Beauty [A Faery Story 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (19 page)

This was where her fire came from. It came from Shim.

She moved on the bed, restless and alive. She felt more alive than she had in years. Her whole body was awake, but she was missing something.

Where is my other Dark One?

Did he have a name? His face was the same as Shim’s. Why wasn’t he here with her?

Hush, love…holding the connection…holding…pissed he can’t join in…

Shim moved down her body, kissing her breasts and the valley between them. He wanted to see her tied up. It was an odd image, one she might turn away from, but she could feel how much he wanted it. He wanted to see her wrapped in thin ropes, the ties elaborate, reminding her of the tortoises who lumbered down the road from time to time. He would bind her and then take his time creating the design, her body his canvas. He was an artist with the rope, spending hours and hours practicing on women in some odd place. She could see it as though sharing his memories. An elegant place not of this plane. Vampire plane. It had to be. There was no other place with lights that carried no flame, wood that wasn’t wood under her feet. Shim would tie the women up, but he never touched them for his pleasure. That was reserved for her and her alone. Everything was for her. All the training, all the pain. To be with her.

Tears pooled in her eyes. What a lovely dream she was having.

Not…don’t…listen, Bronwyn…

She shook her head. She didn’t want to argue. She could feel the connection waver. She grabbed it with her mind. She didn’t want the dream to end. She didn’t want to leave this place where she could feel Shim. All that was waiting for her was pain and heartbreak and death. This was where she wanted to be. If she could she would sink into this place and never leave them.

She sent him an image of what she wanted. Him. The other him. One and her Two. Shim cuddled to her front and her other at her back. She wanted a name for him.

Lachlan.

It whispered through her body, like a cool little thrill going up her spine.

Shim and Lachlan. Her Dark Ones.

They would surround her, making her feel so small. She wouldn’t have to be a princess with them. She didn’t have to be strong. She just had to be theirs.

She could feel Shim’s deep pleasure with the image. It was what he wanted, too. The three of them together. The halves of his whole finally combined through her mind, her soul connecting theirs.

They would almost flow into one another, their pleasures combining.

Shim took over. His breathing picked up, sending her heart racing. He was close. His balls, so heavy and aching and infused with power. They didn’t swing anymore. They were drawn up, ready to spill inside her. He wanted that. He wanted to fill her with his cum, his child.

There was a tingling at the base of her spine, so wild she jerked a little, but then she knew what was happening. Shim was coming, finishing, completing the cycle they’d begun.

Bron’s heart nearly stopped at the pleasure. Relief cascaded through her like a giant river as he spilled his seed. She could feel Shim’s joy in the act. In his mind’s eye, he pumped in and out of her pussy, grinding against her, giving her everything he had. He squeezed his cock, wringing every ounce of pleasure.

She dragged air into her lungs, blood pumping through her body in a pleasant pounding rhythm. She was happy and lethargic and she felt so, so good.

And then a hard voice echoed in her head. He practically screamed as though he wasn’t sure she could hear.

Stay where you are! We’re coming for you.

Bron came awake. She sat straight up in her little cell, the moonlight streaking through the high bars the only illumination.

Her head hurt again. Had she been sleeping? It had been so different. They had spoken to her, telling her their names. She’d felt his pleasure.

Symbiotic twins. She laughed a little ruefully. Well, of course, she’d dreamed up a set of symbiotic twins. She missed her brothers. She was in a horrible position and symbiotic twins were powerful. Tears squeezed out of her eyes. She was alone again. She could still feel her nipples throbbing and the wetness of her pussy. She acknowledged for the first time that she might be a little crazy.

“Uhm, are you finished with all that…whatever you were doing?”

Bron screamed a little and sat up, pulling the flaps of her bodice together. Dear goddess, she’d been caught masturbating. She looked up and saw a guard staring through the cell door. There was a small window that opened from the opposite side. The guard shoved a tray of food through the slot in the door.

She remembered him from the day before. She’d fed him while he stood guard for the mayor. Now he was her jailor. So much for kindness.

She pulled her dignity around her. Well, whatever dignity she had left. Now he probably thought she was a whore along with being a witch. She carefully schooled her features. No matter what she was accused of, she was still Bronwyn Finn. If she was going to be burned tomorrow, she wouldn’t let her fear show.

She forced herself to stand and walk across the cell. Her legs felt a little wobbly, like a newborn lamb just learning to walk. Crossing the cell floor with small steps, she held her head high. She grasped the wood tray. There were slices of bread and an apple that been quartered. Nothing else. Still, she took it.

“Don’t forget this, Isolde.” The guard regarded her seriously through the small window, his hand pressing through the slot. A small, folded piece of paper was in his hand.

She took it, placing it under the tray so anyone else looking wouldn’t be able to see it.

“Eat well, witch. Tomorrow you burn.”

The window slammed closed, and she heard the guard’s boots ring down the hallway.

Bron forced herself to eat the bread and the apple. She let an hour go by and then two. When she was sure no one was watching, she finally pulled out that little slip of paper.

Trust Niall. He’s working with us. I won’t let you burn. G

Niall? She stared at the door. The guard. The one who had looked pissed when the mayor had talked about purification. The one who had told her to hide the brownies.

The one who had passed her the note.

Bron tore the note into tiny pieces, taking her time to make sure no one could ever put it back together. She shoved it into the seams of the mattress and lay back.

Her head still hurt, but her heart was worse. She would follow instructions. She would trust Niall, but she wanted her Shim and her Lach, and they didn’t really exist. She was damaged. So damaged.

