The Inn Ch. 12

She nodded and smiled. Then she turned her head my way until her gaze attracted mine. "You do know, though, don't you? What Cang said of you, and the fact that you're so assured of something like the Staff of Verdance – it hasn't escaped you, has it?"

I frowned, suddenly less tickled and more cold. "I'm not sure I'm getting you."

"She has a taint of dark magic about her. Low and faint, like an old curse, or a lineage rooted in fell soil."

"Oh,that," I said. But even though I knew the thing about lineage to be true, it unsettled me that Leyna's paternity would leave a detectable aura on her.

"Or," Yilma went on as we neared the front of the Nestled Goose, "like something more grave, dressed in the garb of sunshine."

That's ridiculous. There's nothing even the tiniest bit wrong with Leyna.

"It's ancestry," I said, offended on my beautiful serving maid's behalf.Or are you taking offense so you won't have to think about the idea?I'd dreamed Nataleynata up in the first place to make trouble for Juliette Ravendark, after all. Nothing in my notes said she was kind and innocent – even if nothing in my notes called her evil, either. "Your bloodline doesn't necessarily make you who you are."

"No, of course not," said the greenwarden. She smoothed her ginger-gold hair back from her antlers. "I didn't mean to cast any doubts for you ... I just wanted to make sure you hadn't missed it."

We rounded the corner and headed toward the bench. Piperville's main street looked as it always did – quiet and lightly populated, with old lady Murgwand rocking on her porch down the way and the usual smoke roiling up out of the blacksmith's chimney.

Yilma's not the kind to spread unhappiness without reason,I thought.

"Is it ... dark enough to really worry you?"

"No, not at all," she said. But before my spirits eased, she went on, "I don't expect to be around here long, or to make any investment in her friendship. But you're in deep already, and if you didn't already know about it, I'd say it's dark enough it should worryyou."

I sat down on the bench, frowning at the packed earth of the road. Yilma trotted over and put a hand on my shoulder.

"I'm sorry to have said anything." She gave my shoulder a squeeze. "It's new love, and as often as not, something dark's been overlooked that will rear its head later and throw sand in the butter. You've probably no more to worry about than any other man."

I opened my mouth to insist that what I felt for Leyna was different. But despite her faun's body and unlined features, Yilma Greenwarden had a lot of years on me. If she had me pegged for a love-blinded fool, could I really be sure she was wrong?

Yes.I set my jaw and called up Leyna's whisper from a few mornings back:Mated.It was real, more real than anything I'd ever felt before. Even just conjuring it back to mind now, the certainty of that word threw heat into my chest – and hardened my cock like a doctor's rubber hammer twitching your leg with a tap beneath the knee. But ...Eesia's poison gave you instant, unwilling hard-ons too, didn't it? Andthatsure wasn't any sign of True Love.

"Is there any way to tell for sure?" I asked her. Then, broiling at shame for doubting Leyna enough to eventhinkof testing her, I said, "No, don't tell me. I trust her. That's all there is to it."

Yilma looked at me thoughtfully, her green eyes bearing the wisdom of ancient forests and the vibrance of new flowers in springtime.

"I believe you," she said. Then she strolled through a slow circle, tapping her chin. "There is something special between the two of you."

"Then why do you still sound concerned?"

"Because ..." She paced back and forth before looking at me. Wilper Kegwright, the town cooper, came out of the inn from his usual late breakast of porridge and beer, tipped his hat our direction without seeming to notice Yilma's horns or quadrupedality, and meandered off down the street. She watched him go and then continued her thought. "A man as in love as you are, who knows a woman's dark secret – if he loves as you love and still holds the turmoil I see in you now, there must be a cause for that turmoil which isreal.You would not doubt her for your own sake, would you? I can see that. So for my words to sow any doubt at all ..."

I nodded, my shoulders slumping. "It's because there's more to worry about than just me. You're right – there's a lot more."

With no real alternative, I told Yilma the basics of the situation – that a necromancer had horrific plans for all of Phaeland, that Leyna was his daughter but hadn't known it until I told her. And that she was helping me, that finding her mother's brooch could end the threat of her father's malevolence.

When I finished, her antlers dipped with several slow nods.

"So it could as easily be," she said, "that this girl needsyou– an innocent, good-hearted and well-intentioned – to get the gem back from the Lady of the Bog."

