Faerie Story:  Chapter Four

On the morning that Skinner and Alexin’s disappearance had been discovered, Sylvana had ordered the immediate execution of the Captain of the Castle Guards, whom she had, naturally, held responsible for the fact the monkey-man had managed to somehow break free of the dungeon and kidnap the young Prince.

The execution had been public and merciless. It had also been painstakingly long. Determined to assert her authority in front of all the other gathered queens and princesses, Alexin’s mother had personally supervised the skinning of the unfortunate Captain and had hanged her still live body over the main entrance gate of the castle so that the twitching, howling misery of the soon-to-be corpse was grim witness of just how furious Sylvana was at the situation.

It must be said that, at that point, she had been feeling more embarrassed about the public breach of her security than worried about her son’s safety. She had been absolutely certain that both Alexin and the monkey-man would be recovered by her troops before nightfall. The idea of a monkey-man eluding capture while on Faerie land was unthinkable.

Three days later, the only trace that had been found of the missing Prince was a swathe of ripped, bloodied cloth, the now mercifully dead Captain had been joined by three further bodies - those of the replacement Captains who had failed, one by one, to return to the castle with a successful resolution to their daily hunts for the escaped monkey-man and his captive – and Sylvana was not only growing increasingly frustrated but was running out of candidates for the Captain’s position.

The guards were all slinking around the castle now, desperately trying to avoid her eyes, lest she chose to promote *them* next.

Furthermore, many of the delegations of the other queens had broken camp and left the castle in fury. It wasn’t because they doubted she’d recover the boy alive. The Faerie were too arrogant to believe a mere monkey-man could evade pursuit indefinitely – even if he *had* already been surprisingly elusive. It was that, in her outrage at Alexin’s disappearance, Ariana had publicly threatened to dissolve her intended alliance with Sylvana and, during the argument, it had become obvious to the other ‘suitors’ that their own courting of the young Prince had been doomed from the start.

So, after eighteen years of careful planning, instead of Alexin’s veiling becoming the moment that united the Faerie against the monkey-men, Sylvana’s revealed deception had now made enemies of many of the other queens and they had returned home, muttering vague threats under their breath.

Sylvana could have *killed* Ariana for her stupidity.

On the other hand, as long as Ariana still allied with her, all was not lost. She and Ariana ruled the two largest queendoms and as long as they stood together none of the other Faerie would do more than loudly sulk and threaten. None would actually rise up against them in vengeance for the deception. And, combined, Ariana and Sylvana’s armies could *still* rout many of the human settlements. Perhaps they couldn’t drive the humans out of their lands completely, but they could still inspire such fear in them that it would be centuries before humans again dared to live within the hills that bordered the Faerie mountains.

So, despite her fury at the other queen, Sylvana channeled her fury into punishing her guards for their failure to find Alexin and thus managed to keep relations amicable with Ariana.

Not *all* of the other queens left the castle.

Some had never truly believed themselves to be in with a chance of winning the boy’s hand. Most of those ruled small, insignificant queendoms – which was *why* they’d doubted their chances – and so they had always been more interested in an alliance with Sylvana anyway.

Others, a scant few, repressed their anger at Sylvana and stayed because they wished to aid in the search for the missing Prince.

One of those was Rhianna.

Though she made no attempt to conceal her disgust at Sylvana and Ariana’s private ‘arrangement’, Rhianna was genuinely concerned about Alexin’s fate. She was, perhaps, the only one of the queens – Sylvana included – who found herself sleepless with worry over how such a delicate, sweet child could possibly survive for any length of time without the comforts of the castle. She pictured him already battered and bruised, half starved and terrified out of his wits in the company of the savage monkey-man.

Having heard of, if not seen for herself, the tortures that the beast-man had endured, she was sure it was exacting its revenge on the frail boy. Undoubtedly poor Alexin was paying the price for what the monkey-man had suffered in the Faerie dungeons.

So, despite her fury at the deceit of the other two queens, Rhianna still accepted an invitation to join them on the fourth morning, as they discussed their plans for Alexin’s rescue.

“We know they’re still on Fairie land,” Sylvana announced. “I sent riders to seal all the ward-gates yesterday morning, when it became obvious those incompetent fools of guards are incapable of tracking a single monkey-man with an unwilling captive.”

“I doubt the boy’s struggling,” Ariana snorted. “‘No’ isn’t in his vocabulary, is it?”

“If it were, you wouldn’t want him,” Sylvana snapped. “The point is, Alexin can’t cross the width of the castle grounds without his heels blistering. The animal must be carrying him because there’s no way Alexin has managed to *walk* far enough to evade my patrols.”

“He’s a slight boy,” Rhianna agreed. “I imagine the beast-man could simply have thrown him over its shoulder and barely have felt the weight of him. Still, you’d expect its tracks to be even more noticeable if it’s carrying a burden.”

“The tracks disappear at the edge of a stream and, although my guards have ridden the whole length of the water twice, they can’t find the place where they returned to dry land.”

“Where they exited is irrelevant,” Ariana snarled. “In three days the guards *should* have picked up their trail again. They’re *somewhere* in the forest. Surround the trees and work inwards.”

“It doesn’t appear to be possible to do that,” Sylana replied. “The trees are constantly… moving.”

Both Rhianna and Ariana paled at Sylvana’s words.

“It’s not possible,” Ariana said, when she’d recovered from the initial shock. “The trees have been slumbering for centuries. Why would they wake now? What possible reason would they have for protecting a monkey-man?”

“A monkey-man who possibly has Faerie blood,” Sylvana reminded her. “*Northern* Faerie blood. And now the trees have woken. The implications are not good. The prophesy foretold such a happening. ”

Ariana shook her head vehemently. “It’s impossible. Even if the animal *is* a part-breed, it barely has a trace of Fairie in its veins. And, for the trees to ally themselves with it, it would have to be directly descended from Behaana’s bloodline. Yet the banishment spell still holds strong, even after a thousand years. None of Behaana’s blood can ever enter the Southern Territories.”

“Perhaps that’s the point,” Rhianna answered. “Living as I do, so far north, I hear many rumors from the Northern Territories. As recently as five centuries ago, a number of monkey-women were apparently kidnapped by Behaana’s soldiers and returned to their people pregnant with half-blood children.”

“That proves nothing except their desperation,” Ariana spat. “Faerie males lying with beast-women. Bah! It’s disgusting. A perversion.”

“Yes,” Rhianna agreed. “But perhaps it was also a plan to dilute their blood sufficiently that the prophesy could be fulfilled and so their immortal curse could finally be broken. Perhaps they deliberately created a creature with enough Faerie blood to cross through a ward-gate, but with so *little* Faerie blood that the banishment spell doesn’t kill it.”

Sylvana shuddered slightly. “Could it truly have come to pass? After so many hundreds of years, has Behaana finally found a way to fulfill the prophesy?”

Ariana shook her head firmly. “The creature’s male. Completely male. Even if it *is* muscled like a woman. Behaana’s blood or no, it can’t be the ‘Sword of Vengeance’ spoken of in the prophesy. Perhaps a part-blood *could* be the one spoken of in legend, but it would still have to be a female beast because without harnessing a male’s magic it can’t fulfill its destiny.”

Sylvana sighed with relief. “Of course,” she said. “Behaana’s plan is fatally flawed. The nature of the monkey-men is that their males are the warriors, and yet the ‘Sword of Vengeance’ must mate with a Faerie male and so must, of course, be female.”

“So this monkey-man who’s taken Alexin is not the culmination of the prophesy, but rather the proof that it can’t ever come to pass by such means,” Ariana agreed.

“Tell that to the trees,” Rhianna snorted dryly.

