Chapter 9: The Claiming of Conquerors
The cold of the proving grounds had seeped into our bones, a deep marrow chill that the long walk through the castle’s stone veins couldn’t thaw. We carried the smell with us too—the sharp, acidic tang of spent powder, the scent of ozone and scorched earth. It clung to our work leathers, a perfume of triumph. Mary walked beside me, her shoulder brushing mine, the same electrical hum of spent adrenaline still vibrating in the space between us.
We pushed open the heavy oak door to our chambers. The screaming wind was replaced by a silence so profound it rang in our ears.
Heat washed over us. A dozen braziers glowed, pushing back the eternal frost etched into the marble. The faces of the forgotten kings in the bedposts seemed to leer in the flickering light.
They were on the great bed, a mountain of furs and shadows and warm, naked skin.
Ellie lay propped against the headboard, a queen on a dunghill of dark pelts. Nancy was sprawled across her lap, on her back, head resting on Ellie’s thigh, her long curls fanned out. Ellie’s hand was buried between Nancy’s legs, moving with a slow, deliberate rhythm. Nancy’s eyes were closed, her lips parted, a soft, continuous sigh escaping them.
We stopped just inside the door, the iron latch clicking shut like a gunshot.
Ellie turned her head. Her blonde hair was loose, cascading over one shoulder. Her eyes, blue and knowing, swept over us—from our soot-smudged faces to our heavy boots.
“You’re late,” she said, her voice a low, liquid sound in the quiet. Her fingers didn’t stop their work; Nancy arched into the touch with a tiny whimper. “We were about to send a search party out for you.” A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “Or the guard. As promised.”
Mary let out a shaky breath, half laugh, half surrender. The raw, practical focus she’d had on the cliffs was melting away, replaced by something hotter, more yielding.
“The data required post-firing analysis,” I said, my own voice rough from shouting orders in the wind. It sounded feeble, even to me.
“Analysis is over,” Ellie stated.Her gaze pinned Mary. “Come here. Let me see you. Both of you.”
We moved as if pulled. The distance to the bed felt vast, then suddenly insignificant. The smell of gunpowder met the smell of skin and sex and heated oil.
Nancy opened her eyes, glazed with pleasure, and looked up at Mary. She reached a hand out, fingers trembling. “You did it,” she breathed. “We felt the thunder. Even here.”
I began fumbling with the buckles of my leather apron. My fingers, so sure with tools, felt thick and clumsy. Mary was ahead of me, shedding her tunic, letting it fall to the frost-veined floor. The cold air pebbled her skin, her small breasts, her tight nipples. Soot streaked her ribs like war paint.
Ellie watched us undress, her hand still working between her daughter’s thighs. The obscene, wet sound of it was the loudest thing in the room. “Look at you,” she murmured, mostly to Mary. “My little architect of thunder. All that power in those hands.” She withdrew her glistening fingers, brought them to her own mouth, and sucked them clean, never breaking eye contact. “Now get on the bed. You smell of violence. I want to taste it on your skin.”
We climbed onto the furs. The heat was immense, swirling with their scent. Nancy immediately rolled and pressed herself against Mary, capturing her mouth in a deep, hungry kiss, her hands coming up to frame Mary’s face. “I was so wet watching you,” Nancy gasped against her lips. “So fucking wet, thinking about your hands pulling that trigger.”
Ellie shifted, turning her attention to me. She pulled me to her, and I went, the soft, generous curves of her body a familiar heaven. She kissed me, and I could taste Nancy on her tongue, sweet and musky. “My brilliant, stubborn wife,” she whispered, her hands pushing the last of my clothes away. “All that calculating. All that fire.” Her hand slid down my flat stomach, through the coarse hair, and found me. I was already wet, startlingly so. The adrenaline had transmuted, directly and without pause, into this pure, aching need. “Oh, Amy,” she breathed, her fingers sliding through my slickness. “You’re dripping for it. Is it for the gun? Or for me?”
“Both,” I groaned, my head falling back. “Always both.”
Her fingers entered me, two, then three, with the easy knowledge of decades. I cried out, the sound stark and loud. On the other side of Ellie, Mary and Nancy were a tangle of limbs, Nancy now on top, grinding herself down against Mary’s thigh, her cries mingling with the wet, sucking sounds of their kiss.
Ellie’s mouth was at my ear, her fingers pumping steadily, her thumb circling my clit with a precision that shattered thought. “You showed them all, didn’t you?” she hissed, her own breath coming faster. “You and your daughter. You showed them what your minds can make. What your wills can do.” She bit my earlobe. “Now come for me. Come on the fingers that built a god-killer.”
