“We’ll discuss this further in less formal settings,” the woman announced grandly. The figures on the raised seating rose and began to shuffle out murmuring amongst themselves, as if her words were some pre-arranged signal for them to depart.
The woman stepped off the dais and walked towards us. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were the same white as her hair. Her eyes were cold and speculative, I thought. “You can drop your guard,” she told Rivyn. I felt him relax, and he dropped his arm. “You are a very interesting couple,” she looked at us with interest but not hostility. “Come, we will have something to drink, and discuss why you are here, and where you came from.”
“Siorin?” Rivyn murmured as he took my hand and followed her to the door which the robed audience had used to exit.
I looked up at him, meeting his eyes. There was concerned enquiry in his. He wondered where it was that I had been taken and whether I had e
She is precious to me. I turned that odd statement over in my head as I followed the boy out of the building. We passed the stables, and a kitchen garden, before passing through a door in a wall, out onto a side street. Rivyn was referring to either his source of virgin hair or his belief that I was part of his destiny spell, I decided. I doubted very much that I had anything to do with his destiny. The fact that he had cast the spell and then I had passed by on the road did not mean anything. If he had cast the spell, and then my mother had decided Fiane was a changeling would have been different. But I had been already set on my path before the spell was cast, it had not changed anything. Except... it had been a contributing factor to him taking me through the portal with him, changing my destiny. I did not yet know if that change was for the better or worse. “What sort of supplies do you need?” the boy ask
I began to pin the excess material at the waist and down his thighs, fitting the trousers around his legs to be more pleasing to the eye. By necessity, this fitting meant I was touching him in an overly familiar way, and I knew the colour was rising in my cheeks. He watched me, his eyes smouldering in a way that made my skin feel hot and my body ache. “You can take them off, now,” I said to him. Our eyes locked. His were a true blue with no shadow of other colours in them, no flecks of brown or gold. I drew in an unsteady breath and released the ties that closed the front. His hand closed over mine, and he pressed my palm against the hot skin of his stomach, sliding it down, through the crisp hair at his groin, to close over his hardness. His eyes closed and his head rocked back on his neck as he guided my hand along him. “ - Siorin,” he moaned, his other arm coming behind my back, drawing me closer.
I was the changeling, I thought, dazed, as his words began to make sense. A siren changeling. My voice had magic. A different sort of magic to the sharp, bitter metallic tang of the mages. I possessed the sort of magic that lured ogres to sleep when lullabies were sung, and mages to spill their seed when I cried out in pleasure. “A -ing virgin siren,” he continued with amusement. “A very unusual commodity. Virginity is a misogynistic concept of course, but when it comes to spell components, the repressed sexuality does give a bit of a power kick that cannot be denied. Monks or other aesthetics’ hair is excellent. Years of repression there. Alright, let us get dressed. I have a book to read.” He released me and rose, reaching for a drying cloth as he stepped out of the water. He passed me a cloth as he worked his through his hair. He had answered why I was precious to him, I thought as I rose from the water, less concerned with my nudity
I dropped my head to the book with a groan. “I don’t think the librarians would approve of your bookmark,” Rivyn commented mildly. He sat on the opposite side of the table, the heavy tome open before him and propped up on a stand. He leaned back on the chair, his ankle resting on his knee, seeming at complete ease on the uncomfortable wooden chairs. The library whispered with movement as mages and apprentices moved between the rows of bookcases or turned the pages of their books at the table around us. The murmur of voices was maddening, for not a word could I understand as they murmured incantations to themselves, memorising them for later use. “There is ridiculously little said in all these words,” I complained. “Well, what is it that you wish to know?” Rivyn replied, pausing his own reading and leaning around the book to look at me. “How to use my power. Why I was le
It was the white- haired woman mage who had waylaid Rivyn in the hallway, I thought rising to my feet. They stood not far from our chamber, as her words carried clearly through the small gap in the door. Something in her tone of voice alarmed me – she spoke as if Rivyn was hiding something significant and she had gained the upper hand with her discover. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t. Your eavesdroppers weren’t discrete, and my wife was chatty today,” Rivyn replied with indulgence. Whatever significance her statement had, he was unbothered by it, which, perhaps, should have reassured me, but I already knew that the mage was afraid of far too little for his own good. “You are not what I expected,” she sounded disgruntled. She had a script in mind, and Rivyn was not playing to it with his response. She had expected fear, I suspected, and my Fae mage did not display it. “People rarely are,” there was definitely super
“Are you a knight?” The innkeeper cast a glance over his shoulder at the gathered menfolk, who were all keenly following the conversation. I was glad I was not the only person to think he looked like one. “A mage,” Rivyn sat back on his chair. “Though I have competently wielded a sword on occasion,” he added in such a way that I knew with certainty that he was as much a knight as he was a mage, despite his demurring. The innkeeper agreed with me, his expression avid. “A mage knight,” he said. “That’s exactly what we need to kill this dragon.” “Mmm. Will our meal be forthcoming? We will want to eat and retire to bathe, perhaps with another bottle of wine and some fruit and meats.” Rivyn had lost interest in the discussion. From the expression he sent me, his attention had moved on to seducing me in the bath. I flushed, and his grin was wicked knowing that he had flustered me with a look. “Of c
Wrapped in the drying cloths, leaving our clothing to be washed, we took the wine and the fruit with us as we crept up to our room. The tavern was busy below, the sound of voices spilling through the floorboards. I wondered if they discussed us, and the impending arrival of the dragon the following day. It made me nervous to think of, and worried for Rivyn - he was so full of Fae confidence, but a dragon was a formidable opponent. The room was basic, falling below the slope of the roof, with much of the space lost to the diminishing height, but the bedding was clean and the mattress thick. A small table near the bed held a lit chamberstick, the only light in the room. We placed the wine and fruit next to it and our bags at the foot of the bed. Rivyn sat on the bed sipping wine as I ran the comb through his hair. “So,” he said, his voice somnolent. “We will offer you as tribute.” “The dragon will know, though, won’t
The villagers escorted me to an open field beyond the village. They were restless and over-excited with anxiety over the dragon’s imminent arrival, crowding around me and all speaking at once so that the sounds of their voices merged into cacophony, the pitch and their unease causing my heart to pound and my ribs to feel constricting to my lungs. “What happened with previous offerings?” I asked the woman who seemed to be in charge of me. She had arrived an hour or so before with a white dress for me to wear, its hems brightly embroidered, and had braided my hair with ribbons to match. She had scrubbed my face and nails, pinched my cheeks, rubbed berries on my lips and declared me respectable before bringing me out of the inn, into the bright sunlight, where the rest of the village waited to escort me to my potential doom or ravishment – both possibilities equally dire to them, from what I managed to distinguish from their conversations.