Exomas, Day Twelve - Male haunted mirror/Fae (you'll see) x reader (nsfw) (Patreon)

Wow folks, here we are at the end of twelve exclusive stories! I hope there's been something for everyone in there, and that you've enjoyed at least some of them! In total you've had exclusive access to 71,654 words of stories, and it's been a pleasure to share them with you! 

Here we have our last one, with a haunted mirror story with a little Fae Realm twist... 

Contents: one bored, unfulfilled human, one bratty human prince, some dark corridors, one touch-starved entity, some very messy sex, and a happy, disgustingly fluffy ending. Wordcount: 8347

Stepping in at the last minute to help out your deliriously ill friend had seemed like such a good and altruistic idea at the time. 

Hina lay sweating and throwing up in their bed at home, cared for by her partner, and here you were, pretending you knew who was who at one of the most significant events that Highridge Castle had possibly ever hosted. You circulated the room with your heart in your mouth, meekly offering glasses of wine to people who you prayed were just stupendously beautiful humans, and not the diplomats from the Fae Realm who had agreed to join in the evening’s historic talks and events. You had no idea if offering a drink to a Fae while they were in the Mortal Realm would be taken as an insult (or if it would result in the loss of your immortal soul or something), but, looking round at your fellow wait staff, you saw that everyone was being offered refreshments, so you did the same. 

Despite its lofty size, the ornate ballroom was stiflingly hot. Sequined dresses and elaborate silks rustled as couples danced in the centre, and folks with obvious glamours - no human could be that beautiful - glided past on elegant limbs, their lips barely keeping from curling upwards as they passed someone who was obviously, painfully, mortal. You’d had no idea how the talks had gone, but there were clearly deep enmities that would take generations to smooth over.

As the last of the full flutes of the country’s most famous sparkling wine was claimed from your tray, you headed for the doors to refill and begin again. One of the other waiters, a young woman with precariously-restrained, curly red hair grinned at you and puffed out her cheeks, dramatically blowing out a sigh. “It’s intense in there, huh?” she chuckled, setting her own tray down on the table in the service corridor just beyond the ballroom. 

“Right?” you wheezed. “I keep thinking I’m going to stand on someone’s toes and start another war between the realms or something…”

She snorted and began to take the freshly poured wine glasses from one end of the table to restock her tray. “At least the king got rid of his collection of Fae in iron chains for this,” she said darkly. “You know, the ones they find sneaking through the veil and keep as pets…”

You shuddered. “I’d hate to think what our noble Fae guests would think of that…” you muttered through clenched teeth. 

The woman in charge of providing refreshments for the guests glared at the way you were yacking at each other while you refilled, and she stepped forwards and snapped, “If you two don’t stop gossipping like fishwives at market, I’ll find another job for you that involves scrubbing pots in the kitchen til your hands are raw!”

Your new red-haired friend turned her back on her and pulled a face and rolled her eyes, but she picked up the last of her fresh flutes and hurried off without another word, leaving you alone in the tight confines of the corridor with the formidable woman.

“You know what?” the older woman barked at you and you flinched almost comically. “You can go and fetch another case of wine from the cellars. Take this,” she added, thrusting a huge iron key at you. “You’ll need to show the cellarman that I’ve sent you and you’re not some ragged thief.”

You raised your eyebrows and blinked. You didn’t think that Hina’s shirt and trousers looked that shabby on you, and it was the castle’s own livery anyway after all. 

She didn’t like your scowl because her eyes turned dangerous, and you nodded. “Sure,” you chirped. “Ok, I can do that. Uh… How… How do I get there though…? I’m new…”

She snarled and jabbed a thick finger down the shadowy service corridor. “Follow that passageway until you hit the stairs. Go down until you can’t go any further. Turn left, then right, then left again. You can’t go wrong. Now get out of here.”

“Right,” you said rather faintly, and scuttled off like a startled cockroach in the wainscot. 

The servants’ corridor was obviously well used. There were dripping candles in sconces along the wall that had been lit earlier that evening and were still burning, though slippery puddles of wax had spattered onto the floor at regular intervals. Mercifully there wasn’t a hint of a cobweb - much to your relief, because the very idea of unseen spiders lurking in the dark shadows gave you goosebumps. With another shiver, you pattered down the stairs in the flickering gloom until you eventually hit the bottom. 

“Left, right, then left,” you repeated over and over like a temple mantra against the darkness. There were more doorways and openings than you’d expected, leading off down labyrinthine corridors and passageways, some with candles and some with nothing but gaping blackness beyond the reach of the candles at the junction. They were nasty, fatty tallow candles that sputtered and produced choking smoke, so you weren’t exactly keen to linger. 

Plunging down the left corridor, you hummed softly to yourself, your voice seeming disproportionately loud in your ears down here in the dark. 

A cool breeze wafted across your face and you froze, thoughts of ghosts and captive Fae skittering through your mind like scattering rats. “Stop it,” you hissed at yourself. “It’s just a draft.”

With a jolt, you realised that you’d come to a junction in the corridor without noticing. Like a puppy chasing its tail, you turned around, and, because it was a crossroads, you disorientated yourself completely. As your heartbeat picked up its pace, going from a steady trot to a raging gallop like a startled racehorse, you bit your lip and forced yourself to stand still. The floor wasn’t dusty, and it all looked exactly the fucking same. 

