Lust. Charlotte Featherstone

       www.spice-books.co.uk

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      To Grannie MacAlpine,

      whose stories of the dark and mysterious Fey did not have the intended effect.

      I wasn’t scared in the least that a Faery would come and pluck me out of bed

      because I was up after I had been safely tucked in. I was entranced.

      And inspired! Thank you for those stories,

      and for shaping my love of Faeries, and faerytales.

       ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      THANK YOU TO KATHLEEN OUDIT, FOR ONCE again spoiling me with a gorgeous cover. It’s everything I wanted and more!

      And to my fantabulous editor, Susan Swinwood, who most definitely lives up to the adage Patience is a virtue! Thank you for that!

      THE CURSE OF THE UNSEELIE COURT

      IT IS SAID THAT THE FEY HAVE ALWAYS LIVED amongst mortals, their world lying parallel to ours. They live in two courts; the good faeries belong to the Seelie Court, where gaiety and light reign. Opposite to the Seelie Fey are the Dark Fey, those who live in the Unseelie Court, or the unholy court as it is known. These dark faeries are mysterious and sensual, well versed in pleasures of the flesh. It is said that to look upon them and their beauty is to be drawn into their erotic, voluptuous world, and once there, your fate is sealed, your body and will no longer your own.

      And this is precisely what happened once, long, long ago, to a beautiful queen of the Seelie Court, who had the misfortune to catch the eye of the Dark Fey king.

      Immediately, the king was besotted with the queen, driven to possess her at all costs. Queen Aine was all the king could think about, but Aine spurned him, forcing King Duir to steal her away from her golden court as she slept. Like Persephone taken to the underworld, Duir brought Aine to his dark court, plying her with his erotic skills. The Unseelie king was certain he could win Aine, but the queen despised Duir. Long had she plotted against her captor, vowing to leave the king and his court behind, but Duir kept her prisoner, a concubine for his dark pleasures.

      The queen’s loathing of the king festered, until she could think of nothing but revenge. Fueled by hatred, Aine searched for a way to break free—all to no avail. Until one day, she was delivered of the king’s twin sons. Enraptured by his progeny, and grateful to the queen for giving him such a gift, Duir became less watchful, allowing the queen new freedoms, and it was then that Aine found a way to leave his court.

      One night she stole away, taking with her one of her sons, the golden-haired child who was the image of her Seelie self, leaving behind his dark-haired brother who bore his father’s resemblance. As she fled, Aine placed a spell on the Unseelie Court, that it whither away, never to thrive again until the Dark Fey could make a woman give herself to him of her own free will. As well, she cursed the sons of Duir’s siblings—and any future male children of the king—with each cardinal sin, further destroying her own dark son’s chances of finding a virtuous woman who would give herself willingly.

      To this day, the queen’s spell holds strong. The Unseelie Court is dying. There is but one hope for the court—to find the seven women who represent the virtuous aspects of humanity. Seven women who embody chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility. Women whose very being calls to the sins deeply buried in each prince, sins that are eager to corrupt, through erotic pleasure, their virtues.

      If the court is to survive, the fey princes will have to find a way to make the virtues follow them willingly, while satisfying the basic needs of their sins. Sins of which, perhaps, each virtue is ready for a taste.

       PROLOGUE

       Dear Diary,

       Born of a higher power—gifted, favored … cursed. I am all of these things. It is said that not only my conception, but those of my sisters as well, was an auspicious event. Like the visit from the angel Gabriel to Mary, my father was visited in his slumber from the faery queen, who foretold the coming of our births and the importance of not only myself, but my three sisters. In his dreams, it was whispered to him the part we would play in a world that we had not yet seen—a world, it seems, we will never really become a part of.

       Like the spirit of Christ to the Virgin, the queen infused within my father the qualities that all humans wished to possess—attributes that many sought through absolution at church, and monies given away to pardon them for any trespass. Through his seed, our virtues were passed on, each daughter possessing the moralities that would define her—humility, kindness, temperance and chastity.

       We are bound to these virtues as surely as we breathe. They define us, our personalities, our hopes, our desires. They enslave us. Chain us, until the day our purpose in this small, confined world is revealed.

       It is our lot in life. Some would say that others have endured far worse than what we have. After all, we were born into the Lennox dynasty—a family whose powers stretch from the southwest of England into the wild beauty of Scotland. A family whose riches have flourished. A family who is revered, and just a touch feared, for the four daughters who were born within minutes of each other.

       While some fear that we’re witches, others eager to possess wealth and power fear not the mysterious happening of our birth, but the fact that we are beyond possessing. We are made for something else, something beyond the pleasures and ambitions of men.

       We are made pure. Righteous. Virtuous. Lonely.

       Imagine, as I have, going through life and never experiencing all it has to offer. Imagine what it is to dream—and dread—a future which you know nothing about, because, as my sisters and I know, we were not created for such mundane purposes as tending home and hearth, but for some other mystical, and I fear sinister, reason.

       Imagine if you can bear to, never