“I have a better idea of what to ‘tell’ the trees,” Sylvana replied. “I’ll set fire to them. That will quickly disabuse them of any notion of helping the creature. Behaana’s blood, huh? When I’ve finally finished with punishing the beast for daring to steal my son, I’ll put what little remains of it in a box and send it to the Northern Territories to show Behaana that the curse will *never* be broken.”

~~~

Despite Alexin’s obvious fear, as evidenced by his tightly shut eyes, quivering frame and the way his hands clenched into fists despite his posture of otherwise complete submission, Skinner’s only hesitation, as he knelt between Alexin’s splayed legs, was whether to use his mouth or his hands to demonstrate his ‘magic’ to the boy.

In the end, he decided on both. Even though he had never taken any of his previous male lovers between his lips, he knew the pleasure he himself had felt from oral sex and wanted Alexin to experience the same bliss.

In view of the situation, the fact he was now bound to the Faerie boy in such a way that regular sex between them was inevitable, it was imperative that Alexin learned to take some pleasure in the couplings. Faerie magic or no, Skinner wasn’t prepared to spend the rest of his life as a rapist – even if Alexin, surprisingly, didn’t seem to see him in that light – and although he had no control over the compulsion to mount the boy, he was going to do everything within his power to convince Alexin that the experience could be mutually enjoyable.

He still, at some basic level, felt considerable unease at performing what was, morally, no more than a different form of rape. Had Alexin been a human boy, what he was planning would have been indefensible. To deliberately waken an innocent’s sexuality under duress was, in its own way, simply a different kind of abuse.

Yet, as the trees had said, Alexin was no more an ordinary innocent than he was an ordinary boy. While Skinner found it hard to reconcile the idea of a child being raised both so ‘pure’ that he’d never even touched his own private flesh and yet simultaneously aware and accepting that his ‘destiny’ was to be, in effect, a sexual plaything, Skinner couldn’t argue with the evidence of his own eyes and ears. From the first rape, Alexin, though understandably terrified and unhappy with the pain he was suffering, had been almost unnaturally submissive and accepting of Skinner’s right to abuse him in such a fashion.

Not only submissive during their couplings, when Skinner could blame the boy’s compliance on the magic between them, but generally.

Alexin was clearly unhappy. Probably even to the point of secretly praying for ‘rescue’ by his people and his freedom by way of Skinner’s death. But it was clear that for as long as Skinner remained alive and free, Alexin would passively accept the nature of their relationship and make no actual effort to free himself from their bond.

Again, Skinner was unsure how much of Alexin’s passivity had been ingrained into him through his upbringing and how much was due to the Faerie magic binding the two of them together, but the fact remained that he *would* continue to use the boy sexually and so the only way to make that bearable to himself, let alone Alexin, was to ensure that their future couplings were more mutually pleasurable.

Still, he was both confused and concerned when he gave a first tentative stroke on one of the boy’s inner thighs and Alexin stiffened, began to silently cry and then softly whimpered that he “didn’t want to die”.

“Die?” he repeated quietly, shaking his head in confusion.

“My…my nurse said… said if I tou…touched myself, I’d…I’d die,” Alexin sobbed.

Skinner blinked in disbelief. So the boy wasn’t just worried about being forced to do something he considered ‘unrespectable’ but was genuinely frightened. He decided it wasn’t the time nor place to tell Alexin exactly what he thought of a boy being told such a cruel lie.

“Well, even if that were true, which it isn’t, you *aren’t* touching yourself, Alexin. *I’m* touching you.”

“But… but you’re not a woman,” Alexin whimpered.

Irritation rippled through Skinner. Despite his sympathy for the boy, he was growing increasingly angry at the nonsense that kept spouting from Alexin’s mouth. His anger was at the Faerie rather than the boy himself, but it still roughened his voice as he said, “Haven’t we already agreed that I have the right to touch you as I please?”

Eyes still closed, Alexin moaned and nodded his miserable acceptance but, if anything, he appeared even more frightened.

“I know,” he whispered, “and I’m not refusing you. But… but I still don’t want to die.”

Skinner rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Why do you think you’re going to die, Alexin?” he asked, deliberately softening his tone.

“Be…because only a woman can… can safely remove the fire from a maleness once it’s begun to burn. If…if you touch me and waken that fire, I’ll die in agony,” Alexin sobbed.

Skinner cursed under his breath. The Faerie women were obviously as smart as they were evil. A man’s arousal often did feel like a heavy, burning pressure in his groin. How better to keep a boy from breaking their cruel ‘rules’ than to convince him that any natural feeling of arousal was the beginning of an immolating fire inside the boy’s groin that only a woman could safely quench?

“Believe me, boy,” he said, his voice gruff with fury, “the only possibility of you ‘dying’ through an unsatisfied ‘fire’ in your groin is through disappointment. Your member isn’t designed purely for a woman’s pleasure, though she can steal pleasure from it. A male’s member is a delight unto itself and I’m going to prove that to you right now.”

Alexin’s only response was to stiffen with fear and moan low in his throat.

Skinner abruptly decided that no amount of words would convince the boy as much as a practical demonstration. So he forced himself to ignore Alexin’s terror except for being careful not to touch the tears now streaming silently down the boy’s face, and he lowered his face to Alexin’s groin.

Despite his own inexperience at pleasuring a male in such a fashion, Skinner couldn’t deny that Alexin was pretty all over. His member and sac were inarguably pleasing to the eye. Unlike a human male, Alexin had no bodily hair whatsoever. His groin was as smooth as a prepubescent boy’s. It was strange, but oddly attractive. As was the long but fine member that nestled at his groin. The head of Alexin’s member was smooth, dusky pink and devoid of the fold of skin that protected Skinner’s member. Skinner knew of men who had had that fold of skin removed but he was sure, somehow, that Alexin’s member was naturally devoid of that tiny piece of skin. On the other hand, Alexin had a totally inexplicable fold of skin at the root of his member.

The other slight oddity of Alexin’s member was that it wasn’t smooth like a human’s. Three faint ridges ran up the sides and top of the member, ridges that – now he thought about it – presumably became more pronounced when the member was erect. The boy’s member *had* felt a little strange in his hand earlier, but he’d been too consumed by his own desires to give it much thought. Now, clear of the haze, he was able to gently trace the ridges with his fingertips. Ignoring the boy’s frightened twitching, Skinner frowned carefully as his touch caused a small, unexpected nub of flesh to grow at the root of the boy’s member.

In front of his amazed stare, a second tiny member seemed to sprout from the base of Alexin’s maleness at the place where he’d already noticed the fold of skin. The growth was scarce as long and wide as Skinner’s thumb and shrank whenever Skinner ceased his gentle caress of the ridges.

With a low gasp, Skinner understood that he had been slightly incorrect in his comment that Alexin hadn’t been designed for a female’s pleasure. Alexin was *perfectly* designed for a woman’s complete satisfaction. The tiny second member, when suffused with blood, was in exactly the right place to stimulate the little highly sensitive nub of female flesh that drove women wild with desire.

The boy’s sac, while smaller than his own, was perfectly sized for Alexin’s body and, being hairless, was velvet smooth to his touch. It was, however, far neater than his own sac. It was almost devoid of loose skin, with the boy’s balls feeling hard and eager despite the softness of his member. It appeared that a Faerie boy’s balls didn’t shrink and expand in the fashion of a human’s but remained always hard and full, regardless of his state of arousal.

After a moment’s thought, Skinner lapped his tongue wetly across the taut skin of the boy’s sac.

Alexin squealed, his eyes flying open and his lower lip dropping into an expression of shock. “What are you doing?” he squeaked.

In answer, Skinner simply licked him again.

The boy’s skin tasted sweet. Honey-sweet. Despite Alexin’s whole body being wetly sheened with fear, his perspiration tasted like sugar rather than salt. The sugary flavor was almost as addictive to Skinner as the boy’s tears. He found himself eagerly licking and sucking at the sweetness, his teeth gently nibbling Alexin’s flesh as though he were teasing the juices out of a ripe fruit.

The boy was, he decided happily, an absolute feast for the senses and in that moment he *almost* sympathized with the Faerie women. How could anyone resist the lure to greedily keep such a perfect delight as a Faerie male for their own satisfaction?

As he lapped and sucked at Alexin’s flesh, the boy’s moans of fear changed rapidly into hot, ragged pants of arousal. Although the boy’s expression remained terrified, his body still reacted to Skinner’s touch with undeniable enthusiasm. Alexin’s skin changed from pale to rosy as his blood caught fire. His soft member engorged so quickly that the rising ridges burned against Skinner’s cheek. His hips arched upwards, his legs opening slightly and his whole body softening in surrender.

Skinner had never before witnessed such a rapid transformation from cringing fear to full-on sexual arousal, but he found it as irresistible as confusing. The boy was, unexpectedly, a seething fountain of sexuality.

Was *this* why the Faerie women were so cruel in their suppression of their males? Because the males were so sexually charged that the only way to control their libidos was to make them terrified of their own natural reactions to another’s touch?

It seemed so, Skinner decided, because even as Alexin was involuntarily arching with pleasure, his eyes were those of a man condemned. Perhaps his body was enjoying the experience but his mind had been conditioned to misinterpret his own pleasure as fear and pain.

So it was time, perhaps, for Skinner to disengage Alexin’s brain from the process.

He licked his lips, bent his head and took the head of Alexin’s member into his mouth.

Alexin squealed again and drummed both his heels and hands against the floor in protest. Yet his hips still rose automatically and thrust upwards, driving his member deeper into Skinner’s mouth Perhaps *Alexin* didn’t want Skinner touching him, but Alexin’s *body* was thoroughly enthusiastic about the idea.

So enthusiastic that Skinner gagged a little. He was unfamiliar with having a member inside his mouth at all, let alone one that was trying to burrow itself into his throat. Yet Alexin’s honey sweet flesh tasted too delightful against his tongue for Skinner to seriously worry about the minor discomfort he was feeling.

“Oh,” Alexin moaned. “Oh, oh, OH. I’m burning. Oh, I’m burning alive.”

Despite his ‘complaint’, his hips began to dance eagerly as Skinner’s mouth bobbed over his member.

Skinner chuckled deep in his throat and the sensation of his silent laughter rippled through Alexin’s member and emerged as a scream from Alexin’s throat.

He began to suck and suction at the sweet flesh in his mouth, knowing instinctively that if he found Alexin’s sweat so delicious, then the boy’s seed would be like nectar.

Alexin, meanwhile, alternated between howling that he was ‘dying’ and gasping incoherent moans of pleasure.

Barely able to believe he was gaining so much bliss out of what had been intended purely for *Alexin’s* pleasure, Skinner hummed happily into the boy’s groin and began gently kneading his sac with his right hand while his left thumb teased the small protrusion at the root of Alexin’s member.

Although the fact didn’t occur to him until later, it was clearly his manipulation of *that* tiny nub of flesh that finally wrested the seed from Alexin’s body.

The boy’s howl of release was so loud that it echoed through the trees, but the sound wasn’t one of fear but of a pleasure almost beyond bearing. Alexin’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted to unconsciousness even as his member continued to pump into Skinner’s mouth.

Skinner didn’t have words to describe the taste of Alexin’s seed. No human term was capable of doing justice to its flavor. It was, perhaps, even more wonderful on his tongue than the taste of the boy’s tears.

/If you drink from the boy, your need for his tears will lessen,/ the trees whispered inside his head. /You’re not only teaching him pleasure in your touch, but the fact you’ll ride him less often means his body will have time to heal between couplings. Soon he’ll learn not to fear your mounting of him./

//Why are you helping me? Helping us?// Skinner demanded, though he was flooded with relief at the thought that he’d no longer feel compelled to mount the boy twice a day.

But the trees just laughed amongst themselves and refused to answer.

~~~

On waking, had Alexin been a human boy he might have described his feelings over what had happened as being a crisis of conscience. Since he was a Faerie boy - and thus uneducated in even the existence of such a thing as a conscience - he decided he was simply confused.

For eighteen years, less a week, he had been raised to believe in one simple truth. That a male existed only for the pleasure of his wife.

That *simple* truth had, naturally, a whole plethora of justifications to prove itself true. All of which had been drilled into him since the moment he’d first grown old enough to understand the Faerie tongue.

A male brain was incapable of logic. It could absorb only frivolous details and so made decisions based purely on emotional responses. A male might *think* himself capable of reason, but his very inability to understand *why* his thoughts were inadequate was proof in itself of his stupidity. A male, therefore, needed a woman to make all serious decisions on his behalf. A male was capable of trivial choices such as knowing what gown would best suit him or which gemstones made him look most beautiful. But that was the limit of a male’s ability to reason.

A male was incapable of looking after himself physically. He was too weak and frail to survive even a day without a woman’s protection. Without a woman to provide for him, a male was completely helpless.

Bedding… sex …. was the act through which a male paid for his wife’s protection. It was a harsh, painful price, but one which the male offered gratefully as the necessary cost of his wife’s care.

A male’s ‘maleness’ was merely the instrument of that payment.

A well-bred Faerie boy, such as himself, knew that touching his member was ‘sinful’, and that in itself was sufficient reason not to do it. But that wasn’t the *only* reason. Sometimes, particularly after taking the drug that made his maleness stiff and itchy, it had been almost impossible not to at least surreptitiously ‘rub’ that part of himself through his gown. The reason he *hadn’t* ever given in to the urge was that he knew that part of himself was *agonizing* to touch. His nurse had told him endless times that if his maleness ever ached, and he secretly gave in to the urge to touch it, the pain would immediately blossom a thousand-fold until it felt as though he were burning up alive.

The pressure, apparently, began to build up inside the maleness as though it were one of the mountains that spat fire, and the only way to relieve that pressure was if his insides boiled to such heat that the male seed stored inside his body erupted like lava. *That* was why bedding had to be done only with a wife, because only a woman could remove the fiery lava from his body safely. It would still be painful, but wouldn’t be *fatal* as long as a woman guided him through it.

Hence Alexin’s confusion.

He wasn’t dead.

His maleness hadn’t exploded from his body like magma from an erupting mountain.

His seed *had* erupted from his maleness like a lava flow and, for a moment, he *had* thought he was dying. For just a split second he *had* been sure he was in agony. But then… then…

Then he’d experienced *pleasure*.

Well, to be fair, he wasn’t absolutely *certain* what he’d felt was ‘pleasure’ but it had, most certainly, made him extremely happy!

And confused.

Very confused.

Because Skinner’s mouth on his maleness hadn’t been agonizing. It hadn’t burned him. It hadn’t ‘hurt’ him at all. Despite the fact he’d been so terrified of being hurt – or even killed – by the shameful, illicit touch of the monkey-man’s mouth on his maleness that he’d shut his eyes tightly and clenched his fists and had prayed for rescue, it had actually, felt….

….nice.

More than nice.

Wonderful.

Terrifyingly wonderful.

Skinner *did* have magic, after all.

Well, either that or Alexin’s nurse had lied to him.

