#fantasy high family tree

[queencaramilflinda]

I made an updated version of the Fantasy High family tree/relationship chart as of episode 13 of Junior Year. I will update as the season continues. Details about methodology/FAQ under the cut.

Methodology/FAQ:

I use the term dating extremely loosely. People who have hooked up or just said casually they were dating even if only vaguely true were included under this category for simplicity.

"You forgot XYZ" I left out a few specific types of people (described below), but if there is anyone who falls outside of these categories that I forgot feel free to lmk!

I only included relationships that were explicitly canon. Nothing only implied or hinted at was charted

I did not include any relationships that are one off comments or bits that were never followed up on

I did not include any relationships with weird consent issues (I.E. Fig and the adult men she kissed or Riz and Baron)

Tertiary characters (such as the parents of NPC significant others) were not included due to distance from main family tree and wanting to keep the diagram from getting too cluttered

Sklonda and Gorthalax have not been mentioned to be dating within junior year as far as I can remember, so I put a question mark between them

I KNOW I MISPELLED DIGBYS NAME I AM SORRY

[shitpostingkats]

As someone who works with dogs, I feel compelled to tell you that Kristen’s comment of “What are you, four dogs?” upon hearing Kipperlily Copperkettle’s name is SO REAL.

[twinstxrs]

there’s something so personal about the scene in fantasy high s1e7 where gorgug calls himself stupid & fabian, who up to that point had basically entirely been acting like the bad kids (especially gorgug) were beneath him & had also been the one calling ragh stupid two lines ago, instantly says “okay, do not put yourself down like that. don’t you dare do that to yourself.” like it was obvious he liked the bad kids at that point but the instinct to protect his friends manifesting as an immediate strong refusal of gorgug’s self-deprecating talk kills me. that boy loves his friends so bad oh my god i feel sick.

[to-be-a-dreamer]

I will never know peace until the Bad Kids are all legally siblings in some way via Jawbone adoption and/or their parents’ insane polycule. Idk how Gorgug gets involved there but his parents are canonically swingers so he can be a step sibling in spirit if not by law.

[undeadswineart]

baddass goblins

[cosmicrhetoric]

seriously considering reading the ponniyin selvan books but getting a translation where i am of all five million books in the series is looking really expensive 😔

[sturnsdarling]

save a horse...

you and Matt go to a ranch for your anniversary and end up finding an old abandoned barn, taking the perfect opportunity to live your true wild west fantasy.

vibe check: smutty fluff, cowgirl position (obvi), public (kind of) sex

3k words

A/N: it hurts to write my dreams instead of living them. anyways the idea of cowboy!matt makes me feel a bit wobbly in the knees so this is my version of that, this fic is dedicated to the one and only cas (@sturnioz) because she, and I quote, 'loves this shit'

love and cigs, merc

It was yours and Matts year anniversary, you were driving through the South West, Matts hand on your thigh as you drove towards the ranch you had found as a surprise for him.

It was huge, an old family run ranch in the middle of nowhere. Recently, Matt had been on a kick about reconnecting with nature so, with your anniversary coming up you thought a long weekend in a ranch would be perfect for him to live out his cowboy dreams.

When you got there,

the family that rented it out was welcoming and lovely, showing you both the little house you'd be staying in for the weekend. It was an old converted barn, all the old wood work still intact and the furnishings being very on theme for yours and Matts 'wild west' weekend.

It was perfect, and the look on Matts face when he saw the cracks of light seeping through the cracking wood walls made everything worth it.

Once you guys had dropped off your stuff,

you and Matt decided to wander around the grounds and find a nice spot to have a picnic. After a while of walking about and taking photos of the beautiful scenery, you noticed a large tree a little ways walk from where you were, telling Matt it was the perfect spot and he agreed, looping his arm over your shoulder and leading you both to the tree.

When you sat down,

Matt laid down your picnic blanket and told you to sit down, saying he'd get everything ready and that you didn't have to do anything. You complied, watching as he unpacked everything, the bright orange sun illuminating his beautiful face perfectly.

"I can feel you starin' at me, you know" Matt smirked, pulling to plastic wine glasses out the basket followed by a bottle of root beer.

"i'm not staring, i'm admiring" you corrected him.

Matt chuckled, shaking his head and turning to face you, hooking a soft finger under your chin and pulling your head up to him. He pressed a tender kiss on your glossy lips, slotting his mouth between yours perfectly. You let out a satisfied hum into the kiss, relishing in the feeling of his lips on yours.

Matt pulled away and opened the bottle of soda, he held it out to you like a waiter holding wine and made a fancy, silly face, "will this do, your highness" he spoke in a posh English accent.

you giggled, nodding and trying to pull a serious face, "yes, that will do nicely" you mimicked his tone.

Matt chuckled and poured you a cup of soda before pouring his own, holding it out to you to cheers before sitting down next to you on the blanket.

You were facing the horizon, watching as the sun began to set, leaving the sky a hazy orange and pink swirl of colours. You rested your head on Matts shoulder and he turned to place a soft kiss on your hair.

"happy anniversary, beautiful" Matt said, softly.

You lifted your head, resting your chin on his shoulder as he looked down at you, batting your lashes at him as you gazed at him, "happy anniversary, my love"

He smiled, placing a soft kiss on your lips before turning back to face the sunset.

You stayed there for a while, eating, laughing and enjoying each others company. The sun was still setting, and you were laying on Matts chest, peppering soft kisses all over his face as he chuckled beneath you. You were giggling the whole time, loving how he let you shower him with love like you so desperately wanted to twenty four seven. Matt placed his large hands on your hips, flipping you both over so he was on top of you. You giggled at the swift movement, and Matt hovered over you, watching in awe at the way your face lit up when you laughed.

Your giggles subsided, and you looked up to Matt, who's eyes were flitting between yours and your lips. You looked to his plump lips, and bit down on your bottom lip at the sight of him looking at you as if you were the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

Matt craned his head down, pressing his lips against yours with a firm hand on your jaw. You wrapped your arms around his neck, deepening the kiss with a swipe of your tongue against his lip. He accepted your invitation and pressed his warm tongue against yours, absentmindedly grinding his hips down into yours as you hooked one leg around his waist.

Everything was perfect, you were in a beautiful place, with a beautiful boy, making out on a picnic blanket like sneaky teenagers trying to get some alone time in the wild west.

Once the sun had begun to slip under the horizon, you decided to do some more exploring before heading back to where you were staying.

On your adventure, you guys had spotted an old barn, it was falling apart at the seams and looked as if no one had touched it in years.

"we have to go see inside" you said, pulling Matt towards the old barn with your hand in his.

He followed you, letting you lead him town the dry hill towards the large old structure.

You reached the doors, pulling on the old lock slightly as it basically crumbled in your hand. Matt reached above your head, pulling the door open and letting you walk in.

It was like a time capsule, bails of old hay everywhere, old horse riding equipment and a beat up tractor in the middle.

"this is so cool" Matt said, looking around in awe.

You were just looking at him, watching his face light up with every new thing he noticed. You did a full lap of the barn, and didn't take your eyes off him once, just letting him guide you about with his fingers locked between yours.

"y'staring again, baby" He chuckled, turning to face you, placing his hands round your waist and pulling you into him.

you looped your hands around his neck, "admiring" you corrected him again, brushing your lips over his.

Matt pulled you into him, capturing your lips in a kiss that was quick to become desperate. His warm tongue pressed and pushed against yours as your hands found the tangled curls at the back of his head. His hand snuck down to your ass, gripping and squeezing at the flesh over your flowery sundress. Matt walked you backwards towards the bails of hay, laying you down gently on top of them without breaking the kiss.

He laid you down, one hand on your face and the other on your thigh as he looped your leg around his waist. Matt ground his hips down onto yours, pressing his growing cock against your pussy as your dress fell bunched around your waist. You whimpered into the kiss, tugging at Matts hair and pulling him closer into you with your leg.

Matts hand wandered up your leg, pushing your dress further up with his soft hands as his hand edged impossibly close to where the two of you connected. He pressed and kneaded at your skin as he ground his hips down into your core, hard and slowly, chasing his own friction just as much as he was trying to help you chase yours.

You whined into Matts mouth once more, biting down on his lip and bucking your hips into his. Matt chuckled, breaking the kiss and pulling away from you slightly.

"so needy" He muttered, lips still brushing yours.

"you like it when I'm needy" you pretended to sulk, earning a smile from Matt

Matt nodded, quickly pressing his lips to yours once more, "I love it, baby, y'so sexy when you're all desperate f'me" Matt smirked.

You let out a satisfied hum and kissed him again, this time, just after kissing you back for a moment, Matt began to trail is lips down your neck and along your chest, pulling at the bust of your dress with delicate fingers to expose your hard nipple to him. He locked his mouth around it, sucking down before biting it between his teeth, toothing the sting with another warm press of his tongue.

Your back arched into him, your head falling back onto the hay with a small moan. Matt made his way down your body, watching as you arched into his touch, bunching your dress around your hips and coming to eye level with your already soaked folds. Matt groaned at the sight when he saw you weren't wearing any underwear, his mind reeling at the thought of you not wearing any all day.

Your folds glistened for him, and he swiped a gentle finger over your core, earning a soft moan from your lips as you bucked your hips, chasing the feeling.

"so pretty and perfect" Matt uttered, his breath hot over your pussy as he edged impossibly close.

He wanted to tease you, he really did, but the sight of you like this for him, in a pretty sundress, spread open in an old barn with cowgirl boots on and no underwear, Matt was desperate to taste you.

Matt pressed a soft kiss against your slick folds, brushing his thumb over your puffy clit as his tongue dipped into your sopping hole. Your hands found his hair, pressing gentle fingers into his scalp as he began to lap at your pussy.

A soft, breathy moan left your lips, your legs coming to hang over his shoulders, boots wrapped behind his head as he groaned at the taste of you on his tongue.

"fuck, Matt, that feels so good" you moaned, head rolling on its hinge as your eyes fluttered shut.

Matt hummed in response, the vibrations making you clench around nothing as he continued to lap and kiss at your pussy, his nose brushing against your clit periodically, sending bouts of shivers up your spine every time.

It was blissful, his slow pace making your whole body tingle as you moaned his name, unable to stop the noises that left your mouth. He was bringing you to eye watering orgasm with just his mouth, working you so slow and tenderly, his steady pace making your stomach tense and your legs tighten around his head. You were a whimpering mess, moaning his name over and over again as you approached your high on his tongue.

it was as if Matt had a sixth sense that was tuned into your body, knowing exactly when you were going to cum without having to be told. He kept his pace, lapping softly at your pussy, driving you to a piercing orgasm. You were seeing stars, releasing your cum all over his mouth as you ground your hips against his face desperately.

Matt continued his pressure against your pussy, helping you ride out your orgasm. Your hands found his jaw, and you pulled at him, dragging him away from your pussy and whimpering as you pulled him upwards to you. Matt chuckled, crawling up your body and following your request as you pulled him down into you, kissing him with feverish need.

"see how good you taste, baby?" Matt spoke into your mouth.

You whined into the kiss, and Matt flipped you both over, so you were on top of him, sopping pussy pressed against the rough material of his jeans. He toyed with the fabric of your dress, pushing his hands under the material and pressing bruises into your skin as you ground down onto him, kissing him like he was oxygen and you were struggling to breathe.

You moved your kisses down his neck, inching your hands down the buttons of his shirt. You expertly unbuttoned his flannel, his bare chest exposed to you as you pushed it open, leaving it loose on his arms. You arched into him as you peppered wet kisses down his stubble ridden jaw, down his neck and across his chest. You were crawling down his body, your tongue inching closer and closer to the little trail of hair that led to your favourite thing.

You paused as you reached his bulge, palming him through his jeans as you looked up at him through your lashes. You fiddled with his belt, Matt helping you remove his jeans and boxers in one swift movement. His leaking cock slapped against his stomach, the sight of it making your mouth water as Matts gentle hand found your jaw, moving to the back of your head to take a handful of your hair.

You took Matts length in your hand, pumping him slowly as you hovered your mouth over his leaking tip. His head hung back, jaw slack as a soft moan left his lips.

You wrapped your lips around him, lowering your head down his length with a flat tongue against his stiff length. Matts grip on your hair tightened, him fighting every muscle in his body not to fuck into your mouth, wanting to let you do your thing that you did so well. You began to bob your head up and down against him, hollowing your cheeks out as you let him bottom out in your throat.

Matt gently guided your head down onto him, pressing his hips against your lips as you gagged around him.

"fuck, baby, your mouth feels s'good" Matt said breathlessly, letting you continue to bob up and down on him.

You hummed around him, the vibration sending a jolt up his spine as he softly bucked his hips into your mouth. Your hand came up to his balls, cupping him with a tender pressure, a throaty moan escaped his lips at the sensation, his eyes fluttering closed as he let you work your mouth over him.

Pools of saliva gathered at the corners of your mouth, your throat opening to take his whole length as you flattened your tongue against him, the thick vein running up his cock tickling your taste buds as you lost yourself in the motion.

Matts stomach began to tighten, legs twitching periodically and you knew his was close. Before he could unload in your mouth, you pulled off him completely with a pop, earning a desperate whine from Matt who's head shot up at the feeling of your mouth no longer around him.

"why'd you stop?" he whined, eyes trained on your glistening mouth.

you chuckled, rising to straddle him, pumping his wet and sticky cock from behind you as you lined yourself up with his tip.

"I wanna ride you, cowboy" you said seductively, swiping his cock through your puffy folds.

Matt groaned at you taking control, loving when you rode him and loving it even more when you called him silly nicknames like that. He attempted to muster up a witty reply, but his train of thought was cut off by your gummy walls clenching around him as you lowered yourself onto his cock.

Matt let out a blissful sigh, eyes closing at the sensation of being nestled in your warm pussy. You bit down on your lip as he entered you, bringing your hands to rest on his chest as small whimpers left your throat, instinctively grinding your clit down against the small scattering of hair at the base of his cock.

Matts eyes fluttered open, locking with yours as he took in the sight above him, one hand finding your hip as the other tucked behind his head. He loved you like this, needy and desperate to make him feel good, and the sight of you, tits hanging out your dress as it laid bunched up around your hips, steadily bouncing up and down his hard cock, made his head spin.

You leaned forward slightly, pressing your body weight against Matts chest though your palms and you began to shift your ass up and down, dragging your tight walls over his cock as you milked him.

Matts grip on your hip was bruising, him holding you steady as you rode him. His lip was tucked between his perfect teeth, relishing in the sight of you fucking him. Your eyes were closed in pure pleasure, the stretch of your pussy around his cock making you feel lightheaded. His hand came to your ass, kneading at the flesh under your dress, he smacked the fleshy fat, soothing the sting with a massaging touch before repeating his action, spanking you as you bounced on him.

His spanks egged you on, making you feel all the more confident. You opened your eyes and smiled down at him, lip tight between your teeth.

"you look so good like this, pretty girl" He cheesed at you, shaking his head in disbelief that you were his.

You smiled at him, blushing slightly at the compliment as you picked up your pace, causing Matt to moan, his eyes closing as his head craned back into the hay.

"cum inside me, Matt, please, cum for me whilst I ride you" you muttered, your words coming out accompanied by moans, his dick hitting your gummy g-spot as you fucked down onto him harder.

