Chapter 6: The Maid Who Watched
The fire had burned low when Amber sat up in the furs and declared it was time.
"Time for what?" Ray asked, though he already knew.
"The lake. I told you we'd go back every night."
"We went last night."
"Last night was last night. This is tonight." She was already out of the bed, naked, reaching for the plain clothes they'd worn before. "Get up, Your Majesty. The water's waiting."
He dressed in the linen shirt and wool trousers, laced the borrowed boots, and watched her braid her damp hair with quick fingers. The castle was quiet in the way only old stone could be quiet, every sound swallowed, every corridor empty. They took the same route as before, past the suit of armor on its landing, down the narrow stairs, through passages where the torches had burned down to stubs in their iron cages.
The eastern door was unguarded again. It groaned on its hinges when Ray pulled it open, and cold pine-scented air rushed in.
The moon was high, a day fatter than the last, and it poured light across the grove until the pine needles gleamed like oiled steel. They followed the path, their boots crunching softly, and stepped out of the trees at the water's edge.
A figure stood on the shore.
Ray stopped so sharply that Amber walked into his back. Someone was already there, a small shape at the margin of the silver water, knee-deep, a bundle of linen held against her chest. At the sound of their footsteps she spun, and the moonlight caught her face.
It was the maid. The shy one, the one who had revealed the spring and guided them down, who kept her eyes lowered and her mouth shut. Her wide eyes were rounded with something between terror and awe.
"Your Majesties," she breathed, and dropped into a curtsy so deep she nearly lost her footing in the shallows.
"You again," Amber said. "What are you doing out here?"
The girl's face went scarlet, a color even the moonlight couldn't hide. She clutched her bundle tighter, which turned out to be her own shift and a towel, and her mouth worked for a moment before any sound came out.
"I beg your pardon. I didn't know anyone would come. I thought, since the eastern door, since no one guards it, I thought it was safe to bathe here, that no one would..." She trailed off. Her gaze flicked up to them and immediately away, fixing on the water.
"You thought no one would come," Ray said slowly, "to the spot we found first."
"I didn't know you'd found it. I mean, I knew, after. I..." She pressed her lips together. Water lapped at her calves. She was barefoot, her skirts hiked and tied above her knees, and she stood there trembling like a rabbit that had wandered into a wolf's den.
Amber tilted her head. "After. You knew after. How did you know after?"
The silence stretched long enough that the owl in the pines called once.
"I saw you," the maid whispered.
Ray felt Amber tense beside him, a small shift of weight, the coiling he'd learned to read years ago. "You saw us," Amber said, her voice velvet over steel. "Swimming?"
"I saw... everything." The girl's voice cracked. "I came out here two nights past, after I'd shown you the spring and you'd gone to your chambers. I wanted to bathe where no one watched me. And then you came through the trees, and I couldn't move, I was afraid if I did you'd see me, and then you were..." She squeezed her eyes shut. "In the water. Together. Like that."
"You watched a King and his Queen," Ray said, "fucking in the lake."
The crude word made her flinch, but she didn't run. She nodded, once, small and miserable.
"And you said nothing."
"I would never say anything." Her eyes opened, wet-bright, fixed on his boots. "Not to anyone. Not for anything. I swear it on my mother's grave."
Amber crouched slightly, drawing the girl's gaze up. "But you're here tonight. At the same spot. At the same hour we'd be likely to come. That doesn't feel like nothing."
The maid's breath shuddered out of her. She looked at the water, at her own feet, at the moon, anywhere but at them. Then, in a rush:
"There's something I want to ask. I have no right to ask it. But I thought, if I was brave enough to be here when you came, and I offered you the only thing I have, my silence, freely, forever, no price except..." She swallowed. "Except the favor itself."
"Which is?" Amber asked.
The girl's voice dropped so low the wind nearly took it. "I've never been touched. Never by anyone. And I watched what you did to each other, the way she cried out, the way you held her, and I've thought of nothing else since. Every night I lie awake and my own hands aren't enough anymore. I want to know what it's like. Just once. Just to know." Her chin came up, trembling but determined. "I'll keep your secret all my life, whether you say yes or no. I only ask because I can't think of anyone else I could ask."
The wind moved through the pines. The lake lapped, patient and silver.
Ray glanced at Amber. She was watching the girl with an expression he knew well, the slow, calculating green-eyed look she usually reserved for courtiers who had made an error in her presence. But there was nothing cold in it now. There was curiosity. Interest.
"What's your name?" Amber asked.
"Mara, Your Majesty."
"Mara." Amber stepped closer, her bare feet silent on the cold stones. She reached out and took the bundle from the girl's arms, setting it on a flat rock above the waterline. "You watched us and didn't look away."
