Chapter 4: The Beginning of Lust
The sight hit Simon like a physical blow the moment he re-entered the Silver Hall’s main chamber: Lady Francesca, perched on a velvet pouf right beside the great silver throne, her head tilted in a laugh as she whispered something into the ear of King Aldric. The King, a shrunken figure wrapped in furs, actually chuckled, a dry, rasping sound Simon rarely heard, his gnarled hand patting Francesca’s arm with a familiarity that made Simon’s guts coil. Bile, hot and acidic, rose in his throat.
She’s already at the source, he thought, his hands curling into fists at his sides. Measuring the drapes for her future window.
He forced his feet to carry him forward, each step a battle. The memory ambushed him, not as a thought, but as a full-sensory trap.
That summer. He was twenty-two, raw from his first major command, his soul still ringing with the screams of the battlefield. Francesca had been a cool, blonde oasis. She’d sought him out in the quiet library of her father’s estate, her fingers tracing the fresh scar on his forearm. “It makes you look fierce,” she’d murmured, and he, starving for any touch that wasn’t violence, had believed her.
It started in that library. Her mouth was greedy, her hands impatient. She shoved books from a heavy oak table with a sweep of her arm, the thud of leather bindings on stone a prelude. “Fuck me here,” she’d breathed against his lips, already working the laces of his breeches. He was hard, aching, a willing prisoner. He lifted her, her legs wrapping around his waist, her silk skirts a riot around them. He entered her in one rough, desperate thrust, her back arching off the polished wood. “Yes, like that,” she hissed, her nails digging into the scars on his shoulders. It was frantic, a bruising collision of hips and hunger. She came with a sharp cry, her body clamping around him, and he followed, spilling into her with a groan he’d tried to stifle in the sweat-damp column of her neck.
After, tangled in her bed, he’d made the mistake of speaking. Of telling her how the silence after a battle was worse than the noise. How he’d find himself looking at his own hands, wondering if they were still his. She’d listened, propped on an elbow, her expression unreadable. Then she’d laughed, a light, tinkling sound. “My brooding warrior. You think you have darkness? Try being a woman with a father who owns half the north and sees you as a bargaining chip.” She’d traced his jaw. “You’re just sensitive. Like your poor mother. I heard she used to talk to the portraits in the hall. Is that where you get it?”
The words had iced him from the inside out. She’d used his vulnerability, a confession he’d never made to another living soul, as a ladder to climb onto her own cross. His mother’s shattered mind, a direct result of his father’s rages, was a weaponized anecdote. He’d left her bed before dawn and hadn’t looked back. A warm, willing body meant absolute fuck-all when the soul inside it was a calculated, frozen wasteland.
The memory snapped away, leaving the present reality even more foul. He reached the dais, the weight of the court’s attention settling on him like chains.
“Simon,” the King croaked, his watery eyes sharpening. “Francesca tells me you’ve been neglecting your guests. Particularly her.”
Simon’s gaze cut to Francesca. She gave him a smile of pure, polished innocence. “I only mentioned that we barely had a moment to speak, Your Majesty. After all our… history.”
“See that you rectify it,” King Aldric commanded, a flicker of his old tyrannical will cutting through his frailty. “Walk with her. Now.”
It was not a suggestion. It was a royal order, issued in front of the entire watching court to bolster the Duke’s alliance. Simon gave a single, stiff nod.
Francesca slid her hand into the crook of his elbow with the smoothness of a sheathed dagger. Her touch burned through the fabric. She steered him away from the throne, away from the crowd, toward a secluded alcove framed by heavy, dark curtains. The noise of the hall faded to a muffled hum.
“You’re still angry,” she said, her voice dropping its performative sweetness, becoming matter-of-fact. “After all this time. It’s rather childish, Simon.”
He said nothing, staring at a tapestry depicting some forgotten hunt.
“We were good together,” she pressed, stepping closer. The familiar scent of her lily perfume enveloped him, a smell he once associated with desire and now only with betrayal. “You can’t pretend we weren’t. I remember how you’d fuck me. That time in the stables. You pinned me against the stall door, remember? My dress around my waist, your hand over my mouth so the grooms wouldn’t hear. You came so hard you bit my shoulder. I bled. I liked it.”