Matt let out a guttural groan, pulling his hand from behind his head and palming your tit, his fingers pressing bruises into your flesh as he maintained heavy eye contact with you though his low hanging lashes.

You picked up your pace, shifting so you were rested on the bottoms of your feet, knees tight against your chest as you fucked him at a relentless pace. Matt couldn't control the noises that left his throat at the new position, the angle letting him hit a deeper spot inside you, your walls tight around his cock as he began to fuck up into you, matching your pace.

The moan that left you was throaty, eyes rolling to the back of your head as Matts balls slapped against your ass with every thrust of his hips, meeting you in the middle as you rode him.

Matts movements began to falter, breathy moans leaving his lips as he kneaded at any exposed flesh of yours he could. You were clenching hard around him, moaning his name, begging him to cum.

He didn't need to be told twice, his hand moved up to cup your jaw, pulling you own into a sloppy kiss as he pressed his cock base deep inside of you, his hips stuttering as he released spurts of white, warm cup into your perfect pussy, filling you up just like you asked. He bit down on your lip as the last remnants of his cum left his tip, coating his dick as you continued to fuck down onto him.

"I love you" he breathed into your open mouth, his whole body relaxing back into the hay.

You followed suit, letting your body weight drop down onto him as the ache of your thighs became instantly prominent, "I love you too" you muttered.

You were both spent, Matt pulling out of you with a hiss as you slumped down onto him, one leg by his side and the other over his hips. He pressed a long kiss into your hair, trailing soft tickles over your arm as you nestled into him, catching your breath on his chest.

The sun was fully set, and the light of the moon was creeping through the cracks in the battered barn walls. Crickets began to chirp outside, the night time wild life coming alive outside the barn doors.

It was a perfect end to a perfect day, and without meaning to, you both fell asleep on the hay, tangled up in one another in the warm embrace of the warm western air.

taglist: @sturniozalt@mattslolita@shaquilles-0atmeal@blahbel668@sleepysturniolo@le4hsblog @sarosfilms @joemamaaa42069 @2muchofaslvt @seluky10 @cherib3lla @jetaimevous

[strongtowerluxuryapartments]

figueroth and sandra lynn faeth; daughter and mother // dimension 20: fantasy high

fantasy high: junior year - a very merry moonar yulenear // lady bird, 2017 // ijeoma umebinyuo - questions for ada // alexuma // wych elm - susan smith // joan tierney - the elektra complex // fantasy high: sophomore year - hellbound // imma_slytherin - fig the unfaithable and the summer sads // nora kasten // honeytuesday // fantasy high: junior year - untapped rage // ethel cain - family tree (intro) // lynn emanuel - single girl. one room flat.

[madamabelladonna]

𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐀𝐭 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫 - 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝: House Dayne of Starfall, bearing the sigil of a white falling star and a sword on a field of lavender. Though sparse in men and coin, House Dayne is renowned as one of the oldest in Westeros. Sworn to House Martell, under the decree of their liege lord, Lord Julius Dayne dispatched the Sword of the Morning, his second son, Ser Merek Dayne, along with his only daughter, to King’s Landing as emissaries of Dorne. Little did they know, the twinkle of a star could ignite the passions of men, dragons, and wolves alike. 𝐓𝐚𝐠𝐬: Romance, Angst, Love Triangle, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Drama, Coming-of-Age, Explicit Content, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT, Violence, Gore, War, Reader eating cheerios with Luke and Helaena while Jace, Cregan, and Aemond duke it out 𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬: Jacaerys Velaryon x Reader, Aemond Targaryen x Reader, Cregan Stark x Reader

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐈: 𝐄𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐃𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐞 Young Lady Dayne never truly grasped what it meant to be a high-born lady; her mother and father had sheltered her from the vipers lurking in the shadows. Yet, as fate would have it, their protection could only shield her for so long before she was cast into a den brimming with treachery. Green or Black? The choice is hers, but she finds herself drawn to the hue of violet…

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐈𝐈: 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐲𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐬 Young Lady Dayne, finds herself adjusting to her new life at the capital. A gift from Starfall, a steed with a mane like freshly fallen snow. As she immerses herself in the pages of her books, a small figure unexpectedly scampers into her chamber—a boy lost in the game of hide and seek. She finds herself teaching the boy how to read. Only to be seated in the company of Princess Rhaenyra and her small family, sharing a quiet tea.

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐈𝐈𝐈: 𝐀𝐝𝐦𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐀𝐟𝐚𝐫 Young Lady Dayne, awaiting Jacaerys' lesson's end, enjoys tea with Princess Rhaenyra, who grants her access to the Royal Library due to her rare gifts. As she reads beneath the heart tree, a prince in green watches her, sparking jealousy within the eldest son of Rhaenyra. With Jacaerys' eighth name day nearing, their growing relationship seems to be all the court can talk about.

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐈𝐕: 𝐁𝐚𝐧𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐖𝐡𝐬𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬 Young Lady Dayne captivated the feast held by King Viserys in honor of his grandson, her presence and dance stirring much interest among the court. The murmurs of a possible union between the Seven Kingdoms and The Principality of Dorne swirled in the air, though beneath the revelry, rumors threatened to unravel such hopes.

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐕: 𝐎𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐧 𝐈𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐲 Young Lady Dayne knew survival in the Red Keep required more than caution—it demanded influence. After keeping her distance from Jacaerys, she finally accepted his apology, truly forgiving him. But as he left, she realized it might be long before she saw him again. In his place, a prince in green awaited.

[More in pending...]

This is my first post so I hope you like it, personally, House Dayne is my favorite and I hope it gets more recognition in the next book.

Taglist: (If you want to be added, please click here)

@yohanseyebrowmole @radiantdanvers @accidentpronedork @marvel-mistress-padawan @tabathastan @deltamoon666 @hotdhoe @cosmosnkaz @dragonamongwolves @r-3dlips @ghizlana @boiolay @gardenfaeries @ilymoonie @mellylla @omgsuperstarg @idohknow @beskardroids @buckystevelove @plainxlazy @gwaynehightower @beebeechaos @milksde @saintkittykat @cornbreadwithcheese @pinkb00bsocks @agoldenwoe @moonliightbabes @day2dream @geminizmoonz

[izzabela]

Hi! could you please write bi-han headcanons w fem reader that is a lot shorter than him? Thank you for noticing ❤️

Short Glass of Water - Bi Han x short!fem!reader (headcanons)

in which your height gets you into certain scenarios

a/n: i'm 5'3 and my bf is 6', so i will be basing these things from reality too

ship[s]: bi han x short!fem!reader

warning(s): MDNI LATER ON (you'll see the tag)

- short!fem!reader is but 5' tall. Bi Han is imagine is roughly 6'. if not, 6'1

- short!fem!reader often gets lost in crowds of people. i mean it. you'll separate from Bi Han for a second to look at something pretty, next thing you know he's hollering your name while Lin Kuei warriors are hopping roofs for you

- short!fem!reader is not allowed to leave his side anymore after that

- short!fem!reader likes to call Bi Han to get things for her when it's too high. Bi Han pretends to be annoyed over it, but he actually loves it

- short!fem!reader hates when Bi Han holds objects over her head, or use his full wingspan to keep objects away from her

- Bi Han likes your height because he loves your eyes. big, round, doll-like eyes that look up at him with so much love and adoration

- short!fem!reader likes the date nights out because she feels the bodyguard privileges. she loves the security of how big Bi Han is (also plays into her fantasies)

- short!fem!reader gets the softest headpats from Bi Han. especially when they cuddle. he strokes your hair softly, kind of like someone does to a newborn kitty

- short!fem!reader can reach places Bi Han can't, especially when you guys are being playful. you almost gave him a heart attack once when you hid at the top of the family tree in the garden

- short!fem!reader cannot hug Bi Han around the neck. To compensate, Bi Han carries her up so her legs wrap around his waist and she can wrap her arms around his neck. She especially loves to nuzzle into the warmth his thick neck provides

-MDNI FROM HERE ON OUT-

- short!fem!reader loves it when Bi Han mentions their obvious size difference, thats how you get the kink in the first place. things like "you enjoy feeling every part of me in your little body, huh doll?" or "do you feel that? how big i get just for you, doll?"

- his muscles. short!fem!reader loves his muscles to the point where hickiss are littered all over his arms and back. huge back muscles and biceps specked with deep red hickies

- short!fem!reader absolutely adores the way Bi Han manhandles her. the tight grip he has on her waist, the way he just throws her leg over his shoulder, or tosses her onto the bed before the love-making begins

- short!fem!reader also enjoys the spanking. she loves the roughness that Bi Han gives her in bed because he's so gentle with her in the day. she likes the bruises, the semi-temporary reminders of their nightly activities

- short!fem!reader goes gaga over kneeling in front of Bi Han. it kind of plays into the size kink she has, but can you blame her? there's power in Bi Hans eyes as she takes his entire girth, eyes locked on his as she skillfully bobs, licks, and sucks her personal "popsicle" up (and Bi Han loves it just as much)

- short!fem!reader also goes nuts over the dirty talk, by the way. During doggy, as Bi Han practically drills into your wet cunt as he looms over you, nipping your ear as he whispers the dirtiest of things. things like "you're taking me so well, doll" or "do you like how i reach around you perfectly, gripping your throat as you beg for more?"

- short!fem!reader loves how Bi Han can use only one arm when lifting you up. when you two stand during sex, he grips your thigh with one hand while the other is tweaking your nip as you feel the head of his cock abuse the beginning of your cervix

- and oh, short!fem!reader can't get enough of Bi Han pressing his hand on her belly, the pressure of it as his cock hits the perfect spot makes her speechless. she loses all thought as the feeling of Bi Han's length fills her

=====================

something something Bi Han and his size kink

short and sweet, thanks for the req! im writing another one about kung lao and i think you guys will like it

see yall in the next fic!

[archer-antiope]

latest addition to the bonkers fantasy high family tree dropped: gilear's many-greats grandfather resides within the chest of lydia, the roommate of his daughter, ex-wife, ex-wife's new partner, and their many foster children who are students at the school he vice-principals

[queencaramilflinda]

Fantasy High Junior Year is over, so here is the updated version of the Bad Kids extended family tree/relationship chart! It is extremely complicated. This was a wild ride to make, but I have listed an FAQ/explanation of my methodology below the cut.

Methodology/FAQ:

"You forgot XYZ" I left out a few specific types of people (described below), but if there is anyone who falls outside of these categories that I forgot feel free to lmk!

I only included relationships that were explicitly canon. Nothing only implied or hinted at was charted

I did not include any relationships that are one off comments/scenes or bits that were never followed up on

I did not include any relationships with weird consent issues (I.E. Fig and the adult men she kissed or Riz and Baron)

Tertiary characters (such as the parents of NPC significant others) were not included due to distance from main family tree and wanting to keep the diagram from getting too cluttered

I couldn't figure out how to represent Garthy being the child of a former incarnation of Ayda so I just left it off

Sklonda and Gorthalax have not been mentioned to be dating within junior year as far as I can remember, so I put a question mark between them

It was implied Kristen and Tracker might get back together, so I put a question mark between them

searching how to include a clone in a family tree yielded no helpful results, so I did my best with K2

Similarly, trying to represent a failed polyamorous relationship between Sandralynn and the Dawns was difficult

[shy-sapphic-ace]

List of queer books I read, loved & recommend!

(There isn't any particular order, I wrote these as I remembered them)

Master Of One - Jaida Jones & Dani Bennett (mlm, fantasy, very cool worldbuilding and magic system, funny, cool characters)

Legends & Lattes - Travis Baldree (wlw, fantasy, very soft & chill vibes)

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon (wlw, high fantasy, cool worldbuilding, kinda reminds me of LOTR but with more dragons and feminism and lesbians)

Even Though I Knew The End - C.L. Polk (wlw, supernatural noir, cool 1930s detective story with angels & demons, I loved this one!)

The Love Interest - Cale Dietrich (mlm, science fiction, very cool concept)

The Darkest Part Of The Forest - Holly Black (side mlm, fantasy, cool fae lore)

The Weight Of The Stars - K. Ancrum (wlw, not quite science fiction but space stuff is involved, lovely and complex characters)

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz (mlm, fiction, very nice in general, there is also a sequel)

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - Mackenzi Lee (mlm, historical and vaguely fantasy, nice story but I preferred the sequel honestly)

The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy - Mackenzi Lee (wlw, the sequel to the one before, more fantasy elements than the first, asexual main character!!)

Gallant - V.E. Schwab (no romance, but in the background one of the characters(?) uses they/them pronouns, very cool dark fantasy vibe)

Stranger Than Fanfiction - Chris Colfer (gay main character, trans main character, coming-of-age, nice book)

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (yes it's the Love, Simon book, mlm, fiction, pretty nice)

They Both Die At The End - Adam Silvera (mlm, sci-fi ish but mostly fiction, cool ideas, but the ending is sad! Very amazing book though, I haven't read the prequel yet)

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid (wlw, bi main character, historical fiction, cool story, just a neat book in general)

This Is How You Lose The Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (wlw, sci-fi, very cool time travel stuff!! and very beautiful, it felt like reading poetry most of the time)

One Last Stop - Casey McQuinston (wlw, background trans & pan & queer characters, sci-fi or fantasy idk, but time travel, I loooved this book, great)

The House In The Cerulean Sea - TJ Klune (mlm, fantasy, THIS BOOK oh my gosh you should read it!!, just cute and lovely and good)

Under The Whispering Door - TJ Klune (mlm, fantasy, this book is also sooo amazing, great character development and awesome relationships and stuff, it's been a while since I read it but it was so good)

In the Lives of Puppets - TJ Klune (mlm, ace main character!!, sci-fi, now THIS is found family, oughh feelings. argh, tj klune you’ve done it again, a human and his family of funky robots… I love them)

And They Lived... - Steven Salvatore (nblm, fiction, about gender identity and learning to love yourself, read it a while ago but it was very nice)

I Wish You All The Best - Mason Deaver (nblm, fiction, about finding your identity and people who care about you, very cute and sweet)

The Song Of Achilles - Madeleine Miller (mlm, historical, very good in general)

Carry On - Rainbow Rowell (mlm, background wlw in the third book, fantasy, it's a trilogy, basically Harry Potter if it was gay and also better)

Silver In The Wood - Emily Tesh (mlm, fantasy, very pretty, lots of fae stuff and lovely descriptions, it has a really good sequel too)

Pretty much anything by Alice Oseman (all cute and lovely and great, though I've only read Radio Silence so far I hear only good things, Solitaire is on my to-read list)

I Kissed Shara Wheeler - Casey McQuinston (wlw, fiction, it's been a while but I liked this book)

The Falling In Love Montage - Ciara Smyth (wlw, fiction, this book was so cute and funny and deeply emotional it made me Feel way too many things, I'd definitely recommend it)

What Big Teeth - Rose Szabo (a bit of queerness all around, fantasy, werewolves and monsters, this one was pretty cool!, lots of original ideas for the world/character building)

His Quiet Agent - Ada Maria Soto (mlm, asexual, fiction, about like spies but this book was so gentle and sweet I wanted to cry in the best way possible)

Some By Virtue Fall - Alexandra Rowland (wlw, historical fiction(?), theatre drama!! rival romance!! duels!!, a very good read in general)

Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend - Emma R. Alban (wlw, historical fiction, I’m not usually one for regency romances, but I really liked this!!, very cute and lots of drama, and there’s a sequel coming out soon!)

