Page 142 of Trials of Dusk and Dreams
We share fantasies—longings. Only his is buried deeper.
She’ll be the first to belong to all of us in a way we’ve only experienced second-hand. And then there was that one time Fox lived the experience himself . . . the whore who tasted like the beginning of addiction. But she tasted wrong. Not ours. Not deserving of the magic his tongue wrought between her thighs. That gift alone will belong to our true queen. On this, we all agree. We are hers, and she is ours.
I join Fox and Styx in the old kitchen.
“How will we know it is any good?” I ask, approaching Fox at the counter.
“Simple,” he replies, swiping his finger through the pulpy mess. He sucks it into his mouth. I watch as he tastes. I know it’s not the same as between a female’s thighs. That was nectar—I am told. This is blood no longer warmed by a beating heart. This is . . . dirt.
Emrys’s cruel laughter echoes through the house. Fox’s tail lashes irritably, and I’m reminded that we are not people. Our queen is people.
“Look here,” Styx points to the book Fox pilfered from the Order library. “This reads you must tenderize the meat first.”
“Huh.” Fox sweeps the pulpy mess from the counter into a trash can. It slops against his other failed attempts—time to start again.
As he strides to another room, I flip through the book, searching for more information. It all seems tedious. Elementary. He looks at me when he returns with a fresh slab of meat. “What is tenderize?”
I find the answer. “You must hammer the flesh with a mallet, a spiky corrugated tool.”
Styx grins as he forms a fist and punches the flesh with his spiked knuckles. When he’s done, the meat fibers are well and truly separated. Fox gingerly lifts the slab, but it falls apart into wet, sloppy chunks.
“Perhaps our queen will sup on souls like us,” he suggests hopefully.
“Meat,” Varen dryly corrects through our hive mind. “She will eat People Food. But most importantly, meat.”
A wicked glint sparks in Styx’s eyes. He grasps the appendage between his legs. “Perhaps she prefers this flavor.”
“That is not the sort of meat she ingests,” I growl, though the idea of putting my cock in her mouth stirs an unfamiliar heat in my core. Perhaps that is because it will befun—it will feel good—a game.
Fox lifts the slop and releases a long-suffering exhale. “We are doomed.”
“No,” Legion replies with melancholy from the living room. “Our Seventh was doomed. With our queen, we are saved.”
Not all ofmy memories are painful. It seems impossible, ridiculous, and irrational to believe a single soul can affect me so completely. But Willow has infected us with her light. I refuse to return to darkness.
I use all she is and means to hunt and chase her down. She is here in the hurricane somewhere.
I think of her mischievous smile, the little sounds she makes when asleep, and her feminine grunts when she trains with me—she refuses to concede. She is stubborn, willful, and refreshing. Loyal.
The golden twinkle in her eyes, the way she enjoys watching me squirm as I do her. I recall the little collection of strange items in her room. Each means something special to her. I found one of my hair beads there.
I see her holding Varen’s ear to her chest. See her protecting the wildling from my ire. See her eyes flashing when we threatened to send her friends away.
“Come on. Let’s dance. It could be fun!”
Her voice is my lifeline.
I think about her scent, her intoxicating scent. How it makes my body ache for her, even when she’s not in heat. I see her eyes heavy with reciprocated lust as she looks up at me, those lips wrapped around my cock and taking me deep into her throat.Pushing. Testing my limits. Desire is the heat of life, the opposite of cold and in chaos, the void and the oblivion we wished for.
I chase the fading star until I land in a memory, standing behind our silver-haired hope as she watches the last of my shame unfold.
Maebh’s voice is silk and poison as she speaks to us, kneeling at her feet.
Six, no longer Seven.
“Oh, my dear, sweet monsters. Don’t look so perplexed.” Her hand cups my past self’s face, and her eyes fill with pity, making my skin crawl. “You are Sluagh—harvesters of heartbreak. You are drawn to suffering because you do not understand it. Did you ever ask yourselves why? Why do the mortals feel so much pain when the wound seems so small?”
I see the confusion in my old self’s eyes. We didn’t understand then. We couldn’t.
