and fell silent. Fingers tightened their hold, but he cared little about that. The grip of a human was nothing but a pleasurable, amorous invitation to many beings of the forest. She would learn that eventually, when he had time to instruct her in such delights.
“Arx,” he growled aloud to his abode in his ancient tongue. “Open a way, part and reform your living walls, and bring to life a chamber beside my own.”
A low moan rippled through the hallway, making the female freeze in his arms, but his lips twisted in appreciation. The vines on the wall across from his bed writhed as the rock folded away with sharp cracking sounds. They reshaped themselves, and another doorway appeared. Still, he waited until the stone of the walls resettled before walking with his prize into the room provided for her. This room had more glow pods than his own, perhaps to compensate for her inferior vision, and a stone bed stood against one wall where it had sprung from the ground.
Setting the human on her feet with care, Silvas released her and stepped back to give her room as he watched expressions fly over her face. She gripped her bow in both hands, drawing it tightly against her chest as if for comfort as eyes the hue of summer’s deep—lush green—darted around the room. He found himself fascinated with her eyes that seemed to appear varying dark hues of green, blue, gold, and brown. He wondered how they would appear when she was caught beneath him, her body straining with passion.
“This is your chamber,” he rasped in a soft growl. “I will have basic comforts delivered to you so that you may rest while I am gone. You will stay here. You will not attempt to leave the chamber.”
“And if I do?” she whispered, her eyes fastened apprehensively on him.
He shrugged. “It will do you no good. The door is bespelled, and you shall not be able to open it or exit.” His gaze fixed on her, knowing that it unsettled her and using that to his advantage. “Know that I am not required to tell you these things, but I am telling you out of consideration for your comfort. I shall return shortly.”
Her pink lips parted, but he did not allow her to respond, not wishing to listen to the pleas or objections that would fall from her tongue. Nothing she said would be able to sway him, so there was no reason to stay and listen, and in doing so give her false hope.
His little huntress would not escape him.
Pulling the heavy door shut behind him, Silvas strode from his room, returning to the hall. He peered at a particularly thick tree trunk that stretched along one wall before disappearing into the ceiling.
“Alseida,” he called out.
The dryads of his court could hear him through the trees in every sector of his palace, and in some cases even out through his Eternal Forest when they chose to visit among their trees. He knew that Alseida would hear him and present herself at his summons.
The tree rustled, the lower leaves against the ceiling twitching as something pushed out from its bark, the cellulose growing thinner and splitting as a beautiful female stepped forward, pulling herself free from it. Her green hair was the last to appear before it dropped around her amber shoulders. She peered at him with brilliant green eyes, sharper and clearer in color than the warm green of the mortal. Her simple dress obscured much of her form, though as she bowed, she exposed her rounded thigh from the open side of her dress, and the upper swell of her breast.
“You summoned me, lucomo,” she asked in a breathy voice, her eyes bright with interest.
“Not for anything which you might be imagining,” he snarled.
Only for a short time had he been foolish enough to take the dryad to his bed and lost hundreds of years as she coupled him with and drained him. In the end, it had taken many silvani and several trolls to pull her away and free him. He had been so drained that he was a wraith in his own palace for the passage of centuries before he recovered. After that, he instated his guard, and Alseida was punished, bound to the service of Arx.
Green eyes narrowed on him with anger, but he smiled with satisfaction, reveling in it.
“What would you have of me?” she whispered venomously, all softness disappearing from her features