Bastien by Alianne Donnelly Read Free Book Online Page A

get a hump in your neck. I’m up here, not at your feet.”
    “Yes, my Lord,” she says. Her gaze stays on the floor.
    I roll my eyes. “Read.”

    She opens the book. “H-han-sel and Gret-tel.” Jocelyn reads slowly, with the unease of one not familiar with the written word. I can see from the way she is near tears that her illiteracy embarrasses her.
    “Stop,” I say, taking pity on the girl.
    She falls silent with a sigh of relief.
    “I want you to learn to read,” I tell her. When her wide, hopeful eyes lock with mine, I shift uncomfortably. “When you have free time, you will come here and read aloud until you can finish a sentence without stumbling over the words, understand?”
    She nods jerkily. “Yes, my Lord.” She looks much too happy for a woman who hasn’t just climaxed.
    “Take the book and go.” I’ve lost my taste for it. And her.
    She curtsies and leaves.
    It’s another week before I’m back to myself, and by then I am going out of my mind, trapped inside my own castle. Night after night I have to stop myself from riding out to that shack again. It’s not Lilith that pulls me there, but the hag. I need answers only she can give me.
    But I know now the moment I am close to the Faery court, the black cup will be beckoning just like last time.
    I’m not an idiot. Thinking back on that night I recognize what I hadn’t then. Lilith and her court are fly traps for humans. They lure us mortals into their world to amuse them, use their magics to make us think we have a choice.
    We don’t. To the Faery folk we are no more than insects, and they ever delight in tearing off our wings and making us whole to do it all over again. A stronger, wiser man would stay far away from that place.
    But there is something in those mystical woods I want, a question I need answered and before the week is out, I can no longer contain myself. I inform Jacques that I am leaving and not to expect me for a while. If he has an opinion, he keeps it to himself. I ride through the chill evening and arrive at the hag’s table just as the sun dips behind the mountains.
    She lights a torch and turns a card. Judgment.
    I don’t have my own deck with me. Instead, I reach for hers and take the top card. I don’t expect it to be relevant. To my surprise, it is The Moon. The same moon I see in my dreams each time I drink from the white cup. The same wolf on a cliff, howling at it.
    She takes the next card. The Tower. I frown at the face of it. It looks uncannily like my castle, the balcony of my chambers lit from the inside and a shadowed figure standing at the balustrade. Is she telling me to go back?
    I should. Already my attention is more on the curtained door behind her than on what she is telling me. There must be a compromise here, some middle ground. Perhaps I was too exhausted last time to dream of my Strength. If I just pace myself this time, maybe I can find her. I need to know who she is, whether she’s real or simply a figment of the hag’s meddlesome spell.
    I turn my card without looking and the hag sighs. Temperance? I pulled Temperance?
    As if she has given up on me, she fans the deck and pulls out the Five of Pentacles. I scowl as I hand over the coins. The woman is gouging me, I know it. “There,” I say. “Buy yourself a better cloak.”
    I enter directly into the bower, with a black cup already waiting for me. I was expected.
    “You made me wait, lover,” Lilith’s disembodied voice croons. Bracing myself with grim determination, I down the contents without once looking at the mirrors.

    I don’t remember the white cup. My dreams are filled with thorns and not a single bloom.
    When I awake on the floor of the shack, I know I won’t be dreaming the woman again no matter how often I come here and drink the black cup. She’s gone. I lost her. No more point in returning here, then. I make that decision before I even have my feet under me. I feel hollow, as if I’ve lost something precious, a part of