Beauty

  Fingers tightened on her nipples, erotic pain flaring, making a sharp contrast to the soft pleasure at her core.

  “You stay still, princess. You don’t want him to stop, do you? He’ll stop, and we’ll have to discipline you. If you don’t behave, you’ll feel the flat of my hand on that perfect ass of yours and then you’ll suck us both and get nothing in return.”

  Despite the fact that everything inside her tightened at the thought of having One spank her, she didn’t want to lose Two’s tongue on her pussy. She was close, so close to something she’d never felt before. She’d played with herself, found comfort in masturbating, but this was something completely different. This was a massive quake where before she’d managed a gentle shaking. This was something utterly new.

  One tortured her nipples while Two lashed her pussy with his tongue. Bron whimpered and cried, trying to float over the edge, but they kept it up. Two’s tongue danced all over her pussy, lighting her up but never spending enough time to force her over that ever-elusive edge. Two gently pulled back the petals of her pussy, licking and sucking every inch of her flesh.

  “You taste so good.” The words seemed to sink into her skin. She felt his nose running over her pussy.

  And then he speared her, his tongue fucking into her cunt as his cock would. While he pierced her with his tongue, he pressed on her clit, and she went flying.

  * * * *

  She came awake with a cry of joy on her lips.

  Bronwyn sat straight up in bed, her chest heaving as she tried to drag air into her lungs. Her hands were shaking, her nipples still peaked and wanting.

  Tears leaked out of her eyes.

  She was awake, and they were gone once more.

  Loneliness swept across her. She could still feel their hands on her, but she was alone. Brutally, painfully alone.

  She stared out into the star-filled night and prayed for sleep to take her once more.

  * * * *

  Torin Finn stared out over his kingdom, trying not to let the screams and cries get to him. Normally the wailing of the condemned was simply a sign that all was right in his kingdom, but today the sound seemed to have actual weight and motion, pushing at him. He had a fucking headache from that damn noise.

  Why couldn’t traitors die more quietly? Did they really have to scream every time they were stabbed or cut or had their fingernails pulled from their bodies?

  He sighed. It was because they were unworthy. They were not sidhe. Sidhe died properly. Even his own brother had died with a quiet dignity, his bright gray eyes widening as the sword went through his heart. Seamus Finn had died as a king should, with rage in his eyes and no cry on his lips.

  Yes, his brother had died well.

  “I’m glad I did one thing right.”

  Torin’s stomach turned. Fuck, he wished his brother would go away. Thirteen years and his brother was still here, still a shade who managed to whisper in Torin’s ear.

  “Shut up, Seamus. Why didn’t you leave with your brethren?” The sluagh were gone. He’d had his guards check the caves near the palace. Torin knew it was most likely a bad sign. They had heard of his plans to destroy them, but the one thing he had been happy about was the fact that his fucking dead brother would be gone, too. No such luck.

  “I didn’t become sluagh to join the happy little family. When I died, I sent my wife on, but tied myself to this place until such time as you no longer breathe air.” Seamus’s form shimmered, a sure sign that he was emotional. Even then, his voice remained a hoarse whisper. “I chose to stay here because I owe my children.”

  Torin sighed. He’d heard this all before. Roughly three years after his successful coup, Seamus had shown up, having stored enough energy to make himself known. Torin had thought he was going insane. Those around him still believed he was. Seamus was excellent at hiding from all others.

  Seamus liked to show up at the worst times. When Torin was giving a speech, he’d catch visions of his brother’s form. When he made love to his wife, Seamus stood and watched, those flint-gray eyes filled with judgment.

  Torin hated his brother. Just like when he was alive, Seamus ruined everything simply by being around.

  “My hags are going to make sure you never come back. They’re working on it now. The blood of traitors will banish you to the underworld, and then I won’t have to see you or listen to you prattle on ever again.”

  Seamus laughed. “I’ll believe it when I see it. Even if you found a way to get rid of me, you can’t get rid of the me who lives inside you, Torin. That piece of me will never fade until you join me in death.”

