by Clare London
Chloe colored. “I suspect you’ve made that message more diplomatic before delivery, Darius, and for that I thank you. I’ll go back to the Household now. Will you be accompanying me?”
Darius glanced up at her, and a look passed between them that I didn’t recognize. Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “Of course. I understand the Queen’s demands must always take precedence. Attend to me later, Darius, if the royal duties permit.” We both bowed, and she turned and left the training ground.
“IS IT finished?” Seleste’s eyes were dark, her expression petulant. “The History, Maen! Is it done? How many scribes have you put to the task?”
Darius shifted gently in the background. He was standing inside the door to her office, on guard. Other soldiers had arrived with him, but they were shut outside in the corridor. Her Ladies had been dismissed as well.
“There’s just the one, Mistress,” I said. “But he’s very talented and very industrious. I believe he’s developed a new artistic theme to the illustration of the royal brand. He’s also written up much of the battle for Queenship already, with some fascinating commentary from your loyal subjects who were there at the time.”
She was angry, I could tell, but still carefully enunciated her words. “It is too slow. You work like Nerisa, like the tortuous drip of sickly, melted sugar. None of you understands the need for this, the importance of this! It must be done in time for the Convocation. My History must be in place, with illustrations of my achievements and my rightful succession to the Queenship.”
“I will make sure of it—”
“You will indeed!” she snapped. She was unusually agitated today. She’d thrown off the formal cloak that she’d worn to speak to the men, and was dressed in a dark green silk robe that clung to her figure and her arms were adorned with ornamental bracelets. Although she’d removed the jewels from her hair, it was still bound with red silk ribbons that mimicked the elegant pattern of the vines in her brand. She walked a few paces, letting the rich fabric of her gown flow around her ankles, then turned sharply and paced back the way she’d come. Her tension was obvious in every tight, drawn stretch of her body. I saw Darius watching her, his gaze following the graceful sway of her hips. But when I looked back at Seleste, her eyes were on me.
“You’re in my presence now.” Her voice was low and somehow chilling. “My needs are all you should ever think of.”
I stiffened. “Of course, Mistress.” For a few seconds, all we did was stare at each other. I knew she wanted to hear something more from me, but I remained silent.
She moistened her lips, her eyes still on me. “Soldier, come here,” she called to Darius, beckoning him over. “Tell me what thoughts are in your mind.”
Darius’s eyes darkened. “Your wishes are mine, Mistress,” he murmured, his voice husky. “Your pleasure is my task.”
Seleste smiled, pleased with his response. When he reached her side, she turned to face him and gripped his chin, bringing his mouth close to hers. They were of a similar height, and Darius’s tongue slipped out to wet his lips. I expected her to kiss him for play. So did he.
But she turned her head at the last moment to look back at me. “Maen.” There was a dark, bitter light in her pupils. “His lips speak well, and his tongue plays better. I’ve wished for a long time to make you two a pair for my entertainment. And you already know how he tastes, don’t you?” Darius’s gaze flickered between us but he didn’t move from her grasp.
“Yes, Mistress,” I said.
“But not as good as a woman?” She was provoking me again. “Not as good as your Queen?”
I saw Darius tense as if he were expecting trouble.
“You want me to say no,” I said quietly. “I only know I’ve been a servant to you both, in different ways. Should a servant make that comparison?”
Her face twisted with shock. I realized I no longer had any idea if my answers pleased or angered her, only that they weren’t respectful enough. And maybe I no longer cared. She reached out her other hand and gripped my wrist, pulling me closer to her.
“This will cease at once!” she hissed. “You’re mine, soldier, and you’ll surrender to that or face punishment. You will choose where your loyalty lies, once and for all!”
Darius frowned, uncertain as to what was going on between us.
I gazed back at Seleste, all three of us so close, my mouth dry with tension. It would have been so easy to lie to her, to offer my unadulterated loyalty to my Queen—to her. But I wondered if she’d ever believe me if I did. Too many intimacies had passed between us, yet too much affection had not. I had nothing more to give her, nothing more to be taken. I wondered what I owed to her, to offer up the truth instead.