“Shit…” you whimpered, trying not to panic. The darkness, the proximity of the ageless stone walls, the narrow dimensions of the tall corridor, the blackness that seemed to be eating up the corridors in all directions, even as you stood there at the centre of the four-way junction, squeezed your lungs to a tight, wheezing panic and your brain turned to nothing but empty buzzing and pounding fear. 

And then you heard it. 

A soft, gentle whispering, like the sound of prayers through a chapel window. You stilled instantly and looked around. Cocking your head from side to side, you pinpointed which corridor it was that was amplifying the whispers, and shot off down it like a gopher down a hole. 

When you barrelled out into a domed chamber, at the centre of which stood a huge, ornately carved mirror, you knew you’d picked the wrong corridor. 

A single shaft of moonlight filtered down through the ovoid chamber, lending the dull grey of the smooth stonework a silvery shimmer. To have real moonlight shining through a hole in the top of the chamber was impossible at this depth, unless there was some series of mirrors that kept it illuminated by sun or moon from outside. 

Despite your situation, you couldn’t help yourself. You stepped into the chamber. 

The mirror’s surface was oddly hard to make out, but it seemed speckled with age and dull, dusty even. The rest of the room was empty, save for some lettering carved into the wall that you didn’t recognise. If it was a warning, it wasn’t chiselled in any language you knew. 

Twisting, vine-like, silvery lines had been inlaid into the smooth floor of the room, which gently sloped down into the centre where the mirror had been erected. Free-standing, with huge twisting pillars of what looked like black glass, the mirror faced the entrance, and yet as you approached, you couldn’t see your own reflection in it. 

Roiling smoke billowed constantly behind the glass, and as you checked behind you, you saw only smooth, cold, silent stone. Fascination crept in and mingled with your apprehension until you were only a few paces from the mirror itself. The twin, twisting, flame-like pillars stood at nearly ten feet tall, gleaming like polished obsidian and looking as though they’d been sculpted by wind and water over thousands of years. Or perhaps it really had been black fire that had been somehow petrified. 

The back of the mirror was a plain, dull metal, like unpolished, tarnished pewter, and there wasn’t a distinguishing mark on it, save for a single hand print right in the centre. 

As you circled round to the front again, you caught that whispering again, louder now. 

“Hello?” you replied in a similarly hoarse undertone. 

The whispering chorus intensified, and as you stepped back in front of the mirror, you saw that you were not alone. 

Your heart nearly beat its way out of your chest and you whirled around with a choked scream, certain that you would find a six foot, looming figure, draped in gauzy grey robes standing directly behind you, one ghostly pale hand extended. Tattoos had covered that hand from fingertip to cuff, though how far up the skeletally thin arm they stretched you couldn’t be sure because the softly-draping fabric had obscured their arm from the wrist up, and besides, you hadn’t stuck around long enough to look. 

When you had stared wide eyed at the empty room behind you for easily thirty seconds, you steeled yourself and peeked back to look in the mirror. 

Your shout of horror echoed off the walls again as you found the figure standing there in plain sight and reeled back away from the mirror by half a dozen paces in shock. 

It brought it’s thin index finger to its hooded face in a gesture that quite clearly said ‘shh’, and then lowered its hand again to make a soothing motion, the way one might with an angry dog. 

You froze and the creature in the mirror inclined its head slightly, almost as if it was thanking you. A second later, it crooked its finger and a rasping voice like dry autumn leaves said, “What brings you here, mortal? I haven’t seen you before.”

The voice was like nothing you’d ever heard before, although it had a similar note to it as the whispers had earlier. There was something almost metallic about it, like chains dragging on stone, or a sword being sharpened, and it made your skin crawl. 

“What are you?” you asked instead of answering the entity’s question. 

You couldn’t see beneath the shadow of its hood, but something made you step a little closer to the mirror. It tilted its shrouded head to one side and the flowing, mist-light fabric lifted briefly, though not enough to reveal the face beyond. You could see, however, that the fingers of its bone-white hand ended in thick, deadly, ivory talons. 

“What am I?” the entity repeated, its voice sounding strangely sad. “I am a prince and a shadow, a memory, and a revenant.”

“Are you… trapped in the mirror?”

“No,” he sighed. “And yes.” 

“Riddles,” you spat, and stepped back, turning towards the open doorway behind you. “Keep your cryptic riddles. I’m leaving.”

“Wait,” the voice hissed. 

“Why?” you asked, not turning to look back at it. “I shouldn’t even be in here in the first place.”

“Or perhaps you were supposed to find me?”

You rolled your eyes at the sheer cliche of the phrase, and couldn’t resist turning back to stare at the creature in the mirror with a flat, unimpressed look. Yes, it was terrifying to behold, but as long as it was actually held within the mirror, you felt safe enough. Of course, you had no proof that it was actually contained by the glass, but something told you that this chamber had been built to contain whatever the mirror and its inhabitant were. 

To your evident surprise, the creature laughed. The slow, dry, rumble echoed around the room, sounding genuinely amused. “I’ve missed this,” he said. “Please, stay a while. I ask nothing more than a moment or two of your time.”