[diejager]

what would eldritch reader vs some other eldritch person look like?

[A cheese wheel has been added to your inventory.]

[A cheese wheel has been consumed.]

Opposition Cw: blood, gore, death, cannibalism?, tell me if I missed any.

Despite old-age rivalries and ancient hostilities, to fight a Lord for One’s territory, the bloodshed and animosity shared between many, and the death of a ruling, primordial being, they had forgone the older ways, taken to learn and study humans and monsters alike, especially the sudden emergence of hybrids, a perfect cross between human and monster, one that rivalled the flawlessness of Old Ones. You were one of those that sought change, to live and prosper farther than in their imagination, their faith and their fear. You wanted something substantial, tangible under your clawed, see thing you could taste and touch, more than the pleas and cries.

Most had left their territory, travelling wherever the wind blew, some ventured far and high, drifting from the country they were born to new colonies —the Caribbean or the Thirteen Colonies in the West of the great Monopolies of the 17th centuries. You rarely strayed outside familiar lands, presiding over a small stretch of land in Europe, it was familiar, comfort. It was a decision many agreed with, those you crossed would peer at you, a subtle nod of their head and they’d be gone, vanishing when someone broke your contact; gone along the wind, leaving only a whisper of their existence in monstrous words too high for human and monster ears.

Perhaps that’s why it felt odd to fight another one after centuries of peaceful coexistence, to throw yourself into the fray, broad and towering over the trees, beak snapping at the canidae entity and talons gripping their paws, claws threatening to rip into your feathered body. You felt stretched, rusted with joints creaking and bones groaning, too old and too tired. This Entity was young, a few centuries old, with a wolf-like appearance and a character that fit a mutt more than it would a being of such prestige. They were chaotic, acting recklessly and without thought, you needn’t ask it their age, it was written all over the scarless skin and brutish acts.

Rather than fighting for land, coveting wealth and fine metals that humans loved with greedy hands, you took on the wolf for protection, the ward of your small family, under a dozen with years of bloodshed and violence under their belt. The 141 had a mastery in different skills, utilizing what they did best to push on, to fight and survive to see the next sunrise, but even hybrids had limits, where their great feats and insurmountable reputation were useless against something of old; be it young or primordial, Eldritch beings had little predator, prey to their own kind but rarely from another.

You clashed with the Wolf, standing on muscular, hind legs ruffled with dirtied fur, blood staining the greyish hair; a strong tail swaying carelessly, cutting trees down with a rough swing; a well-defined abdomen painted with a tribal tattoo, gleaming with a gold light, portraying the image of a holy symbole on a blasphemous being; sculpted arms holding back your own feathered ones, hands bleeding from your talons; and a wide mouth, silver teeth bared in a loud growl, the sound near deafening to you. It was strong and well-trained for something born in times of peace, body built to it’s peak and mind sharpened to ignore every distraction, but you were from the old, racking up more experience and wisdom it could only dream of wielding.

You were defending the LZ, standing between the Wolf and it’s mission of killing those it could kill, beings weaker than it. The only thorn in their mission was you, the lone Entity that engaged it. The Wolf hadn’t been told that the TF had an Old One, primeval in every sense. It struggled against you, your more monstrous figure compared to their tamed one, their creation stemming from some wild fantasy of the Middle Ages, when France feared the human eating wolf.

You screeched as loudly as it growled, voice gaining in force, a cacophony of screams and cries slipping from your tongue, the fears and terror of beings that brought you to life. Spreading your second pair of limbs, you slashed at it, digging into the soft skin of it’s abdomen, tearing away fibres of muscle and warm fat. It yowled, struggling to pull away, frantic at your shift of tactic —fearful that you decided to attack than defend your group. It stood on the single probability that you wouldn’t engage, preferring to protect than fight with the risk of endangering your family.

The Wolf would die today. Your grip was unyielding, keeping it in this situation however much it tried to squirm away, hands prisoners of your first pair of wings and chest bleeding from your second. Before long, it would be another body added to your count, cooling and gutted on the forest ground. You swung your tail around them, wrapping once around their slim waist, adding further leverage over it while you dug their intestines out. The strong stench of blood, metallic and tempting, filled the air, bringing fearful tears to the Wolf’s eyes, beady, yellow eyes growing hazy.

You revelled in it’s slow death, your thirst for violence growing with the ages of peace, strung tight like an itch that bothered you incessantly. You hungered, you couldn’t remember the taste of Eldritch meat, the rich ambrosia in the veins or the last whip of their dying breath. Your beak cracked open, white teeth gleaming inside your black mouth until they were dirtied, stained red with the blood of an Entity, you clamped down on it’s neck, breaking the rough skin with enough force to shatter bone, but the Wolf had tough bone. That would only prolong it’s suffering, the pain feeding you as much as the meat and bone would —a delicacy of the ages. You wonder how König and Ghost would think of Eldritch flesh.

You wouldn’t need to eat for another month after this buffet.

Taglist: @warenai @capricorn-anon @sae1kie @yeoldedumbslut @tallmanlover @distracteddragoness @vxnilla-hxrddrugs @konigsblog @havoc973 @im-making-an-effort @daisychainsinknots @0alk0msan @danielle143

[amerricanartwork]

RW Headcanon: Know the Difference! | An Overview of Quetzalli's Slugcats

Here’s a headcanon I’ve wanted to elaborate on for a while, and today I finally felt compelled to make it real! Also, just a disclaimer I am not a huge biology nerd nor have I studied it that heavily, so I apologize if something here doesn’t make sense or if I get something wrong. I just like fantasy worldbuilding from time to time, and I always like trying to make sense of things I’m interested in!

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Basically, I’m in the crowd that interprets slugcats as mustelids rather than literal slugs. When I say this, however I don’t mean that slugcats would necessarily be classified in the actual mustelidae family, seeing as Rain World’s world is most-likely not Earth and therefore our taxonomic classifications and phylogenetic relations can’t necessarily apply. Thus, when I call them “mustelids”, I really just mean that I imagine them as some kind of weasel with all the necessary physical traits to earn that general label. 

The first half of the name “slugcat”, in my headcanon, is thus not referring to any literal connection to slugs or other mollusks, but is instead derived simply from their appearance. Due to their long ears and thick tail, and because their fur and fat often squishes together in such a way that it makes their features blend together and their bodies appear more smooth (it’s the same physics as that whole “cats are liquid” idea), the general silhouette of a slugcat can easily be likened to that of a literal slug. The second half of their name is also not literal, and instead refers to their jumping and acrobatic abilities and their skill in hunting and pouncing on small prey, which is very similar to that of small cats.

Species Overview

Now to give a little more detail on slugcats themselves as a species! I headcanon them as small to medium-sized mammals most similar to Earth weasels in both their biology and their ecological niche, who originally served as cute low-maintenance pets for the Ancients and as hunters of small pests in facilities on the ground. They’re clever by nature and good at fitting through tight spaces, and later on they evolved greater jumping abilities to pounce on prey. They’re also very social creatures, who’ve taken to forming medium to large colonies primarily in and around the massive trees that thrive between the cracks in iterators’ rainstorm areas (like the one Gourmand, Survivor, and Monk’s colony lives in). Due to this social nature they also generally travel in groups of at least two, both for company and protection against tougher animals. Travel partners are usually siblings or good friends, and sometimes even whole families will journey out together to find food and other resources for the rest of the colony.

Despite being a small prey animal, slugcats have managed to get by not only due to their intelligence — the evolution of which would be seen as a rather unexpected twist of events if you asked their creators, for the Ancients found them cute but rather simple — but because of their impressive adaptability. It’s similar to that of real life red foxes and pigeons, and it allows them to survive decently well even in less ideal environments; a trait especially necessary for a world as industrialized as this one, even if its people are gone and most of the machinery is inactive. As such not all colonies live in trees; some find homes in the abandoned facilities, large underground hollows, and a few bold colonies have even claimed territories high up in iterator cities alongside scavengers. Slugcats are opportunists and masters at making the best of their surroundings, yet even beyond that they carry a certain other, “special” ability of their own that makes them as diverse as they are clever. But that’s a headcanon for another day…

Reasoning

Now for some out-of-universe explanation for this classification choice. I’ve always seen slugcats as some kind of small scurrying mammal (kind of a bias on my part, I just like mammals honestly, and they’re most familiar to me), mainly due to the way they look and move when on all fours, and their place in the game’s food chain. Originally though I saw them as rodents and compared them to mice and rats, which I still sometimes use for anatomy reference for these creatures. But one day a friend of mine saw me drawing slugcats and thought they were weird ferrets, and the more I thought about it and the more I developed personal speculative biology headcanons for slugcats, the more that label seemed the most fitting for them. It was also solidified when I did a bit more research and realized the main characteristic of rodents is their buck teeth, which just didn’t seem to fit with how I perceived slugcats. Not to mention rodents aren’t really predator animals, and slugcats’ implied natural diet and the gameplay itself does strongly imply if not confirm they have some instinctive hunting ability. 

Thus, it seemed “weasel” was the best classification for these creatures, and I quite like it so far! Once again it satisfies my mammal preference, but I also just think it’s a fun idea that neither part of the “slugcat” name is literal, similar to a lot of real-life creatures named after completely different animals, including fellow weasel, the polecat. Plus, I realized recently it’s kind of ironic with how I perceive the messenger slugcats, Hunter and Spearmaster, as being like hunting or guard dogs for their creators, when weasels are exactly the kind of animal humans with their dogs would normally hunt for! It’s cute, it’s familiar, it’s fun, yet I think it still has just as much potential for some interesting speculative biology ideas as the literal slug slugcat interpretations!

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

I'm so glad to finally get this out! I like seeing specbio slugcat headcanons in the RW fandom, yet I haven't seen many more in-depth takes from artists who don't take the "slugcats are literal slugs/mollusks/primarily mollusk-based" angle. Not that that's a bad headcanon of course; do what you think feels right! But once again I personally prefer slugcats being mammals, and I always look for fan-content that's as close to my personal preferences as possible. And when I can't find enough of it, I make it myself!

So hopefully this serves as a bit more of that kind of representation for the mustelid slugcat interpretation. It at least helped me develop my own idea of the species a bit more; much of that stuff in the overview part was ideas I came up with while typing this whole headcanon out!

As always, I hope you enjoy this headcanon of mine! I've still got so many ideas to develop and share, and even more coming as I continue to ponder these characters and their stories, so as long as you guys still like these Rain World headcanons of mine, they'll keep coming!

[hyukascampfire]

To: Someone From a Warm Climate

wc: 17.5k (whew…)

genre: smut, angst, fantasy violence

pairings: faerie!taehyun x human!reader, faerie!yeonjun x human!reader

synopsis: a life lived as a human among the fae is one hard-earned. the folk are built of indescribable beauty, and of debauchery and mischief. for some, a life lived subservient to the folk is just fine; but to those who dream of something more, they would spend their lives clawing and biting to make it happen.

you, looking for a way to escape a life as a faerie’s human servant, put a new foot forward thinking that any life could be better than that. but, when your first assignment as a king’s spy is alongside a brooding, icy faerie man, you begin to wonder what your place in this foreign world really could be.

a/n: y'all. Y'ALL. I have so much in store for you. I was hunched over my desk writing this like a crazed scientist mixing their chemicals.

! warnings: violence (stabbing... twice..), a dead animal appears in a scene, fem reader, mentions of past family trauma, cunnilingus, overstimulation, unprotected sex

playlists: taehyun | yeonjun | series

prev | next

It’s more difficult than you had anticipated to keep your mouth shut about what had happened, but Taehyun stays quiet, so you do too. You make yourself useful, packing up with him, hoping to ease the palpable tension.  

Insecurities whisper in your ears that the kiss was just… disappointing to him. It was your first kiss, anyway. The feel of his lips on yours is brutally seared into your mind. You hope your mouth harasses his mind as much as his does yours. You can’t let that fester for too long, though. You have a lot to do to become a useful spy. Your inadequacy is why you’re even here, traveling in silence next to Taehyun, heading north. You’re not sure why they decided to throw you to the wolves for your first assignment, but there has to be a reason. You can only throw yourself more fully into improving your skillset. 

You decide on trying to cut the nagging tension with words. You’ve walked for hours with it looming in the air. But, it isn’t easy. You open your mouth to speak, closing it to rethink your words, and repeat a few times, before finally just saying, “What are we going to even be doing, when we reach the north?” You readjust your bag on your shoulders, its thick straps digging into the bone of your shoulder. The bag is heavier than it was yesterday. Everything is heavier today. Maybe it’s the realization that you’re progressing toward your dream, but it’s all hazier than you imagined it would be. Or, maybe, it’s the awful cold shoulder Taehyun is throwing at you.

“Do you know much about the Unseelie queen?” He asks. 

You shake your head. You know that her kingdom is revered as the most fearsome in Faerie, and you know that they hold a special brew of distaste for humans. But, you do not know much more. Your school lessons had, for reasons you could infer, brushed over the ice kingdom only very briefly. The folk prefer that humans don’t see those sides of this world. Not for your peace of mind—but, because it keeps you complacent. It’s not like you don’t see it, anyway. You know the evils of this world well.

“You need to be careful when we get there. Things get rough for humans up there. You need to remember that you can’t trust the words that come from their mouths.” 

How long until snow powders the ground? The scenery around you has already grown wintry—trees are sparse, and foliage is hardier. It all is so much more muted. Probably not too long. 

“We’re going to be infiltrating The Queen’s Court. She’s always pledged allegiance to him, but The King wants eyes and ears in the north.”

The King thinks that she’s going behind his back? There’s more in this world that you are oblivious to than you imagined. You’ve been under the impression that the Northern Queen was starkly allegiant to The High King. It makes sense, though. There isn’t much incentive to keep humans in the know on faerie politics when you’re just here to be working bodies. “Does he have any reason to believe that?” you ask. It would be nice to have some more information. 

Taehyun explains, “The Northern Court and High Court have had a history of tension. It’s why it became a tradition to send their children to intermingle with each other’s courts. However, the Queen hasn’t upheld that tradition for at least the past hundred years.” An extra chilly breeze licks at your cheeks, and you shiver. You are definitely making progress northward. 

“So, he risks the lives of his heirs?” you ask, pursing your lips. If the northern court is supposed to be so vicious, you cannot imagine why The King would even consider it, especially if relations are supposed to be so strained.

“The Queen would not outright harm them. She values the power that his alliance gives her too much, and she would lose the war that would follow. She is the scheming type.” Taehyun tugs up the hood of his cloak to keep the wind from chapping his skin, and you do so with yours as well. “Which is why we’re going up there in the first place.” 

You acknowledge his answer with a nod. The wind whips past you, and you have to fight it to keep your eyes open. You would appreciate the accompanying snowfall if it was not blowing wildly down on you and stinging your cheeks. With a flex of your fingers, you confirm that they’re still mobile, but they’re lethargic and locked up in the cold. A powdery layer of snow builds on the ground, and you curse it for the way it has your toes freezing through even your leather boots. 

“Can,”—Your teeth chatter—“Can we get a fire going, or something?” 

You catch a glimpse of his face under his hood as he turns to you. His nose and cheeks are rosy, but it seems that the cold affects him less than it does you. The snow is high enough now that you have to drag your feet through with each forward step. Is the rest of the way going to be like this? You might freeze to death, then. 

