Page 2

“This one is a bit skittish,” Sefri, one of the Joy Vessel Keepers, explained.

“She hasn’t said a word since she came here.

We fear she may have defective hearing, limited mental abilities, or a speech impediment, or possibly, some combination of them all.

Either way, she doesn’t look like she’s capable of a wide range of emotions, which may make her unusable as a Joy Vessel.

The Royal Council selected her for the first fitting as a test. This way, if something goes wrong, we won’t lose anyone more valuable. ”

At those words, the Joy Vessel glared at Sefri, which made me doubt there was anything wrong with her hearing or comprehension.

“Well.” The Master Guardian unfurled his tendrils and placed a hand on the golden altar where the fitting was to take place. “Since she refuses to move on her own, we have no choice but to bring her to the altar by force.”

The woman pivoted toward him, narrowing her eyes.

The light from the flames fell on the side of her face that had been in the shade until now, and all her symmetrical perfection crumbled.

A large, dark bruise bloomed under her right eye, grotesquely swelling her cheek.

Her bottom lip was split open with blood crusted over the cut.

Looking closely, I spotted more bruises on her arms and shoulders.

Damage to the coal-black skin of shadow fae would mostly manifest as a rougher texture and loss of shimmer. But the human’s shade was lighter than ours, allowing for her bruises to show as dark patches on her otherwise smooth brown skin .

“She’s been hurt,” I blurted out, struck by her appearance all over again, only now for very different reasons.

“Not due to our doing.” Sefri shook her head in a vehement denial. “The royal guards swore they didn’t harm her either. She sustained her injuries back in her world before the guards took her.”

“How? Why?” The very idea of someone hurting a woman disturbed me. But there was a special air of vulnerability about this one that awoke in me the unexpected urge to protect her.

“That we don’t know,” Sefri replied. “But because of that, we’re hoping she’ll see us as her liberators from whatever she endured in her world, rather than as her abductors, like many of the humans are currently calling us.”

“She is a human. And as such is a threat,” I mentally reminded myself, trumping down the unwelcome and very inconvenient compassion that could be detrimental to the success of my mission.

Holding the leilatha harness, the Master Guardian approached the Joy Vessel.

“It has to be done, Sweet One.” He reached for her with his tendrils. “We’ll have to put the harness on you.”

She darted her gaze around, then did the unexpected. She spoke.

“I’ll do it,” she said in a slightly raspy voice, then cleared her throat, eyeing Arter suspiciously. “I’ll do it myself. As long as you don’t touch me.”

I waited for her to scream, to try to run, or at least to fight us. She was the first one to go through the fitting. There hadn’t been anyone who had survived it already to ease her mind. Yet she took the harness from Master Arter, looking relatively calm.

“How…” She fumbled with the loops of the ribbons. “How am I supposed to wear it?” She smiled.

She smiled?

I couldn’t believe my eyes. In the course of my studies, I’d learned that humans smiled when they felt happy.

But I didn’t believe she was feeling that.

How could she, considering the circumstances?

Did humans not fear the uncertainty? Did she not realize the loss of her freedom?

Did she not know that she would never return home?

“Let me help you.” I stepped forward, unable to watch her struggle with the harness. “Here, thread your right arm through these two loops.”

I held the ribbons open for her, mindful not to touch her as per her request.

“Thanks.” She gave me another quick smile.

Her smiles were flitting, with sadness floating in her large brown eyes. They couldn’t be a sign of happiness. They must hold some other meaning, one that I couldn’t decipher.

She promptly slipped her right hand through the harness, then the left one. The magic in the ribbons made them snap snugly around her upper arms.

I reached to help her fasten the ribbons around her neck and chest, but she stepped away from my hands quickly.

“I’ll do it myself.” She smoothed the ribbons over her skin, then glanced up at me. “Now what?”

The Master Guardian patted the polished surface of the golden altar. “Now, we need you to lay down here.”

The altar looked like a high, narrow table made of gold.

Every chapel and temple had one, normally used for offerings or for casting spells during a service to a deity.

Today, the offering was her. And the spell was the one that would fuse the harness to her emotions, providing a permanent access to her joy for any shadow fae favored by the queen.