  Torin feared Seamus was right. Guilt weighed heavily on him, but he couldn’t go back. He was too close to finishing off those annoying boys. The Vampire Council had declared them criminals. The word was that Beck and Cian had fled the Vampire plane and were seeking asylum. Once they were caught and their bodies and that of the bitch they’d bonded to were hanged in the city square, the rebels would know all hope was gone.

  Then he would take out all non-sidhe one by one if he had to. Including those disgusting, blood-drinking vampires.

  All he had to do was kill two men.

  “As long as they’re out there, you aren’t safe.” Seamus seemed to be able to read his mind. His brother leaned against the marbled wall of the palace balcony, his ghostly eyes going out over the city. Beyond, Seamus could surely see the fires that had been set in the country in an attempt to quell the current rebellion. “These are small rebellions run by peasants. What would you do if one of the nobles gave the rebels someone real to rally behind? You didn’t kill all those with royal blood. The rebellions will almost surely continue since you don’t know the first thing about running a country. Peasants don’t like it when you steal all the food and leave them with nothing.”

  Torin’s fists clenched. “Traitors. They’re lucky I leave them alive.”

  Seamus’s head shook. “Oh, brother, you’ve put them in the position where they have to choose between the king and their own lives—and the lives of their children. A king’s worth is in protection and shelter, and you offer neither. You’re a tyrant, Torin. It’s why father chose me over you.”

  Their father had chosen Seamus over the eldest, rightful heir. Torin had been forced to bite his tongue and plot revenge for twenty fucking years. “Our father was an idiot who would have had us make friends with the monsters. As you would. You were seriously thinking about a marriage between the Unseelie and your daughter. It’s a good thing I did what I did or she would have been tortured beyond anything a girl should have to survive.”

  Seamus snorted. “You call all non-sidhe creatures Unseelie, brother. It’s ridiculous. There are plenty of sidhe who are considered Unseelie. And many helpful races who are as Seelie as me.”

  “The Unseelie are all half-breeds. Impure. Unworthy. I have plans for them.” As soon as he’d dealt with the royal vampires, he would handle the Unseelie. Within mere months, he would rule three planes. Ambition burned bright inside him. He wouldn’t stop until every sidhe bowed to him and his name was glorified for ridding the world of monsters.

  A low wail pierced the night. Would the hags never be done?

  “You allow a single incident to color your life, Torin. It was one group of goblins and trolls who nearly killed you,” Seamus pointed out.

  Torin turned away. He didn’t think about the day. He didn’t think about how the small band of monsters had delighted in beating him and making him bleed. “Well, I think they would all pause before attempting to harm me again.”

  “You’re a big man, oh yes. King Torin kills brownies and gnomes.” Disdain dripped from his brother’s voice.

  “Yes, and you embraced them all.” Torin turned back to the ghost of his brother. “You were so fucking kind. You beat your own child.”

  If a sluagh could pale, Seamus did it. His form faded a bit. “I thought I was helping him. I thought I was correcting his bad behavior as our father corrected mine. I see th
ings differently now. This side allows for a full accounting of all that is true if one is open to it. I hate you for killing my wife, but one good thing came from it. Beck was freed from my rigid morality. He can become the man he always should have been, and Cian can get over my ignorance. And they’re both definitely better off without your bride.”

  Maris. Lovely, blonde, frigid as an iceberg. And seemingly as fertile. She’d been promised to the symbiotic twins, the bondmate who would have bridged them, but she’d hated the idea. She’d been more than willing to help Torin in an effort to get out of a hated marriage.

  At the time, she’d seemed a perfect bride. Thirteen years in, he’d given up going to her bed, but she still had her value. She was a bondmate, but suspicious of psychic powers. She’d managed to make the other bondmates somewhat comfortable, until they had figured out he wanted to use their powers to enhance his own. “You didn’t vet your pick properly, brother, or you would have known she hates non-sidhe as much as I do.”

  “Your Highness?” A throaty voice broke through the quiet. Una. One of his hags burst into the room.