He turned his head slowly, looking down at her. His eyes were devoid of the heat she was trying to conjure. “You talked about my mother.”
Francesca blinked, thrown. “What?”
“After the stables. After the library. After all of it. You laughed about my mother.” His voice was low, a flat, dead thing. “You used what I told you in confidence as a fucking weapon. So you can take your memories of steam and stables and shove them straight up your scheming cunt. They mean less than nothing to me.”
She recoiled as if slapped, her porcelain composure cracking to reveal the furious woman beneath. “You self-righteous bastard! You think you’re the only one with burdens? I am trying to secure my future! Our future! A merger of our houses makes sense!”
“It will never happen,” Simon said, the finality in his tone absolute. He peeled her hand from his arm as if removing a rotting piece of fruit. “Whatever game you and my father are playing, you lose. Stay away from me.”
He turned to walk back into the light and the noise.
Her voice, sharp as a shard of glass, flew after him, hooking into his back. “I’ll be trying, Simon. You mark me. And that African princess you’re making eyes at? She’s a summer storm. Pretty, loud, and gone when the season changes. She won’t change a thing.”
He didn’t break stride
Across the hall, Yaa watched him retreat from Francesca’s alcove, his shoulders a rigid line of contained fury, and she felt an unexpected pang of solidarity.
She turned back to the young woman beside her at the long banquet table, who was now enthusiastically devouring a honey-glazed pastry. “You’ve found your appetite, I see,” Yaa observed, a genuine smile touching her lips at the transformation in Elara.
“I was too nervous to eat before,” Elara admitted, brushing crumbs from her lilac bodice with a blush. “My mother would scold me for such poor strategy. She worked three seamstress contracts just to get this dress made, after my father took ill.” She paused, her voice softening. “He was a good man, once a respected tutor. A friend to the Queen, actually, before… everything.”
Yaa’s interest sharpened. She leaned in slightly, keeping her tone casual. “Before what?”
Elara glanced around, then whispered, “Before she went mad. They say she just ran into the woods one winter night and never came back. But the servants’ talk… they say the King’s rages were terrible. That he’d shout, break things. That he… hit her. And the Prince, too, when he was a boy.”
Yaa sat perfectly still, the court’s noise fading behind a sudden, cold rush of understanding. The prince’s silence, his flinches, the scars that were not all from battle—they rearranged themselves into a horrifying new pattern. “Is that truth or castle gossip?” she asked, her voice low.
“Who can say? But they talk about him, the Ghost, all the time.” Elara’s words tumbled out now, fueled by relief and Yaa’s non-judgmental attention. “Some say he’s our only hope to fix the King’s mistakes. Others say the violence is in his blood, that he’ll be worse. And the ladies… they whisper about him in the bedding sense. That he’s… intense. Amazing, actually. But I don’t know. I just hear things.”
Yaa listened, filing each piece away, separating fear from fact. She believed in evidence, not echoes. She needed to hear the history from the man who lived it. A solid tap on her shoulder made her jump.
Johnny stood there, his expression unreadable. “The Prince requests your company,” he said, his voice low. “In the rose garden. Now.”
Yaa’s breath caught. She gave a curt nod to Elara, then stood, squaring her shoulders as she followed Johnny through a side archway into the biting night air.
The cold outside was a slap, clean and sharp, washing the cloying perfume and murmured lies from her skin. Johnny led her down a gravel path without a word, his presence a solid, silent escort through the sleeping topiaries. The manicured grounds unfolded under a fat, silver moon, every hedge and flowerbed precise, unnaturally still. A part of her wasn’t sure what to expect, what to think, but there was clearly more to the prince she saved than met the eye.
The deeper she went, the more the moonlight seemed to gather, pooling in clearings and glinting off dewy petals. She heard the soft trickle of a fountain before she saw the clearing. He stood by a bank of night-blooming jasmine, his back to her, a dark silhouette against the pale stone. There he was, a tall giant tired of a party he didn’t ask for.
