Chapter 7: The Prince's Corruption
The silence of the Obsidian Baths was heavier than stone. Steam rose in thick, twisting plumes from the central pool of molten gold, its surface shimmering with reflected firelight from the braziers set into the walls. The air tasted of sulfur and spice, coating the back of Sephoryn’s throat as he sat on a black marble bench, his head in his hands.
He could still see it. The image was branded behind his eyes: his mother on her knees, her mouth stuffed, her body taken from behind by his uncle while his father watched, a cruel god presiding over his own private altar. And his own hand, moving frantically in the dark, shame and arousal a poison in his blood. He had bathed three times, scrubbing his skin raw, but the stain felt internal.
A soft footfall on the wet stone echoed through the chamber. He looked up, his warrior’s instincts snapping to attention even as his heart clenched.
Hegozia stood at the entrance to the bath chamber, wrapped in a sheer, grey silk robe. The steam clung to her, outlining her curves before parting like a veil. She looked neither broken nor ashamed. She looked… composed. Serene. The marks on her skin from the night before were faint shadows in the low light. She regarded him with an unreadable expression.
“The water is hottest at this hour,” she said, her voice calm, conversational. She untied the sash of her robe and let it slide from her shoulders. It whispered to the floor. She stood naked before him, utterly unselfconscious, her body a map of recent possession.
Sephoryn’s breath hitched. He forced his eyes away, staring at the churning gold pool. “I was just leaving.”
“Were you?” She walked forward, her steps silent on the slick stone. She moved to the edge of the gold pool and dipped a foot in, testing the temperature. A hiss of steam rose. “It seems we are both drawn to the heat tonight.”
He said nothing. He could feel her gaze on him, like a physical touch.
“You watched,” she stated, not looking at him. She sank into the pool up to her shoulders, the molten gold clinging to her skin like liquid light. “In the shadows. You watched, and you touched yourself.”
The words were a blade, precise and cold. Sephoryn flinched. “I did not—”
“Do not lie to me, Sephoryn.” She turned in the pool, her eyes finding his across the steam. “I felt your eyes. They have weight. I know the weight of being watched.”
He stood up, his body rigid with tension. “Why are you here? To shame me further?”
“To understand.” She tilted her head. “You were disgusted. I saw it on your face. And yet… your hand moved. Tell me which was the lie.”
“It was all a lie!” he burst out, the words tearing from him. “The entire fucking court is a lie! You, kneeling there, taking them both… him… and then father… How can you? How can you allow it?”
A slow, knowing smile touched her lips. It held no joy, only a deep, weary understanding. “Allow it? Sephoryn, my sweet, sheltered prince. I don’t allow it. I revel in it. It is the currency of this kingdom. Power is taken through strength. Pleasure is taken through submission. They are two sides of the same blade.” She lifted a hand, watching the golden droplets fall. “Your father doesn’t take a queen to cherish her. He takes a queen to display her. To prove there is nothing, no one, he cannot possess. And in that possession, I find my own power.”
“That’s sick,” he whispered, but the conviction was bleeding from his voice.
“Is it?” She stood up in the pool, the golden liquid sluicing down her body, clinging to the slopes of her breasts, the dark triangle between her legs. She walked towards the steps, emerging like some ancient, gilded spirit. Steam rose from her skin. “You watched. And you were hard. You wanted it. Was that sickness?”
He backed up a step, hitting the cold obsidian wall. “No. I didn’t—”
“You wanted to be where Vaeloryx was. You wanted to be the one fucking me from behind while my mouth was on your father’s cock.” Her words were blunt, brutal, stripping every pretense away. She closed the distance between them, her naked body glistening, her scent—sulfur, sex, her own dark musk—filling his senses. “You wanted to feel my cunt gripping you instead of him. Didn’t you?”
He couldn’t breathe. His own traitorous body was responding, his cock thickening against his thigh, confined by his damp linen pants. He shook his head, a frantic denial.
She reached out, not touching him, but her hand hovered over the hard line of his erection. “This tells the truth your mouth won’t.”
With a sudden, violent move, he grabbed her wrist. “Stop it.”
Her eyes widened, not in fear, but in pure, fiery challenge. “Or what? You’ll run to your father? Tell him his wife accurately guessed his son’s filthy cravings?” She leaned in, her lips close to his ear. Her breath was hot. “He already knows, Sephoryn. He saw you in the shadows. He let you watch. He wanted you to see. To understand your place.”
Her free hand came up and pressed flat against his chest, over his hammering heart. Then it slid down, over the defined plane of his stomach, and palmed him through the linen. He groaned, his head falling back against the wall with a dull thud.
“You’re a virgin,” she murmured, her fingers tracing his length, squeezing gently. “Aren’t you? All this time, training to be a warrior, and you’ve never had a woman. Never felt this inside something warm and wet.”
He was trembling, his knuckles white where he gripped her wrist, but he didn’t push her away. He was pinned by her words, by her touch, by the awful, thrilling truth of them.
“Let me go,” he begged, his voice cracked.
