Chapter Text
The cry was sharp as it left her throat, banishing sleep from her heavy eyelids. Gwen did not know where she had been. Only that it burnt. The heat of the sun smothered her. There could be no rest. No peace.
“It’s alright.” Lord Cyr caught her amongst the sheets. The words as gentle as his arms. “Do not fear.”
“I cannot.” Words spilling from her lips. Desperate bubbling pleas. “It burns!”
“Hush.” His palm drew down her arm. A touch as gentle as a mother to her babe. “You are not alone.”
“The storm came for me.” The dream clung, fetid with the stench of sulfur. “Fire and agony.”
He shushed her, arms curling around her shoulders. Her cheek pressed close enough to hear the steady beat of his heart. It slowed as her own chest loosened.
Lord Cyr made the strangest sound. A gentle hum as his fingers drifted across her skin. Her arm and back. Her cheek. Places that were safe to touch. Soothing, as the rumble turned to song.
“Fear not the moon, my dove.” The words were barely audible to her ears. Hushed. “For he is lonely in the sky above.”
Almost drowned out by the steady beat of his heart.
She turned to better see Lord Cyr’s lips. He caught her chin, pressing her temple to his shoulder.
“Let darkness be your confidant—” Without the thump of his heart, she could hear his words. “He’ll gift to you your every want.”
She could do naught but listen to the soothing timbre of his voice. Gwen did not think it was the first time she had heard him sing, but she could hardly remember it. The mess of moments that came before.
“Dread not the dawn, my joy—the sun dotes on every girl and boy.” An enchantment made of breath and murmur. “Gentle as her light unspools—for her kiss all fæ are fools.”
Gwen’s eyelids grew heavy. The tightness in her chest had all but gone.
“Surrender your heart to nighttime’s charms.” Strange that such a cruel man should sing a mother’s lullaby. “Let rest encase you in her arms.”
A breeze tugged the canopy of the bed, the softest caress, not of fælight, but of the wind. The window was open; she had not known it could. A few stars dotted the darkened sky visible through the gap in the stone walls.
Winter was behind them.
Spring had come, and Gwen knew not when it arrived.
Only that it was here.
Gwen hunched smaller by the empty chair, her head dropped low enough for the arms to hide her almost entirely. The prince’s raised voice was not a sound she could abide, yet Lord Cyr seemed to often be at odds with him. They’d snarl at each other or glare, and it was only Lord Makdara’s calm that kept them from blows. She avoided them as best she could. Yet she could go nowhere without Lord Cyr.
“Of course you would think that,” Lord Cyr’s raised voice set her teeth on edge. “Your ignorance knows no bounds.”
“My ignorance,” the prince managed an equal measure of disdain. “You call them mud savages—”
“Gwen?” Lord Makdara knelt on the floor beside her, one arm around his raised knee.
It took too long to understand the word. Distant as it seemed when the raised voices of the fæ rang through the room.
“How fair you this day?” The fælord’s smile was heedless of the dangers around them.
Her lips parted, and Gwen tried, she truly did, to answer. The sound didn’t come.
Trapped.
She swallowed, and then a breath.
“I—” The words were too big to breach her throat.
Her voice was sealed within her chest. Tears came instead. The sting of frustration as much as fear. The slam of a fist against wood made her hunch lower. Lord Makdara reached for her palm instead, pressing it between two of his.
“I’ve never told you how I found Myrie?” he asked. “Have I, Gwen?”
“Stop growling at me,” the prince's voice rose again. “Why must you be a bore about everything?”
Lord Makdara leant back, craning his head around the edge of the chair that hid her. Gwen would not have dared to look. His face split for only a moment into a deep scowl.
There was a sharp intake of breath from one of the fæ, a change to the tension in the air. When the prince spoke again, his voice was so hushed Gwen could hardly hear him. She could not make out Lord Cyr’s whispered reply either.
Lord Makdara returned his gaze to her. Searching for an answer to a question she’d all but forgotten. She shook her head at the expectation in his eyes. It was easier than words. He had yet to let go of her hand, but Gwen did not mind his grip. He smiled at her, though she’d failed him.
