I had been happy once; I was pretty sure of it. It was hard to remember now, surrounded by monsters who delighted in my pain. The Queen monster was the worst. She kept saying that I had to be prepared—seasoned for her spell. I had to be broken to accept the dark curse she was crafting for me.
Her kind had hated mine for longer than I'd been alive, and we'd been at war for close to forty years. Luckily, the Farungal—that's what the monsters call themselves—hated the Fae too. And the Fae, whose lands bordered ours but were protected by magical barriers, knew that Stalana—the human portion of the continent, was the last line of defense between them and the Farungal. So they helped us. They sent their strongest warriors, both Sidhe and Unsidhe, to form armies with us humans and drive the Farungal back to their continent.
The Sidhe are animal shapeshifters whose kingdoms are divided by their beasts—sub-races of the Sidhe. The Sidhe can manipulate natural magic in addition to transforming into animals, but when they fought, they usually did so in beast form. There are twelve sub-races of Sidhe, split into three animal families—the Canine Family contains the Wolves, Jackals, Foxes, and Coyotes; the Felines are the Lions, Tigers, Leopards, and Lynx; and the Avians have the Hawks, Eagles, Owls, and Falcons. The Twelve Beast Kingdoms of Varalorre. I don't know nearly as much about them as I'd like to, but I can tell you that out of all the Fae races, the Sidhe are the most human in appearance.
The Unsidhe are closer to the Farungal in looks. Some have claws, tails, fangs, or even all three, and look more monstrous than bestial. They fought for us—the Trolls, Red Caps, Goblins, Sylphs, and so forth—and that demanded our gratitude. Most humans were grateful to them, but that didn't negate our fear, so the Unsidhe served in separate armies from the Sidhe and humans. I think we feared them because they reminded us so much of the monsters who had captured me. The Farungal with their poisonous, barbed tails and venomous fangs. Their spindly limbs and sin-black skin. Their knife-like claws that even now cut through my tender human flesh.
I shrieked as Queen Gremara bent to lick my blood from my naked thigh. Then she lifted a jar and opened it. I whimpered and shook my head even before the acrid scent invaded my nose. The contents of that jar were the source of my worst tortures—an evil substance that hardened my shaft despite my fear and revulsion. The Farungal Queen called it wild-rot and said that if she didn't take pity on me and fuck me, I would rot. The magic needed to be fed, and if it wasn't appeased with sex, it would consume my flesh instead.
Gremara smoothed a small smear of wild-rot on my member and it hardened instantly. I closed my eyes and blocked out the sight of her climbing onto my prone body. They had chained me to the floor this time. The chains were slack enough that I could have sat up, but she held me down with her thin arms, her clawed hands slicing at my chest as her sex consumed mine. My body, ravaged by torture and starved to gauntness, trembled beneath the wild pounding of her hips.
“Open your eyes, human!” Gremara commanded.
I opened my eyes because to disobey would only lead to more torture or, even worse, she might decide to let the rot have me. There had been other humans in the cells around me at first—people taken from my village. Gremara had used them as leverage against me, especially my lover, threatening to torture them if I didn't behave. Despite my acquiescence, she killed them one by one, sacrificing them in some kind of evil ritual, and painted symbols on me with their blood when she was done. The last to die had been my sweet Gerard. His pleas would haunt me for as long as my wretched life continued. Gremara had delighted in covering me with his blood and watching it destroy a part of my soul. I could feel pieces of myself slipping away even now—my mind breaking and submerging. I knew that even if I survived this, I would never be the same.
“That's it,” the Queen monster purred as she opened her dress. Her thin, scaled breasts bounced with her movements and she grabbed them, pinching her nipples as she moaned. “You have a wonderful