“I will,” she promised, her tone shifting, becoming soft, coaxing. “But first, let me show you. Let me show you what you wanted to see. What you’ve been dreaming about since the first time you saw my tits spill out of a gown, since you watched my hips move when I walked.” Her hand slid inside the waistband of his pants, her cool fingers wrapping around his hot, straining cock. He gasped, his hips jerking involuntarily. “You think I haven’t seen you looking? Your eyes on my breasts, my mouth, my ass? I know the taste of a man’s hunger, Sephoryn. And you are starving.”
She dropped to her knees before him.
“No,” he choked out. “Not like… not like you did for him.”
She looked up at him, her face angelic and wicked in the steam. “No. Not like that.” With her other hand, she tugged his pants down over his hips, freeing his erection. It stood thick and flushed, the head glistening. He was beautifully made, like his father, but untouched. She didn’t take him in her mouth. Instead, she leaned forward and pressed her face against his stomach, her cheek to his skin. She turned her head, her lips brushing his shaft. “This is for you. Only for you.”
Then she rose, her body sliding against his. She took his hand and placed it on her breast. The flesh was full, heavy, the nipple a hard pebble against his palm. “You’ve wanted to touch these. Do it.”
He squeezed, a groan tearing from him. It was everything and nothing like he’d imagined. Softer. Hotter. Real.
She guided his other hand to her hip, then lower, over the curve of her ass. “You watched Vaeloryx hold me here. Now you hold me.”
His control shattered. He grabbed her, his hands rough and desperate, pulling her against him. His mouth crashed down on hers. The kiss was clumsy, furious, all teeth and frantic need. She responded by opening for him, her tongue meeting his, her body melting into his grip. She tasted of spice and something indefinably her own. He kissed her like a drowning man, his hands roaming her back, her ass, pulling her tighter against his throbbing cock.
She broke the kiss, breathing heavily. “Now,” she whispered, her eyes black with intent. “Take what you watched him take.”
She turned, bracing her hands on the cool obsidian wall, arching her back, presenting herself to him. The view was obscene, glorious. The golden sheen still coated her skin, highlighting the perfect swell of her ass, the glistening, pink furl of her anus above the wet, dark folds of her sex. She was still swollen, still used from the night before, and the sight of it—his father’s and uncle’s leavings—should have repulsed him. It inflamed him.
He positioned himself behind her, his cock nudging against her entrance. He was bigger than Vaeloryx, he realized with a feral pride. He pushed forward, but his aim was off, his inexperience showing.
She reached back between her legs, her fingers wrapping around him, guiding him to her slick opening. “Here, my prince,” she breathed. “Put it in. Fuck your mother’s well-used cunt. Make it yours.”
With a guttural cry, he drove into her. The heat was shocking, a velvet vice swallowing him whole. She was impossibly tight, yet yielded perfectly, her body accepting his invasion with a wet, willing gasp. He froze for a second, overwhelmed by the sensation, by the reality of being inside her.
“Move,” she commanded, pushing back against him. “Fuck me. Hard.”
He obeyed, setting a punishing rhythm from the start. His hips pistoned, slapping against her ass with a sound that echoed in the steamy chamber. Each thrust was a rebellion, a claim, a blasphemy. He gripped her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh, holding her still as he plowed into her.
“Yes,” she hissed, her head dropping between her shoulders. “Just like that. Fuck me like the jealous boy you are. Fuck me because you saw him do it. Fuck me because it’s wrong.”
Her words were fuel on the fire. He hammered into her, his world narrowing to the slick, clutching heat of her body, the smell of their coupling rising with the steam, the driving need to own this, to own her. One hand left her hip and tangled in her hair, yanking her head back, mirroring his father’s possession. She cried out, not in pain, but in savage approval.
“You like that, don’t you?” he growled, the words foreign in his mouth. “You like being used. Being filthy.”
“I like being wanted,” she moaned, pushing back against him, taking him deeper. “And you want me so badly it’s eating you alive. I can feel it. Your cock is screaming it.”
He was losing himself, the climax coiling in his balls, an unstoppable tide. His thrusts became erratic, wild. He leaned over her, his mouth on her shoulder, biting down, marking her as his own. His hand slipped from her hair, groped between her legs, finding the swollen bud of her clit. He rubbed it clumsily, frantically.
She shattered first. A raw, ragged scream was torn from her throat as her inner muscles clamped around his cock in rhythmic pulses, milking him. The feeling tipped him over the edge. With a final, deep plunge, he came, his release jetting into her in hot, violent spurts, his own cry muffled against her skin.
He collapsed against her, spent, shaking, his mind a blank white noise of shock and sated hunger.
Slowly, the world came back. The hiss of steam. The smell of sulfur and sex. The feel of her back, warm and damp, against his chest.
She shifted, and he slipped out of her. She turned, facing him. Her face was flushed, her lips swollen. She looked at him not with tenderness, but with a dark, fulfilled knowing.
He stared back, the horror of what they’d done now crashing down through the haze of pleasure. He had fucked his mother. He had come inside her. He had wanted it.
Without a word, he pulled up his pants, his movements stiff. He couldn’t look at her.
“Sephoryn,” she said, her voice quiet.
He stopped, but didn’t turn.
“This changes nothing with your father,” she said, the queen’s steel back in her tone. “And everything with you. You wanted a taste of the poison. Now you have it. The craving will only get worse.”
He fled the bath chamber, the truth of her words already a cold, sharp stone in his gut, nestled right beside the burning, shameful memory of how good it had felt.