“Myrie’s family were travellers, wandering the fringes of the fiefdoms,” he said. “Forever moving, because no place would have them.” His smile slipped. A brightness creeping into his eyes that spoke of sympathy or grief. “They strayed too far into Lorién’s lands.”
And the prince of Flamehold held no love for humans. She knew then how Myrie had become daughter of no one.
“Twas a hunting party that slew her kin.” He cleared his throat. “From then she was alone, two years, perhaps three, until I found her in the prince’s forest.”
His smile turned rueful, warmth creeping into his gaze. Gwen leant closer. She held no fear of Lord Makdara. He was kind.
“She was half beast by then, a vixen hiding in her den.” His lips pursed for a joke shared, though Gwen did not find the words funny. “I knew she was afraid; she had half forgotten even the human tongue. So I brought her gifts, coaxed her from hiding with gathered berries.” His head tilted with a hint of conspiracy. “It is her namesake. The one I gave her. She could not remember her own. Myrie, because myrtille were the first berries I left for her, she took. It was a month for her not to hide when I came. Weeks more for her to accept food from my hands.” He shook his head. “Three months before she smiled at me. And one year—”
Lord Makdara took a slow breath, as though that single year had felt as long as any century he’d lived. “One year before, Myrie spoke to me.”
“A year?” Gwen could hardly believe it.
She had not known Lord Cyr a year. But the time they’d shared were not moments she could bring herself to dwell on. Better to forget. To think only of the peace she felt in his arms, or the ticklish sensation of his laughter against her skin when he was pleased with her. To fill her mind with his smile and ignore the darkness of before.
She could not exist in those memories.
“I had brought her back to the castle by then,” Lord Makdara said. “The snow that winter was awful. She would not have survived the forest.” He let out another gentle laugh. Gwen found herself smiling. “But she was furious with me for weeks. Growled and scowled at me and kept trying to sneak back into the cold. My Myrie was a wild thing.”
Gwen wet her lips, curiosity drawing her closer. “What changed?”
“I wish I knew.” He shook his head. “One night, she was lying on the rug by the hearth, the fire at her back, her belly full. She smiled at me. And when I asked her what she was thinking, as I had a thousand times before, she finally replied.” There was warmth to the memory. She could see the flicker of it in his eyes. “She said: ‘I think I’ll keep you, Lord Makdara.’ I realised then, she had been listening for a long time. Watching me as closely as I watched her.”
Truly, she could not quite imagine it. But then she did not truly know Myrie. They had spoken but once. On another night, Gwen did not wish to recall. It was a puzzling thing, the bond between Lord Makdara and Myrie, one she could hardly understand.
“Do you love her?” Gwen was not sure it was the right question, and yet it felt important to know.
To understand these creatures that surrounded her.
Lord Makdara’s smile dropped away. “To love is human.”
She could not understand it. Surely all creatures loved. What else held them loyal to one another?
“Lord Makdara?” Gwen swallowed, uncertain under the weight of his patient gaze. “If not love, then what do fæ feel?”
He offered her one more smile, but his eyes had no answer.
The fælord squeezed her hand once before he let go.
“It was nice to hear you speak again, Gwen.” As he rose, Lord Cyr returned to the seat she hid behind.
The chair creaked as he settled into it with a cup of wine tilted in one hand. He reached blindly, his hand finding the centre of her back as he pulled her closer to his leg. Gwen went willingly. He was a far better shield than the chair alone.
“Why should we go?” The prince’s voice rose again, and Gwen grit her teeth against the sound. “I would not waste the longest day surrounded by Lorién’s kin. They’re miserable—” his head tilted back. A cry to mercy alone. “And boring!”
As though that were the greater sin.
She let her hand find Lord Cyr’s trousers, the crook of her elbow surrounding the muscle of his calf. It was safest when she touched him.
Fingers rested on her crown, parting the strands with the gentlest touch. One she could lean closer to.
“For the sake of peace,” Lord Makdara advised as he took the chair across from the prince. “We must sometimes put up with our cousins’ company.”
Tristrian huffed. “Well, since you seem to have an opinion on everything nowadays, what say you, Cyr?”
