‘Hmm. Well, perhaps I like the audience.’
‘You have all the audience you need here, surely?’ The hall was full of hundreds of faeries, feasting and dancing.
He raised his eyebrow and smiled. ‘Quite so. Well, then. Perhaps it is that we need humans. We need your attention to survive. We need your love.’ He looked at her deeply, and she felt her breath catch. ‘We were banished from your world, or near enough, when you stopped paying us our due. As the spirits of the land. As the ones who give you good luck, help you, keep your babies healthy. We didn’t ask much, but it was too much for humans in the end, and it broke our hearts. Now, we are mostly confined to our own places. But as I am king, I can choose whether to go forth into your world or not. And I choose to be loved again, and give love. It is no more than an act of a broken heart looking to be healed, my time with Dal Riada.’
Faye didn’t know what to say in reply. She thought of the rules, in Grandmother’s grimoire:
The Rule of Balance applies between the faerie and the human worlds. Each world depends on the other to exist, and there is a natural ebb and flow between the realms. If one realm seeks to overpower the other, chaos reigns. If they work harmoniously together, peace reigns.
Finn nodded to another couple that danced next to them. The woman – or, as Faye corrected herself, the faerie-woman– was dressed very grandly in a violet and silver dress with a bodice and full skirt reminiscent of fashion from many hundreds of years ago. She wore red roses in her dark golden-blonde hair, which was plaited intricately around them. Her partner was, as far as Faye could tell, human – a dark-skinned young man with a dazed expression who couldn’t take his eyes from the faerie queen in his arms. She was high-cheekboned and full-lipped, and her eyes had the same oddness as Finn’s – as if they were made of jewels that held great depth but still remained somehow impassive and cold.
‘Greetings to you,sidhe-leth.’ The woman nodded imperiously to Faye, and her human partner smiled briefly before he swung the golden-haired beauty away.
‘Who was that?’ Faye murmured to Finn, though she was having trouble focusing on anything apart from Finn and the music, which had entered her blood; it felt as though it was powering her actions from inside a formerly hidden part of herself. A part of herself that was as wild as the trees and the rivers, and wanted to sing and dance and – most of all, as Finn pressed her against his firm, well-muscled chest – submit to him. The thought of submitting to him made her thrill with a dark passion that she had never known. She thought about what it would be like to kneel before him; obey him.
Their faces were so close together now that their lips almost touched. Faye’s awareness of the dancers around them dimmed so that it was only the two of them moving as one inside the music. If she inclined her head less than an inch, her lips would meet his; the idea thrilled her more than she had ever thought possible.
‘My sister, the Faerie Queen Levantiana, Queen of Murias, Mistress of the Cup,’ he breathed.
‘And the…the person with her?’
‘Her lover.’
‘Is he human?’ she murmured. ‘Like me?’
‘Yes.’ Finn smiled, and lightly traced the line of Faye’s cheek with his fingertip, causing a pleasurable fire that lit her whole body up in desire for him. She sucked in her breath. ‘But not like you.’
‘Are you…close to your sister?’ Faye was curious about the faerie queen, and Finn’s relationship with her. His eyes had glowed when they met hers, and Faye had felt something pass between them: an unspoken understanding, a deep connection.
‘Of course. She is queen, I am king,’ he replied dismissively, but on seeing Faye’s expression, he explained a little more. ‘She is made of the same stuff as me, the same as all faeries, just as other humans share much in common with you. But she and I are of an old, old family: our forebears are the spirits of the first oceans. What is between us cannot be between anyone else – it is impossible for you to understand. We are Murias, and Murias is us. This is one of the mysteries of my kingdom,sidhe-leth: it would take you many more lifetimes than the one you have to understand.’
She had so many more questions. But, rather than speak anymore, Finn brushed her lips with his fingertip and gently kissed her
17
It was like being underwater, but without fear of drowning.
Faye’s eyes fluttered closed, and she was subsumed by the kiss, pulled under into tumultuous waves. She felt as though she was dissolving into Finn, and he into her, as they kissed deeper, and the sky rolled back into indigo nothingness above them.
Dimly she was aware of them walking away from the dancefloor, but they were both already somewhere else. Theyweresomething else other than what they had been separately: combined, even in a kiss, they had begun to merge and both felt the fierce pull of elemental power.
The music quietened, and Faye’s eyes cleared a little as she climbed the golden stairs up again to the room with the balcony where they had started. She had no sense of time, or how much had passed while she had been in the faerie world. But she didn’t care. The occasional flashes of her real, human life seemed like trivial memories. Compared to Finn, compared to the strange music that inhabited her blood, it was that life that seemed a dream now.
He led her down a corridor and into a bedroom. Faye followed, her hand in his. To refuse now felt like madness.
The dreams she’d had, the dreams where Finn Beatha had played games with her, pleasured her, raised her ecstasy to levels she had never known before, and then refused to satiate her – those dreams had been intensely erotic.
But being here in the faerie realm itself, where Finn commanded ultimate power, was another thing entirely. If she had felt enchanted before, that was nothing compared to the complete abandonment she felt now.
In the centre of the room, a golden four-poster bed was covered in green and blue silk and velvet coverings; the walls of the room were decorated with the spirals and carvings that were everywhere in the castle. One whole wall was glass, and looked out over a waterfall outside the castle. Faye was so deep inside faerie now that the pull of the human world was very weak. She was heedless of the danger she was in; the link to her old life was fragile now, and it would take very little to sever altogether.
Finn pulled her unceremoniously to the bed and she obeyed.
He kissed her again, deeply, and Faye felt the full power of the faerie realm close over her like a cloak of soft seawater. She pulled back from the kiss and gasped as she felt the strangeness come over her, but when Finn kissed her again, she dived gratefully into it.
‘Now, you will obey me, won’t you, sweet one?’ he demanded, pulling away from the kiss.
His lips found her neck, and she moaned in pleasure.
