Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92476 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92476 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
“Their love was true…but the King, Talandra’s father found out about it,” Liath murmured, still narrating the tale the Pool was showing us.
Suddenly an angry figure with golden hair stepped into the picture. He was wearing the Sun Crown, just as my father always did and for a moment I thought he looked exactly like him.
“King Oberon—another ancestor of yours,” Liath told me. “He was the one who created the Great Divide that keeps the Seelie and Unseelie Realms separate. All because he was angry that his daughter was willing to bed with an Unseelie—and a creature that was a half-breed at that.”
“Oh no—what did he do to them?” I asked. In the Pool, the angry king had grabbed his daughter’s hand and was pointing at the Satyr. Fae guards rushed up to flank him, tying his hands behind his back and dragging him out of the forest glade.
“For his daughter’s lover, he decreed death,” Liath said flatly and the Pool showed us a terrible image—a guard beheading the Satyr. An axe blade rose and fell and the sightless head rolled on the ground, the mouth still working soundlessly.
“Ugh!” I exclaimed involuntarily. “That’s horrible! That poor Satyr!”
“Talandra’s fate was fucking worse,” Liath growled. “For her willingness to bed with an Unseelie, the king decided on a punishment that held a special level of shame. He strung her up naked at the crossroads in the middle of the forest and decreed that since she was so willing to bed with an Unseelie, that any who wanted her should have her.”
To my horror, I saw the princess with eyes like mine stripped of her clothes. She had full breasts and curving hips too, I saw—also like mine. She was dragged by the Fae guards to the crossroads I knew well—it was at the border of the Unseelie territories and the Summer Court—the place where the Great Divide that kept the two Realms separate was thin.
Talandra’s hands were tied together and raised above her head, where they were fastened to the post at the center of the crossroads. Then her legs were spread, showing her naked sex clearly, and tied in the open position as well.
“You might want to look away, little bird,” Liath rumbled in my ear. “What comes next isn’t very fucking nice.”
I covered my eyes with my hands but I couldn’t help peeking through my fingers—as you do when watching a scary or horrible sight. I didn’t want to see it fully but I couldn’t help looking just the same.
“How…how long did they leave her there?” I whispered, almost afraid to ask.
“Her punishment was to be bred by any male who wanted her for a whole day and night,” Liath told me.
As he spoke, a new figure came into the picture. It was a goblin, I saw with horror. A huge one—they get quite large—with green, warty skin and stumpy, bow-legs. Its arms were too long, the hairy knuckles dragging on the dusty road. But it was the legs my gaze kept returning to. Between them hung a set of what I could only assume were male genitals—they were quite grotesquely large.
As I watched, they got even larger, the shaft in the middle swelling to the size of an enormous sausage while the two heavy balls below swayed with each bow-legged step.
The goblin came up to the bound Talandra, who was weeping silently and—
But I couldn’t watch any more because Liath had covered my hands with his own, much larger one, blocking my vision completely.
“It occurs to me that you don’t need to watch a rape when you’ve had so little experience, little bird. It’ll scare you to fucking death,” he growled in my ear. “Hey, can’t you speed it up some?” he added, and I got the sense he was talking to the Pool itself. After a moment he said, “All right, that’s better.”
“Can…can I look now?” I asked as he pulled his hand away.
“You can.” He took my hands from my eyes and I saw that the Pool was showing a picture of Talandra, though this time she was clothed. Her pale pink dress couldn’t hide the unsightly swelling of her midsection, though—clearly she was pregnant.
“But…how many males…?” I began.
Liath shook his head.
“You don’t need to know that. The point is, that punishment changed her life—and not for the better. Of course, everyone assumed that since she’d been bred by so many Unseelie ‘monsters’ that she would give birth to a monster herself. But she didn’t.”
“She didn’t?” I asked, surprised.
“No—look.”
The Pool showed us a picture of Talandra holding a beautiful, cherubic looking Fae infant. I couldn’t tell what sex it was, but it had curly golden hair and bright, jewel-like blue eyes.
“Oh,” I said in surprise. “It looks just like a regular Seelie Fae baby!”
“That he did—and since the king and queen had no other children besides Talandra, they chose to adopt their grandson as their heir,” Liath said.