Chapter 17: The Empress's Whim
The Cherimony Room’s air was a solid thing, heavy with incense that coiled in my lungs like smoke from a funeral pyre. I stood beside Marisa, a pace behind the dais where Angela held court on her ivory throne. The blue sheath felt absurd now, a child’s garment in this room of adult games and sharp-edged rewards.
He stood before the dais, his head bowed. Darius. I knew the slope of his shoulders, the dusting of dark hair on his forearms. I knew the taste of his skin, the sounds he made in the dark when called to an ancell’s chamber in what felt like another lifetime. A lifetime of gold, not simple blue.
“His service in the Delta was exceptional,” Angela’s voice rang out, clear and dispassionate. “Loyalty must be rewarded in kind. Don’t you agree, Benedetta?”
My name was a hook. I lifted my gaze from the mosaic floor. Her green eyes were on me, unreadable. Marisa, beside me, was a statue of composed amusement.
“Yes, Divine One,” I said, the title ash in my mouth.
“Then you shall administer his reward.” She leaned back, a lazy flick of her wrist. “He has pleased me. Let him find his pleasure in you.”
What the fuck. The thought screamed through my skull, primal and revolted. My stomach clenched. I am an ancell. A confidante. A lover. Not a… vessel for a slave’s release.
You were an ancell, a colder, internal voice corrected, Marisa’s voice echoing in my memory. Now you are something simpler. The silver collar at my throat seemed to tighten.
Darius’s eyes flicked to mine, wide with a mixture of fear and desperate hope. He dared not refuse. Neither did I.
“Approach,” Angela commanded.
I moved forward on legs that felt detached. The space between the dais and Darius shrank. I could smell the clean linen of his kilt, the faint sweat of a man who has waited in tense silence. My own scent, jasmine and nervous salt, felt traitorous.
“Kneel.”
I knelt on the cold stone. The hieroglyphs for ‘eternity’ and ‘devotion’ were carved beneath my knees.
“You may begin,” Angela said. A pause, then a surgical addition. “No hands. Bind them.”
A steward materialized from the shadows with a cord of crimson silk. He wrapped my wrists behind my back with efficient, impersonal tugs. The knot was secure, not cruel, but the position arched my back, thrust my breasts against the thin blue linen. Exposed. Helpless.
How they dare, the furious voice wept inside me.
This is what you are for, the other answered.
Darius stood frozen until Angela made a soft, impatient sound. He fumbled with the tie of his kilt. The fabric fell. He was half-aroused already, a pragmatic response to fear and opportunity. My eyes stung. I knew this body, had explored it in laughter and mutual service. Now it was a tool for my degradation.
“Proceed,” came the Empress’s voice from above.
I leaned forward. The world narrowed to the heat radiating from him, the musk of his skin. I closed my eyes, but it was worse. All sensation amplified. The silence of the room was a roar. I could hear Marisa’s soft, even breathing from behind me.
I extended my tongue, the first contact a shocking wet salt. He flinched. I flinched. A low, approving murmur came from the throne. I began to lick, slow, tentative laps, a grotesque parody of affection. My mind recoiled, a storm of outrage and shame. This was beneath me. This was filthy.
But my body, treacherous and alive, reported a different truth.
The heat was not just his. It was mine, pooling low in my belly, a flush spreading across my chest. The helplessness of my bound wrists, the utter lack of choice, carved away the last fragments of my old, complicated self. There was a terrible purity here. No decisions. Only obedience. My breathing hitched, misting against his skin.
He hardened fully under my mouth. A soft groan escaped him, quickly stifled. I took him in, the act mechanical at first, then something else. The weight on my tongue, the salt-tang of his precum, the shudder that ran through his thighs. My own pulse hammered between my legs, a hot, insistent counter-rhythm to my ministrations. I hated it. I reveled in it. The division was not just in my mind now; it was a chasm tearing my soul in two.
“She has a talent for this, doesn’t she?” Marisa’s voice was a low, conversational purr meant for Angela. “One forgets.”
Angela didn’t reply. I could feel her gaze like the sun on the back of my neck.
His breathing grew ragged. His fingers, which had been clenched at his sides, twitched. A warning. I worked faster, a dizzying, shameful expertise taking over. I was good at this. I was. The knowledge was a poison and a nectar. His hips gave a tiny, involuntary thrust. A tear finally leaked from my clamped-shut eye, tracing a hot path to my jaw.
He came with a choked gasp, his body rigid.
I swallowed. It was bitter. It was warm. It was the taste of my new station.
For a moment, there was only the sound of his struggling breath and my own. Then the soft rustle of silk as Angela shifted on her throne.
“Adequate,” she pronounced. “You may attend to her, Marisa. Clean her up. Darius, you are dismissed.”
He scrambled back, fumbling with his kilt, bowing blindly before fleeing the chamber. I remained on my knees, wrists bound, the bitter aftermath coating my throat. My body throbbed with a frantic, unmet heat.
Marisa’s slender hands appeared in my periphery. She undid the silk cord with a flick. The blood rushed back into my fingers, a painful prickling. She produced a damp cloth, scented with lemon, and wiped my mouth with a startling, impersonal gentleness. She tilted my chin up, her clever eyes scanning my face—the tear tracks, the dilated pupils, the furious blush.
She leaned close, her whisper a secret just for me. “See? So much simpler.” Her thumb brushed my lower lip, a mockery of a caress. “And you feel it, don’t you? All that fire, with nowhere else to go.”
She stood, offering me a hand I didn’t want to take. I took it. She pulled me to my feet. The blue sheath was damp with my own sweat. I refused to look at the dais.
“Bring her to the baths,” Angela said, her voice already distant, moving on to the next matter of state. “Then to my quarters tonight. I wish to… assess her newfound focus.”
Marisa’s fingers tightened on my arm, guiding me from the room. My steps were unsteady. The shame was a shroud. But beneath it, undeniable, a humiliating, liquid truth simmered.
I was furious.
I was awakened.
And I was, irrevocably, hers.