Chapter Twenty-Five
Lonan started coming round every night.
We were insatiable for each other, half the time not even making it to the bedroom before we were stripping each other’s clothes off. He got addicted to fisting us both in his trembling hand and stroking us together fast, kissing me the entire time, not even stopping when he shook and groaned low into my mouth and his cock throbbed against mine in release.
He still sucked me like he’d die without it. And he still sometimes hesitated before kissing me when we weren’t in bed, like he wasn’t sure if I felt differently when we weren’t both frantic with the need to come.
After a month or so, we started getting better control of ourselves and didn’t always tear each other’s clothes off the moment he arrived. We didn’t even have sex some nights.
We hadn’t had any form of penetrative sex yet, because as eager as he was, I was still wary that this was all new to him. I didn’t want to rush him.
He never slept the night with me, but he stayed for longer and longer, as if he was as reluctant to leave as I was for him to go. It started cutting into my time with the wolf, who was always waiting for me in his spot round the back when I eventually went out there to see him after Lonan had left. He didn’t seem to mind waiting, and I made sure to shower him with affection while we sat out there in the quiet.
I didn’t breathe a word of it to Caom when we went for walks or into the village. But I spoke endlessly to the cat and the wolf about Lonan, fully aware that I was acting like an infatuated teenager, but I couldn’t help it.
I felt truly happy for the first time in months. Hopeful that something good could come out of all of this, even if I never did figure out how to shed my mortal skin and was trapped here forever. Suddenly, the thought of being stuck here was a little less terrifying and hopeless.
I liked my cottage. I liked waking up and making tea or coffee over the kitchen hearth before making my breakfast—either eggs from my hens fried on the flat stone or something preserved from the pantry on the bread I was getting better at making.
I liked taking baths in front of the fire in the big copper tub, with my rosemary oil and lavender soap. Drying off from the warm flames before I slipped into my old shorts—which were thin and threadbare now after being handwashed and scrubbed roughly for months—and waited for Lonan.
A few times, when I was positive it was him knocking, I answered the door naked with a grin, just to see his black eyes flare with intense hunger before he lunged at me. Those times normally ended up with me flat on my back on the living room floor and Lonan hunched over me, still fully dressed while he desperately sucked my cock.
I liked tending to my little herb garden and organising my ingredients. Sitting in the sun with the cat curled up beside me, reading drachmsmith books and copying out the recipes I wanted to try. I liked lounging outside in the dark with the wolf after Lonan left, my body calm and still boneless from pleasure, before I went back inside and fell into deep sleep.
It felt like everything was falling into place. Like something had finally clicked. I still worried constantly about the Carlin’s plans for me, and what would happen if I did or didn’t shed my mortal skin, but it was easier to push aside now. Sometimes when I was outside with the wolf or making a potion, I would stop and close my eyes and see if I could feelanythinghappening. Any kind of power rising inside me. Any strange reaction like the one I’d had to the sight of Lonan’s favour that day of the game.
But there was nothing.
I figured maybe it was a gradual thing. That it was happening slowly, in tiny increments too small for me to see. I didn’t have a mirror in the cottage, but one day I’d filled the bucket with water and taken it outside so I could peer down at my wavy reflection in the sunlight, to see if I looked any different.
I didn’t. Maybe more flushed and healthier than I had been in those weeks before I was taken by the Folk, but otherwise I looked exactly the same. Eyes still hazel, skin still lightly tanned. My brown hair had grown out considerably and was now a wild mop of curls, but Lonan seemed to like it. He ran his fingers through it all the time, twisting a loose curl round his long finger when we were lying in bed together.
I’d told Lonan about my success with the plant potion, feeling a little childish for how desperate I was for his praise.
He’d simply nodded and said, “I knew you would,” which was somehow better than if he’d gushed about how amazing I was. That wasn’t him. His quiet, unassuming belief in me meant so much more.
When we weren’t frantically touching and kissing, we sat on the bed or in front of the living room fire with tea. Lonan shyly admitted that the one I liked was his favourite too, which made me stupidly happy, as ridiculous as that was. We talked, or he helped me pick out potions to try that he thought might work or actually be useful for me. Like one that would protect my herbs from the frost when winter came, and another that would keep the coop warm for the hens.
He told me more about the Folk and their traditions, including the fact that we were currently in the Mild Months, when the balance of power was tipped towards the seelie court. The Bitter Months, when the Carlin was stronger, began on the first of November.
On that day, the Carlin and her sons, and a few chosen members of the court, would travel to a place deep in the forest called the Midsith, a “neutral” area for the transfer of power from the Seelie Ruler. Lonan’s face had grown pinched and closed off at the mention of her, so I hadn’t asked too much about the other court of Folk out there on the other side of the forbidden forest.
After the Carlin and her court got back from the ceremony, she would apparently stand on the steps of her palace and slam down her staff to spread ice and snow across the unseelie land. She was the Lady of Elements, Lonan told me. The Queen of Winter. A siansmith, which meant she controlled violent, bitter weather and could let out a piercing shriek that shattered glass and froze the feet of nearby Folk to the ground.
And as of the first of November, which was rapidly approaching, she would be in her element. Her full power. The Bitter Months were her true time to rule. I was terrified of what that meant for me.
“It’s actually my birthday,” Lonan admitted shyly one night when we were lounging on the sofa, our legs tangled together in the middle.
I slid my foot up his bare calf. He’d taken to wearing my shorts when we got redressed after we’d fallen into bed together, which I didn’t mind even though it meant I had to struggle into my leathers. His waist was a little narrower than mine, so they hung off his lean hips with just a hint of his thatch of black hair peeking above the waistband. I didn’t think he knew just how much the sight of it affected me.
“What is? The first of November?” I asked, leaning down to put my mug on the floor beside the sofa before sitting up.
He nodded, black eyes lowered as he traced a fingertip round the rim of his mug.
“She still resents me for it,” he said in a flat, emotionless voice. “She had me just after midnight. By one, she had left me with a wet nurse to start getting ready for the ceremony.”
Boiling anger flared inside me, far stronger than it should have. From the little things Lonan had told me, I’d already worked out that the Carlin was not a doting, maternal parent. She was cold and cruel and had made sure that her four sons were all pitted against each other. Competing for her favour. Trying to one-up each other.
And Lonan was so much younger than all the others. Just twenty-one. I was fairly sure his childhood had been tense and lonely. Long years of constantly looking over his shoulder for his lurking brothers and conniving mother, who had shaped him into a cold killer kept apart from everyone else.
“Fuck her,” I burst out, crawling forwards until I was leaning over Lonan, my hands gripping the armrest tight on either side of him. “Can you come here for your birthday? Even though it’s on that day. I’m guessing I won’t be going anywhere near whatever ceremony takes place.”
His throat bobbed. “I’ll have to go to the Midsith with the Carlin, and then there will be the celebration in the village after, which she will probably insist you attend. But… I could come here after that. That night.”
Black eyes flitted to me and away again just as fast. Long fingers played with the lacing on my trousers, brushing through the thin trail of hair leading from my navel.
I nodded fiercely. “We’ll celebrate your birthday that night then. Together.”
Lonan’s cheeks were pink. He hardly ever smiled—almost never—but he gave me one then; a tiny curl of his lips as he looked up at me. My throat ached at the sight.