The Wildest Woods

by S. K Munt

  Cairo groaned, and I felt his need for me pressing against the place where I needed to feel him the most. ‘Are you asking me to rob you of your senses, my Queen?’ He slipped his tongue between my lips, parting them, as one of his hands began to gently rake the soft fabric of my skirts up my thigh. ‘To push through your… inhibitions?’ His finger left my skin and gently rubbed against my sex through my underwear, making me gasp. Too out of my mind to do anything but throb all over, I nodded, opening my mouth to accept his tongue completely. He tangled it around mine and gently dipped his finger inside me while he grunted, making me cream. I couldn’t think ‘Oh God!’ and I wasn’t about to think ‘Oh Satan!’ so I moaned and let my knee fall open more, welcoming my sailor home. ‘Are you sure?’ Cairo gasped, retreating his finger a little and making me sob. ‘I’m a big man you know, and this is such a hot, tight little-’

  ‘Cairo!’ I pleaded, reaching down and pressing his hand into me again, and he shuddered before wrenching himself away from me. ‘Please-’

  ‘Good!’ But Cairo removed his hands from my body and cupped my face instead, grey eyes sparkling as he whispered: ‘Then let the courtship begin as it ought to between soul mates: with romance, patience and respect for one another’s boundaries.’

  Then his lips were on mine again, more gentle than before but more erotic for it. It was frustrating but still lovely and I sighed, letting my arousal wash through me as his fingers threaded between mine. This time, the kiss felt less like falling into a cloud of lust, and more like falling in love, which was still not what I wanted, but probably the very thing that I needed- and the only way that I was going to get closure for my feelings for Kóhen.

  31.

  Arcadian Barracks, City Of Arcadia

  Karol Barachiel

  I spent the remainder of Monday night buried in my cot in the barracks and shooing off all of the people that wanted to pepper me with questions about my reunion with my brother. Saul-Yin had come back long before me and had reported everything that she’d seen and heard, of course, but I’d only had the briefest moment with her before I was marched off to be whipped to explain the mission that we’d been charged with to her, so naturally there were more questions about the mission than there were about my punishment.

  No one was too concerned about my welfare because they’d all seen me return looking perfectly fine if not a bit drowsy, and had just assumed that I’d had a healer work a miracle on me. And to be honest- that sort of bugged me because in any other caste (or division) the fact that I’d just received ten lashings would have guaranteed me a few extra smokes and a lot of awe and sympathy, especially in Division one where they counted removing a splinter as an act of bravery.

  But I was with the other kind of Callielian citizens now- the hardened ones- and because there were only two guards amongst us that hadn’t been whipped before, they were less than staggered by my ordeal. Saul-Yin had received thirty lashings once, Theodore had taken fifty the year before when he’d been only sixteen, and Jent had lost count of how many times he’d been whipped in general, so the fact that I’d only been given ten lashings and had been healed directly after had apparently only further cemented the fact that I was a spoiled brat with them, at least when I was at home. In fact, the only thing that did get them riled up on my behalf was the notion that I’d been subjected to those lashings because my elder brother was an even bigger spoiled brat that didn’t have the balls to fight me like a man when it was clear that that was what he wanted to do.

  That’s right… I’d thought, rubbing my face with my hands and groaning in response to the ribbing I was copping about my ‘pretty’ lavender scent. Give me hell! I’m too beastly for the palace, but not beastly enough for the army! When am I EVER going to find somewhere that I fit in without being the butt of some joke?

  I wasn’t too bothered by their teasing though, because I knew that I would have given any one of them a similar amount of grief if I’d had the chance, because that was simply how we bonded in the barracks. And after I threw my alarm clock at Clay’s head, the others realised they weren’t going to have a healer handy to cure them of whatever wounds their Guardian inflicted upon them, so they stopped giving me a hard time about my lack of battle-scars (and I actually had quite a lot of the ‘real’ kind) and started in on me about the Northern expedition.