  And just like that, Seamus was gone. Torin had no doubt in his mind that his brother was still hanging about, listening in and gathering information to torture him with later.

  “What is it? Do you have the spell?” They were working on a spell to kill the sluagh. He needed to be rid of his troublesome brother.

  Una was one of the singularly least attractive women he’d ever seen. Even in her human form, there was an air of decay that hung about her no glamor could ever mask. On the surface she was in her middle years, a plain woman with fair skin that no one should really notice, but once Torin stared at her for too long, the wrongness couldn’t be denied. Her sister Liadan had been the most skilled at glamour, but she was dead and the hags suspected the renegade royals had done her in.

  Una shook that salt-and-pepper hair of hers. He noticed there was blood on her hands.

  His head ached. The wailing wouldn’t stop. Glannis, Una’s remaining sister, joined her. Like the other hag, Glannis had streaks of blood marring her clothes and hands. Why were the stupid fucking brownies wailing when their torturers weren’t busy torturing them?

  The noise sounded like it was coming from the walls themselves. “I’m making a new rule. Cut the prisoners’ tongues out before you start torturing them. I can’t stand to listen to the bastards scream anymore. Why is it so loud? They’re in the dungeon, are they not?”

  Glannis wiped her hands on her skirt, seeming to not care that blood soaked the cotton. Her hair hung in clumpy strands, sweat dripping from her brow. “It would be rather hard to get any information out of them what’s if we cut their tongues from their heads. Do you be expecting them to talk out of their arseholes?”

  He didn’t hesitate. He slapped her, adding to the blood on her clothes. Her head snapped back and a brutal cut opened on her lip. “You will watch your tongue around me, hag.”

  “Aye, Your Majesty,” the hag replied, her tongue coming out to swipe at the blood on her chin.

  The wailing reached epic proportions, threatening to shake the walls. Torin put his hands to his ears. “Go down to the dungeon and shut them the fuck up! Or I’ll have your tongues.”

  Una shivered a bit. “It ain’t the brownies.”

  He thought about plowing a fist into her face, but he still needed the bitches. “Then shut the goblins up. I don’t care who it is.”

  Glannis pointed out the balcony toward the river that ran by the White Palace. “I think you should care, Your Majesty. It’s why we came up here. One of the guards saw her.”

  Torin looked out, a cold chill invading his limbs. There was a single woman standing by the water’s edge, a piece of clothing in her hand, a wash basin at her side. She got to her knees, soaking the garment in the river water.

  “What in all the planes is that dumb bitch doing?” Torin turned away only to see his brother standing in the background, a wicked smile on his face. He ignored Seamus. “Get the guards. Tell them to shoot that woman and hang her corpse up for all to see. And shut that wailing up.”

  “The guards won’t go near her,” Una said. She wouldn’t come out on the balcony. Una wasn’t afraid of much. Her magic was based in blood. She killed with a perfection he’d seen in very few, but she was scared of a single woman washing her clothes?

  The wailing. The washing. That eat-shit grin on his brother’s face.

  “Bean sidhe?” The words came out on a hushed sigh. Even speaking the name made his stomach revolt.

  “It can’t be too important.” Unlike her sibling, Glannis didn’t seem impressed by the legendary washer woman. “There’s only one of them.”

  Una was nearly out the door now. “But they only wail for royal lines when death is near.”

  For royal lines. He knew the washer woman’s tale. She was legendary across the planes. Some called her banshee, but here she was bean sidhe. The bean sidhe had three forms, the virgin, the mother, and the crone. Three forms of the same woman. She showed up before tragedies. She sang her song when a royal death was coming. He’d been smart enough to have his hags cast a spell over the palace three nights before his coup. The washer women had come—all three, but no one heard them.

  Three would sing for a king. One for a prince.

  Or a pretender. Seamus’s voice seeped into his head. The bean sidhe know what you are.

  Could it be possible? Could the washer woman’s wail be for him?