“We’ve got a bit of time. Let’s get as far as we can, before stopping.” 

You roll your eyes. Maybe he wants you to freeze to death, and then he could be freed from any trace of what had happened last night. You bring your hands to your mouth and let out warm puffs of air as if it would thaw out your poor hands and nose. 

Your mouth struggles to even form words.“I would appreciate living to see tomorrow,” you say slowly. You still lace it with plenty of attitude.

Taehyun doesn’t respond. 

❈

Taehyun curses as visibility wanes to only a few feet. All that lays in your path is whipping snow and haze. 

Your boot catches on something beneath the snow, and you tumble. Frigid snow and ice shards greet you on the ground, biting your skin. Looking up, you find Taehyun gone. He has to be at least somewhere in the gray haze around you; it’s only been a few seconds. If you can’t find him, you’ll die here. That isn’t up for debate.

 “Taehyun?” you shout, your voice muffled and carried away by the howling wind. 

You stay where you are, but lift yourself from the ground. You can’t start wandering blindly, you’ll end up separating further from him.

He calls your name, but it’s distant. 

“Here,” you say, “I’m over here!” 

There are many ways that you do not want to die, but you especially do not want to die like this. Your throat tightens the longer he doesn’t respond. 

“Taehyun?” 

He appears through the veil of snow and haze. A cry erupts from your throat, your voice breaking with relief. He takes you by the arm and tugs you behind him wordlessly, searching for something.

“I thought I was dead,” you say to the air, but it mostly drowns you out. 

“I know.” His voice is thick. “I did too.” 

He finds whatever it is that he seems to be searching for, and you might cry as you recognize the rocky opening to be a cavemouth. You won’t be dying today, at least. 

“I’m going to start a fire,” Taehyun announces only moments after you both duck under the low cavemouth and step into the refuge of the cave walls.

“You’ll get lost.” It’s true, but you also just cannot stand the idea of sitting in this cave alone for any extended amount of time. Your hand is barely visible in front of you, and it’s only getting darker as the blizzard grows thicker outside. 

“I’ll be fine. You’re going to freeze to death without it,” he says, before he dips out, leaving you alone and shivering. He could’ve at least given you a second to protest.

You’re not usually too scared of the dark, but you do press your back to the wall, decorated with liverwort, and sit. Getting separated earlier nags at your mind. You have to remember that you aren’t safe. A line of work like this guarantees it. You could easily have become a body losing heat out in that flurry of wind and snow. You would’ve died before ever seeing the fruits of what you could make of yourself; would’ve died living an insignificant life. Some jaded part of you wonders what Taehyun might’ve felt if you had. Would he move on with this assignment without delay?

At least the wind is no longer circulating about the cave and producing the howl that has been haunting you. There are no such wintry winds to freeze up your extremities in here, but it’s still cold enough to have you shuddering and tucking your hands underneath your knees to ration your warmth. 

Will you even be able to make it all the way to the Northern Court? You imagine telling Taehyun that you can’t handle it, or that you’re going back, and you imagine the look that would fall over his face. No. You’d become a statue of ice, frozen forever at a crossroads between a meaningless life and new beginnings, before that. 

The cold beckons you to sleep, and the aching in your tired back and limbs say that sleep is a splendid idea, but you resist. You need to see him return so that you know that a fire will warm your aching bones to sleep. But you are so cold, and sleeping it away sounds so nice… 

Your eyelids are heavy, and it’s harder to keep them open than it is to just let them fall. Your veins are sluggish with the cold.

When your head drops, you’re brought back to consciousness, but it’s so, so cold when you’re awake. It’s so cold that it burns. Even your lungs are slow and weary. 

You are so cold that you can no longer shiver. 

Something is muffled and shuffling beyond your shivering huddle, but you can’t rally the energy to worry about it. You hang suspended between dream and consciousness. You want both so badly.

Taehyun curses. “I need you to stay awake,” He says. You can only muster a nod for him. Your eyes protest as you hold them open, watching Taehyun hastily sparking up a fire. He strikes rocks against each other, growing more frustrated each time a spark doesn’t catch. When one does, the flame starts slowly on the snow-wetted wood. Your skin tingles under the warmth radiating from it. The roiling flame is intense, having been cold for so long. 

You bask in the fire’s flickering light. Movement comes easier to your limbs as you defrost. Taehyun produces a few hardy roots and skins them with a dagger that glints in the low light, then sets them to roast over the flame. 

“How did you find those?” you say. It was hard to even walk out there, and you’re sure it had gotten worse while he was out. How would he even find them under the snowpiles, unless he knew where to look?

He gives you a long look, as if considering something. “Just got lucky digging through the snow while I was looking for the wood.” 

That explanation doesn’t make sense; finding three subsurface roots underneath thick snow is different from finding hunks of wood protruding from it. It might be the truth, but you decide to ask, “Under the snow?” 

Fire crackling is the only sound to fill the silent moment as he doesn’t answer. Well, if you weren't already iffy, you are now. He watches the flames prance around for a charged moment, the reflection of it shimmering in his dark eyes. 

“I’m from the north,” he finally says. You frown. Why hadn’t he just said that in the first place? 

“Is that why your ears aren’t pointed?” you ask, sitting up a bit. He pulls the roots, lightly toasted, off the fire. 

His gaze rips away from the flame, landing on you. His eyes are a little too intense for such a simple question. “No,” he says.  His behavior tickles a curious part of you; if you’re going to be on this assignment together for so many weeks, then it’s best to get to know each other. You also have been intensely curious about his ears from the moment you noticed their curvature. It’s odd to see fundamentally human features on a faerie. 

You don’t mean to be overly invasive, though, and you feel bad for prodding so much as his face hardens. You hadn’t thought too much about why it might be a sensitive subject for him; you just wanted to satisfy your curiosity. You’re seconds from telling him that you like his ears, but he speaks before you can. 

“My mother was human,” he says, his eyes trained on the cave floor in front of him. He’s half human? That’s why he’s so averse to mentioning his ears—he’s embarrassed by his human mother. You stew over that. If he dislikes his mother for her humanity, it explains how he has acted concerning you. You pity him, though. It would be difficult to belong anywhere with that specific mix of blood: humanity fears him, and Faerie does not treat half-blooded faeries as truly its own.

“She hid herself away when she found she was pregnant, and gave birth to me where she thought she would be safest. She knew what my father would do. He found her eventually. He killed her because she was dirt on his name. He couldn’t kill me, though.” Your stomach does a sickened flip. You know that, by faerie honor, he would have to raise Taehyun.

“I’m so sorry, Taehyun,” you say. He just presses his lips thin and hands you a roasted root to eat. 

“I hated him for it more each day, so one day I took a blade to my ears and made sure I never resembled him again. At least, in that way.” Your heart lurches. The thought of him carving off the points of his ears to spite his dad… He had maimed himself, and you’ve been poking and prodding him about it. You wince.

You want to apologize again, but you have a feeling that he doesn’t want any more apologies, and you don’t know him well enough to comfort him in any meaningful way. Instead of saying something that you’re sure will ring hollow, you say, “The faerie that stole me from my parents was a seamstress. She wanted a human girl to work her shop for her, without having to pay wages like she would for a faerie. It was taxing work, even when I was this tall,”—you denote the height of a child six or seven years old with your hand—“Maybe she just didn’t know what it means to raise a human child, but she wasn’t the best replacement for parents. She knew that I needed to be fed at least regularly, and provided everything I needed for hygiene, but she didn’t know that I needed a mother. She gave me an education, and I know that humans here don’t usually get that. I’m grateful for it—I really, really am, but it’s just… The fact that it was more for her own benefit than out of the goodness of her heart…” 

Taehyun listens, his eyes reflecting the oranges and yellows of the fire. You know that you’re rambling. “Sorry. What I’m trying to say is… I guess…” You hope the yellow glow of the flames is enough to disguise your embarrassment, and also that he doesn’t think you’re trying to upstage him. You just feel wretched for putting him in a position where he had to surrender such dark memories to you.

He doesn’t say anything, taking a root from the fire for himself and biting into it. 

You bite into the fat, tuber-like root too, appreciating its nutty flavor, and you embrace the silence that grips the cave. Only the garbling of the fire speaks, but it is a comfortable quiet. 

❈

The snowstorm must’ve died down while you slept, because the snow isn’t too much higher when you and Taehyun set back out the next day. It’s a bit of a drag to fight the mountains of snow it left with each step, but you don’t complain. 

Sunlight shimmers off ice crystals and sends droplets down from snow-dusted branches and to your cheeks. Every breath into your lungs is crisp, but you have bundled yourself in the thermal clothing from the bag Taehyun had packed for you, so you’re mostly comfortable. At least your fingers and toes are mobile now. 

Taehyun says that you have less than a day until you’re there. You repeat that like a mantra in your head as your feet ache with the strain of traveling so far by foot. He hasn’t said much else since, though, and you wonder if it has anything to do with last night’s topics of choice. His shoulders are as tense as his demeanor. 

It’s getting boring walking for hours on end, and Taehyun isn’t the most talkative. The most you get for entertainment is your thoughts and watching the scenery change. So, you decide to put this time to use. You apply the silent walking technique that he had taught you despite how awfully your feet ache. It’s harder in the snow, but you’re better off knowing how to do it even in extraneous circumstances. You don’t know all that you’ll be facing in the north. Sliding your sword off your back, you realize how much it had been dragging your back down. No wonder your spine aches…. You practice swings and jabs, still sloppy with inexperience. 

Taehyun hears you, and says over his shoulder, “Don’t push yourself today. You were close to freezing to death last night, just recharge your energy.” 

Was it so bad? You know you had gotten pretty cold, but you feel fine now. “I was just exhausted, not freezing. We walked forever yesterday.” 

You continue trying to get used to the weight of a sword in your hands. 

Trees start coming fewer and farther between, and though the snow on the ground grows lower, it is crusted over in an icy layer that you have to break through with each step. Everything is sharper and more icy, less fluffy and light. Icicles drip from trees so sharp they could substitute for a weapon. You put away your sword; the ground is slick, and you’ll fall if you don’t think your steps through. You’ve got to be in the Northern Kingdom, now. 

You walk like this for a while longer, only sparse trees and shrubbery, until an estate standing tall on the snowy flat peeks through the midday haze. An ancient and gnarled blackthorn tree sits proud on the estate’s grounds. Its spiny branches, bare of any fruit or leaf, twist among themselves. They remind you of impish claws.

Taehyun is heading straight for the estate. 

“Are we about to meet somebody?” you ask, closing the distance between you with a little jog. 

He shakes his head. “It’s my father’s residence.” 

You stop, and he makes it a few steps ahead of you before he realizes. “We’re meeting your father?” you say. The thought turns your mouth to cotton. He had killed Taehyun’s human mother. Faerie hospitality doesn’t seem to mean much to him, and you don’t think he’ll like you much.

Taehyun’s brow creases. “What? No,” he says, looking back at the estate. “He’s been dead for a while.” 

You reign in the relief that you feel, but that tidbit of information renders you curious again. Faeries don’t die of old age. How had he died? Is Taehyun pleased that he’s gone?

“Oh,” you say, not pushing it. You learned that lesson yesterday. “Good, ‘cause I’m not in any shape to be meeting anybody right now.” You drag your fingers through your knotty and tousled hair to make a statement. It’s wet in some places, where snowflakes found their way to your head and melted there. You’re sure it looks even worse than it feels. “Are we staying here, then?” You could use someplace to make yourself look less like you’ve just traveled three straight days, and it’s relatively optimistic that the sizable estate ahead of you has what you might need. 

Taehyun hums in confirmation. 

You approach the heavy ironwood front doors, and you gape at the wood interior and high ceilings. Nut-hatch’s humble cottage was more than the roaming life the wilder fae prefer, but it pales next to this. Charcoal-black banners hang down from the mezzanine and are embroidered with silver into a family crest that resembles the blackthorn tree that sits on the grounds outside.  

“Who, exactly, was your father?” you ask, running fingers along the top of the dusty dining table that sits center of the estate. The sight of the empty chairs that encircle it is almost mournful.

Taehyun doesn’t answer, and when you look for him to see why, he is planted to the floor. A muscle feathers in his jaw as takes in the estate.

“He was general of The Queen’s guard. And, I guess, also a lord in her court.” There’s icy distance in his voice.

This is absolutely the estate of an esteemed general and lord if you’ve ever seen one. 

“Anywhere for me to clean up?” you ask. You don’t want to intrude on whatever he’s dealing with returning here.

He nods, pointing up to the mezzanine floor where the walls are lined with doors. “There should be some stuff left over. You can use whatever you find.” 

You follow him as he leads to a room. As you draw yourself a bath with water warmed over a fire stove, you cannot help but wonder what awful memories this place might hold for him in its ornate, wooden walls.

❉

Waking up in the warm sheets of a plush bed was a soothing balm for your aching joints and bones. Your hair is fresh and perfumed with the soaps and powdery-scented oils left over in the bathing room. You delighted in brushing out the tangles. The estate is full of pleasures that only the gentry could find mundane; you, on the other hand, are only left scheming how you might make this life your own. 

You don’t see much of Taehyun all day, until he pokes into the bedroom you’re staying in and informs you that you’re attending Court tonight, and though you’ve known for a while now, a thick ball of nerves coils up in your stomach. 

You unstring your travel bag, worrying that you’ll have to wear what you arrived here in, but Taehyun had packed accordingly. You tug out a mute dress, beige in color, and embroidered in the bodice and skirt of it with bronze threads. The short, puffed sleeves are pretty. There isn’t much to decorate yourself with, no pretty pins or silk shoes in the dressing tables or wardrobes, so you just wear your hair as it is and lace up your traveling boots for footwear. You find yourself in the mirror to be prettier than you’ve ever looked. Any dresses you’ve had access to in your life have been largely unspecial, and they marked you as a human servant. Even nakedness, in the land of Faerie, is more ornate than those kinds of dresses.

You hold the skirts of your dress up and above your feet so that it does not tread on wet snow and dirt as you and Taehyun leave the estate for Court. The knots in your stomach don’t let up any. You know you’ll stick out as a human, that’s a given, but you are deeply terrified you’re going to make a fool out of yourself by forgoing some unspoken faerie revel rule. You can’t compromise your assignment. Does Taehyun know you’ve never partied alongside the fae? Humans often attend faerie revels in the High King’s court, but are they even allowed to do so here?

Taehyun is dressed lavishly, clad in black from head to foot, and he wears a sleeved doublet encrusted with shimmering black beads and threads that glitter in the moon’s light. He wears the black fur pelt of some beast around the collar of his neck. He resembles entirely the son of a general. You feel plain, next to him. 

“What do I do when we get there?” you ask, stepping around a puddle encased in a thin layer of cracked ice.

“The King wants to know if anything is going on, so you need to just listen. Look around a little, talk to people you think are interesting, and go from there.” 

Sounds simple enough. 

A thick forest surrounds the snowy flat that Taehyun’s estate sits on, and as you approach it, Taehyun says, “When we’re there, you can’t dance, no matter how badly you’ll want to.” 

“I won’t.” You reassure him, but you’ll just run on the hope that Taehyun sticks near you. Faerie celebration is untamed, and if a human happens to dance among them, they will not be able to regain control over themselves until a faerie takes pity and pulls them out. That isn’t usually the case, though. The folk delight in seeing humans lose themselves to the abundance of faerie delights. 