She walked slowly, letting her fingers brush the velvety head of a deep purple rose. She could feel his attention shift from the middle distance to her, a palpable warmth on her skin.
“They’re beautiful,” she said, her voice cutting the quiet. “Even in this cold, they thrive.”
He turned. Moonlight carved the planes of his face, emphasizing the weariness around his eyes. “They’re always tended,” he replied, his voice rougher out here, stripped of its courtly restraint. “Whether I’m here or not. It’s one of the few things that doesn’t require my direct command to simply… exist.”
His 6'2 frame loomed over her small, 5'1 curvy frame as he approached. The sheer size of him should have been intimidating, but the careful space he kept between them felt deliberate, respectful.
“How are you?” she asked, the question softer now.
He released a sigh that seemed to come from his boots, his shoulders relaxing a fraction. “Honestly? I’d like to run away. Just keep walking past these walls and not stop.”
Yaa’s lips twitched. “You haven’t even cut your cake. That seems a drastic precedent to set.”
A ghost of a smile touched his mouth. He gestured to a stone bench half-hidden by a trellis of climbing ivy. Two copper cups and a bottle of dark wine sat waiting. “I stole better provisions. Care to join a deserter?”
She grinned, a real one that reached her eyes. “Happy to oblige.”
They sat. The silence wasn’t empty; it was thick with the things they’d carried from the hall. He poured the wine, a rich, peppery red, and handed her a cup. Their fingers brushed. A spark, simple and clear.
“Tell me about Kumasi,” he said after a long sip. “Your lands. The sun.” He said the word like it was a mythical concept.
So she did. She spoke of the vibrant markets, the smell of earth after the first rains, the way the community gathered under the great tree to settle disputes. He asked about her father, his philanthropy, his death. She told him of the quiet strength that had disappeared from the world, leaving a hole shaped like guidance.
“And the archery?” he prompted, his eyes on her hands.
“A necessary skill for a princess who liked to wander beyond the palace walls,” she said, shrugging. “I had a teacher who believed a woman’s aim could be just as true as a man’s, if not truer. She was right.”
He nodded, absorbing it all. Then she turned the question back, blunt as a stone. “And your father? How evil is he, really? Not the king the bards sing of. The man.”
Simon stared into his wine. The night insects sawed their legs together. “The man is a hollowed-out shell filled with spite and paranoia,” he said, each word measured and cold. “The evil was in his hands. In his belt. In his voice down a long corridor. He believed fear was the only glue for a kingdom.”
She didn’t flinch. “And the borders now? The civilians who hope his son is different?”
He talked then. He spoke of villages stripped for garrison supplies, of trade roads left to rot, of a people weary from a crown that only ever took. His vision, haltingly articulated, was of repair, of walls that protected from the outside rather than imprisoned within. It was practical, detailed, and fueled by a quiet, simmering fury.
Within time, the wine was half-gone, and they were relaxed, their knees almost touching. She laughed at his impression of a stuffy earl; he gave a low chuckle at her story of outshooting her brother. The tensions of the evening—Francesca’s claws, the king’s demands, the court’s judgment—melted in this private, moon-drenched world, but beneath it, a new tension simmered. It lived in the glance that held too long, in the way he leaned closer to catch her softer words.
His gaze dropped to her mouth. The casual ease tightened, coiled.
The casual ease tightened, coiled. They stared at each other for a long moment, the only sound the distant fountain and the frantic beat of her own heart. Yaa finally broke the silence, downing the rest of her wine in one swift, fortifying gulp.
“There’s clearly more to this,” she said, the wine lending courage to her candor. “Than you thanking me for the road, or pulling me out here for air. Is it friendship you’re after? Why me?” She met his grey eyes, unwavering. “Or am I just an exotic pick to make your father’s blood boil?”
Simon raised an eyebrow, contemplative. He took her empty cup from her fingers, his own brushing against them, and set both vessels down on the stone bench with a soft click. He didn’t release her hand immediately.
“I’ve heard rumors,” he admitted, his thumb tracing a line across her knuckles. “About your people. That they’re brash. Unruly. Too vibrant for a subdued court.” He let out a short breath. “My father sees darker skin and thinks ‘inferior’. He always has. After Harris attacked me, when I was bleeding in the dirt and you stepped out of the mist… you looked at me. You stared right into my eyes without an ounce of malice. I was completely vulnerable. You could have ended me. Many would have.”
