was to him alone she prayed.

Chapter Text

He’d all but forgotten the rebel they’d been hunting the week before, but the sight of the woman as he passed its cell stayed his feet. The door to its cage was open, but it was of no concern. It wasn’t alone. Cath was with it; the pair were a tangle of limbs. Not yet coupling.

They were the stage before that. The fight.

Cyr wasn’t certain who was winning. The woman’s nails scraped across the lord’s face. Cath snapped his teeth at its fingers. He might well have bitten one of them off if Cyr hadn’t cleared his throat.

He folded his arms, leaning against the bronze bars as Cath turned his head.

“I’m busy!” he growled, chest heaving as he sat on top of the woman's hips.

His hand on its shoulder pinned it to the dirty stone. The rebel hissed, matted curls askew. Its glare filled with the purest fury.

“Coupling with rebel scum is not work,” Cyr said. “I need to talk to it.”

Cath scoffed. “You can hardly talk.” His neck cracked as he stretched, pushing the lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead away. The rebel’s hand moved whilst Cath's attention was elsewhere. Served him right for not tying its wrists. “We all know about the human you have locked in your keep. Tristrian’s seething—”

The twist in his chest distracted him enough that even he didn’t notice the woman strike. It ripped the knife from Cath’s belt, slamming the blade deep into his thigh. The lord let out a howl of pain, and the woman bucked him off. It scrambled up, barrelling straight for Cyr.

He sidestepped it. Grabbed the rebel by the scruff of the neck, ripped the blade out of its hand and dropped in on the floor before he tossed the girl back in its cell. Cath’s palm covered the knife wound in his thigh as he glared.

“You’ll regret that,” he said.

“Come near me again.” The woman bared its teeth right back at him. “And the next time I take your blade, I’ll fuck you with it.”

Cath’s brow rose. Cyr was certain he’d slap the woman. He smiled instead.

“The sweet things you say to me—” he leaned towards it, and the woman didn’t flinch back. “Make me yearn to cut your tongue out.” It snapped its teeth together in front of his face. Cath’s eyes widened before his head tilted back. “Don’t snap your jaws at me; that’s my threat.”

“My teeth are as sharp as yours,” the rebel said.

“Cath,” Cyr sighed. “Go get Dara to look at your leg; you’re still bleeding.” The knife was likely an iron alloy. He was a fool to keep it on him when any other metal would have served as well to slice human skin. The lord didn’t move, the strangest light in his eyes as he met the rebels’ glare. “Now, Cath.”

Cath finally pulled himself to his feet. He passed Cyr, leaning to grab his knife. He wiped the blade on the sleeve of his black shirt, glancing back at the woman once, as he returned it to its sheath.

“Thora, daughter of Mor,” Cath said in an undertone. “It hasn’t eaten in two days, and if you get too close to it, it will bite you. It’s surprisingly strong, you—”

“I’ll be sure not to let it take my knife,” Cyr said.

The faintest flush crossed Cath's cheeks. Embarrassment.

“It’s—crafty.” His gaze slipped back to the woman. He leaned in. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t kill it yet.” Cath’s next words were softer than a whisper. “Or fuck it.” Cyr didn’t blink; it wouldn’t do to show his surprise. His voice rose. “I told it I would be the one to kill it, and my word is my bond.”

Cyr laughed, gripping the other man’s shoulder. “Do not fear, Lord Cathel, I want only a word with the beast.”

Cath was satisfied enough that he stepped back. “I’ll see you this evening, pig.”

“I’ll be the last thing you see!” The woman snapped back, its teeth bared in a snarl. “Come back and I’ll blind you!”

The lord laughed as he walked away. Even with the wound in his leg, there was a spring in his step. Cyr watched him for a few moments longer. It wouldn’t be the first time Cath had a prisoner, but he’d never been territorial. His head ached even considering it. He did not feel himself today. He was tired. As the day drew on, it grew worse. His throat stayed parched no matter how often he quenched his thirst, and his belly ached for more food. It put him in a foul mood. All he wanted to do was lie down. Return to his chambers and Gwendolen, sweet and warm in her bed.