Taehyun accepts your answer, but he stops at one of the many wax-leaved holly trees and plucks a few jewel-red berries from their branches. Holly berries are faerie wards, and humans often carry a handful of them in their pockets to protect themselves from simple faerie glamours. 

“I don’t have anywhere to keep them,” you say, taking the berries he drops into your hands. You feel around your dress to reaffirm that it doesn’t have any hidden pockets or pouches. None. 

He produces a needle and some twine thread, offering it to you. 

“What?” you say, a little lost. Obviously, he wants you to do something with it, because the berry’s juices would burn him, but you’re not exactly sure what. 

“String the berries on it, and then I’ll show you.” 

You purse your lips and do so as you continue on your way to the revel. Some squish as you do, but you tug them down the thread anyway. The thread seems long enough to wear as a necklace. 

When you’re done stringing the berries, you look up to find that you’ve arrived. You admire how The Queen’s hall of revelries is not even a true hall, and is instead formed with tree trunks for walls and their branches for ceilings. Off-kilter faerie music twists and turns and floats alive in the air; the lilting flutes urge your limbs to move. Maybe it’ll be more difficult to stay off the dancing floor than you had initially anticipated. 

Taking the strung berries from your hands, Taehyun gives you a look that you yet again cannot decipher before walking around you. He takes the top section of your hair into his hands. 

“What are you doing?” you say. 

He sections the hair into two and spins the pieces before pinning them in place. He continues fiddling with it for a bit, tugging something around and in between the hair, and then steps away. You feel your hair. He had pinned the hair into a half-updo with an ornamental hair comb and braided the berry string through it as a ward that doubles as a pretty hairstyle. It’s a fairly intricate hairstyle.

“How’d you learn to do hair?” you ask, spinning to face him. 

He scratches the back of his neck. “It’s intuitive.” 

You laugh a nose-crinkling laugh for the first time in a while and take him by the elbow to drag him toward the reverie ahead of you. 

❉

You stand eating fruity delicacies and glazed meats off banquet tables, to curb your anxieties. There is plenty to enjoy—throngs of faeries dancing like nobody's watching to the rich song of the fiddle, long tables surrounded by chatting folk and rendered full with the plumpest of fruits and blocks of various cheeses. You had worried that you would stick out as a human attending Court in the north, but you have quickly realized that most are more worried about sinking in the debauchery than ogling you. There are so many conversations to listen to, but you don’t have the slightest clue which to even begin with. The Queen does not make an appearance today, but you don’t know if she ever even does. 

You stand here, though, because Taehyun suggested it was best you split off and try to cover the most you can. You’ve been trying your best to strain your ear, but it all blurs into Court jargon to you. You inspect each of your snacks for the poisons Taehyun had taught you. It’s not like anybody cared enough to poison you, but Faerie courts are fickle. 

A tap on your shoulders has you turning around to face the most beautiful faerie man you have ever seen. His brown eyes twinkle under the chandeliers hanging from branches overhead as he regards you, as do the plethora of crystals sewn into his extravagant white get-up. You gulp down the last of the cheese block in your hand.

He smiles, the corners of his lips turned up in a cheeky tilt. “Are the snacks any good?” he says. 

It feels a bit odd that he’d be worrying what a human thinks of the food, but you reply anyway, “The cheese is fantastic.” 

He laughs, having just watched you gulp down the last bit of it. His honeyed laugh compels laughter from you, too. And, so quickly that you don’t notice it, the rest of the revelry fades around you. 

“Do you want to dance?” he says, gesturing over at the whirling sea of faeries. He holds himself with grace, down to his posture.

Your lips tug down into a disappointed frown. There are quite a few things you’re better off not doing here, but that is what you should do the least. “I don’t think I should.”

His eyes flicker with understanding, but his smile doesn’t falter any. “I’ll pull you out if it becomes too much,” he says. “I promise you that.” He presses a pristine hand over his chest, right at his heart, in testament to his sincerity. 

Well, his words are plain enough to know that he isn’t lying. But you’re not here to dance; you’re here to perform your duties. 

He can tell that you’re not convinced as he studies your face. “We can always stay here and enjoy these,”—he pops a cube of cheese in his mouth, so his next words are muffled—“No problem.”

His quickness to compromise is unfamiliar to you.“Let’s have some cheese.” You try to emulate his smile with your mouth, but you’re sure it looks better on him because he throws his head back and laughs. 

The more you study his features, the more you realize how reminiscent of a fox they are. “Can I ask your name, pretty?” he says. The sugary-sweet words taste good in your mouth, and they rot your inhibitions. You shouldn’t be sitting here twirling your hair. Where is Taehyun under this canopy of branches? You wonder if he’s catching any useful stuff. Guilt digs its claws at your skin. 

You flounder and try to catch your name as it seems to slip away from your mind and into the air. You’re not always this ditzy, it’s just that his sharp eyes and mouth confuse you. You tell him your name. 

“Are all human names as pretty as yours?” he says. He thinks your name is beautiful? Human names are unspirited and prone to repetition, not singular like a faerie name. 

You’re not sure how to respond, so you deflect. “What’s your’s?”

His black hair slides over his eyes as he tilts his head, eyes alight. He wears so much on his face. You’re wary, though. Maybe he is cunning like the fox, maybe his face tells you a different story than his mind. You worry again why he is sitting here making conversation with you.

“Yeonjun,” he says, and you try to remember when he had gotten so close.

“Well, Yeonjun,” you say, trying his name in your mouth. “I’m not the most interesting, so if you’re looking for entertainment, I don’t think you’ll find too much here.”

His eyes roam your face for a few heartbeats. “I think you’re plenty interesting. Maybe the most interesting lady this court has had the pleasure of keeping.” His use of the word lady, addressing you, feels good in a bittersweet way. You’re a far cry from a lady, but the sound of it settles deep in your bones and warms you. 

The way he sees your burning cheeks, and seems to delight in it, should alarm you. You know his words are saccharine. But, his attention is delicious. You find yourself hoping he’ll stay here and keep you company until the night is over. 

“Okay, now I know you’ve got to be up to something,” you say. 

He grins and, stepping back, says, “I’m going to go get something for you. Don’t move.” He slips through the gaps of chatting revelers before you can tell him that you won’t move; that you’ll be right here all night because you should be. Taehyun trusts that you’re doing your job. You sigh a breath, trying to force down the guilt that gnaws hungrily at you again. 

You make an effort to tune your ears into the conversations around you. There was so much you could’ve missed in the time you spent talking to Yeonjun. 

As you do, pair of frilly and silk-draped faerie girls, one with skin like white snow and crystalline wings at her back, and the other with hair inlaid with glittering strands of gold, approach the banquet table arm-in-arm. You hate the way their eyes land on you, and then on your awful dress. You hate the look they share, and the way one hoots at something the other says. Your skin burns with how you become something to laugh at. 

You don’t notice Yeonjun’s return until he steps in front of you, his hands full with a bounty of bonbons and indulgences from various tables throughout the hall. 

“I want you to try these,” he says. You shoot him a skeptical eye, raising a brow, to which he scoffs and says, “I just wanna know what you think. They’re my favorites.” 

You take a sweetmeat and place it in your mouth. Your brows shoot up at its full, mallow flavor. 

“You have a sweet tooth?” you ask, chomping on another. 

“You could say that,” he says. The flip of his words and the facetious raise of his brows make you feel that he isn’t just talking about confectionaries. You squirm a bit under his heavy gaze. 

You continue taste-testing the sweets he brought, but your mind keeps cruelly spinning the jeering of those faerie girls. You scorn your inadequacies; your inability to be a worthy spy, and your inability to ever fit in. It would be easier to act as one with the court and to coax out meaningful secrets if you look at least like you belong. However, Yeonjun seems like the only place you have to start. 

“You meant what you said about pulling me out if it becomes too much?” you say. 

Yeonjun doesn’t look at all taken aback by your words. He must’ve seen the way your eyes flickered over to the rambunctious dancefloor. “Of course. I won’t let you lose yourself, and nobody will touch a hair on your head.” 

“Let’s dance,” you say, and giddiness blooms wide in your chest. Is dancing among the faeries as enchanting as it's said to be? 

Here’s to finding out.

Yeonjun brings you to the dance floor, and he smiles down at you as you begin moving. Your limbs are heavy with hesitance. His hands find your waist, and the touch soaks up the stiffness right from you. Suddenly, you are alive in ways that you hadn’t known you could be before. Your boots slide over the packed earth, and he guides you to a rhythm that you can feel thrumming in your bloodstream. Yeonjun’s eyes are on your face. You can feel the other dancers all around you, and you brush up against some here and there, but you don’t mind much. You feel the music in your heartbeat. His fingertips dig divots into your skin, and it’s the only thing you can really feel. 

He leans in over your shoulder. “I heard what they said. Do you want dresses? I can give you dresses more beautiful than those girls could dream of wearing.” 

It takes the words a bit to cut through the fog in your head, but you narrow your eyes at him. “Is this one really so bad?”

He squeezes his eyes shut in a laugh, as if that were ridiculous, and then opens them to look you in your eyes. “Pretty, you’d look delightful even in your bare skin.” He tugs your bodies impossibly closer, melding them together into one spinning thing. “But, if what they said hurt you, I will give you whatever it is you ask for.”

Even in your hazy state, you know that doesn’t sound right. But, you don’t ask why he would bother with that, you only lose yourself further into his eyes. They devour you.

The music grows faster, and faster, and faster, coiling itself up and around your legs, willing them to dance for you. Yeonjun’s hands grab here and smoothe over there, exploring. Mapping. 

“Do you love it?” he asks.

“Yes,” you breathe. Your head is swimming, crashing through the throes of waves, and the undercurrent of panic only thrills you into dancing more. 

His eyes rove over you in a languid pass, before he kisses you like your lips are the sweet delicacies he so loves. You are as lost in his lips as you are the spirit of the dancefloor. His hot tongue explores and licks at your lips. The world swirls behind your eyes even as they are squeezed shut, but you welcome the dizzying nature of it. Your heart jumps from its cage in your chest as he brushes a hand along your collarbone, sliding it up the side of your neck, and then places it at the back of your head, pushing you further into his kiss. A vignette blurs your vision, lungs burning for air, but you can’t find it in you to care. 

You’re abruptly pulled from the messy tangle of galavanting bodies. Like if someone were to just halt the Earth’s spinning on its axis, your body reels. Your mind comes back to you, but it’s scattered, and your heart pounds like drumbeat in your head. 

Someone speaks. It’s Yeonjun’s voice. He situates you in between two of the pillar trees that make the walls of the hall, and you drag in the night air. It’s so fresh it burns your lungs a bit to breathe. 

“I feel like shit,” you say. Your heart is still running amok in your chest. 

He snorts. “Yeah, I bet. I’m sorry I didn’t notice that you were slipping earlier.”

You’re unsure how long you two danced, but the sky is breaking into day, so it had to have been for way longer than you remember. You groan. Taehyun has to be looking for you. Or, perhaps he left without you.

“Something wrong?” he asks, watching you recover.  

“No, no, I’m fine,” you say. “Thank you for that. I’ve never done anything like it.”  

His eyes crinkle. He really, really, is beautiful, down to the points of his ears. “You don’t need to thank me. Seeing you enjoy yourself like that was a sight for sore eyes.” 

You laugh a little, looking out at the way the sun crests over the horizon from your little hiding spot. The breeze does wonders in brushing up on your blazing skin and placating it. The thrill still lingering in you makes you wonder if you could claim such a life for yourself.

The sound of Taehyun’s voice saying your name rips out that seedling of hope, and stomps it down into the ground. It was a useless hope, anyway. As he approaches you, Yeonjun nods his head in greeting. Taehyun’s face is drawn, but he bows low at the waist. It’s quite a formal greeting. 

“It’s time to go,” Taehyun says, addressing you. His eyes are searching yours like he’s trying to find some answer in them. It seems he doesn’t find what he’s looking for. 

A crooked smile tugs at Yeonjun’s lips. “Is she under your care?” he asks. It’s a less direct way of asking: does she belong to you? 

Taehyun’s face morphs into something hard, but his words remain cordial. “Yes, she is.” You know he says it because it’s the best way to explain why a human would be attending Court, but for some reason, you had expected Taehyun to answer that a little differently. 

Taehyun gives you a meaningful look and tilts his head to the side in a silent way to say let’s go. You curtsy a farewell to Yeonjun, letting a soft smile onto your lips before you depart with Taehyun. Yeonjun doesn’t say anything at all, but you feel his eyes following you. 

You walk without words until you clear the hall and reach the forest, where the thicket can muffle your sensitive words and keep them just for you. “Did you find anything?” he says. His attention stays ahead, and his jaw is a bit strained. Here it comes; he saw you wasting time. 

“Nobody around me was talking about anything other than gossip until I ran into him. His name is—”

“I know who he is.” Taehyun snaps. “Please, enlighten me. What did you learn of him?” 

His words feel a bit like he’s spinning you a web. A trap. You don’t even have anything to offer him, because you hadn’t learned anything about Yeonjun.

“You made a promise to me. You promised you wouldn’t dance at all, and I find you dancing with The King’s son.” The world trembles underneath you at his words. You were flirting with a prince all night. You kissed a prince.

The dam of guilt and embarrassment and shame that has been filling you throughout the night crumbles and washes over you. “I didn’t mean to waste time, Taehyun. He just seemed like the most interesting person to talk to. I thought that maybe I could hear something interesting from him.” Your legs protest as you lift them to step over a tall bush. Dancing had exhausted you down to your marrow. “A prince seems like a pretty good place to find information, though.” 

“Does kissing him entail hearing something interesting from him?” His words are spat, and when he looks at you, his eyes hold distaste. So he saw that, too. 

You sigh. “I didn’t mean for that to happen, either.” 

“You didn’t mean for it to happen,” he echoes, scoffing the words. “You are nowhere near serious about this. Why are you even here? Well, let me tell you this; you did not come here to suck the faces of pretty princes. This life is not yours.” 

His words are everything you don’t want to hear, and they antagonize the anger in your chest where shame had previously sat. “It’s a little hard to do what you’re asking of me when you send me in looking like this,” you say, gesturing down at your get-up. 

“This is about a dress?” Taehyun says. “You don’t need all that. They’re just putting on a show.” He doesn’t say them, but he dances delicately around the words: You’re human.

You get up in front of him so that he has no choice but to look at you. “You know that I’m going in there at a disadvantage! You know that I can’t just blend in, and it’s so much harder when I look like this.” You point your finger at him accusatorily. “And, did you even get anything? You’re sitting here, picking me apart, but really, what did you do?” 

He doesn’t respond. 

“Oh, that’s rich,” you say, tone mocking. 

“The difference,”—he says his words slow—“Is that I didn’t use the night to enjoy myself in snacks and courting ladies.” 

“That’s because you spent your night watching me,” you snap. If he was even trying to pick up information, he wouldn’t have had his eyes on you the whole time. “You just wanted to catch something to give me shit about. Can you not see any value in following this thread? If Yeonjun is the king’s son, and he’s taken interest in me, imagine what I can catch hanging around him.” The estate appears on the snow flat as you two clear the forest. The sun hangs well in the sky, now. Ugly hurt twists in your chest. Yeah, you could’ve been more alert, but you can easily turn whatever you’ve got going on into something. 

