Low_fantasy on Knotty Biscotti

Thaw

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Year of the Orchard had arrived early, exactly as Juvielle had promised the people of Little Stoneleaf, and the Time of the Tapping had been upon Froatburn Dell when Juvielle departed, reassuring her people she would return before the Time of the Sowing. The trip to the high ridge had taken her nearly three weeks when she last came this way, but she hadn’t known the way, and it was deep winter then. She should have reached the hall of Queen Nechta—Talvra—in less than two.

Juvielle, Greenwhisper of Little Stoneleaf, planned to mark Balance Day with Talvra. The day when the sun first remained in the sky longer than it slept was sacred to her kind—those who spoke the words of earth and water and plant—and she needed to share that day with the Ice Queen. But the path from the ridge to Talvra’s forest faded, failed, and Juvielle had more than once needed to backtrack, moving purely by memory.

Despair had gnawed at Juvielle when, finally, she found Talvra’s palace. She choked back a sob of relief, it wasn’t too late, Balance Day was on the morrow. She would still be able to celebrate it with her love, the Lady of Winter. What did it matter if the clearing seemed smaller, the walls of blue ice less luminous? Juvielle had returned. Smiling as she had not since leaving Talvra’s side—three full moons ago—Juvielle snugged her ceinture fléchée around her waist and tucked it under itself, both ends lying loose against her thigh.

“My queen?” That wasn’t Talvra’s title, but Juvielle felt she needed some words of respect. When there was no response, Juvielle approached the doors. As before, they opened silently at her approach, almost beckoning her inside.

“Queen Nechta?” The hall seemed shorter, the door to Talvra’s bedchamber closer than when Juvielle was here last, and icy prickles of fear touched her heart once more. “Talvra?” she called, hating the quaver in her voice, echoing back to her from the vaulted ceiling.

“My Greenwhisper,” came the soft reply from beyond the doors at the end of the hall. “Still I await you.” Juvielle’s relief hit with such intensity she stumbled, before breaking into a run.

The bedchamber was much as Juvielle remembered. Vast and empty, walls and ceiling lost in shadow, columns of mirrors guiding one toward the most luxurious bed Juvielle had ever seen, piled with warm furs and soft cushions. Seated in the middle of the bed, the willowy woman Juvielle had come to see.

Talvra was just as Juvielle remembered. Long limbs, delicate fingers, slim but shapely, skin the colour of fresh cream, platinum hair cascading around her shoulders, and flinty, colourless eyes that, on another, could appear cruel, but in Talvra were curiously protective.

She was naked still, and the sight filled her with the sister feelings of love and desire. She was halfway across the room—catching visions of herself in the mirrors—in a heartbeat. The mirrors showed her fantasies, her desires, her needs—Juvielle on her knees before Talvra, offering herself; Juvielle standing over Talvra, holding the queen’s head between her legs; Juvielle wearing something she had no name for but giving her the form of a man—but she had no time for those.

Talvra was wrong. Smaller, thinner, Juvielle couldn’t tell quite how, but Talvra was less vibrant.

“Talvra!” Juvielle’s concern rapidly spiralling into fear. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

The Ice Queen held up both hands in greeting, and Juvielle went to her. Cold fingers found her cheeks. She didn’t smile—Juvielle didn’t think Talvra knew how to smile—but she exuded pleased contentment. “The end is here,” she said simply.

Juvielle gasped, “The end? What? No! No, Talvra, please!”

Talvra shifted on the bed, cold hands still holding Juvielle’s warm cheeks, but the queen was rising to her knees now, offering her lips. “Night ends, the star remains,” she offered, then her mouth met Juvielle’s. She slid her tongue between Juvielle’s lips, then began to explore her mouth once more. Juvielle moaned in response, her hands first brushing over Talvra’s shoulders, then to her breasts. When she had been here last, she had fallen asleep many nights with her face between those generous, pale mounds. Most of all, she had loved Talvra’s response when her tongue circled those nipples, those raspberry-bumped areolae.