"I couldn't."
"You wanted what you saw."
"Yes."
Amber reached up and unbraided her own hair with two fingers, letting it fall loose over her shoulders. Then she pulled the linen shirt over her head in one motion and stood naked in the moonlight, utterly unashamed, her skin pale and glowing, her nipples tight from the cold.
Mara's mouth fell open. Her eyes went wide and stayed there.
"Then take off your clothes," Amber said, "and come into the water with us."
Mara's hands flew to the laces of her dress and stopped. "You'll... you'll show me? Both of you?"
Ray stepped to Amber's side, close enough that his arm brushed hers. "We'll do more than show you," he said. "Question is whether you can hold still while we do it."
The girl looked from him to Amber and back again. Then her fingers found the laces again, fumbling, and the first knot came loose with a small, desperate sound.
The second knot gave way faster than the first. Whatever shyness had rooted her to the shore broke all at once, and Mara pulled her dress over her head with a haste that made her stumble, shedding it into the stones. Her shift followed, dragged up and off in one rough motion, and then she stood naked in the moonlight, chest heaving, arms half-lifted as if she didn't know what to do with her hands now that they were empty.
She was younger than Amber, small and narrow through the waist, her skin flushed pink from cold and nerves in equal measure. Small breasts with dark nipples hardened by the night air, a soft thatch of brown hair between her thighs. She didn't cover herself. She didn't seem to know she could.
"Well," Amber said, and there was warmth in it now, real warmth. "That was eager."
"I was afraid you'd change your mind if I was slow about it." Mara's voice shook. Her eyes kept traveling over Amber's naked body, drinking in every detail, then flicking to Ray, to the front of his trousers, then away in a panic of propriety that arrived far too late.
"Come here," Amber said, and waded into the water, holding out her hand.
Mara took it.
The cold hit her at the thighs and she gasped, a high helpless sound, gripping Amber's fingers so hard her knuckles went white. At the waist she shuddered. At the ribs her breath came in ragged little pants, and Amber laughed and pulled her deeper, until the water lapped at her collarbones and her small breasts floated free, silver-lit, her dark nipples breaking the surface and sinking again with every swell.
"Look at her," Amber said over her shoulder. "She's shivering herself to pieces."
"She'll warm up." Ray waded in behind them both, shedding his shirt as he went, dropping his trousers on the shore. When the water closed around his hips he crossed to Mara's other side, and the girl turned her head, found herself flanked by the two of them, and went very still. Her lips were parted. Her breath fogged in the cold air.
"Has anyone ever kissed you?" Amber asked.
"No, Your Majesty."
"Amber. When we're like this, just Amber."
"Amber," Mara repeated, tasting the name, and then Amber leaned in and kissed her.
It was clumsy. The girl didn't know where to put her mouth, and her eyes were still open in astonishment, and her hands hovered uselessly at her sides in the water. But Amber cupped her jaw and tilted her and slowed her down, and within a dozen heartbeats Mara's eyes had fallen shut and her mouth had softened and learned. A small sound came out of her, swallowed by the kiss, and her whole body tipped toward Amber like something coming loose from an anchor.
"Good girl," Amber murmured against her lips. "See? Nothing to it."
Ray touched her back. Just his palm, flat against her shoulder blade, and she jerked like he'd branded her, breaking the kiss to look at him with huge wet eyes.
"Easy," he said. "I'm not going to do anything you don't ask for."
"And what," Amber said, sliding her hand down Mara's arm beneath the water, "would you ask for?"
Mara's throat worked. "I don't know. I don't know what there is. I watched, but watching isn't knowing, is it? I saw her mouth on you in the water and I've thought about it every night since. I've thought about both of you. Every night." Her voice cracked on the last word. "That's filthy, isn't it? To think that about your King and Queen."
"It's flattering," Ray said.
"It's the best compliment we've had all year," Amber said, and took Mara's hand, and drew it down under the surface, over her own flat stomach, down to the dark triangle between her thighs. "Here. Learn with your hands first."
Mara's fingers touched her and she made a sound like she'd been struck. Her fingers trembled against Amber's cunt, exploring, pressing carefully through the folds, finding the swollen nub at the top and feeling Amber's hips roll in answer.
"That," Amber breathed. "That's the place. There. Like that. Slower."
"Amber," Mara whispered, staring down into the silver water as if she could see through it, "is this what you watched?" Her fingers moved in a slow uncertain circle.
"That's it. Don't stop."
Ray moved closer behind the girl. He put one hand at her waist, feeling her flank quiver, and slid the other around to rest just below her navel, not touching lower, not yet. She stilled but didn't pull away, her fingers still working between Amber's legs, her breath coming faster.
