Chapter 46: The Fairy’s Pain

Note: Thanks to B0b and WRC 264 for beta reading this!

Sven Falk

Aingeal’s wings fluttered as she concentrated on the Lodestone. Her eyes grew unfocused, her breathing slowing, her large breasts rising and falling. Light played along the gold rings piercing her nipples.

“What do you think she’s doing, Master?” Zanyia asked as she crouched beside me in that cat-like manner she was fond of. Her tawny years twitched and flicked, her tail swishing behind her.

“Breaking the stone,” I answered.

“I know that,” the lamia said. I could hear the eye roll in her words. “But how? She’s just staring at it.”

“I’m directing the spirits that neither of you can see,” Aingeal said, her voice strained. “But they are not very cooperative here. We are trespassing.”

She said that last word with such vehemence. I hadn’t pried at her loathing for Duke Gallchobhar, but it was clear she detested the faerie lord. He had done something to Aingeal that got her banished from her home to our world.

If he worked with Prince Meinard in something as heinous as this ... My gaze swept around the humans in the stocks, drooling, their souls slaved to statues in our world. I could only imagine the crimes Duke Gallchobhar committed against my new faerie-wife.

My hand rested on Zanyia’s head, scratching between her ears. They flicked against my flesh. A purr rose in her throat. Her tail swished faster, jutting out against the pale, naked swell of her ass. Her back arched, supple skin almost glowing in the alien moonlight of Faerie.

“The enchantment is strong,” Aingeal added. “A mage of some strength did this.”

“Yes, Ava mentioned her father employs a master mage. This is his work. Magic combined with imbuing to make this ... monstrosity.”

Zanyia let out an angry hiss.

“This will take some time,” Aingeal added. Her jaw set. Her big breasts jiggled as she stamped her feet. “Come on, spirits. Stop fighting me. This was my father’s land! Don’t you remember me?”

Father’s land?

Then I saw it. More than strain to disenchant the Lodestone tensed her face. Pain twitched her cheeks and set her jaw. Yes, Duke Gallchobhar had hurt her. Done something terrible to her family. Killed her father? Definitely usurped her family’s land. So that made her a duke’s daughter. A noble faerie.

Her wings fluttered. Then purple energy flickered around the edges. I saw faint glimmers streaming from her hands towards the lodestone. A nimbus flickered around the stone. An aura just perceptible to my sight.

Zanyia’s ears flicked. “Master!”

“What?” I asked, scratching between her ears.

The ground shook. Thud. Thud. Thud. I groaned, throwing a look over my shoulder. Two of the treemen trudged towards us. In the distance, my sister’s bonfire no longer roared, her illusion snuffed out. My stomach twisted. A sick oil writhed through my guts then through my veins. My heart ached, laboring to pump blood through me.

“Kora!”

“Master!” Zanyia shouted again. Then she threw her slender body into me.

She caught me off-balance. I stumbled to the side, my lamia slave’s limbs wrapped about my body, her entire form trembling. I opened my mouth to shout at her and throw her off when something flashed down from the sky striking where I stood.

Purple energy burst, leaving a scorch mark on the ground.

Wings flapped above. A faerie appeared, looking like a young and beautiful man. The type of effeminate perfection that could almost pass for the feminine but has too much masculine in the square of the jaw and the muscles of the chest.

Duke Gallchobhar.

Purple energy swirled in front of him as he aimed at Aingeal.

Aingeal

“Aingeal! Above!”

Sven’s shout jerked my head from my task. I stopped directing the blue abjuration spirits at the lodestone when I saw him. Duke Gallchobhar fluttered in the sky above. Evocation spirits rushed in front of him. The red balls of light danced and swirled into a blast of energy, purple light flaring at the edges as he directed the attack at me.

My heart exploded in fright, my stomach sinking.

My wings flapped hard as I redirected the abjuration spirits. They fought my will. They didn’t want to obey me in the presence of the duke. But I grit my teeth and ripped them into place as the beam lanced down. The air crackled with energy. The evocation spirits hurtled down at me encased in purple plasma.

The attack slammed into the abjuration spirits.

Violet energy rippled before me. The air crackled. My skin tingled from the released energy. Sven and Zanyia shouted, the pair thrown to the ground by one of the stocks, my husband cradling the lamia in his arms as they hit.

The beam ended. The evocation spirits surged in every direction, bouncing off my shield. They recovered, arching back towards him for another attack. I leapt into the air, my butterfly wings flapping with frantic need.

A beam knifed at me. It swept beneath my feet as I soared higher and higher. The energy struck my feyhound, shattering its wicker body and releasing the spirits animating it. Then the attack crashed into a stock. Wood pulverized. The insensate human didn’t make a sound as the evocation spirit blasted his flesh into torn bits of bloody meat.

“You monster!” I snarled at him, anger at losing Cú Mheá swept up in the horror of the poor humans death. “Have you no propriety! To hurt the innocent.”

“If you hadn’t dodged it, Aingeal, he would still live,” the duke said, his voice melodious, even beautiful. Far too beautiful.

How did I ever love this thing? How could I miss his black heart? That damned smile!

“So you would murder a daughter of Cernere?” I demanded. “Murder her where she stands.”

“It’s death for you to return to Faerie after what you did, Aingeal.” He grinned. “Covering our beloved queen in iron ... She still remembers the pain.”

“Only because you arranged for her to enter the glade! You used me to destroy my father and usurp his land.”