My eyes fluttered towards Amadan. How would those sculpted arms wrap around me, what would he look like, if I saw all his revealing garb hinted at? The land grows most fertile at Beltane, both in the Underhill and the world above. And I, who was Faery as She me, never experienced it so much as I did now.
A sudden warmth washed over my cheeks, and my chest grew tight.This is Amadan I am thinking of. He who nearly killed Thomas Shepherd, who impregnated Glenna Baker, and strung my changeling self along like a wooden toy.I envisioned his long fingers stroking the side of Mairi’s face, causing her illness and death. But faery passions go where faery passions will; logic plays no part in it. One does not need to like or even tolerate someone to share their bed.
I plucked a golden fruit from the trees hanging o’er us and offered Amadan a bite, taking delight in how his eyes closed with the taste of it, and he made a deep moan low in his throat.
I bit into the fruit, and licked away its sweet juice, eyes spearing Amadan’s face. Would his lips taste sweet as fairy fruit or sharp as bitter greens on my tongue?
Why was I so eager to find out?
Amadan smiled and reached a hand to my shoulder. A tiny butterfly climbed onto his finger, then swiftly took flight.
“They all wish to be near you,” he said softly, and his eyelids lowered in pleasure, as if to say,I know the feeling well.
It burned in me then, a lust unkindled by affection, which the Christians had always taught me was sin.
There were no Christians here now.
Heat bloomed beneath my skin, and my heart began to pick up speed. Flutters began deep in my belly, the kind once only my shepherd king was wont to bring. I could not decide whether I was grateful or disappointed when we finally arrived where the banquet was to be held.
In the courtyard stood a magnificent pavilion, gleaming white like an opal, its columns twisted round with flowers and vines. The tables beneath it were set with fine linen, clusters of flowers and fruits scattered up and down its length as ornamentation. On a dais in the middle stood a silvery throne carved into intricate knotwork, cushioned with what appeared to be moss.
My throne.I stared at it a moment, thinking I might prefer the arms a bit wider, to allow for my billowing skirts, and, attentive to my will, it complied.
I clapped my hands with delight.
Amadan chuckled, deep and rich as fine wine. “I am glad Your Majesty approves.”
Beside the throne I had taken as mine stood another chair, nearly as ornate, if not as high. Wound round with carvings of fruits and vegetation it was: grapes on the vine, ripening wheat, bluebells and comfrey and cattail wands. “Who is that one for?”
Amadan leaned close to me, wafting loam and musk as always, his breath warm against my ear. “Your little friend is to sit there, of course. I know how you dread to leave him alone.”
A very human reaction almost poured out of me then: the words “thank you,” which we of Faery will not say and dread to hear. Instead, I simply squeezed Amadan’s arm, and was rewarded with perhaps the first genuinely warm smile I had ever seen on his face.
I steered Amadan away from the pavilion. “Quite a crowd has assembled. I should make my rounds.”
He nodded, and we traversed the courtyard, waving in greeting to Aos Sith and redcaps, goblins, and sylphs alike. Fae children chased after each other with willow switch swords, catching pixies and shaking them until their shimmering dust floated all about. The goblins argued with one another viciously, but paused to greet me as I passed, then raucously went back to their clamor and fighting.
We had circled the entire courtyard and come back again to the fine pavilion. By now, my advisors and courtiers had gathered round: Sith nobility and ministers from all over Faery. Lileas stood waiting to be seated, and her brows dipped at the sight of the Dark Fool, though her face quickly turned placid and lovely again. Every chair except mine had someone standing behind it, waiting for me to take my seat. Every chair, that is, except the smaller of the two thrones. This one was occupied by a small person in a crisp linen tunic and a surcoat of green velvet, a far cry from both his brothers’ cast-off clothing and the diaphanous tunic he wore here in the Underhill. His cheeks shone with health and his eyes were merry; he’d been freshly bathed as well, from the look of his damp curls. Yet, he was a child still, and had already spilled down the front of his fine clothing—berries, I decided, though for a brief, alarming moment I took it for blood.
I smiled at Jamie. “How handsome you look. And so grown up.”
He did, growing by the moment, it seemed. Soon he would not be a little boy anymore. Yet I remembered holding him in my arms, a wee bairn stumbling about the cruck house, the smell of green grass and sweet porridge when I comforted him once upon a time.
Because of me, the boy is happy and healthy, need never fear his mother’s neglect nor his father’s rod again.
Something melted inside me as I envisioned him fully grown, tall and handsome with a circlet on his brow, a token of the queen’s regard. Beside him sat the goat boy—no, he too was fully grown now, a proper faun, whose deep-brown eyes looked only at the mortal beside him. Their hands were joined, so tight as if they would never let go.
After so much neglect, such suspicion, the boy at last would know love.
I blinked away the vision—and the tears from my eyes. This was something I had wrought. This future unpromised, not glimpsed upon the surface of my scrying bowl. ’Twas everything I was determined he would have, just the same.
Jamie had taken up his silver knife and was trying, with a great seriousness of purpose, to cut his meat. Oh, Ididlove the little whelp, mortal that he was, an outcast among the Grieves, as I had been. We shared a kinship beyond blood.
I climbed the dais to take my throne beside him. “It is glad I am to have you here at my right arm. So handsome you look.” And I bent to kiss him on the forehead. He ducked away at first, then looked up to give me a giant kiss on the cheek, and we both took to giggling, like two youngsters hiding behind a hay wain to get up to mischief.
Jamie and I shared a plate, he serving me so that I would not get food upon my clothes. At least he did not spill my wine, though eventually I wiped my lips with my own napkin.
Lileas smiled, and her shoulders relaxed a bit. “She never lets me do that either.”