  I repeated to them what I’d already said to Karol as I began to check out of consciousness, and though everyone claimed that they were going to ride back to the palace just so they could tell my brother to go fuck himself and his mission, when I woke up in the morning I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had nine willing volunteers who valued money and honour more than they valued their lives. It was only half of my division but to my relief, they were most of the strongest ones- all except Monty Plath, who said he was going to spend the wage that he had already earned in one of the city’s harems until we got back, and that he wasn’t the least bit sorry about it because quote: ‘Like a hot Satan fuck am I going to hunt bear instead of Arcadian beaver.’ End quote.

  Each to their own. After my close brush with an Arcadian Beaver the night before, I was personally more willing to embrace a bear. The only positive thing that had come from my time with Amelia-Rose was the fact that she’d officially taken the wind out of my sails; I probably wouldn’t fantasise about sex for a week and wasn’t jealous of Monty’s itinerary at all.

  So, despite the fact that my back was still aching and that I’d barely slept for nightmares of getting whipped and then healed, I started rallying my troops as soon as the sun rose, confident that a party of nine was all that was needed to fulfil the third division’s obligations, and relieved that more hadn’t volunteered because that meant that I was less likely to get my entire squad killed.

  Arcadia had always run the Corps in a military-like manner, so there had already been a barracks in every major city in Calliel to accommodate the caste before AA644, including two major ones in Pacifica and Rachiel, which had served as on and offshore headquarters. However, the amount of enlisted citizens within the caste had almost doubled after Karol had created the Royal International Defence Force, so major changes had been made to the way things were run.

  The biggest change was the fact that Atticus Hartley had lost most of his authority over the military. He’d originally been promoted from General of the Pacifican fleet to Prime Minister because ninety-five percent of the citizens in Pacifica had been Corps recruits anyway, and because at the time, seventy percent of our Corps caste had been stationed there so it made sense that the person in charge of them ought to just be put in charge of everything.

  But although he’d been offered the promotion to Guardian General after the inception of the new military, he’d turned it down. Accepting responsibility for the entire reimagined Callielian Corps would have meant giving up the role as Prime Minister his little island nation, and Atticus had not been willing to do that so he’d opted to keep the lesser titles of Prime Minister and General of Pacifica, and had handed absolute power over to Guardian General Aldous Alvares from Tariel, who had put his hand up for the job.

  Kohl had not been happy about that development because instead of becoming the second most powerful guard in the world, he was now equal in rank to every other Lieutenant General (there were several of them) but Pacifica’s branch of the Royal International Defence Force was still the largest because it included army and navy personnel, and when he wrote to me, Kohl bragged about how powerful his five divisions were and of how certain he was that one day, he’d end up as Guardian General of the entire RIDF because Atticus apparently delegated most of his work to him.

  I wanted to write to him to let him know that I’d been promoted to Guardian of my own division because I knew that he’d heard about my struggle to function within the military at all and I desperately wanted to earn some dignity back, but I had decided to let him find out from someone else because I had the feeling that whatever he said in return would make me
feel worse about myself and not better.

  Just like Karol had.

  I’d only spoken to Kohl’s superior, Atticus once (that I was aware of) and that had been one of the most uncomfortable interactions of my life. We’d been forced to take a meeting together with the king and a mediator the day after my father’s funeral service to discuss the subject of the missing eleven million dollar necklace that Larkin Whittaker had absconded with, and it had been a meeting full of grief, cussing and awkward silence. Atticus had been the grieved one, Karol had been the cussing one and I had been the speechless block of humiliation at the other end of the table. Apparently he’d gifted some priceless necklace to me to gift to Larkin as a bargaining chip that would lock her in as a Pacifican resource in the future, so now that she was gone, the country was without its two most valuable assets and it was all my fault.