"Her fingers are learning," Amber said, her voice gone low and rough. "Ray. She's going to shake herself apart before she even gets what she came for."
"Then we'd better be quick about it." He drew his hand down, over the soft curve of her belly, and Mara's thighs fell open in the water without any instruction at all. His fingers traced the top of her mound, the downy hair wet and fine, and she whined.
"Oh," she said. "Oh, that's. Nobody has ever."
"First of many," Ray said, and slid a single finger down through her slit.
She was burning hot against the cold water, impossibly wet beyond it, and when his fingertip found her opening she bucked, one hand flying out of Amber's to clutch his forearm. Her channel gripped the tip of his finger as it pressed inside, tight as a fist, untouched muscle clenching around the intrusion even as her hips pushed shamelessly down to take more.
"Fuck," she gasped, the first obscenity she'd ever spoken aloud, and she said it like a revelation. "Fuck. That's what that feels like. That's what it is."
"That's barely it," Ray said, and pushed deeper, curling his finger up against the front wall of her, and Mara's whole body arched, her back bowing, her small breasts thrust out of the water and gleaming in the moonlight.
Amber caught one nipple in her mouth.
Mara screamed. Actually screamed, high and cracked, the sound rolling out across the black lake and coming back off the far shore. Her hand fumbled back into place on Amber's cunt, pressing hard, and Ray worked his finger inside her in slow deliberate strokes while Amber suckled her breast, and the girl stood between them shuddering like a leaf in a gale, utterly unmade.
"I'm going to," she panted. "Something's happening. I read, the kitchen girls talked, I thought they were inventing it. I'm going to. Oh, oh, please don't stop either of you, please, please."
"Come for us," Amber said against her nipple, and bit down gently.
Mara came apart between them. Her orgasm hit her like a wave breaking over her head, her cunt clamping down on Ray's finger in hard rhythmic pulses, her knees giving out so suddenly that both of them had to catch her, one at her waist and one at her arm, holding her up while the water rocked around them and she sobbed and gasped and shook, saying their names in a broken jumble, both of them, King and Queen, Majesty and Amber and Ray, all of it at once.
When it finally ebbed she hung limp between them, boneless, her cheek fallen against Amber's shoulder. Her thighs trembled in the water.
"Oh," she said faintly. "Oh, that was. And that's only fingers."
Amber laughed, low and dark, brushing wet hair back from the girl's dazed face. "Mara. We have all night, and you have all of us."
Ray slid his finger out of her slowly, and she whined at the loss, clutching at his wrist. He brought his wet hand up to his mouth and tasted her, deliberate, watching her eyes go wide all over again.
"How do you want the rest?" he asked her.
Mara looked at him, then at Amber, then down at the water hiding all three of them, and her hand, steady now, found the front of nothing at all and closed on Amber's hip instead, pulling herself between them.
"I want everything," she said. "In any order you like. I'm not going anywhere."
Amber kissed her wet temple and looked at Ray over the girl's dark head, her green eyes wicked in the moonlight.
"Then let's not waste the night," she said, and drew them both deeper into the lake.
The water deepened until it lifted their feet from the stones, and Amber turned Mara to face Ray, holding her shoulders from behind. The girl's head fell back against the Queen's collarbone, her throat bare and offered.
"Here is the rest of it," Amber murmured against her ear. "He's going to fuck you now. I'll hold you up. All you have to do is let it happen."
Ray freed his cock from the water, hard and aching, the cold lake a shock against his flushed skin. He guided Mara's small hand down to it, curling her fingers around the shaft. She gasped, her grip clumsy and curious, sliding along him once, twice, feeling the weight of what she'd watched from the reeds two nights ago.
"It's so big," she whispered. "It won't fit."
"It fits," Amber said. "You'll stretch. That's the whole of it, love. Now spread your legs."
Mara did. Ray hooked one of her knees over his forearm, opening her in the moonlight, and Amber reached around to spread her lips with two fingers, baring the flushed pink slit beneath the silver water. Ray pressed the head of his cock against her opening and pushed, slow and inexorable.
The girl went rigid. Her channel resisted him, stretched taut around the blunt crown, and she whimpered, high and thready, her nails biting into Amber's thighs.
"Breathe," Amber said. "Push down, not away. That's it. That's a good girl."
The resistance broke. Her maidenhead gave in one small sharp give and Ray slid into her, inch after inch, her virgin cunt gripping him so tight his vision swam. She was scalding inside, tighter than anything he'd ever felt, and she sobbed as he seated himself fully, her whole body trembling in their shared hold.
