“The wedding needs to be consummated tonight in order to be binding. Healers will come in the morning and examine you.”
I nod my understanding. I know he has to take me. Fey wedding customs aside, I am his vessel now. If he doesn’t untap my magic, it will be clear to everyone.
“Yes,” I manage to say. “I understand. I have been trained for this. I know all the sixty-nine positions.”
One of his elegant eyebrows lifts. “Sixty-nine positions?”
Despite everything, my lips twitch. “Yes. It is a source of a great many crude jokes.”
“I can imagine.”
He stares at me for a moment longer. Then he walks away, over to a cabinet. He pours a golden liquid into a beautifully carved wooden goblet. He returns to me and hands me the goblet.
I take it and gulp down the sweet liquid. Mead. Fermented honey. I can’t taste any drugs in it, but that doesn’t mean anything.
I look back up at him and wait to see what he wants me to do next.
Selwyn frowns. “Getting you drunk will not help, will it?”
It might. If he got me so drunk I passed out, he could simply arrange me on the bed in whichever way he saw fit. But my trainer said some men don’t like that. They want their consort to be conscious and aware.
He takes the goblet from my lax fingers and sets it down on the floor. All while his eyes never leave mine.
“May I see you?” he says softly.
My heart slams against my ribcage. My body belongs to him now. He doesn’t need to ask.
Weakly, I nod.
He takes my wrists and guides me over to the bed. Gently, he sits me down on the edge. I swallow and stare unseeing straight ahead.
His nimble fingers go to the laces at my neck. He tugs for a moment. Then he slides the soft silk of my robes off one shoulder. I shiver even though the room is not cold.
His hand moves over to my other shoulder. He pulls the silk lower until it slips off.
Both of my shoulders are exposed. Out of the corner of my eye, my skin looks pale. Soft and smooth thanks to fey lotions.
His finger runs down the curve of my neck and continues down, over the slope of my shoulder. The echo of his touch lingers all over my skin.
He traces along my collarbone until he finds the thin silver chain of my brace. He pauses and pulls the brace out of the silks pooled at the top of my chest.
“What is this?”
I lick my lips. Surely it is obvious? Strips of leather wrapped around a three-inch long piece of wood.
“It is my brace.”
Silence.
I swallow. “It is… um… for biting on. Clenching between your teeth so you can remain silent and um… brace yourself.”
All vessels have them. Or so I have always been told. A good vessel is a quiet vessel.
His fingers move to the clasp. He undoes it and lifts the chain off of my neck. The brace thuds on the floor.
“I want to hear you sing for me.”
My stomach does something strange. Sing? That has to be a translator glitch. Cry out, surely? Moan, perhaps? Hopefully, he doesn’t mean scream.
