Lorian’s gaze followed his more and more carefree subjects, warmed up by the wine and influence of the moon. He sipped his wine slowly, his hand only sometimes picking up the goblet. His eyes delved in the depths of the ballroom, his mind catching delicious thoughts, filled with fire, awaiting fulfillment, which their heated bodies and souls craved for.
He felt the moon warm his own body too. Eternal lover for all the fae, which reflected all their needs. All their hidden desires.
He sensed as Nymre leaned to him, wine mixed with her feminine magic caused her to be less tensed, less restricted. And darker.
“Lorian…” her fingers landed on his chest and slowly traveled down, on his tight. “I allowed… the wine to work on me. I loosened my guard…” a small, vicious smile wandered on her lips.
Lorian felt her insistent body, as it started to press to him, latching to him like sticky honey. His eyes gleaming with something that would frightened all the others, human or fey. But not Nymre. She wanted it. She desired exactly this.
“I shall use it against you…” he whispered, a sultry caress for her ears. “Use all your weaknesses.”
Her eyes sparkled, her long talons closed over his tight, he felt them burying in the flesh. Such a rapture. Such a tamed, beautiful, tempting pain.
He will give her more of it.
His finger took a whitish lock of hair that fell on her forehead, brushing it behind her ear. Her eyes were now wild, deep like wells filled with thorns and black roses.
Painted with blue and white.
“But first… I want to spark that fire to unbearable heights” he purred into her exposed ear. “Painfully intense.”
Nymre sighed when he touched her neck. The other fae, who were sitting around him by the feasting table, were only partially aware of what was going on. Some of those who danced, following the delicate yet atonal sound of the forest music, played by the group of the lower fey, already started to disappear between the low arches, by the ornate doors which led to corridors, even outside, to taste cruel love of the frost and snow.
Lorian felt Nymre’s arousal. Her worries disappeared from her mind, leaving a place only for enjoyment, the moon filled her with another kind of strength. She was unquenchable now, untamed. She was everything he admired in her, ready to destroy whole nations with her magic and allure. Send all lesser beings on their knees. Just as they did in the past. Enjoying the pain of those who opposed them, carving their names on their skin…
“But first, I will give you… blood.”
His gaze landed on a human slave who now served Lord Trivan. The boy offered the goblet of moon-influenced wine with trembling hands. His scent was raw, blood pulsed in his veins, red, inviting.
Nymre followed his sight. Her smile twisted with false concern.
They were never tired of it. Hunter and prey. Wolf and maiden. God and sacrifice. It worked on her better than blood apples.
Lorian’s shadows amassed around the human like smoke with sharp talons and hungry teeth. The boy tossed before he felt them, his body reacting faster than thought. Mist slipped beneath his clothes, pressed against his lips, slid inside. He gasped, his breath stolen.
“After all,” Lorian said, his voice holding cold cruelty, “the most intense love is always bathed in crimson.”
Nymre’s hand clenched around his thigh, claws digging in. The human whimpered as the mist pulled him close. Closer.
Lorian smiled – divine, inhuman. His shadows dropped the slave at his feet. Real fear beamed from him, a most delightful treat. Lorian inhaled deeply, tasting the scent of it. To the oldest fae, human emotions were like a filling meal – love, lust, devotion – but fear… Fear was the strongest.
And this one was full of it.
Lorian reached for him gently, as if offering grace.
“Come, little one,” he said. Shadows withdrew back to their master. “We’re enjoying. Let us enjoy more.”
The human’s mind screamed. He’d run, if he could. Lorian let him breathe – just to make the terror spread wider.
“Do you wish to please your lord?” he asked, hand resting over the boy’s chest “To give yourself to his pleasure?”
“Y-yes… please…” The human’s voice broke. His lie was sweet.
Lorian’s hand slid lower, beneath thin linen.
“Your blood is hot. Let me make it hotter.”
His black eyes met the brown ones and the human with horror saw – and felt – how his own hand drifted to his face. He tried to back off, but his body refused to follow. His fingers formed talons and slowly, meticulously, started to dig into his eye socket.
Lorian took over his mind and had full control over him. A puppet on a string…
Blood poured from the mangled eyeball which the human slave pulled out. His second eye looked frantically at the round piece of meat.
“Feast on it” purred Lorian, feeling Nymre shift next to him. Her aura’s caress erotic and so hot, like a burning gossamer.
The human pressed the eye to his lips, trying to not swallow, but Lorian’s mind was merciless, animating his body like a living doll. Soon, his teeth chewed on it, his throat gagging from pain and shock.