  My Companion had evidently had a ‘thing’ for growing crops and a dream for growing cotton in addition to a love for precious jewels, and because every king, queen, lord, lady and duke had been trying to get her to agree to sign a contract with them to work in their kingdom’s after her release, (the pre-emptive release that Karol had orchestrated) Atticus had agreed to promote Kohl to his 2IC in order to win Larkin’s favour. Larkin had already liked Atticus and Pacifica, and she’d been desperate for Kohl to be elevated above his lowly third-born status after his own release, so she’d taken the deal.

  But then I had come along, learned that she’d favoured Kohl and had tricked her into believing that I was him so she would sleep with me and get herself good and stuck at my side. That sleazy move had rendered her free will null and void, and in a mad panic, Atticus had come to me, explained that he needed Larkin around even if she wasn’t a free woman anymore, and had pledged to do whatever it took to get ME to move to Pacifica anyway, because apparently wherever I went, she had to follow.

  I’d been mad as a mother-fucker that Atticus had gone behind my back and had promoted Kohl for my girl’s sake without my knowing about it, (though Atticus swore that she’d only done it because she felt sorry for Kohl, not because she was in love with him) and I’d been looking for a way to win my Companion’s forgiveness, so I’d suggested the trade- the diamonds to butter my love up with in exchange for my moving to Pacifica one day with my hopefully happy slave if my father offered me the lesser crown there.

  Yes, what a prince I had been! The scar on my chest had throbbed the whole time, stretched by my rapidly pounding heart.

  I only learned of this as I’d sat there in that heinous meeting, of course, and I’d listened to Atticus explain what had happened while holding onto my own hair as though I could wrench my soul out of my body. Atticus had been angry, yes, but he’d been angrier at Karol’s suggestion that we use the army to hunt the necklace down because it would inevitably end up costing us more. He had hidden behind the defence that if the Barachiel men had not driven Larkin Whittaker out of her mind, Pacifica would have known only profit from the odd bargain because no matter what, the necklace had always still belonged to the small nation- he’d only allowed Larkin to wear it, and if she’d moved to Caldera, it would have stayed in Caldera. By that logic, he had not lost the necklace- we’d driven out the girl wearing it because we’d failed to safeguard it and her, so who were we to lump all of the guilt on him? Perhaps Arcadia could no longer count the necklace amongst its assets, but it was Pacifica that was going to be handicapped for the financial loss because it was practically broke now, and building the treasury up again was going to fall to him not us.

  It had been a disaster of a discussion. Atticus had been mad at me, but he was also in trouble with Karol for slyly making the deal, and Karol was in trouble with the rest of the monarchs for releasing Larkin in the first place and causing all hell to break loose after, so it had been like sitting at the bottom of a sliding scale of corruption. In fact, the only reason I think why we hadn’t started shitting in our hands and flinging it at one another was because Ora Camden had been present to mediate.

  The lovely daughter of the president of Rabia had barely been able to look at me, but she’d been the one to suggest that we simply offer a reward for the precious stones to give anyone lawless and Godless that might be hanging around with Larkin incentive to hand it in. We didn’t have that sort of money to give up as a reward, but we’d certainly be able to wheel some sort of land and house deal as a package that could be considered to be of equal value.

  Then, she’d said that the next time it occurred to us- to any of us- to try and make a private bargain that would affect any of the kingdoms or their citizens, we do so in a meeting full of people for the sake of keeping things above board... and out of our pants.

  No one had left that meeting feeling any better about themselves or one another, but we’d come up with a bit of a solution and had left physically unscathed, and I knew that we had Ora to thank for that. Without her, I probably would have been thrown off the Statue Of Liberty and onto the rocks below as a human sacrifice. It was ironic too, because I got the feeling that she resented me more than anyone did.

