For a moment, I thought Mom was riding me, Brianna yanking her hair and fucking her ass hard, the way my father had been doing. Except, that was years in the past. It only felt like it had happened just a few moments ago.
"So?" Mom said, looking into my eyes as if trying to peer through to my soul.
I smiled and kissed her. Affectionately. "Not sure what you were worried about. I'm glad you restored that memory though. That was...well worth remembering."
She smiled and kissed me back.
Brie smiled and clapped her hands. "Oh, goodie. Everyone's happy!"
Mom slid out of my lap, staring at her niece coldly.
I cleared my throat, and tried to do the same for my thoughts.
While I couldn't imagine saying anything other than exactly what I'd said to Mom, some of those memories did indeed sting a bit. I'd always been jealous of Dom, thought Mom favored him. Now I knew that I'd been even more right than I ever thought. And though I'd suspected Mom actually liked being treated a bit roughly based on the last interaction I'd had with her and Brianna, I now knew that for sure. I no longer could maintain the illusion that the one time I'd seen her seem to embrace being treated that way, she'd been doing so for the benefit of the queen. Not that I'd ever really believed it, but it had been a nice lie.
How could I be sure that when she said she didn't "need" that to get off, it really meant that I shouldn't feel like I was incapable of satisfying her as fully as she wanted because I was unwilling to treat her the way my father and cousin did?
But she'd also said she didn't want that from me. And which one of us had she sent away for a few hours so she could be alone with the other?
I might never forget the things Dad had done her, or the way she seemed to enjoy them, but maybe none of that really mattered.
"Relax, Aunt Ellen. I'm just teasing. Besides, I'm going to leave the two of you alone to get reacquainted for a couple hours before I send Frank back. Is your queen not gracious?"
We both assured her that she was.
It took some effort, but I buried my reactions to the less pleasant parts of the memory. Not so successfully that Mom didn't ask me several times if everything was okay, but after a few minutes, we both forgot about it. The two of us had some very enjoyable sex before Brianna told me it was time to go back.
After asking Mom to leave the two of us alone, Brianna smiled at me, patted my arm, gave me a peck on the cheek, and wished me luck.
I'd expected more of a sendoff, but since she'd actually left me alone with Mom, unlike the last time I'd tried to say goodbye to my mother, I really couldn't have been any happier.
So without further ado, I returned to the First Autumnal Court.
#
My heart skipped when I opened my door that evening. Lily's otherworldly skin, her extreme hourglass figure, and the mix of desire and nervousness radiating off of her, all reminded me of my mother. If I couldn't be with her, if I had to do my best to find information for Brianna so that she might someday let me come home, I could do a lot worse than using sex as a tool for extracting information from a woman like this.
She slid into my arms and whispered, "I'm so sorry."
"For?"
"I wish I didn't have to do this. But I still haven't earned my asylum either, and I've been running for so long. Please forgive me." Then she kissed me.
I felt the air stir behind me. I started to push Lily away. But there was no time for that.
Before I knew what was happening, I was yanked away from my quarters.
#
As with her brother, there was no telling what Deirdre really looked like. She took on the appearances of several dozen women all at once.
Her hair could have been brown, black, red or blonde, and I wouldn't have known, since at least one or two of her visages had each of those hair colors. And some had more exotic hair colors as well, from pink to purple to blue and green. Similarly, some of her images were tall, others short. Some were petite, some athletic, some soft and voluptuous. Some dark-skinned, some fair. Every one of her many forms was beautiful in its own way, or would seem so to those with the right tastes.
My hypothesis about Silas was evidently mistaken. If this was how I saw Deirdre, I could only assume women saw all of Silas' visages at once as well. As soon as the thought came to me, though, another part of me insisted that the question of how Silas' powers worked was just about the least important question before me at that moment.
Deirdre's private quarters looked like like they'd been inspired by someone with eclectic but distinctly historical sensibilities. Chaise lounges and ottomans, covered in more pillows than you could shake a stick at, were interspersed throughout the room. Each had been upholstered with a rich brocade, and as many as not had gold tassels hanging from them. The walls and ceiling were stone, the floor tiled with veiny marble. Pristine alabaster columns reached up towards the cavernous ceiling, though a few were short and had statues or antiques set atop them. Rich tapestries hung from two of the walls. Some were portraits, others commemorated battles, while still others depicted pastoral settings. Oil paintings of similar subjects bedecked the other walls. A particularly largely portrait of her brother hung above the great stone hearth. Or, I assumed it was her brother, since the man bore a face I was pretty sure I remembered being one of the many I saw when I looked at Silas.