Something broke inside me, yet I felt no pain, only relief.
“You chose for me once,” I replied. My tone was flat and hard. “That will have to be enough for you.”
Darius gasped aloud at my insolence. Seleste’s face darkened. She let go of both of us and took a step back.
“How dare you,” she snarled at me. “You talk to your Queen as an equal!”
“You talk to me as a slave,” I countered. “Is that any better?”
The air around us crackled as if lightning were overhead. Seleste’s gaze darted to Darius, and he obviously took that as an order. He gripped my shoulder and twisted my head around to kiss him, pressing his mouth against mine, thrusting his tongue into me. I stiffened in his grasp but didn’t pull away—my Queen was still a foot away, watching this, sanctioning it. His hand slid down to my crotch and cupped me.
“To his knees” came Seleste’s harsh command.
Darius pushed down on my shoulder, forcing me to the floor. I knelt at her feet, my head hanging down, my heart racing.
She stepped nearer so that my face was on a level with her hips. “You will not look up until I allow it,” she ordered.
Darius’s feet also came closer, facing her, and I heard the jingle of the bracelets on her wrist as she slid her arm around his neck. He moaned with pleasure, and her laughter was muffled as they kissed. Then her other hand reached down and gripped my hair. With a tug, she pulled my head into the bay of her legs, my mouth pressed against the sumptuous silk. The front seam split just below her hip into two separate swathes of material, and one of these caught up on my shoulder. The laces that held the garment tightly in to her waist snagged up beneath it, cutting into my cheek. I could smell the perfume of her bare skin, for she was wearing only a short shift underneath.
Darius’s hand hung down at his side, the fingers brushing my face.
“Maen. Suck them,” she said, her voice hoarse.
Darius’s palm curled up with momentary surprise, and then he stretched his fingers out to my mouth, pushing three of them in. I nearly gagged, but not because he was too fierce. He was tense, I could feel it in his body as he stood next to me, but he was stimulated too. I sucked on his fingers, soaking them with saliva, licking into the valleys between them. He’d asked this of me before, during our coupling, and I knew it excited him. Meanwhile, Seleste took her hand away from his neck and tugged the laces of her gown free. The fabric slipped away from her body, the folds of it clinging to my face and shoulders, then falling away onto the floor. She stood there exposed, dressed in nothing but her indoor slippers and a flimsy shift of fine, soft cloth, and her pale thighs underneath were warm and washed in flower-perfumed water.
I knew her bare skin well enough to know how it would taste on my tongue, that combination of pampered delicacy and musky desire.
Darius slid his hand up underneath the shift, bunching it up around her waist. I saw his wrist, supple and sly, moving between her thighs. His dampened fingers reached up into her and her body shivered against me. When I tried to pull back, her hand tightened in my hair. “Not until I say,” she gasped. “I will have your attention, Maen, and on my terms.”
Darius spoke hoarsely above me. “I deserve it too.”
“You have no right to speak,” I mutter
ed to him, but Seleste laughed harshly, as if she indulged him and I was the one being foolish.
“It’s you I’m talking to, Maen,” he said, emboldened in front of his Queen. “I should have your full attention too, like I have any other man’s when I’m on his bed.”
I laughed softly and bitterly.
Seleste sighed. “Do you think you’re different from other men? That you deserve some special treatment? That your devotion to your Queen should be any the less?”
“No,” I whispered, though I don’t think she was listening to me.
Darius caressed her, his thumb twisted around to press on her clitoris, his other arm around her waist to support her as he worked her toward climax. Her body rocked against me, her hips grinding against both of us.
“If you don’t have his attention either, soldier,” she whispered to Darius, “what does he give you?”
Darius grunted. “His seed, Mistress. His body, late at night, in the dark. A hard, desperate coupling. Nothing but that. His real passion is elsewhere.”
