In any case, everyone but a few of the Aralyssean nobles accepted my self-nomination with great cheer. And those dissenters are quietly being replaced by merchants and chamberlains happy to support my delightful, healthy, thriving, people-first agenda.
In fact, Skorrin has already approved several requests from Stone Fae warriors to transfer to Aralysse.
Officially, it was to help secure our new most-favored breadbasket kingdom as they collaborated with Elephim and the Mountain Goats to create a light-and-steam magick version of a train that would run from my coastal gift kingdom, through the other three breadbaskets, past the Wastelands, with a hopeful last stop in Solmane.
But in the privacy of our chambers, Veyrion confessed that after seeing our happy state—and hearing the… ah…voraciousnature of our lovemaking—he suspected a few of his soldiers had become curious about taking human wives.
Initially, I felt guilty for this influence.
There had never been a Stone Fae–human union in their kingdom’s history. Veyrion even flew to one of their outer territories to meet his eldest sister’s son—his firstborn nephew—and subtly groom him for the possibility of having to take the throne when Veyrion died in another hundred years or so.
I pointed out we didn’t even know if Stone Fae and humans were biologically compatible.
He answered, “If they do manage to find a love this passionate, it will sustain them over legacy. Do you know that because of you, I’ve rewritten my brother’s story? He loved his husband, and they died without ever having to lose each other. How fortunate to be commended to Eryx at the same time.”
Had I once accused my husband of having no art inside him? I’m still occasionally rocked by the poetry that falls out of his mouth.
Not that we didn’t still have our conflicts,I write in my diary.
One such conflict came to a head while my father and I were deep in discussion with Yerivian, the royal healer who lived in the Stone Fae village by the lake, about the medicinal plants needed to support his recovery from the magic that had restraightened his spine.
At leastIwas having an important discussion about medicinal plants.
I was beginning to suspect my father was way more focused on flirting with the healer, whose white hair was streaked with black, and Yerivian didn’t seem immune to my father’s fawning compliments.
I learned that Stone Fae could blush when Yerivian’s cheeks turned a dark gray and he said, “I do not believe I have ever been so complimented by such a charming male.”
I was just about to ask only half-jokingly if they’d like some private time together when my name echoed across the terrace.
Both Yerivian and my father dropped to their knees as the Stone Fae King came storming toward us.
I suppose my otherwise level-headed, loving husband didn’t appreciate my itty-bitty prank this morning...
I’d snuck over to his window right as the suns began turning him to stone—and gave him a hand job mid-transition. Which meant his overlarge phallus was fully erectandfully granite until nightfall.
I rolled my eyes when, without so much as a greeting to Yerivian or my father, he hauled me over his shoulder and stormed straight back to our chambers, without the slightest care that my ever-rotating Stone Fae crew still needed guidance under the Elephim-sourced garden lights until moonsrise.
Poor Rinthiah jumped out of the way and mouthedWhat did you do?just before he slammed the chamber door behind us.
Let’s just say Veyrion and his shadows wereextremelydispleased about having a hard-on all day.
And try as I did to convince him—first with teasing and baiting, then, eventually, with crying and babbling while trapped in his merciless shadow binds—he could not see the poetic justice in what I had done.
Ah well. He made it up to me with one of my favorite new positions after I finally gave in and said the safe-word phrase:I’m sorry.
(I adore my husband, but he remains a kinghole sometimes.)
“I’m sorry!” I wailed. “I’m sorry for everything.”
“Ssh,” he said, immediately using his shadows to lift me higher along the closest stone wall until my core was level with his face. “Allow me to reward your pretty apology with a necessary soothing.”
And by reward, of course, he meanteat me out for filth.
Apparently, oral sex isn’t a thing in the Stone Fae community, but Veyrion was more than pleased with my awkward demonstration of taking as much of his staff as I could in my mouth. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just because this was the first time I voluntarily got on my knees like the rest of his quick-to-bow subjects. It only took a few enthusiastic sucks and some tongue around his bulbous tip before he exploded between my overstretched lips.
And while Veyrion never let my bad deeds go unpunished, he also never let my good ones go unrewarded.
Using his shadows to hoist me up to his mouth, he propped me against a stone wall with my legs draped over his shoulders so he could “return your most delightful gift.”