"Oh god," she cried. "Oh, it hurts. It hurts and it doesn't. Don't stop, please don't stop."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Ray said through his teeth. Her cunt milked him with every fluttering pulse, and he held still, letting her adjust, watching tears and moonlight mix on her flushed face.
Amber's fingers found the girl's clit above where Ray filled her, circling gently. The pain melted off Mara's face in seconds, replaced by something stunned and greedy. Her hips began to move, tiny rocking motions, taking Ray deeper.
"It feels like being split open and filled up," she panted. "Is it always like this?"
"Wait until he actually moves," Amber said.
He did. He drew out until only the head remained and drove back in, and Mara screamed across the water again, both hands flying up to clutch Amber's hair, her knee locked over Ray's arm. He set a rhythm, deep and rolling, the lake slapping softly around them, and Amber held the girl upright and worked her clit in tight circles and whispered filth into her ear the whole time.
"Look at you," Amber breathed. "Taking a King's cock on your first night. You're soaked for it. I can feel you dripping past him into the water."
"It's too much," Mara wailed, but her hips were slamming back to meet every thrust now, wanton and frantic. "It's too much, I'm going to, again, I'm going to again."
"Come on his cock this time," Amber ordered. "I want to feel you seize."
She did. Her orgasm tore through her so hard that Ray nearly lost his grip, her cunt clamping and rippling around him in waves, her screams fracturing into wordless cries that echoed off the stone wall behind them. The rhythmic clench dragged Ray's own release up fast, pressure coiling at the base of his spine.
"Where do you want it?" he ground out. "Tell me."
"Inside," Mara sobbed. "The way she had it. Please, I want to feel what she felt."
Ray buried himself to the root and came, pumping her full in thick spurts, his groan low and animal in the cold air. Mara shuddered through every pulse of it, moaning at the heat flooding her, her thighs shaking against his arm.
They held her between them while she came down, the three of them drifting, her spent cunt still fluttering weakly around his softening cock. Her cheek was wet. She was smiling.
"I understand now," she said faintly. "Why she couldn't be quiet. I couldn't be quiet either and I tried."
Amber laughed and kissed the top of her head, then nodded to Ray. "There's still more of us she hasn't learned."
"What else?" Mara asked, her eyes widening.
Ray slid out of her, his seed leaking white into the dark water, and turned her gently by the shoulders toward Amber. "You watched her mouth on me," he said. "Tonight you'll do it."
Mara's breath caught. Amber guided her down through the shallows until her knees found a flat submerged shelf of stone, until the girl knelt with the water at her waist and Ray's cock stood level with her lips, gleaming wet and hardening again from the sight of her.
"Open your mouth," Amber said, crouched beside her, one hand cupping the back of her skull. "Cover your teeth. Take just the head first."
Mara obeyed. Her lips stretched around him, hot and unpracticed, and she gagged softly on the first inch, her eyes flying up in apology.
"Slow," Ray said, fisting a hand in her wet hair. "Breathe through your nose. Deeper when you can."
She learned fast, greedy as she'd been with everything else, bobbing and swallowing, her tongue clumsy and eager. Amber murmured corrections against her ear, wider, relax your throat, use your hand on what won't fit, and Mara's moans vibrated up his shaft until his thighs tightened.
"Enough," he said finally, and pulled her off with a wet pop, her mouth swollen and red. "She's earned the rest. On the rock, on your back."
The flat stone above the waterline was warm where the night air couldn't reach it. They laid Mara on it, her body silver and streaming, and Amber climbed over her face, kneeling astride her head, sinking her soaked cunt down onto the girl's eager mouth while Ray lifted her hips and drove into her from behind.
The girl ate her first cunt and took her second fucking at once, muffled cries vibrating into Amber's flesh, her hips pushing back to meet every thrust. Amber rode her tongue with her head thrown back, moaning to the moon, and Ray fucked the maid hard across the stone until both women came nearly together, Amber shuddering above the girl's face, Mara convulsing and clenching around Ray's cock for the third time.
He spilled into her again and pulled out slow, watching his seed run down her thigh onto the moonlit rock.
Mara lay sprawled and boneless between them, lips shiny, cunt dripping, utterly wrecked and grinning at the sky.
"I'll keep your secret," she said. "But I'm coming back tomorrow night."
"No," Amber said, running a hand through the girl's soaked hair. "You'll come at our summons. Our rooms, after we ring. Every night we're here."
Mara's smile widened. "Yes, Your Majesty."
Mara floated on her back a moment longer, staring up at the moon, then laughed at herself and rolled over to swim for the shore.
