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Immortal Mother led everyone out except for Khortys, whom I chose as the maid to serve me first. Austrydhur and Pirkitta tried to convince her to let them stay too, and I could clearly see they were aiming to feed me as well, but Immortal Mother told them firmly that in my current condition I could only feed on one at a time, so their turn had to wait.
She didn’t explain why, but it was because she was preventing access to my blood core. I had no way to store any extra blood that I drank. Not only would extra feeding be a waste, I probably couldn’t even stomach it. I would feel far too full to continue.
My head was spinning, full of questions, but with my mouth full of fangs, I couldn’t exactly insist that the universe stop and explain itself to me once more, from the beginning.
I needed it to do so. How could I possibly not? As I was now, I could only numbly let Immortal Mother direct traffic while my thoughts churned.
The other baby in my womb was the woman whose body and life I stole?
Ms. HR Manager, you need to explain this right away! If she was going no further than Mother’s womb, why couldn’t she just come back to the body that already belonged to her?
That was an honest-to-goodness prayer. I hoped she was listening. I hoped she had the grace to answer.
All prayers are heard, but most should go unanswered.
Yeah, heck with that. I demand an answer.
Khortys simply stood next to me and watched them go, then gave me a smile with her hands folded. Despite wearing an eye-catching two-piece swimsuit and a sexy beach wrap rather than her usual Dorian maid outfit, she still had the perfect manner of a royal maid. Given her service in the Fairy King’s Castle for two centuries, I suppose that was only natural.
“Your Highness, I am honored to serve you again,” she told me. “And most relieved that you appear to have recovered from your amnesia. We worried considerably about you when we heard. Her Highness was especially distressed.”
It reminded me that I had a problem to take care of, and couldn’t dwell on the other confusing manner. I needed to know why, but I wouldn’t get my answer here, anyhow. I chose to pull myself together and wait for later to find out. Immortal Mother or Oranos or someone should be able to tell me something.
For the time being, Immortal Mother’s magic was still allowing me to control my urge. I could gracefully accept my senior maid’s well-wishes rather than grabbing her and plunging my fangs into her neck, the peril that Amelia faced only a few minutes ago. So, that would be the better approach, wouldn’t it?
I nodded and said, “I still have physical rehabilitation to do, but my memory is now completely recovered.”
She looked around, then wondered, “How… no, where should I serve you, Your Highness?”
I once fed on a girl named Becca here, or rather, in the Huadean location that they copied to make this place. I knew the perfect place. But that was a spot up the hill, where I would have a great deal of difficulty reaching right now. Frankly, the only places I could go were…
“No truly private location is accessible to me in this form, and the seniors are preventing me from switching to my legs. Unless you want to sit in my lap right here, we’ll probably have to lie down in shallow water or a beach.”
She dimpled, her eyes sparkling. “Your lap doesn’t seem too bad, though?”
Wait, that sounded good to her? I was joking!
I snorted. “I would end up having to hold you in that position while you sleep. Doesn’t sound like a good plan.”
My maid rather insolently grew a disappointed pout, but wasn’t able to hold it and giggled instead. Tipping her head, she pulled loose the single bow holding her wrap together and shrugged the garment off, letting it fall to the grass.
An Atian beach wrap is essentially a robe made in a fishnet weave, to be safe to swim in, for the women who are a bit too modest to show off their bodies in the current styles without at least a token degree of additional coverage. They come in varying degrees of transparency, from tight, small weaves for the more shy to big, loose ones for the more bold like Amelia. Khortys wore something between the two, but it seems she belonged to the school that didn’t bother using it in the water at all.
She followed that sexy move by bowing politely one last time, declaring, “Then I shall join you, Your Highness.”
Either my hunger or my once-masculine libido had taken over and I thought I should focus on her face instead. Leering at her like an old lecher just didn’t feel like appropriate behavior for a mermaid. Although perhaps not that inappropriate for a fairy…
By elven standards, this golden-blond beauty was exceptionally curvaceous, but frankly, only by elven standards. The only other species where that word could potentially apply to her would be bird-kin. But she filled her pink bikini in a sensual way that caught the male eye still buried somewhere in my soul quite magnetically.
So I confess that my eyes remained locked on her charms as she lightly stepped off the bank into the shallow water nearby. In the end, balance and form count for far more than size. If sculpted masterfully enough, a willowy beauty like Khortys can be more seductive than the most buxom fairy.
“It’s quite warm!” she exclaimed as she waded in.
“It gets warmer, the closer you get to the fountain,” I told her, pointing to where the hot spring bubbled up as a fountain, ten paces or so away.
She smiled at me as she waded a bit deeper. “Will you come in as well, Your Highness?”
I planted my palm on the rock, raised my butt and slipped into the water. Swimming past her, I beckoned for her to follow, and headed to a spot I selected, closer enough to the hot spring to warm the air.
Grandmother, for thousands of years, cultivated her pool and her lake into a place that would not only be comfortable for herself but an attractive trysting spot for the local mortals, to ensure young people came to picnic and frolic as they do. Doing so gave her opportunities to pick off the occasional stray maiden to dally with. Naturally, she included spots of grass and sand and other comfortable natural bedding.