“Why?”

“I’m lonely,” the creature said with startling honesty. He pressed himself closer against the glass, his face still shrouded. 

Something about his words - a trade of one thing in return for another - triggered a thought and you asked, “Are you Fae?”

“Why would you ask that?” he countered, still amused. 

“Because you talk like one.”

That seemed to surprise him. “You’ve met my kind before? I didn’t think we were frequent visitors to the Mortal Realm…”

“So you are Fae,” you crowed softly in triumph, and the creature nodded, unperturbed. 

“I am. I am the prince of a court which has now been forgotten by even my own realm.”

You scowled in confusion. “What?”

He laughed bitterly and turned away, his floating, grey robes billowing around him with unnatural torpor, as if he were underwater. “Unbelievable, isn’t it? That they should have forgotten an entire court? But we existed in the spaces between, so I’m not surprised really. Not any more.”

You were hooked. You’d always loved the stories of the Fae Realm, with its four solar courts and its four seasonal courts, its myriad different creatures, its fantastical powers and magic, its princesses and princes which ranged from staggeringly beautiful to eerily strange… but that was all they were to you; stories. 

“What happened to you?” you breathed. 

The entity in the mirror sighed, and his clothes shifted too, swirling like candle smoke around his ethereal, intangible body. 

“I will share my story in return for yours,” he said. His voice had grown softer, less coarse, less… abrasive, and you wondered if it was a Fae trick to get you to relax. It was working, if it was. 

You licked your lips and glanced back at the doorway. “That’s it? A story for a story? No names, no trickery, no losing my immortal soul to some creep in a mirror?”

He laughed again at that, and shook his head. “That’s it. Tell me about your life, human, and I shall share mine with you.”

“There really isn't much to tell,” you said carefully. “I mean, I’m pretty ordinary…”

“Ordinary,” the prince-that-was repeated in a heavy voice. “How comforting. I bet it involves no betrayals, no magic, no dastardly sorcerer intent on destroying everything you hold dear in return for a fraction of your power…?”

“Uh, yeah… you’d be right,” you said. You began, hesitantly, to divulge the basics of your painfully human existence - omitting your name, just in case - and when you were done, the creature in the mirror was staring at you, transfixed by your tale as if it was the most outlandish thing he’d ever heard. “Well… I guess that’s… it?” you finished rather lamely. 

“Fascinating,” he breathed. “Come here,” he added, beckoning you closer. 

Without thinking, you stepped right up to the speckled glass and he lunged forwards in the blink of an eye, bringing his form right up to the mirror’s surface. You shot back, but he smiled. “I cannot hurt you, human. Not unless you step into my mirror…”

“That’s… That’s possible?”

“Mmm,” he hummed, not really clarifying one way or the other. He was still close to the glass, but his face was obscured. You didn't need to see it to feel his gaze on you though. 

“What do you look like?” you blurted. “Why the hood and the theatrics…?”

“Oh,” he said in a suddenly tiny voice. And then he allowed himself another dry, sour chuckle. “You do not want to look on my face, human. I promise you that.”

“What happens if I do?” you asked petulantly. “Will I go mad or something?”

“No,” he said, “But I have none of the beauty of my fellow Fae princes. I am a creature of nightmare. A remnant of my tale still lingers in their world. If you stand in front of a reflective surface in the dark and breathe the words ‘black mirror, prince of dreams’ in the Fae’s ancient tongue, it is said that you will conjure me.”

You raised an eyebrow and asked, “And what are you said to do in these tall tales?” 

“Devour your soul?” the prince said dryly. “Or something.”

“Or something.”

“Exactly.”

“So it’s not true?” you asked, returning a little closer to the mirror. “I mean, we have our own legends about mirrors and chanting names into them,” you added. “But none of them talk about a forgotten Fae prince… How’d you end up in this mirror anyway?”

“I’m not in the mirror,” he scoffed. “I thought I told you that already.” When you didn’t say anything else, he sighed and said, “I am trapped in a chamber in The Between…” 

“Yeah, but… what does that actually mean?”

“That some human sorcerer got unfathomably lucky a thousand years ago, and tricked me into making a deal with her. I have been bound to serve this royal line ever since, with their never-ending questions about the future and about money and fertility and wealth…!” His voice grew sharper, more discordant, the more worked up he grew, pacing in and out of view behind the mirror’s glass, his robes sweeping around him and swaying like ocean waves against a basalt cliff. “The sheer repetitious inanity of it, generation after generation, is enough to drive a soul to distraction!” he spat. 

You watched, and as you remained in front of the mirror, he slowed his pacing. 

He turned his hooded face towards you and spoke again. “And then you turn up. Nothing but a… what was it you said? A ‘painfully human commoner’. Your story is like none that I’ve tasted in all these years.” He froze, his head snapping as if he’d heard a noise. “You must leave.”

“Why?”

“The prince is coming,” he hissed. “He may already be too close for you to escape.”

“Shit!” you cursed, panic rising in your throat. “I’m not even supposed to be in here. I was just supposed to fetch a case of wine for the party!” 