Taehyun shakes his head at you. “I want you to remember this one thing, if you’re going to remember anything I tell you at all. The folk will never fail to make you into a spectacle. Your duties lie in The King, and only that.”

You walk the rest of the way to the estate, and then split off to your rooms, in an awful silence that sits itchy under your skin. It’s always silence, with Taehyun.

❈

Taehyun’s accusatory voice wakes you up from a hard slumber. You don’t have time to even blink out the sleep from your eyes as he roars, and you listen.

“You had him send you dresses?” There is a scorching flame blazing in his eyes, and they blister you.

“Huh?” 

His face is pulled into a sneer. “You had the prince send you dresses because you decided you wanted pretty things? What are you doing?” He holds a silvery, glittering gown in one arm.

His words remind you of what Yeonjun had said to you last night, and you curse. How would he even know where to send them? 

“I didn’t ask him to do anything,” you say, crossing your arms over your chest. 

“Don’t lie to me.” 

“I’m telling you that I didn’t, and I mean it! I didn’t ask him to send me dresses.” You slink out of the mess of a bed, the wood flooring cold under your feet.

“So a royal errand runner shows up at the door, with a pile of dresses directly addressed to you, and I’m supposed to believe that it’s random?” 

“Why don’t you just believe me?” you ask, and the words sound pathetic even to you as they leave your mouth. “We’re supposed to be partners. You’re supposed to believe me.”

Rage dissolves from his face, but his features don’t soften. No, instead, they harden into stone. You almost wish they would twist back into fury. You can work with anger. But, whatever this thing that he does is, it leaves you unable to crack through his hardened exterior. 

“Take your shit,” he growls, tossing the dress in his arm at you, and then spinning around without care of where it lands. 

“I don’t want this, send it back to him,” you say. You go to throw the dress back at him, but his words stop you. 

“I already sent them back.”

You watch him storm out. That means that the dress in your hands is not from Yeonjun; it is from Taehyun.

❉

You hold up the gown in front of you. Looking at the sheer material of it, embellished with beads and crystals that remind you of snowflakes in the sky, feels bitter. It only reminds you of the nasty terms you and Taehyun are on. 

You haven’t seen him once today, and you assume you’re going to be heading to Court alone, too. All you can feel is resentment. 

You go about getting ready with a ten-pound weight in your mind, and Taehyun is as absent as you had imagined he’d be when you leave the estate for Court. The walk feels a bit longer this time. Though you didn’t talk much last night, the presence of Taehyun just being there was enough to ground your nerves.

All is the same as last night in the hall. The tittering of folk and the lovely aroma of burning incense spices the air, and the music is just as inviting. You find that secluded spot Yeonjun had taken you last night when he pulled you out of the crowd and lean into the tree. Tonight, you’re going to just watch which faeries interact. The more you know about who associates with who, the more you’ll be able to dissect your priorities. 

Your eyes fall over the throngs, and a majority you remember from last night, but some are new. These folk all have to be important in some capacity; they wouldn’t have a place in Court otherwise. If you look hard enough, maybe you can find who is the most important. It doesn’t help, though, that you’re not familiar with important figures in the Northern Court. Taehyun forgets that he was born into this Court, and you are a foreign human girl. You may be better off playing into your ability to lie; maybe you should spin up a good falsity and ask around with it. 

You’re halfway to the crowd with the intent to poke around when Yeonjun steps into your line of vision. His wry smile is inviting, but you can’t do this again. 

“You look beautiful tonight,” he says. “But, I don’t recognize that dress.” He looks you over. 

“You didn’t tell me who you were, last night,” you say, crossing your arms. 

Yeonjun’s suave falters. “Ah. He told you. Did he also not like me sending you those dresses? You sent them back.” 

You pinch the bridge of your nose. “Please, I don’t appreciate being toyed with.” 

His lips tug into the first frown you’ve seen worn on his ethereal face. “You wound me. I don’t just send gifts like that to anybody. I’m not toying with you. Not even a little bit.”

You’re not sure what to make of his words. He seems like the type that, even when his lips can not form the shape of lies, he would hide them in between the gaps of truths. But you do see sincerity shining in his eyes. 

“I didn’t even get to see the dresses,” you say, relenting to the conversation. If he insists on making your company, you’ll entertain him. You wouldn’t dare shoo a prince away, anyway, and his words are a soothing balm to every thought that tugs at your mind. 

“Did he give you this one?” he asks, looking down at the glittering thing. 

You hum, nodding your head. You wonder if Taehyun has made it here tonight, or if he is even here at all. You’re going to put all your eggs in this basket. If it leads you nowhere, you’ll deal with that when you get there. You don’t know where else to start. 

“They’re all yours, whenever you decide you want them. Just come and ask me, sweet thing. I’ll even send you more if you want.” 

His words shoot a thrill through you, for whatever reason. It’s hard for you to imagine a life where those kinds of things can be given away so easily. 

“Do you want to dance tonight?” He says. His fingers are warm against your skin as he takes your upper arm into his hand. Each time he rubs his thumb over the skin there, it makes you shiver more than it soothes you. You don’t remember much of the time you had spent dancing last night, but you do remember his kiss.

You really can’t do that. You need to do something that keeps you present so that you can pick up on stuff. 

You tilt your head to one side and offer, “How about you show me around? I wanna see your hiding places. I know you’ve got some.” You smile a heart-felt smile; running around the hall and discovering the nooks and crannies Yeonjun hides away in actually sounds like fun. It’ll familiarize you with the layout of Court, as well.

Yeonjun agrees, his face lighting up. He brings you around to alcoves and hollows that you wouldn’t imagine even existed unless he was showing you. Leave it to a faerie to find little places to hide.

“How often do you come to the north?” you say. Taehyun had said that The King sends his heirs here for foreign relations. It must be why he’s here. 

Yeonjun pauses his touring. “Most of the year. My father prefers me here, so he sends me out often.” You’re a bit taken aback by how generous he is with the information. You had expected to sly-foot it from him. 

The King sounds like a paranoid, centuries-old man. Maybe you and Taehyun will find something in your time here that proves his fears right, though. It’s just as probable that tensions run deeper than you think.

“Why doesn’t he have The Queen send one of her children to his domain if it’s for diplomacy? It’s a bit strange that she swears fealty to him, but he’s the one sending his heirs out.” Also, why does he have you and Taehyun here, undercover, when his son is here already?

Yeonjun shushes you with a finger over his lips, and it reminds you that you can’t just say all that comes to your mind here. He doesn’t seem to take any offense, though. 

“The Queen doesn’t send her children out as emissaries.” His words take on a rueful, bitter note. The look plastered on his face says what his words don’t: The King does, though.

Yeonjun is good company, and you don’t notice how night bleeds into day. 

“I should probably go now,” you say. Your dress itches and your feet ache in a way that calls for the lush bed waiting for you back at the estate. The revelry is still very much alive and kicking, and the crowds haven’t even begun thinning, but they’re so drunk on pinot wines and faerie spirits that you doubt they even feel the toll the night is taking on their bodies.

He nods. “Let me walk you home?” He offers you an arm, his smile so very sweet. You would like nothing more than to have someone to accompany you on the trek home. The walk here had been dreadful in your loneliness.

You pretend to think about it for a minute, a teasing smile playing at your lips, before you say, “Why not?” 

He swipes a baked good topped with sweet fig from a platter for the journey, and begins heading for an exit between trees.

 “But!” you say, and he halts. Your eyes scan the crowd.

“What is it?” he asks, rejoining you. 

“I need to find Taehyun.” 

He offers you the delicacy in his hand. “Do you?” 

“Yeah. I need to tell him if I’m going to be leaving.” 

Yeonjun scoffs at that. He takes you by the arm and points out Taehyun in the crowd. He appears to be in conversation with a spindly, feather-skinned hob. “He’s right there. But, you’re not going to be doing all that. It’s not right that you have to report your every move to him. C’mon.” You know that he’s only saying it because he thinks that you’re Taehyun’s human servant, or something, but his words are simultaneously gratifying for your current woes.

Your laughs bounce off the darkwood trees as you walk shoulder-to-shoulder. Yeonjun has a way to him that makes you feel like you’re really living. Maybe you can let this hope fester. Maybe Yeonjun is genuinely courting you. And, you foolishly let yourself think, maybe you don’t need to be a spy to make something of yourself. 

When you make it to the door of the estate, Yeonjun is behind you, peppering warm kisses up and down your neck. You pry yourself from him to open the door, and you stumble in. You then stagger up the stairs and to your room. Yeonjun doesn’t make it any easier, roaming his hands everywhere they shouldn’t be. 

Yeonjun clicks the door shut behind himself, and your stomach drops seeing the unabated hunger written into his face as he turns and looks at you. 

You fizzle under his gaze. “Thanks for walking me,” you say. “That walk is scary alone.” 

“Turn around for me, pretty,” he says, his voice glazed with honey and sugary syrup. You do, heart thundering in your chest. Something in the deep pit of your mind feels guilt, but you don’t pay it enough mind to sort it out, you just suck in a breath and hold it as Yeonjun steps so close behind you that you can feel his breaths on your neck, and he starts working at the laces of your dress. He doesn’t lean forward and press any more kisses to your neck like you wish he would; he just undoes the ribbon, until the dress loosens on your body, and you have to hold it onto yourself. Should you drop it? Does he want you to drop it? Is he just toying with you?

A puff of air on your neck makes you shiver as he laughs softly, his face hovering over your shoulder. You wish you could see his face right now.

“You’re so tense,” he says into your ear. He takes the top of the dress into his own hands, sliding them under yours. “Are you uncomfortable?”

“No,” you breathe. Your heart is thrumming in your chest and your neck so hard that you hear it in your ears, and maybe even he can, too. He rubs a thumb over the skin where the dress starts to slip. 

“Tell me you want it.” 

You suck in a breath. “I want it.”

He begins letting the dress down, and you let him. Chills rise on your skin, both at the cold that meets your skin as it is freed to the air, and at the kisses and scrapes of his teeth at your now exposed shoulder. “Yeah? You want me to make you feel good?” he says, and you can hear the tease in it. His words douse you in flame.

“Yes, Yeonjun, please,” you say, and it sounds pathetic to your ears. He makes it so hard to sound like the confident spy that you’ve been trying so hard to convince yourself that you are.

The dress droops lower and lower on you, releasing your skin in tantalizingly slow increments. He’s in no rush. He just continues to pamper your skin with his tongue, nipping your ear here and nibbling at your shoulder blade there. Your mind unravels a bit more with each. 

The fabric finally pools at your ankles, and the both of you sit in an electrically charged moment. 

“Turn around. Let me see you.”

When your eyes meet his, your breath catches at the way he takes you in, but mostly at the way his eyes come back up and fix on yours with such depth that you feel it in the way your heartbeat skips. You resist every urge to cover yourself, ignoring the tensing of your muscles that tell you that you should run and hide yourself away. You can’t believe that such a beautiful creature is devouring you with his eyes like this; like he wants you, like it doesn’t matter one bit to him that you are so much less than him. And maybe it should. He’s a prince. A prince of the king that you are supposed to be serving right now.

He guides you by an arm around your waist to the bed, and then stands at the foot of it, looking down on you with hazy eyes. Your stomach flips, and your knees and thighs are pressed together. He drags his bottom lip into his teeth.

“Open your legs, baby. I want to see how much you need me.” He reaches down, patting at your knee.

You hesitate, but slowly pry your knees apart, letting him see the mess that had been brewing there. The cold air immediately brushes at the wetness, and it makes you feel impossibly more exposed.

“Fuck,” he says, dragging out the word like a hiss. The raw, ravenous look in his eyes reaches deep into an unwanted part of you, that had for so long believed that you’re not worthy of anything like this. You know that you’re still not worthy of it, but you’ll happily bask in its warmth while you have it.  “So wet,” he growls, eyeing your center without ceremony, as if those aren’t the most lewd words you’ve heard spoken aloud. “Pretty, you’re dripping all over your bedspread, and I haven’t even really touched you yet. Makes me wonder if you’ve ever even been touched before.” 

Your cheeks flame the more he stands over the foot of the bed, lazily drinking you in. You haven’t. You had your first kiss in the woods somewhere a few days ago. Flashes of those memories plague you for a second, of bark on your skin and Taehyun’s hand in your hair, and that guilt that you can’t seem to place tugs at you again. You need to forget about it; Taehyun doesn’t seem too caught up on it, so why should you be? Where is Taehyun right now?

“Has he touched you? Did you let him put his hands on your skin,”—he brushes a whisper of a touch on your inner thigh, so close to your center, yet not actually paying any attention to it—“like this?” The rush that shoots up your spine is lethal. He draws such intense feelings from you with the simplest of touches in a way that borders on scary. 

Oh, yeah. Yeonjun still thinks that you’re Taehyun’s human servant, or something. You decide to just lean into it. “Why would he?” you ask. 

“Because I saw the way he looked at me yesterday,” he says, and the plush of the bed dips as he settles his knees into it. He hovers over you, notched between your thighs. You knew the truth behind that look, though. Taehyun was livid at you, at how you had shirked your duties and danced all night. You don’t know how to convey that to Yeonjun, though. Any explanation would just lead to more questions you couldn’t answer. 

He plants a line of kisses up the length of your inner thigh, just where his hand had ghosted, and you wiggle your hips in anticipation as if it would move him any faster to where you need him most. It doesn’t, he only continues to antagonize your skin with his tongue and lips. 

“Please,” you breathe. Yeonjun’s lazy eyes flick up to yours from his place between your legs, and the sight makes the blood in your veins sing. 

“You want my mouth?” he says, sitting back up onto his knees and running a smooth hand from the wet patch of skin on your thigh up and over your hip bone, and then the softness of your stomach, and then he brushes a thumb over your breast. You struggle to breathe a bit as he does, and it’s exponentially harder to as his words ricochet in your ears, cutting through the fog of your mind. 

“Yes,” you say. You can’t muster anything else. A satisfied, lopsided smile plays at his lips, and he lets his thumb over your nipple, rolling it. 

“Do you realize how badly you’ve got me?” he muses. His gaze leaves your chest, opting for your eyes as he says it. “I want to give you everything you’ve ever wanted. I’ll do anything, if you ask it of me.” The alarm bells ringing in your ears sound more like music than warning. It should sound like too much; you’d met him yesterday. He’s a faerie, you’re a human. His words are cloying; he’s lying. He’s lying.

But, he can’t lie.

He settles his head down, a breath’s-width from providing you with relief from the burning that he so cruelly kindled there. “Here? You want my mouth here?” The words puff onto you. You can feel your ears reddening; he seems to enjoy seeing you debased. It’s like he wants to be the source of your ruination.

“Yes, right there,” you say, toes curling in anticipation. He hums, taking the back of your thighs into his hands and pressing them up. It leaves you even more exposed to him. When the first contact of his mouth to your cunt comes, it’s with a barely there roll of your clit with his tongue, but it spreads like alcohol through your system. You mewl as he holds eye contact as if entranced with the way you react to him, and swirls his tongue around it. Your hands find perch in his hair.

He is wholly overwhelming you: his hands dig divots into your thighs to hold you open for him to eat, his eyes make sure you’re watching as he does, the sound he makes into your cunt. You don’t know what else to do, other than squirm on the sheets and chant nonsensical words. The more his mouth consumes you, the more it consumes your thoughts, until you are tunnel-visioned, only able to feel his touches. He runs his tongue down, and you gasp as it prods at your entrance, but he brings it back up, and then suckles at your clit some more. 