I opened my mouth to argue against that. But at the same moment, the door of the Nestled Goose swung outward to reveal Leyna with a serving tray. The sight of her, smiling and bright, made me angry at Yilma for badmouthing her, even though I knew that wasn't the greenwarden's intent. And it made me angry at myself for not shutting the entire line of conversation down once it headed in that direction.

"Sorry to take so long – had a great gooey porridge spill to take care of. Here's –" She held the tray out, looking from one to the other of us. "My, we've gone all grey-sky and gloomy, haven't we. Is there bad news afoot?"

"No," I said taking the platter from her and setting it in my lap. The bowl of porridge it carried let off steam and a smell that reminded my stomach of its cavernously empty state. "The subject's just a serious one, you know."

Her solemn nod made me feel even worse. I meant what I said, yet somehow the words made me feel dishonest.

"The blame is on me," Yilma said, attracting her attention. "Simon laid out the story for me, and when he got to the part about your father, I began asking suspicious questions. He refuses to think any ill of you, but I'm not convinced of the objectivity of his opinion."

The words surprised me, despite being completely in character for Yilma. Her drive to bring out the peace and good in any situation often made her play fast and loose with surface truths.

"Oh." A conflicted expression crossed Leyna's face. "Oh, so you think I might be ... well, but that's ..." She looked at me, blowing on a spoonful of porridge. I lowered it to try to reassure her, but her expression resolved itself and she blinked. "It's actually a reasonable worry, if I think on it. I don't every day run across evil sorcerers' daughters, but I suppose if Simon told me of one, it wouldn't be my first thought to trust her."

"Please be assured it's notyouI mistrust, but the situation."

"It's not going to stop you helping Simon, is it?" The alarm of her tone poked at my stomach.

Yilma shook her head. "No, but I would be remiss in my charge as a servant of the woods and wilds if I proceeded without determining whether any harm rests in you."

"Can you?" Relief pushed through the alarm in her voice. "Determine it, I mean? Honestly, now I know my father's a wicked wizard, I could use some reassurance myself."

I took her hand and tugged on it to coax her onto the bench next to me. She sat down and scooted in close.

"I know three different spells by which the truth of your intent can be outed," Yilma told her. "One takes a two-day ritual and some appurtenances I have back at my cottage. Another requires me to cut off one of your fingers and boil it."

"I rather care for all ten of them," Leyna said. "What's the third way?"

"Well. It requires an open mind."

* * *

A few minutes later, in the stables, Leyna gave me a dry scowl and said, "Honestly, Simon, I don't see what the problem is."

"I just don't want you to feel like you have to prove anything," I said, squirming inside because Yilma Greenwarden's proposal had several unnervingly attractive sides to it. "And now that we're, you know,us... I don't know, it just feels a little cheaty."

She laughed and swatted my chest with her hand. "Simon, I've lain with six different men since you told me you loved me, and I haven't seen that troubling you any. Has it?"

"That's different."

"Yes, it is," she said. "It's outright raw whoring, where this would be you trying to save all of Phaeland. Is there something I don't fathom that makes it okay for me to spread my legs for some fat caravaner or farmhand, but not okay for you to fuck a pretty wizard for the sake of every soul in the realm?"

My throat felt very dry, and my stomach rumbled because I'd only eaten a couple of bites of porridge before Yilma's description of the third spell sent us around back to discuss it.

"Will it make you love me any less to dip your wick in her? I didn't notice the welf-hole or the orf-cunt or the snake-woman's ... whatever she had ... cooling your interest in me the least bit. Is something different, now you've had me?"

"No." I stepped in closer and took her face between my hands, looking into her blue eyes to try to figure out how to explain myself – how weird and warped Yilma's proposal felt because of the ideas I'd been raised with.What's there to explain, though? If it doesn't bother her, and if her prostituting herself doesn't botherme,why would this be anything to worry about at all?"No, nothing's different. If you're okay with it, then we should do it."

"Good." She went up on tiptoes to bump her nose into mine. "I've done my share of oddness and peculiarity, these last three years. Butthisis going to be a sight!"

Whatever doubts I had, my cock apparently didn't share them, because her verve and the brush of her tits against my chest brought it to full attention in my pants.

"Okay, well ..." I glanced up at the hayloft where our improvised bed waited beneath the rafters. "I guess we should go tell Yilma so she can change back to human. I mean, if you think you have time before the lunch crowd starts up."

