Once Upon a Tryst with My Stepbrother

008: The Queen’s Mercy

TRIGGER WARNING: this chapter contains a scene that is s****l and can be difficult to read for survivors of s****l or emotional/psychological abuse. Read at your discretion.

[Devona]

I morph into my raven form. On my breast, a handful of singed feathers are still smoldering. I send a small bit of energy into my chest, but the damage does not repair itself. I am unable to alter my form.

Fuck, as the humans say.

I cannot return to court like this. The Queen would not approve. And nobody wants to anger the Queen. Moreover, if she didn’t already know, this would confirm the truth.

Her powers are awakening.

If I hurry, I might still find a way to convince the queen she is no threat, just a small elf-touched girl with no promise of being queen.

At the height of my power, I could slip in between realities as easily as taking off a cloak. Now I needed to travel through a Way, like an elf-struck mortal drunk on too much Faerie wine. When the future Queen of Night was killed before her time, her death was pinned on me. I was stripped of most of my power, and it is only by the “mercy” of the queen in her “generosity” that I have regained the ability to take original form.

I used to master both of them. Now I master none.

Tonight I was a fool. Before tonight, she had only been a normal, mortal girl. I pushed too hard, trying to get her to see the truth, but ended up terrifying her instead, forcing her hand. How would I ever get her to trust me?

She must think she is losing her mind.

Why did I get so close to her? Maybe I was hoping she might remember a bit of whom she once was if I introduced myself. Who I was to her….

Lord Merlin of East Avalon, ha! What a joke. I haven’t been that person since the moment I was cursed. If ever I wanted to prove I was unworthy of the title, I did so tonight when I failed her.

Veering to the left, I enter the Way as if pushing through mud, feeling the cost of expending too much power in my efforts. Once I cross beyond the veil, I am suspended within never-ending darkness, the stars of other worlds above me, a sign I have entered the shadow way. I send a thought into the aether to tell it where to take me, it pulses, propelling me forward, and then jerks me at an angle, off of the course I had set. I see a small dot of light ahead of me and the sound of ringing bells. My request is denied. I am not going home just yet.

Without ceremony, I fall naked, no longer a raven, at the white-heeled feet of the faery queen.

“Merlin, you kept me waiting.” I pull myself up, trying to regain any trace of dignity I might still have, and stand in front of her, my soul and body bare. Her ice-blue eyes stare at my breasts, free from their binding, and the two red handprints burn right below.

“What is this?” She takes a step closer. “Who did this to you?”

“No one, Your Majesty.” I block my thoughts in the hopes that she does not sense my lie. “Just some minor elf-touched mortal…”

“What aren’t you telling me…..” She hums. She tilts her golden head to the side and I feel a tug at the shield I placed around my thoughts, a mind's eye peeking around the corners. “Bad bad girl….” You thought to hide her…” She pauses for a heartbeat, “…foolish.”

I do not remember falling back, but she is standing above me, revealing her downy mound, her perfect slit, as if presenting it to me on a platter of gold. She is wrapped in a robe of the finest white linen, clasped at her neck with a single pin, wearing nothing else but a low-riding belt dangling from her well-formed hips. This is a challenge. The Queen of Light can shine her very essence into any corner of your mind, revealing all your secrets. She wants to be desired, but only because she uses that desire to hurt, to tame, to conquer. More importantly, she wants power, and she’ll use the power of her s*x to gain whatever she wants from whomever she wants, lowering their defenses long enough to get them to tell her everything.

In another world, some may have called her a siren. Others, a succubus.

Here I am, on the very day I regain the ability to do anything about all the carnal thoughts floating around in my raven brain for around fifteen hundred years, only able to take human form when it serves here, and I’m forced to look up at the perfect p***y of the biggest cunt in all of Faery.

I want to tell her to go f**k herself, but I can’t even do that. Even thinking of it can get me whipped.

She smirks down at me, knowing she has won.

“Do you like what you see?”

I do not answer. If I say yes, I could be forced to do things I’d rather not do with her. If I say no, I risk her wrath. Neither felt safe. So I kept my mouth closed.

“Pity.” She replies, reading my thoughts, I reduce my shields, wrapping them more tightly around the thoughts that could reveal everything. “I’d rather you opened your mouth. Will you sing for me, Merlin?”

I watch as she begins to lower herself slowly, her slick slit just inches above my face. I can see that she is glistening before me, wet with the arousal of exercising her power.

I do not flinch. Her opening smells of sunshine on wet grass. I use all of my energy to keep my face emotionless and my expression blank.

She laughs as she suddenly stands up, sauntering to her throne and taking a seat on a red cushion held aloft with briars and branches forced into perpetual spring by her power alone.

I see a petal fall from the top of her throne to the ground.

“Your flowers are wilting, my Queen.”

She pretends not to hear me. But I can see her eyebrows flinch at the double implication. She knows she is fading, but she is working hard to show no weakness before the court. The fact that she doesn’t burn me where I stand with her blinding light, at the implication that I notice any imperfection in her, is a sign enough that she no longer has enough power to do so. As winter approaches in Faery, her power is shifting to another.

And she knows it.

And she hates it.

But there is nothing she can do, for it is the nature of things.

Nothing, other than weaponizing her sorrow by inflicting her pain onto others.

“You told me you were unsure that this one is ‘the one,’” she paces “So in my grace and mercy, I returned to you the ability to change your form so that you could get closer, to see if it was indeed ‘Morgana’ of legend”. She stops to stare at me, trying to pierce my thoughts again, masking anger and frustration as amusement. “I see,” she looks pointedly down at my chest, “that you have with proof.”

The court laughs along with her. The evidence was written on my skin.

“How close did she need to be to put those hands on you?” There is no point in lying now. She must have felt the pull of her counterpart as soon as her powers started to surface.

She already knew.

“We were close, but not touching,” I confess. “She ran away from me.” I do not tell the Queen of Light that she also sent me flying. Nor do I tell her that she spoke into my mind, or that I suspect that her boyfriend might be The Pendragon, the first member of her court. If she does not sense that already, I will not be the one to tell her.

“Ran away?!” she cackles, her voice filling the hall. “Ran away?! Like a rabbit? But you are a raven, why didn’t you catch her?”

“I could not.”

“Could not or would not?” her eyes held no humor, her face stoic. “Your assignment, your PUNISHMENT, is to wait for any sign of any descendant awakening and bring them back to me immediately.”

In the space of a blink, she is standing before me, grabbing my face in her hands. I didn't even see her move. “Why do I feel like you are keeping something from me, Merlin?” she spat, my title sounding fowl and curdled on her lips.

“My Queen, I…”

“LIAR!!” she shouts.

“I didn’t say anything, I…”

“No. You did. The part where you said ‘My Queen,’” her eyes are only inches from my own, “we both know there is only one queen in your heart.”

“Go!” she pushes me away as she marches from the chambers. “I am feeling generous today,” she removes her robe, letting it pool at her feet, her white heels making a clicking sound on the marble floor, echoing through the hall. “I’ll give you another chance. Another chance to bring her back to my court before her powers truly rise. One more chance to bring her to me.”

Her attendants rush to open her doors.

“But if you fail…” she turns to look at me again, making sure I understand the intent behind her words.

“If you fail, I’ll eat your heart from your chest as you scream. I will heal you and then do it again. And again. Until I feel satisfied.”

And the Queen is never satisfied.