“More,” you say. 

He detaches from you for only a moment, just to ask, “More what?”—he pushes your thighs further up, molding them to your body—“More this?” He pushes his tongue into you, and then out. 

“Mhm!” you cry, digging your hands into his hair harder. He makes a low hum of satisfaction, slurping you up, lazed, as if you were a sweet sugarplum liqueur. A tense knot settles in your belly, sending your legs jittery even as he presses them, and your toes curling in the air. Your hips roll up and into the bed wildly, chasing that knot. “Yeonjun—”

Yeonjun knows what your cries mean, pulling from your hole, if only to suction his lips around your clit. It halts every thought and word in your mind, and the knot tightens so intensely with it that it snaps. You seize up in his hands and then explode in shakes and desperate whimpers. Your body rages, but your mind is suspended somewhere in the sky, removed from you. Yeonjun lavishes you through it, despite the way his tongue bumping into your sensitive spots has you jumping. His mouth follows your hips everywhere they go as you writhe to escape it; he isn’t letting you float down, he keeps your body on that high and builds on it. Your breaths come panted and whimpered. 

“Slow—slow down, ‘jun,” you say, pushing at his head. When he pulls off of you, the sight of you all over his mouth draws a moan from you. His tongue swipes at his lips. 

“You’re divine,” he purrs. “Did that feel good, sweet thing? Do you want more?” You lay, catching your breath, trying to let the waves of aftershock dissipate so that you can articulate yourself. You feel it still thrumming in the hollows of your bones. He skirts his thumb oh-so-lightly around your throbbing clit, and it’s no help in your efforts.

You nod. “I want to make you feel good, too.” You can’t fathom letting him please you like this without returning the favor. It would be so nice to see him fall apart, too.

“Yeah?” He drinks in your state. He stops circling his thumb to press it to your bud. You let out a surprised sound, your muscles coming back to life to jolt. He acts as though he’s thinking it over, but you can see the teasing lilt on his face. “Say my name again, pretty. It sounds loveliest on your tongue.”

“Yeonjun,” you indulge him. A content sparkle in his eyes tells you that he’s gonna give you what you want. He lets your thighs down, instead resting his weight on either side of your head, leaning down to capture your lips in a sultry kiss. He tugs your bottom lip into his mouth. The scrape of his teeth is dizzying. He’s freeing himself with one hand when he pulls back, and your spine tickles with anticipation until you see the look on his face.

 Is he suddenly disgusted with you? You can feel the color drain from your skin as you ask, voice thin, “What?” He climbs off of you, and you could throw up. “What is it?” 

“I think your friend is here,” he says, adjusting his clothes. Oh. Your mind wars between relief and terror knowing that, if Yeonjun knows Taehyun is here, Taehyun knows Yeonjun is here. Damn their superior hearing. 

You curse. “Go,” you urge, slipping out of bed with sticky thighs and stumbling to the wardrobe to source a shift dress to slip into. Yeonjun thumbs your chin, tugging your face to him, and presses a parting kiss into your lips. It lingers on your lips as he lets out a soft laugh, shoving open the window and disappearing through it. You roll your eyes, finding the image of him clambering down the tree to escape quite humorous. 

You clean up and settle into the bed. Is whatever you have going with Yeonjun sustainable? Echoes of Taehyun’s voice, vicious and tart, tell you that you should get it together; that you should nip this in the bud, and focus your energies elsewhere. You want so badly to make the little girl, snatched from her home, proud. You want to fulfill her dreams. But, you can’t shake yourself from whatever hold Yeonjun is securing over you. He so casually promises to give you everything you ever ask for; would you be stupid to ignore it? Is it naive to imagine that a man would say his words and mean it? A faerie, no less? 

You sink further as sleep calls you. If Taehyun knows that Yeonjun was here, or what you had done with him, he doesn’t show up to chew you out for it. You wish he would.

❉

The next few days blur into hours of Court spent around Yeonjun and his courtly friends. You try to glean as much information as you can from it, but really, it’s mostly nothing of any importance. You begin to think that Taehyun is right; that you shouldn’t be sticking your nose into the business of a prince. If Yeonjun were to ever find out your reasons for even attending Court… Your stomach does a sickened flip. He might hate you for lying, maybe even begin thinking that you have been using him.

You really do like Yeonjun, though. It’s not just that he’s an interesting thread to follow; he treats you like you’re no different from him. Your bruised and beaten heart clings to him, hoping he’ll soothe over all the years you spent insignificant and unloved. If anything ever comes of all of your stolen nights and kisses, he’d have to know eventually. It can’t be shoved down forever, though you truly wish it could. 

You sit at the ornamental vanity in your room, combing through your hair, when Taehyun makes an appearance at the door. You haven’t had even one conversation with him following the morning Yeonjun had those dresses sent to you.

“We’re not going to Court today,” he says, his arms crossed over his chest. His face is steely. 

“Oh?” You place the boar bristle brush down. “What are we doing, then?”

He studies the room you’ve been staying in. It looks an awful lot like he’s searching for something. His eyes linger on the bed. “I think I got something last night. We’re going check it out. You’re gonna need your weapons.” 

He’s gone from the room with that. The conversation was terse and majorly discourteous, but it’s the most you’ve seen of him in multiple days. You’ll take it. Maybe you’ll even have time to plead your case today, or some way to show him that you’ve been practicing your fighting stances and memorizing poisons on the days sleep doesn’t find you as easy.

You’ve armed yourself to the teeth by the time you meet Taehyun at the bottom of the stairs. He’s armed much lighter than you.

“Did I overdo it?” you say, slicing yourself some cheese to eat on bread.

He adjusts the blade sheathed at his hip, shaking his head. “That’s just fine.” 

You frown and bite into your breakfast. What kind of information could he have gotten yesterday? The need for weapons worries you.

You like to think that you’ve adjusted to the chill of the north by now, but as you break through an untrodden forest with brambles catching your legs in each step, it does nip at your skin. You’re still only human, after all, no matter how hard you pretend yourself to be a faerie lady in the Court. You’re still only a spy, you’re reminded, as the two of you come across a mound of packed dirt sitting atop the snowy ground. It’s marked as an entrance only by a hole that looks hand-dug. You’ve lived long enough in Faerie to know that it’s more than just any old dirt hill or foxhole. The folk dwell in odd places like these.

“When we get in there, I need you to pretend that you’re a human servant. Can you do that for me?” he says. You’re unsettled, but you nod.

 You head for the entrance first. It’s just big enough for you to slip a leg into, duck under, and wiggle in. The entrance opens up, and you’re sent sliding down a chute of twigs and dirt. It takes every bit of your willpower to not make a ruckus of shouts and gasps in your descent. When your feet meet the ground you stumble to steady yourself, you know you look a mess. Taehyun makes a much more graceful descent, and you explain away any mortification with the notion that Taehyun had been anticipating it.

A throaty voice hoots almost immediately, “So, great Lord Taehyun thinks to show his face at this honkey tonk?” 

So, this is that kind of place, then. The reek of ale and wilder spirits tells you enough. What does he think he’ll learn from a place like this? Clearly, he’s known in this place, too. You’re always left with more questions about Taehyun than answers.

Taehyun doesn’t pay the barkeep any mind. “Fetch me a drink,” he says, before leaving you as he cuts through the measly crowd of revelers drowning in their merriments. You narrow your eyes and brew with distaste at his words, but you know he needs you to play the part of demure servant. You don’t know exactly why, but you can do it for him; you’d lived the role your whole life.

You scurry off, shoulders curled in, to the barkeeping hob that stands pouring foamy goblets of honey mead from barrel taps. He eyes you. “Pity you, girl,” he says. “That one’s a real brute.” 

You infer that his words are about Taehyun. Really, you should just grab a drink and go, but curiosity compels you. The faerie laughs at the questions brimming in your eyes. 

“A real, stone-cold killer,” he drawls, twisting open a different barrel. You resist the eye-roll tugging at your eyes. He’s just looking to entertain himself off of your human fright. You feign hesitance in your limbs when you accept the goblet full for Taehyun. He goes to fill another, from a third barrel. “The House of Blackthorn are all such a frightful bunch. The late Lord even more so, but he sowed a good seed of wicked into his son, regardless.” The worry you let your features into is real this time. There’s so little you know about Taehyun; this is the first you’ve ever heard of him that isn’t directly from his mouth. Should you be scared of Taehyun? Ice runs in his veins, sure, but you can scarcely imagine him as a brutal Lord. 

“One mead for the Lord, and one sugar-sweet liqueur for the lady,” the hob says, handing the drinks to you. You offer him a meek, “Thank you.” 

He shoots you an unsavory, toothy grin. “Welcome to The Hovel.” 

You find Taehyun in conversation with a sweet-faced faerie boy who strums at a lute. Their conversation tapers off as you approach. You hand Taehyun’s drink off to him. 

“You’re sure of it?” Taehyun says to the boy. 

“Yup. Just last night,” the boy says. His waved mop of blonde hair moves as he nods. You see the cogs of Taehyun’s mind turning behind his eyes as the exchange comes to a close. So, the information he was following from last night came to fruition, then. You kick yourself for your lack of any real results.

“Who was that?” you ask, voice hushed. You tilt your head at the faerie as he rejoins the other musicians, and the stream of lute song intermingles with the other instruments once again. You pretend to sip from the drink the hob had given you for free, tipping it into the dirt when you think nobody is looking. You know it’s bad manners, especially in Faerie, but you have bigger fish to fry. Taehyun hadn’t paid that boy for that info, nor had he paid the tavernkeep for his drink. You recall the hob’s words of warning. They fear him. 

He shakes his head. “Let’s get out of here, first.” 

When fresh air meets your lungs, you realize how stale and muggy the air inside the little burrow is. You pull yourself out through the exit, following Taehyun. The two of you begin your battle against the wild forest again. 

“So…?” you say. 

It’s getting colder as night arrives. His breath puffs from his mouth, furling like smoke into the air as he says, “Apparently, there were some lackeys there last night asking around about me and a human girl in cahoots with The Prince.” 

Your mind launches into a frenzy. Do they know that you’re spies? How would they even know? It’s not like the two of you have even done anything to garner any suspicion. Whoever has had their eyes on you and Taehyun has also noticed that you’re running around with Yeonjun. Is Yeonjun in danger? You gnaw at your cheeks. This person had to have been hovering around you two for days and days—not once had either of you noticed.

“Did you find out who it could’ve been?”

He shakes his head solemnly. You can tell he’s unseaming and picking apart every moment leading up to this one—you are, too. Nothing sticks out. 

You freeze in your tracks. A pretty magpie sits dead on the forest ground, its blood decorating the snow in patches. No arrow pierces it, nor is it caught in any sort of trap. It lays with its little legs in the air. The imagery is unnerving. 

“Poor thing,” you say, crouching down by it. 

Taehyun pays you and the bird no mind, but you feel that something is off when he turns to you with his limbs and shoulders stiff. “What?” you ask.

His eyes survey the forest around you. He must be hearing something that you can’t. The hair on your skin prickles. Are you being watched? Taehyun narrows his eyes, looking over the surrounding forest for a few long moments, before continuing on his way, and so you decide that you should too, despite the feeling buzzing at the back of your neck.

 Somebody comes crashing out of the foliage, securing your arms to your side before you can process that they’ve got you. They hold the point of a dagger to your chest.

Metal hisses as Taehyun frees the blade from his hip, but he doesn’t make any advancements. Your heart beats under the point of the weapon, chasing breaths as fear paralyzes your chest. 

“A little birdie told me,”—your captor says from behind you—“that I’d find you two here.” 

“Let go of her,” Taehyun says. He stands with so much restraint in his limbs.

A patronizing laugh hurts your eardrum with its proximity. He sounds like a cawing crow. “No, I don’t think I will, Lord.” He spits the title out like it is bitter in his mouth, letting the blade dig the littlest bit into your skin. You don’t even feel it with the way adrenaline buzzes in your gut, leaving your limbs shaky.

Taehyun can’t move, so you begin wiggling your fingers for your dagger. Fear chokes you. 

“You won’t miss this one, right?” the man says. He uses the metal to point up at your face, before replacing it over your heart. You’ve almost made it to your thigh, and still, he hasn’t taken notice. “I’ll just get this over with, and then we can talk about this more comfortably.” You may throw up. 

You bunch up the hem of your dress with the littlest of movements to free your thigh and slide out the dagger hidden there.

“Who told you where to find us?” asks Taehyun. Your palm is sweaty around the metal of the dagger, and you readjust your grip a few times, trying to muster the courage to swing it up.

“I told you already,”—the man readjusts his hold on you—“a little birdie.” There’s a sneer to his words. He points the tip of the dagger up to your chin, ghosting it down the column of your throat. Repressed whimpers of terror bubble to the surface. 

“Shut up,” he spits.

Taehyun challenges him. “Do it, then.” Blood roars in your ears.

“You think I won’t?” your snatcher says. 

“Do it,” Taehyun repeats, and you almost let your life flash before your eyes until you see that Taehyun is not looking at the man as he speaks; he’s looking at you. He’s telling you to do it. You tighten your grip on the dagger, before driving it behind you. It makes contact, and the faerie man bellows. You use his shock to free yourself. 

You had driven the blade deep into the man’s shoulder. He thrashes, ruby-red blood inking his fingers as he holds the wound.  

“Bitch!” he howls. “You’re fucking dead, anyway.” 

What does that mean?

Taehyun plunges his sword through the faerie before you even notice he had approached, or ask the man what, exactly, he means. He drops to the floor, mouth filling with blood. You can see it when he opens his mouth to scream and is only able to burble. His own blood chokes him. Your fingertips feel numb, and so does your face.

Taehyun turns to you. “You did good.” 

You did good? You don’t feel good.

You nod. “Thanks.”

 Now, on the forest floor of white snow, lies both a dead faerie man and a dead magpie. You feel the sensation of his skin breaking under your dagger reverberating in your hands, twisting in your mind. His blood paints the ground a nauseating shade of death-red.

“Are you okay?” Taehyun asks, eyeing you.

“Yeah,” you say. “Yeah, I am.”

❉

You and Taehyun attend court the next day skittish. Taehyun delegates you a new role, now; make as big of a scene with Yeonjun as you possibly can. The goal is to throw attention to that, rather than to Taehyun as he continues snooping around. 

It’s not hard to make a spectacle of you and Yeonjun when everybody is already noticing. He doesn’t hide the way he showers you with luxuries, nor does he want to. You can’t help but wonder why he’s making such a show out of it. At some point, his father will hear of him courting a human. Word flies fast in Faerie. You can’t imagine The King would be pleased.

A hand curls around your hip, and you know it’s Yeonjun’s. 

“You weren’t here yesterday,” he says. 

You frown. “No need to state the obvious.”

 He laughs and thumbs your cheek, and you swear the butterflies that flutter in your stomach are nearly painful. “I missed you,” he says. His eyes glitter with the words. “Did you go somewhere with him?” he asks. You don’t miss the way the word him curls in his mouth, much like how a person of the court would speak of something more unfavorable in a sickly-sweet way, to keep up a mask of indifference. 

