They gave me a potion so potent I didn't care that they also gave me two stitches, or that each breath stung a little. I kept my eyes closed through all of it, conscious that I believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was easier for the invisible staff to do their jobs if I wasn't trying to watch them do it. Their humming and fussing seemed less muted than usual, as if the drink had rendered me closer to their state. I found the consequent higher pitch of their buzzing disturbing, even upsetting, and as soon as they seemed done with me, fled the parlor-cum-bathing-room.
In my altered state, I was not at all surprised that I could not find my rooms. I marched down the hallway, occasionally bumping off the walls and equally often picking myself up from the floor, and waited for the enchantment to take advantage of my muddled head. Even expecting it, I still didn't quite notice when the visions began, perhaps because they entwined nicely with my half-acknowledged fantasies of the Beast. They faded together, blood-heating images of my great Beast with my knees over his shoulders and his tongue between my thighs, and equally aching visions of my hands knotted in a dark-skinned woman's hair, urging her tongue to carry me to ecstasy. She crawled up my body, burying her fingers within me, a thing even fevered imagination admitted the Beast and his claws could not do, and lingered at my breasts until I cried with need and pleasure. She covered her mouth with mine as I broke for her, and she whispered, "How could I go on without you, my Nell?" as I shuddered and gasped and sank back into the sheets.
"You would find a new king," I murmured, when I could speak again. "A new man to pleasure you in bed, while I stood by and went mad with jealousy."
"Never."
"But you would." I rolled my queen onto her belly, stroking her thighs until they began to part. "You miss a man's touch. You still say his name at night, sometimes."
"Your touch is all I want right now." The queen's voice was ragged, and grew more so as I teased promises from her in the pursuit of satisfaction. Then, because I could, I refused to finish her until she had brought me to a head again, and her desperation to please made my release all the sweeter.
She went away often, did my queen, and I could never quite forgive her for it, no matter how important the treaty, no matter how necessary the war. I would dress her in her armor and leave her wanting, so she would remember to come back to me, and I recalled her sensual, shameful flush when her desire was so great that mounting her horse cascaded her into release. I teased her mercilessly when she returned from that campaign, urging her to admit to the thrill she'd felt with a beast between her legs. "No one," she promised me, "no one could ever love a beast as I love you."
While she campaigned and I sated myself with her love, the prince grew from a child to a youth, always standing at my side as his mother rode away. "Why does she always go?"
I put my arm around his shoulder, kissed his hair, and replied, "Because she doesn't love you like I do, my sweet." He turned a gaze on me that would have broken his mother's heart, but I was not his mother, and never had been.
Time passed: Irindala came and went, her son growing in leaps and fits from a youth to a young man. He had his mother's look about him: large dark eyes and curling black hair, and in time, I saw all that I desired about her reflected in him. He charmed and flirted, delighting the ladies of the court, and though I taught him to dance and seduce with his gaze, he never turned that sweet look on me. A worm of envy began to grow in my breast, that others should have what I did not. Irindala returned home and to my bed, and for a little while I was satisfied, until late one night, our limbs tangled together, light and dark, she murmured to me that she would bring her son with her on her next campaign, so he could begin to learn politics in the real world, and not just from books.
My heart cracked, not with fear, but with anger. "Are you sure he'll want to go?"
"It's his duty."
"And you'll leave me here, alone, with neither of you?"
"Who better to watch over my kingdom while we're gone?" She put herself above me and showered me with kisses, but even her hunger to satisfy me could not thaw my anger. I would not be abandoned by both for the sake of politics; the son could be sent to try his uncertain hand, or Irindala could go alone, but I would not lose them both. They belonged to me, Irindala because she loved me and the boy because I had raised him for her sake. I would have no other answer but that one of them would stay and be mine. But Irindala was accustomed to leaving, and I knew I could never keep her. The boy, then, would stay, no matter what enchantment I had to work to make it so.
I had done no magic since giving Irindala the boundary spell that she had worked with her husband's bones and her own blood. I had not needed to: she had been willingly seduced, and the power of being the queen's lover and confidante was stronger in human courts than almost any faery magic could ever be. We were creatures of magic, shaped in form by our desires, and the longer we went without using our power, the stronger it became, distilled in our blood. The boy did not see me with a lover's eyes, and so I made myself into a thing that he would: sweet and bosomy, with hair like his mother's, and a boldness that would run suddenly dry and require coaxing to be brought again to the fore. I let him seduce me, leaving him never knowing that it was I who seduced him.
I came to the court by day a precious creature lost in wonderment, even foregoing the roses I so often embroidered into my clothes, so that I might not be measured against my other self, Irindala's lover. By night I went to Irindala's bed, more passionate than ever from the pursuit of her son. The same touches that brought cries from her throat elicited shudders in the youth: teasing lips plucking nipples, curved nails scraping sensitive centers. No faery was ever more sated by love and desire than I, but rage clouded my joy whenever the queen mentioned her next journey, and her intention of taking her son with her. "The courtiers say he has a mistress, my queen. Perhaps he won't want to leave her."
She laughed beneath my warning, and gasped as I took her more ferociously. Only after, her lips against my breast, did she murmur, "I've heard the rumor, but I've not seen the girl, so perhaps she doesn't exist. He'll still come, Nell. It remains his duty."
I rose from the bed cold and angry, determined to win protestations of love and promises of forever from the boy I had raised to manhood. I shed the form that Irindala loved as I walked to his rooms, replacing it with the curves and large eyes that had captured his heart, and I was welcomed into his bed by eager hands. My anger could not quite hold as I admired the beauty of his face, and in holding my breasts to his tongue, I knew I could win from him the promises I desired.
And then came a thing I did not expect: Irindala at his door, Irindala who had followed me, Irindala who saw through my enchantment, and cried, "Nell!" in horror as I rode above the lad and let his fingers work between my legs.