And if he’d lied to him about *that*, then what else that Alexin had always believed to be true would also turn out to be a lie?

~~~

Eons past, when the two Territories had still been one continent and humans had still walked on four legs, Faerie magic had been strong in the land. There had, in fact, been a golden age of magic, known as the ‘Time of Power’, when no physical labor had ever been required of the Faerie. They simply wished a thing to be, and it automatically became so.

But ever since the great war, long before the reign of Sylvana, most of the magic was gone from the land. Except for some elemental magic, such as the ability to conjure small storms, and those ward-gates which had survived the war, the female Faerie of the Southern Territories had little more magic than humans.

So, before the guards could follow their Queen’s order and set fire to the rebellious trees, it was necessary for fire-breaks to be painstakingly dug around the perimeter of the enchanted forest. The guards had neither the ability to ‘magic’ the ditches into place nor the power to turn the fire back without the ditches if the wind blew in the wrong direction.

It took two laborious days to complete the task, during which time two more ‘Captains’ were sacrificed to Sylvana’s wrath.

The two days also took their toll on the relationship between Sylvana and Ariana.

The longer Alexin was missing, the more Ariana began to doubt that he’d be recovered in a fit state for marriage. Although it was inconceivable to any of the females that his ‘innocence’ had been corrupted or his magic stolen, since they couldn’t even imagine any male – even a beast-man like Skinner – mounting another, there was still the unavoidable fact that if Alexin had survived almost a week without female company he would, inevitably, come home less docile in his acceptance of a male’s absolute need for a female’s constant protection.

Furthermore, and more relevant perhaps than his attitude – since he could be quickly disabused of any strange notions he developed during his absence – it was becoming increasingly likely that his beauty would be marred by his experience. His perfect, almost bluish-white skin would inevitably be burned to a pale tan with the exposure to sunlight. His frail body would likely thicken as his flight with the monkey-man forced limbs always deliberately restricted from activity to develop some unmanly muscle. His flawless nails would chip and flake. His long lustrous hair would tangle and split.

Again, all of the above could be corrected by time. All Ariana needed to do was veil the boy the moment he was recovered, so none saw his dishevelment, and several months of pampered captivity in her bedchamber would inevitably restore him to his previous perfection.

But what she feared was that the young prince would return home scarred.

If the monkey-man was abusing him, and there was no reason to believe such a savage beast *wouldn’t* beat and cuff its captive in vengeance for the torture it had suffered, then it was *highly* likely that Alexin would suffer some permanent effects of that savagery.

Ariana still *wanted* Alexin, regardless of whether he was scarred or not, but she was definitely beginning to doubt whether she still actually wanted to ‘marry’ him. If the boy’s looks were permanently marred in even the slightest way, his value to her as a husband would be reduced considerably.

Besides, there would always be scandal attached to Alexin because of the kidnap. Even if he *weren’t* scarred, speculation would abound that he had been. And unless she paraded her husband around like an unveiled barracks man to prove he’d retained his beauty, those rumors would persist. A queen’s husband was supposed to be the source of envy in others, not the cause of speculation and barracks’ jokes.

Any way in which she looked at it, Alexin was now damaged goods and thus unworthy of marriage.

The reason she still *wanted* him was the wealth he still carried in his loins. For one thing, even with his beauty flawed, his male magic would still be potent and enjoyable. For another – and this was the crucial detail – his seed would still provide her with a valuable child. The opportunity to bear a child by Alexin, particularly a *boy-child*, was not something to refuse lightly.

Yet, if he were merely to be her stud and plaything, there was no reason for her to *marry* him. She could simply take him as a concubine and her actual marriage bed could be saved for another. Queen Zyana of Eastern Cove had a pleasing boy-child, still two years from his veiling, who wasn’t as beautiful as Alexin, certainly, but who now was beginning to seem a far more sensible choice as a husband. Zyana, while not as powerful as Sylvana, was wealthy enough to provide a considerable dowry for her son *and* would become a useful ally.

Sylvana, naturally, was less than pleased by the way Ariana’s thoughts were going.

For two days they argued constantly, until they finally reached a mutually agreeable compromise.

Ariana would take Alexin merely as concubine but would still sign the papers confirming her alliance with Sylvana. Sylvana would be saved the cost of Alexin’s dowry - since there wouldn’t be an actual marriage – which pleased her immensely as sixteen Faerie horses were worth a small fortune. And Ariana’s offspring by Alexin, if male, would be married to Marita when he came of veiling age, to further cement their alliance.

During none of the negotiations were Alexin’s feelings considered of any importance. Despite both women knowing that the boy had been raised to expect marriage, neither of them considered the impact on such a well-bred boy of being reduced from the prospect of having the status of a treasured husband to that of being a mere concubine. Neither did the women discuss the inevitable fate of concubines, which was to be discarded to the barracks when their magic was superseded by that of a queen’s rightful husband.

Just as Ariana’s marriage to Alexin would have relegated her current concubines to the status of barracks men, so Ariana’s marriage to Zyana’s son would subsequently seal Alexin’s fate.

But the two years Ariana would have to wait to bed Zyana’s son was more than long enough for Alexin to father a child or two, and so the deal was struck between the two queens.

When Rhianna learned of the arrangement, she felt sorrow on the boy’s behalf and a considerable amount of anger towards Sylvana.

She couldn’t find fault with Ariana’s reasoning. Although Rhianna would have been delighted to take the boy in marriage herself, she too had always been more interested in Alexin’s breeding potential than his personal prettiness. There were so few males born anyway, but Alexin’s looks were an even greater rarity. His beauty would make his offspring particularly valuable even if his *own* beauty had been compromised by the kidnap.

Rhianna couldn’t truly fault Ariana’s plan to simply use Alexin as a stud and then pass him over to barracks life. The Faerie population would stagnate completely if lower-bred females weren’t given the opportunity to bear children, and given the scarcity of males, those either too unattractive to be offered marriage or whose magic had already been taken by a higher-caste female, were naturally shared freely among the other Faerie women.

Even so, it saddened Rhianna to think of *Alexin* reduced to the ranks of a barracks man. In her youth, before she’d risen to power – because Rhianna was one of the few queens who’d taken her rank by conquest rather than birth – she’d been a guard herself, forced to avail herself of the temporary pleasure of riding a barracks man. Most of the barracks males she’d used had been sad, frightened creatures who’d begun to sob and tremble with terror the moment they were mounted.

Because they’d already been stripped of their magic, the barracks males weren’t spanked in the fashion of husbands. Their tears held no pleasure for the female riding them, so weren’t a required part of the bedding.

Yet barracks males still wept constantly, because the average barracks man was ridden by an average of fifteen or sixteen women nightly. Some, the prettier ones, were more popular and sometimes serviced twice as many females, since the drugs that kept a male’s member stiff at all times made it possible for males to be ridden from dusk ‘til dawn every night regardless of the pain they suffered through such constant usage.

It was no wonder unwed males crept around in the daylight hours like cringing curs and flinched if a woman came within thirty paces of them.

Naturally, even the best care of a castle’s medicant couldn’t prevent the prettiest of the barracks men having particularly short lives. It was unlikely that Alexin would survive more than a year or two after Ariana passed him over to the barracks. Even if his heart survived the constant exertion of being so heavily used, his member would develop excessive sores that would, eventually, turn septic regardless of even the best medical attention. Within six months of entering the barracks, Alexin would lose all his beauty. By the time he was discarded as no longer of any use to a female, probably no more than a year later, he would look *old*.

But he would also be the father of countless children. Not politically valuable children, in the way that Ariana’s son or daughter would be, but *beautiful* children regardless.

So Rhianna *could* understand why Ariana would make the deal with Sylvana to offer her allegiance in return for a mere ‘concubine’. She would not only gain a valuable heir but would add Alexin’s obviously good breeding to the offspring of countless of her subjects.

What Rhianna struggled to understand was why *Sylvana* had agreed to the arrangement.

Alexin was so beautiful that Ariana clearly wanted him regardless of the condition in which he was returned to the castle. There was a dark, lustful gleam in Ariana’s eyes whenever the boy’s name was mentioned, which clearly belied her occasional pretence of disinterest. So Sylvana could have insisted Alexin be kept by Ariana as his child’s nurse after his successful breeding. Or, at the very least, Sylvana should have insisted that Alexin be humanely killed after providing Ariana with the child she wanted.

Rhianna *never* passed her concubines to her barracks. Whenever she remarried, she always had her medicant give her discarded concubines a painless draught of poison. It was a far kinder way to deal with her unwanted males. Perhaps it caused a certain amount of resentment among her guards that she deprived them of their fun, but Rhianna couldn’t understand how a woman could bed a male, sometimes for years, and then simply throw him away to suffer a lingering, painful death at the hands of other females.

After all, a woman grew somewhat *fond* of the males she bedded.

~~~

“Tell me about Faerie men,” Skinner said, as he gutted the second of two rabbits in preparation for their evening meal. The trees had not only opened up into a path for them as soon as he’d learned his lesson that the taste of Alexin’s seed was as addictive as the boy’s tears, but had led them directly to a large warren filled with an abundance of slow witted rabbits. Skinner had barely had to do anything to trap the animals save sit next to one of the rabbit holes and catch them by the neck as they’d emerged, blinking stupidly, into the daylight.

He’d caught six of the creatures before the trees had shifted again, indicating it was time for them to move on, and so he’d used a strip of Alexin’s gown to tie the rabbits over his shoulder and, for the last two days, Skinner had dug a small fire pit when they’d camped for the night to serve roasted rabbit for their dinner.

Alexin was sitting with his back to Skinner. Close enough to the small fire to take comfort from its heat but deliberately looking in the opposite direction from his companion.

Skinner didn’t take it personally. Although he’d ridden Alexin twice more since his demonstration of human ‘magic’, the trees had been right. Now that Skinner was no longer mounting the boy twice daily, Alexin’s body was getting the chance to heal and adjust to being ridden. His bottom was less inflamed and the muscles of his passage were learning to relax and allow Skinner’s entrance each evening. Furthermore, the boy was *definitely* adjusting to the idea of Skinner taking his member into his mouth each morning. Although Alexin was carefully guarding his feelings, refusing to even discuss the physical contact between them – by way of bursting into tears if Skinner ever tried to force the subject – there was no arguing that the boy was feeling less terrified of the consequences of the magic that bound them together.

That evening, as they’d made camp, Alexin hadn’t even crept to hide among the trees to apply the dripping to his bottom. As soon as Skinner had begun to gather the stones to create the fire pit, Alexin had sunk to his haunches, lifted his tattered skirts and had begun to slather the grease into himself right in front of Skinner’s eyes. Then he’d walked over to Skinner, draped himself over his lap and had lifted his buttocks in silent invitation even before the veins had begun to rise on Skinner’s arms.

Still somewhat satiated by the seed he’d drunk from the boy that morning, Skinner had been almost free of the dark haze as he’d spanked the boy’s buttocks to a warm, rosy glow. He’d been almost *gentle* as he’d lain the boy down on the ground and then ridden the delights of that heated bottom while lapping at the tears the spanking had created and, furthermore, he’d retained enough awareness while taking his fill of Alexin’s treasure to stroke and caress the boy’s own member to excitement during the coupling. As he’d spilled his seed deep inside Alexin’s body, the boy had released a howling cry and released his own seed.

Which Skinner had, naturally, devoured with intense pleasure.

It had, except for the spanking and the need that had driven through Skinner’s veins at the time, *almost* felt to Skinner that he’d finally ‘made love’ to the boy, rather than simply ‘used’ him, and it had been clear from the stunned look in Alexin’s eyes afterwards that the difference had been noted and appreciated.

So Skinner wasn’t overly worried that Alexin now couldn’t look him in the eyes. For one thing, the boy had almost fainted the night before at the sight of Skinner preparing the rabbits and so, naturally, was refusing to watch the skinning and gutting of their dinner. For another, Alexin was obviously embarrassed about the way his body had responded so enthusiastically during their coupling since his face had been even more flushed than his buttocks ever since the moment Skinner had rolled off him.

Skinner didn’t object to the boy’s coyness, and he understood why Alexin would be unable to watch the preparation of the rabbits, but he was uncomfortable with the deepening silence between them. And so he decided it was as good a time as any to find out the answer to a question that had been plaguing him for a week.

“Why didn’t I see any other Faerie males when I was at the castle?”

Alexin didn’t turn around, nor lift his eyes from the ground, but he at least replied to the question. Albeit, in a low, hesitant voice.

