Chapter 2 : The Doxy Girl and The Prince

Raquel’s POV

“I’m sorry…but what is that?”

“What is what, Thibaut?” It was always something with the trow, I swear. “You know exactly what that is and how much it’s worth. Look, I’m tired and have had a very strange day—”

“Strange? In the Everwood, you don’t say?” he snorted, the exact sound of a prized show pig rooting around for truffles, and adjusted his glasses with a single long crooked finger. The pompadour he’d combed his sparse gray hairs into did little to hide his receding hairline and warty forehead. “What is it, a day that ends in Y?”

“Thibaut.” Did he delight in being such a prick or was this just his natural personality? “Please—”

“Oh, so you do know the word, mutt! Don’t you—” He levered his quill at me, the curled end of the phoenix feather tickling my nose. “—bare your teeth at me, missy! I was a Quartermaster before your great-grandmother was even a speck in your great-great-grandfather’s jewels! I’ll give you one-sixty for it, and not a sovereign more!”

“You cheap fucking bastard! This is quality warg!” I dropped the rope I looped around myself to carry the beasts with me. I could tell from some of the other recruits on the line that I was starting to…ripen. Sorry lads, but a bath would have to wait while I wrestled with this creature over extra pay!

If the prat would pay me…

With a sigh, I took up one of the warg’s paws, just so his lordship could inspect the game better. “Look at that coloration! Moss over ink! Orcs would die for this!”

“One-fifty,” Thibaut spat, sliding a bead on the abacus. It took everything in me not to throw myself over his tiny desk and give him a proper thrashing. “For the cussing.”

“You’re a fucking cunt!” Three more beads slid to the left. “What is even wrong with it? It’s two whole pelts, you sick bastard!”

“As you said, mutt, ‘two holes’.” I gave Thibaut a look, just as blank as Nanica on a good day, which caused the little man to throw up his arms in disgust. The solid gold bangles dangling around his thin wrists clacked together with the gnashing of his teeth. “Holey, dim blood! Holey! It’s full of holes! No one wants to pay extra for fur they have to stitch together themselves!”

“It’s not full of holes! It’s one slash and a hole!” The trow lord rolled his red eyes, sliding another bead across the abacus. My wings buzzed beneath my cloak. Steady, Raquel, easy. “Well, how else was I supposed to kill it? Laugh it to death?”

“You certainly are a big enough joke…” I had to fight the urge to spit acid into all three of his eyes. “One-ten. Take it or leave it, mutt.”

“I hope the Dread Lord takes you,” I cursed, but without any real magic thrumming through my veins, it fell short of having any real threat.

I left the pelts where they were, on the side of the line, and ignored the jeers from the other guardsmen as they traded in their bounties or came for the other services the little blighter offered. The ogre gent behind me, with the pelt of one measly warg pup, was handed a whopping total of four hundred and seventy-eight sovereigns and sixty-two crowns.

Racist prick.

Well, whatever, I had my coin. That’s all that mattered.

With Nanica back in her stable and nothing else to do but get ready for tonight’s tryouts, I headed to the ladies’ barracks to bathe.

***

Fucking. They were fucking in the baths because, of course, they were fucking in the baths.

“Oh, Bramble-Berry! It’s you!” Marina licked the cum from her plump lips, her eyes looking in two different directions as she tried to reform her face.

Undines, daughters of water spirits, tended to be a little less sturdy than their fellow cousins the sylphs when it came to post-orgasm reconstitution. Much to most humans’ horror, elementals had a terrible habit of coming apart when the big O happened. Literally.

A perky nose floated across the aqua of her gel-like skin and slid around to the back of her head again. “I’m so glad you’re here! Regulus wants to see you!”

“No.”

I turned on my heel, ready to walk back out the doors, and just resolved myself to stink forever when Marina grabbed me with one of her tentacles. I pitched into the wading pool with a yelp, my wings fanning uselessly to save me. Curse Marina and her fucking loyalty to the royal dipshit!

“Reggie’s changed!” She ducked out of the way when my hand slammed down where her face used to be, her body now indistinguishable from the water of the bathing pool. “Honest this time! Give him a chance!”