“Yes,” she hissed, “I know. And I will not have that insubordination from one of my men. I’ve had enough of his disloyalty, whether real or emotional.”
I groaned as she pulled painfully at my hair again. Darius must have been suckling at her neck, for I felt her back arch with pleasure and her knee press forward against my cheek. “Share me with him, Maen. You will please me because I demand it.”
Her voice was strained. She was very tense from both the excitement and her anger. She didn’t need to direct me, for I knew what she wanted. I leaned forward, my lips against her naked groin, anchoring myself with my hands behind her thighs. My cheek nudged against Darius’s hand as it stroked up inside her, playing with the heat outside her swollen vulva. My face damp from her sweat and juices, I slid out my tongue to lap at her.
She moaned aloud and shuddered, but we both held her now. Darius grasped her against his torso, kissing her face and neck, his hand slowly bringing her to satisfaction. He was fiercely aroused, his cock swollen inside his trousers, its erect contour hard against my chin. I knelt at Seleste’s feet, supporting her legs and licking firmly at her bud, knowing the rhythm she enjoyed the best. When she reached down to grab one of my hands, I didn’t resist. She pulled it across her body and rested it on Darius’s groin. As she started to gasp in his arms with her climax, I pumped at his cock, using the friction of his trousers against its sensitive flesh.
He jerked, groaning, and he came moments after her. The heat of it spread a damp stain across the front of his trousers.
She let go of my hair shortly after that and I rested back on my heels. Darius collected up her robe and helped her to a chair to recover. His face was flushed, his gaze hot, and his expression petulant when he looked at me.
Sitting down, Seleste’s gaze was on a level with mine, but her eyes were slightly glazed and her emotions unfathomable. “My wishes must be yours,” she said quietly, her voice very cold. I knew she spoke to me alone. “Isn’t that true?”
“It’s what you demanded.”
She shuddered. “That’s enough, Maen.”
I nodded. “Yes, Mistress. Enough by far.”
I don’t know whether she heard the contempt in my voice, but I knew it was sufficient for her to have had me arrested on the spot.
Instead, she dismissed me without a further word.
KIEL FOUND me in the Library late that afternoon, a long time after I’d arrived there. Pulling himself up into the second story, he was startled to find me already sitting in a corner surrounded by open books. “Maen?”
“Kiel, I’m sorry.” Maybe there was something amiss in my voice because he peered at me, puzzled. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. I came to study some of the books you mentioned before.”
“The old Histories?” He glanced at the selection I had in front of me. His eyes narrowed. “Maen, some of these haven’t been opened in years except… well, except by me. They haven’t been formally cataloged in my work on the Queen’s History, you know, she passed a very strict list of recommended texts to Mistress Nerisa at the start of my work.”
“I know.”
“What exactly are you looking for? Are you here on the Queen’s business?”
I sighed softly. “No.” He frowned at me, and had my mind been easier, his seriousness would have made me smile. “Will you trust me, Kiel?”
He took surprisingly careful stock of me before answering. “Yes.”
I nodded, pleased with both his caution and his bluntness. “When you saw Eila’s two brands at the Exile camp….”
“Mistress Eila? The fierce woman?”
I smiled. “Yes. Do you remember you recognized both designs as a royal brand?” When Kiel nodded, I placed my hand carefully on the open book on my lap. “You said it was a clue, that the different, yet similar version would help you travel further into the history in these old books.”
“Well, that’s just me prattling on, of course,” he mumbled and didn’t meet my eyes. “The books are full of illustrations, brands all over the place. It’s their method of marking their own stories from other Households’. I told you and Mistress Eila that at the time, and she told me I was wrong about her brands, they weren’t the same at all. I was probably mistaken. They all look so similar.”
“No,” I said sharply. “You weren’t mistaken.”
He was silent, which would have been unusual enough to alert me even if I hadn’t already browsed through many of the old books myself. “What have you done with that information, Kiel?”
He tensed. “I haven’t told anyone about the Mistress’s brand, if that’s what you mean.”