“There are very few males born to our people. Perhaps one in fifty children are male and many of those don’t survive to adulthood because male children are fragile. Many males even have a sickness of the blood. If they begin to bleed, the bleeding cannot be stopped and so they die.”

“I have heard of such a sickness in human males too, but it’s very rare,” Skinner offered. “But there are so many Faerie women. How is that possible if there are so few males to father them? How does your species survive?”

Alexin visibly flinched, then wrapped his arms around his legs and lowered his head so much that Skinner had to strain to hear his answer.

“I heard rumors that the barracks men sire many babies,” he whispered.

“You’ve mentioned barracks men before. What exactly are they?”

“Shameful, ill-bred, unwed men who lie with many females,” Alexin replied, his tone both embarrassed and contemptuous.

“I see,” Skinner said. He *did* see. Far clearer than Alexin did, he suspected. For the Faerie to survive with so few males, they would have to use their males as he himself had used the sole stallion he’d bought when he’d first thought to breed horses for Crystal City. One stallion could service many mares. So it was logical, if despicable, that the Faerie women should see their males in that same light. Though, at the same time, he was confused how such a situation could exist alongside the jealously protected male ‘magic’.

“I thought you said a male’s magic was lost if he was unfaithful. So how can one Faerie male lie with many females?”

Alexin shrank even further into himself, his body language indicating his complete embarrassment at the subject of their conversation, but he still obediently attempted to answer.

“Only high-ranked women are permitted to enjoy a male’s magic. That’s why the most beautiful boys, like me, are raised to be their husbands. Lower-ranked women don’t marry at all. Well, maybe some might take a widowed male to their bed, but only if she’s rich enough to keep him for herself and he’s pretty enough to make it worth her while.”

Skinner gave a bark of bitter laughter. “The more I hear of your people, the more despicable I find them to be. Yet, I’m now beginning to believe they’re as stupid as they are cruel. It’s evil that they treat males as no more than studs, but it is at least *understandable*. If there truly are so few males, I suppose it’s *logical* that males need to breed with a great number of females to sustain your population. But if the most powerful of your women greedily steal the best males for themselves, leaving only the dregs for the general population, they’re completely insane. That’s like me buying two stallions and choosing to breed most of my mares with the one with the poorest confirmation.

“Though,” he added, frowning suddenly. “On the other hand, it’s no wonder your males are sickly. It’s amazing your whole population isn’t riddled with diseases. If there are so few males, all of your people must be endlessly interbred.”

Alexin turned slightly, just enough to glance at him curiously from under his lashes. “What does interbred mean?”

“It means that you all must be related by blood. It’s not a good thing, Alexin. I once visited a settlement in the Northern Territories that had been isolated for over a century because of a heavy rockfall through a mountain pass. By the time the mountains shifted again and allowed passage, many of the people in that place were physically deformed or mentally strange because of constant interbreeding within such a small population. Sisters even mated with brothers in that place and the resultant offspring was… odd.”

Alexin gave him a puzzled look. “None of my people are deformed,” he pointed out. “We’re all beautiful. Even the women are beautiful, albeit in a womanly way.”

“They are, indeed, fair of feature. If not of body or heart,” Skinner agreed reluctantly.

“Besides, what’s wrong with sisters being mated with brothers?” Alexin continued. “The main reason I’m not to be wed to my sister Marita is only that she’s younger than I am and I need to be veiled *now*. It wouldn’t be respectable for me to be unveiled past my eighteenth year.”

Skinner sliced at the rabbit he was gutting with such savagery that he almost cut his fingers. The thought of Alexin marrying anyone else – especially his own sister - inflamed Skinner to instant fury. “Your people *are* insane,” he spat. “And you seem to be forgetting that the *main* reason you weren’t to be married to your sister was because of your mother’s political machinations. She’s always intended to sell you to the ‘highest bidder’.”

Alexin paled, turned his head away from Skinner and shivered miserably.

“I’m sorry,” Skinner said, instantly feeling guilty at his temper induced tactlessness. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not?” Alexin muttered. “It’s true.”

“It is,” Skinner agreed. “But it was cruel of me to remind you. I know… I know you believed she loved you.”

“She *does* love me,” Alexin whispered. “I know she does. It’s not her fault that I’m too stupid to understand how she can love me and still promise me to Ariana to further her own ambitions. I’ve thought and thought about it and I’ve *tried* to understand, but I *still* feel upset with her. I don’t mind being a boy. Sometimes I *love* being a boy. I like being beautiful. But… but I just wish, sometimes, that I wasn’t so stupid. I wish I was smart, like a girl, so I’d understand things. I know if I were a girl, my mother’s actions would make sense to me.”

Skinner groaned and shook his head in despair. He’d thought, at least, that Alexin had fully understood and accepted his mother’s perfidy. Now it seemed that Alexin had actually spent the last few days trying to find excuses for his mother’s behavior. It would be cruel of him, perhaps, to bluntly point out that there was *no* excuse for what Sylvana had planned. Alexin clearly needed the comfort of believing his mother loved him, and that was understandable. The boy had to cling on to *something*, now he’d been ripped from his life of ease and comfort into a nightmare of cold, pain, blisters, brutal sex, torn gowns and tangled hair.

Looking at the way Alexin was miserably playing with his lank, dirty tresses, Skinner chuckled ruefully at the realization that it was probably the latter which distressed the boy the most. Alexin was being surprisingly stoic about the discomforts of their journey and passively accepting of their sexual relationship, but he was constantly upset about his increasingly disheveled appearance.

“Tomorrow, when we find a stream, we’ll do something about your hair, Alexin,” he offered softly. “Perhaps we’ll even find some flowers for you.”

Around him, the trees rustled approvingly and so Skinner was certain that he’d have no problem keeping his promise. Just as the trees had led them to the warren, he was now equally certain that the next day would find them in a clearing with clean water and an abundance of flowers to weave through Alexin’s hair.

He spitted the rabbits, put them over the fire to cook, then rose and walked to Alexin’s side. The boy flinched slightly when he sat down next to him but, undeterred, Skinner raised an arm over Alexin’s shoulder and pulled him into a hug.

“You’re a bright, brave, beautiful boy. You need to start believing that. Stop doubting your instincts. Stop looking for excuses where there are none. If something doesn’t make sense to you, it doesn’t mean you’re stupid. It probably means it *doesn’t* make sense.”

Alexin relaxed against him slightly, accepting his embrace, but replied in a gentle, almost pitying voice. “I know you believe that, but it’s only because you’re male, too. We *think* we’re making sense, but we aren’t because we’re only males. We aren’t capable of true reason. We aren’t intelligent enough to even realize we’re being stupid.”

Skinner shook his head in disbelief and actually guffawed. “That’s priceless,” he laughed. “The answer to any challenge to female authority is that a male is simply too stupid to realize he’s being stupid?”

“Yes,” Alexin replied earnestly.

“Your women are a piece of work, Alexin.”

“What?”

Skinner just chuckled and squeezed the boy’s shoulders fondly. Skinner was beginning to accept that only time would disabuse the boy of his brainwashing at the hands of the Faerie women. In the meantime, he had to admit to himself that the more he learned of the boy’s upbringing, the more impressed he was that Alexin had run away with him at all.

“Are your heels still sore?” he asked.

“And my soles, and my thighs, and my calves, and my back *and* my bottom,” Alexin replied, but his tone was more sad than complaining.

“I know this is hard for you, boy,” Skinner admitted. “Especially now we’re running out of the potion and having to ration it so strictly. But it won’t be long now before we’re out of Faerie land. As soon as we reach a human settlement, we’ll be able to buy horses.”

“I can’t ride,” Alexin pointed out miserably.

“Then I imagine your bottom will feel even *more* sore for a while,” Skinner admitted, with a helpless shrug. “But we’ll be able to move faster on horseback and at least your feet will get a chance to heal.”

“Where are we going? Are you going to take me to your home?”

“I’m not sure I have a home to return to,” Skinner admitted reluctantly. “Time moves differently inside your land. I have no idea how much time has passed in the human world since I crossed through the ward-gate. It could already have been years.”

Alexin began to shake within his embrace. “I…I can’t… can’t keep living like this,” he whimpered. “I…I want to go home. You promised to take me home.”

A bolt of anger surged through Skinner at the boy’s words, the dark haze rising to cloud his mind at even the thought of losing *his* beauty back to the Faerie but, fortunately, before he spoke his fury out loud, the trees whispered to him.

/He’s frightened, Skinner. A moment ago he was ready to accept the idea of staying with you. It’s only your saying you may be unable to provide him with a home that has made his thoughts return to his life with the Faerie. It isn’t his home he wants. It’s simply *a* home./

So Skinner took a deep, steadying breath, pushed the dark jealousy from his mind, and spoke softly to the miserable boy.

“Your home’s with me now, Alexin. I’ll look after you and provide for you, and if there’s no place for us in Crystal City then I’ll make you a *new* home. It won’t be the first time I’ve had to start a city from scratch.”

In that moment, it not only seemed possible for him to do so but he realized he *wanted* to do so. In less than a week, he’d gone from wanting to kill the boy to being unable to conceive of living without him.

“Let’s eat before the meat burns,” he said, his voice gruff to cover his own confusion at such a turn of events.

Was he falling in love with the boy? he wondered.

But then he shook his head in firm denial. The Faerie magic was simply potent stuff, he decided. Perhaps his *best* answer was to let someone else use Alexin sexually to break the magic that had ensorcelled him.

Yet even the *thought* of such a happening caused the dark haze to rumble warningly within his veins and he suddenly knew he’d die before letting another person touch the boy.

The realization both stunned and sobered him. Whatever strange turn of events had brought the pair of them together, it seemed that their destinies were now irreparably entwined.

“Let’s eat,” he repeated quietly, and reached to take the roasted rabbit off the fire pit.

~~~

Burning trees screamed, Rhianna realized, and she felt both sickened and apprehensive.

Though she said nothing, neither to condemn the action nor applaud it, she knew that what Sylvana was doing was *wrong*.

Perhaps this part of the enchanted forest *had* supported Behaana in the time of the great war and still clung to that allegiance even a millennium after the banishment, and yet the trees had slumbered harmlessly for so long. Dreaming of Behaana’s return, perhaps, but not actively working against the Faerie that had remained in the Southern Territories.

Even their inexplicable aid to the monkey-man had been a small, lazy rebellion. The monkey-man couldn’t remain indefinitely within the boundaries of the trees’ protection.

Rhianna would have advised a little patience. Her own idea would simply have been to place hidden guards near the disabled ward-gates. The best time to capture the monkey-man and his victim would be when they left the forest and attempted to escape back to the world of the monkey-people.

But neither Sylvana nor Ariana were prepared to wait. The full moon was rising to mark the time of Alexin’s intended veiling and the two queens were determined to retrieve the boy before the moon passed. Perhaps Alexin was now intended as mere concubine rather than husband, but Ariana was still insisting that Alexin’s veiling *had* to take place on the eighteenth anniversary of his birth.

They had less than three days to retrieve a *boy*. Later than that and Alexin would be an unveiled *man*. And the law stated that, as such, he’d be fair prey even to the guards who were hunting him on the Queens’ behalf. An unveiled *man* belonged to the barracks.

Rhianna would simply have changed the law - why be a queen if you couldn’t change the rules to suit yourself? - and then would have threatened dire, fatal retribution to any low-ranked female who dared to steal the boy’s magic for herself.

But both Ariana and Sylvana were more concerned with their own reputations than with logic.

And so they set fire to the forest with no care for what long forgotten elemental magics they might unleash in the land by their attack on the ancient trees.

Rhianna shuddered.

With the fires licking at the roots of the outermost trees, and the wind seeming to scream through the rusting leaves, there was a sense of long dormant powers awakening. Angry, malevolent powers.

It occurred to her, if not to the other queens, that this action was a fulfillment of the prophesy.

‘…and in the time before Behaana’s return, the Sword of Vengeance will lay waste the land of the treacherous ones until the earth itself is black, twisted and deformed.’

Perhaps the ‘Sword of Vengeance’– if indeed the monkey-man *was* that creature of legend - hadn’t actually set the fires himself, yet he was within the land and so the land was burning and being laid waste.

And if *that* part of the prophesy was coming true…

Rhianna shuddered again and wondered whether the attempt to retrieve Alexin from the monkey-man would indeed herald the long foretold destruction of their world.