I would’ve explained it all to her, had she asked. But she didn’t ask any questions. She didn’t say anything at all, silently climbing onto the altar.

Her braids dropped around her face, concealing it from me, as she sat on the altar with her head tilted forward.

“Lay down, please.” The Master Guardian moved to place a hand on her shoulder, but I took his wrist, stopping him .

“She asked not to be touched,” I reminded.

“There is no other way. We will need to restrain her during the worst of it,” he argued.

“You don’t have to restrain me. I won’t move,” the Joy Vessel said quickly.

Tossing her braids over her shoulder, she did as she was told, laying down on the altar. She seemed calm. But the tension in her body and the stiffness of her movements betrayed that she was far from relaxed.

She stared up at the ceiling, her expression vacant, except for that faint ghost of a smile slightly curving her full lips.

Nothing about this woman or her behavior made sense to me, and I could no longer hold back the question.

“Do you care to know what will happen to you next?” I asked.

She rolled her head on the altar, meeting my eyes.

“No.” she said in a hollow voice. “I don’t care.”

Her words stunned me. But the Joy Guardians linked their hands around the table, and I had no choice but to join them in chanting the spell.

The magic used to connect the leilathas to the woman’s emotions was supposed to take her from the deepest despair and suffering to the highest euphoria.

As we chanted the first words of the spell, terror slammed into her. She choked on her breath. Her body arched and stiffened, gripped by agony.

They said the deepest sorrow was often borne in silence, and that was how this woman endured it. She didn’t make a sound, didn’t release a single word, not a cry, not even a breath.

Her eyes closed so tightly, only the tips of her long eyelashes could be seen peeking between her eyelids. Her jaw seemed to be locked open, her teeth bared. Her knuckles paled as she fisted her hands. The heels of her feet pressed into the altar with her body tensing in an arch.

I kept reciting the words of the spell along with the others, praying in my mind for the worst of it to pass quickly, for her sake.

Humans were a threat to the only thing in this world that mattered—our Joy. I vowed to fight and even to kill if necessary to protect it. I wanted humans gone out of Alveari Kingdom.

But I didn’t want this woman to suffer.

As the terror and agony eased into a lesser phase of fear and pain, she finally screamed. She thrashed on the altar, trying to get off it.

Master Arter pressed down on her shoulders. Oria trapped the human’s legs in the loops of her tendrils. The Joy Vessel punched the air, and I caught her fists, holding them between my hands.

I couldn’t say any words of comfort to her, maintaining the chants for the spell to continue. But I softened my voice in an attempt to convey the calm through my intonations to soothe her.

As the spell progressed, she moved from the devastatingly horrible emotions to the highly unpleasant ones, to the more manageable and neutral, and finally to the pleasant ones.

Now, her features relaxed, as did her body. She breathed deeply and easily. Her eyes remained closed, but her lips parted a little. I wondered what emotions she might be experiencing now.

Everything higher than content was known to me only through the Source of Joy in the temple.

I tried to guess by her expression which one of those divine emotions she might be feeling, but it wasn’t easy for me to identify them all.

From the Source of Joy, they all came as a wondrous blend of different pleasures, barely distinguishable.

The Joy Vessel moaned softly. Bending her knees, she parted her thighs, then pressed them together with a long exhale.

Was it sexual pleasure that she was feeling right now?

Unlike humans or the fae from the Above, shadow fae were never meant to experience it. Sex for my kind was purely for procreation with a burning, painful need to be fulfilled and not a hint of pleasure in it.

The woman moaned again. Her breathing changed from long and languid to short and halting, like the pleasure she was experiencing proved too intense to even breathe through it.

Rolling her head on the table, she inhaled a shaky breath.

Her thighs shook, with tremors resonating through her entire body.

She cried out in pleasure. The muscles in her belly flexed rhythmically. Then her tense expression relaxed, and now, I knew exactly how she felt because I’d seen this expression of bliss many times on the faces of Joy Guardians during their prayer time at the Source of Joy.

I knew she felt elated. It was a powerful feeling that made one believe there was no obstacle one couldn’t overcome, no battle one couldn’t win, and no evil in the world one couldn’t defeat.

That was the highest of the bliss that could only be experienced in the afterlife or through our sacred Source of Joy.