Chapter 25: The Emissary's Gaze
The myrrh smoke coiled thick in the slanting morning light, a sacred haze that did nothing to cleanse the air of what was about to happen. It only made it harder to see, harder to breathe. I sat upon the obsidian throne, its silver veins cold even through my robes. The Nubian emissary, a mountain of a man named Dakarai, stood before me, his skin like polished ebony against the white linen of his kilt. He spoke of grain tariffs, of river rights, his voice a deep, rumbling melody. I heard the words, shaped appropriate responses, my own voice steady as carved stone. The Empress was present. In control.
But beneath the throne, nestled in its shadow where the cool of the stone seeped into the marble floor, my ancells waited.
I felt their stillness more than I saw them. Benedetta, a calm, grounded presence to my right. Marisa, a coiled spring of anticipation to my left. The collar was a familiar weight now, a constant companion under the high, gold-threaded neckline of my formal attire. A key, I had begun to believe. A private truth.
Dakarai finished his address with a bow. The audience was concluding. Protocol dictated my dismissal, his withdrawal.
Then Marisa moved.
It was a subtle shift, just the soft scrape of her sandal. She didn’t look at me. She looked at Dakarai, and she smiled—not the mischievous grin she saved for our chambers, but a slow, deliberate, knowing curve of her lips. A signal.
Benedetta’s hand, hidden from the court by the throne’s bulk, came to rest on my ankle. A warning squeeze. Or an encouragement. I couldn’t tell.
“The Empress,” Marisa said, her voice clear and resonant in the hall, “wishes to demonstrate her… personal commitment to this new accord. A gesture beyond treaties.”
Dakarai’s eyes, sharp with intelligence, flicked from her to me. He was no fool. He saw the dynamic, the way my ancells spoke from the shadow of power. He said nothing, waiting.
My heart was a frantic bird in a cage of bone. This was the trap. Not laid by enemies, but by my own. The choice Marisa had spoken of in the dark—chain or key—was being ripped from the private chamber and displayed here, in the blazing sun of the throne room. There was no escape that wouldn’t shatter everything.
Benedetta’s hand urged gently.
I rose. The movement was regal, fluid. Every courtier, every guard held their breath. I descended the two shallow steps from the dais. The sound of my own footsteps was enormous. I stopped before Dakarai. He towered over me. I could smell the sandalwood oil on his skin, the dust of the journey on his clothes.
I did not look at his face. I looked at the ornate buckle of his leather kilt strap.
Then I knelt.
A gasp, sharp and collective, sliced through the room. The marble was brutally hard and cold against my knees. The reality of the position was a physical shock. I, who was never lower than anyone, was on my knees. The Empress was gone. Only Angela remained, exposed and trembling.
I heard the rustle of linen. Saw the shift of his stance. My vision narrowed to the texture of the woven belt, the glint of bronze.
My fingers, which had signed death warrants and peace accords, felt clumsy as they worked the buckle. The leather gave way. The linen draped loosely. And there, presented to me, was the flesh of the matter. Thick, semi-aroused already from the spectacle, from the power of it. The scent of him was musky, alien.
This is the end of you, a voice screamed inside my skull. You are broken now. They have broken you.
My ancells had done this. They had engineered my annihilation. The betrayal was a taste of copper in my mouth, sharper than fear.
But beneath that, a colder, stranger current stirred. The collar felt heavy, true. But it was also an anchor. This humiliation was theirs as much as mine. They watched. They had orchestrated it. I was not alone in this degradation. We were all drowning in it together.
I leaned forward.
The first touch of my lips to his skin was clinical. A dry, foreign pressure. He twitched. A low groan escaped him. The sound, involuntary and raw, did something to me. It was a reaction I had caused. Not as Empress, but as this. As a woman on her knees.
I opened my mouth.
The reality of taking him in was a suffocating fullness, a stretch that made my jaw ache. The taste was salt and skin and something profoundly vulnerable. This was not the curated, perfumed world of my chambers. This was animal and real. I gagged, tears springing to my eyes from the reflex.
“Easy,” Marisa’s voice came, soft but clear from the throne’s shadow. Not a command from a subject. An instruction from a trainer. A lover.
I forced myself to breathe through my nose. To relax. The rhythm, once established, was hypnotic. The world dissolved into sensation: the weight on my tongue, the scrape of calloused hands tentatively settling on my coiled red hair, the choked sounds from above. The shocked, silent awe of the court was a palpable force against my skin.
And a terrible, forbidden knowledge bloomed in the centre of my shame.
I was good at this.
There was a power here, in this absolute submission. A dark, inverted control. His every hitch of breath, every tremor in his thighs, was mine to command. His dignity was unraveling by my design. I was reducing the mighty emissary to a shuddering, helpless thing, and I was doing it with my mouth. A slick, heated warmth pooled low in my belly. The ache between my own legs was a brutal counterpoint to the ache in my jaw.
The collar was not a chain. In this moment of monstrous debasement, it was the key. It had unlocked a part of me the throne never could—a part that thrilled at the ruin of my own image, that found a devastating freedom in having no lower left to fall.
He finished with a sharp, stifled cry, his fingers tightening in my hair. I took it, swallowing the bitter proof of my service. The act was complete.
I sat back on my heels, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I finally looked up.
Dakarai’s face was a mask of stunned, sated awe. He fumbled with his linen, his regal composure in tatters.
But my eyes found Marisa and Benedetta. They were not smiling in triumph. Their faces were stark, pale. They saw it. They saw the flush on my skin, the dazed clarity in my green eyes. They saw that their trap had caught something far more dangerous than a humbled Empress.
They had meant to shatter me. To prove I was theirs.
Instead, they had introduced me to myself.
I stood, my legs steady. The taste of him was in me, a covenant more binding than any scroll. I looked at Dakarai, then past him to my silent court.
“The accord is sealed,” I said, and my voice was not broken. It was new. It was low, husky with use, and utterly, terrifyingly calm. “You may withdraw.”
As he stumbled back, bowing with a new, confused reverence, I turned and walked back to my throne. I did not look at my ancells. I sat, the obsidian cold once more against my back.
The sun through the high windows had moved. The shadows were different now. Everything was.
I had served a cock in my own throne room. And part of me, a deep, secret part I would never again be able to disown, had loved it. The Empress was dead. Long live whatever was left.