“But Talvra—” Juvielle whispered, breaking the kiss for a beat even as her hands continued exploring Talvra’s breasts, then began moving further down.

The Ice Queen studied Juvielle, her expression inscrutable. “I would ask this. Before the dawn.” She locked eyes with Juvielle and began to remove her ceinture fléchée, allowing Juvielle’s tunic to fall open, exposing her rather modest chest. “Dawn,” Talvra repeated, unhelpfully.

Juvielle struggled out of her clothing, then pushed Talvra back onto the bed, her small, hard nipples rubbing against Talvra’s in a way that made her toes curl. She lay atop the queen, her hips pressing against Talvra’s, her dense, untended pubic curls scratching deliciously over Talvra’s hairless mound. She kissed and suckled and touched every part of Talvra she could, desperate to hold this moment in her memory forever. The way the Ice Queen sighed and arched her back, the way Talvra’s raspberry-areolae felt against her tongue, the way Juvielle’s coarse, scratchy mound felt against Talvra’s unblemished skin, even the way it felt when their hip-bones bumped.

She moved down. Kissing and licking and nipping at Talvra’s chin, then her neck, then her chest and finally her mound. She guided Talvra’s legs over her shoulders, then squeezed those porcelain thighs snugly against her head. “I love you,” she whispered, desperate to say it but hoping she’d been too quiet for Talvra to hear. Then her nose was against Talvra’s clit, her lips pressed firmly against Talvra’s labia and her tongue deep inside.

She licked, she sucked, she drew deep of Talvra’s juices. The subtle twitch and shudder of Talvra’s thighs against her head guided her. More there, less here, just like that. When Juvielle felt Talvra’s hands on the back of her head, she understood it was encouragement, not direction.

Juvielle continued.

Juvielle lost herself.

She licked and sucked and nibbled at Talvra’s clit, then slid a finger inside her cunt and drove it deep—wild, desperate, relentless. The bedchamber echoed with the wet, tender, loving sounds of their sex, and when Talvra finally climaxed, her thighs gripped Juvielle’s head so tightly the Greenwhisper’s vision dimmed.

I also love you. Juvielle heard without words.

Balance Day passed. Neither Juvielle nor Talvra—Queen Nechta, the Lady of Winter, so many other names—left the bedchamber. As the sun reluctantly settled below the horizon, Talvra caressed Juvielle’s cheek a final time. “Dawn,” she whispered. She seemed so weak now—Juvielle fairly wept.

“I await you.” Talvra’s eyes closed.

“The star remains,” she murmured, a hopeful smile tugging at her lips as a light snow began to fall outside.

Knotty

No Rest Here by Morn

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My skin was wet beneath my clothes, though I could not say if it was due to the soft mist that had refused to become proper rain all day, or my own sweat, earned as I followed one overgrown trail after another. A lost churchyard, west and south of Pen Cerrig-calch, but not far. A local “historical society” had hired me to find it, but I had not accounted on getting lost. Nigh on an hour since I’d given up on finding it and still I could find sign of neither Pen Cerrig-calch nor Pen Allt-mawr, though my app had said the full loop wouldn’t take half a day to walk. Little good it did now, it told me I was in Cardiff.

When the mist at last gave way, the rain came in a relentless, drumming downpour. Though the sun would not set for another hour, the woods had already settled into a gloom, premature twilight, not the coming of evening, but the retreat of the day. I had not seen a proper trail—one furnished with markers and directions to a car-park—since early this morning.

I took a moment to stand, breathe, and curse inwardly. No good doing it out loud, nothing would hear.

I shivered at the thought of another night sleeping rough. The prospect rendered no more agreeable by my clothing: my jeans, already grown heavy in the damp air, slipping steadily downward, while my underwear pursued with equal determination an uncomfortable ascent.