The prince in the mirror laughed softly - an oddly reassuring sound, given the circumstances - and then he pointed his bony, taloned hand at the blank wall on the other side of the ovoid chamber. “Press the rune that looks like a diamond with two tails. It will reveal a small chamber. They never use it. You may hide there while His Highness attends me…” The sarcasm dripping off his tone was enough to put your teeth on edge, but you fled unquestioningly and did as he’d told you. 

It as only as you collapsed into a small, abandoned, dust-filled study, with the sound of hard-soled boots ringing up the corridor towards the chamber, that you realised you’d blindly trusted a Fae. Not only that, but one that had been trapped in a mirror - or wherever the ‘between’ was - for a thousand years. “Fuck, I’m such an idiot,” you whispered to yourself, pressing the stone door closed just as someone strode into the chamber towards the mirror. 

The prince was a nasty young man by all accounts. Rich, beautiful, and unfathomably spoiled, he got his way with men and women alike, using them and discarding them as he saw fit. Now, seeing him for the first time as he halted in front of the mirror and found the creature already there waiting for him, you thought that he seemed perhaps a little unsettled. “You’re already here?” he said in his whining drawl. 

“I felt your royal presence, Your Highness,” the creature crooned, bowing obsequiously from the waist and making a flourishing gesture with the robes. It revealed lizard-like, pewter-skinned legs beneath the grey robes and you nearly recoiled with surprise, though not, you realised, revulsion. 

The human prince, on the other hand, sneered. “Disgusting,” he spat. “Tell me, Thauriel, there is a woman attending the party who was wearing this necklace -” with that, he thrust a sapphire pendant out in front of the mirror where it dangled on a fine gold chain. 

The creature drifted closer to his side of the glass and tilted his head. He was waiting for an actual question from the spoilt little piglet and you smiled to yourself as he dragged the silence out. 

“I wish to know if she is Fae or human.”

“Human,” he said without missing a beat. 

“If I were to marry her, would she bring me sons and fortune? Or is her family as rotten beneath the surface as half our nobles seem to be?”

It was more than half, if your opinion had held any weight, and as if he’d sensed your thoughts, the creature’s head twitched almost imperceptibly in your direction before he chuckled to himself. 

“Tell me!” the princeling brat demanded. 

“Give me the pendant,” the prince in the mirror said calmly. 

Your eyes went wide as you watched the creature stretch out his hand, the surface of the mirror buckling like fabric, like molten glass blown by a master craftsman into a new, viscous form. His hand pushed the glass aside until it broke through with a soft hiss and the prince dropped the sapphire into his outstretched palm as if he held a dog turd in his favourite silk handkerchief. The fact that the creature could indeed emerge from the glass set your heart racing, but you watched, fascinated, through the little gap in the stone as the scene continued to unfold before you. 

“Perhaps,” the creature mused, turning the glittering blue stone over in his bird-like fingers. 

“Perhaps?” the prince parroted. “What use is that? Will she bring me sons and money or not?”

“I see sons in her future, and gold in her present, but where her path could join yours is a silver dagger.”

“Well, what does that mean?”

The creature shrugged a shrouded shoulder and handed the stone back, the mirror’s surface rippling like thick fluid as he passed it through to the prince again. “The dagger’s point spins, sometimes pointing towards a golden crown, and sometimes away. How you treat her affects the outcome.”

The prince curled his lip and stormed off without another word, and the Fae in the mirror turned to face you as he left. You had the impression that he was staring straight at you, and your heart leapt, skipping every other beat for a good few breaths. 

When the prince’s footsteps had faded, you pulled the door open again, assisted by some unseen mechanism, and stepped out into the chamber. “That was close,” you whispered, and the Fae in the mirror laughed. “What a brat too…”

“Didn’t I tell you?” he sighed, turning away and fading a little into the blackness behind him. 

“Wait,” you said as you resumed your spot in front of the glass. “What’s it like there… where you are?”

The creature looked around and said, “Simple.”

“Simple?”

“Mmm. I have everything I need, but… it’s hardly a palace. It -” the Fae went still, every line of his body rigid and alert. 

“What?”

“Quiet,” he hissed. 

“What is it?” you asked, and before you could process what had happened, his arms shot out from the mirror and grabbed your shoulders. You were yanked off your feet, and as the surface of the speckled mirror hurtled towards you, you tried to scream. 

The world went black for a moment and your whole body felt like it had been plunged into an ice bath. Then you were staggering on your feet, dizzy, dazed, unsteady. Without warning, you were shoved to one side, and you fell hard onto your side with a short cry. 

The room was darker than the chamber that housed the mirror, its walls square instead of curved, and as you looked up you saw that the Fae prince was standing only a few feet away in front of you in his eerily shifting robes, but he was not looking at you. He bowed, and purred, “Your Highness… Back so soon?”

“I… I thought I heard…?” the prince stammered, staring around the chamber like a mole above ground for the first time. 

From what you could see, the mirror was the same on this side as it was in the Mortal Realm that you had undoubtedly left behind, only here it was set against a wall, the swirling obsidian pillars set against a bulwark of stone instead of standing alone in the centre of a room. The human prince looked vaguely translucent somehow as you stared at him from your oblique angle. 

“You thought?” the Fae sneered. “That’s a rarity, surely?”

