Read Bastien for Free Online Page B

the rose and the phantom woman who haunts my dreams. I falter as I place the card on the barrel. The hag, too, seems momentarily distracted. She touches the card, tracing its edges with something akin to reverence. This is what I really came here for.
    She turns the next card slower. Death.
    A chill runs through me and pain blooms in my chest, as though I’ve been shot. Another warning. I should heed it this time, pick up my deck and go back home. Instead my hand reaches for the next card.
    The hag slams her hand down on top of mine. She half bows her head in what might be ascent or defeat and pushes my turned cards back toward me, spreading her deck across the barrel, face down. She picks one of the lot and turns it without pause. The Two of Pentacles.
    I grin when she holds out her hand for the payment. Her fee has doubled since the first time.
    I pay her and collect my cards. As I am rising from my seat and she is pulling back the curtain to allow me entrance, some morbid curiosity compels me to look at the card she didn’t want me to see. I turn it on top of the deck. The Lovers.
    The hag hisses, the first sound I have heard her make. She knocks the deck from my hands before I can get a good look at the card and pulls the curtain wider open. Enter or go. But leave the deck.
    There is nothing waiting for me in my castle except stone walls and bad dreams. I enter.
    The Faery court is not as I remember it. There are trees around me now, with bark of unbroken white and leaves so bright green it hurts to look at them. There is no sun in the sky.
    Rather, it is the sky itself which shines down to illuminate everything. The creatures I saw before are gone. I am alone in the clearing. “Hello?” I call. Only my echo answers me.
    “Is anybody there?”
    Nothing.
    “Lilith!” I try.
    A breeze makes the trees sway and their leaves knock together like delicate wind chimes.
    “Lover,” the air whispers around me.
    Lilith appears in a flash of light, draped in a gown made of mist. She smiles knowingly and opens her arms to me. “Welcome back.”
    I swoop her up and kiss her hard, the familiar taste of her tongue in my mouth bringing back memories of euphoric pain. “How could I resist?”
    She laughs. “Did you miss me, Bastien?” She asks this as though already anticipating the answer to be yes.
    The truth would not please her, and I am not fool enough to voice it. Instead of answering, I grab her leg and loop it around my waist so she can feel me hard against her. “Where is that damned cup?”
    Lilith laughs again. She closes my eyes with a kiss on each lid, and when I open them we are in her bower with its false mirrors. A black cup is waiting for me on a pedestal. I set her away and pick it up.
    But I hesitate. I look at my own reflection. It’s matching me this time. There is the other me, a cup in his left hand when mine is in my right, that selfsame look of stubborn determination is there in his eyes. That same muscle twitches in his jaw. Our clothes melt away as Lilith comes up behind me and presses her mouth to the center of my spine.
    My eyelids droop. My reflection’s do not. He shakes his head as though in warning, but Lilith already has her hands on my cock and I can’t think. I don’t want to think. I want to forget everything, lose myself in pleasure for as long as I can, and then sleep. The most vivid dream I had of the beauty from the card was in this bower after Lilith fucked me nearly to death. I need to see her again. Just once.
    I drain the black cup with one swallow and give myself over to its burn.
    It’s worse than before. I know exactly what the elixir is doing to me; feel every little sting, every stutter of my feeble human heart. But the pleasure is greater as well. It’s almost beyond bearing, an agony tearing through my body in bone breaking spasms. One cup, two, three... I lose count. I spent two weeks here last time. This time I know it will be longer.
    But I will not die. Not before I