Chapter 18: The Celebration of his Majesty
The scent of roses and sweat had long since overwhelmed the usual palace smells of polished stone and torch smoke. Outside, the distant sounds of the festival in Jin’s honor—lutes, laughter, the clatter of tankards—were a world away, muffled by thick velvet drapes and the pounding of his own blood in his ears.
He was twenty. A man. The weight of it felt abstract, distant, compared to the overwhelming, crushing reality of Sori beneath him, around him, her silver hair fanned across his pillows like spilled moonlight.
“Look at me,” she breathed, her voice a husk of sound. Her hips rolled, a practiced, devastating rhythm that drove him deeper. “Your people celebrate a prince. But I’m celebrating the man.”
Jin’s control, the iron discipline he wore like armor, was in splinters. It had been unraveling for months, thread by thread, in this very chamber. Now, on the day of his ascension to adulthood, she planned to burn the last of it.
Her hand slid between them, her fingers knowing and cruel. She found the sensitive cord on the underside of his shaft, the corpus spongiosum, already taut and throbbing. Her thumb pressed, stroked in time with her contractions.
A ragged shout tore from his throat. It wasn’t a moan; it was a fracture. “Sori—gods—”
“That’s it,” she coaxed, her blue eyes holding his, seeing every shattered piece. “Forget the kingdom. Forget duty. There’s only this. Only me. Let it go, Jin. All of it.”
The stimulation was too precise, too relentless. The pleasure built not in a wave, but in a seismic pressure, a dam straining at its foundations. He was still buried inside her, pistoning helplessly, when the first orgasm hit. It wasn’t a release; it was an eruption.
His back arched, muscles locking. A guttural, continuous scream was ripped from him, a sound he didn’t recognize as his own. His cock pulsed violently, jetting into her with a force that felt limitless. Thick, hot spurts, one after another, a flood that seemed to have no end, soaking her, dripping between their pressed bodies. He could feel it, a surreal, full-body convulsion of release that went on and on, until his vision spotted and his ears rang.
She held him through it, her legs clamped around his waist like vise, milking him, whispering filth and praise that blurred together. Just as the sensations began to ebb, as he shuddered on the brink of oversensitivity, she shifted her hand, her touch fluttering, insistent, on that same overstimulated nerve.
“Not yet,” she murmured. “You’re not empty.”
A new, different urgency seized him. Deeper, more primal. The unbearable fullness shifted, transformed. The magnificent, dizzying pleasure twisted seamlessly into another kind of desperation.
“I… I need to…” he gasped, tears of overwhelming sensation at the corners of his eyes.
“I know,” she said, and there was a triumph in her voice. “With me. Now.”
The permission shattered the last dam. As he thrust, shaky and shallow, another release tore through him. This one was hotter, liquid, a relentless stream that joined the mess he’d already made. It wasn’t spurts, but a flow, a relief so profound it felt like his soul was pouring out. He sobbed, collapsing against her, his body convulsing with the dual, shocking completion. It went on for a long time, a seemingly impossible volume of fluid easing from him, until he was boneless, hollowed out, and utterly spent.
The best feeling he’d ever had. A total annihilation of self.
He was aware of her hands, gentle now, stroking his damp hair. Of her lips on his temple. Darkness, warm and deep, pulled at him. His last conscious thought was the warmth pooled between them, and the faint, contented smile on her face.
He passed out to the sensation of his body, against all logic, giving a final, weak pulse.
Sunlight, sharp and accusing, stabbed through a gap in the drapes. It cut across Jin’s face. He groaned, lifting a heavy arm to shield his eyes. The bed was a disaster of tangled, damp sheets. He was alone.
The silence was wrong.
Not the quiet of an empty room, but a profound, echoing absence. The fortess had never been silent with Sori in it. There was always the whisper of her gown, the hum of her strange magic, Ueno’s contented, wheezing clicks.
“Sori?”
His voice was rough. He sat up, his body aching in a hundred new, delicious ways. The memories of the night flooded back, bringing a flush to his skin. He looked around, expecting to see her at the washbasin, or teasing him from the doorway.
Nothing.
Then he saw it. A single sheet of parchment, weighted down by a strange, smooth stone that glowed with a faint inner light, on the table beside the bed. His name was written on the outside in her elegant, looping script.
A cold knot formed in his gut, cutting through the afterglow.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, the stone floor cold under his feet, and grabbed the note.
Jin,
Happy Birthday. You are, officially, a man. I have given you a final gift, though you may not see it as such for a long time. Your body now knows a peak it can only reach with the memory of me. Consider it… a token. A reminder.
I am gone. Ueno and I have a journey to make. It is to another sphere, a different thread of reality. The path is long, and the outcome uncertain. It is likely I will not be coming back.
Do not waste your youth searching for doors that are closed. Your duty is here, to your people. You are a good man, Jin. Perhaps the best I have known in a thousand years. That stubborn, loyal heart of yours is your true strength. Do not let it grow bitter.
Regarding the gift I have left you: your body will feel a specific, urgent need. It will build until it is all you can think of. When it becomes unbearable, take yourself in hand and think of this night, of my voice, my touch on that specific place. It will grant you relief. I am sorry for this chain I have placed on you, but it was the only way to ensure the memory remained potent. A selfish act, from a selfish creature.
Live well. Rule with that compassion you try to hide. Be the prince they need.
Do not follow.
- S
The parchment fluttered from his numb fingers. He stared at the empty space where it had fallen. The silence in the room wasn’t just silence anymore. It was a vacuum.
He stood, naked, in the sunbeam. The celebrations would be starting again in the courtyards below. His people awaited their young prince, their new hope.
He looked at the rumpled, stained bed. He felt the phantom grip of her thighs, the ghost of her whisper in his ear. He felt the first, faint, insidious stir of the need she described, already coiling in his core, a hunger with only one key.
A loud, dry sob escaped him. He turned and drove his fist into the stone wall beside the window. The pain was bright, sharp, and clean. It felt better than the hollow, screaming emptiness inside him.
He dressed mechanically, his hands steady while his mind reeled. He folded the note, placed the strange glowing stone in his pocket. Its warmth felt like a mockery.
As he fastened his cloak, the Prince of Dragoondara looked at his reflection in the polished steel of his shield. The eyes that stared back were a soldier’s eyes. Hard. Resolved. Full of a new kind of pain.
He had a kingdom to rule. And a ghost to outrun.