“He can suck it!” I shucked my soaked towel to the side, wading deeper, looking for that tell-tale spark of her core. A pearl heart that all undine had. I circled, palms open, ready to grab her at a moment’s notice. “He’s an absolute ass and I want nothing to do with him!”

“A pity.” A voice, richly masculine and decadent like the world’s most forbidden dessert, lilted into my ears and straight to my groin. “I was hoping your attitude would be better, doxy girl.”

“Stop that.” I wasn’t going to turn around and give him what he wanted. Cheeks hot and eyes already glazing, practically lust-struck. The effects of the magical aura the prince always had around him, which was only now made ten times worse because he was otherwise… engaged.

I could hear the wet sounds and breathy moans of an Undine beneath him, all the louder in the quiet of the baths. The way my own cunt got wetter, quivering, wanting what I knew would be a bed-creakingly good release. It had been too long, but that was always the case. “I said stop it.”

“Spoilsport.” Everything he said always sounded like a joke, but he did get her to quiet down and did shield me from his glamour. It progressed. “Better? Now turn, doxy girl. Your liege will not converse with the back of your raggedy head.”

Fuck me, I couldn’t disobey a direct order.

I thought of snatching up my towel, trying to preserve some modesty, but most Fae would see that as weak. How so very human of me. And, I couldn’t afford to look weak in front of Regulus. If Thibaut was a barracuda, then Regulus was the goddamn Kraken.

“There we go! There’s the mutt! The famed half-breed of Everwood!” Prince Regulus clapped his hands like the canker sore he was; an irritating whelp I couldn’t wait to get taken care of. “My, my, my—all fresh from a hunt are we? Let me guess… jackalope?”

“Wargs, Your Highness.” I bowed at the waist, which brought me eye level with one of the two Undines that were taking turns sucking his cock. She blew me a kiss, one of her wayward eyes blinking as it dropped to her sizeable breasts, and tongued his dark balls. Really? “There were two legendary class adults near the Midnight Meadows. I dispatched them as quickly as possible.”

“Legendary class?” His tone sounded amused, but I was thoroughly shocked by the pride I could see dancing in his tri-colored eyes when I glanced up.

Ah, the one thing the Sidhe—the elves—had over the rest of us were those damn eyes. To say his eyes were gray was like insisting that steel was the same brilliance as silver or platinum. Past the black rim, like the eyes of a cat, lay the outer ring—the slate of storms. Nestled in the middle was the delicate harbor fog of the morning after the seas had calmed. And innermost spiraled from the dark dot of his pupils were the silvery tendrils of the first signs of frost.

You could get lost in eyes like that, and I understood humans for their follow of waiting for more of the Fae. How it wasn’t entirely their fault that they got bewitched by us, ensnared in the mystery of that gaze, ignorant to the trap until it was already too late.

His naked thigh grazed my hip, and I felt the muscle in them jump before I shook the spell he’d placed on me. Son of a—

“Well, that was new.” His smile was all poisoned honey as Prince Regulus petted the head of one of the Undines eagerly bobbing on his cock. “You’ve always been so careful, doxy girl. You above all else should know never to look a Sidhe in their eyes.”

My cheeks reignited and I was glad I was too dune skinned to spoil in redness. Didn’t save the green tips of my ears.

“Is there something you want, Your Highness?” Other than to fuck off, perhaps?

“Why is it that you never want sex, doxy girl? You never look at me like the others. Never beg for my touch. I’m beginning to think you are either defective or dim…”

The undine before Prince Regulus had solidified enough for him to get a good enough grip on her hair, well, the gelled tentacles most people assumed were hair. She squealed as he forced the length of his long prick past her pert lips, thrusting with all the wild abandon of a stallion.

Her fellow undine slithered back into the waters, caressing my thighs with a giggle before she headed to her friend’s half-formed hips. The second undine parted the ass of the first with care, kissing along her cleft before she slurped the wet folds of her pussy, nose bumping along her clit.

I stopped myself right when my fingers danced along the dark curls of my sex.

Like Void this bastard was going to use me as a free meal!

“Probably because I have no want for bad sex.” I dragged my fingers back over my taunt belly and tucked them into a fist. “All of the Faewild knows that to lie in your chambers is a long death.”

