Jacob's Trial [Forbidden Legacy 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (21 page)

BOOK: Jacob's Trial [Forbidden Legacy 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)
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“I understand, Leitha.” He’d used the Brownie’s magic before, when a mission demanded subtlety. Their magic was closer to the earth and to all living things. They excelled as farmers and healers alike. To be touched by a Brownie was to be touched by the gift of spring itself.

“I am serious, Lord Helcyon. Should you engage in magical conflict, the glamour will fade. This is too complicated a structure to hold up under battle.”

“It need not. The idea is to avoid a battle.” He folded his arms across his chest, enjoying the feel of real linen and leather against his skin. In Cassandra’s world, he had spent most of his time dressing much like the humans. It set them at ease. Underhill, he retrieved his own things before making his way to Leitha and submitting his request.

The Brownie clucked her tongue. “You warriors always say that, and then when it fails, you blame us for faulty magic.”

A smile eased his face. Of all the Brownie healers, he adored Leitha. Unlike their Elvish cousins, the Brownie lived shorter lifespans, perhaps because they gave so much of themselves to their magic. They were the first to feel the blight and begin to fade, diminishing their short two centuries to eighty years for the eldest. Leitha was barely forty, but already gray shaded the silky fur coating her face.

“I am so chastised, Leitha. I will blame you naught if or when,” he amended, holding up one palm to ask for peace, “the glamour fails. But I trust this task to no other.”

“As well you shouldn’t.” Leitha’s chest puffed out, accentuating her stout figure. “Few have the patience to spell such a complicated concoction. The use of a potion was a wise suggestion. It will allow the effects to linger longer in your system.”

Which was exactly as he and Jacob hoped. The combination of Brownie and Wizard magic was a risky play. One that depended on Helcyon’s own magic sustaining the combination of spells. If successful, it would provide them with an unparalleled advantage.

Leitha’s modest stone cottage was quiet. Her cubs played elsewhere. He’d picked the timing well, choosing to visit when many of her kin would be working the fields, begging what little they could from the dying Underhill crops. Their recent reveal added a tinge of hope to the air, but the energy channels barely trickled into the land itself.

If they were not able to surface in the next fifty years, the Brownie might very well pass into true mortality. A loss that could devastate the Fae as a whole.

“How is my patient?” Leitha spared him a look as she continued to wind her spell into the bubbling froth in the pot.

“She is well. Fully recovered, far speedier thanks to your tender mercies.”

The Brownie nodded her head, as beatific as a queen. “I would have her ask to visit. She was a kind soul, one that I would enjoy hosting around my fire.”

Another of the Brownie’s tricks included inviting no one into their homes, for the laws of guesting were so easily turned against their gentle natures. Instead, they offered to be asked, and thus in answering the request, they were not bound to such ancient rules.

“I shall tell her she is free to ask. I do believe she would enjoy making such a request.”

“And will you tell her to ask for a seat at my table?” The Danae’s musical voice floated ahead of her, heralding the Queen’s arrival like the breeze whispering the dawn.

Straightening, Helcyon’s arms fell to his sides. He’d hoped to avoid this encounter, but the blonde woman striding toward him wore sunshine like a halo that burned a fraction too bright. Bowing, he dipped his chin in a stiff, if polite, acknowledgement. His training urged him to drop to one knee, but his oath to Cassandra held his spine straight.

“My darling Lord Helcyon, how pleasing to find you here amongst your kin once more. I thought certainly you were lost to cavorting amongst the Wizards.” Chastisement threaded through her tone like a silken garrote seeking only his throat to slit.

“My apologies, your majesty. Had I but known you wished me to seek you out, I would have done so before now.” Helcyon didn’t allow his gaze to wander to Leitha, who chose not to acknowledge the royal patronage of her household.

It was her right.

After all, the Queen had not been invited nor requested the right to enter.

“You’re a tease, my lord. But I shall forgive you the oversight.” The grace of her boon came with strings. It always did. “Tell me, how is fair Cassandra?”

“She is well, m’lady. She works tirelessly upon your behalf. Two days past she scheduled the meeting you suggested with her majesty, the Queen of England.”

“So it was mentioned in her delightful memo. I would be honored should you mention that I find her little slips of paper poor recompense for her company. She has as yet not requested an audience herself despite my assurance that such a request would be granted immediately.”

Something agitated the Danae. She spared the dance of politics a cursory nod. Her multicolored eyes flared, staring at him in rude demand.

“I fear that the many facets of our announcement have preoccupied her schedule. I imagine that such an oversight will be corrected.” In five to ten years. But he kept those words to himself, guarding the thoughts carefully. The Danae rarely intruded, but her guards lining the path beyond the door were hardly known for their politeness.

He should know.

He’d led them long enough.

Clasping her hands together, the Danae strolled across the dirt floor of the cottage on steps as dainty as she might take in her own gardens. Her silver dress tinkled with a chorus of bells sewn into the sleeves, giving an air of musicality to every gesture and a dramatic pause to her stillness.

“You have not requested an audience either, my Lord Helcyon. Why is that?”

Leitha hesitated midstir, the minute gesture speaking volumes for the Brownie’s shock. The Danae’s open demand for an explanation dared so far beyond the proper grace as to be an overt challenge.

“I have hesitated to leave Cassandra’s side while she is so thickly surrounded by Wizards.” Not a lie. Not with the Council closing in on her.

“But apparently that threat is diminished, for here you are, calling upon Leitha and taking advantage of her generosity.”

Helcyon went still, guarding his thoughts ruthlessly. The Danae’s obnoxious behavior was out of bounds, yet she would not be deterred.

“A simple task, my lady. One that requires but an insultingly slender piece of time. A rudeness that I will have to offer my apologies to Leitha for most sincerely.” Though he spoke of the Brownie, his gaze never left the Danae’s flowing movements as she paced the room.