Leyna's mouth scrunched to one side. "Change back? l thought ... seeing you and her the way she is now, that promised to be the naughtiest part!"

Before I could get my head around that to answer, a knock from the door turned us both to look. Yilma stood just outside the stables, my porridge bowl in one hand and the spoon in the other.

"Have you two decided yet?" she asked around a mouthful of my breakfast. Then she pointed the spoon at the bowl and added, "Sorry to make off with your food, but it was going cold and smelled too good to resist, and I haven't eaten today either."

"Yeah, that's fine," I said, though my stomach growled in a less forgiving tone. "Listen, were you planning on returning to your ... regular shape for this?"

Her antlered head ducked as she slurped another bite of porridge. "Does it make a difference for your decision? I certainlycan,but if I undo the spell, I'll be stuck on my own two feet until the moon wanes another two days."

I glanced at Leyna, who bounced her eyebrows briefly up and said, "That sounds quite an inconvenience, doesn't it, Simon?"

"Um ..."

"Look here," Yilma said, trotting her back end around our direction. Her hind legs splayed out and the white-furred rump above them tipped up, revealing a very human-looking vulva and slit nestled in the pelt of her crotch. "My top half isn't the only bit I left in normal shape. Some of my best spells have a coital component, and I didn't want to make it too awkward on anyone who might be helping out."

She continued eating my porridge as I stared at her womanly mound and curved haunches – and the tawny sleekness of her white-spotted flanks.

Pressing up against my side, Leyna put one hand on my chest and moved around behind me until her breasts and belly slid into place flush with my back. Then her flesh glided upward as she went tiptoe again and said quietly into my ear, "Surely that's less awkward than the snake-woman?"

Considerably. And she's not even threatening to kill me like Eesia was.

"I wasn't complaining or anything," I said. "I just figured we'd be using the bed in the hayloft, and the ladder isn't exactly made for deer legs."

Leyna laughed and kissed my cheek. Yilma gestured toward the door with her bowl.

"My magic is all the outdoors sort anyway. That stand of trees off to the back of the pasture will do much better than a hayloft, even if I was in human form."

"A bit chill out, though, isn't it?" asked Leyna.

The greenwarden smiled. "Again, I have some mystical sway with the out-of-doors. Do you want the rest of this before we go?"

She asked that last of me with the porridge bowl raised. Politeness leaned me toward telling her to finish it, but my stomach leaned harder toward having a few more bites for myself.

"Sure," I said.

And I scraped out and ate the last of the lumpy mush before we headed for the rear of the pasture.

* * *

At the heart of the little copse, we found a cozy little clearing where Yilma Greenwarden galloped three times in a circle, arms out and incantations flowing from her lips. When she trotted back to us and nodded us in, we found the air in the clearing warm as a comfortable spring day.

"What a handy bit of magic," Leyna said. "Can you keep off the rain as well?"

"Yes, but it's strenuous. Don't worry, though. I don't smell anything in the clouds beyond a bit of drizzle, and that's at least an hour off."

The serving maid's lovely blonde head nodded. "You must be splendid at picnics."

I hooked my arm through Leyna's and squeezed it, making her look up at me and smile.

"So," I said, "what exactly do we do to get started?"

Unceremoniously, Yilma took hold of her spider-silk top and drew it up over her head two-handed – taking care when it reached the branched horns at her temples. That delay kept her arms raised and lifted her modest breasts appealingly. They had a spray of freckles across the valley between them, and no tan line at all – just the same warm bronze skin as the rest of her, setting off surprisingly broad, dark areolas and perky nipples.

"There," she said. "We're started."

My dick rapidly agreed.

Leyna, though, looked around at the grassy earth. "I suppose we should have thought to bring a blanket to spread out. I'm to go first, right?"

Leaning her human half back, Yilma patted herself just in front of the tail. "No blanket needed. We've a nice deerskin cushion instead. Why don't you lift your skirt and climb on?"

"Hmm," Leyna said, gathering up the lower half of her dress. Unsurprisingly, she had nothing on beneath it. I swallowed at the sight of her downy golden bush and the pale, lush mound it topped. "So ..."

As she stepped toward Yilma, the greenwarden bent her back legs to lower her hips and tail. Leyna moved in a little more surely then, straddling the tawny-furred pelvis and bending forward to trap her skirt between Yilma's body and her own. When her breasts touched the hindaur's back, Yilma lifted up again, leaving Leyna draped along her, a hand on either forequarter and legs hanging to either side of Yilma's, the toes not quite touching the ground.

