The girl was content to live a quiet life with her garden and her brothers and sisters and her books. But on the evening of her eighteenth birthday she heard music so beautiful she couldn’t help but weep. With big, fat tears rolling down her cheeks, she followed the music beyond the safe walls of her estate and into the bordering woods. It was there, under a willow tree, that she found a man strumming a lute. Except it wasn’t a man. As she got closer, she noticed something just the slightest bit off about him, his too-long fingers, his pointed ears, his face so beautiful it made her weep harder, and she knew she had stumbled upon one of the Others she’d been warned about.
She turned to run before he saw her, but she wasn’t quick enough. Immediately stricken by her beauty, the man grabbed her by the hand, fell to his knees, and begged her to be his wife.
Thinking herself very clever, she promised to be his wife for a year and a day and then she would be free to live as she pleased. The man agreed to her terms and took her back through the portal to his land to wed. It wasn’t until a crown was placed upon her head at their wedding that she found out her new husband was the king of the Otherworld and she had been tricked. Time doesn’t pass for the Others like it does for humans, and a year and a day in the Otherworld could be as long as a human lifespan on earth.
In some versions of the story she eventually fell in love with her husband and they reigned side by side for many years; in others, she escaped him and he spent the rest of his eternal life searching for revenge upon her and her offspring. I always liked the version where they fell in love best. Lydia and I would make tiaras of dandelions and pretend to be the faerie king’s human bride.
In my dream, I am wedded to the faerie king, attempting toescape the prison of our shared bedchamber. He runs his hand softly over the front of my body, cupping me from behind. “Come to bed, wife.” His tongue flicks against the shell of my ear and I shiver all over. He moves his mouth lower, trailing his tongue over my pulse, down to where my collarbones ache. “Come to bed,” he says once more, and this time I follow him.
His hands are hot as they press against the planes of my back. He cradles my face gently and tucks a loose curl behind my ear. I writhe against his body until I’m aching for him all over. I don’t understand why he’s making me wait. He rolls so he is on top of me and cages me in with his arms. His knee nudges between my legs, and I drop them open for him. “Kiss me,”I whisper against his mouth. “Take me. I was only ever yours.”The faerie king comes into focus. He has Emmett’s face.
“Ivy,” the faerie king says.
“Ivy.” It’s louder this time.
“Ivy!” I blink awake, confused and clammy, the wanting all over me like a fever. The room I’m in is shabby and unfamiliar. I blink again, and my eyes adjust to the low light of dawn.
Oh, right.The storm. The coaching inn.Emmett.
I tilt my face up and see Emmett staring down at me, a bemused smile on his face. His hair is wild with sleep, his eyes slightly puffy. “You’re difficult to wake up,” he says.
My head is tucked against his warm chest, his heartbeat hammering in my ears. He’s got an arm tucked against my back, his hand falling right on the small of my waist.
The tips of my ears are freezing, but the rest of me is warm with the heat of Emmett’s body.
“I’m sorry.” I scramble across the bed, hot with embarrassment.
“The fire went out in the night. You were cold,” Emmett replies.
“Yes. Cold.”
Emmett swipes a hand across his face, like he can wipe away the blush of color along his cheeks. “I’ll get it going again.”
“Aren’t you lucky you had such a good teacher,” I say as he bends to open the tinderbox.
He’s ditched his shirt sometime in the night, and he wraps himself in a blanket to get to work on the hearth.
I understand what Emmett meant when he said he would always be love-hungry. I feel a stab of desperate hunger when I look at him.
The storm has finally quieted, and dawn arrives with a wash of pale blue pressing against the windows.
I notice for the first time that Emmett’s left collarbone juts out unnaturally under the skin. Usually hidden by his high cravats, it’s poking out from under the blanket now.
“What happened there?” I gesture to it.
Emmett touches the bone gingerly. “I broke it jumping horses when I was twelve. I was afraid my governess would scold me, and I had no one else looking after me, so I hid it, and it healed all wrong. Hurt like the devil.”
At twelve, I was still playing dolls with Greer. Emmett was so alone, he didn’t have a single person he trusted enough to tell about a broken bone.
His back is to me as he stokes the fire. “You talk in your sleep.”
I shuffle down under the quilt until I am completely covered. “Please leave me here to die,” I call out.
Emmett laughs. “Don’t you want to know what you said?”
“No. I want to be drowned in one of the puddles outside.”
“It wasn’t all that bad. Something about a king.”
