Field training: Day 30, hour 18
What do you do when you’re depressed but everyone around you is having sex? You smoke.
Lying on my too-squishy bed, I sucked my pipe between my lips and closed my eyes. Inhale drug. Exhale calm.
The grand hearth threw heat and vitriol. Once again, the flames shrieked at me.
I waved my hand at the fireplace. Hello to you too.
Maybe they were complimenting me and it just sounded so aggressive because they were very passionate about how much they loved me.
I was going with that.
I sucked in more enchanted smoke as the squelching and moaning sounds of sex became an unbearable cacophony.
The crack of a belt was rhythmic.
How many times did you need to beat someone on the ass? You couldn’t tell me that once didn’t get the job done.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Where did Malum even get a belt?
I wasn’t an expert on sex, but Malum and Scorpius’s sadism seemed exhausting. There was a 0 percent chance that getting cut up with a knife was more relaxing than kisses.
My cheek burned with the memory of Orion’s warm, bee-stung lips, and I fingered it as I flushed.
“Swallow,” Scorpius ordered, and there was an awful gagging sound.
I hated to say it, but this was definitely more PTSD-inducing than the ungodly.
When the gaggle of girls had come into the room and the first penis had been whipped out, I should have left.
Or maybe hid in the bathroom?
Ripped out my own heart and quickly ate it before I died? Or would that just make me ascend to the throne?
You should try it. There’s a chance you’d just break the realm’s enchantment and there would be no monarch.
I fingered my pipe and debated going into a shower stall and attempting it.
Nah, I was too tired. I’d try it later.
The weird truth was a small part of me hoped watching seven men have violent sex while I smoked would make me feel something. Because I hadn’t felt much of anything lately.
A terrifying sense of blasé had settled into my bones.
Colors were darker.
My thoughts were more erratic.
So when Malum had announced that since we had the afternoon off and it was a free time to “fuck and get our aggression out,” I’d just nodded sagely.
How did they have any aggression left?
Fighting monsters for over twenty hours straight had left me feeling strung-out and dry. Raw.
But they were still angry. Never mind. I wouldn’t banish all men; I’d have them committed.
What I really wanted to do was get my hair and nails done with Sadie. Then go to a luxury clothing store and overpay for shoes and dresses we didn’t need. I’d bully Sadie for acting poor when she saw the prices. She’d bully me for having a shopping addiction.
Afterward, we’d get wasted on sparkling fae wine and get matching tattoos. Maybe we’d get inspirational quotes or maybe cute little skulls on our wrists.
I could practically feel that delicious exhaustion from retail therapy.
That was my ideal day.
“Come now!” Malum barked, and there was a high-pitched moan/squeal as the girl obeyed.
I rolled my pipe with my tongue and doodled a heart onto my hands.
Smack. Smack. Smack. Orion grunted loudly as he rammed his cock into a woman.
I grimaced.
I inhaled for ten seconds until my chest burned with smoke, then I blew out with my mouth in an O.
Smoke rings rose and disappeared into the galaxy across the ceiling.
Horace made a slurping noise.
I twisted my lips and tried to make my smoke rings into squares.
Holy shit, I did it.
I tried a triangle, and a perfect shape formed.
Wait a second.
I sucked on the enchanted pipe and imagined the smoke forming into a crow as I blew out.
Wings burst from the pipe, and a crow cawed as it flapped lazily in the air around my head. I eyed the enchanted pipe with awe.
“John, look at this!” I shouted excitedly at my friend.
He sat up in his bed, and the girl riding him squealed but didn’t stop bouncing.
I puked a little at the sight of my friend being defiled but was too excited to show him what I’d discovered.
“Watch this.” I blew out, and a smoke dragon roared to life. It flew in loops until it slowly dissipated.
“Shit, that’s sick. Let me try.” John started to push the girl off him, and I squealed.
“No, don’t come over here! You can try it later.” I covered my eyes.
“Okay, fine,” John said and then fell back with a loud groan as the woman resumed bouncing vigorously.
Her moans were unnaturally loud, and as I looked around, I realized the kings had stopped what they were doing and all three were staring at me.
Once again, Malum and Scorpius were on the floor with a girl on her knees between them. Malum took her ass and beat it red with a belt while Scorpius took her face and wielded a steak knife.
Similarly, Orion was standing near them with a girl pressed against the wall.
Acting without thought, I closed my eyes, then blew out a flaming phoenix. I directed it in my mind and sent it flying across the room to Malum.
Smoke slammed against him and dissipated with a puff.
