Fae Queen's Pet

The river is quiet on my wedding day, a smooth slick of water in the middle of the forest, disturbed only by autumn-colored branches drooping low enough to skim the surface. Alder, elder, and birch. Oak and rowan. Hawthorn and wych elm.

The branches sag and sway, and vines hang from them, and here in this wide crook of river, the branches and leaves make something like a veil, shrouding a wide, flat rock from view. On that rock are carved prints—footprints and hoof prints—and it is on this rock that I will make a royal consort out of my pet.

On the far riverbank is my court and guests from other fae courts—along with visitors from even farther off, from other realms and dimensions. Through the screen of red and yellow leaves, I see demons and witches and gorgons and mortals…and even two of the merfolk, their tails swishing slowly and politely in the water as they hold hands.

The only person missing is my twin brother, Morven, who left the court earlier this year for places unknown. I miss him, although I’d eat tangled mermaid hair before I ever told him so.

All of the guests are here as friends, as diplomats and witnesses—even as enemies in some cases. As a young and still vulnerable queen, I know my attention should be fully on them. A royal wedding, after all, is a political event, meant to cement power and solicit awe, and if I’m to be a different and less arbitrary ruler than my mother, power and awe are non-negotiable tools I need to wield.

I know that, and yet my attention is elsewhere. On the place where the carved rock meets the bank of the river, where a path of soft moss and white sedum await the bare feet of my bride. Janneth will be stepping onto this rock any moment, and it is only a lifetime of being molded for public spectacles that keeps me from parting the curtain of leaves and vines and dragging her out here myself.

She would laugh if she knew how anxious I am to stamp this claim on her, given that she’s literally sacrificed her entire life to join me in Faerie, that she’s already made a far greater pledge than anything a wedding can recreate. A joining can always be unjoined, but what she’s done for me and Faerie can never be undone.

But it’s precisely that pledge that makes me want to give her everything in return. She already has my heart, my attention, my obsession—but there is one last thing I can share, and I can only share it if she’s joined to me by the laws of Faerie.

I cannot wait to fuck her while she’s wearing the crown I’ve given her.

At last, I hear murmurs and soft footfalls. On the other side of the forest veil is my bride with her retinue, and my heart swells in my chest and then beats harder than it has since I stood in a circle of standing stones with an iron knife in my hand.

I’m glad I’m not my twin brother, whose heart is visible through his glass; I’m glad my dress of dark red silk hides my own glass, hides my lungs spreading and shrinking, spreading and shrinking as I pull in breath after breath that seems to do nothing for me at all.

And then the veil parts and there is no air. There is no stone beneath my feet, no water around me. There is nothing but her, my perfect pet, the autumn sunshine slanting through the trees to pick out the gold in her hair, to glint off the piercing in her upturned nose. Her high cheeks and full mouth catch shadows, and her green eyes fringed in dark gold lashes remind me of the forest in summer, of the sun falling through the trees.

And her body…

Her body reminds me of being alive, of being in love. Her body is a topography of my every desire come to life, of plush curves and soft skin, of dips and valleys and dimples. And today, it is on display for me, as is our tradition. She wears a sheer white gown that shows me the well of her navel and the dark rose tips of her breasts. The shadowed place between her legs taunts me as she walks, and I think I will punish her for it, for being so unbearably lovely, for plunging me into a delirium of need every time I see her. I will mark her pretty backside for it, ride her even prettier mouth until I’m satisfied she knows what she does to me.

I will pin her down and remind her that I would eat her whole if I could.

The translucent silk of her dress drags softly against the moss and sedum as she walks, and her long, wavy hair tumbles around her shoulders. She’s completely unadorned and will remain so until I crown her as my consort.

By the time she reaches me, I’m almost out of my mind with wanting her near to me; she sees my restiveness and laughs.

“For an immortal being, you are not very patient.”

“I fail to see what one has to do with the other.”

“Maybe being a queen that means you’re used to getting what you want when you want it.”

A smile pulls at her pink mouth, and I’m bewitched all over again.

“You make it sound like a bad thing.”

“No, not a bad thing.”

