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“Oh, True,” I whispered.
He shook his head. “We are not a poor nation, Farah. We don’t have the riches you do. We don’t have the advancements of Airen. But our people are not starving. If we set the men we use to war on Firenze to training them in the engineering of Airen and bettering the piping in our homes, the irrigation of our fields, the improved passage of our rivers. If we were to build alliances with the King of Mar-el to allow our ships through to the Green Sea so our wool and grain and pewter can get through to Lunwyn, Hawkvale, Fleuridia, they would know better lives without ruby mines and saffron fields.”
“I’ve noted King Wilmer has not taken this rare opportunity to sit with King Aramus,” I remarked.
That made him look out the window. “It isn’t rare. It’s unique. And you’re right. He squanders this opportunity when we have much wood that can build ships, and if we had passage, we could build fleets for merchants to deliver our wares to the Northlands and The Mystics.” He turned again to me. “I do not know if my men would desire to be sailors. What I do know is that they would be gone from their homes for months, but they would return. And they’d do it breathing.”
I caught his hand at that.
“Can you talk to King Aramus?” I asked.
He nodded. “I can and I will. Not now. Our relationship is new, and I don’t think it’d be wise to ask for a concession when I barely know the man and he has no reason to grant it. He is warm to his men. He is warm to Cassius, who he knows. He is wary of everyone else and does not mind showing it.”
I had noticed this myself.
True continued, “It’s clear with my father and Gallienus, they’re taking this opportunity not to worry about the Beast, but instead to enter into negotiations under the guise of diplomacy. I can’t imagine they’re missing the fact that Aramus is no fool. Though it appears just that is happening. However, we have months of travel together as we fulfill the prophecy. So I’ll find my time. I just have to hope my father doesn’t cobble my efforts before I find it.”
“I’ve also noted he does not show great respect for the Mar-el,” I murmured.
He took control of my hand so I was no longer holding his, but he was absently fiddling with my fingers in a way that I greatly liked, giving him something of mine to touch, hold on to, as he sorted important things in his head.
“His counsellor thinks Mar-el is not of great import, as he wouldn’t, since he feels they can obtain an everlasting ruby mine and saffron fields. Though I’m uncertain who he intends to sell those rubies and saffron to, as, if we wrested that land back, the Firenz would embargo them, the Airenzian probably would too, and the Nadirii don’t put much consequence in jewels. Therefore, we’d need to ship them to The Mystics or Northlands, and to do that, we’d need permission to sail through.”
“This is very short-sighted,” I muttered crossly, my gaze dropping to our joined hands.
Just in time for True to stop fiddling with mine and squeeze it.
“Ah, beautiful Farah. In our short acquaintance, I admit, I’ve wondered often if your beauty makes you beautiful, or if it is your loyalty that shines through and gives you beauty.”
I stared at him, unable to breathe, for that was the highest compliment anyone could pay me.
“Perhaps both,” he whispered, lifting my hand to his lips and touching them to it but briefly before he gave it another squeeze, let it go and rose from the seat. “Shall I walk you to your rooms?”
Apparently, our brief interlude was done.
This saddened me.
“I’m going to sit for a bit.”
He bent, touching his lips to my forehead before he straightened.
“Sleep well, sweets.”
“I bid the same to you, my True.”
He granted me the gift of his smile in the moonlight.
Then I watched him walk away.
I looked out the window.
Tomorrow, I would see, and meet, this Elena.
Until then, I would hope that I would find it in me to like her for she was True’s and I highly suspected he was a man who would not let go of anyone who had a place in his heart.
Even if what they’d wished to share, heart to heart—what I was coming to wish to share with him—would never be granted.
For any of us.
14
The Plot
G’Drey
Marital Bedchamber, Manor of Captain of the Trusted, Fire City
FIRENZE
G’Drey really did not wish to climax.
He really did not.
Not like this.
But he would, and he had, not frequently, but regularly, after the warrior had found him again in the city.
This time being the most humiliating.
And after it, he knew, he would vow never to come back.
But he also knew, when the crimson envelope summoning him arrived—becoming obsessed with these encounters like a man addicted to the effects of the ashesh—to get his experience, Drey would steal into the night from the Go’Doan temple and find their home. He would make his way to the back door, which would be opened for him, and eventually, after they used him as they would, he would climax…
Humiliatingly.
This time, his chin to the bed, his wrists tied to his knees, his knees staked open, tied to a brace, a leather strap along his forehead bending his head back as it was tied to the baton that was working through his arse, his aching, rock-hard member being sucked on by a woman.
All this while he was forced to watch before him, his noises muffled by a scarf shoved in his mouth—one of hers—as the warrior pounded between her legs, their lips hardly ever disconnecting, his grunts muted by her mouth, her whimpers the same by his.
