Chapter 35: The Trap Springs
The silence after their conversation was a living thing. It pressed against my skin, heavy with the echoes of my failure. I remained at the foot of the divan, a statue carved from shame and cold calculation. The plotting in my mind was a clean, sharp counterpoint to the degradation of my body.
Neferti shifted above me. I felt her gaze like a physical weight on the back of my neck.
“Look at me.”
I turned my head, my movements deliberate. I would not be hurried.
She was leaning on one elbow, her expression unreadable. The victory had settled into her now, a quiet, permanent light in her eyes. “You have not yet addressed me properly. The loser acknowledges the winner’s station. You will call me ‘my queen’.”
The air left my lungs. It was a small phrase, a tiny arrangement of syllables, but it was a key that would unlock a final, intimate door to my capitulation. ‘Empress’ was my title, my essence. ‘My queen’ was a submission, a personal fealty. I had never said it to anyone. Not to a lover, not to a slain rival, not even in empty diplomacy.
My green eyes locked with hers. The braziers popped. Across the room, Jabari watched, a faint smile on his lips, enjoying the architecture of this surrender.
I made my voice work. It was low, stripped of its usual resonance, but clear. “My queen.”
The words tasted of ash and aloes.
“Again,” she whispered.
“My queen.”
“Come here.”
I uncurled myself and rose to my knees before the divan. She did not move to meet me. She waited. I understood. I closed the final distance myself, leaning in until our faces were a hand’s breadth apart. I could see the flecks of amber in her dark eyes, the slight sheen of sweat still on her upper lip. Her scent, musky and sweet, filled my senses.
“Now kiss your queen,” she said, her voice barely audible.
A final, elegant cruelty. To make me initiate the act that would seal my defeat. I did not hesitate. Hesitation was a luxury for those who still believed they had choices.
I brought my lips to hers.
It was not the fierce, battling kiss of our contest. It was slow. Deliberate. A performance of allegiance. Her mouth was soft, yielding under mine, and that was the most humiliating part—her passive acceptance of my homage. I kissed her, and the heat of it, the shocking familiarity of the act, sent a treacherous current of need straight through my core. The denied climax from the game, the simmering fury, the intense focus—all of it transmuted, in that instant, into a raw, blinding ache.
I pulled back, my breath catching.
Her hand came up and cupped my cheek, her thumb stroking my cheekbone. It was a parody of tenderness. “Good,” she murmured. Her other hand drifted down, over my collarbone, between my breasts, across the tight plane of my stomach. I shuddered. “The loser’s pleasure is forfeit. You do not have my permission to climax. Not from my touch. Not from your own. Not from the memory of this. Do you understand?”
A whimper died in my throat. The ache became a furious, throbbing pulse. It screamed for relief. Her fingers were so close, yet they traced idle patterns just above the source of the torment. The denial was an exquisite cage. I nodded, my jaw clenched.
“Use your words.”
“I understand,” I grated out.
Her touch withdrew. The absence was a torture worse than the teasing. I swayed slightly, my body betraying me, begging for the resolution it had been so close to achieving before the obsidian egg fell. The need was a physical pressure, a second heartbeat lodged low in my belly. It clouded thought. It eroded will.
She watched the struggle on my face. Her smile was faint, knowing. “What is it, Empress? Does the body rebel against the mind’s agreement?”
I swallowed. The room swam. The scent of myrrh was suddenly cloying, suffocating. All my plans, my cold revenge, they were smoke under this biological onslaught. I was nothing but this want.
The words tore from me, raw and desperate, before I could cage them. “Please. Let me finish. I will give you anything.” I heard myself, a stranger’s voice, hoarse with need. “Name your price. Gold. Territory. The harbor taxes from the northern provinces.”
She laughed, a soft, breathy sound. “I have gold.”
“Then what? What do you want?” I was babbling now, leaning into her space, my hands gripping the edge of the divan. The pressure was unbearable, a tight, burning coil. “The fertile lands by the river? The tribute from the eastern kings?”
Her eyes held mine, merciless and clear. “You misunderstand. I have won those things already, by winning you. They are mine to take when I choose. I am asking what you would give.Right now. For this.” Her hand descended, and this time her fingers did not tease. They pressed, firmly, exactly where I needed them, through the thin linen of my gown. A shockwave of near-painful promise ripped through me.
My vision blurred. Reason shattered.
“My realm,” I gasped. The words hung in the air, huge and stupid. “You can have a share of my realm. A co-regency. Just let me—”
The pressure of her hand vanished.
Silence.
Cold, clarifying horror rushed into the vacuum where the heat had been. It doused me like icy water. I blinked. I saw her expression shift from curiosity to pure, undiluted astonishment, then to a contempt so deep it was almost pity.
I had just offered my empire for a moment’s physical release.
Jabari let out a low, disbelieving whistle from the shadows. “Now that,” he said slowly, “is a first.”
Neferti stared at me as if seeing a new, pathetic species of insect. The last vestiges of sensual play evaporated. “Your realm,” she repeated flatly. “You would trade the legacy of your dynasty, the loyalty of your people, the weight of your crown… for the tension in your belly?”
The full magnitude of my words crashed down upon me. My face, already flushed with arousal, burned with a deeper, mortifying fire. I had not just been defeated. I had been unraveled. I had shown her, and more importantly myself, the rotten, weak core hidden within the iron. I would have betrayed everything. For a touch.
I looked away, unable to bear her gaze. My shoulders slumped. The frantic, physical need was still there, a throbbing reminder of my disgrace, but it was now drowned in a vaster sea of self-loathing.
“Get out,” Neferti said, her voice devoid of all warmth. “Go back to your ancells. Look at them, and remember what you were willing to forfeit for the sake of your own skin’s hunger.”
I stumbled to my feet. My legs were weak. I did not look at Jabari. I did not ask for permission. I turned and walked toward the chamber doors, my bare feet silent on the furs. Each step was a funeral march.
As the guards opened the heavy doors, the cooler air of the hallway hit me. I saw Benedetta and Marisa straighten from their posts, their faces shifting from boredom to immediate concern as they took in my expression, my posture. Their empress, broken.
I walked past them without a word. The echo of my offer rang in my skull, a damnation louder than any curse.
My realm.
I had offered my realm. And in that reckless, desperate moment, I had meant it.