War of Hearts (True Immortality) - S Young Page 0,110
Aine gave a dramatic little sigh. “I must take comfort in the fact that it is merely a case I am not equipped”—her eyes dropped deliberately to Eirik’s groin—“to satisfy him.”
The court laughed at her joke as she moved back up the dais. Instead of sitting on the throne, she halted beside Fionn, staring up at the large warrior king. He stared straight ahead, ignoring her. Aine placed her hand on his bare chest. Whatever she whispered to him, it caused the muscle in his jaw to tick before he turned to offer his hand.
The surrounding air shimmered, and then they were gone.
We all knew why and where.
Eirik stared at the space they had stood with envy tightening his features.
I finally looked at Andraste.
There were no words for how much I needed her. Sometimes I feared the extent of my feelings because they were infinite, never ending, like the stars themselves. Too much feeling. Too much love. It hurt as much as it pleasured. I feared I would die without her. The hunger, the need for her, did not seem to abate. It was stronger than my need for blood. No matter how many times I found bliss between her pale thighs, it was never enough.
I wanted more.
It felt like hours before I could be with her. Eirik disappeared as I spoke with friends we had made among the supernaturals and fae. The human guests were treated much better within the court than those who wandered outside of its protection, like the human girls Lir had tormented.
At last Andraste and I made it out of the room without detection, no words passing between us, so eager were we to be alone. She led us to a set of stairs used only by the servants. We hurried up the coruscate marble, the servants we passed turning a blind eye to our appearance. Andraste scolded me for watching a fair maid hurry past us, but I assured her, I was as ever merely caught up in my wonder. The fae, whether aristocrat or servant, were lustrous in their attractions.
“There is not a crow among you,” I once teased Andraste.
“Oh, there are,” she assured me. “However, they dwell in parts of our world that no one ventures. Nasty, horrible creatures.”
“Are they kept separated because they lack beauty?” The thought had troubled me.
“No. Because they despise beauty and once upon a time sought to destroy it.”
“There was a war?”
“Millennia ago. Yes. They wielded weapons that could kill us but Aine was too powerful for them. We won the war, Aine destroyed any trace of the weapons and was benevolent enough to let most of the challengers live. There is another continent on Faerie, across vast, dangerous waters. We have not seen or heard from them in centuries. Thank goodness.”
My curiosity on the subject had grown, and Andraste had allowed me use of the royal library to read of the war. There I read that during the war, Aine discovered what she called the cauldron. It had the power to strip a fae of their memories so they could be reborn, something the fae required now that they were truly immortal. In their newly eternal evolution, fae children became rarer and rarer until only one or two fae children were born every century.
Now, however, was not the time to be thinking of such things when my glimmering mate was leading me toward her chamber.
It was as we moved from one floor to the next that we heard a harsh male grunt and a cry of pleasure. Both our gazes flew to an open doorway, a servant’s bedroom, where I flinched to see my brother and Lir naked. Lir was on his hands and knees as my brother powered into him from behind. And I knew him well enough to know he’d deliberately left the door open.
I curled my lip in distaste.
It was a sight I’d have liked to have gone an eternity without ever seeing.
As Andraste and I hurried away, she giggled.
I glowered at her.
She shrugged. “Your brother is so contrary.”
“He’s a dominating bastard.” He would just love that. Taking pleasure from Lir, making him vulnerable to him. It was his own way of punishing the fae for hurting the humans. To make him want him so much, to have power over him.
Eirik was good at that.
“I need you to spell the image from my head,” I grunted, pulling Andraste into her bedchamber. “Love me until there is nothing but you.”