Of course, it was equally possible that this man was no one in particular, and Silas had included this face amongst the others because it appealed to his sister. I couldn't have said.
Yet at the same time that the huge chamber tried to evoke a sense of belonging to the past, if not any one era in particular, there were other ways in which her quarters could have belonged to a modern millionaire playboy. She had an Olympic sized in-ground pool in one corner and a home theater in another. The theater had a high definition projection screen, four rows of stadium seats, and a sound system that would make any audiophile jealous. A glass rolling bar stood near the pool. It was stocked with all manner of spirits, both conventional and exotic, and two professional grade blenders.
But as unexpected as the stark contrast between antiquated and contemporary amenities was, a much bigger surprise awaited me in her quarters.
Not a moment after the two of us arrived, so too did Lily.
Judging by her wide eyes and slack jaw, the moonlit woman hadn't expected to end up here anymore than I'd expected her to.
"Wait, I thought...," she started to say.
Deirdre walked over to her, took her by the hand, and led her to the nearest ottoman. She sat Lily down and stood above her with one hand on a blue shoulder. With a voice like honey, Deirdre said, "My brother did not appreciate your decision to use me as bait."
"But I didn't!" Lily said. She made as if to stand up, but Deirdre's hand pressed her back down. Or, rather, she gave up when the other woman refused to take her hand away. It didn't really look like Deirdre had applied much pressure.
"What's going on?" I asked, approaching the two of them.
Lily looked down, avoiding my gaze. Deirdre whipped her head around and I expected her to command me to be silent. While a few of her faces wore stern expressions, though, most looked at me softly. Maybe even with pity.
"Your friend here was instructed to determine whether you were spying on our court for your queen, as my brother suspected," Deirdre said, eyes back on Lily. Then, looking over her shoulder at me, she continued, "So she fed you information that a spy would be all but certain to rush back to report. Which, predictably enough, you did."
Of course. She'd chased off that other woman, and let slip a very dangerous secret.
Moreover, I'd had the feeling that I'd walked into a trap since I got to the party.
What had made me think that with all those unbelievably sexy men around to choose from, Lily had decided there was something really special about me?
Wishful thinking, that was what. Damned romantic fool.
"At first, my brother was elated by her success, and was prepared to grant her asylum," Deirdre said to me. Then, to Lily, "Indeed, promised her that he would." Back to me. "But the more he thought about it, the more he felt he could not reward Lily for her actions, not since she'd revealed my existence in the process. She couldn't be rewarded, he'd decided, but neither could he bring himself to Devour her, not since she'd helped to reveal your duplicity. So he commanded me to hold her in captivity."
Lily hung her head and covered her face with her hands.
Deirdre stroked Lily's indigo hair. Was that gesture mocking, or was it truly meant to be soothing? I couldn't tell.
Turning back to me again, Deirdre said, "I asked my brother if I could do the same for you, though I knew he'd prefer to have ended your life. I reminded him that it might be useful to have a bargaining chip for extracting concessions from your queen. In truth, I just thought it would be fun to have two prisoners rather than one. Silas doesn't visit me as often as he used to, and will probably do so even less once he becomes Patriarch. But that doesn't make what I said to him any less valid, and he eventually saw the wisdom of it. So here you are."
Lily's shoulders rose and fell, and though I couldn't see her eyes with those pale blue hands in the way, it sounded like she might be crying.
I should have been furious with her. I knew that. But for whatever reason, perhaps more of that stubborn and dangerous romanticism, I went over, sat beside her, put my hand on her thigh, and told her it would be okay.
Deirdre laughed at that. "You did catch the part where she betrayed you, right?"
I studied her many faces. "She felt she had no choice. I'd have done the same."
And that was true enough.
But the question I wasn't comfortable even asking myself was whether I'd have been able to see that if she wasn't so beautiful. If the stark contrast between her pale blue skin and dark indigo hair, coupled with her impossible proportions, didn't remind me of my mother, however much the colors were wrong with respect to the former and her curves a bit too modest with respect to the latter.