“Mind your tongue,” the prince snapped and the Fae merely inclined his head. You still couldn’t see his face. 

“What may I do for you then?” he asked. 

“Nothing,” the prince said and he stormed off again. “Nothing for now. Be ready to attend me next time I summon you, Thauriel.”

The creature shivered and shot you a sidelong look as the prince’s back retreated from the chamber for a second time. 

“Thauriel,” you repeated and he gave another violent shudder, his robes rippling and trembling. “That’s your true name, isn’t it?”

“…Yes,” he admitted. “I did hope you wouldn't notice that.”

“Why am I here? Can I get back?”

“If the prince had discovered you, you would be dead for sure,” Thauriel muttered, pacing like a raptor in a cage. 

“And my other question? Can I get back?” you insisted, scrambling to your feet as a distinct note of panic shot through your voice. 

“Yes,” he said. “I can get you back through the mirror. Fear not.”

“You can,” you said carefully, “But will you? If I ask?”

“Yes,” he growled. “Of course.”

You took the opportunity to look around the room and discovered that it was a small, square chamber of black stone, with a bookshelf covering the wall opposite the mirror. Behind you was a low pallet bed, more a collection of dark cushions and a thin blanket than an actual bed. 

A faint rustling sound emanated from the bookcase, like turning pages, and you raised your eyebrow curiously at him. He laughed and swept over to it. As he walked, you snatched glimpses of his bird-like feet, the huge, onyx talons glinting in the soft light of the chamber that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. There was no obvious light source in the room. 

“This bookcase reflects the world it sees,” he said. “It’s deliberately facing the mirror. Any book from your world may materialise here. I’ve had some very entertaining literature to keep my mind occupied this past millennia or so…”

“What’s your favourite?” you asked and he turned to face you properly. 

“I will answer that if I may ask you a question in return.”

“You can ask it,” you said and he laughed. 

“I’ll take what I can get. It has been so long since anyone has really spoken to me.” He turned and drew out a volume which changed the second he set his strange hand on it. It had been a generic-looking brown book, but as he drew it off the shelf, it transformed, growing in size until it was as thick as your fist and covered in luxurious, green leather, tooled with gold. “Overly decorative,” he remarked idly. “The last copy I had was much more simply bound. Never mind.” With that, he held it out to you and you saw that it was a book of poetry, centred on the theme of the countryside. 

“What’s your question?” you asked as you leafed through it. 

“Why are you not afraid of me?”

That made you look up, but you shrugged. “You’ve given me no reason to fear you,” you said simply. 

“That… That’s the most ridiculous reason I’ve ever heard…” he said in a rush. “Some snakes look frankly adorable, but you don’t want to pick one up…”

“I doubt I could pick you up,” you deadpanned, and he went still again. 

The snort of laughter that escaped him was anything but regal or refined, and it made you laugh as well. 

“Are you a danger to me, Fae?” you asked flatly. 

“I could be,” he replied honestly. 

“Yes, but… do you want to hurt me?”

He shifted slightly his slender body swaying beneath the formless, voluminous, smoke-grey robes. “No.”

“There you are then. That’s why I’m not afraid of you. I am curious though.”

“Oh?”

“Mmm. What are you hiding under all that… fabric?”

He shrank back then, shaking his head. “I will not show you.”

You shrugged and crossed the room to put the book back on the shelf. As it slid into place amongst the myriad brown books on the shelf, it assumed a similar size and colour. “Fascinating…” You turned and said, “Well, I suppose I should be going.” 

“Yes,” he said. “Here,” and he held out his hand, the colour of bone, with its talons of ivory flexing dangerously in the soft light. 

Unafraid, you slid your fingers into his palm and discovered with a gasp of surprise that his skin was warm. For some reason you’d expected him to be cold as porcelain. His fingers flexed slightly, closing around yours so that the points of his claws just pricked your hand. At that, you tilted your face up and peered into the shadows beneath his hood. “Thauriel,” you whispered and his whole body convulsed slightly, as if someone had run their nails down his spine. 

“Yes?” he breathed. His hand was trembling.

“Show me what you look like,” you said. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“You will be,” he said. “Please, don’t ask that of me, not on my True Name.”

“Not on your name,” you said more gently. “But… Let me see you? Give me something to take away with me?”

He growled, a deep, lupine snarl, and let go of you as if your hand were a hot ember. “You wish to take a piece of me with you? To leave me broken? Incomplete?”

“Of course not,” you snapped, frustrated, heart rate jumping. “I just… Oh, never mind.” You turned towards the mirror and said, “Go on, push me through or whatever it is you have to do.”

When nothing happened, when no hands shoved you roughly by the shoulders, you looked back over your shoulder and found that Thauriel had gone still. With a huge, ragged sigh, he raised both his hands and hooked his claws around the edges of the hood and tugged it back off his head. 

Your eyes did widen, but you weren’t afraid, despite what he revealed. His skin was a dull chalky grey, pulled tight over his wide cheekbones but disappearing in a ragged, open scar around his nasal cavity which gaped wide and exposed in the centre of his face. His eyes were small and opalescent blue, with huge, black pupils in the dim light, and on either side of his head were tapering, pointed ears that looked somewhat battered, the way pit-fighters’ ears went after years of battering. He had no visible hair on his head or his brows, and his mouth was a gaping maw full of jagged teeth. It looked like the mouths of the deep sea fish that were occasionally dredged up by fishermen and hauled in to the market to be sold as curiosities to those with enough coin. The teeth were like conical crystals, clear like glass, and his saliva glistened thick around the base of each tooth. He couldn’t close his mouth completely, it seemed. 