~~~


Even with copious amounts of sweet smelling sap from a plump leaved plant they discovered near the bubbling stream which the trees had led them to, untangling Alexin’s hair was a mammoth operation that soon had Skinner swearing impatiently under his breath. Had it not been for the warning rumbles of the trees and the look of sweet trust in Alexin’s eyes, Skinner might have been tempted to take out his knife and shear a foot or two off the long, snarled tresses to make the task easier.

As it was, he carved a rough comb from a fallen branch and spent literal *hours* carefully unknotting each strand of hair.

He couldn’t believe he was doing it. An entire race of Faerie were on their heels, determined to retrieve Alexin and kill *him* in the most painful ways imaginable and, instead of dragging the boy through the forest towards safety, he was sitting, cross-legged, on the bank of a stream and playing ‘nursemaid’ to the boy.

He’d discovered that Alexin had no idea of *how* to untangle his hair. For one thing the boy had never been in a disheveled state before. For another, the boy’s nurse had apparently always taken care of Alexin’s grooming. The full extent of Alexin’s ability to care for his hair appeared to be no more than the skill to weave flowers through already radiant, well groomed locks.

Skinner *had* shown Alexin how to use the sap to help the comb slide through the hair, had shown him how to start at the tips and work upwards – he *had* been married, so he understood such things – but Alexin had just sat there with the comb in one hand and a length of hair in the other, his lower lip trembling and his eyes filling with helpless tears, until Skinner had sighed impatiently, snatched the comb and begun the task himself.

Then, admittedly, despite his concern at the time it was taking, Skinner had found a strange kind of pleasure in grooming the boy.

For one thing, Alexin *purred* when he was happy.

Skinner hadn’t noticed that before. Mainly because the only time he’d previously managed to bring a smile to the boy’s face was when he was too preoccupied with sex to actually *listen* to Alexin’s reactions.

After the first, unavoidably painful, process of removing the small twigs and burrs that had caught in Alexin’s mane, the boy had sighed, relaxed, closed his eyes and allowed himself to enjoy the sensation of Skinner’s comb teasing through his locks. By the time Skinner was sweeping the comb in long strokes from Alexin’s scalp down to the middle of his back, Alexin was almost warbling with pleasure.

Years before, Skinner had often plaited Shrona’s long hair for her. Not in the severe style of the Faerie women, but in numerous small intricate braids that hung like small looping ropes from the sides of her face and were then tied together with a ribbon behind her neck, so that although most of her hair remained unbound, it was kept tidy and manageable – and beautiful – by a ‘harness’ formed from the hair growing from the sides of her head.

It seemed a practical answer to keeping Alexin’s hair from tangling again, so Skinner found his fingers automatically forming some of the long tresses into tiny braids. And, if it occurred to him that such an intimacy as dressing hair was something usually performed only between husband and wife as an act of love, he dismissed that knowledge from his mind.

Alexin was obviously confused as Skinner’s fingers wove his hair into ropes, but his expression remained placid and accepting, even turning to a shy, happy smile as Skinner casually began to pluck tiny flowers from the ground and weave them into the fine braids.

“There,” Skinner said, when he finally finished and tied the plaited hair together with a ‘ribbon’ made of yet another strip of cloth from Alexin’s gown.

The boy leaned forward on his knees, looked at his reflection in the stream, and gave an ecstatic sigh. “I look beautiful again,” he exclaimed. “Different. But beautiful.”

“You do,” Skinner agreed, with a chuckle. What would have seemed a prideful and immodest comment from a human, was somehow charming from Alexin’s lips.

Besides, he was relieved that Alexin was so pleased with his hair that he barely seemed to notice that his skirts now reached little more than mid-thigh.

Alexin stared at himself for a little longer, seeming to drink in his reflection as though the restoration of his beauty was a source of strength and courage, and then he turned enough towards Skinner and, for the first time ever, raised his eyes enough to look Skinner fully in the face.

“You…” he began, then hesitated, chewed his lower lip a little and took a steadying breath before continuing in little more than a whisper. “You are kind. I… I never… never expected kindness.”

“From a monkey-man?” Skinner bristled.

“From anyone,” Alexin mumbled, dropping his gaze once more and picking nervously at his tattered gown. “I expected to be… valued. I expected comfort. I… well, I mean I obviously never expected to sleep in a forest or anything. But… but I never truly thought I’d be treated kindly.”

Skinner was more than slightly confused.

“I only braided your hair,” he pointed out. “I thought you’d been groomed and pampered all your life by your nurse.”

Alexin nodded his agreement, but flushed and whispered, “This is different.”

“Because I’m your…” Skinner began, only to hesitate over what word to use to describe their relationship. He finally decided on “…lover?”

Alexin blushed ever deeper but shook his head in negation. “No. Because *this* time it was for me.”

Skinner felt his own cheeks flame a little as he understood what the boy was saying. He was embarrassed, and yet touched by the boy’s perception. He hadn’t plaited the boy’s hair for his own pleasure. He hadn’t restored Alexin’s beauty simply to increase his own aesthetic enjoyment as he gazed on the boy. He’d untangled and plaited Alexin’s hair simply because he knew the boy *needed* the comfort of feeling beautiful.

“You’re saying your nurse only looked after you to please the eyes of women?” he asked gently.

Alexin nodded shyly.

“You own your beauty, Alexin,” Skinner pointed out, feeling a little awkward. “You *should* be allowed to take pleasure in it.”

“But you own *me*,” Alexin countered. “So you don’t *have* to be kind. That’s why… why I thank you for treating me so well.”

Skinner rocked back on his heels a little, now beginning to feel increasingly uncomfortable with the boy’s obviously genuine gratitude. He had an insane urge to scream out, “Treating you well? I’ve been raping you for days, you stupid fool.”

/Accept the boy’s love, Skinner. Deserved or not, you need it. Without it, you are both lost and what should come to pass will never be,/ the trees whispered inside his head.

//Love?// Skinner demanded helplessly, staring at the ancient trees in shocked disbelief. //You’re saying the boy *loves* me?//

/How could he not? You are the holder of his magic *and* you are kind to him in small ways. He always expected pain and fear. He never even dared to imagine pleasure such as you give him with your touch. You are, beyond doubt, more than he ever dreamed possible in a mate./

//Then maybe he *is* stupid,// Skinner growled, trying to ignore the sudden pressure in his groin. The idea that the boy was falling in love with him, though disconcerting, was still somehow almost as potent and heady as the sexual magic itself.

/Not stupid. Simply uneducated,/ the trees chuckled, in echo of his own previous words.

Skinner smiled wryly and nodded.

/Now you must move rapidly towards a ward-gate, Skinner. We gave you as much time as we could, so that you could capture the boy’s heart before the thing that you must do if you are to escape this land. But time is no longer with us. Our friends burn and soon we also will be caught by the Faerie fire. Now you need to hurry if our sacrifice is not to be in vain./

//Fire? What fire?//

/The Faerie have set flame to the forest to drive you out and, undoubtedly, to punish us for aiding you. But the fire burns even faster and swifter and hotter than they anticipated. They cannot quench the flames they started, even though they now fear your death rather than your capture. We are trees. We cannot fight fire. We cannot run. We can only burn and die./

//This is *my* fault? You’re all dying because of me?// Skinner demanded, appalled by the idea.

/It was foretold, Skinner,/ the trees whispered. /We are not afraid. Behaana gave us life, and so for Behaana we will gladly lay down those lives./

//Who’s Behaana?//

/Your destiny, human child./

//I don’t understand.//

/You will. But time passes swiftly. We have no time to speak further. You need to take your new love and run now. We will show you the way to the gate and tell you how to break through it. After that… we can only pray you are The One./

//The ‘one’ what?//

But the trees’ only answer was to shift and reveal a wide pathway. Skinner would have argued and demanded an explanation of their cryptic words but, the moment the trees moved to form the path, he smelt far-off smoke.

/RUN./

Skinner didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Alexin by the hand and began to tow the confused boy in his wake as he charged down the path.

On and on they ran, until Alexin was stumbling and crying in protest, and still the smell of smoke grew thicker in Skinner’s sensitive nostrils, though it was clear the boy still had no notion of the danger they were in.

“MY LEGS HURT!” Alexin howled eventually, dragging his heels and trying to break free of Skinner’s grasp.

Skinner didn’t waste the time trying to argue or explain. He simply grabbed the boy around his slight waist, threw him over his shoulder and continued to run.

He ran until he could barely breathe, until his chest was burning with exertion and his left thigh was raw where his sword’s scabbard had slapped against the barely healed burns on his flesh, until even Alexin’s light weight was beginning to feel like a boulder over his shoulder. Yet *still* he ran.

And then, abruptly, they burst through the treeline and the forest was behind them.

Skinner didn’t even have the chance to feel relief.

Ten paces from where the trees ended, he ran into an invisible wall.

The impact knocked him off his feet and he tumbled to the ground, instinctively twisting his body to cushion Alexin’s fall, and then, gasping for breath, he shook his head in confusion.

/The ward-gate is closed. It’s been deactivated. You need to magic it open again. If you don’t go through it by the time the fire reaches us, the heat and smoke will kill you./

Skinner glared in the direction of the trees. //I’m a human. I have no magic,// he spat.

/Alexin does./

Skinner turned to the boy, who was glaring at him in temper over the impromptu, unexplained flight, and said, “You have to open the gate. Quickly. Before the fire reaches us.”

“What fire?” Alexin demanded, paling significantly.

“The forest’s burning, Alexin. Your beloved mother has either lost control of the fire or must have decided she’d rather have you dead than free,” he snapped bluntly.

Which he regretted immediately, since Alexin promptly burst into hysterical tears.

Hating himself, but seeing no other option, Skinner slapped the boy across the cheek.

Alexin’s wails abruptly ceased, replaced by shock. “You hit me,” he wailed, holding his hand against his stinging cheek and gazing at Skinner with huge, horrified eyes.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t have time for hysterics. You need to use your magic and open the gate, Alexin.”

“I don’t *have* any magic,” Alexin pouted. “I’m a BOY. And even if I were a girl, it probably wouldn’t help. Only a few high-ranking females have magic.”

“I hate to point out the obvious,” Skinner snarled, pointedly rubbing the front of his loincloth, “but I think we’ve already established you *do* have magic.”

“But that’s *all* the magic I had and you’ve already *stolen* it,” Alexin protested, starting to cry again. “Only high-caste women can lock and unlock wards.”

Skinner shook his head in frustration and turned to glare at the trees again. //He says he can’t do it.//

/He can’t. He can’t *use* the magic. He *is* the magic. Why do you think the Faerie here have so little power left? Because it’s the *males* who possess the magic and there are so few of them remaining for the females to steal power from./

//If the males have the magic, why can only women use it?//

/There’s no time for us to explain, Skinner. You have to leave. You have to use the boy’s magic to open the gate./

//HOW?//

/You know already know how,/ the trees replied. /You’ve already tapped into his elemental magic, but now it’s time now for you to stop ‘playing’ and grasp firm hold of *all* his magic. You have to take control of all his power, even that which he doesn’t know he has to give. We hoped for more time. We hoped to show you a better way than violence to complete the bond between you. But there’s no more time. No time to for you to do anything except take the remainder of the magic by force. But he’ll forgive you, Skinner. Now he loves you, he’ll forgive you. Don’t let our deaths be in vain./

Skinner shook his head. //I don’t know how,// he protested.