They climbed out dripping into the cold night air. Mara stood shivering on the stones, her dress a crumpled heap where she'd dropped it, and stared at the wet fabric as if she'd forgotten how it worked. Amber took pity on her, wringing out the skirt with quick hands before shaking the wrinkles out of it.
"Skirt first," Amber said. "Then the laces. You'll manage."
Mara dressed faster than she had undressed, but her fingers were stiff with cold and the knots defeated her twice. Ray ended it by stepping behind her and pulling the laces tight himself, his knuckles brushing the knob of her spine, and the girl went rigid at the touch, then melted, and Amber caught Ray's eye over her bowed head and grinned.
"I'll take the east door back," Mara said, hauling her shift on under the dress. Her hair hung in a soaked rope down her back. "The kitchen stair. No one questions me if I'm wet. They'll say I fell in the cistern."
"And if they ask what you were doing out here?" Ray asked.
"Falling in the cistern, Your Majesty." She lifted her chin, and for a second there was something under the shyness, something with an edge to it. "I told you. I can keep a secret."
She gathered her towel and her bundle, dropped one last curtsy that was more of a wobble, and padded off barefoot through the pines. Her footsteps faded into the needles. Then it was only the owl and the water.
Amber wrung her braid out over the stones. "She'll be at our door tomorrow before we ring."
"I know."
"You liked her."
"I liked that she came back," Ray said. "Brave's rare in a servant. Useful, too."
"You liked more than that." Amber pulled her shirt over her head, the linen sticking to her breasts, and laughed at his silence. "Don't worry. So did I. Her mouth is a quick study. Imagine what two more nights will make of her."
They dressed and took the path back through the grove. The eastern door groaned on its hinges; the corridor beyond was empty, the torch stubs burning low in their cages. The stone drank the warmth from their wet clothes at every step, and by the time they reached the landing with the armor they were pressed close together for heat, Amber's cold hand tucked into Ray's.
A footman was waiting at the turning to the royal apartments.
He straightened so fast his heels clicked. His eyes went to their soaked hair, the wet hems, the borrowed clothes, and then fixed resolutely on a point above their heads. "Your Majesties. His Lordship's steward sends word. The feast will be served within the hour. The household has assembled in the great hall."
"Within the hour," Ray repeated.
"Yes, Majesty. Water for washing has been laid in your chambers. The garrison steward begs your patience; Ravenshold's kitchens are not what they were, but the boar was brought down Tuesday and His Lordship insisted it be saved for your arrival."
Amber smoothed her wet braid with two fingers, entirely unhurried. "Tell His Lordship's steward we'll be down directly."
The footman bowed and went.
"Directly," Amber said, when his steps had faded. "That's generous. I'm soaked to the bone and I smell like lake and both of you."
"You'll smell like that at the feast either way, under the wool."
"Mm. The boar." She started up the stairs, then paused on the third step, looking back at him with her green eyes narrowed in thought. "Edran Vosk couldn't greet us. Couldn't spare an hour from his ledgers for a King and Queen. But he saved a boar."
"He's a man who counts everything."
"Then someone will have counted us, coming in through the eastern door at midnight, wet as drowned rats." She climbed the rest of the stairs. "It doesn't matter. Let him count."
In their chambers the fire had been rebuilt, blazing high, and steam rose off a basin of fresh water by the window. Their traveling clothes hung brushed and aired on a stand by the hearth; someone had been in and out while they swam, and Ray felt Amber register it at the same moment he did. Neither of them said anything. They washed in silence, cold skin under warm water, trading the single cloth between them.
Amber dressed first, pulling the fresh gown over her head and holding her wet braid up while Ray laced her. He dressed more slowly, working the buckles of his court boots, and when he looked up she was standing at the mirror, turning her collar to check the marks on her throat. His marks, from the bed, still dark against her pale skin.
"Leave them," she said, before he could suggest anything.
"I wasn't going to."
"You were thinking about it." She smiled at his reflection. "Let the household see. Let them count that too."
A knock at the door. The same footman, breathless, bowed low.
"The household is assembled, Majesties. If you will follow me to the great hall."
They followed, side by side, her hand tucked back into his arm. Torches flared as they passed. Somewhere below, the sound of a hall filling with quiet, calculating people carried up the stairwell, and under it, fainter, the smell of roasting boar and woodsmoke.
"Smile," Amber murmured as they descended. "You're a King now, in front of all of them."
"I am smiling."
"You're glowering."
"Then I'm smiling the way Kings do."
The great hall doors opened ahead of them, firelight and faces spilling out, and at the head of the long table a thin old man with a ledger under his arm rose from his seat and bowed, precise as a coin dropping.