Page 59 of A Court of Hearts and Hunger
Fin tilts his head, pressing his face to my palm.
Sweet pain floods my soul at that gesture, the mark of his complete trust.
The planes of his face, golden in the light from the orb overhead, tighten with purpose. “There is something else I want to say to you.”
“Go on.” I stroke his cheek, waiting.
“Saying it in this specific way has always been a curse for me. Everyone to whom I’ve spoken these words has left me, or faded, or been killed.”
Oh.
Oh.
“I want to say it,” he grits out. “But I fear if I do, it will curse our mission and I will never be with you again.”
“It won’t,” I assure him. “But if you’re truly afraid to say it, don’t. You don’t have to speak those exact words, Fin. I know you adore me.” I give him a slow smile, and his eyes light up.
“Precious human,” he breathes. “I want to fuck you until you’re senseless from pleasure. I want to make you come until you can’t breathe. I want to savor your mouth until it is scarlet and swollen from my kisses.”
“Promise you’ll do all those things to me when this is over?”
“I swear it.”
“I’ll hold you to that bargain, Faerie.”
A flash of his grinning teeth in the light, and then we continue walking.
“About what happened to you—I won’t offer you pity, because you don’t need it,” I say softly. “But I will do anything I can to help you carry the pain.”
“You already have,” he says. “I’ve done things with you that I haven’t been able to enjoy since that night. There is solace in playing roughly with you, sugar, when I know you are just as eager for it as I am. I cannot explain it, but those wicked games are a relief to me.”
I link my fingers with his. “They’re a relief to me, too. For different reasons, of course—but Fin, you can’t imagine how many times I sobbed in that closet in my father’s house, knowing I would never be able to speak my fantasies aloud or share them with anyone. I knew I’d be called a freak with a sick mind. But you—you accept me. All of me. The shy parts and the wild parts, you don’t find them confusing or off-putting. You take me as I am, and you run with me, play with me. It’s more than I could have dreamed of.”
He retracts his claws so he can tighten his grip on my hand. “I cherish everything inside that beautiful head of yours.”
I want to tell him how terrified I am. How I’m walking toward Mallaithe, not just for him, or for Drosselmeyer’s poor captured maid, or for the dangerous spellbook—but for me.
I grew up choiceless, controlled, finding freedom only in the small rebellion of my art and my private pleasure. Since I came to Faerie I have been dependent on Fin, on Lir, and on my sister. I’ve certainly fought my own battles a few times, but this foray into the Dread Court will be the first time I must truly stand alone. And I’m doing this consciously, for my own sake, because it scares me and because I want to be self-reliant. I need to prove to myself that I can exist here, in Faerie, that I can survive and adapt, using the skills I’ve learned.
“Tell me, sweetness,” Fin says, low.
“Tell you what?”
“Your thoughts. I can almost hear them racing around in your brain.”
So I talk to him while we walk on, pushing through tangled thickets; and he talks to me while we fly together across a black river, while the world darkens around us.
A few hours later, a huge hill bars our way, and my aching legs revolt at the sight of it. But Fin assures me we’re almost there, so I struggle up the slope after him, through scrubby bushes and skeletal trees.
At the top of the ridge, bound in coiling black vines, is a ruined watchtower, its edges limned in silver moonlight, a forbidding bulk against the flat gray of the night sky.
My stomach flips as I realize I’m about to meet Fin’s former lover. “Why do they call her the Hatter?”
Fin looks down at me, arching a brow and chuckling. “Because she makes hats.”
I giggle, a little embarrassed. “I thought there might be a more subtle significance behind the name.”
“She makes very good hats. The most monstrous, most magnificent hats you ever did see.”
