Page 43 of Light Fae's Love
“Wherever did you get your Blood Dragon?” Quinn asks Florian now. I feel him make a note to inform whichever Blood Dragon clan this poor girl was stolen from that she’s been abducted, and tell them where to find Florian’s Dark Haven and how to get in.
I feel his further thought: that Blood Dragons can’t be taken by Vampires when they amass in force for battle. If Quinn tells them one of their own has been stolen by a Vampire, they will bust the door down to reclaim her. Unless she’s an Outcast and clanless; which makes me concerned, realizing now that this poor girl would be Florian’s slave for centuries.
Forced to make blood for him and everyone he treats, forever, until she dies of magical exhaustion.
“Oh, this little thing?” He pets her long blonde hair, like a family dog. Twitching the thin golden chain, he makes her step back, having a prim seat on the stone bench beside him and crossing her ankles like a 1950s housewife as she folds her hands in her lap. “She’s from the USA. Texas, I believe. She has a beautiful drawl when you make her talk dirty to you. Sometimes I make her do it while sucking my cock. Which is exceedingly funny, don’t you think?”
I’m disgusted, and I feel rage roar through Quinn at Florian’s oh-so-casual abuse. It’s the same way Emiliana abused people in her Dark Haven, and anyone else she could seduce with her magic. I feel through Quinn how Emiliana and Florian were like terrible twinsies; one deadly dark and the other carnally bright. Florian’s brightness is still disgustingly dark, however, even though on the surface he looks golden and glorious, just like Lucca.
But his brightness is a farce—unlike Lucca’s true Light.
“Amusing. Indeed.” Quinn looks at Florian with a smile, nodding his head at the joke, though I scowl.
“Her pleasure is nothing compared to how you used to do it, Quinn.” Florian digs into Quinn now as he outs some past they share right in the middle of the party where everyone can hear. “I still remember the feel of those full, red lips latched around my cock. Diabolical. Your technique was ever splendid, Quinn, and your pleasure-inducing magics even better. But nothing can quite compare to a Courtier or Courtesan of the Hotel, can it? Except perhaps a Dark Fae, I’d bet.”
“No one in all the world is better than a Courtier or Courtesan of the Red Letter Hotel, Florian.” Quinn doesn’t take Florian’s bait, even though Florian’s just threatened to make me his bedroom slave if he can get his hands on me.
I feel a thought lance through Quinn then, though he quickly shuts it down.
Something about Florian and Emiliana—and sharing bedroom slaves.
“I suppose not.” Florian grins wickedly back at Quinn, and then I see all the terrible things he does to people in his eyes—which he will do to me if he can take me some deep black night.
Quinn won’t let that happen, though. Even as he raises his dark aura up around me now, flickering with his old Summer Fae fire as a warning to Florian, I feel Lucca’s power flow through our joined bond, bolstering it. It helps Quinn, though he’s still exhausted to his bones and I see him suppress a shudder. Reaching out, I take his hand right there in front of everyone. A steadying flow of power rolls from me into him, and he takes a deep breath, stronger.
Florian’s gaze drills into me, as if he just saw that deep flow of magic.
I raise my inner shields as high as I can get them, so he feels no more.
It’s clear, not just from the conversation and the fury I feel rolling through Quinn now, but the ribald joy I feel from the Master of Monaco, that Quinn was used terribly by this man at Emiliana DiClario’s behest, long ago. It makes everything inside me sear with dark fire as I grip Quinn’s hand, a steadying flow of my power rushing into him. I know then that I will give everything I have to keep him safe from Masters like Florian, as my power floods me. A shimmer of dark rainbows lifts in the midnight air, rising in the night.
As soft gasps ripple through the party.
“Beautiful.” Florian runs a hand through my power now, as I feel Arturos step to my back. The Master of Monaco does nothing else, however, as he plays a hand through my dark-bright waves of magic.
As if he’s mesmerized by them—before his bright gaze snaps back to me.
Before he can say anything else, however, a strange presence reaches us in the night. Like a shimmering wave of mist easing through the garden party, it’s deep green and silver, and all the colors of a midnight forest as it reaches us. Curling around our feet, whispering up into the hedges and trees as it floods the fountains, that power is nothing short of magnificent as it stops all talk in the garden.
If a crowd had been watching our talk with Florian, the entire party turns now to watch whomever approaches us from the garden. Like the deepest forest at midnight, that power begins to slowly bloom night-flowers in a riot all around. Flowers fill the fountains and cascade from their basins, coating the hedge maze with night-blooming jasmine and cereus as everyone turns. From the maze entrance steps a woman, coalesced from that shimmering, silver mist and moonlight.
As the party becomes so quiet, you could hear a pin drop.
She moves towards us. Her flowing garb is made of nothing but delicate vines with white-petaled night flowers as it cascades from her perfect figure, willowy and lovely. She’s even taller than Arturos as she comes to us, like a goddess of the silver moon, the forest, and the night.
A sound like a symphony of night-birds calls in the dark all around her. Vines slither over us, and I brush them from my arms as they blossom in a riot of luminous white flowers. Arturos’ well-trimmed garden is nothing but wildness now from this strange, incredible woman. Pure snow-white, her hair cascades down her back in thick, lustrous waves. Unshod, her high-arched, pale feet walk like she’s dancing, touching only flower petals as she comes to us. A shimmer of pale white rainbows moves in the air around her as she arrives.
Her dark black gaze dives into me, as she extends a long, white hand to Arturos.
“Mistress.” Arturos steps out from behind me, going down on one knee to kiss this wild woman’s outstretched hand. He lets his lips linger, bowing his head and closing his eyes as I realize this is his Sire who has arrived before us.
She who is only known as the Wanderer—her true name lost to time.
“My Siren.” Her lips move, but the sound they create is in the air around us and also deep inside my mind at the same time. A feeling of tens of thousands of years, maybe more, sighs off her.
Ancient and timeless, like the gods themselves.
“Why are you here, Mistress? Why have you come?” The entire party is silent now, waiting with no breath as they strain to hear Arturos’ conversation with his Sire.