She closed her eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come.

The light streaming in from the high window brought Bron out of her sleep. She sat straight up on the hard cot and tried to remember her dreams.

She could only remember one, but it had been a little wild. Shim and Lachlan. They had names after years and years of dreams. Odd. She’d never heard the name Shim before, and she wouldn’t have picked Lachlan. She’d always liked Padric and James.

She stretched and saw a wooden tray. A guard must have brought it in this morning while she slept. A wooden mug of water and a dry crust of bread. Her last meal.

She shuffled over and sipped the water, her throat a parched mess. She couldn’t even look at the bread, her stomach churning at the thought. She put down the mug. Even the water tasted bad here.

She shook her head, trying to gather her thoughts. What was happening to her? Her mind flew back to so many years before. She’d been just a child, listening in on her parents talking. Her father had worried that Bron was touched in the head. Her mother tried to say that imaginary friends were normal for a six-year-old. Her mother had touched her father’s face and asked him to spend more time with Bron and Cian. She vaguely remembered her father saying something about them not needing his steadying hand the way Beck did. Then her father had been gone and her mother wept.

Bron had stopped talking about her Dark Ones that day. Even at six she’d known something was wrong, despite what her mother had said. Six-year-olds might have imaginary friends, but the Dark Ones didn’t seem imaginary.

And now Bron was twenty-seven.

She could still feel Shim’s hold on his cock. He’d gripped it with the confidence of long use. She could practically see him winking at her flirtatiously.

We’re coming, Bron.

That voice in her head was accompanied by the candle at her bedside flaring to life. But she’d blown it out.

Mad. It was the only explanation.

She forced herself to take another drink and then tried the bread. If she had any chance at running, she would need some strength. After taking another small sip and chewing through some of the bread, she turned to the window.

She could hear activity and stood on her small cot, straining to see out the window above her. Grasping the bars that covered the window, she went up on her tiptoes and could barely see the courtyard outside. Guards worked, hauling logs into the clearing. They were directed by the sheriff to place them in a circle surrounding a giant pole.

The maypole.
Bastards
. Yesterday it had been decorated with colorful ribbons, the center of the children’s joy. Today it would be the center of the bonfire that would take her life. They would lash her to the pole, and the executioner would tie her down and they would set her on fire.

She stared out, recognizing a few of the guards. They had laughed and danced with her at the festivals and now they would be the ones who lit her body on fire, the final payment for defying the pretender.

There was the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. Loud and lumbering. Not Niall. Bron slipped back down to the bed. She’d been so afraid the night before, for Ove, for herself. Now there was a horrible nothingness as the window in the door opened, and the mayor’s puffy face showed through the opening.

“Traitor bitch.”

Yes, she would likely hear a whole lot of that. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

His face twisted, contorting into a mask of fury. “I’ll tell you something you don’t know. I’ve placed wards around the village. No magic is going to save you.”

She hadn’t expected it to. It was standard procedure to ward the jail against all magics. The sheriff certainly didn’t want prisoners to be able to escape death by way of magic. Bron wouldn’t be surprised if Micha had the whole damn village warded after yesterday. “I didn’t expect it to. I don’t really know what happened yesterday, Micha. I know you won’t believe it, but I don’t care. I didn’t mean to torch your guard.”

“He died, you know.”

Bron was surprised to not feel a thing. It had been the guard or Ove, and Ove hadn’t done anything wrong. In that moment, she would have killed anyone who was going to try to hurt the innocent youngling. She would do it again. She would never be able to sit by and watch. If she hadn’t felt that power surge, she would have attempted to stop the guard in some other way. She would never be able to sit idly by and watch as someone was killed for no reason.

But that’s what you’ve been doing for thirteen years, Princess Bronwyn.

“You don’t even care. I never knew you at all. Know this, I’ll find that little brownie and I’ll throw her on a fire, too.” Micha huffed as though he’d expected something more. Some groveling perhaps or offers of her body in exchange for a bit of mercy.

That wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t stupid. After what had happened yesterday, there would be no mercy for her. She was just happy someone had thought to take Ove away. “What do you want, Micha?”

“You should call me by my rightful name, you ungrateful bitch.”

Why wouldn’t he go away? Shouldn’t the hours before her inevitably horrific death be quiet and peaceful? She could try to go to sleep and see Shim and Lach again. Maybe, if there was a place beyond this one, maybe they would be real.

Selfish. So selfish. You want to die so you don’t have to fight.

The voice inside her head was getting obnoxious. Well, the voice that seemed steeped in guilt. She apparently had a whole bunch of voices inside her head. “If you aren’t going to tell me what you want, then feel free to go away.”

“I want you to tell me where your bitch sister went to.”

That had Bron sitting up and fast. She was definitely still capable of feeling something. Gillian had slipped her a note. Goddess, the last thing she wanted was to get Gillian killed. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

His eyes narrowed to little slits, making his whole iris look like endless dark. “I doubt that. She’s already managed to kill three of my best guards.”

Gillian? “I don’t believe it.”

“It was her or her little friends. Tell me where she is and I’ll make your death painless. I can have the healer brew a tea to ease the way. You won’t feel the fire. You won’t feel anything. All you have to do is tell me where Gillian is. Isolde, you don’t want more deaths, do you?”

She didn’t want them, but they would come. They would come whether she stood up or not. They would come if she escaped. They would come if she burned. She’d spent thirteen years believing that staying alive was all that was important. But weren’t some things worth dying over?