Cyr turned to the woman instead, smiling down at it. “I always liked Mor.” The rebel had dragged itself to the corner of its dank cell. Arms wrapped around its knees. Unchained prisoners often took the position to protect their vulnerable bellies. “He was a sweet boy.”

He was late back that night, and he did not mean to disturb her. Cyr snuck through the main chamber, lighting no candle. If she were asleep, he would not wake her.

“Water.” Her voice cracked, echoing from the darkness. “Sir, I need water.”

Gwendolen knelt by the bars of her cage, her open eyes catching the faintest moonlight. He froze, his hand resting on the door to his bedchamber.

“I gave you water yesterday.” He did not know why he whispered.

It felt right in the darkness.

She lifted from her seat, hands clutching the bars. “Humans need water every day. Food, too, at least one meal.” Her voice cracked again, and she winced as if it had pained her. Gwendolen's hand pressed to her stomach. “It hurts.”

Cyr let go of the door to his bedchambers, padding across the rug. His feet stopped him in front of the locked door of her cage. The darkness did not blind his eye; he could see clearly. A creature knelt before him painted in black and white. His nose wrinkled.

“What is that smell?” Putrid, like rotten eggs.

Reminiscent of the streets of the human slums. Her cheeks darkened as her head turned to the corner of her cage.

“If you dislike the smell, then you must change the slop bucket,” she whispered, as though speaking deeper hurt. “And if you would use my body then, I need water to clean myself.” Her head dropped, forehead resting against the bars. She took a deep breath, as though the last word she intended to utter was the most painful to speak. “Please.”

Cyr had left her all alone, with no sustenance. Her only companion the smell of her own filth. Gwendolen's eyes glinted, but no tears fell across her cheeks. Cracks split her quivering lips. He was exhausted. Would much rather fall into bed, but she could not take care of herself. Pain burned behind his eyes. He’d been feeling weaker and weaker as the day progressed. It was unnatural, as though he’d fallen victim to some foul curse. His people did not get sick, yet Cyr felt ill.

“I’ll get you water,” he said. “The bucket can wait till the morning—”

Her shoulders slumped, dejection and relief in every weakening muscle of her form. He could pour her filth down the storm drain, wash her leavings out and return it to her. But he was a lord. Lords didn’t clean up human shit. He could leave it outside the door, for the servants to take, but then she’d have no place to empty herself.

“And food?” she said softly. “Just a little bread.”

There was no one in the corridor beyond his chambers. Cyr had to stray down one long hallway before he found a guard.

“Gal, have food and water brought to my rooms,” he said. “Some of the soup and meat from tonight’s feast, and whatever fruit we have.” He almost turned away, taking in the knight’s confused eyes as he tried to memorise the request. “And some wine.” He needed to relax. A little wine would do Gwendolen good. Cyr turned back a final time. “Oh, and a fresh slop bucket.”

She watched him from the far corner of her cage, curled small with her arms around her knees. He considered telling her she need not protect her underbelly from him, that he had no intention of slicing her open. It likely would not soothe her. Her eyes watched his every movement as he removed the bucket, locking the metal door behind him. He left the slop bucket down the corridor. Away from the entrance to his rooms. A maid would collect it in the morning. Cyr went to his wash chamber, cleaning his hands first, before he returned to the receiving area. His hair stirred around his cheeks as the fælight surrounded him. Fire crackled as he lit the logs in the grand hearth. It was more for the light than the heat. The heated copper pipes that ran beneath the stone kept the room warm.

The soft knock on his door announced the arrival of her meal. He took the platter from the knight’s hands at the door. Sir Gal craned his head, attempting to peer into Cyr's rooms. He shifted, blocking the knight’s sight with a scowl that had him stepping back, gaze dropping to the stone.