It was too much. The command, the memory of the concussion, the feel of her, the sounds of our daughters lost in each other beside us. My orgasm ripped through me, a silent, blinding detonation that locked my spine and tore a ragged scream from my throat. I convulsed around her fingers, seeing stars behind my eyelids, the phantom flash of the howitzer’s muzzle flare burning in my vision.
As I shuddered down, she withdrew her hand. “Nancy,” Ellie said, her voice thick.
Nancy understood. She broke from Mary, her lips swollen, and moved down Mary’s body. She settled between Mary’s legs, her curls falling like a curtain. She didn’t hesitate. She pressed her mouth to Mary’s cunt and ate her with a desperate, grateful hunger.
Mary’s back arched off the furs, a guttural “Fuck!” exploding from her. Her hands fisted in Nancy’s hair, urging her on. “Right there… yes… just like that, Nan…”
Ellie guided me, turning me, positioning me. “Now you,” she said to me, her eyes on Mary’s face. “Taste your victory on her.”
I moved down, joining Nancy. The scent was overwhelming, musky and pure. I licked a slow stripe through Mary’s wetness, and she jerked, a broken sob escaping her. Nancy and I worked together, a shared, intimate engineering. I focused on her clit, sucking it into my mouth, flicking my tongue, while Nancy delved deep inside her with her tongue. Mary’s thighs trembled violently around our heads. Her pleas became incoherent, a stream of “oh god oh god oh fuck yes yes there please—”
Ellie watched us, one hand pinching and pulling at her own nipple, the other moving between her legs. She was fucking herself with her fingers, her hips rocking in time with our tongues. “Make her come,” she chanted, her voice a hoarse command. “Make my girl come.She earned it. She fucking earned it.”
Mary did. Her climax was a silent, breathless seizure before the sound returned, a long, wailing cry that echoed off the stone. Her body bowed, every muscle taut, before collapsing into the furs, trembling.
Nancy kissed her way up Mary’s body, swallowing her cries. I moved back, panting, my chin glistening.
Ellie was not done. She pulled me up, kissed me deeply, letting me taste Mary on her tongue. Then she pushed Nancy onto her back. She looked at Mary, who was still gasping, spent. “Hold her,” Ellie ordered.
Mary, dazed, moved behind Nancy, pulling her up so Nancy’s back was against her chest. Mary’s hands cupped Nancy’s small breasts, pinching the nipples.
Ellie positioned herself between Nancy’s spread legs. She didn’t use her mouth. She looked at me, her eyes burning.“Amy. Come here. Let’s show them how it’s done.”
I knew what she wanted. I moved behind Ellie, pressed my body along her back. I reached around her, my hands finding her full breasts, rolling her nipples as she lowered herself.
Ellie brought her hips down, aligning herself with Nancy’s soaked cunt. She rubbed her clit against Nancy’s, a slow, grinding press that made them both gasp. Then she began to move, a firm, circular rock of her hips.
“Watch,” Ellie groaned, her head falling back against my shoulder. “Watch how I fuck your daughter.”
I watched. I watched my wife’s wet folds slide and grind against our daughter’s. The slick, intimate sound of it filled the room. Nancy was mewling, pushing her hips up, desperate for more friction. Mary was whispering filthy encouragements in her ear, one hand sliding down to rub Nancy’s clit as Ellie moved.
“That’s it,” I growled into Ellie’s ear, my hands moving down to grip her hips, to guide her rhythm. “Fuck her.Just like that. You’re so fucking beautiful.”
Ellie’s pace increased, becoming frantic.The bed rocked. The faces in the wood seemed to watch, frozen in their eternal screams and smiles. Our sweat mingled, gunpowder and salt and sex.
Nancy came first, a sharp, shattered cry, her body clamping around nothing, shuddering between Mary’s hands and Ellie’s relentless grinding. The sensation tipped Ellie over the edge. With a raw, choked shout, she followed, her body stiffening against mine, a hot rush of her release adding to the mess between their tangled bodies.
We sank down into the furs, a heap of breathless, sated limbs. The only sounds were the crackle of the braziers and our ragged breathing. The cold of the room began to seep back in at the edges, but here, in our nest, we were spent and warm.
Ellie traced a soot smudge on my collarbone. “Next time,” she said, her voice drowsy with satisfaction, “be quicker. The wait was… agonizing.”
Mary laughed, a low, contented sound. Nancy nuzzled into her neck.
Outside, the wind shrieked against the towers. Far away, on the cliff, a circle of scorched earth cooled. Here, the only echoes were of pulsebeats slowing, and the deep, quiet hum of a different kind of power, perfectly contained.