  Needless to say, I was rather relieved to hear that Atticus Hartley had turned down the Top Dog spot in the RIDF after that, because it meant that he and I would not be forced to deal with one another directly because I would not fall under his Guardianship as an Arcadian recruit. I hadn’t confessed my relief to Kohl though, because I’d already felt like I was on thin ice with him... but I got the feeling that both of them were relieved to have some distance from me anyway, just like Ora, who had decided to stay in Calliel until Larkin was found, but had moved in to my uncle’s castle in Nitika until she was- during my last visit. Apparently she’d been in an apprenticeship as an ambassador for Rabia since she was sixteen and once she’d turned nineteen, she had become qualified to work under another ambassador’s guardianship for an actual wage. Originally, she’d intend to finish her training in Eden, but she’d had a change of heart and had accepted my uncle’s offer to learn the ropes under the guidance of Nitika’s ambassador instead.

  No Arcadian regiments had been sent to Pacifica yet, and because I was in the third division that was made up of criminals, it was likely that I’d never be sent abroad because of the whole ‘flight-risk’ thing. That was okay with me so long as we still got to roam the continent that we were already on, but I felt bad that my squadron were constantly treated like second-class citizens despite the fact that they worked hard and were probably the most efficient crop of guards that the RIDF could claim to have. None of them wanted to escape the military- they were too proud to belong to something real for once to dream of it!

  I sure hoped that wouldn’t change after our expedition north though, because if they decided the going was getting too tough and got going, I’d sooner hang myself in The Wildwoods then return to HQ without my guards because they’d gone AWOL. Not only would that be almost as embarrassing as the whole harem kerfuffle, but it would be an experience that I’d actually remember.

  But for now I had a handful of my soldiers with me, and we were bound for Rachiel, which was the new ‘official’ RIDF headquarters. After accepting the promotion, Guardian General Alvares had decided to make the existing barracks in Rachiel his new base camp, and he had doubled the size and the sophistication of the facilities there since, making it practically impenetrable and fitting it out with a lot of advanced equipment. The Rachiel Barracks was where each division went for their initial weapons training, so the majority of the rifles and ammunition that the army had in its arsenal were stored there, and seeing as how there was no way that I was going north without making sure that my people were armed to the teeth first, I’d decided to enter into The Wildwoods via Rachiel, instead of right there through Arcadia. Taking a detour northeast to stock up on weapons instead of heading northwest was going to add some time to our trip, but what did I care? We were all going to be on overtime as of that morning anyway- might as well get my soldiers every extra coin that I could manage!


  Besides, it was a bullshit mission anyway and everyone knew it. There was a damned good reason why no country had yet to conquer the wild northwest, so if someone had managed to establish a tiny colony there back in February, it was unlikely that they’d lived long enough to even contemplate threatening us, let alone actually doing it! Really, it was only the wildlife and the Devil’s Claw that we were wary of.

  There was only one major road that led from Arcadia to Rachiel, but taking it would cause an even larger detour, so after studying a map for a while, I realised that we’d be able to get to Rachiel faster if we cut through the farmlands that lay between the city limits and our sister city. To my surprise, things like map-reading, orienteering and strategizing had come very easily to me right from the start, and it wasn’t until I had visited Kohl the previous October (we’d met at the base in St Miguel when our squadrons had traded off on coastal patrols) that I’d found out that all of that stuff came naturally to me because I had already studied it in detail.

  Kohl had told me that he’d always had to fight to learn that kind of thing- usually by reading whatever old book he could find whenever he could find one- but my education had been first rate. Yes I’d studied public relations, diplomacy, history and fencing: all of the typical royal stuff that was more or less fluff, but I’d been determined to beat Karol’s score on some exam so I’d had tutors helping me every day of my life in addition to my mandatory courses- doggedly hunting down knowledge like it was sport.

  Kohl hadn’t been able to hide the fact that he’d envied my education and I couldn’t blame him for that because it was clear that he, too, was academically minded and would have benefitted from all that I’d been gifted, but that had been the first thing I’d learned about myself that I actually liked; that I had a thirst for knowledge. It was unfortunate that I’d apparently been motivated by sibling rivalry but still, it said a lot about my intelligence, didn’t it? I’d behaved like a brute when it came to sex, but was it possible that I hadn’t been as one-track-minded as they’d all led me to believe? I sure hoped so!