  “But we killed the girl.” Glannis waved off the bean sidhe. “It’s most likely the queen she sings for. ’Tis no great loss. You can take a new wife. A fertile one. The rebellions might die out if you had an heir of your own.”

  His coup had been carefully prepared. He’d taken no chances. He’d planned for years, including paying soothsayers across three different planes. Each had seen the same thing—Bronwyn, his ridiculous puffball of a niece, was the one who could strike the killing blow. Beck and Cian could take the throne back, but they couldn’t kill him. Only that nitwit Bronwyn could.

  But he’d buried her.

  He turned to his brother. “You said you hated me for killing your wife.”

  The hags stared at him like he’d gone insane.

  “Your Majesty, we don’t hate you.” Una looked around as though she could suddenly feel something, but couldn’t see it. Glannis glanced around, too, but neither could catch sight of Seamus, it seemed. Seamus showed himself only to his brother.

  Torin didn’t waste time on them. There were no explanations that could make sense, and he’d struck on something important. His brother’s words came back to him. Seamus had lost his smile.

  His brother railed at him for the loss of his throne and his wife. He often spoke of Beck and Cian. And he never ever mentioned Bronwyn. Torin thought it was because a daughter was of no use outside what her hand in marriage could bring a kingdom. Seamus had ignored the girl except to lift her in his arms and twirl her around on occasion. He would pat her on the head and call her “little pixie.” She was insignificant.

  Or was she? His brother had changed since his death. He fucking loved everyone now. Everyone except his little pixie.

  “She’s alive.” It was the only explanation. Somehow the little twit had survived and lain out a body to be mistaken as her own. Perhaps that was why she’d set the fire.

  Seamus shook his head, but he hadn’t been a decent liar in life, and his turn as a sluagh hadn’t fixed the problem.

  Torin roared, the sound combining with the bean sidhe’s wail. He put a hand to Glannis’s throat and squeezed until the hag’s eyes bulged.

  “Find Bronwyn Finn.”

  Chapter Four

  Shim stared out over the ocean. The temptation to grab the invisible thread that bound him to Bronwyn was nearly overwhelming. This was where the thread had always been its strongest. Here on the beach. Now, Shim understood why. There was a crack in the veil here that they would shortly slip through. It would lead t
hem to Tir na nÓg.

  The night before he’d felt so close to her. They’d drawn her in, bringing her to the chamber that would one day be theirs and stripping her bare. She’d been so beautiful, her skin nearly pearlescent in the moonlight. At first, she’d stayed in the sun, her domain. In those moments when she’d turned her face up to the sun, she’d been a goddess, remote and untouchable, a true vision of pure Seelie beauty. But once they had her in their domain, she’d looked perfect—sexy and so fuckable that Shim’s dick was still in agony hours later.

  “Do you think she just woke up?” Lach asked, joining him. Lach was already dressed for travel, in plain clothes and worn boots. Nothing that would give away the fact that they were royalty. It wouldn’t work here in the Unseelie kingdom, but once they got to the Seelie plane, it was hoped they could blend in. They were, if anyone asked, merchants travelling to the agricultural provinces. That would explain the guard. Merchants had more rights than peasants, but were far less interesting than nobles.

  Though the sheer fact that they were travelling with a group of mercenary vampires, a gnome who thought he was the next coming of Lugh, and a girl who could change into a wolf might hurt them in the blending-in department.

  Shim sighed. The dream the night before had been the most vivid since their childhood. It had hurt when she’d disappeared. “I suppose so.”

  “You don’t think she cut off contact herself, do you?” Lach asked, his expression blank, but that didn’t work on the man who held the other half of his soul.

  The smarter half. “No. She was right on the edge of a massive orgasm, Lach, so no I don’t think she decided to cut us off. She woke up. It happens. Besides, as far as I can tell, she hasn’t figured out how to tune us out.”

  Shim turned. They had been walking since daybreak, trudging back and forth along the beach, looking for something Simon Roan, the mercenary, called a weak point. He would stop every now and then, use his tablet to take readings, and then move on. Finally, they had stopped here. And then the waiting had begun.