-PROLOGUE-
A court of six waited for the moment that the night was the blackest.
Then they began. Beneath a dome of brambles they summoned their prisoner from the sapling that grew between them. They drew forth his soul from the roots of the child-tree so that they could bind his physical form to its trunk.
"Laird Marvon of the Brambleprick Grove-" began the figure in front of him.
"You know," Marvon Brambleprick interrupted with a pleasant smile, "I dreamed of a different world while I was stuck down there with the dirt and the worms. I dreamed that these sorts of things happen in great buildings of stone and glass, where everyone wears their best clothing, where there are twelve of you instead of six of you, and where there is only one of you instead of six of you."
He sighed and fluttered his moonkissed eyelashes. "A different world. A different time."
"Shut up, Marv," grumbled one of the hooded figures.
"Press that minge up against my mouth and I just might, Genria," Marvon said. The hooded figure's hands clenched into fists. Marvon smirked and continued.
"You know, I think there actually was a century we spent with my tongue buried in your fur. Didn't we have to borrow a pry bar from the humans just to loosen your thighs from their grip on my ears?"
"That's it!" A roughspun cloak went flying, revealing a middle-aged fey with fury in her apple-round face. Leafy vines clung to her slender body, leaving free her trimmed sweet spot down below and her small, firm breasts up above. Violet-ebony smoke swirled around her sharp nails, but in an instant one of the other figures was behind her and burying its hand in her mossy hair.
Genria shrieked as her comrade forced her down on her knees.
"I'm sorry," she wailed. "I'm sorry, but he's just so-"
"Shut up."
Trembling, Genria shut her mouth. After a moment, the one behind her released her hair and stepped forward. The cloak became a wisp of midnight fog, revealing a hardbodied fey with a pointed nose and dark, dead eyes, wrapped up in leaves like her inferior.
"Luly," Marvon said with a nod. Lulyanna's gave him a blank, expectant stare.
"You're going to kill me anyway," Marvon said. "Skipping your title won't change that."
"We tested the human's mind," Lulyanna, Queen of Fey and Forest, replied. "You fucked her."
"Yes."
"She's with child now."
Marvon winced. "Ah."
"His birth will threaten us more than anything else in our history-"
"A son?"
"And yet we are sworn to protect him by virtue of his blood. Your blood."
"A son," Marvon said, shaking his head. He smiled. "The Bramblepricks will not die today..."