My pet’s long eyelashes sweep down and then back up as she speaks, and her green eyes are soft and pupil-blown when they look up at me. Hungry and dazed even though she hasn’t even had a lick of fairy fruit yet, already eager for more and more and more.

My insatiable girl

“Are you ready?”

I brush my fingertips over her rounded cheek

“If you are not, you know I will honor your needs.”

“After last Samhain, I think it would be stupid to be scared of a wedding.”

She says it lightly, but I hear the curl of shame in her words, the tendril of fear.

A Seelie queen should not savor shame and fear so much, and yet it is like blood on the air, like wine on the tongue. Heat twists in my cunt as I take her jaw between my fingers.

“You are not stupid. You know that being my bride will come at a cost. You will have to rule with me, share duty and danger with me. You will be joined to me not only by your own desire, but by the des ire of the land. And that joining will be in front of everyone gathered here today. They will watch as you prove yourself as a consort must”

Any union can be dissolved in Faerie, of course, if one or more of the partners no longer wish to be inside it, but a royal union is made through the blessing of the land, and so its dissolution is a formal thing, a ceremony of severance. It is a serious thing, to wed a fae ruler, even without the perils of war and scandal and politics.

Janneth is wise if she is afraid today.

“Look at me.”

She says this as if I ever do anything else when she is around. But I lift my eyebrow to show that I’m paying attention.

“I am nervous.”

She bites her lip as she confesses this, then tries again.

“No, that’s not the entire truth. I am frightened. But not of joining to you, Morgana, only that you will regret joining yourself to me. I’m…I’m no one. Just a mortal. Just Janneth.”

I was wrong to be grateful for not having Morven’s glass chest earlier, because right now I’d pay any price for Janneth to see my literal heart, to see right inside me to my blood and bones and marrow and observe that her name is written on all of it.

My very existence is a signature of love for her now. I lift her chin enough to expose her throat to me, enough for her to feel the strength of my will so that she knows I mean what I say.

“You are the only person in the world to me,”

I say simply.

“ And what I chose on Samhain night, I would choose over and over again. I would die a thousand deaths for you. A thousand thousand.”

I lean down and brush my lips against hers. They’re warm velvet, sweet to taste.

“You’ve given me your life and your future,”

I tell her, pulling away enough to speak but not so far that I can’t feel her breath on my lips.

“Let me give you what I can, even if a crown is a cheap answer to an entire life.”

“Okay.”

I still feel her uncertainty, her doubt. And then she does something that might as well be a tongue running up my thigh for how much it inflames me.

She lets me see it. She lets me see all the mess, however ugly and however slithering, inside her.

“Sometimes I feel perfect here, but I’m afraid one day I’ll be too much for you. I’m afraid that sometimes I’m still too much for myself. I’m ashamed of how far I’d go for the love of you, and I’m ashamed that I haven’t gone even further. Being too much and not enough—they are almost the same thing, aren’t they? And even this moment right now, I feel so needy, like I’m ruining our own wedding by dumping all of this at your feet”

I let go of her jaw and find her hand. My other hand has pulled up the hem of my skirt, and I guide her hand between my legs, to my naked sex. From the other side of the riverbank, there is very little reaction to this. It is a Faerie wedding after all.

“Feel what you do to me”

She licks her lower lip as I press her hand to my wet cunt.

“Your too muchness, Janneth. Your neediness. So please. Be too much and beg forgiveness for it. Be not enough and beg forgiveness for that too. It all stirs me to wildness. But you must know—you must have seen over the last year here with me—that you are the shape of sublimity to me. It was your world that was wrong for you, not the other way around, but it’s no matter now, because you are where you belong. You are home with me, and I will build a new world for you every day so long as I can have you in return. You and your trust and vulnerability and curiosity”

Her fingertips push deeper, searching out my opening, and my jaw tenses as I force myself to remember there is a ritual before this ritual, words to speak before my new consort must prove herself to me and her new people.

“Thank you.”

She’s looking up at me still with that open face, still letting me see all the fear and shame flitting through her expression.

“If you can hold it all, then I’ll give it all to you, the good and the bad.”

“Both drug me. More than any fairy fruit. Both your best and your worst.”