Lord Cyr’s hand stilled in her hair. Holding her a moment as Gwen sank into his warmth.
“I can think of nowhere I would be less inclined to spend the solstice.” His voice had an edge to it, as tense as his jaw. Gwen looked quickly away from his face. His expression unsettled her. “But an enemy is only kept at bay, so long as he pretends to be a friend.”
Silence held between the fæ, and Gwen could not guess what passed within it.
“Mercy, spare me from the both of you,” the prince growled, his open palms smacking the table in defeat. “Fine, return the missive with our acceptance.”
The first month had been silence: listless and broken. Pale eyes that watched without seeing. Tristrian had told him a thousand times in those eternal weeks. The high keep—lock her away. Cyr had come as close as he ever had to striking his prince.
He could not be parted from her, not for a moment. Her physical presence was the only balm to the ache of her absence. The maw inside him that had turned to pitch and fury.
He had thought that would be the worst of it, but then came the shaking, the words trapped in her throat. The desperate way she tried and failed to answer even the simplest questions. Flinched at every loud noise and hid her face in his side.
That part he minded less.
How closely she clung to him, as though he were her shield rather than the blade that slew her.
And the nightmares—mercy, the nightmares. He had not slept a full night in months.
At first, he worried she would not speak again. But she did.
‘Lord Cyr?’ whispered to him with terror. ‘I cannot.’
A victory spoke with words of defeat. His Gwendolen returned in the smallest pieces. A word here, or a sentence there.
A time she forgot to be afraid and turned to him with a smile. Cyr remembered still the way she’d felt against him when he pressed her to the wall. Kissed her till she forgot words once again.
It had been the greatest relief he’d ever known. She was not gone. But she had yet to truly return to him.
“Wh—” The sound caught. He hated that shallow stutter. The twist of her lips as she tried to force words out. Defeat in her glistening eyes as she silently begged him to understand. To read her mind so she did not have to struggle to speak. “W—”
She did not flinch when he reached for her. Leant in to him as he let his knuckle trace her cheek as though his touch were the greatest comfort. She was flushed from the struggle to be brave. To dare to ask him the simplest of questions.
He laid the missive he’d been reading on the corner of the table, shifting on the settee to face her. The report from the Tuend could wait.
“What is it, Gwen?”
Her hand shook, lifted in the air between them. Her fingers curled around something.
Her meal was laid out on the low table. One foot touching the floor, but her body turned to face him as it always did. Like she was a flower and he the sun, she followed.
Outside his rooms, she sat on the floor, knelt at his side, though she rarely kept her distance. She’d slip closer, her shoulder touching his leg. When she grew tired, her head would dip. Lay across his thigh.
In the privacy of his chambers, she sat beside him.
Within easy reach to pull into his arms. Hold her close and rest his chin upon her crown. There was no need for pretence or conditioning. No call to force her to her place. She could barely stand to be parted from him. Clung to him as though he were her only tether in a broken world.
She offered him so little defiance that he yearned for it most. The spark of fury in her eyes. Then alone would she be returned to him. When she remembered how to hate him.
Cyr was careful as he took her wrist. She reacted ill to fast movements. He gently pried her fingers open to reveal the treasure clutched in her palm.
He could not help but smile at what he found.
“Cheese?” he asked, glancing at her blushing cheeks.
“It tastes strange?” She spoke so softly.
Afraid of the sound of her own voice.
“May I try?” Cyr asked.
She nodded, her gaze following his fingers as he plucked the morsel from his hand. Popped it in his mouth. It was saltier than her usual fare, savoury rather than the sour tinge sheep’s milk lent.
“It is safe,” he said.
Her frown was confusion, not fear. “It is different?”
“Have you ever seen a cow, Gwen?” They kept some in the further reaches of the fiefdom.
Her frown deepened as she shook her head. “Is it dangerous?”
There was a light in her eyes. Curiosity or fear. Fear would be the better to nurture. Cattle were as accursed beasts as men.
“The males of their kind are,” Cyr warned her. “Horned beasts with foul tempers. The females are more placid.” He plucked another piece from her plate, holding it to her lips. “Though they can turn—their milk makes for better fare than a sheep’s.”