He was careful to keep his eyelids lowered, a deference to her station. Something else was in play here, a nebulous other that he could not put his finger on.

“Have you made her pregnant yet, my lord?”

Only centuries of practice froze the twitching of his eyelid upward. “Not to my knowledge, your majesty.” Truth.

The Danae stilled, a frozen flower. Her rainbow eyes went white, and her mouth tightened.

“Has the Wizard?”

“Not to my knowledge, your majesty.” Again, a truth.

“He still shares her bed?”

“When she is not in his, yes, your majesty.”

“And your bed, my lord? Does she come to it or do you go to her?”

“Forgive me, my lady. The line of questioning is not fit for one of your station.” Helcyon allowed censure to slip beneath his words, a gentle rebuke for the woman he’d served faithfully for centuries. It was beneath her to act like this, and she should know better.

“I would have your answer. Do you lay with her regularly? Do you sheathe your cock in her body and fill her womb with your seed?”

His cock threatened to shrivel up at the heat blistering her tone.

“She is my lover and I hers, your majesty.”

The Danae swished toward him, the bells in her sleeves jingling a merry warning. “I would have you gaze into my eyes, my lord.”

To refuse would offer the most sincere of insults. One she would hardly forgive. To agree would be a betrayal of his oath to Cassandra.

And the Danae damn well knew it.

“Would that I were free to gaze upon you, I would fall to my knees in gratitude.” The words burned as they sliced across his tongue.

“Be careful of your choices, my lord. I would not see you banished forever from my court for an insolence that cannot be forgiven.”

“If such a fate were to befall me, your majesty, then I would grieve the loss of your favor.”

“So very careful. So very adept at the wording. You were a treasure, my lord. I hope my Cassandra appreciates the sacrifice you offer on her behalf.”

Leitha did not so much move as shift. The wooden spoon in her hand twirled once, and she turned to face the Queen, her sad, dark eyes raising. “Would you have me look into your eyes, my lady?”

The Danae averted her gaze a fraction too late, and for a few seconds, displeasure rippled across her face. The plump pink of her lips thinned to white. “You honor me with such a request, dear Leitha. But I must decline for the moment.”

“As you wish.” The Brownie returned to her cauldron, her expression satisfied. The Queen’s rudeness could have gone unseen had Leitha chosen to ignore it, but the Danae actively calling Helcyon on his carefully thought words pushed the boundaries of propriety and the Brownie too far. The Danae may rule Underhill, but in the Brownie’s home, even a Queen had to be polite to the other guests.

“I would have words with you in private, my lord.”

Helcyon smoothed away his frown before it could truly wrinkle his forehead. The Danae must be desperate. Alarm jangled along his senses.

“Were it only possible to dismiss the guard and step beyond the threshold of Leitha’s blessed dwelling.” He dared the suggestion.

“All things are possible, my lord. I think I shall refresh myself. My gratitude to you, Leitha.”

“Blessings upon you, your majesty.”

The Danae retreated on slow, measured steps to the doorway and stepped out into the tepid sunshine filtering through the overcast skies. Helcyon studied the doorway, patient and cautious.

“My lord?” Leitha looked up from her cauldron, her wrinkled expression serious. “When my patient finds herself with child, I invite her to come to me.”

Shock rolled over him. For the first time in centuries, he found himself without words. He met Leitha’s unflinching gaze for the space of three heartbeats before sweeping into a deep bow.

“By your leave, my lady.”

Her furred hand covered his, and he found three vials of silvery liquid.

“Drink them, one right after the other, and speak the words. The glamour you place will hold.”

Closing his hand around the vials, he tucked them into his vestment and rose. “I would have your permission to step outside.”

The honor of her request and the offer of supplication were boons that he would hardly ignore. The honor of her permission was all he could offer in return.

“Then accept my permission with caution, my lord. The Danae is most vexed with thee.”

“I noticed,” he murmured and gave the Brownie a small smile. Steeling himself, he strode across the room and ducked out the low-slung door. The Danae sat on a small stone wall ten feet from the Brownie’s sod house. The village sat empty around them and only the thin trails of smoke curling upward from the stone chimneys betrayed the presence of others, but they remained enclosed in their shelters, affording the Danae her privacy.

Her guard was nowhere to be seen.

Helcyon’s gaze swept the horizon. They were close enough, or they would all deserve the flaying of every stripe of skin for their failure to protect the Danae.

Even from herself.

“My guard’s absence will be short-lived, and I would be frank with you, my lord.” All traces of her coquettish behavior were gone.

“As you wish, your majesty.” He could slip sideways from the Brownie grove, but it would only take him to the next village. Enough time perhaps to find his way back to the surface, if only by a circuitous path. Of course, that depended on which village she’d sent her guard to.

Were it he, they would be dispersed to all of them.

“It is imperative that you and not the Wizard father Cassandra’s children. I care not for your method nor if you must bind her to a bed and take her until your cock is too weary to rise. But it
must
be you.”

Of all the things the Queen would have been so frank about, that was not what he expected. Instead, wounded pride at his avoidance of her many ploys to invite him into her bed would have seemed more likely.

“If one were being frank, one would ask why is it so important?”

“Because it is. You chose her bed over mine. She has accepted you. But she also accepted that bastard Wizard. A Wizard, I might add, you were supposed to execute and failed.”

“The opportunity never presented itself until the death warrant had been rescinded. He has offered no offense to the Fae and much succor to your emissary.”

“I can just bet he has.” The cruel twist of her smile worried Helcyon. He’d known the Danae for a thousand years, and even her pregnancy had not seen her so…

BOOK: Jacob's Trial [Forbidden Legacy 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)
3.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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