“We know what you need, Sweet One,” the hissing voice murmured with deep satisfaction, sounding far less tender now.
“Get her!” a female voice ordered.
Hands grabbed me. Rough and unyielding.
I should be scared. I knew I had to be scared. Fear could possibly still save me. It could send me running at least.
But I had no place for fear. All I felt was the torturous, all-consuming need and hope that it’d be over soon.
Twenty-One
Timur
Adistant sound of a celebratory horn reached Tobis and me through the shuttered roof of the courtyard.
“The city is getting ready to welcome the queen,” Tobis explained, leading me along the mosaic path across the inner garden of the spacious, empty mansion. “Queen Abeille is coming to Teneris for the first time ever. We’ll get more noise than usual for the next couple of days of preparations and during her visit. But normally, this is a very quiet part of the city, with hardly any noise at all. The house is located too high above the market and too far away from the royal palace for the city noise to reach here often.”
Quietwas exactly what Elaine and I needed. Away from all the noise and nosy crowds.
The shutters above the garden remained closed even during the night since the house was currently unoccupied, but the gardens had been somewhat maintained. The shrubs might need a trim soon, and the flower beds could be weeded. But theirblooms were plentiful, the garden paths had been cleaned, and clear water trickled unimpeded in the water feature with a pond.
Elaine would love it here. I could already imagine her sitting in the sun by the pond. She said she used to love weaving clothes from yarn when she was younger and wished to have more time to do it again. She’d have as much time as she wanted here to do whatever she wished. The garden was big enough for a walk, too. She wouldn’t have to go outside for that either.
“You said there’s a balcony too?” I asked Tobis as he opened the gate at the end of the path.
“Yes, just off the sitting area on the top floor. Are you…um, comfortable going up the stairs?” he asked, pausing a questioning look on my two walking staffs.
I left my chair back in Ashgate. It simply made no sense to ride in it across the desert when I could fly so much faster. My right leg remained as useless as ever. But since the pain in both legs was now gone, I could put my full weight on my left leg again.
Using a pair of sturdy wooden staffs with padded crooks that I fitted under my arms, I could keep up with Tobis on his two perfectly normal feet. I didn’t even have to reveal my wings to anyone in Teneris, not even to Tobis. Not that I didn’t trust the man to keep my secret, but the fewer people knew about all my unusual deformities, the less outside attention I would attract, the safer Elaine would be.
“Show the way. I’ll be fine,” I assured Tobis, following him up a wide staircase to the top floor.
Blood rushed through the muscles of my left leg that I hadn’t used for walking for so long. It was extremely satisfying to discover strength returning to the body part I’d long written off as useless due to the crippling pain.
For so long I’d been living in dread and trepidation, expecting the pain to get worse and more of my body to get covered in scales while my flesh turned to bone.
Instead, the pain had disappeared completely. I also couldn’t find a single new scale anywhere on my body in the past two weeks, when they used to appear nightly before.
Two weeks.
That was how long it’d been since the day when I lay in the storm on the beach in Ashgate, crippled by agony, and Elaine’s healing presence flooded my senses through the single one of my tendrils. That day, she was my one tether to reality. Hers was the only humanity I could still feel, after having lost mine to the dragon.
After that day, I could no longer stay away from her. I kept connecting to her again and again. I needed to feel her with all my senses just as I wanted to feel her in my arms.
I’d been waiting for the signs of Ray’s degeneration to appear in me too. But I have yet to experience any signs of mental decline. On the contrary, Elaine’s emotions made all my senses sharper somehow. Through her, I experienced the world more vividly than ever before. I tasted her wonder, her exhilaration, her thrill that often made ordinary things feel extraordinary.
I never understood before how much joy could be found in little things. She taught me how special all of them could be. The sight of the first star in the evening sky, the vivid colors of sunset, the splash of cool water after a hot, sweaty day, and a warm cuddle in the cool night—she taught me to treasure them all.
Tobis led me through a specious hexagonal bedroom with a round platform for a bed. I envisioned Elaine happily snuggling in the soft cozy bedding under a dark canopy for restful sleep. Especially restful, after how tired I would make her with my tongue, fingers, and cock…
I smirked at the thought and followed Tobis into the next room, chasing away the tempting images of naked Elaine stretched out on our new bed. The last thing I needed was to tent my skirt with the hard pole of my cock in front of Tobis. That would unnecessarily reveal another one of my disfigurements since I was the only shadow fae with a permanent cock in this entire kingdom.
“And here is the balcony,” Tobis crossed the sitting room and opened the tall stained-glass doors with wooden shutters.
The same feeling of abandonment hung in here too, as in the rest of the house. A thick layer of sand covered the floor, left by the day storms. But wide delicate flowers were open on the thick vines framing the doors from the outside. Gold and silver moths fluttered between the flowers, dusting them with their shimmer. A stone bench stood by the parapet, as if specifically put there for Elaine to watch the sunset whenever she wished.
“I’ll take it,” I told Tobis, resting my gaze on the bench and thinking about Elaine sitting there at sunset, her thick hair down, the bright colors of the setting sun reflecting in her eyes and warming her skin with soft glow.