Cyr laid the platter on the low table before the settee. The silver dome covering it caught the warm red glow of firelight. He placed the water jug next to it, and the wine on the other side. A feast just for Gwendolen, daughter of Quinn.

The door to her cell he opened last, putting the fresh slop bucket in the corner she'd placed its predecessor. He left her cage open, seating himself on the settee as he poured himself a cup of wine. Gwendolen was slow to rise, tentative as she stood in the doorway of her cage. Her eyes darted to the platter and then to the chamber door. Cyr smiled, though he ought to have punished her for even considering fleeing. There was still a streak of the wild in her; it would take time to tame her.

“Come, Gwendolen.”

Her steps were unsteady, bare legs shaking. She stopped across the table from him, swaying like she might faint. The white tunic reached only to mid-thigh, baring her thin, muscular arms, and the glorious stretch of her legs. Cyr had debated leaving her naked, but it had felt vulgar. He preferred her covered with just enough fabric to tease him. To keep her form a mystery he could unravel again and again. He tapped the seat cushion beside him. Thoughts burned behind her desperate eyes, hunger and pride fighting.

“Just for tonight, you may sit at my side.”

She may well have preferred his feet, but Gwendolen made it to the settee. Her knees buckled as she reached him, and she caught herself on the back, lowering herself beside him. Her gaze was fixed not on the silver tray, but on the water jug. Cyr placed his wine cup on the table, lifting one of the silver chalices to pour her a drink.

Gwendolen's gaze fixed on the stream of tinkling water. Her yearning was an awful thing to behold. When he held the cup out, she snatched it from his hands. Her throat bobbed as she took a long gulp. A noise leaving her, he had never heard before. A deep groan. The throbbing at his temples eased as the tension left her limbs. Liquid spilt from the chalice onto her chin. Cyr caught her wrist, pulling the cup back from her parted lips.

“Careful,” he said. “Drinking too fast will do you no favours.”

The glare she fixed him with was purest enmity, jaw tensed like she might growl at him. But when he released her, she slowed her gulps, taking smaller sips. He reached for his wine; the taste alone eased the ache in his bones.

Gwendolen clutched the cup to her chest, her unblinking eyes fixed on him. Cyr offered her a smile of encouragement before he lifted the dome off the platter. The scent of the steaming stew was appealing, even to him, and he’d eaten three plates at the feast, his stomach burning with a hunger he could not sate. Her eyes snapped to the steaming bowl with a longing he envied. He had not realised how deeply he wished for her to want him, till he saw what need looked like in her eyes.

Gwendolen cradled the stew in her hands. She forewent a spoon, raising the edge to her lips; her throat bobbed as she took a slow sip. A shudder slipped from the base of her spine to her narrow shoulders. No doubt the food was richer than anything that had ever touched her tongue. Her low whine went straight to his cock. She swallowed the broth until only the chunks of meat remained. The ache in his gut finally burnt out as he watched her eat. Gwendolen dipped her fingers in the bowl. Never once reaching for the cutlery.

Cyr cleared his throat. “Are your hands clean?”

She stilled, eyes wide like she’d forgotten he was there and now found herself caught in some sinful act.

“Ought you not use a fork?” 

“Fork?” Her gaze darted to the pile of cutlery on the silver platter.

Her lip pulled between her teeth, and Cyr's hunger returned. The urge to catch her bottom lip, to pull it between his own—

“The one with the four prongs.” He reached over, lifting the fork and holding it out to her. 

Her eyes dropped to the metal, then back up to his before she reached for it. She peered at it, turning it from side to side. The fruit he'd requested came in the form of a pomegranate, already split open. Cyr reached for one of the shards as she inspected the fork. Gwendolen flipped it, getting it both upside down and the wrong way round. Her fist curled around it as she speared the scraps of meat at the bottom of the bowl like a fisherman with a trident.

He debated taking it from her, feeding her himself or showing her how to use a fork, of all things. Cyr pulled a single seed free, holding the red droplet between his fingers. She stilled, the meat scrap caught between her jaws. Her eyes were fixed on the ruby droplet in his hand. Her nostrils flared wide at the scent. She chewed slowly, throat bobbing as she swallowed.