He was hideous, and yet… not frightening. Far from it. He was fascinating. 

You stepped a little closer and he drew back, as though you were the threat and not him. Your lips twitched slightly and you said, “You know, if you chose to, and with the right timing, I bet you could make the prince shit his breeches…”

If you’d slapped him with an iron poker, the Fae couldn’t have looked any more startled. Thauriel didn’t seem offended though, just taken off-guard. He swallowed thickly and a tiny thread of drool slid from his thin, dusky blue lips as he did. “But not you?” he whispered. 

You laughed a little nervously and admitted, “I’m sure with the right timing you could probably scare me into shitting myself as well, but I’d rather you didn’t.” A second later you added - probably insensitively - “I didn’t realise you had teeth like that from the way you talk. You could really do some damage with those, you know?”

“I have done,” he said darkly. “But… I can hear your heartbeat. You’re not afraid.”

You rolled your eyes. “Look, like I told you, until you actually give me a reason to be scared of you - and please don’t, by the way, because these clothes aren’t actually mine and I don’t want to admit to the person they belong to that I crapped my pants - I’m not going to be scared…”

“Huh…” he said, and turned away for a moment. 

“I saw your legs when you were talking to His Royal Arse-ness,” you admitted. “So I was kind of expecting something a bit… different.”

His gaze tilted downwards and he raised his right leg just enough for the flowing fabric to slide free of the dark grey scales of his avian leg. 

“Please tell me you have a tail too,” you grinned. 

“Why, would you like to see it?” he answered back, catching you off-guard this time with his unexpected playfulness. 

You gaped at him. “You do have a tail?”

“Yes…”

“Of course I would!” you laughed. “I’ve never seen a Fae before…” you added. 

“I’m your first?” he said, and you snorted. 

He rolled his eyes and with the trepidation of someone about to plunge into a freezing pool, he took off the robe entirely, letting it pool on the floor around his huge, clawed feet. Beneath it you saw that he had a slightly curved back, his shoulders stooped, as if accustomed to the weight of wings, though he had none that you could see. His skin was the same chalky grey all over, occasionally mottled with watercolour patches of darker grey, mostly around his narrow, sharp-looking hips. He had a tail like a lizard’s, long and muscular, and prehensile too you noted as it swayed gently from side to side in soft ‘s’ shapes. 

Actually, you realised with another jolt, you found him startlingly attractive. He was completely naked beneath the robe and, at that side angle, what sat between his legs was obscured to you. Even so, you felt a flare of heat inside you that you’d never experienced for another human in your entire life. Yes, you’d had partners, but you’d never felt anything like this. 

He raised his head a little and gasped. “You… No… No… that’s impossible…”

“What?” 

He swallowed thickly and turned to face you. Your eyes naturally went down his torso, his skeletally thin body showing every rib, swooping in around his belly button and then out again to his jutting hips, and between his legs you saw a slight bulge, like a sheath. He approached you and lowered his head. “Tell me the truth,” he growled softly, his clawed hands coming to rest on your shoulders. 

You shivered and he almost looked like he was going to step back, but he didn’t. He made himself remain where he was and glared down at you, his milky blue eyes boring into your face, searching every micro-flicker in your expression. 

“You haven’t asked me a question,” you croaked, throat dry, heat throbbing through you. 

“What do you think of me now that you can truly see me?”

In answer, you brought your palm up and pressed the flat of your hand gently against his chest. He gasped again and raised his head a little, breathing quickening. Panting softly, he let you explore his torso. His body was firm and warm, and he shook tangibly as you brought your other hand lower, to his waist. You watched his bird-like feet shift, his toes flexing as he adjusted his weight, and his tail lashed once behind him, whipping back and forth. 

“You like that?” you asked in a tiny whisper. 

“You have… no idea,” he gasped, “How long I have been without… without the touch of another.”

You looked at the bed behind you, at the meagre array of flattened cushions and the one blanket, and said, “Come with me…” 

Leading Fae prince by the hand, as meekly as anything, you encouraged him to lie down. His arms were covered in dark tattoos and you trailed your fingers up them once you’d got him lying on his back. His huge, fang-filled maw opened again and you watched a line of drool trickle down his cheek as he tipped his head back and lurched wildly beneath your touch. 

“Shh,” you crooned and he began to pant again. “Shh.”

His claws scrabbled at the stone beneath his feet where they dangled off the makeshift bed, and the sheath between his legs began to glisten with fluid. His talons flexed and he arched his back when you shifted your touch to his torso again, and as you brushed your thumbs over his dusky nipples, they hardened and he yelled a raw, plaintive cry, his whole body going taut. 