The road didn’t so much appear as manifest before me. Barely broken trail, stinking of wet earth, moss and rot one moment, a stretch of double-track the next, then spreading to a gravel road maybe a lane and a half wide. Opulent in this region. My worthless app had given up, now simply showing me somewhere in the United Kingdom. Possibly northwestern Europe.

I walked a kilometre, or five, or two, or ten—it was a blur of vague anxiety and acute discomfort—when a light finally appeared ahead.

I followed.

Moments later I was studying an old, weathered sign outside a begrudging building that proclaimed itself the Red Thorn Rest. A collection of letters above the name that I could not form into words suggested I was still in Wales.

Promising.

The rain lashed against the ancient windows as if it were driven by some purpose, a relentless rhythm that mirrored the chaos in my head; and my chest. This place, I already knew, was somewhere between, and it had invited me in. The pub was a husk, wooden beams groaning like a great, but tired animal with a fatal wound. A single oil lantern flickered over the bar, casting elongated shadows over the common room.

I shouldered through the door, my pants, my jacket, even my shirt dripping onto the flagstone floor. The air was thick with peat smoke and sour beer, the ghost of too many bodies and too few dreams — and none present now. Behind the bar, a gaunt man nodded once, his eyes hollow, before shuffling into the back. And there, in the corner booth, sat the only other soul: a man—or something appearing as one—with a beard and long hair like burnished copper and glittering emerald eyes. He held a pint glass of something rich and dark, his fingers were long and tapered, and his nails glinted like obsidian.

“Evening, stranger.” His voice was laced with an Irish lilt that put me in mind of the mist that had dogged me. “G’wan then, sit. It’s been a long while since someone new come through that door.”

I hesitated.

He narrowed his eyes. “Wait. I know you.”

“You don’t.” I grew furious at his smile.

“Ya, I do. Not you, but your kin. Morrow.”

“Not anymore,” I told him, intent on ending the discussion.

He considered, nodded. “Ya, not n’more. Sit.”

Not a command, an invitation.

I slid into the booth opposite him.

“Riven,” I said, my voice steady despite the tremor in my heart.

He smiled. “Fionn mac Cumhaill.”

I snorted and stood to leave. I’d take my chances with the storm if this was what the Red Thorn Rest had to offer. “Fuck off.”

He faltered.

He faltered.

“Well,” he drawled, trying to recover gracefully. “I was there for what made ‘im Fionn, an’ he never would’ve been if I’d sat quiet. Yeah?”

I studied the beautiful liar for a long, long time. So long I could see his discomfort on his face.

“You have my true name, I’m owed yours,” I said, returning to my seat opposite.

He laughed so loud I jumped in my seat. “Finbar Foxember, or what’s left of ‘im. Banished these—fuck me, what year is it?”

I told him.

“Fuck. Three hundred years from hearth an’ home for a fool’s wager. Lost the wrong coin to a mortal, ye see. I bring it home or I don’t come home ’tall.”

I had a knack for spotting lies, and he spoke pure truth. I was seized by sympathy for this fae. Exiled by his own for being the wild spirit they expected, while I exiled myself for the opposite crime.

We talked as the rain raged outside, our words coming easily, confessions easier still. He spoke of deals struck, of mortals fooled, of women loved—not only women—and of the land that still beckoned him home. He spoke of ‘home’ with such loss that, I admit, my heart ached. Just a little. I almost felt a longing for the old estate.

He never lied during those hours. Never once tried to deceive.

I gave him the same respect.

I confessed fragments. The family business I was doomed to inherit, the suffocating prospect of a life forever in one place, and always, the prying questions—‘But what are you?’—from relatives, staff, society, all demanding I fit their boxes.

We talked through the night, Finbar and I, but the dawn didn’t come, and still we talked. Hours? Days? Years? We talked and drank from mugs that never emptied but were never refilled. The gaunt old barkeep, a comforting lie? No matter. The barkeep had not returned, and I found I did not expect him to.

