“How long will you torment me?” I demand.
“Wrong question, Capitaine,” she sighs. “Perhaps you are still not ready. I may regret I gave you this chance.”
“What chance?” I cry. But Proserpina is evaporating into the shadows, leaving nothing behind but a last, insinuating purr. “Play well.”
Jezebel, to torture me with phantom hopes and riddles. I will never play again, and she knows it. And as I whirl round and round in the shadows, desperate for escape, the trees and the sand and the night all vanish with Proserpina and I am once again in the midst of blazing light with a solid surface under my feet. I cringe, narrowing my eyes against the sudden brilliance, until the lights mute themselves to a softer glow. Somehow, I’ve strayed into a vast hall. Elegant alabaster columns support an arched ceiling too distant to be seen, mountains of fragrant flowers—lilies, jasmine, narcissus— on huge piles of greenery erupt out of urns and pots and tubs and baskets in every direction, and the surrounding walls shine like glass, mirroring the light. I turn round and round in my dazzlement and terror. The Great Hall of the Fairy Queen.
She enters by nothing so prosaic as a door. Rather, a shifting in the quality of light, as indistinct as the edge of a rainbow, and a rustling among the flowers announces her presence. In any direction I look, there she is, advancing upon me, the dark intruder in her proud domain of light.
She’s draped in some gauzy stuff, ephemeral as morning mist, all flowing, glittering train with no substance. Her body is entirely visible within, skin so smooth and rounded she gleams in the light, nipples sparkling on creamy breasts, like fine confections tipped in silver dust. Arcane symbols painted in royal purple decorate one exposed shoulder and trail down to swirl suggestively round one breast. Her pale hair is not blonde but bright, waves of it shimmering all around her in a spectrum of colors too brilliant to register on mortal eyes. Her own vivid eyes are shifting echoes of the moonlight, circled in violet and shadowed in green. She’s like an effigy of spun sugar and ice, fragile as breath, but for the primordial power of her presence.
She needs no throne, no pedestal, to loom before me, nor does she disturb the silken, translucent wings that arch so high above her head and trail their filigree appendages upon the floor. She merely glimmers there, an imposing figure of more than my own height, less than an armspan away, radiating unnatural heat, and a dangerous earthiness born of an underworld mortal men are wise to fear. And yet, every part of my traitor’s body, my palm, my sex, my withered ghost of a heart throbs in unison just to behold her, do I will it or not.
“Welcome to our revels, Captain.” She addresses me not so much in language as in sensation I am powerless to resist, not discordant like the common fairies, but slow, beguiling; her meaning flows inside my head, a shivering of distant chimes on a warm breeze. “To what do we owe this … pleasure?”
Too late I remember who I am and what business has brought me here. “My Lady—” I stammer.
“I am Queen BellaAeola, sovereign of this place.”
“Majesty,” I amend, remembering at last to make a leg and bow. “I mean no harm,” I lie. I can’t confess I’ve come to her forest to ferret out the boys. “I seek … a friend.”
The fairy monarch flutters closer, her expression lively. “You have found one.”
My flesh crawls even as my blood boils from her nearness. Her purple tattoos dance about on her skin like living things; lacy patterns twist and unfurl round the fullness of her breast, tongues of liquid flame stretch lewdly toward her swollen silver nipple.
“Ask of me what you will, “she murmurs with drowsy intimacy. “This is not a night for refusals.”
I open my mouth, but no sound emerges. My wit has flown with the queen’s arrival, leaving only hungry flesh and gnawing
“Wrong question, Capitaine,” she sighs. “Perhaps you are still not ready. I may regret I gave you this chance.”
“What chance?” I cry. But Proserpina is evaporating into the shadows, leaving nothing behind but a last, insinuating purr. “Play well.”
Jezebel, to torture me with phantom hopes and riddles. I will never play again, and she knows it. And as I whirl round and round in the shadows, desperate for escape, the trees and the sand and the night all vanish with Proserpina and I am once again in the midst of blazing light with a solid surface under my feet. I cringe, narrowing my eyes against the sudden brilliance, until the lights mute themselves to a softer glow. Somehow, I’ve strayed into a vast hall. Elegant alabaster columns support an arched ceiling too distant to be seen, mountains of fragrant flowers—lilies, jasmine, narcissus— on huge piles of greenery erupt out of urns and pots and tubs and baskets in every direction, and the surrounding walls shine like glass, mirroring the light. I turn round and round in my dazzlement and terror. The Great Hall of the Fairy Queen.
She enters by nothing so prosaic as a door. Rather, a shifting in the quality of light, as indistinct as the edge of a rainbow, and a rustling among the flowers announces her presence. In any direction I look, there she is, advancing upon me, the dark intruder in her proud domain of light.
She’s draped in some gauzy stuff, ephemeral as morning mist, all flowing, glittering train with no substance. Her body is entirely visible within, skin so smooth and rounded she gleams in the light, nipples sparkling on creamy breasts, like fine confections tipped in silver dust. Arcane symbols painted in royal purple decorate one exposed shoulder and trail down to swirl suggestively round one breast. Her pale hair is not blonde but bright, waves of it shimmering all around her in a spectrum of colors too brilliant to register on mortal eyes. Her own vivid eyes are shifting echoes of the moonlight, circled in violet and shadowed in green. She’s like an effigy of spun sugar and ice, fragile as breath, but for the primordial power of her presence.
She needs no throne, no pedestal, to loom before me, nor does she disturb the silken, translucent wings that arch so high above her head and trail their filigree appendages upon the floor. She merely glimmers there, an imposing figure of more than my own height, less than an armspan away, radiating unnatural heat, and a dangerous earthiness born of an underworld mortal men are wise to fear. And yet, every part of my traitor’s body, my palm, my sex, my withered ghost of a heart throbs in unison just to behold her, do I will it or not.
“Welcome to our revels, Captain.” She addresses me not so much in language as in sensation I am powerless to resist, not discordant like the common fairies, but slow, beguiling; her meaning flows inside my head, a shivering of distant chimes on a warm breeze. “To what do we owe this … pleasure?”
Too late I remember who I am and what business has brought me here. “My Lady—” I stammer.
“I am Queen BellaAeola, sovereign of this place.”
“Majesty,” I amend, remembering at last to make a leg and bow. “I mean no harm,” I lie. I can’t confess I’ve come to her forest to ferret out the boys. “I seek … a friend.”
The fairy monarch flutters closer, her expression lively. “You have found one.”
My flesh crawls even as my blood boils from her nearness. Her purple tattoos dance about on her skin like living things; lacy patterns twist and unfurl round the fullness of her breast, tongues of liquid flame stretch lewdly toward her swollen silver nipple.
“Ask of me what you will, “she murmurs with drowsy intimacy. “This is not a night for refusals.”
I open my mouth, but no sound emerges. My wit has flown with the queen’s arrival, leaving only hungry flesh and gnawing
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