“Only to those with weak enough magics. Only they waste away, forgetting themselves.” His eyes fluttered shut as he came with a purr, cum muddying the translucent tones of the undine before him till she became opaque. She dropped into the water like a stone, losing all semblance of herself, her friend eager to take her place.

“But that’s the beauty of you, mongrel! You have no magic whatsoever! You’re as plain and dull as the human that bore you. You may have our looks but none of our spark, doxy girl. So fucking you should be easy.”

“Fucking me is not easy! I am not some—some—”

“Doxy?” Prince Regulus laughed, a cascade of white waves frothing over his purple-gray shoulder. Like all Sidhe and in particular royals, he’d kept his hair long in the way of tradition. The lack of braids marked him still unmarried, go figure.

“Come now, girl! Is that not your people’s great legacy to fuck and be fucked? That’s all your people are good at, isn’t it? As bed warmers? Even the humans saddle your lot as mindless whores enough to name their own after you! To think, you fooled them all with your…prowess. But we both know the real reason you climbed the ranks. Does Knight-Commander know about you and Captain Mal—”

“I AM A SOLDIER!” I was hovering, bath water dripping from my bare toes. It was against regulation to fly above royalty if you had wings. I was already on thin ice for cussing out the Foxton heir during last week’s recital, but I’d be damn if I just sat there and—and—

I pressed my forehead to the Prince’s, the buzz of my wings sounding like a hundred angry bees. “I serve and protect wretches like you from being killed by your own incompetence! Call me a whore one more time and I will show you the meaning of being fucked, you fucking spare!”

The moment the words left my lips I knew I’d messed up.

I’d always had a mouth on me, from the moment I’d first drawn breath my mother had said. It was the whole reason we’d been captured by slavers. Most babes were noisy, but I was a screamer. Hot head as I was deep lunged.

“What did you call me?” He yanked the poor undine from his prick, launching her to the other end of the bathing pool. The candles in the room flickered, reacting to his anger. Those same eyes I’d marveled at, got lost in, became moon bright as sclera became pitch night. “Speak up, abomination! I think you had the gall to call me something foul and I wish to hear it!”

“Nothing that bears real meaning.” Like all Fae, I couldn’t lie, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t bend the truth. Truth be told, I didn’t repeat what I said out of respect for the fallen Queen and the lost Prince. We did not speak of The Mourning. All of the Everwood knew this. “I didn’t say anything of the sort, my liege.”

“Liar.” The water bubbled, close to scalding, as the undines leaped out with a shriek.

He stalked for me as I retreated and looked for an exit. I spotted Marina hesitating near the back entrance where most of the women had fled. I shook a hand at her, to ward her off, hoping she wouldn’t do something heroically stupid. Just when I saw her bare ass slip past the gilded doors, Prince Regulus grasped my face in a crushing grip. He jerked my gaze back to his, magic bleeding from his eyes in angry jolts of red lightning. “Eyes on me worm-mouth! Forked speaker! Black tongue! Say what it was you meant! SAY IT!”

“Spare,” I hissed, both sorry and not. For too long he’d tormented me, threatened me, and made a mockery of me. “Backup heir! The spoilt brat everyone shudders to sit upon the throne! You treat your servants like playthings, the people your meals. Void, only force me to be around you so you can have one more thing to crush beneath your fancy boot! Gods how we wish you weren’t here!”

“I’m sure your mother would say the same.” My wings stopped, all the rage in me gone cold. “I’m sure if it hadn’t been for you, she might still have lived—”

I struck him, hard enough to turn his head and fall into the pool. Shaken.

“Do you not think I wish it every day—every single day—that she and I switched places? That she could have gone back to being that little shepherd girl who’d wandered into the wood, placing carvings at the altar of the Old Gods? That I could’ve stopped her from ever having me in her belly, the reason for her exile and shame? For her capture, for her death?”

Tears came easy, and I hated him for it. I’d thought I’d lost them all at the funeral pyre. “Do you ever fucking think!?”

The curtain of his white hair covered his face, his body still half-turned from my blow, but I could hear Prince Regulus clear as a bell, “Raquel—”

I fled, blubbering like a lost babe, like the orphan I was before I’d stepped into that accursed fairy ring.