It is sadistic, maybe, or cruel—or perhaps it is something indelible to being fae that doesn’t translate to mortal sensibilities. But her worst is as much a gift to me as her best, especially when she lets me see it, when she hands it to me with such trust in her eyes.

“I love you. And I’m ready. I’m ready for this.”

I’ve been ready to marry her since that last Samhain night—or possibly even before. When she was sitting at my feet in the Sanctuary, maybe, or when I fed her the stag’s heart in my forest.

Or more likely, knowing me, it was since I saw her spread open before my throne. Soft thighs and a deep crease of skin at her hips. A slick, pink cunt which quivered at the slightest touch.

With some regret—allayed by the knowledge that we will fuck very soon—I pull her hand away and suck her fingers clean.

And then, linking my hands with hers, we move to the footprints carved onto the rock, the place where thousands of years ago, a stag encountered the first Stag King and offered him its heart. It is the well of power in our land, the center of our history, and where coronations and weddings take place.

And so the two of us, veiled by the forest and on the eve of Samhain, begin speaking aloud our vows in the ancient language of Faerie—a language reserved for ritual and the most formal of court occasions. Hearing its solemn tones in Janneth’s husky, musical voice makes something ache in my throat. Sacred meeting sacred, I suppose.

We hold hands and pledge, with the witnesses watching on the other side of the veil, to give each other counsel, comfort, and challenge. To give each other our loyalty, and to give the antlered crown the best and noblest of ourselves. We pledge ourselves to this land, the land that Cernunnos once walked, that his wild children played and spread over, carving out different courts among the moors, forests, and seas.

We pledge that our love will be tined, sharp, and ever-growing.

With the soft breeze and the distance to the far riverbank, our witnesses can hear us speaking but not our individual words. Nonetheless, Janneth’s eyes stray over to our guests as I say,

“And what will you offer to a ruler of Faerie? How will you serve your crown?”

The pulse is pounding fast at the base of her neck, and when she looks back at me, her cheeks are rose-flushed and her nipples have stiffened under her dress. My little exhibitionist.

“I will serve eagerly.”

Ah, but she looks so beautiful on her knees before me like this, framed by autumn leaves and glittering water, her hair gleaming like spun gold over her shoulders. Her hungry, open face tilted up to mine.

Even though I know the distance muffles our words somewhat, I still lower my voice.

“You do not have to eat fruit today. For the ceremony. There are many ways we can do this, if you’d like to do this with a clear head.”

Despite choosing Faerie on Samhain night, Janneth still takes mortal salt with her meals, and still has mortal salt in her blood. Until her blood runs without it, she will age as a mortal and fairy fruit will affect her…powerfully.

I understand why she’s waiting, why this might be a harder thing to let go of than one’s home and history, but I also make sure to carry mortal salt everywhere we go, because there is a reason mortals should be wary of our fruit.

“We’ve made our pledges with a clear head,”

There’s a mischievous smile tilting her coral lips.

“But I’d like to think of this part as something like communion wine for me.”

I do not argue. I trust her own wishes and desires, and anyway, I like the idea of being communion wine for her very much. I lift my hands to the knots holding my dress closed and unhurriedly untie them, working my way down from my bodice to the final knot just below the line of my hips. I leave the gown on, hanging from my shoulders and its hem brushing the stone, but it’s gaping open now. I wear nothing underneath, so my sex is exposed, and my breasts could be too if the silk was pulled to the side.

She must come willingly to my flesh, willingly to serve, but once her soft lips graze the curls between my legs, I twine my fingers into her hair and pull her tight against me.

Through the veil, I see our guests watching, shifting, restless with low-simmering want. Most things in Faerie are carnal by nature—and fae courts pride themselves on making everything a display of excess anyway—so it isn’t the sex that makes a fae wedding unusual. It is that the guests themselves may only watch. They can’t take part, they can’t indulge themselves with other guests, and they can’t even gratify themselves while they witness. It’s part of what makes the banquet after a fae wedding such a legendary thing: all that muzzled lust, all that thwarted need, finally unleashed.

Janneth’s mouth moves over the rise of my pubic bone, pressing reverent kisses down to the seat of my pleasure—and the seat of my power, according to ancient fae beliefs—until she reaches the wet furrow there. She knows how I want to be serviced at first—that I want her to work for it a little—and so she doesn’t use her hands yet, she doesn’t reach up to part my sex to get to the hidden flesh. Instead she splits me with her tongue, searching out my opening until she tastes me, a silken invasion that makes my breathing hitch.