But the trees didn’t answer him and the next waft of wind brought not only the smell of smoke but the sound of strange, high pitched screaming.

“They say you *are* the magic,” he told Alexin.

“Who does?”

“The trees. And they’re dying now, boy. I can hear them screaming.”

“I can’t hear any screaming,” Alexin argued, “and you’ve already stolen the only magic I had.”

Smoke began to billow out from the trees. Thick, black choking smoke that quickly filled the small space between the treeline and the closed ward-gate.

“I can’t breathe,” Alexin gasped, his eyes terror filled.

Skinner didn’t have time to think. He acted purely on instinct. Somehow he had to save his beauty, had to get him through the ward-gate, and the only way to do that was with magic.

Alexin’s magic.

And he knew only *one* way to steal the magic that Alexin possessed.

He grabbed the boy by the wrist and dragged him right up to the invisible barrier. Then he used his bodyweight to press the boy against the transparent wall, so that one hand could undo his loincloth and the other could tug Alexin’s skirt over his waist.

There was no time to apply dripping or stretch the boy for his entrance. No time to even warn the boy of what he was about to do. Choking and gasping in the thick, black smoke, Skinner lined his member up against Alexin’s buttocks and shoved it inside in one smooth, brutal thrust.

Alexin screamed with pain, struggling wildly to escape the cruel impalement, but he was helpless, trapped between the ward-gate and the desperate humping of Skinner’s hips. He could only howl and wail with grief and horror as his ‘kind’ mate took him with such savagery that all the previous rapes paled by comparison.

So many tears of pain were pouring down his face that as many were splashing onto the clear, window-like gate and dripping to the floor, as were being greedily wiped off his cheeks by Skinner’s hand so that Skinner could lick the sweet liquid while he drove his member inside Alexin’s body, and yet still the gate remained closed against them.

Skinner had been so certain that Alexin’s tears would be the key that he roared with fury. Both he and Alexin were going to die and the boy’s last memory would now be of pain and betrayal.

He ripped his member out of the boy’s buttocks. Even through the thick smoke he could see blood dripping down the inside of Alexin’s thighs and he wanted to grab one of his knives and stab himself for needlessly causing the boy such unnecessary pain.

“DAMN YOU,” he screamed aloud at the burning trees.

/Tears…n…not enough. All his magic, Skinner. All…/ the trees gasped, their voices twisted and distorted with agony.

Skinner could barely breathe, and Alexin was swooning in his arms, either from shock, oxygen deprivation or pain - or perhaps all three - and he couldn’t even *think* what the trees were trying to tell him.

But again instinct, or perhaps the dark magic coursing through his veins, gave him the answer.

He reached around Alexin’s waist, took hold of the boy’s limp member and began to savagely pull at its flesh even as his own member buried itself inside the boy’s bleeding passage once more.

Alexin was choking, sobbing and begging him to cease, yet the dark magic wove its spell between them, causing Alexin’s member to stiffen and fill even despite the pain Skinner was causing.

Until, with a screaming howl of agony, Alexin released an arcing flow of seed against the tear covered ward-gate…

“OPEN, DAMN YOU!” Skinner screamed.

… and the gate opened.

Opened so swiftly that both the man and the Faerie boy collapsed right through it. Alexin tumbling face down onto the grass and Skinner crashing down on top of him with his member still lodged between the boy’s buttocks.

Then they were both so busy gasping the clean air of the human world into their besieged lungs that it took Skinner several minutes before he remembered to disengage himself and roll off the boy.

He reached his hand backwards and felt it tingle as it passed back into Faerie land.

He cursed. If the gate remained open, the Faerie would know exactly which gate they’d escaped through and would pursue them easily. He wished he knew a way to close it again.

Something punched against his hand, shoving it backwards, and when, in shock, he reached forward again, his palm hit an invisible wall.

The gate was closed!

He shook his head in confusion. How had that happened? Had it closed automatically, or had he wished it closed?

“Open,” he whispered, feeling foolish.

He reached out, and his hand passed through the tingling barrier again.

“Close,” he said, a little louder.

Again it felt as though his hand was shoved by a strong force and, reaching with his fingers, he could feel the closed gate once more.

And though sense and reason insisted he couldn’t be right about the sudden suspicion that caught hold of him, Skinner still raised his trembling hand towards the open sky and whispered, “Lightning.”

Immediately, seemingly from nowhere, clouds filled the sky and a bright fork of lightning arced downwards, striking the ground not twenty paces away.

“GODS,” Skinner gasped, staggering to his feet in shock. It took a second bolt of lightning before he had the presence of mind to tell the clouds to dissipate again.

The males had *all* the magic. The females merely stole and used that magic.

The subjugation of the males wasn’t *just* about sexual pleasure.

It even finally made sense to him why the high-ranked Faerie were the only ones permitted to have a ‘husband’. The lower-ranked females weren’t being refused the pleasure of a male’s sexual magic as much as being prevented from gaining a male’s ‘power’. Presumably lest they used it to rebel against their queens.

But now *he* had the magical abilities of a high-caste Faerie woman.

Because he’d stolen it from a Faerie male, just as they did.

Just as *brutally* as they did.

‘He’ll forgive you,’ the trees had said.

But looking at the sobbing boy, curled up in misery on the forest floor with blood pouring from between his buttocks and his face streaked with tears, Skinner found that impossible to believe.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so damned sorry.”

~~~

The pain had gone.

It had left his body within seconds of him swallowing the potion that Skinner had forced him to drink.

Not that he’d protested.

He’d just meekly opened his mouth when ordered to and had swallowed the liquid uncaring of whether it was potion or poison. Neither had he struggled nor flinched when Skinner had insisted upon gathering him onto his lap and holding him there, stroking his wet face and whispering endless, meaningless apologies into his ear.

At some level he *had* been aware that Skinner had given him the very last of the potion, regardless of Skinner’s own, still raw burns. Just as he’d been aware that the gate had only opened because of what Skinner had done to him. So he’d known he perhaps should have been grateful he’d suffered only the brief, survivable agony of the coupling rather than the permanent agony of burning to death.

The coupling had been incomparably more painful than the other times Skinner had ridden him, yet Alexin told himself that it didn’t matter. Skinner owned him, and had the right to use him however he wanted. The fact that he was so ‘kind’ afterwards, holding him and petting him and giving him the potion, was more than Alexin had the right to expect anyway.

Alexin *knew* that.

Believed that.

But he *still* felt numb and betrayed.

And it wasn’t that Skinner had been so brutal with him, when the last few days had taught Alexin to expect a certain level of gentleness and even ‘pleasure’.

It was more than that.

Alexin’s sense of deep betrayal went far deeper than the mere suffering of physical pain at the hands of someone he’d begun to trust.

It was *his* magic that had opened the gate.

That knowledge changed *everything*.

~~~

“Please, Alexin,” Skinner begged. “Try and eat *something* at least.”

He’d given the boy the last of the potion and had held him until his broken sobs dried into stunned silence. He’d promised, over and over, that he’d never, regardless of the situation, ever touch the boy with anything except gentleness in future.

Alexin hadn’t responded. Which was possibly because they *both* knew Skinner’s promises were meaningless. No matter how much Skinner tried to resist the magic that bound them together, within 24 hours he would inevitably be spanking and mounting the boy regardless of whether Alexin’s torn flesh had healed.

He’d even tried to ‘make up’ for the rape by taking the boy’s member into his mouth and pleasuring it. But, within minutes, he’d realized Alexin was just stoically accepting the attention rather than enjoying it.

So he’d made a small fire, roasted the two remaining rabbits and had hoped that the smell of the cooking meat would break through Alexin’s dazed indifference. The boy *had* to be starving, he decided, and feeding him would, at least, show his care for the boy’s comfort.

But Alexin just ignored the food until Skinner *insisted* he ate, and even then he just picked listlessly at the meat, his normally luminous eyes so dark and dull with grief that they seemed almost the color of a human’s.

Skinner was so consumed by guilt that he physically ached.

“Please, Alexin. Tell me what I can do to help you. How can I make this better? Tell me what you want, what you need, and I’ll do it,” he pleaded.

He didn’t really expect the boy to answer him. What *could* he do? Nothing. Nothing that would make any real difference, anyway. Gods, if he thought it would help he’d offer to lie down, open his legs and let the boy pay him back in kind. But he knew Alexin was too damned gentle to do it. He might as well offer to let a kitten maul him.

So he was shocked when Alexin suddenly spoke.

“You stole my magic.”

“Yes,” Skinner agreed quietly.

“It was *my* magic that opened the ward-gate.”

Skinner nodded.

“And *my* magic that summoned the lightning.”

“Yes,” Skinner breathed, still struggling to believe he’d actually done it.

“It’s *my* magic.”

Skinner frowned slightly, not annoyed at Alexin’s pugnacious tone – since the boy had every right to be angry – but confused by the contrasting look on sorrow on Alexin’s face. “Yes, it is,” he said.

“It’s *male* magic that powers the spells of the Faerie, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Skinner agreed softly. “The trees told me that *all* magic is male.”

“Then… then everything *is* a lie, isn’t it?” Alexin asked, blinking as though he was struggling not to cry.

Skinner rubbed the bridge of his nose, and sighed deeply in both sorrow and relief. His relief, selfish as he knew it to be, was that the boy’s long, dazed silence *hadn’t* been about the rape after all. His sorrow was that the boy truly *was* as intelligent as he’d always suspected him to be and had consequently suffered a world shattering realization.

“It’s still bits and pieces in my mind,” Skinner admitted quietly. “I don’t yet have enough information to know the whole picture. But what I *do* know is that something has gone seriously wrong with your whole society. Your species are ruled by women, yet those women have no magic. They can rule only because they found a way to steal power from males like yourself. At some point in history perhaps males even ruled your people, until something happened to change the balance of power between the sexes. It may simply have been that the male population began to dwindle until sheer weight of numbers gave females the upper hand. Whatever caused the shift in power, your females certainly found a way to maintain their superior position. They not only steal your magic, but they raise you to believe that they are the ones with the *real* magic while you males are destined to be nothing more than their sexual playthings.”

“Faerie women are physically strong,” Alexin replied thoughtfully. “Faerie males have magic. Perhaps we were meant to be equals, working together. Perhaps *no one* was meant to ‘rule’.”

Skinner smiled with genuine admiration. “I think you’re right, Alexin. I hadn’t thought of it in that way, but it makes sense. Why would a species evolve with such a dramatic difference between the sexes if those differences weren’t intended to compliment each other?”

“Maybe, before the war that broke the land into two, that *is* how the Faerie were,” Alexin mused. “It’s said that magic was strong then, and if all magic is male then males *must* have been numerous then for so much magic to exist.”

Skinner frowned suddenly as he remembered what the trees had said to him. “Who is Behaana?”

Alexin shrugged. “I’ve never heard of her.”

“Then how do you know it’s a ‘her’?” Skinner chuckled.

“Because only Royal females have names ending with an ‘a’. Even *I* know that,” Alexin replied, rolling his eyes. “Why?”

“Something the trees said. Something about them helping us because of someone called Behaana. They said she was our destiny.”

“I don’t think I like the sound of that,” Alexin muttered. “I’ve had more than enough queens in my life already.”

“Well, they might have meant *my* destiny,” Skinner admitted, “and I don’t like the sound of it either. But the trees *did* help us for her sake, so she can’t be all bad.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Alexin snapped. “Since they obviously knew what you were going to have to do to get us through the gate, I think the fact they didn’t warn us was plain *evil*. It wouldn’t have hurt me *half* as much if I’d known to prepare myself.”