She took it with her lips, slipping it into her mouth. Her eyes thoughtful as she slowly chewed. Four months had passed since the day he first caught her in the Prince’s forest. Her cheeks were no longer gaunt. There was a thickness to her thighs, a swell to her breasts.
Mercy, he could devour her.
“I think—” she glanced up, her gaze distant, but she smiled. What he wouldn’t give to see more of her smiles. “I think I like cow cheese.”
Cyr leant in, catching her lips for the shadow of a kiss. She allowed it without flinching, leant in to him even as he pulled away. It was not his kisses she feared. Truly, there were so few things he could give her she liked.
“Then it is precious indeed.”
Her chest flushed in the candlelight. Skin warmed from bathing, though the breeze through the open window cooled her fast enough that she still reached for the covers. The hair had returned to her cunny. Strands still too short to tangle. The finest fuzz over her skin that he would convince her to remove. Eventually.
She’d frowned when he’d suggested it to her. The touch of defiance in her eyes.
“I am a woman.”
A full sentence, without a single stumble or stutter. Cyr lived for her anger. It was the only thing that made her bold. The frown. Embers sparking in her gaze, so close to igniting. His Gwendolen. Strong enough to bend metal to her will.
“What a lovely creature you are.” Cyr tugged the cover from her hand.
To reveal her breasts again.
“Lord Cyr?” Her eyes changed, no longer distant.
Guarded with the softest hint of suspicion.
“Yes, Gwendolen?” Her belly burned his palm.
Soft as silk. Warm.
“I don—” A deep breath, her chest rose with her gasp. “I d—”
“Hush.” He brushed his palm upward, over her torso, to catch the underside of her breast. “Quiet now.”
He didn’t want to hear her cries. Her fearful, broken, little stutter. At his most patient, it infuriated him.
He could not abide it now, when his cock ached for her. His thighs burning with the need to touch. Mouth salivating as though he were the beast. Cyr wanted to bite her. Sink teeth into every soft part of her. Snarl and snap at her. Better tears than that fucking fearful flinching.
Her lips tasted sweeter than her words. Fingers gripped the back of his shirt, twisting in the silk. She made a small sound against his lips. So far from a moan. She clung to him in daylight. Slept in his arms. Her gaze forever turned towards him, as though she feared he’d disappear.
But when he fucked her, she howled.
Shivered beneath him when he parted her legs. Sobbed when the warmth of her body enveloped his cock. Tight and clenching around him. A dichotomy in its truest sense: the heat of her welcoming him as her shaking hands pressed to force him away.
Too weak to fight him, and still she tried.
“Stop!” Finally, fists beat at his chest. “Stop it! I hate you—I hate you!”
His Gwendolen. Cyr growled, the heat inside him rising. His hips snapped, skin slapping against hers as she writhed beneath him.
Nails scratched across his cheek, drawing blood.
He caught her claws, forcing them down above her head. The scratch across her own cheek bled. Iron stung his tongue as he licked it away. Already salivating.
Poison that he would die to taste.
Soft, warm. He knew his laughter was tinged with madness. Knew that he was lost.
Words did not come as he fucked her. No reassurances. Only snapping teeth. Need and heat. Hunger.
And she fought. Mercy, she scratched and growled. Bit him in return.
Teeth sank into his shoulder, and his cock pulsed. A ripple of sensation from his knees to his abdomen. Sweet hot release, deep inside her, as he flew over the edge of oblivion, her hair fisted in his hand, and his teeth around her throat. Pressing, holding. Not biting down. Never that.
Just the taste of sweat and spit. Tears, and the burn of blood from wounds already healed. His bite released, cheek brushing her skin as he lapped at the mess. Sweat tinged with iron and salt. Tears sweeter for the fury in them.
Cyr’s chest heaved, breath catching as he drew back to look at her. Wrists twisted under his grip, and her eyes, bright with rage. Cheeks flushed. She came alive in a fight.
“I hate you!” Gwen glowered at him, as though she had never seen a fouler beast.
No words had ever sounded sweeter from her lips.