If I’d known what a good pet she’d make, I would have taken her long before I did. Her tongue swirls hot and ticklish at my entrance, and I see the moment the fruit takes hold. Her already flushed cheeks are looking more fevered now, and her eyes are turning into dark, shiny mirrors.

And the hunger…like there’s not enough me for her to eat, like the only thoughts she can think are about fucking me. She does use her hands now, sliding them up my thighs and then pressing her thumbs to my folds to spread me. Standing, there is only so much she can reach, so much she can lick, but that’s hardly a problem when she’s this ravenous.

I tighten my hold in her hair and guide her mouth exactly where I want it.

“Suck,”

I tell her, a little roughly.

“Until I come.”

Her mouth is hot and slick as satin as she draws me into her mouth. I groan at the first hard pull from her, pushing my hips into her face, unsure of how I don’t spend every waking moment making use of my pet’s eager mouth. As it is, I come very close; Janneth’s gleeful exhibitionism and my unending need mean that I spend many meetings with my advisors with my legs spread and with my pet under the table between them, and I’ve had her kneeling in front of my throne with her mouth open for my needs more often than not.

But there is no end to the lust she drives me to. She pulls again on the swollen bud between my legs, her mouth nothing but wet, tight suction, and my control snaps. I fuck myself against her without mercy, need burning me like a Beltane fire. I curl over her, both hands in her hair now to hold her still while I rock against her face, and I see her hips grinding mindlessly in the air, I see that she is squirming with her own pleasure. A gift of the fruit; her own body is inflamed, yes, but she can also feel my pleasure as hers. She can feel my impending climax as if it were her own.

I look up to my guests, knowing what they must see, the half-naked Stag Queen with a torc of antlers around her neck, selfishly making use of a sweet little mortal. And they are agitated by it, aroused by it, crowding silently by the edge of the water with avid eyes and twitching hands. If they could, if they weren’t bound by the water and tradition, they’d be crawling to the stone to touch us, to have us touch them. To fuck my plush and pliant bride.

I watch them all as I peak, shoving myself harder against my bride’s eager mouth, making her accept my pleasure, my release, my need. It’s a consort’s duty, after all, and it’s also the love between us. Give and take, crave and sate.

She will never have enough of me, and I will never tire of her trying to have it. Cernunnos himself could not have designed a more seamless union.

I feel her moans and whimpers against my sex, see the frantic jerks of her hips, and know that she must be coming with me, that she’s fucking herself against the empty air as our shared pleasure rolls through her.

Knowing that her body is quivering and wet and aching for touch escalates my own release, redoubling the orgasm tearing through me. The pleasure pushes through my thoughts, my soul, my skin—the sharp bite of thorns and mountains, the pushing, greening life of my land—and rose petals tickle my palms, having come from my bones and my blood. Having come from the part of me that is made of the Stag Court’s land itself, bonded to it until death.

When I release Janneth’s hair, dark velvet petals are tangled in her tresses, and many more tumble to the stone around us, but I pay them no mind. The ceremony might be satisfied, now, but I am not, and I lift my bare foot to press it against Janneth’s shoulder. I push

Janneth moves gracefully backwards, reclining until she’s flat on her back and blinking up at me with dark, blown-pupil eyes. For a moment, I stand at her feet, enjoying the way my shadow looks as it spills over her, and also simply enjoying her. The days of fae rulers fucking mortal virgins on this rock are over, but my bride looks downright virginal right now, with her pink cheeks and wide eyes and white wedding dress, and why not resurrect that little tradition today? Or at least the semblance of it? Why not take what is mine, even if it is already mine by choice and by vow?

I crawl over her, shoving her dress up to her hips so I can see her pretty cunt, flushed and wet, and then I take the front of her dress and tear the silk down to her navel so I can see her breasts. The tips are hard and tight, her belly moves with fast, excited breaths. I lean down and draw a nipple into my mouth, savoring the taste of her skin, the feel of her turgid nipple on my tongue. I flick my tongue over it, pleased by her squirming, and then I bite. Not hard, not enough for pain, but enough to make her gasp underneath me.