Skinner winced and flushed at the reminder of his brutality.

“I’m so sorry about what I did, Alexin. But I think… well, forgive me for saying this but I think I was *supposed* to hurt you. I think hurting you *so* badly was what allowed me to access the rest of your magic. I think that’s why your females are so very brutal with their husbands. My way of… of making love to you, allowed me to tap into a certain amount of your magic. But to gain its full power, our coupling had to be far more intense. Without that intensity, I wouldn’t ever have forced you to release that final part of yourself to me and the trees must have known I’d *never* have taken you like that unless it was the only way to save your life. So I think they deliberately set us up to force the issue. They said it was time for me to do the thing that I *had* to do. It wasn’t something I *wanted* to do. Even in the beginning, when I was completely under the spell of your magic, I never was *that* brutal,” Skinner said, then paused and frowned worriedly. “Was I?”

Alexin shook his head. “No. No you weren’t.”

“And… well, it was the trees who told me how to be kind to you,” Skinner admitted sheepishly. “They were the ones who showed me that your seed was as satisfying to me as your tears. I honestly think they meant you no harm, Alexin. They even said they wished they’d had more time so they might have taught me a different way to access your full power. So although what they did was cruel, they must have truly believed it was the only way.”

“Remind me of that tomorrow, when you use me *there* and there’s no potion to take the pain away,” Alexin pouted.

Skinner was humbled and saddened by Alexin’s words. Somehow the boy’s placid acceptance that he *would* be used, regardless of his pain, was even more terrible than the knowledge that he himself would be unable to resist the urge to do so.

“May I… may I look, Alexin? I… well, I need to see how badly I’ve hurt you.”

Alexin’s face flickered briefly between distrust and embarrassment, but then he rose with a grunt of pain, limped over to where Skinner was sitting, hiked up his skirts and lay down on Skinner’s lap as though for a spanking.

Skinner winced as he stared at the wounded place between the boy’s buttocks. It was not only torn and swollen, but the surrounding flesh also badly bruised.

“It looks sore,” he said, then blushed at the inadequacy of his words.

“The potion helped a lot,” Alexin mumbled. “It’s better than it was. But it *is* still sore.”

Skinner stroked Alexin’s lower back soothingly. “There’s no way I can ride you like that,” he said. “It’s going to take days for you to heal properly and there’s no more potion to ease your pain.”

Alexin sighed, rolled over and rose until he was sitting on Skinner’s lap. Skinner automatically put his arms around the boy in a hug and was touched almost to tears when Alexin lay his head on his shoulder and relaxed into the embrace.

“It’s okay,” Alexin whispered into his chest. “I know you won’t be able to stop yourself. It’s enough that I know you don’t *want* to hurt me. That’s more than I *ever* dreamed of having in a marriage. Someone who doesn’t *enjoy* my pain.”

One of the tears Skinner was struggling against broke free and rolled down his cheek at the boy’s words.

“We’ll find another way, Alexin. We *have* to find another way. Even if it means you tying me up until the magic calms in me.”

“Perhaps…” Alexin began, then flushed and buried his face in Skinner’s neck.

“What, my love?” Skinner encouraged. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Alexin’s head popped up and he stared at Skinner with amazed, suddenly luminous eyes. “You… you called me your ‘love’,” he whispered.

Skinner’s answer was to lean down and kiss the tip of Alexin’s nose.

Alexin’s eyes grew impossibly larger. “You…you *kissed* me.”

“That wasn’t a kiss,” Skinner chuckled. “*This* is a kiss.”

And he lowered his head and pressed his lips to Alexin’s for the first time. He’d licked the boy, sucked him, lapped at his tears like a starving man at a feast, but he’d never once tasted Alexin’s lips. He hadn’t *deliberately* avoided kissing the boy, he’d simply never shared that kind of intimacy with any of his previous male lovers so it hadn’t occurred to him to kiss Alexin either.

Yet the moment his mouth touched Alexin’s, he realized he’d been greedily feasting at the banquet but overlooking the tastiest morsel. The boy’s lips were the very sweetest part of him. Soft and compliant, sweet yet musky like wild honey, lips to be savored and sucked and delighted over for hours. He teased his tongue into Alexin’s mouth, loving the way the boy hesitatingly, but then with growing courage, met Skinner’s tongue with his own in a delicate dance of courtship.

It took all his self-control to slowly break the kiss, leaving Alexin’s lips sheened with moisture, swollen and hungry for more contact, and prompt, “You were telling me you had an idea, Alexin.”

The boy blushed furiously, dipped his eyes and took a ragged breath. “It might be a stupid idea,” he mumbled.

“I highly doubt that,” Skinner encouraged.

Alexin looked unconvinced. “Well, I thought… perhaps I could…well, maybe my mouth. Like you touch me,” he blurted incoherently.

It took Skinner a second, but then he thought he understood what the boy meant. “You want to try taking my member inside your mouth?”

Alexin cringed a little, horribly embarrassed, but nodded.

Skinner thought about it for a moment. He was worried that he might choke the boy given the enthusiasm of his magic-driven rutting. Yet, it *had* to be better than mounting Alexin while he was so badly torn. And maybe there *was* a way to make it safe…

“It’s a *good* idea,” he assured the nervous boy. “But the first time, at least, we do it with me tied down. I want *you* to be in complete control, so you *know* I can’t accidentally hurt you.”

Alexin blinked with obvious astonishment. “You’d really trust me to tie you up? Just so I don’t get hurt?”

Skinner smiled softly. “Every time you prepare yourself for me, you show me trust I don’t deserve. It’s time I showed *you* a little trust too, don’t you think? How can I say I love you, if I don’t trust you?”

Alexin’s mouth opened and closed silently several times, though it was clear he was trying to incredulously say, ‘You love me?’