He leaned closer, his voice dropping. “I’ve studied maps and histories of nations linked to Astoria. I know the strength they speak of in the Accra nation. I saw it in your eyes that night. Now I see it in the way you stand, the way you speak. You’re a breath of fresh, strong air, Yaa. A wind I don’t think anyone could ever truly contain.”
Yaa listened, her pulse a wild thing in her throat. His words were not polished flattery; they were an excavation, unsettling and profoundly sincere.
“My turn,” he said, his gaze sharpening. “What rumors have you heard about me?”
Yaa shrugged, a defensive little gesture. She would not give voice to the stories of a beaten boy or a mad mother. “The usual court gossip. That you’re a great warrior. Rough in bed.” She said the last part too fast, aiming for glibness and missing.
A slow, genuine amusement warmed his features. “Is that so?” He didn’t deny it. “I’m not a man who seeks out every warm bed, for what it’s worth. Few have found their way to mine.” His expression grew introspective. “But I can’t deny the… intensity. Considering who I am. What I’ve seen. It bleeds into everything.”
Yaa went quiet, the image forming unbidden, both thrilling and daunting. He saw her hesitation.
“Does that scare you?” he asked, a subtle taunt in his tone.
“No,” she fired back too quickly, defensively. “I just think it’s a reductive thing for people to say. Reducing a person to a… performance.”
“I find it attractive,” he murmured, not letting her retreat. “A woman with such fire out there in the world.” His free hand came to rest, a heavy, warm weight, high on her thigh. “But so… soft right here.”
The touch seared through the layers of silk. Her breath hitched. She looked down at his hand, then slowly, deliberately, picked it up. She didn’t push it away. She placed his broad palm flat against the silk covering her chest, over her pounding heart.
“Many men see the fire,” she whispered, her voice unsteady. “They never get to the softness inside. It’s surprising you saw it so fast.”
His hand felt huge against her. He could feel the frantic rhythm beneath his palm. Their eyes locked, a current fusing them to the spot. His gaze dropped to her lips, then back to her eyes, a question and an answer in one.
His hand slid from her heart, up along the column of her neck, to cup her cheek. His touch was calloused, infinitely gentle. He leaned in, giving her every chance to pull away. She didn’t.
He kissed her.
It was not a tentative exploration. It was deep and claiming from the first moment, his mouth slanting over hers with a hunger that stole the air from her lungs. His tongue traced the seam of her lips, and she opened for him with a soft gasp. The taste of him was dark wine and winter night, a flavor she knew she would crave. She kissed him back, her hands coming up to clutch at the hard planes of his shoulders, her fingers digging into the unforgiving wool of his doublet.
The kiss turned heated, a desperate convergence. He groaned into her mouth, the sound vibrating through her entire body. One of his hands tangled in the intricate braids at the nape of her neck, tilting her head for better access, while the other arm wrapped around her waist, hauling her flush against him. She could feel the hard, rigid length of him straining against the placket of his breeches, pressing into her belly.
When they finally broke apart, breathing ragged, foreheads pressed together, the world had narrowed to this bench, this garden, this man.
The night air was a cold shock against their heated skin. Simon pulled back just enough to see her face, her lips swollen from his kiss, her dark eyes wide and searching in the moonlight. He ran the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip, his own breath coming in ragged clouds. "You're trembling."
"I'm not cold," Yaa whispered, the truth of it vibrating in her voice.
His gaze held hers, intense and unblinking. "Are you hungry?" he asked, the question absurd in the context of the fever humming between them.
Yaa blinked, thrown. "What?"
"Food." He said it like it was a logical next step. "Do you want something to eat?"
Her mind, still swimming with the taste of him, struggled to find purchase. She supposed she could. Her breath was still shaky. "I... suppose I could."
He stood abruptly, the motion fluid and decisive. He kept her hand locked in his. "Good. Let's go."