“Is it fæfruit?” Her nerves showed in every quiet word.

Cyr shook his head. “A pomegranate. We grow them in the hothouses.”

“Hothouses?” Her eyes were so bright, catching the glitter of the fire in the hearth.

“The glass structures in the castle gardens.” He brought the seed to her mouth. 

The ruby rested against her bottom lip.

“Are your hands clean?” She said, neither blinking nor looking down.

Cyr smiled. “Cleaner than yours.”

Gwendolen’s lips parted, letting him slip the seed into her mouth. When she bit down, her pupils dilated. He doubted she’d ever tasted anything like it. Cyr could only imagine how it must feel.

It occurred to him then to feed her six, but the symbolism would be lost on her. Really, he ought to make it twelve; Cyr had no intention of giving her back when spring came. He took a few seeds for himself instead, slipping them between his lips. They were ripe. Bitter and sweet. Her gaze dropped to the seeds in his hand as she leant closer.

“May I have another, Lord Cyr?” 

How could he deny her when she asked so sweetly? She returned her bowl to the platter. Her mouth opened for him to slip another red seed between her lips. Gwendolen chewed slowly, savouring a single bite for longer than it would take him to devour six. He fed them to her one by one, shifting closer and closer, till he could smell the fruit on her breath. It stained the seam of her lips a brighter red. He knew she would taste of the juice if he were only to lean in. But as lovely as her lips were, she was no lady of the fæ.

The more she ate and drank, the better Cyr felt. The ache in his limbs vanished entirely when she finally let out a contented sigh. He reached for his wine, enjoying the way it fizzed softly in his mouth, before he pressed his cup to her lips.

She was so pliant, had grown accustomed to eating from his hand. Her belly full and satisfied, she gulped a deep mouthful. Gwendolen flinched, pulling away from his cup so fast that wine spilt on her chin and neck. Her hand flew to her face as she slid across the cushions. Her pupils pinpricks, when a moment before they’d been wide and sated.

“No.” She shook her head. “Oh no! I don’t—”

Cyr put his cup down.

“Quiet, Gwendolen.” His hand caught the arm of the settee, trapping her before she could flee any further. “Calm yourself; you’ve drunk it now.”

She squeezed her eyes closed. Her chest heaved, breasts squeezing against the linen covering them. It took moments for the wine to calm her. For a human, even a sip was enough. Her breath slowed, her eyes opening. Her eyelashes fluttered as she stared at him like a familiar stranger. 

“You.” Gwendolen’s face split into a bright, wide smile. “I know you.”

He was speechless; Cyr couldn’t have moved. At once, he felt the thrill of thievery, what it must be like to steal a dragon’s greatest treasure.

Her smile as she reached for him put the jewels of Tristrian's crown to shame. Cyr thought he might well slaughter a thousand mortal men if it earned him just one more of her smiles. Gwendolen's fingertip brushed his skin. Her touch tickled faintly as she traced the scar that split his brow. Marked him from forehead to cheek with the trace of cold iron.

“It makes you seem real.” Her whisper was not the breathy whine of terror. The words were deeper. From her chest. “A man.”

He flinched, and she drew back, her lips a perfect o. Her wide eyes caught on her hand. Gwendolen’s smile returned, dimmer than it had been, but no less beautiful.

“It glows.” She giggled, the sound finer than the bubbles in the wine. Her heels kicked. “I’m glowing like you do.”

She wasn’t. Her pupils had grown wide enough to capture the faintest light. Gwendolen’s gaze dropped to the centre of her chest.

“What is this?” Her thumb and index finger caught around something he could not see. Her hand pushed outward, like she was following a thread. Kept following it until she reached him. Her palm opened as she laid it on his chest. “It glows.”

Her touch set him alight, and the joy of watching her was no longer enough. He needed to touch her. Feel her.

