Page 20 of The White Stag
I helped her into the tub. She moaned and slid up to her chin.
“Want me to wash your hair?”
“You don’t mind? My arms feel like they weigh a million pounds. What did I say while I was out?”
I grabbed the metal carafe on the side of the tub and the shampoo and set to washing her hair.
“A lot of shit about Alastair that pissed us off. You could have told us you were afraid of him. We didn’t know about the conservatorship either.”
“I don’twantto be afraid of him. I get the feeling it’s not Unseelie.”
“Oh,a stóirín,everyone feels fear. It’s not an emotion you can breed out. We were all terrified when we realized you were gone. So was your ma. It scared us all night while we watched you fight the poison. If it makes you feel better, I think Cyrus has been plotting revenge all night.”
“What’s with Cyrus? He’s being weird around me.”
“It’s nothing. We all remember you as you were the last time we saw you. Then we get there, and you’ve grown into a beautiful woman. Weshouldhave expected that to happen, but we were kind of idiots in that regard.”
“Youallgot weird when I got in the water, and that makes little sense with everything you said about people bathing together in the Seelie Court.”
Yeah, we’dgottenweird, and that was really mortal of us. There was a perfectly good explanation for our stupidity, and maybe she would have to have a conversation like this with Cyrus. Unseelie nature wasn’t something in their DNA. I was living proof of that.
“So, none of us were expecting you to rip off all your clothes and go skinny dipping because not only did you grow up thinking you were human, you spent all that time around Alastair. Where we come from, certain things are illegal, but it’s up to the individual, not others, what is inappropriate.
“When it comes to matters of who you have sex with or who sees you naked, it’s no one’s business but yours unless they did it without your consent. If someone is giving off bad vibes, you just don’t bathe with them or sit in the sauna. It’s not up to someone else to tell you it’s inappropriate to do that. It’s an entirely nonsexual thing, so there’s no jealousy involved.
“Now, there was nothing sexual involved when you took your clothes off to go swimming, butnoneof us were expecting it because of where you grew up. So Estrella wouldn’t have been upset with us for joining youunlessit botheredyou.And it could have, because I’m pretty sure you’ve never seen a naked man before.”
The little minx. Finnan had charged into the water with his clothes on, but I was wearing my favorite trousers that had to be dry cleaned, so I’d taken my clothes off. Of course, everything Alastair did to try to turn her into some perfect Seelie zombie wife haddn’t workat all.Reagan just giggled.
“I have now.”
“You better not have peeked at my junk, Reagan.” I laughed, putting a bit of bubbles on her nose.
“I might have. I’m nineteen. Ishouldhave seen a cock by now. When we got to the lake, I realized I didn’t have a suit. I thought about going back for it, but then I thought about how fuckingmadAlastair would be if he found out I went skinny dipping with three monsters. It didn’t bother me at all, and I wasn’t uncomfortable. I just had fun until I almost drowned.”
I chuckled.This girl.She was going to make a fantastic queen one day, despite growing up in the mortal realm.
“No one has tricked me into getting naked to look at my cock to spite another man before. That’s some evil mastermind shit right there. You’re going to need it when you’re the queen.”
“I have time before that happens, right?”
She seemed panicked at the idea. Reagan was just so young, and she had limited knowledge of the Fae.
“Oh, a long time. Fae live thousands of years. You’re nineteen. No one expects or wants you running things until you’re a few hundred years old.”
“How old are the three of you?”
“Oh, we’re still quite young. Estrella picked us to be guardians to her firstborn when we were about two hundred years old. We went through intense training to be ready for it. Finally, she decided she was ready for a baby about one hundred years later.”
“Three hundred years old? You all look quite good for your age.”
Was she flirting with me? I got that vibe from her a lot. I understood she went skinny dipping out of spite, and if she wanted to do it again, I’d probably join her unless she started taking this in a sexual direction.
We’d had to forego relationships with women when we’d come to the mortal realm with Reagan. We happily did it to keep her safe, but things could get pretty lonely. None of us felt the need to slap on a glamor to be with a human. If we were going to be with a woman, it would be as we were, monstrosity and all.
Reagan had always accepted it, and maybe she was more into it now that she was an adult, but we couldn’t encourage it. The Unseelie didn’t tell people who they could fall in love with, and we didn’t have a caste system as they did in the Seelie Court. No one would have forbidden a marriage like my parents because they said one person was beneath the other because of their station.
Fuck, Estrella had married the palace cook. She’d loved his food and kept going to the kitchen to tell him how much. Finally, they’d gotten to chatting and love had blossomed. If that had happened in the Seelie Court, the cook would have disappeared one day, and no one would have found his body.