Finbar’s hand brushed mine across the scarred wood, his skin fever-hot. “How’d y’feel ‘bout this?” His words were gentle, his voice soft, but his eyes darkened, pupils dilating to abyssal depths. I nodded, pulse thundering.

I touched him first, my hand caressing the coarse curls of his copper-red beard. He leaned in, delivering a kiss that tasted of whiskey and heather and wild honey, tongues tangling with desperate need. We broke apart gasping. My hand slid down, palming the bulge straining against his trousers. I unlaced him, pulled the flaps wide and set him free.

His cock was long—nearly the span of my thumb to my pinkie, I measured—and thick, festooned with veins and shaped with a slight upward curve that made me blush at thoughts of it inside. Inside me. The head, flushed a deep crimson, glistened with pre-cum, another tiny pearl appearing as I watched. “Touch yourself.” My voice husky.

His breath caught, then he wrapped his fingers around the shaft, stroking slowly from base to tip, thumb circling the slit.

I only allowed him a handful of strokes. “Stop,” I commanded, bewildered at my assertive tone. I took his wrist in both hands and lifted his hand away from his member, drawing it to my lips. My gaze trapped his as I first licked his palm, shivering at my first taste of him, then spit in the centre. He kept his eyes on mine as he resumed, my saliva smoothing the friction just enough.

I unbuttoned my jeans and stood up just enough to work the hateful garments down to my mid-thighs before sitting back down. My right hand moved my underwear aside, then attended myself as I liked best. My left hand moved to his cheek, caressing him as we each fucked ourselves in the empty common room.

Time passed, I couldn’t say how long, the two of us in the booth while the storm raged outside and the only sounds between us were the grunts and gasps and wet sounds of our masturbating. I tasted his fingers and spit in his palm more than once while he offered me the assistance I desired as well. He was so charming while the two of us wanked, my hand never leaving his cheek and more than once he turned his head to kiss my wrist.

Finbar started pumping faster, fist gliding over his length, veins bulging under his grip. His pre-cum flowed freely, some landing on my bare thigh. I matched his pace for a while, but his stamina outstripped my own.

“By the fuckin’ dark roots, Riven,” he growled, his free hand grasping the table edge, knuckles white. His strokes grew erratic, hips bucking slightly. My climax was already in the booth with us, but I wouldn’t fault him for not noticing.

He came with a sound like a lion’s roar. Thick ropes of cum spurted from his dick, arcing onto the table, my thigh, my top, his abdomen, pearlescent strands pooling in the recesses of his muscles. I didn’t remember opening his shirt, but I must have—he’d been too distracted.

His body shuddered, hand milking every last drop, the scent musky, like damp earth—intoxicating. I waited until I saw the sudden burst of sweat on his cheeks and forehead, a secondary release that I’d seen before, signalling an end—or another type of invitation. I kissed him softly on the cheek first, just above his coppery beard, then on the lips, then on the bridge of his nose. This last drew a warm, weak chuckle.

Then I went down. When I captured his cock in my mouth it twitched and shot another wan squirt of cum, he hadn’t been expecting this. “Fuck me sideways, Riven!” Finbar gasped, threading fingers through my hair. He shuddered, then gasped again, “Y’don’t hav’ta—” I did. I took him deep, throat relaxing around his girth. He hardened again; the fae resilience a marvel. I bobbed my head, lips sealed tight, sucking with voracious hunger. My tongue cradled the thick ridge that ran along his underside, my lips pressing the vein that pulsed anew.

He thrust shallowly into my mouth, hands guiding but not forcing. My saliva coated his shaft and pooled on his balls, mingling with his earlier spend. I hollowed my cheeks, humming vibrations along his length, right hand cupping his balls, rolling them gently while my left remained on his cheek. Finbar’s moans built, ragged and desperate, his body arching as the shadows deepened around us.