“More,”

She moans as I move to the other breast.

“Please, Morgana. Please.”

I love the sound of my name on her lips; I love it in her slightly raspy, always lively voice. And I’m not sure if she wants more teeth or more pleasure—or more fruit—but I give her all three. I nip at the soft underside of her breast, and then I brace myself over her to drop my mouth to hers, which I do as my fingers find the slippery, needy place between her legs.

She licks inside my mouth, whimpering with delight, while I explore her pussy. Her hips lift shamelessly to meet my every touch, and I take care not to play with her clitoris just yet. I want to draw this out a little longer; I want my bride flat on her back with her thighs apart until I’ve had my fill.

“So wet”

I say, keeping my tone cool, knowing it sounds almost disapproving. She moans underneath me, still straining against my touch. She likes when I’m cruel, cold, which is good, because cruelty is a part of me, as much a part of me as my glassed back or rose petals. But she also knows the truth, which is that I would die by iron for her at a moment’s notice. My love might be laced with fae sadism and a queen’s prerogative, but it runs as deep and as powerfully as the sea.

“Please”

“Please, what?”

I ask, dragging her slickness down to the tight, pleated rim below her cunt. Slowly I push in a finger as I push two into her soaking sheath above. I lift myself up and sit back so I can watch, so I can see where I’m filling her body.

She arches, panting, twisting. With the fruit, she could come just from this, from feeling me inside her, but there will be no just for my bride on her wedding day. I want her to scream when she comes. I want our wedding guests to hear it. I want the pleasure to cut her in two, the way that love for her does to me.

Kneeling now, I use my other hand to find the erect knot at the top of her sex, stroking it gently, gently, until the arching of her hips turns frantic, bucking, and then I begin rubbing her clitoris the way she likes, fast and hard. She is so wet, so sweet, her breasts heaving and her chest stained with a pleasure-blush, and she is so very mine.

“You are mine. Mine. You are mine…”

She moans and whines and twists her way to her climax.

“Mine,”

Her eyes flash to my face as her belly moves and her thighs tense.

“Yours”

She breathes, and then she cries out as her body clamps around my fingers.

Ahh, to be inside the tight, sleek heat of her as she ruptures, to feel those rushes of wet sensation quaking through her! It’s like having my hand inside the beating heart of a god, like touching the center of a forging star. I’m livid with need, and the moment her orgasm abates, I’m sucking my first two fingers clean and crawling over her, mounting her mouth and fucking it with hard, quick thrusts.

She is wild too, the fresh taste of fruit sending another climax shuddering through her, and I ride her through it, looking straight down at her as I fuck. Her eyes are pools of black rimmed with forest green, and her hair is a spill of gold like

sunlight, and there has never been a more worthy consort for the antlered crown than this, than this fearless mortal girl with her forest spirit and her insatiable heart.

“Janneth…”

I come—and I say her name as I do. And my cunt pulses and my heart beats and rose petals tumble and the land is pleased.

Its consort has served it very well today.

Lust fills the forest, and when I help my bride to her feet and place the slender consort’s crown on her head, I hear the desperation in the cheers from the guests beyond the veil. They are frantic to get to the banquet, where fucking will be permitted, and when I look at Janneth, I see she is too.

“I have salt now if you’d like it,”

She shakes her head with a wide grin.

“After the banquet,”

She adds one of her mortal-isms that shouldn’t charm me as much as it does.

“The party’s just getting started.”

“As you wish”

The banquet is lavish and large, held in our greatest hall and filled to every corner with guests, food, and wine. We’ve barely taken our seats on the two thrones at front of the hall when the thwarted desire tips over into delirium. Music plays, along with the rising symphony of moans, and Janneth only makes it through the first song before she’s sliding off her seat and crawling to my feet. She will join the others later—another consort tradition, not that my eager lover needs tradition as a reason. I always share her freely, because I know she is indelibly mine, because I know that I alone command her heart. And it pleases me to see her pleased, happy, blissed with sex, even if it’s one of my courtiers who’s given her the bliss rather than me.