“You knew she’d been a Royal Mistress?”
“Yes.” He was wary, as if trying to gauge how much to say in front of me. “After we met with her, there were some comments made around the camp when they were finding me a tent. Some of the older men suspect she was in the Royal Household, though I don’t think many of them care. No one thought I was listening.”
“You’re always listening.” I smiled. “Even when you’re talking.”
He shrugged, but he grinned. “It’s the only way to know what’s going on. I can travel through this city with very little notice, yet there’s always information to be gathered.”
“And what did you gather about Eila?”
He flushed, his face darkening in the dim light of the storage room. “That she was one of the Royal Ladies, maybe even related to the Queen herself. She’d obviously been exiled the same way Mistress Flora was, maybe in the same kind of situation after a battle for Queenship.”
I nodded. “It’s true. You continue to impress me.”
His expression was still guarded. “I learned more about other matters too, Maen, for the Exiles talk very loosely. More about the Gold Warrior and his Bronzeman who’d once been held at the camp. Who arrived and left as a couple, but how only one returned to them.” When I shifted awkwardly, he yelped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. It’ll go no further. I mean, it’s not for me to make any comment or judgment on my betters—”
“Hush,” I said, and he did. “You know what happened to me. It’s no longer a secret to you. I would want to tell you the whole story even if it were, because I trust you too. And don’t talk about people being your betters when you’re the one with maturity and sensitivity. But it was all a long time ago.” I smiled a little bitterly. “It’s an old history in itself and no longer of relevance.”
“But if he’s not dead, Maen, as you thought—”
“The story is dead,” I said sharply. “His devotion is. Any obligation is.”
He shook his head vigorously. “No, Maen, surely it’s not like that, I don’t think he ever saw himself as bearing any kind of obligation—”
I hushed him again, holding up my hand for emphasis. “I made my choices, and they were misguided, and so my life is trapped in its sorry path. I don’t wish to talk about it anymore.” I shifted again, disturbing
a thin layer of dust on the piles around me. “Instead, I’ve been following your current work back to the texts you used to track the lineage of the Queen’s immediate family, the background and basis for her current History. It’s fascinating. And the royal brand appears at all times in its current form, a design of beauty, sophistication, and complexity.”
Kiel’s eyebrows rose. “You’d make a good scribe, Maen, to have found your way around in such a short time.”
I shook my head, amused despite myself. “I’m not built for it, I fear. I’ve toppled several shelves of books and trodden on more than a few pages in my burrowing. I’m too large and too clumsy for this work, and it’s lucky no one else has been around to discover me.”
Kiel grinned. “Then you really are lucky. Mistress Nerisa has been at my heels for several days now. I don’t know whether the Queen’s sent her to check on my progress or whether she just enjoys harassing her scribes as a matter of course.”
“She’s displeased with your work?”
Kiel shook his head. “No, that seems to be well. She hasn’t insisted I work with others, or that she needs to check through each stage of the History, which is what I might have expected. I think she’s just inquisitive and troublesome.” I laughed and he flushed. “Maen, you won’t tell anyone I said that? Speaking in that way of a Mistress….”
I shook my head too, reassuring him. From what I’d seen of the drab, nervous Mistress Nerisa, I didn’t think he was in any trouble. Every time I met her in the Library and nodded my respect, she’d drawn away quickly with no conversation, her arms tucked inside her sleeves and her eyes avoiding any further interaction with me. She traveled with a couple of equally nondescript Ladies, and they always had their arms full of dry papers and bottles of ink. Mistress Nerisa had obviously found her calling in her new role. I marveled at the difference between her and her pretty, more forthcoming sister Chloe. “I’ve seen your work, Kiel,” I reassured him, “and it’s very fine. I like the script you’ve used, and you’ve chosen a good selection of illustrations to enhance the Queen’s story. You ink the current royal brand very well too.” He flushed with pleasure, though there was still a glint of wariness in his eyes. “And yet that’s all there is of it.”