Chapter 21: Answers

There are several things in my life that seem to always be constants. If I go on a roller coaster, I will throw up, guaranteed. I’ll always sing along to HOT TO GO when I hear it playing, no matter where I am. If a cat shows me any interest whatsoever, I’ll stop everything I’m doing to pet it. And if Laetitia Gelsper kisses me, I will kiss back.

These are just facts.

My hands go for her hips on pure instinct. I can’t help myself. I can feel her lips twisting into a smile as we kiss and somehow that drives me even more crazy. Her fingers slide up my arms. Goosebumps follow in their wake. I shiver with pleasure as I imagine those skilled fingers teasing other parts of me. Gods, she’s so good at this. At breaking down my barriers. At driving me wild. At making me want more.

She pushes me up against the wall. I melt under her touch. She can press me up against any wall, anywhere, anytime, and I’m pretty sure I would cave right then and there. Our kissing becomes fierce. I take her lower lip in my teeth. Her knee presses between my thighs. Why did I come here, again? I don’t remember. Something about a book. Ah, fuck it. I’m a bit preoccupied right now.

I slide my hands down to her ass and squeeze, eliciting a murmur of pleasure from the woman who’s “claimed” me for herself. I’ll say this for Laetitia, she has the nicest ass I’ve ever seen, let alone felt. Plump and round and oh-so-squeezable. Fuck all other religions, I’d worship this ass if I could.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed how much you’re enjoying this,” Laetitia whispers. She pushes my skull against the wall as she kisses back, harder. I whimper as her lips trace their way down the side of my face to my neck. “See? You can deny it all you want, but your body can’t. You are mine.”

And she’s right. I can argue until I’m red in the face, it doesn’t change the fact that I want her hands and lips all over me. I cover my mouth and moan as her knee presses against my crotch. Her tongue on my neck, her hands on my skin, her whisper in my ear, she’s captured me like nobody else ever has. And I hate that I am loving every second of it. 

“This doesn’t make me yours,” I manage to whisper back in between gasps of pleasure.

She withdraws her lips from my neck (criminal, I know). “Oh? But you’re so…pliant.” Her grin is all mischief. Her right hand starts to play with the waistband of my jeans. “There are so many things I could do to you, and you would let me.”

Gulp. She’s not wrong. She could take me right here, right now, consequences be damned. Maybe she does have some kind of control over me. Would that be so weird? Considering everything else that’s happened since I got to Robin’s Brook, it doesn’t seem like the most implausible explanation. Yeah, that’s gotta be it. She’s enchanted me or something. Right?

She inches closer, and my eyes are drawn down to her cleavage. Remember when I called her dress “the perfect dress”? Yeah, this is one of the reasons why. That plunging neckline makes the outline of her breasts wonderfully visible. How does someone with such wide hips and huge breasts have such a tiny waistline? It almost seems unfair.

Only almost, though, since I am fortunate enough to have my hands on her. My breath catches in my throat as her hand goes for the button of my jeans. Oh gods, is this really happening? “Laetitia, I…”

She hushes me with another kiss. Then, a flick of her fingers, and pop. There goes the button. Yes. This is happening. She unzips my fly and slides my jeans down, exposing my panties. I can tell there is a growing wet spot down there by the way it feels…and the way her expression turns victorious when she breaks her kiss to look down at me.

“Okay!” I say, raising my voice a little. “You win. You’re right.”

One of her fingers drags up the wet spot of my panties, pressing against my slit through the fabric. My world spins. Oh, hell. This girl is going to be the end of me. “Am I, now?” she coos.

“Y-yes,” I confess. She has a hold over me. There’s no denying that. Hey, don’t judge me. No one's touched me there in a damn hot minute (told you I liked HOT TO GO). Nobody but me several days ago, that is. And probably again as soon as I leave this place, judging from how much this is driving me crazy. “But this isn’t what I came here for.”

“Then why did you really come here?” she asks, her fingers sliding up to the lace of my panties, hand slipping inside. I don’t even care how ice-cold her hand is anymore. I want those fingers inside me. I want that so bad.

“I came here to—ohgods—I came here for—” I struggle to say pretty much anything as her fingers reach down to touch me, slipping between my labia, slipping inside me, oh gods, I am undone. “—a book,” I finally say.

“A book?” she says, still fingering me. I try to speak but all that comes out is a whimper. One of two things needs to happen right now: either she needs to stop teasing me, or she needs to stop teasing me.

“Answers.” My breathing is heavy, moans breaking apart my words. “I need to know—hnnng—who you all really are,” I manage to say.

Just as her index finger is starting to reach deeper inside me, she withdraws. The grin on her face vanishes, replaced with something cold, knowing. “I see,” she says. “And you know of this how?”

I’m a mess—panting, jeans around my knees, panties lowered just enough to reveal how moist she’s made me. But I can still salvage this little operation of mine. “My, uhh, source is confidential.” 

Laetitia brings her finger to her lips and runs her tongue along it. I shudder from top to bottom. Gods, what that tongue would do to me. “A shame. But I’m patient. I can wait a little longer to take you for myself.”

Shivers. She could take me right now. But I do still need answers. “So…you’re letting me go?”