I, however, have trust issues, as Janneth says, and prefer her company to all others. Hardly a sacrifice with such a tractable beauty, but even before I took her for my own, I rarely partook of the carnality of my own court. That someone might see my body was one thing, but that they might see my thoughts, my wants, my softnesses as I surrendered to pleasure?

Unthinkable.

The banquet rolls on, merriment and mayhem and sex, and I find myself smiling and laughing as I look down at the now-crowned bride sitting at my feet. My heart hurts, my skin tingles. Even without the sharp ecstasy of orgasm, rose petals occasionally flutter from my hands. They catch in Janneth’s hair when I stroke it, drift to rest in the silk skirt of her torn bridal gown when I lean down to murmur in her ear about this guest or that guest, this old scandal or this new gossip.

Janneth’s insatiability is not only for sex, but for learning too, and she’s absorbed so much of court life and fae history so quickly. That must be why she sounds surprised when she asks,

“I don’t recognize them. What court are they from?”

I look to see two mortals sitting at a far table, both of them young, still far from thirty years. The woman has ivory-pale skin and dark hair, with green eyes to rival my Janneth’s. The man is blond and very handsome for a mortal—the kind of handsome that makes me wonder if he has fae blood in his veins. Moreover, there is something holy about his face and his bearing. Even when he leans down to speak to her, there is a gravity to it, as if he’s delivering a message from beyond a veil that even I cannot lower.

“I do not know.”

I murmur, and I watch them when I can. Even when they kiss, even when the woman sits in his lap and allows him to slowly penetrate her, there is a tenderness between them that speaks more of friendship than romance. They love each other, they share each other’s bodies, but as I watch her face, I perceive that her heart is held in someone else’s hands. And years from now, when Janneth and I will travel to a court nestled in the moors and forests of the south, I will see this woman and this man again. Except the man will be a rose priest, inducted into mysteries even fae rulers are not privy to, and the woman will be tucked possessively between two men noticeably older than her—one fair-complected, with hazel eyes and the arrogance of a king, the other with deep gold-brown skin, dark eyes, and his heart visible in his face for anyone who cares to look.

But that is years from now, and tonight, I am only interested in my bride. We carouse and toast and kiss, and soon she is spread on a platform before my throne, being worshipped by my court, and after countless orgasms, she is finally in my lap, kissing my neck and begging to go upstairs.

We leave our own wedding banquet early, but I don’t think very many guests notice, lost as they are in their indulgence. The sign of a good fae wedding, if you ask me.

Once we’re safe in my bower, nestled in bed with Janneth’s head in my lap, I find a dish of salt and press a few large grains onto her waiting tongue. As delicious as she is with the fruit swimming in her blood, she is perfection on her own, and once she returns fully to me, I dip down and give her a long, lingering kiss.

And then I have to give her more salt.

“I love you, Janneth Carter, consort of the Stag Throne, companion and wife of the queen, Conqueror of mighty and cruel fae.”

She reaches up to twine my hair around her fingers.

“And I love you, Morgana Nightglass, Stealer of Janneths, ruiner of hearts.”

“Hmm. Are you saying I ruined you?”

The thought is amusing, given what she managed to do to me and my plans in a mere two and a half days.

Janneth nods solemnly.

“How could I have gone back to my world after being with you? Who else would have fucked me in a forest with blood still on their lips?”

“Half of Faerie, but for my sake, I’m glad you thought me the only one capable.”

I draw a slow finger around her nipple, which is swollen from the night’s attentions.

“Are you ready to rule with me? By my side?”

“Probably not, since being a grad student hardly qualifies me for unelected executive power. But I’ll do my best”

“I’m humbled by your energy in the face of such uncertainty.”

“Are you ready?”

She asks, letting go of my hair to trace the bow of my lower lip. I want to kiss her so badly right now.

“You by my side for the rest of our absurdly long lives is all I want,”

Her smile is soft, full, bridal. My bride, here in my bed, her crown tangled with mine on a nearby table.

Heat twists low in my stomach, matching the sharp, tined joy spreading through my chest, and I answer her smile with my own. We still have hours left in our wedding night, and I’m in love, and she is perfect, and the land is pleased.

Perhaps we aren’t done with the salt tonight just yet…

The end.