Page 40 of The Maleficent Faerie
I should not have left her alone. I thought she needed some time to think, or perhaps a quiet walk around the grounds to contemplate her true identity, maybe some food in her belly. Never did I think I would find her prancing naked on a tabletop, letting my knights fondle her.
They will pay for it—by the goddess, they will bleed regret for every touch.
But right now, I need to handle this woman. I’ve been where she is, though for different reasons. I’ve descended to a dark place where I did not care what happened to me, where physical pain was welcome, if only as a distraction from massive mental and emotional torment.
“Get up,” I tell her, as gently as I can manage. “Come with me. You need rest.”
“I don’t think I can walk.”
“You were just dancing.”
She moans and rolls onto her stomach in the grass. Her panties barely cover the twin mounds of her ass. Even now, when her body is mostly relaxed, I can see the strength in her long legs, the taut calves and strong thighs born from years of physical training.
Propping her elbows on the ground, she begins playing with her hair. “I never wanted to be blonde. Will you glamour my hair blue, like it was?”
“Haven’t you had enough of glamours? Now come, or I shall have to pick you up again.”
She gives me a sultry smile over her shoulder. “What a terrible threat. Where will you carry me?”
“To the room that has been prepared for you, where you can spend a peaceful and solitary night.”
Fear shivers across her features, so quick I barely see it. I recognize that fear too—the horror of being left alone with my thoughts.
“I won’t go,” she says. “I’d rather stay here.”
I bend down and scoop her up again. This time she struggles more fiercely, which is—goddess, it’s torture, having a beautiful, nearly nude woman thrashing in my arms. I shoulder my way through the side door of the Chapel while Aura clings to the frame, digging in her nails.
I have little Void magic at the moment, but I send out a tendril of shadow and whip it across her fingers. She gasps and lets go of the doorway, and I forge on, carrying her inside and up the stairs.
No one stops us. I burst into the room next to mine, the one I requested for my prisoner. Attached to the upper bedposts are a pair of cuffs with accompanying chains.
Aura stiffens in my arms. “No,” she moans, and her voice breaks. “No—please, no shackles. You said I couldn’t get through the boundary you put around this place—”
I kick the door shut behind us and dump her onto the mattress. At first I expect her to fight back, but she only lies there, dazed and whimpering.
“Please,” she whispers. “Please don’t chain me. Lock me in, but don’t chain me again.”
“The boundary I set won’t last all night, and I can’t risk losing you.” Fuck, those words sounded—I clear my throat. “I can’t risk losing my prize, I mean.”
Aura gazes at me, her red lips soft and parted, her lashes half-veiling her blue eyes, her beautiful body pliant and submissive. I could touch her now. Take her, right now. The way she’s looking at me—I think she would allow it.
But she is suffering through a crisis, facing a terrible fate, bound by a curse I placed. And she is drunk. Placing my hand on her breast would be wrong. And it would also be wrong to grasp her panties and work them down her hips until I can see the soft triangle of flesh between her thighs, until I can probe between her tender folds and see how wet she is…
Shit. No.
She blinks at me, docile and innocent. Gently I take her right wrist and move it toward one of the manacles.
She reacts in a blink. A wrench of my arm, a twist of her body, and I’m thrown onto the bed, wings and all, while my wrist is the one being slammed into the cuff.
It snaps shut, the lock clicking in place.
No matter. I can easily get out of this with magic.
But when I call on my power, nothing happens—and I realize my mistake.
When I requested that chains be attached to the girl’s bed, the High Priestess promptly asked, “Bluesteel?”
I hadn’t expected the chapel to have bluesteel manacles available. But I didn’t question it; I merely nodded.