“MERCY-Fuck … just like that,” he panted, hips snapping forward. I deepthroated him fully, nose brushing his pubic hair, gagging softly, snorting loudly, but holding. Again, snort, gag, my eyes watered, but I wanted this so much! He tightened his grip in my hair and my own second peak loomed. I bottomed out again, worming my tongue out between his cock and my lips to lick lightly at his scrotum and then we were both lost.

His cock throbbed, erupted. Hot cum, honeyed and floral and bitter and perfect, flooded my mouth, pulse after pulse, thick and creamy. I swallowed greedily, slurping without shame, milking him with my maw until he finally softened. My throat already ached, raw and angry at how I’d abused it, but I was fulfilled in a way no trifling physical discomfort could taint.

We parted slowly, breath mingling in the afterglow. Finbar tucked himself away, a soft smile breaking through his weariness. “You wicked, bright thing. Stay, willya?”

My wistful smile was all the answer he needed. He raised his mug in quiet salute. “Safe travels, then, may the road find you kindly, and may no thorn keep you.”

I straightened, wiping my lips, the storm easing outside. “And you, Finbar. I’d be pleased to meet again in these haunted lands.”

Outside, dawn had come, the early morning sky promising a perfectly clear day. Stepping out into the crisp morning air, the world felt renewed.

Knotty

The Hall of the Ice Queen

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In Juvielle’s fifth Year of the Owl, she had been the Greenwhisper of Little Stoneleaf hardly six seasons. Oviña had declared her time was done after the Green Winter and had chosen Juvielle to guide the village, bless the crops, and direct the harvest. Oviña had returned to the green before the first frost, so perhaps she had been right.

Juvielle had been born in the Year of the Owl, or so Grandpère told her; Mère had left in her coming and Père had left before that. The Year of the Owl wasn’t like the Year of the Flood or the Year of the Fallowfield. The Year of the Owl was when it was, prepared or not.

The Year of the Owl ended. Crops, people, families.

Communities.

Looking up to the sky, the flat, dull grey of a poorly tended ploughshare. She drew a deep breath, then coughed as the icy air stung her lungs and made her eyes water. The next treeline wasn’t far now. It would be warmer there, in the embrace of the slumbering forest.

She snugged her ceinture fléchée around her waist, binding her cloak tight against her thin frame. “Nechta,” she whispered to the killing cold, and resumed her forward march through thigh-high snow.

It had been three weeks since Juvielle had left Little Stoneleaf. She should have left at least a week sooner than that, but she had denied it to herself. It couldn’t be The Owl. She wasn’t ready! She didn’t know how to prepare for The Owl!

She left before the turning of the year, when daylight finally began to linger. Before the Midwinter Feast. It would be a paltry feast this year, anyway. She would not have missed much in the way of celebration. It was the cruellest of Winter’s jests that as the days began to grow longer, the cold grew stronger; mean.

Juvielle suddenly looked around in confusion. All around, absolute darkness. How many hours had she been walking after reaching the next forest? In her memory was a hole. There was frozen, snow-packed plain, then there was frozen, snow-dappled forest trail, and then…this?

She couldn’t see the sky for the forest canopy, but the way her body ached told her the sun had not set recently, it was hours gone to its slumber. She searched around her for familiar signs, any sort of hint that might tell her even what direction she had been walking, but there was nothing. Even the trees seemed strange, familiar bark and needle and dried leaf that somehow weren’t.

And then she heard it; a sound; a song; voices! Raised in song! She thought she recognised the melody, if not the words. The sort of song that would be sung at the Welcoming of the Dawn after the feast!

Impossibly, she found the strength to run.

The voices had dwindled to distant echoes before Juvielle could locate them, but in her pursuit she found something truly impossible. Rising from a natural clearing, a tower of pure, luminous blue ice. She stopped at the edge of the clearing. The tower was impossibly tall, blocking out the stars above, and somehow, she had arrived exactly at the base of a wide, low stair leading to towering double doors.