I held my breath.
White teeth flashed bright against bronzed skin as Malum grinned. “That was sick.” All three of the kings smiled at me.
A singularity had occurred, and space-time was spinning out of control. There was a rip in the fabric of the universe.
Crack. Malum slammed the belt down as he pistoned his hips into the woman’s ass.
Moment over.
I resumed facing the wall, but this time, I blew out different animals as I doodled more fake tattoos on my hand.
It was sacrilegious to get tattoos in fae culture, and Mother had said it was a crime against nature because they were on your body for your entire immortal life.
I grinned as I thought about getting a portrait of a middle finger across my back.
I frowned as I remembered I already had open wounds there.
I grinned as I thought about enhancing them with a tattoo.
“WHORE” could become “Whoreable Life,” or “Whores, drugs, and bitches.” Instantly I felt better. Now I just needed to find a tattoo artist.
“Shut the fuck up,” Malum barked suddenly, and his baritone sent shivers down my spine.
Was it really too much to ask for people to have sex in silence?
“Sorry.” A gasp, wet smacking noises. “Your highness.”
Imagine having a girl call you “Your Highness” unironically while you’re penetrating her with your male lover. I couldn’t because it was weird.
“Stay still,” Malum snapped.
I mumbled about overblown male egos as I tried to pet the smoke crow that had settled onto my shoulder. The crow dissipated under my fingers, and I frowned.
“Stop fucking laughing, Egan, or I’ll make you.”
I choked on my pipe. Why was he talking to me?
Flipping onto my stomach, twirling my pipe in my fingers, I rested my chin on my fist and rolled my eyes dramatically to let him know that I wasn’t scared of him.
“You say something, Malum?” I asked dryly as I blew another crow.
His features hardened into ice as I called him by his last name. No way was I calling him Corvus when he only called me Egan or “pretty boy.”
One simply didn’t call their mortal enemy by their first name.
It wasn’t proper.
Malum’s hips pistoned fast, and his thighs slapped loudly. The girl shouted something, but it was muffled by Scorpius’s dick.
A pity. I was sure she had something interesting to say.
I blew out another smoke crow, and this one nuzzled my cheek for a second before it dissipated.
Yay, I officially had a pet.
“I told you earlier to shut the fuck up, Egan.” Gray eyes flared with creepy intensity as his hips pistoned faster and harder.
“Then why are you talking to me?” I asked dryly.
“I’m not,” Malum snapped.
This was why men were inferior to women. Jinx would have eviscerated my self-esteem with a comeback about how I was a pathetic prude that was going to die alone.
Something that really cut to the bone.
Malum’s comeback just didn’t have that it factor. She’d eat him alive.
“Please. Please. Yes, Orion!” the woman pressed against the wall shouted.
“Ew,” I mumbled, fully jealous of the woman getting railed by the gentle fae. His fingers choked her lightly as he pressed her against the wall.
I went back to staring at a different wall.
The woman between Scorpius and Malum screamed, probably with a broken hip and not an orgasm, as I brainstormed names to call my pet crow.
The slurping noises got louder.
I pretended not to notice the fact that the girl on Horace’s bed was turning paler by the second and there was a concerning amount of blood pooling beneath her. Someone should probably stop him.
He was latched onto her wrist and sucking like she was a milkshake.
What a nice ambience.
Zenith and Vegar were tangled under the covers on the far bed, and from the sloppy noises, they were making out passionately.
And people said that love was dead?
I glanced back at Horace’s bed. Yep, the woman was now seizing.
“Sun god, fucking save me,” I muttered.
“Horace. Dude.” I crawled to the edge of my four-poster bed and snapped my fingers in his face.
Unfortunately for me, fortunately for the woman, our beds were only inches apart.
The vampyre ripped his fangs out of her artery and glared at me, yellow eyes blazing bright.
“Let the girl go. She won’t last much longer.” I pointed to the ever-growing pool of red.
Horace didn’t look down. “So.”
He hunched forward, and I lightly smacked him on the cheek to stop him.
“What the fuck?”
I’d slapped him with all my strength and left a red handprint on his cheek. “Oopsie.”
I tried to look apologetic, but honestly, it had been very cathartic hitting him. “Please, just let her go.”
There was a long pause, where I was 99 percent sure Horace was considering launching himself onto my bed and breaking my neck, but then the vampyre sat up.
“Get lost,” Horace snapped at the very pale red-haired girl on his bed.
She blinked groggily and slurred, “Nah. I wanna stay wit you.”
Horace arched his eyebrow at me like he was saying, Told you so.