“We just ran some errands.” You shrug it off. It isn’t the truth, but it also isn’t so far removed from it that you feel uncomfortable about lying to him. Lately, the guilt lays more heavily over you. With each dress and bejeweled trinket Yeonjun sends your way, the more you want to get this big lie out of the way. You should’ve done it before Taehyun set you out to do this; at least then, you could face him and not feel so deceitful. Is there a way to tell him that still conveys that you aren’t using him?

Yeonjun’s eyes flicker to your mouth, and back up to your eyes so quickly you could’ve missed it with a blink. “I see,” he muses. “I could take you under my care, you know. He wouldn’t have a say in any of it.”

Your expression sours a bit, and you know it’s not the reaction Yeonjun had expected if the look on his face says anything. 

“I don’t want to just become a playtoy,” you say. 

He looks taken aback. “You wouldn’t be a playtoy,” he says. “Ever.” He searches your eyes for something. “Why would you even think that?” 

Because you’re a prince, you think. Because I’m a human. Because that’s all we are to your kind. 

“Then why don’t we just stay as we are?” you say. There would be no real reason to even go through with such a thing—not when nothing would come of it. Princes of Faerie don’t marry humans. You’d become a mistress, and that’s being optimistic.

“Taehyun is not a good man,” Yeonjun says. His voice is stripped of its usual playful inflection. Why does everybody seem to keep telling you that? “I would feel better knowing that you’re safe.”

Safe? He thinks Taehyun would hurt you? “I’m okay, Yeonjun,” you say, if only to placate him. He doesn’t look convinced at all. “He treats me well,” you laugh. You meet his hand on your cheek with your own, curling it around his. While he doesn’t know the truth of everything, or why you stay with Taehyun in the first place, it stitches some old wounds inside you seeing that he cares for you.

His jaw tightens. “My offer will still stand if you ever decide otherwise.” 

He brushes his thumb at the plush of your bottom lip. Your mind goes fuzzy. When he presses it fully to your lips, you suck his thumb into your mouth, tasting the imprint of his fingerprint with rolls of your tongue around it. He looks as though he could moan standing there watching you, so you make a point of not losing contact with his eyes. You feel multiple burning stares on you, but you shove them out. 

He watches your tongue and his gaze comes alive with hunger, tugging your lower lip down before taking your chin into a hold and molding his lips to yours. His kiss conveys every thought plaguing his mind in its raw nature.

Their eyes are on you; so many eyes are. You know they look, but for the first time, you don’t falter under the weight. He tastes like broken shackles and weightless limbs. He tastes like salvation.

He roams his hands dangerously. When your mouths part, despite your shortage of oxygen, you say, “I’m sure you had many courtly ladies to entertain in my absence.” Your head buzzes. 

You’ve never seen Yeonjun so much as interact with another woman, but you still worry that he doesn’t only have eyes for you. 

His face turns sly again. “They’re honestly all quite dull.” 

Maybe, one day, you’ll join those ranks. You remind yourself that you won’t be here forever—that this moment in time is finite. Hopefully, you won’t be here long enough to see that happen. You’re not sure your self-worth could handle that hit.

“Are you really so superficial?” you ask. You stay playful in your tone, peeling from him to waltz toward an entree table. He follows. The way he trails you like a puppy on a leash does a bit to bloat your ego, despite your worries. “What’s so special about me?” It’s cheap, you know, but you crave his praise. You’ve found yourself thriving off of Yeonjun’s sweet words like oxygen. The question had been plaguing your mind since he had first spoken to you, anyway.

He looks as if he can’t articulate what he’s thinking. Or, maybe, he’s just concocting some words that’ll sound nice to your ears. “This life has become tiring. It drains you, and I am surrounded by it. Endlessly.” He pops a treat off a platter into his mouth. “You’re like a breath of spring air to my lungs.” 

You’re his distraction. He saw a human and decided it would be the biggest spectacle he could find to distract from his princely woes. You draw back. What do the faeries in this court think of you? Do they snicker when you turn your back? Do they laugh to see you think that you’re more than just entertainment to him? Does he join them? 

“What’s wrong?” Yeonjun asks, seeing the way you retract into yourself. “What is it?” 

You have to keep this act up; the well-being of your mission relies on it. You should’ve never gotten your feelings so entangled. 

“Because I’m human?”

A frown etches into his porcelain face. “No. Maybe at first, but…”—he releases a measured breath—“No.” Selfishly, you’re thankful that his kind can’t lie. 

You and Yeonjun find the dancefloor, more packed with cavorting faeries each day, and you accept the distraction from your dreary thoughts. The wild nature of it strips you of such things, leaving you bare to just your happier feelings. It leaves you just as breathless as the first time had. You kick and whirl and flail your limbs freely. 

When Yeonjun inevitably tugs you from your trance and out of the throng of folk, you’re dazed. Exhausted. Your hands itch to be all over him. 

“Breathe,” he reminds you, smoothing over the wild tousle that your hair had become. You focus on steadying your erratic breaths. “You’re a wild one,” he says, a pleased grin on his lips. The flush on his cheeks mirrors your own, despite his teasing. 

You lean into him to support your legs of jelly. You must’ve danced for hours. 

Yeonjun looks down at you, and his features are soft. “You wanna rest?” You nod. He laughs and then takes your hands into his. He guides you away from the soiree, out from the canopy of trees, but not toward Taehyun’s estate. You don’t question where he leads you, even as cold air makes you realize how bare this dress leaves your arms, even as the unfamiliar path catches at the hem of your dress. He notices how you don’t care to lift it from the ground, snorting, before lifting you into his arms.

“Woah!” you protest, feet off the ground in seconds. “I can walk.”

“Ah, but, only a fool would let a pretty lady like you soil her dress in the dirt.” 

You scowl at him, but it doesn’t change the way your belly swoops. He treats you so delicately. 

He carries you until you arrive at a mini palace that is no doubt royal—it towers over any surrounding trees. And, you had thought you had seen luxury. This is luxury. This is a life spent fed off of only crystal spoons. You admire the lush interior as he carries you into the palace. 

“This is where you stay?” you say. 

He hums, and you can feel the rumble of it in his chest. “For one half of the year, this is my home.”

You notice how utterly empty it is. You had expected advisors and permanent guards and bustling servants. “It must get lonely here.” 

“I prefer it here,” he says. You can sympathize with that. You had spent the entirety of your life in the land of summer, but you had found more warmth than ever here in the north. This place was supposed to be a death sentence for humans, and though you had briefly met the danger that the north could present yesterday, you almost dread leaving. Maybe you just need more time, and then you’ll be so overtaken by fear that it’ll make it easy.

Yeonjun carries you through a door, and into what you assume is his room. A bed so large it would swallow up a third of the room you’re staying at in Taehyun’s estate sits in the middle of his room. He sets you down onto its velvety, rose-petal coverlet, before he climbs in next to you, propping himself up onto an elbow so he can admire you.

Your skin sighs as he rubs sweet circles over your bare shoulder with the pad of his thumb. The two of you settle into a long, comfortable silence.

“Do you believe that I don’t care for you?” he asks into the quiet. Do you hear hurt in his words? 

You meet his gaze and struggle to find words. Is it wrong to lie, just because you can? 

Your hesitance tells him enough. His fingers on your skin stop. “I am not so shallow, if you actually meant that.” Your words from earlier must’ve been gnawing at him. 

“It’s not that,” you say, avoiding contact with his eyes. It was exactly that. He doesn’t allow you to look away from him, sitting up to cut straight back into your vision. 

“What is it, then?” 

Your heart thrums. You want to tell him that you’re a liar, and that he should spit in your face and tell you to get out. You want to ask him if he’d still care for you the way he does if he knew your truth. You want to ask him if there’s any way that this can play out where the both of you end up together and unscathed. Your mind beckons you to ask him about every little doubt that has harassed your mind concerning him so that he can comfort you and assure you that they are just doubts. 

You ask none of those. 

“How can I show you?” he says. He climbs over you, knees straddling each side of your legs. “What would it take to prove to you that I mean it when I tell you that you make my heart ache? What will it take to make you become mine?” He lines a kiss up on your forehead, and then your cheek, and then onto the corner of your mouth. “This?” he asks, and then he hikes up the length of your dress, bunching all the fabric above your hips. He draws back so that he can plant a kiss on your clit, and he makes sure you’re looking at him while he does it. “Or is it this?” 

You breathe in the sensation, gasping his name like prayer and making room for him between your thighs. 

“Is that what it is, pretty? You need me to make love to you? I can do that,” he says. “I can do that, no problem.” 

He works at his clothes with one hand and brushes touches to your cunt with the other. Eventually, his needlessly extravagant Court shirt is off, and he’s holding your hip down as he prods the tip of a finger at your entrance. Your hole flutters in anticipation, his eyes catch it, and he breaks into a lousy grin. He finally begins pushing the finger into you, watching as you gasp at the way he curls into you. 

Pleasure whorls in your belly, rendering you increasingly dumber. “I need you,” you say. The muscles in his arm strain as he fingers you, and his black hair falls into his face with the movements. Your heart clenches.

“Slow down, baby. I need to do this, you’re not ready for me yet,” he says, pressing a soft kiss into your temple. “I want to make you feel good.” He slides another finger in, and you suppose he’s right, because it stretches you. He pumps and curls the both of them, and you dig your nails into his forearm as it all starts building in your belly. 

Yeonjun tugs his lip into his mouth, biting it, as he watches you grow restless under his fingers. Your peak feels so close, but his pace is so leisurely that you’re worried you’ll never reach it, as if caught in a limbo of torturous delight. “Faster,” you cry. “Faster, please.” It amuses him, and he abandons his casual pace for sloppy curls that have you whimpering into the air of his bedroom.

 “Yes, yes, yes!” A crescendo looms over you, until it crashes and your back is arching off the bed and you’re making embarrassing sounds. You dig crescents into Yeonjun’s arm when he continues to finger you. Your insides protest his stimulation, tugging and clenching tight in a way that borders tastefully on discomfort. 

“Fuck,” you hear Yeonjun say through the haze. “Just like that. Doesn’t it feel good?” he purrs. His fingers plow you through this peak, hurling you toward another one brutally. “I know it does; you’re clenching around my fingers so hard.”

Your hand covers your face. His words are lewd, and he says them like it’s nothing. It makes your insides burn. You can tell that the orgasm he beckons you into with each deliberate thrust is going to be explosive, frantically squeezing your thighs around his arm to staunch the intensity of his movements. Wet sounds punctuate each curl of his fingers. You can hardly believe that those sounds are coming from you.

“You want another one?” he says. You only answer him with pathetic whimpers. “Keep making those pretty noises for me.” 

You do, and he rewards you with his thumb on your clit. It drives you utterly wild. The blend of his fingers inside you and each bump against your nerves is exactly what you need to explode, and so you do, bucking. You’re worried he’s going to try and have you cum again when his fingers don’t stop, but he brings you down gently with small swirls. 

You catch your breath while Yeonjun adjusts you on the bed, tugging you down by your hips and sliding one of his thinner pillows under the bottom of your spine in a way that lifts your bottom half into the air. You laugh through ragged breaths; it feels a tad ridiculous.

“What’s that for?” 

He massages your inner thigh, soft humor twinkling in his eyes, but also so much more. “You’ll see,” he says. He hovers over you, bracing his weight into one arm at the side of your head so he can look right into your face. His free arm lines the tip of him up with you. Before making any moves to slide into you, he kisses you and takes your bottom lip with him as he pulls back. It exhilarates you; everything he’s ever done to you is exhilarating. You’re swept into a ripwave of emotion. Do you deserve all this? Is this life yours?

His hand rests on your hip, brushing over your hipbone with great gentleness, as he pushes into you. It’s slow and full of peppered kisses all over your face and neck, and then he’s in you to the hilt, and then he’s pulling back out of you so that you’re just so empty, but of course, with just a thrust he’s filling you back up. He falls into a swift pace, but each time he ruts up into you, it’s calculated and well-placed. Maybe it’s the pillow, or perhaps it’s just expertise, but he’s plunging into a sickeningly soft spot inside of you that makes your legs that are locked around his waist shake each time. Your eyes flutter close, but your mouth drops open in a soundless moan. 

“No, open your eyes. Look at me. Do you feel it? Do you feel my love for you?” he says, voice raw. “Is this what you needed?” 

Yes, this is exactly what you need. You feel so far removed from yourself that you can’t even feel your hurt or worries. You nod your head frantically. 

“Please, open your eyes,” he repeats, pleading in his tone. His face is right in front of yours when you do. His eyes flicker between both of yours. The intimacy of it is as consuming as the flames licking your insides, winding you up so tight that you might explode into a ball of blazing fire. The rolls of his hips turn into short, needy ruts. His mouth drops open, but he won’t close his eyes. He wants to watch you. 

“Yeonjun—” you breathe. Your muscles are tense all over, especially in your core, where he winds you tighter. The impending orgasm whispers into your ear that it will swallow you whole in its wake, and you believe it; you can’t breathe. 

“I know,” he says. When you squeak, face screwing up, Yeonjun reads you like letters on paper. “I know, it feels so good.” He’s just as much of a mess as you, panting while his free hand grabs at each of your curves to ground himself. You hold back your climax; it’s so hot in your belly that you fear how it’s going to wreck you. The hair on your skin prickles and rises. 

He feels how tightly you clamp down on him. “C’mon, pretty.”

Your nails rake paths down his biceps. “I can’t” you gasp. “Can’t—”

“Yes, you can.” 

Warm tears pool in the corners of your eyes and you shake your head. You do everything you can to urge it back; wriggling under him to escape his thrusts, pushing at his chest, biting into your poor lip until you fear it’ll bleed. Pressure builds all over you, your eyes burn and your muscles burn, like a thousand pounds of ecstasy pressing on each square inch of you and begging to be released.

“Stop running from it,” he says, pushing your hips into the mattress, pinning them so that he can deliver pointed thrusts up into that place that is so sensitive. It works wonders. “Let go, baby. Let it happen; I promise you it’ll feel so good.” 

You crumble, crying out into the air and clenching wildly around Yeonjun. 

“Yes, fuck!” he growls. He’s chasing his own peak now, leaving you no time to breathe through your own. 

You chant his name.

 “Squeezing me so good—you’re driving me up the fucking walls, pretty.” 

The sounds he rips from you are errant the more he pistons into you, and your hair sticks to your neck. For the third time, you cum, circling him in your arms and keeping him close while you try your best to ride this one out.

With the encouragement of you sporadically tightening around him, he stills over you, abdomen tensing up, before cumming into you, producing strangled sighs. He collapses down to his elbows and drops his head into your neck, delivering shallow rolls as he rides it out. Breaths puff onto your skin as he peppers warm kisses over every inch of your exposed skin. He stays like this, intertwined with you, for a while, lazily delivering thrusts until you’re both able to breathe fully again. 

When he pulls out of you, you feel him dripping from you. You should’ve told him to pull out; you must have no fears. It’s hard to worry too much about that, though, with the way he’s looking at your cunt as if the sight of his seed oozing from you was like nothing he’d ever seen before. He takes your ankle into his hand from where it hovered in the air, feathering a kiss there.

“Do you see now?” he asks, bringing his eyes up to yours. 

“Yeah,” you say. “I do.” 

END PART 2

a/n: there she is! I wanna see who y'all are more attached to this far.

tags: @lvrs-street2mmorrow , @soohashits