“Nechta,” she whispered again, steadying her resolve.

The doors opened, smooth and silent, at her touch. Not locked. As if she were expected. Invited.

The hall beyond the doors was bright, and so warm! After so long in the elements, surely anything would feel warm, but Juvielle found herself first loosening her ceinture fléchée, then opening her cloak. It was too warm here for so much clothing.

“Hello?” she called, sounding to her ears like a nervous child rather than a grown woman, Greenwhisper of Little Stoneleaf, no less! Everyone she’d ever known depended on her now! “Queen Nechta? I–” she coughed nervously and started again, trying to sound confident. “I s–seek an audience with Queen Nechta.”

A sound—a voice?—from further down the hall.

The hall was bathed in a soft, ethereal light, despite the absence of visible lamps. It was as if the tower had simply decided to be lit like a field at midday. It was far too long to be within the tower she had found in the clearing, she realised, a trickle of fear running down her back. Finally, she arrived at another set of doors, open, revealing a wide, circular room beyond. It had columns toward the centre, rising up to a ceiling she couldn’t see from this angle, and in the middle a bed, piled with furs and cushions. Strangest of all, the columns and the walls were nothing but mirrors.

“Queen Nechta?” she asked softly as her heart hammered in her chest. It was far too warm now, Juvielle felt a trickle of sweat running down her cheek and so she loosened her ceinture fléchée enough for her to slip out of her cloak, leaving it in a pile on the polished-ice floor. She snugged the wrap around her waist again and stepped into the room.

“I come with respect,” Juvielle began softly while nervous butterflies filled her belly. “I must—” and then she had no words.

Her reflection, in the mirror-clad column to her right, was no longer moving with her. It smiled warmly, knowingly at her. Reflection then turned away and shed her tunic. Juvielle’s eyes widened as she stared at her own naked back, her hair caressing her shoulders. Reflection looked over her shoulder at Juvielle, removed her ceinture fléchée, and stepped out of her trubhás, leaving both the sash and her leg coverings behind.

“What—” Juvielle whispered as her reflection embraced another figure—shadowy and indistinct. They kissed, then again. Spectral hands moved on Reflection’s behind, squeezing and lifting, and Juvielle felt a new stirring as she watched this unfold. Reflection’s caresses soon shifted to direction. Her shadow-lover lowered themselves to their knees. Reflection’s hands settled on their head, and they began a most intimate dance. Juvielle watched intently, one hand gliding absently between her own legs, beneath the trousers she still wore. Her other hand drifted upward, and just before her trembling fingertips touched the strange mirror, Reflection turned her head again, locked eyes with Juvielle, then succumbed to an orgasm more intense than Juvielle herself could ever remember.

She stepped away, heated and panting softly, then moved deeper. The next column was also Juvielle, but this Juvielle was naked, tied to a tree in an orchard she didn’t recognise. Reflection was helpless, exposed, and Juvielle’s breathing grew ragged as her desire built. The mirror was showing her a place near harvest, with golden sunbeams dappled on Reflection’s bare skin—her stiff nipples, her chestnut-brown curls crowning her pussy.

Another figure appeared from somewhere behind or beyond the mirror and approached Reflection. The figure, again, was insubstantial, difficult to focus on despite the afternoon light. It moved toward Reflection with a pair of wild roses. Reflection’s expression was one of pure love and absolute trust as her attention turned toward her companion. Juvielle watched as the rose petals teased and kissed all of Reflection’s most sensitive areas, as the thorns first grazed nipples, lips, and thighs, then did more—drawing shivers, gasps, and cries from Reflection. When one thorn became a switch against Reflection’s hip, Juvielle moaned with desire. Her fingers were slick with her own juices, though she didn’t remember touching herself.