Oh my sun god, these women just couldn’t see red flags if they were smacking them in the face.
I leaned my face over the bed until I was staring down at her. She blinked with confusion.
I enunciated slowly. “You’re going to die if you stay here with this homicidal maniac. You need to leave. Now.”
She pouted and wrinkled her nose.
It was slightly endearing. She was pretty in an understated way, but it was ruined by the ever-growing crimson puddle underneath her.
“Move it, woman!”
“Okaaaay,” she groaned as she rolled out of the bed and crawled on her hands and knees to the door.
“Go to Lyla!” I shouted after her, and she nodded as she disappeared into the hall. The good thing was the witch’s door was only two away from ours, so she’d make it.
Sun god, it was exhausting being a Good Samaritan.
I climbed back into my bed and resumed blowing crows and thinking of names.
There was a blur in my peripheral vision, and suddenly Horace knelt on top of me.
“Ew.” I pushed at his chest.
I did not think of him that way, and blood drinkers were a big no for me.
Yes, I was self-aware enough to know that this probably had something to do with the fact that I’d dabbled in the lifestyle. Still was a big fucking no.
Horace growled, and he grabbed my wrists with his cold hands. He pinned me to my bed. “You slapped me and made me lose my food. So now you’re going to pay up.”
Somewhere deep in my drug-hazed brain, a monster woke up and started to scream.
Tear off his eyelids and shove them down his throat. Then we’ll see who he threatens.
Apparently, sleep made my monster creative.
“Take your hands off me,” I whispered. “Or you’ll regret it.”
How. Dare. He. Overpower me on my bed.
“What the fuck is going on over there?” Malum’s voice broke through the aggression that was fogging my thoughts.
“We’re fucking,” Horace snapped back and gyrated his hips wantonly.
“What is wrong with you?” I asked seriously.
Horace winked at me and whispered, “Just watch.”
The vampyre gyrated again, and I gagged as he moaned, “Oh fuck, pretty boy, you’ve got such a nice face and a tight body.”
I gaped and pushed against him. “Really? Do you have to be such a pervert? I have no idea how you keep getting women.”
Horace opened his mouth, probably to yell something else obscene, but there was a blur and a loud crash.
The vampyre had been thrown across the room, and the three kings loomed over him.
“Why the fuck would you let that bloodsucker touch you?” Scorpius barked into the room, and his harsh cheekbones were sharper than I’d ever seen them. He looked like death incarnate.
“What is wrong with you three? I wasn’t about to fuck Horace. He was joking.”
Orion slammed his foot into Horace’s side with such force the vampyre’s skull cracked against the wall.
Ugh, my knight in shining armor.
I slapped myself.
Horace recovered quickly and was instantly at Orion’s throat with his fangs distended. However, that set off Malum and Scorpius.
Flames exploded, and suddenly Horace was restrained by Malum with his arms on fire while Scorpius plowed his fist into his face.
Everyone else watched in shock as the kings went nuts.
When Malum released him, Horace just wiped the blood off his mutilated face and sauntered back to his bed.
“Told you, Aran.” He winked a swollen eyelid, then lapped at the crimson puddle on his sheets.
I gagged. “You literally didn’t tell me anything.”
He looked up from his sheets with red dripping down his chin. “I didn’t need to. I think the kings said it all. Am I right, boys?”
“I should have known nobody would actually want to fuck your scrawny ass,” Malum snapped with cruelty.
That insult was better.
“Oh, please.” I sighed. “I’m irresistible and handsome. I know that for a fact.”
Malum glowered.
It was true; I was a sexy man and a gorgeous woman.
Fact of life, I was hot. What did he want me to do, be insecure? I wasn’t dumb like that.
Orion mouthed, “Don’t touch Horace. Don’t touch another man.” Then he went back to the naked girl waiting for him at the wall.
Since I couldn’t let anyone touch me even if I wanted to, I decided to ignore the blatant hypocrisy.
“Watch yourself, Egan,” Scorpius threatened me, and his cock jerked.
Suddenly, my back was burning.
I rolled onto my side and faced the wall.
Eight hours crawled by, and the men fucked the entire time. Eight. Hours. Not even joking. Women entered and left the room like they were on rotation.
At one point, all three kings were fucking the same girl, and John and Horace had a woman between them.
Only Vegar and Zenith kept to themselves the entire time.
Apparently, demons were the only species with any class.
And I just faced the wall and sucked on my pipe, but even in the chaos, one thing remained the same.
I still felt next to nothing.