She grins and leans in close. “Oh, degenerate. When you finally submit to me—and you will—it will be without reservation. You will come to me with no ulterior motive. You will simply want to be mine. And then…” Her lips touch mine in a final kiss. “...then I’ll have you.”

I kiss her back, hungry for more, until she pulls away. “Don’t think this makes me your object,” I say, pulling my panties and jeans back up.

“Yes, yes,” she waves away my words like they’re nothing. “Now, the other thing you desire.”

Other thing? Oh, right. The book. Yes. That’s the thing I came here for. Yep. Definitely. Have I mentioned that my mind is spinning right now? “Something like…‘Annals of the Etherweald?’ Whatever that means.”

“First floor, just past the living room. Third shelf from the left, fourth row down. Don’t let Josef see you. He can be a bit defensive when it comes to the family library. Oh, and do not be alarmed by Ceres.”

“Ceres?”

She reaches down to button my jeans back up and kisses me again. “Now go, while Josef is still cleaning my brother’s room. Quickly. And tell nobody I said any of this.”

I just stare and blink. Is she really helping me?

“Go!” she says again, and I hop to it, opening her door and poking my head out into the hallway. I glance at her one last time before leaving. She waves me off with the back of her hand. With what little brainpower I still have left in this empty skull, I notice that she’s a little wound up, too. If I didn’t know any better, I’d guess she hasn’t been touched that way in a long while, either. A grin crawls across my lips as I quietly shut the door behind me.

I sneak down the hallway and past Xavier’s room. Thankfully, the Gelsper home isn’t nearly as creaky and loud as Rey’s house. I lean over the railing of the living room balcony and peer downstairs to make sure it’s empty. In all likelihood, Josef and Laetitia are the only people home, or she would have warned me. That car in the driveway must be Laetitia’s. Does Josef just live in the house with them?

I make my way past the living room and into the next room in that wing. I must have passed right by it when Josef escorted me around the first time I was here. Inside is an enormous library, home to almost a dozen bookshelves that are positively stuffed with books. No, not books, tomes. I’m talking fuckin’ grimoires. You know, old school, leather-bound, thick as a brick, that kind of thing.

Between two bookshelves, next to the window with the blinds pulled shut, there’s an enormous vivarium, taller than it is wide. I could practically fit inside the damn thing, it’s that big. Inside is a log and a straight-up chunk of tree trunk, both covered in greenery. I’m so out of it, I almost don’t spot the python coiled around the log, bathing under a heat lamp. It’s a tawny brownish-orange color, its scales covered in a beautiful wavy pattern. Ceres, I realize. Who keeps a snake in their library, I wonder. The Gelspers do, obviously, because of fucking course they do.

I follow Laetitia’s instructions, navigating over to the third shelf from the left, fourth row down. I run my hands across the spines of the tomes nestled there from left to right, continuing until I find the one that looks like what Rey described: a thick blue tome, old but well-kept. The cover reads: “Annals of the Etherweald, vol III.”

The fuck is an “Etherweald,” anyway? Been wondering that ever since I left Rey’s house. Guess there’s only one way to find out. I pull the tome off of the shelf and take a glance at the first few pages.

ANNALS OF THE ETHERWEALD, VOL III / 

RECORDS OF THE ANCESTRAL HOME OF THE FOUR COURTS OF THE FEYWILD, 

642 ER – 3738 ER (2012 AD)

Uh, okay. If you say so. I flip a few pages deep and find a page that is written in a language I don’t know. No, not just a language I don’t know how to read; a language I’ve never seen before in my entire life. I keep flipping. More gibberish. Finally, I find a page written in plain English and start reading:

From the Journal of Ember Grey, High Queen of the Summer Court, 3546 ER

It is over. The Etherweald is lost to us. This war between our two courts has destroyed almost all of the etherfield, and with it, our home. Now we face banishment, or worse. But there is still hope. I’ve brokered a deal. Those who follow me may not understand, but it is the only way to preserve a future for our people. We shall take what remains of the etherfield and carve out a new home in the realm of the humans. Neutral ground. So long as our truce remains intact—so long as the etherfield holds—our existence shall go unknown. But never again will we return to the Feywild to be with our brethren. We will remain forever cut off from the other courts, the other houses, and be forever exiles. I can only hope my daughters understand. I can only hope they follow in my example and broker peace, for war in the human realm would mean disaster…not just for our people, but for them as well.

Wh-what? My world is spinning. The words on the page start to blur. The realm of the humans? Feywild? This can’t be real. This can’t be the truth. It can’t.

“Finally! That look on your face tells me you’ve learned the truth,” a deep voice says from nearby. I snap the book shut and spin to face whoever somehow snuck their way in here without my noticing, but the room is perfectly empty. What the…?

“Over here, foolish human. That’s it. Keep turning.” Eyes wide, sweat running down my forehead, I continue to spin, searching for the source of the voice. “Almost,” the voice says. When I’m face to face with the vivarium, the voice calls out once more: “Aaaand there.” Ceres uncoils from the log and presses its head against the glass.

I blink in shock and take a step backward. The tome in my hands drops to the floor.

“Oh, come now. Surely you can’t be that dense?” Ceres says.