“What?” Khortys gasped, then laughed. “Shall I remove mine as well, Your Highness?”
I glanced down and discovered I somehow dropped my raiment when I went in. Was Immortal Mother having fun with me again? I wondered if I would be able to get it back.
I didn’t bother replying. I just finished swimming to the spot where I was headed, and crawled on my hands onto a sandy beach that would make a comfy place for Khortys to stretch herself out. Leaning on an elbow there, I beckoned for her to join me. She obeyed, looking slightly mesmerized as she shed her suit and then reclined, facing me.
“Can you wait long enough to hear my requests, Your Highness?” she asked.
Her earnest eyes told me that it was something important to her. Although my fangs remained grown, a state I just wasn’t accustomed to lasting this long without feeding, I was fine for now. Immortal Mother had apparently decided to make sure I could fully control the moment and my vampiric needs would not rush me. I could wait and hear her requests without a problem, so I nodded. Although I will confess, my hand began caressing her arm while I listened.
“I have two, Your Highness,” she stated, then grew a mischievous smirk. “The first is for you to treat your maids more like the other fairy princesses treat us when we’re in private like this.”
I let just the slightest fraction of a laugh escape, then asked, suspecting I knew the answer, “In what way, my lovely maid? Noting for a moment that I’m not sure I would consider a pool out in the open in broad daylight ‘private’?”
She took my hand and moved it to the bare skin of her waist. “We’re alone enough, Your Highness.”
Frankly, Little Jia was almost certainly aware of our location and current posture, since she is aware of everything in my small world, and I had not seen the pixies in quite a while. They were likely to be peeking if they knew what we were up to. But yeah, I guess this is as alone as it gets, in Sky Ocean.
As she began giving me the same caress as I was giving her, she noted, “If only one of us gets to feed you each day, you have more than enough time for the things the other fairy princesses do with us.”
Her smile grew more playful as her hand traveled lightly onto my slightly swollen tummy.
“These little ones are proof that you’re no longer saving yourself for your fiancé, you know?”
She leaned down and pressed silky smooth lips to my bosom, then my shoulder, then my cheek, then near my eye, my nose, my chin, finally finding my mouth. Her tongue invaded almost immediately, but not aggressively. It simply danced in and tasted mine for a moment, then lightly traced the inner surface of my lip before retreating.
“Uh-oh,” I said with a wry smile as she took a moment to breathe. “You know what you’re doing, don’t you?’
With a husky whisper, she told me, “An elven woman in the Fairy King’s Castle lives a life of pleasure no elven woman on the outside will ever know, Your Highness. After fairies have toyed with me for two hundred years, I’m bound to have learned a thing or two.”
Forcing my mind off her utterly fascinating pearl-pink lips and back to sanity, I noted, “You said two things.”
She nodded, turning oddly shy despite her roaming hand. “After your last visit, we three learned that Mr. Diurhimath was of the same species as you, Your Highness.”
Diurhimath had spent his rehabilitation in Tëan Tír as Oberon’s guest, and worked with Morrígan to research the parasites until he was well enough to travel. It sounded like my maids had cornered him at some point.
“He told us where we went wrong with you, Your Highness,” she said with a sad smile. “We should ask to be your Servants, not your blood slaves, shouldn’t we?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. I had been about to say, No, that’s not the problem, but in a way, it was. I’d had a much more negative view of the blood bond back then, and the term blood slave was a stark reminder of it.
But, although Servanthood could be called a better description of the blood bond, I could not develop a truly positive view of it by any name. It’s true that the Immortals designed Servanthood to be a tremendous boon to mortals, because Servants leapfrog many lifetimes on the reincarnation ladder through the spiritual growth they gain from it. Nevertheless, it still warps their mind for the rest of their current life, with no means to free themselves from it other than death and a return to Samsara.
So I told her. “That’s only part of it, Khortys. You need to understand that the blood bond literally reshapes your mind. Yes it has great benefits to you, but in return, you are unable to resent your feelings of loyalty to me. They are forced upon you, completely ignoring your original will. I hate that, Khortys.”
She nodded. “We asked him why you were so adamant that we think carefully about it, so he explained this to us. You should know that he very much approved of your request for us to wait and think first, so he taught us in great detail exactly how it would affect our minds.”
Then she leaned forward for another kiss, before saying, “We’ve thought carefully, and we still wish for it, Your Highness. It isn’t because His Majesty will make us his women anymore.”
“Although he still will do so.”
She smirked and nodded. “It’s a side benefit for us, now. The main attraction is what you offer. We’ll receive a longer life, stronger magic and a permanent relationship with you and each other. Although I will confess, all three of us also truly wish to bear His Majesty’s daughters.”
I sighed, then gave her a complicated smile. “I’m honestly not sure if I’m willing, just yet.”
“Well then,” she said after another kiss, as her hand slipped onto my bosom and began massaging with mesmerizing skill, “in the mean time, we should revisit my first request.”