Around them, the Court watched with lustful attention. Even Lord Lon’s pale fingers tightened around his goblet. They needed this. Something dark to tear the mask of civility from their noble faces.
The slave twitched on the stone, panting, his limbs trembling, when he was finishing the eyeball. Moans filled the chamber.
Lorian’s smile widened, charming and lethal. His shadows lifted the boy once more, placed him upright; bleeding, trembling. He lifted the boy’s chin, looked into his eyes. And devoured him with his gaze.
“Delicious.”
He smeared a tear across the slave’s cheek with mocking care, then kissed him. Slow. Deep. So deep, the slave choked again. He kissed him, drawing fear from his soul like wine from a cup. It tasted of despair, of surrender.
It was perfect.
When he pulled away, blood already stained his lips. And then – his teeth found flesh.
The bite was brutal, tearing – not seductive. Blood sprayed, ran down his chin, soaked his collar. Lorian drank it down with slow satisfaction, his talons digging into hips, branding skin with dents.
The slave writhed – mute scream caught in his torn throat. Fear. Almost erotic in its purity.
Lorian parted from him, licking his lips, predator relishing on his catch. The slave’s body shivered, held tight in a grasp of shadows. His throat pulsed with the beating of his terrified heart.
“The Court loves you. So eager to be loved back. A sacrifice for moss and stone.”
The fey king turned to Lord Lon. Their eyes met, and Lon’s desire for death fluttered in him like a moth in a flaming lamp. It was awakening. The real nature of the winter fae. Composed manners tossed away, the teeth of night creatures forming from shadows and blood. The slave was thrown down again, the king’s power tossing him like a discarded toy.
“I might keep you,” Lorian mused, “but the Solstice is a season for sharing. Generosity, after all, is a common virtue.”
The boy met his gaze. What he saw there shattered him. A truth colder than winter. No escape. Not from Lorian. Not from what he’d ignited in the room. He crawled, stupid with pain, trying to flee, knowing it was useless. Fae eyes followed him, hungrily. Eyes burying into him like knives.
“Not beautiful enough” laughed Lorian, his laugh silent but cutting the air like blades. The fae around him slowly moved from their seats. An offering for the moon. Bleeding sacrifice for the forest. Their auras glimmering, darkened, when their powers amassed over the human slave.
All barriers broken, only pure lust left.
The other slaves, who circled around the lords and ladies, serving them… it started to dawn on them that they wouldn’t leave this chamber alive. Most of them never experienced Lunar New Year. For most – it will be their first and last.
Lorian leaned back in his seat, a smile, a cruel one, dancing on his bloodstained lips. Nymre was looking at him intensely, his depraved raven, feeding on the emotions of the court. Her fingers, mimicking his own trail over the human’s abdomen, slid down, down, just between his legs.
And pressed. Feeling he is more than ready to own her.
Lorian’s gaze pinned her to her seat, her body aflame.
“I need you, my lord…” she murmured, her eyes wandered off, at the fae and the humans, and the blood and pain. The Winter Court celebrated the New Lunar Year, causing the flesh to scream.
He pulled her on his lap, lifting her dress and allowing her to sit astride of him. He was hard already, and he knew that this act would push the court into more intense, sweet abandonment.
Her impatient hands pulled him from his trousers. They both were heated, powerful and free. Her kiss was hot like molten iron, and just as deadly. Her grasp on him, her breast flattening over his chest, her nipples erected, visible through her dress. She descended on him, he reached deep into her, his shadows entering through her skin, and traveling down, even more, to the point of no return. She moaned, her arms around his neck, her legs tightly pressing to him, like she didn’t want to let him slip from her and join the celebration.
“Fuck me” she grunted, such a low voice, enchanting. Like a distant storm. “Make me yours. Make me your moon bride.”
“I will enslave you” he grinned, his black eyes glimmering with danger. “So hard. Mercilessly.”
“Do it, my king… break me.”
He took her, wild and free, to the sound of the screams and under the moonlight, which hung over the castle, bigger than the sky, pulling all the right strings in their nerves. The Winter Fae knew how to celebrate. And they knew how to drown in the purest wine of freedom.
“Bathe me in blood” she purred, biting his ear and drawing a small droplet from it. His shadows coiled around her neck, pressing, hard.
And he laughed.
And he did it.
The court abandoned itself. In pleasure and violence. In pain and lust.
Freedom.
And the light entering the arched windows, eating them alive.