“Enough of that.” Cyr caught her hips, yanking her on top of him.

She giggled as she caught herself, both hands flat on his chest as she straddled his thighs. Her cunny pressed against his hardening cock. Cyr was tempted to have done with it and bury himself inside of her. Her hair tickled his nose as she rubbed her cheek against his chest. A kitten marking him with her scent.

She didn’t truly smell pleasant. The hyacinth that used to cling to her was gone. Her hair was greasy enough to clump. He needed to bathe her, but it was late. It would have to be tomorrow, for he had not the strength to end that moment. Her weight above him, her breasts firm against his chest, Cyr didn't mind her being a little overripe, not when she was so gloriously warm with him.

“Why don’t you undress me?” he asked.

The wine had made her entirely suggestible. Her will as malleable in his hands as clay. She sat straighter, her fingers pulling at the ties of his shirt, fumbling because she was dazed rather than terrified. It felt a miracle. He ought to have fed her wine sooner. Gwendolen hummed softly as she inspected the knot. The melody turned quickly to words.

“My mother said, I never should.” Breathy and intimate, like she was whispering a song to him. “Dance with the fæ in Prince Tristrian’s wood.” She slipped a nail between the ties, twisting. “Your hair shan’t curl, your shoes shan’t shine.” Her teeth brushed her lip again. “You foolish girl, you shan’t be mine.” She caught the string, and the knot came loose at her tug. “They dance with fire, those wicked fæ.” Her thumb traced the muscle of his chest as she stared, forgetting the rest of her task. “They steal your heart right away.”

Her hands found his shoulder, the bruise that bloomed there, dark and violent. 

“We match,” Gwendolen said.

His brows flicked up, dazed and half enchanted by her song. “We do?”

She nodded, her gaze sharpening as memory filled it. An emotion strong enough to break through the haze the wine brought to her mind.

“Lord Firan, he gripped me so hard,” she said, her voice no longer breathless. “I thought he might break my arm.”

The sleepy contentment he’d been relishing left him as she relaxed. The grip of the memory that had seized her ebbed as she softened again. But it was too late now; the damage had been done. Cyr’s hand shook as he reached for the neck of her tunic, tugging it down her shoulder. She smiled at him, perfect trust in her eyes as he bared her upper chest to his gaze. Not a reflection, it was on the left side, just like his. He twisted his head to glance between the bruises. Different shades, to account for the difference in their complexions, but the size and shape were identical. 

Ice filled the pit of his stomach as his mind drifted back to the night he’d taken her maidenhead. When his fælight had slipped from his control. He’d done something, something he shouldn’t have. He’d—

“Mercy!”

Cyr shoved her off him. There was a crash as she hit the table and a knife of pain across his lower back—another damned bruise. The fury inside him flared, hot enough to burn.

“Ouch.” Her voice was so soft.

Gwendolen was a woman. A human woman staring up at him with wide, confused eyes, and pupils still so large from the fæ wine he’d given it. He snarled at it, and it flinched back. Cyr grabbed it by the scruff of its neck. Gwendolen stumbled as he dragged it across the room. He threw it back into its cage, and his knees burned when the woman’s body smacked against the floor. Knives of pain shooting up his legs. The door of its cage clanged as he slammed it closed. Locking it tight.

“Ouch.” The word was even fainter this time. Startled and so sad that it sent a splinter of agony through his chest. “Lord Cyr, where did you go?”

It was looking at the far wall. Confused. The crushing weight of realisation settled upon him as the inescapable truth was laid bare. His mind could no longer shield itself from the truth because it was written on their skin.

He'd bound his body, his very soul, to a mortal fucking pig!

A growl left his chest, low and deep, and the woman's head whipped around. Even fæwine could not dampen the instinctual terror the noise sparked. As ancient as shadow, as cruel as a moonless night. Blood and agony. Cyr dragged himself away, slamming the door to his bedchamber hard enough to crack the frame. He fled from the creature he'd caged, before his fury killed them both.