How long you spent exploring his strange, Fae body, you couldn’t have said, but within what seemed simultaneously like forever and no time at all, his cock had unfurled from the sheath, a rich, dark blue, veined with glowing lines like foxfire. The pearlescent pre-come that beaded at the top of his slit rolled down to join the slick fluid that formed around the base of his prehensile cock. Shaped like a tentacle and ridged, it glistened with his natural fluids and as you closed your hand tentatively around its hard girth, he whimpered and bucked again. 

Thauriel’s hands fluttered uselessly at your side and he said, “Please…”

“Please what?” you asked. 

“Please, let me see you?” 

With a smile, you nodded. “I think that’s only fair,” you said and, after wiping your messy hand on his blanket, you undressed for him. 

His eyes seemed to glow in the darkness as you shed your clothes, dropping them with deliberate slowness on the floor at your feet. When you stood naked before him, his maw opened, almost unhinging, and a long, bright blue tongue uncoiled and laved at the empty air between you. Saliva dripped from it onto his chest where he still lay on his back, but he seemed to pay it no heed as he tasted your arousal that filled the space between you. His cock squirmed and leaked more pale fluid profusely onto his abdomen, and you smiled as you watched him. 

“Look at you… so desperate…” you whispered. Then, when you added his name in a reverent whisper, he arched his back right up off the pillows, his cock bouncing and squirming, seeking contact. 

“If I take you inside me,” you began but at your words he cried out again, his hand closing around his cock. He began to work himself swift and hard, as if he could make himself come before you finished your question. “If I take you inside me, is there any danger at all… of disease or any other consequences?”

“No,” he rasped. “No, my magic will prevent anything like that… please… ohh-” 

“You’re a prince still, aren’t you?” you chuckled and he nodded. “And yet you ask so nicely…”

With that, you straddled him, facing him, and allowed his slender, slick cock to line up with your entrance. It would be a tight fit, but you wanted it as much as he did, it seemed, and the sheer volume of fluid he was producing would make it infinitely easier. 

Thauriel moved his clawed hands to your hips as you leaned forwards, presenting him with a better angle, and you stared openly at the crystalline mass of teeth, the blue tongue lashing behind them, drool leaking everywhere while his eyes started to glow with an unnatural Fae light. His strong hands eased you gently down onto his hard cock, and as the slickness of it touched you, your entrance began to tingle slightly. Pleasure coursed through you and you moaned deliciously, allowing him to guide himself further into you. 

The intrusion felt immense as he slipped inside you one ridge at a time, but the pleasure of his body moving beneath you countered any fleeting discomfort, and when he finally bottomed out, he arched his back again, his body convulsing so violently that you thought he had to be coming. Finally he began to use his powerful legs, lethal onyx claws digging into the stonework beneath them to thrust up into you and you saw sparks. Your hand came down between your legs, and as he curled upwards to look at you, you watched his pupils soar a little wider. 

He gnashed his teeth together and you reached unsteadily for his jaw. “Show me that tongue again,” you said and extended two fingers into his mouth. His tongue immediately shot out and coiled wetly around your wrist, enveloping almost your whole hand as his eyes rolled closed and his rhythm faltered. He tasted you like a dying man devouring his final meal, that shockingly blue tongue sliding repeatedly over your skin, hot and wet and gorgeous. 

As he picked up his pace, he released your hand and you returned it to your own body, working yourself to catch up with him. “I’m close,” you hissed a short while later, drawing your body up tight and clenching around his incredible cock as it filled you to the limits of pleasure. “Come for me,” you grunted, white heat threatening to spill over and flood through you while you ground yourself in an answering rhythm against him. “Thauriel, come for me!” 

And as you yelled his True Name, the prince-in-the-mirror came with a roar that could have shattered glass. His body bucked and writhed, convulsing in thrashing waves as he spilled inside you. Almost immediately, it began to pour out of you as his release filled you, his cock pulsing, and the feel of it knocked you over the precipice and you tumbled down after him. 

When you finally stopped coming as well, you found that you had fallen forwards onto his stomach. His cock was still inside you, though it was gently receding into his sheath under your body in tiny little spasms that made him twitch and groan each time it happened. 

Blinking, your body tingling all over, you cleared your vision a little and drew in a few deeper breaths. His heartbeat beneath your ear was strange, as if he had more than one heart in his chest, but before you could ask him about that, you noticed the shards of dark glass covering the stone floor of his chambers. 

“Thauriel,” you hissed, and the alarm in your voice pierced his daze. 

He sat up sharply and followed your wide eyed stare. In the gap where the mirror had been, there was now an empty view of a misty, pale corridor, a slight iridescent sheen to the stonework beyond. From the angle you were at you couldn't see much, but he seemed to recognise it. “No,” he breathed, claws tightening on your hips. “No… it’s… it’s not possible…”

“What?”

The monstrous Fae prince drew you close to his chest and held you tightly, inhaling the scent of your skin at your neck as if it were a drug. 

“Thauriel, I don’t understand…” you wheezed. “I can’t breathe…”

Instantly his grip loosened and he sat up, dislodging you uncomfortably, and you groaned. You were soaked, covered in his slick, rapidly-cooling release. With a wave of his hand, you found yourself completely clean and nodded your thanks at him. 