"Go where?" she asked, but he was already pulling her to her feet, leading her away from the bench, away from the ordered rose garden.
"For a little adventure," he said, a low thrill in his voice.
He didn't take the main path. Instead, he led her through a gap in a tall, dense hedge she hadn't noticed, onto a narrow gravel track used by gardeners. They moved quickly, his grip firm, guiding her around sleeping flowerbeds and past glasshouses that gleamed like ghost ships in the dark. He knew every turn, every shadowed archway. He was a ghost in his own home, navigating its secret veins.
Yaa followed him blindly, her silk slippers whispering on the stone, her heart pounding with a strange, giddy terror. This was madness. She was being led through a palace by its crown prince, away from a formal event, like a stolen treasure. He pushed open a heavy, unadorned door that led into a dim, vaulted corridor smelling of damp stone and herbs. Servants' passages. He moved with silent certainty, pausing once to listen at a corner before tugging her around it.
Finally, he stopped before a plain oak door. He listened, then eased it open. The warm, complex scent of spices, cured meat, and baked bread washed over them. A kitchen, but not the main one. A smaller, private scullery with a cold hearth, its surfaces clean and waiting for the morning.
He pulled her inside and closed the door, the solid thunk sealing them in a world of shadows and lingering warmth. Moonlight filtered through a high, small window, painting the central wooden preparation table in strips of silver.
Simon released her hand and went to work. He moved with a soldier's efficiency, opening a tall larder and emerging with a bottle of deep red wine, a wedge of hard white cheese wrapped in cloth, a bunch of midnight-black grapes, and a small loaf of dark bread. He placed them on the table with quiet thumps.
Yaa laughed, a breathless sound of pure disbelief. "What are you doing?"
"You were at the appetizer table for most of the night," he said, not looking at her as he searched for a knife. He found one and began slicing the cheese with precise, even strokes. "But you didn't eat. You were too busy saving lumber heiresses and analyzing the room. So perhaps you could use some sustenance."
"It's the middle of the night."
"All the more reason." He arranged the cheese on a simple wooden board, tore the bread, arranged the grapes beside them. His large, scarred hands performed the task with an unexpected, graceful competence.
Yaa watched, mesmerized. "You do that rather well for a prince."
"I only do it for myself," he said, pouring wine into two clay cups he’d taken from a shelf. "Or for highly esteemed people."
She leaned a hip against the table, crossing her arms. The intimacy of the shadowy room was a living thing, wrapping around them. "And what about women you want in your bed? Do you prepare platters for them, too?"
He looked up from his work, a slow smirk spreading across his face. He didn't answer. He simply nodded toward the finished platter.
Holding his gaze, Yaa reached out and took a piece of cheese. She brought it to her lips, her eyes fixed on him as she took a bite. The flavor was sharp, salty, and creamy. A soft, involuntary moan escaped her as she chewed. "Gods, that's good."
He watched her throat work as she swallowed. She took a grape next, then another, the juice sweet on her tongue. Emboldened by the wine and the darkness and him, she picked up a plump grape and held it out to him. "Your turn."
He didn't take it from her fingers. He leaned in and closed his lips around the fruit, his tongue brushing her skin as he pulled it away. The contact was electric. They stared at each other, chewing slowly. Then he moved.
The kiss this time was not about exploration. It was conquest and surrender all at once. He walked her backward until the edge of the heavy wooden table met her hips. He broke the kiss only to say, "Up," his voice a graveled command.
He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, setting her down on the table amidst the food. Silks pooled around her. "The food is good," he murmured, his mouth trailing hot, open kisses down her neck to the frantic pulse at its base. One hand slid up her calf, pushing her robes aside. "But I would very much like to taste you instead."
Yaa heated from her core outward, utterly flustered, every clever retort dissolving. His fingers found the complex ties at the side of her gown. He didn't fumble. He worked them with a singular, devastating focus, his eyes on his task as if disarming a trap.
"Simon," she breathed, her hands clutching at his shoulders. "The risk... someone could come."
"Let them," he growled, not pausing. The layers of her formal Osei robes gave way under his insistent hands. The cool night air from the high window kissed her bared thighs. He pushed the fabric up to her waist, his large hands spreading her legs, hooking her knees over his hips. He stood between them, looking down at where she was exposed to him in the slim moonlight.