"Haha," Leyna giggled. "You're tickling my twat!"

"Well, then, I'd say you're in just the right position," Yilma told her. As if for emphasis, I saw the greenwarden's furry teardrop tail rub back and forth where Leyna's clit rested against it.

"Ooh! I thought Simon was supposed to do that part!"

"There's no harm in it being a cooperative effort," Yilma said. "The important part is that you climax with him in you, and then he bring me to my own moment with the essence of your release still on his manhood."

Holy fuck, I like this spell.Whatever residual hesitations my monogamous upbringing gave me, Yilma's words and the view of their two bottoms one above the other blotted all restraint from my mind.

"You should get your pants off, Simon," said our forest-wizard ally.

"Yes, you should!" As she spoke, Leyna rubbed her cheek and hands into Yilma's fur. "Mmm she so soft."

I stepped free of my shoes, then unzipped and stripped loose my pants. A step forward on the gentle grass of the clearing made me take my socks off as well.

I'd been at least semi-hard since Yilma's initial description of the rite out in front of the inn, with numerous surges of rigidity since then and a steel pole of an erection once the greenwarden let her perfectly formed little A-cup breasts loose. So it didn't surprise me that a drop of precum fell free of my tip and rappelled down my leg on a clear, sticky strand of its own fluid. I ignored it and got into position.

"Uh, I think she's maybe an inch or two too high ..."

Yilma responded immediately. "Here."

A slight flex of her hind legs brought Leyna's pink slit level with my glans, eagerly swollen in the warm morning air.

"Are you ready?" I asked her.

She snorted. "Simon. Have youmetme?"

And of course, she was. I could see arousal glistening at the center of her waiting labia. So I stepped forward until my end touched her flesh, then used one hand to glide my leaking tip around the edges of her opening, painting them with viscous slickness.

"Ahhhh," she purred.

With my left hand on the round, wan wonder of that lovely ass, I entered her.

She groaned. I did too, sliding my hands up to her bare waist and pulling as I leaned forward to plunge all the way in.

"Uhhh,yes," she said, stroking her face against Yilma's furry shoulder and rolling her hips to swirl her cunt around me. "Yes, Glor be praised!"

I drew back and thrust in again, bringing an even deeper moan from her.

"Jesus, Leyna."

Yilma's fingers came up under my chin, tilting it so that my gaze met hers where her head turned across her shoulder. "Remember, you have to last long enough to please us both."

"Sorry," I said. "She just happens to have anamazingcunt. I'll try to stay focused."

The compliment brought a giggle from Leyna, then another twist of her hips and a sigh.

"Yes," said the greenwarden. "Focus. And also, let me do some of the work."

Before I could ask what that meant, I felt the baby's breath caress of her tail fur against my scrotum, and then the firmer nub of her tail itself, wedging up hard against Leyna's clit. As it swirled and rubbed, the very end of it brushed right at the juncture where cock entered cunt, massaging the underside of my root.

Not surethat'sgoing to help me last ...

But as freshly exotic and erotic as the tail felt to me, it did even more for Leyna, judging from her accelerated breathing and gasps.

"Yes, oh, right at that spot, both of you ..."

Her hands and arms gripped Yilma's deer flanks hard now as she powered back against my rod and the stimulation of that tail.

"Ghhh ... ahhhh ..."

Carefully, I eased into motion, with short and subtle oscillations of my hips. I met Leyna's rhythm and tried to accentuate it, blend in with its pattern. But she kept speeding up and slowing down, driven to wild change-ups by the pressure of the hindaur tail on her clitoris.

"Oooh, Simon, oooh –"

The glissade of her flesh around me swelled every swellable part of my genitalia.

God, she'd better come soon ...

"Uhhhhhh!"

Her pumping and grinding jumped erratically. Yilma's tail was relentless, probing against us both in skillful, insistent revolution.

"Ahhhh–"

A set of quick, fierce tremors took hold of Leyna. I felt them in the jerking of her pelvis, saw them in the clench of her legs and glutes.

Then her peak hit: a jolting run of spasmodic waves cascading along my shaft as she squeezed tight to Yilma and cried out so loud I thought they might hear all the way back at the Nestled Goose.