“What happened?” you asked as you slid off him onto the pillows. He stood, just the very tip of his blue cock visible now in the sheath between his legs. He hadn’t bothered to use his cleaning magic on himself, you noted, as you saw the way it dripped off his thighs and spattered onto the stones between his huge, avian feet. He went to the portal that had once been a mirror and stared out at what he found beyond as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Perhaps he couldn’t. 

Standing shakily, you pulled the thin blanket around your body and began to walk towards him. He turned back abruptly and snarled a warning at you about your bare feet on the glass-strewn stone. “Careful,” he said. “Stay there.”

You halted within sight of the doorway and gasped. A palace of silver and marble lay beyond. “Is that…?”

“The Court of Dreams,” he murmured. “It is my realm, or it was before I was severed from it. I didn’t think it was possible to get here again… Not really…”

“Not really?” you quoted, a question in your tone. “What does that mean?”

“When I asked you if you were truly not afraid of me, I never dreamed that you might actually find me… uh… attractive,” he said, his pale skin flushing slightly. 

With a snort, you said, “Well, now that that cat is out of the bag, want to fill me in on the rest?”

“The sorcerer who bound me in this chamber, this space between, accessible only by that mirror,” he explained, gesturing to the fragments of glass that had apparently blown out into the room with the force of your combined orgasm - an image you would never forget and would probably never not find at least a little bit funny, “…said that there was a condition laid upon my captivity. That if my vile Fae form were ever to be found attractive to a human, there would be hope of release -” 

You snorted obnoxiously and began to laugh openly. “Release?” you laughed. “Are you serious? You Fae take everything fucking literally, don’t you?”

He growled but it was more of a laugh than anything. “Words have power,” he murmured. “Not just Names.”

“Speaking of Names,” you said awkwardly. “I know yours… but… I feel like you should know mine in return…”

“Do not give me something you might regret later,” he said. 

“Alright…” you said, though part of you ached to tell him. “So… What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to go home,” he said. “I am going to rebuild my Court and take back what was mine.”

You licked your lips. “Fine, but… uh… How do I get home…?”

Thauriel stooped and picked up a huge shard of the mirror. About the size of a hand-held looking glass, it wavered slightly as you gazed into it and saw the dimly lit, circular chamber. You blinked at your reflection; at your ruffled hair and flushed face, at the way your eyes glittered, and thought of the contrast between the dull, dead eyes that greeted you every morning. “Wait,” you murmured, touching your fingertips to your reflection as he held the shard steady. “If I were to come with you to your Court… What would happen to me?”

He blinked. “You… You want to come with me?”

You shrugged. “Theoretically, what would happen to me?”

“I owe you everything,” he said truthfully. “You could rule at my side.”

“You’re shitting me,” you blurted. 

“No,” Thauriel said with a surprising amount of patience for a Fae, and a royal one at that, apparently. 

“Would I be free to leave whenever?”

After a beat, he said, “Yes,” though his voice cracked slightly. “I swear on my True Name. You would be bound by no oath to stay longer than you wish, and you would have the freedom to do as you please, to come and go as you like…”

“But I’d rule by your side? I could help you rebuild your Court? As your equal?” He nodded. “Even though I’m just a human?”

“Yes,” he said. 

“Alright. Let’s give it a go. But… before we leave,” you said coyly. 

Thauriel looked wary, if mildly amused. “What?”

“Any chance I could get some new clothes?”

He cocked his head to one side and you gestured at your own. The few inches that hadn’t been shredded by his claws were covered in glistening fluid from where he’d stepped over them to inspect the shattered remnants of the mirror. 

You laughed, and he waved his hand obligingly.

“There,” he said as soft, perfectly-tailored fabric wrapped itself around you like a second skin. “And a vast improvement on the last ones…”

Thauriel extended his bony, taloned hand to you and you slid your own into it. “My prince,” you grinned and he smiled, all his sharp mouthful of teeth on show. “My lethal, terrifying, prince,” you added with a giggle and he rolled his eyes. 

“Please don’t make me regret bringing you along,” he said as he stepped out into the soft light of the abandoned Court of Dreams, and a dark robe swept up his body, concealing his swathes of pale bony skin. He did leave a little tailored hole for his thick tail, and as you emerged on the other side, you ran your finger teasingly around the base of it. 

He gasped, jerked as if you’d poked him with a skewer, and then laughed. 

“Already regretting it?” you asked. 

“No, astonishingly,” Thauriel replied. “But don’t push it. I’m sensitive, apparently.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Come on, show me round.”

“As you command, Your Highness” he said with a playfully obsequious bow. That one was all humour though, and you laughed as you set out on an entirely new chapter of your life on the arm of a Fae prince, leaving behind a dreary, human existence. 

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 Thanks again for joining me on this epic 70k word Exomas Extravaganza! I'll be taking a short break of about a week now as I plan the next lot of goodies for you. I'm going to be restructuring my tiers a little, but you won't lose out anything. In fact, I'm adding more things to each tier, so I hope you're excited! (Don't forget to register your interest in stickers in the poll please! I'll be closing it in a few days' time...)

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Hope you enjoyed this one! Don't forget to check out the Patreon Masterlist, in case you missed anything from before. All the xmas/Exomas stories will be going up in a separate list on the masterlist, so you should be able to find them easily enough if you want to go back later. Merry Christmas - and Happy New Year! x