“I know,” Skinner chuckled wryly. “Believe me, I’m as surprised about it as you are.”

~~~

They made little progress that first day of traveling through the human world.

The fault wasn’t Alexin’s. Despite the savagery of the earlier rape, the last of the Faerie potion had stripped most of the pain from the boy’s body. So much so that he followed placidly, a few steps behind Skinner, and even his usual whimpers about sore feet and legs were mercifully absent.

The problem was that it was only as they made their way through the normal, natural forest that bordered the Faerie lands that Skinner fully appreciated how much aid the enchanted trees had offered them.

They’d grown accustomed to wide, open paths that led them effortlessly in the right direction, helpfully guiding them to bubbling streams and sunny clearings full of edible berries and sleepy eyed rabbits.

In the real world, the trees were dark tricksters that seemed to delight in opening routes that promised clear passage only to instead lead them to copses of thick, impenetrable, barren brambles. Again and again, they were forced to turn and double-back on themselves, stumbling through the shadowy, unfriendly forest in search of a better route.

They found no water, except a dark brackish pond that made Alexin recoil in disgust and which even the more pragmatic Skinner refused to drink from. They found no food, not even edible leaves or berries. And, after over five hours of constant walking, when they finally reached a point at which the tightly planted forest finally eased into the more widely placed growth of woodland, with enough gaps here and there in the foliage overhead for them to see the hills that rose around them, Skinner judged they had traversed less than six miles from the ward-gate.

Six miles was barely a fifteen minute ride for a mounted Faerie.

It was a terrifying thought.

And yet, logically, their failure to find an easy path for even two men on foot to traverse, suggested that the gate they’d escaped through had been unused for centuries. The gate that had brought him into the Faerie land had been easily accessible, its surrounding forest paths wide and well worn from the constant passage of the huge Faerie horses. The gate they had escaped through, on the other hand, had led to nowhere except dense, gnarled, knotted trees and dead ends.

It made sense to Skinner that the enchanted trees, if truly wanting to aid them, would have deliberately led them to a gate through which the Faerie couldn’t easily follow.

Alexin was stumbling with exhaustion, his head lowered so much in his weariness that he was no longer even attempting to watch where he was walking. He still voiced no words of complaint, save occasional low whimpers, but his utter misery was evident in every line of his body as he shuffled slowly in Skinner’s wake. Now they had run out of potion, Skinner was hobbling somewhat himself on his burned feet but he still understood that their journey was proving physically far harder on the boy that it was on himself.

Alexin was such a *brave* boy, in his own way, Skinner realized abruptly

Perhaps, in human terms, there was little to praise in someone who would silently and passively allow themselves to be dragged in another’s wake without any hope of reaching a destination of comfort. Alexin, already shocked and hurt from the earlier rape, *knew* the laborious walk through the forest would end, inevitably, in no more than another enforced coupling and another uncomfortable, cold night sleeping in the open. And yet he obediently struggled onwards to that painful fate.

A human boy would have violently protested such treatment, preferring to fight and even perhaps die than meekly accept the continuing – if inadvertent – abuse at Skinner’s hands. A human woman would perhaps have submitted physically to him, but would have filled their journey with shrill accusations and endless verbal chastisements that Skinner was a brute and a beast.

Yet Alexin silently, if miserably, accepted that which he had no power to change.

There *was* bravery in that, Skinner decided. It wasn’t cowardice, as he’d previously believed, nor even purely passivity on the boy’s behalf. The boy’s stoicism was, perhaps, an advanced survival instinct.

Alexin would, it seemed, tolerate *anything* as the cost of his continued existence.

Which made sense. If Alexin was right about there being so few Faerie men, and Skinner had no reason to doubt him, then those few men *had* to be charged with an instinctive need to survive at all costs, or the Faerie breed would have perished long before. So Alexin’s physical frailty and emotional softness were deceptive because they masked a strong inner core of determination to survive.

“We may as well stop here,” Skinner said.

The light was failing, the ground at their feet was as soft and mossy as they would find, there was sufficient space to safely prepare a small fire to keep the worst of the night’s chill from their bones and he was feeling the first, faint warnings that the dark magic was wakening inside his veins.

Alexin immediately gave a dramatic sigh of relief and collapsed thankfully to the ground.

Skinner let the boy rest while he cleared the moss away from a circle of soil, so that he might safely prepare a fire. There were no rocks, not even small stones, available to create a fire pit, so he merely bared the ground of anything flammable and piled a heap of small sticks and branches within the centre of the cleared soil.

Usually, he’d light a fire by striking a blade against a stone until sufficient sparks ignited the kindling. This time he hollowed out a small pit in one of the branches and used the string of cloth he’d previously used to tie the rabbits to rapidly twist a smaller stick inside the hollow until a faint smoke emerged.

He was feeling proud of his ingenuity, sure that the boy was impressed with his display of skill, when Alexin hesitatingly asked him why he didn’t simply use the magic to ignite the fire.

“What?” he demanded, blinking in confusion.

“I’m cold,” Alexin mumbled, hugging his thin, bare legs miserably to his chest. “Can’t you just magic the fire *properly*? Please?”

“I don’t know how to ‘magic’ a fire.”

It was Alexin’s turn to look confused. “But I saw you call the lightning, Skinner. That proves you *can* do it.”

Skinner glared irritably at the boy. “I’m hardly going to summon a lightning storm just to get this fire started,” he stated firmly.

Alexin’s eyes widened with astonishment, and then he snickered softly.

“What?” Skinner demanded, narrowing his eyes at the boy’s obvious amusement.

“The summoning of storms is just one aspect of elemental magic. If you can control the air and pull storm clouds to your vicinity, you *must* be able to control the other elements, too,” Alexin explained. “You’re clever, for a man, but you really don’t know very much, do you?”

“Not about magic,” Skinner admitted.

“Well, I don’t know *that* much either,” Alexin sighed. “Like I didn’t know it was *male* magic being used by the females. But I know that my mother can light a fire simply by wishing it so.”

“Shame she can’t extinguish one as easily,” Skinner muttered sulkily, but glared at the pile of kindling and, feeling slightly foolish, silently ordered it to alight.

“GODS,” he exclaimed, leaping backwards in shock as flames instantaneously leapt upward from the piled wood.

“See?” Alexin purred happily, moving closer to the already crackling fire and sighing contentedly.

“Wh…what else can this ‘elemental’ magic do?” Skinner asked, feeling stunned and awed and yet more than slightly disbelieving that he had truly been responsible for the flames.

“Not much,” Alexin admitted. “It’s said that in the time of power, before the great war, Faerie could even turn the tides and reverse the flow of rivers. They could make the ground plough and plant itself and totally control the weather so that it was warm and sunny every day and rained only at night. But these days, the magic is too dilute for that kind of thing.”

“But I *could* summon rain clouds, like I did the lightning?” Skinner demanded excitedly. “So we could refill our empty waterskin in that fashion?”

“Only if you don’t mind getting soaking wet in the process,” Alexin pointed out sardonically.

Skinner sighed and nodded his reluctant agreement. It was too near nightfall to risk getting drenched. He’d rather remain thirsty than spend the night sodden.

He had another thought. “Can the magic *lead* us to water?”

Alexin just shrugged and said, somewhat bitterly, “I told you, I don’t know much about it. I was always told magic was women’s business.”

Despite the boy’s claim of ignorance, Skinner was eager to question him further. He was learning that Alexin knew far more than he *thought* he knew. Over the years, the boy had obviously absorbed a lot of useful information – even though it had been filtered through deliberate obfuscation – and, if Skinner just found the right questions to ask, he was sure the boy’s answers would be illuminating.

But he had no time to pursue the subject at that moment. His blood was heating rapidly and his extremities were starting to tingle with impending need.

“It’s time,” he said, his tone apologetic, and he patted his thighs meaningfully.

Alexin’s face fell slightly and he bit his lower lip in distress, yet he nodded and moved obediently to sprawl himself over Skinner’s thighs.

Skinner winced guiltily. The potion might have dulled Alexin’s pain but the arduous walk had still exacerbated the boy’s injuries. The bruising around his passage had spread to cover a large proportion of his upper buttocks and the torn flesh of the boy’s entrance was not only bleeding again slightly but was puffy, reddened and inflamed.

“Open your legs a little,” Skinner suggested softly and, although Alexin immediately complied, a whimper of fear escaped the boy’s throat.

“I promise I won’t strike you there. I won’t even *touch* you there,” Skinner assured him. “I asked you to open your legs because I’m going to spank your thighs rather than your bottom tonight. The slaps may feel worse, because you have less flesh on your legs, but hopefully that will just speed things up. The magic’s upon me, and you have little time to get me bound before I forget my intention to let you do so.”

In the event, Skinner barely had to land more than a half dozen spanks because Alexin burst into tears of relief the moment Skinner assured the boy he hadn’t forgotten the promise not to ride him.

“Quickly,” Skinner urged, helping the weeping boy off his lap and handing him a strip of cloth. “Tie my wrists together, behind my back, as tightly as you can manage.”

He made Alexin redo the task several times until he was satisfied that the restraint was adequate. “Now I’m going to lie down on my back, and I want you to use my sword belt to do the same to my ankles.”

Alexin quickly did as Skinner bade, then stepped back a couple of paces, tears still streaming down his face, and watched silently as the veins began to bubble and rise over Skinner’s skin.

“Please, Alexin,” Skinner begged, arching his back in agony as his blood continued to boil without relief.

But instead of moving towards him, Alexin merely hugged himself, chewed upon his lower lip and looked indecisive. He neither stepped towards Skinner nor away. The tears were still pouring down his cheeks but his eyes were hooded and secretive as though, despite his claim that ‘boys’ couldn’t reason, Alexin was seriously weighing the consequences of *not* answering Skinner’s needs.

In that moment Skinner felt true terror.

What if the boy had been faking his passive acceptance of Skinner’s right to use him? Skinner was bound and helpless now, unable to take chase if Alexin simply turned on his heels and ran off back towards the ward-gate. In his concern for Alexin’s pain, he’d made the greatest mistake a man could ever make. He’d allowed himself to be made helpless in the hands of someone who had *every* reason to hate him, and he knew, instinctively, that if the boy refused to share the magic with him now, as the blood boiled inside his veins, he would die in agony.

If Alexin betrayed him now, he was certain the pain already coursing through his body inside his black, pulsating veins would continue to increase until perhaps even his heart itself exploded.

Yet, even in his agonized desperation, and despite the dark haze of lust that blurred his reason, he couldn’t find it in himself to *blame* the boy if that, indeed, was his choice. For almost a week now, he’d caused Alexin pain beyond measure as he’d slaked his needs between the boy’s buttocks. Perhaps Alexin’s survival instinct had simply advised the boy to bide his time for such an opportunity and lull Skinner into a sense of false security.

Skinner’s death would break the bond between them and free the boy forever from a ‘relationship’ that had brought him little but suffering.

So, despite his own fear and pain, Skinner couldn’t find it in himself to hate Alexin for his deception. He knew that, in the same circumstances, if *he* were the one being so abused, he *too* would want his rapist dead.

So although his body writhed and twisted to beg for the boy’s magic, he choked back the urge to plead verbally for mercy and instead bravely accepted his imminent death. He wouldn’t beg for his life. He was not too proud, however, to demand a more merciful demise.

“Gods,” he gasped, as his body now began to convulse in its agony. “If you would have me die, boy, at least do it as a *man* and cut my throat.”

It was those words that finally galvanized the boy into action. Alexin’s beautiful eyes widened as though surprised, as if he had barely registered Skinner’s suffering until that moment, his hands fluttered nervously at his waist and his mouth pursed into a moue of distress. Then, at last, he moved in Skinner’s direction.

Skinner closed his eyes. It was taking all his strength not to roar his pain aloud and he was determined to die with the dignity of a man, not the howling fear of a beast. He was prepared for his death but didn’t actually want to *watch* it.

He felt Alexin straddle his chest and, though he winced slightly at the surety the boy was merely positioning himself to make it easier to slice one of the knives across his throat, he appreciated the boy’s courage in doing so. For someone who fainted at even the sight of a rabbit’s blood, Skinner told himself it *was* true bravery that the boy should choose to give him the mercy of a swifter death.

Then a sole tear dripped onto his lips and he gasped, his eyes flying open as the single drop of magic tingled into his tastebuds. A solitary, cruel teasing promise of relief, which immediately stole his ability to control the dark haze that gripped him. That one tear destroyed any notion he retained of dignity or pride.

Although he was almost certain the boy was merely taunting him, a wild, desperate hope surged inside his chest that Alexin *might* at least consent to gift him with one or two more teardrops if he only pleaded pitiably enough.

“Please,” he begged shamelessly. “Oh, Gods, Alexin. PLEASE. Just *one* more drop.”

And, unbelievably, the boy not only consented to that but even lowered his face to Skinner’s lips and allowed Skinner’s tongue to lap and lave furiously at *all* his tears.

Gasping and groaning with relief, as the sweet, honeyed liquid surged through his body, quenching much of the fiery agony that convulsed him, Skinner suckled greedily on the boy’s tears even as his buttocks began to drum against the ground, his hips bucking and twisting, as his member mindlessly sought relief of its own dark urges.

He heard himself whimpering in distress when Alexin finally pulled his face away and shuffled backwards until he was sitting on Skinner’s thighs. Skinner no longer cared whether he sounded desperate or pathetic. He simply keened a wordless plea for more of the wonderful, delicious, irresistible magic.

And then Alexin lowered his head and licked hesitantly at Skinner’s weeping member.

At the sensation of the soft, wet tongue sliding over his flesh, Skinner arched his spine and howled with relief, his body jerking so violently in response to Alexin’s touch that he almost tipped the boy off his thighs.

“Oh yes,” he garbled. “Yes, Alexin. That’s it. Touch me there. Lick me. Suck me. That’s it. You beautiful, beautiful boy. Oh Gods, yes.”

He couldn’t believe it. Alexin *wasn’t* intending to leave him to die in agony. Alexin wasn’t even planning to hasten his demise with a knife. For some completely incomprehensible reason the boy *was* intending to complete their bargain.

Alexin lowered his head once more and Skinner shivered in anticipation. But a moment before his tongue touched Skinner’s aching member, Alexin paused, looked up to meet Skinner’s rolling, desperate eyes and softly demanded, “Do you love me?”

Later it would occur to Skinner that the boy *truly* was an innocent, not to know that at that point he would have gladly sworn undying loyalty to the entire Faerie race simply to get his member inside that teasing, tantalizing mouth, and yet he wasn’t lying when he gasped, “I *adore* you, Alexin.” He wasn’t lying because, even in his haze of magic driven lust, he understood that Alexin’s unexpected decision to remain and satiate his need was a gift he didn’t deserve.

The boy lapped delicately at Skinner’s member, but then wrinkled his nose and pursed his lips at the bitter taste of the first drops of Skinner’s now bubbling seed.

“I thought you’d taste sweet,” he said, the skin between his brows furrowing with confusion. “You always say *I* taste sweet like honey. But you taste…salty.”

And it was obvious from his disgusted expression that Alexin cared not at all for the taste of salt.

Skinner groaned and tossed his head in despair. Although the tears had soothed the edges of his need, his member was throbbing so much with its need for release that he could barely breathe for the pain in his groin.

“Please,” he gasped. “At least use your hand to…”

But before he could complete the sentence, Alexin shook himself, his luminous eyes steeling with determination despite his obvious feelings of distaste, and he lowered his face to Skinner’s member once more.

This time, instead of licking at Skinner’s flesh, he opened his lips and took the head of Skinner’s member into his mouth.

Skinner howled with relief and arched up into the cooling balm of Alexin’s saliva, pushing his member deeper and deeper into Alexin’s throat. The boy immediately choked, panicked and abruptly jerked his head away.

Skinner howled in frustration, his body thrashing its disappointment and his wrists battling furiously, if pointlessly, against their restraints.

Alexin licked his lips nervously, then caught Skinner’s eyes and petulantly said, “I can’t… can’t do it if you don’t stop moving. You need to stay *still*!”

The boy might as well have told a river to stop flowing.

Skinner coughed a bark of almost hysterical laughter. It seemed insane to him that he could be so filled with the compulsion to drive into the boy’s mouth and yet still see humor in the situation.

“Use your hand,” he gasped. “Forget your mouth, Alexin. It…it isn’t going to work. We… we should have practiced this when… when the magic wasn’t upon me. I need… need to release my seed. Just wet me with your tongue and then use… use your hands to stroke me.”

Alexin’s face flooded with relief at the reprieve. He eagerly lowered his face once more and drenched Skinner’s member with swift, wet strokes of his tongue. Then he tentatively took hold of Skinner’s root and began to gently slide his palm up and down the rigid flesh of the heated member.

“Harder,” Skinner gasped. “Grip me firmer and harder.”

The boy tightened his fingers, his lower lip caught between his teeth and his eyes worriedly tracking Skinner’s for reassurance.

“That’s it,” Skinner sighed. “Now faster, Alexin. Yes, just like that. YES. Oh Gods, that’s it, Alexin. That’s… that’s perfect.”

Alexin’s hand began to move with more surety as he obeyed Skinner’s constant, gasped commentary. His palm and fingers worked desperately to bring Skinner to completion until, with a howl, Skinner finally erupted his seed over his belly and chest.

As Skinner lay there, struggling to refill his lungs, the dark boiling lust finally leaving his body as it was bathed by a wave of cooling relief, it suddenly occurred to him that if *Alexin’s* hands alone had brought him satisfaction then his *own* hands could have done the same.

He didn’t *need* to rape the boy. He didn’t *need* to release his seed inside Alexin at a