His calloused thumb brushed through her curls, finding her wet and already swollen. She jerked at the contact. He pressed a slow, circling pressure against her clit, and a sharp gasp tore from her throat.
"Has any man tasted you here before?" he asked, his voice thick. He wasn't asking about penetration. He meant this. The intimacy of it.
Yaa, shuddering under that relentless thumb, shook her head.
The grin that spread across his face was sudden, bright, and utterly triumphant in the dark. "Good."
Then he dropped to his knees before the table.
His mouth was on her, hot and demanding, before she could process the sight. His tongue was a flat, rough stroke through her folds, lapping up her wetness, and she cried out, her back arching off the wood. He groaned against her, the vibration shooting straight to her core. He ate her like a starving man, his hands holding her hips down as she bucked, his tongue circling her clit before sucking it firmly into his mouth.
Yaa’s head fell back. A string of helpless, shattered sounds fell from her lips—gasps, choked moans, his name. She bit down hard on her own lip to stifle them.
He stopped immediately. He lifted his head, his chin glistening. "Why are you quieting yourself?"
"Ah, my, I--" she panted, overwhelmed.
"Tell me."
"A lover," she admitted in a rush, shame and pleasure warring. "He said... I was too loud. That it was unseemly."
Simon’s eyes, gleaming in the dark, turned fierce. "Fuck him." He dipped his head again, his tongue thrusting deep inside her this time, making her yelp. "I want to hear you," he said, his words muffled against her flesh. "Every filthy, hungry sound. I want to know what I do to you." He doubled his efforts, his tongue fucking her in quick, shallow strokes before zeroing back on her clit with ruthless precision.
The permission was a release valve. Yaa let go. A loud, wanton moan tore from her throat as he sucked. "Oh, gods, right there!" She didn't recognize her own voice, raw and pleading. "Yes, Simon, just like that, don't stop!"
He growled his approval against her, the sound feeding her arousal, making her wetter. He slid two fingers inside her, curling them, finding a spot that made her see white light. She was unraveling fast, her hips pistoning against his face, her cries echoing off the stone walls. She chanted his name, curses, prayers. He drank every sound, every tremor.
Her orgasm hit like a lightning strike, a violent, shocking surge that clenched around his fingers and drenched his mouth. She screamed, a raw, unfettered sound of pure abandon, her body bowing off the table.
Before the last shudder had even left her thighs, before she could float back down, a noise from the corridor outside slammed into the haze—the distinct sound of clattering metal and approaching voices.
"Check the larder for the vanilla pods, would you? The head pastry chef will have our hides if they're not prepped for dawn."
Yaa froze, her eyes flying wide with panic. Simon was up and moving in an instant. In one swift motion, he pulled her off the table, her robes falling back into place messily. He shoved her, half-stumbling, into the deep shadows of the open larder, behind a sack of flour. "Don't move. Don't make a sound."
He turned, snatching up the wine bottle and the two clay cups from the table just as the kitchen door began to swing open. He leaned back against the table, right where she had just been, casually taking a long swig from the bottle as two night kitchen boys stumbled in, carrying a crate between them.
They froze, seeing him. The bottle in the Prince's hand, his disheveled hair, his imposing frame filling the small space.
"Your Highness!" one stammered, nearly dropping his end of the crate.
Simon leveled them with a look that could freeze a volcano. "Out."
"But sir, the vanilla pods—"
"I said out." His voice was low, absolute. "This kitchen is occupied. Use the main one. Tell anyone who asks the Ghost is in here and does not wish to be disturbed."
The boys scrambled back, dragging the crate, the door swinging shut behind them. The silence they left was deafening.
Simon didn't move for a long moment, listening. Then he set the bottle down with a solid click and walked to the larder. He reached in, finding Yaa's arm in the dark, and pulled her out. She was breathing fast, her body still humming, her dress a disaster. He pulled her against him, his own body hard and tense.
"See?" he murmured into her hair, his heart pounding against her ear. "No one disturbs a ghost."