His laughter caught in his chest. She was glorious. Beautiful in the light of moon and candle flame.
Athena herself would have bent the knee to his fierce little dragon slayer. This was what he must give her.
Fury and fight.
Drag the little beast back to him, hissing and snarling. Battle with claws and teeth to rekindle her flame.
His warrior. His Gwendolen.
Gwen slept the whole night without one nightmare. She’d been exhausted by the time she fell asleep, furious, yet still she hadn’t been able to push him away. When he sated himself in her skin and released her from his cruel embrace, she’d found herself turning towards him again. Seeking the comfort of his arms.
She did not know if she was angry now. He’d been strange that morning. Shared his breakfast with her and smiled at her as though nothing else had happened. Gave her clothes with material that covered her skin. When he’d led her from his chambers, Gwen had been certain it would be to see the prince again. But instead, he’d taken the stairs down. The courtyard had been loud, a cacophony of shouting voices. Gwen hid her face in Lord Cyr’s chest. Let his cloak surround her as the horses’ hooves clacked against cobblestones.
The clatter soon turned to a thump against dirt. The voices ebbed, replaced by birdsong. Leaves rustled above. Swaying in the breeze. The softest burble of water over stone.
Lord Cyr dismounted first, offering his hand to help her to the floor. When he gave her leggings to wear with her tunic, she had not questioned it. Said no word when he led her from his chambers. The splits of bluest sky showed through the trees bigger somehow than she remembered it being.
Daunting.
Lord Cyr caught her chin, palm spreading to cover her cheek. His eyes seemed greener in the forest, warmer for his smile.
“Why?” Gwen asked, flinching at the timbre of her own voice.
Her words felt so loud, her throat tightened, and it did not matter that she wet her lips. That she tried to force herself to speak.
More words would not come.
He smiled, finger curling to trace the edge of her jaw. “Why have I brought you here?”
Gwen nodded. It was easier to let him speak. His hands dropped to her shoulders, steering her around so she faced away from him. His chest pressed to her back, lips against her ear.
“Run, Gwen.”
She flinched, hands flying to where his rested over her shoulder. Her head already shaking.
“I cannot,” she gasped. “I—I—”
“Run, Gwen,” he said, a hint of laughter in the words. “Run as far and as fast as you can, and I shall catch you.”
“The storm!” Her breath came short before she’d made one step, eyes burning.
“I am with you,” Lord Cyr said. “You are not alone. You need only look for me, and I’ll be there.”
He pushed her forward with gentle pressure on her shoulders. Gwen took one step, more of a stumble. His hands dropped away, and she was still shaking.
It took too long. That first step. Barely a movement, the tip of her boot pressing tentatively to the dirt, before she stopped, hands clasped.
He was still there when she glanced back. Lord Cyr offered her a smile. There was no anger in it, only patience. As though he would wait a century for her to take another step.
The trees seemed so tall ahead of her. Curling as they towered over her, like giants with a thousand spiked limbs. She barely heard his step, the thump of movement before arms were around her again.
Gwen squeaked. Half jumping in his hold as she curled into him again to hide her head in his chest.
“See how fast I catch you?” Lord Cyr said. He kissed her cheek, rough enough she felt the heat of his mouth and the brush of his teeth. “There is naught to fear.”
He held her till her breathing calmed, till a little of the tension left her limbs, before he pulled her hands from her shirt. Turned her again towards the forest.
“Run, Gwen.”
This time, when he let her go, she did not glance back. She gathered her breath, deep and slow. One more step, just one. The tip of her boot touched the forest floor.
Then another, and Gwen stopped, her hands flying out to balance against the shaking of her legs. A newborn foal stumbling over uneven ground.
She almost glanced back. Almost.
But he was there. Gwen was certain she was not alone.
Another step, and then another, and she was walking.
The distant rumble of water called to her. The song of larks and thrushes. Dappled sunlight through the trees and sky, the deepest of blue. Not cold, but far from summer heat. The leaves had come, and the flush of wildflowers still lingered.
Another step, faster now, the dirt thumped beneath her feet.
Faster again, and it pounded.
The breeze sighing in her ear; the trees turning to a blur.
Gwen ran.