The next column was much more direct. Juvielle was slowly dancing with a woman. She was taller than Juvielle’s reflection, a hand-width, at least. Slim but not skinny, as winter had rendered everyone in Little Stoneleaf. Achingly beautiful. Her skin had only the slightest hint of warmth, the colour of fresh cream. Her hair was a lustrous platinum, flowing freely around her shoulders. Her eyes were flinty and almost colourless; chipped ice. Reflection was dressed as Juvielle was, but the woman wore nothing at all. They both looked out of the mirror at Juvielle as they danced, then as they kissed and caressed, then again as the woman moved to the reflected bed and sat, opening her legs in welcome. Reflection followed, still fully clothed, and knelt before the woman, kissing her thighs, then her hips, until her movements became ones that Juvielle recognised, though she had never witnessed them before. The woman gently placed one hand on Reflection’s head as Reflection pleasured her, but the woman’s eyes never left Juvielle’s.

“All can be yours,” came a soft, but somehow still crisp voice from behind Juvielle. From the bed. Juvielle spun, pulling her slick fingers from beneath her ceinture fléchée, and lowering her other hand from under her tunic. The woman from the mirror was seated on the bed, legs crossed demurely at the ankles, wearing the most marvellous gown Juvielle had ever seen; it sparkled like sunlight on fresh snow. Aside from her position and clothing, though, she was the woman in the reflection.

“Queen Nechta!” Juvielle’s face grew hot with shame, and certainly some lingering lust. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all!

“Why do you call me that?” The woman regarded her with an almost predatory calm.

Juvielle was confused, “A–are you not Queen Nechta? The Ice Queen? The Lady of Winter?”

The woman blinked slowly and tilted her head to one side, studying. “Those are all names given to me. By the fearful.” The tiniest hint of a smile. “You are not fearful.”

Juvielle tried to steady herself, though the need remained, buzzing around her head and muddying her thoughts. She’d prepared a speech. “I am Juvielle Wode, Greenwhisper of Froatburn Dell and Little Stoneleaf. I have come to beg your aid.”

“I know what a Greenwhisper is,” she said. “None have come in some time.” The Queen paused, her thoughts impossible to read. “The last one turned back at the high ridge. I wondered about her. Did she find what she sought by other means? Or did she simply learn to live without it?”

“I can’t turn back.”

The queen inclined her chin—approval? “No, you cannot.” She directed her attention to another mirror, just a flicker, but it was enough to cause Juvielle to look as well. Within, Juvielle’s reflection lay naked, glistening with sweat, in the very centre of the bed while Queen Nechta caressed her. One hand twisted and teased Juvielle’s nipples while the other curled beneath her sex. Juvielle could not see exactly what the queen was doing, but she could imagine, had done it for herself often enough. Mirror-Queen brought her lips to Reflection’s other breast, lips parting—“All can be yours,” the queen repeated, drawing Juvielle’s attention back to her. “You would not see, if you did not desire it.”

Juvielle expected another wave of shame, but instead she felt… welcomed? Understood? Needed? “My queen, please. I do! I want that, but my people, I must help them! Please!”

The queen rose slowly from the bed; her movements were menacing elegance. She walked slowly to Juvielle, stopping only when her breasts pressed against Juvielle’s collar-bones. Juvielle fingered her ceinture fléchée nervously. It had protected her all this way, but would its magic work now?

The queen gave it no notice. “There is no choice.” Juvielle gasped, panic gripping her heart, but the queen continued. “All can be yours.” Understanding came to Juvielle so quickly she stumbled back a half step.

“An early thaw, hidden stores will be found; I will take none from Little Stoneleaf this year, Greenwhisper.”

Juvielle laughed as she had not laughed these last six seasons! “Thank you, my queen!” But before she could say more, the queen held a finger to Juvielle’s lips. Her eyes flickered to the mirrors once more, then back Juvielle. “Linger here. For a time.” Juvielle understood this to be a request, an invitation, possibly a promise.

“I will return, my queen,” Juvielle said softly as she finished packing her supplies for the hike home.

“My true name, Greenwhisper. Talvra. I await you.”

Knotty