And Drey watched the warrior’s arse work.
He also watched his thick, veined, slick, rigid shaft plunging and retreating.
And he’d do anything for the opportunity to watch all of that.
Or the times the warrior would use that shaft on Drey.
Or the times he’d take a paddle to Drey after he’d filled him with something.
Or any of the attention the warrior gave to him.
Eventually, and simultaneously, Drey saw their heads snap back as the warrior roared his orgasm and his wife cried out hers, her hands grasping his muscled flesh, her nails digging, her long legs wrapped around the warrior’s rutting hips.
G’Drey wanted to find it disgusting.
But the savage pounding in his arse and the talented suckling at his shaft, he could do nothing but buck into that mouth.
He lost the mouth and endured the mortification of being watched by the warrior and his wife as he was milked with her hand into some toweling over the bed under him while she used his arse brutally and he jerked and spasmed against his bounds as he poured his seed with muffled moans onto the bed.
“Take care of our girl, my darling,” the warrior’s woman bid and then it happened.
The female behind him was moved in front of him, her cunt shoved in his face, and the warrior fingered her to climax while his woman fondled his chest and he fondled their friend.
There was a good deal of kissing (this only on the mouth between the warrior and his wife, Drey had learned that was a boundary that was never crossed no matter who joined their play) and stroking and cuddling between the three of them that Drey was forced to watch before the women slowly exited the bed after lingering attention given to the warrior.
They left the room and the warrior flicked at Drey’s bounds, releasing him, then offhandedly slid the baton from his arse and threw it on the bed beside him.
“We’ll call for you when you’re again required, mio buco,” the warrior muttered. “Now you may leave.”
He waited for the warrior to do the same before Drey tore the leather strap from his head, yanked out the scarf, and rushed to his robes.
These were not the ones of the Go’Doan. He did not wear those when moving through the city at night for these fe
tid (but titillating, and damnably fulfilling) assignations. He wore darker ones that were similar to the ones the priests and priestesses of Firenze wore.
He pulled them on, attempting (but not succeeding) in ignoring just how much he liked the feel of his used arse, his drained balls, his replete cock, and he felt the fire boil inside him.
They would all feel his wrath.
All of them.
Indeed, they would.
Eventually.
He wasted no time, stole into the night, keeping to the shadows as he moved through the quiet streets, returning to the Go’Doan temple, which, really, was an insult.
The city-state of Go’Doan was resplendent. The white stone. The blinding beacons of the profuse gilding of the doomed roofs. The snowy cobbles of the narrow roads that wound through the city. The glass of the windows blinking in the sun, perfectly clean under the constant ministration of their acolytes, the Go’Ella.
It was a place of inspiration, of great beauty, every corner affording an awe-inspiring vista.
Here, the Go’Doan temple was made of rusty stone with only one gold dome to say it was of the Go’Doan, a few spires, and the only good thing about it were its deep catacombs that went down five layers.
And as he snuck in, he was glad it was late at night and the royal celebrations that would span three countries and three months would start the next day, for everyone would be abed.
This was what he thought before, but two steps in, his head was knocked into the wall and stars exploded in his eyes.
Before he knew what was happening, or he could get his thoughts together, his head to stop pounding, the stars to recede, or his feet under him, he felt many hands on him and he was taken down, down, down.
And down.
Then in a room he’d never entered, not even after his extensive tour upon arriving several weeks before, a room lit only with candles and smelling profoundly of patchouli, his robe was stripped from him and he was forced to kneel on the stone floor. He was then bent over and tied bodily from neck to hips on a stone slab, his arms wrapped around its bottom and tied at the wrists, his legs bound to the legs of the slab.
And his arse was used again.
To take a lash.
His cries of pain had quieted to whimpers of agony and exhaustion when he felt the blood start to run down his thighs.
Only then was his hair seized and his head yanked back, and in a haze of pain and confusion, he noticed priests all around, their robes not white, but black, their hoods drawn up, their faces obscured, but he knew them…
He knew his brethren was around him.
And he could see right in front of him, Seph’s face surrounded by his hood in the candlelight.
“You risk much to have your arse fucked,” he bit out.
“My brother—” Drey tried.
Another lash across his arse and Drey’s neck tensed, his teeth clenched, and they stayed that way for three more.
The whip stopped and Seph, who had not let go of his hair, started speaking again.
“Were you not, this very morn, in a meeting to finalize the plot?” he demanded to know.
“I was,” Drey whispered weakly. “But, sir—”
More blows landed, and more blood started slinking down his thighs.
When they stopped, Seph carried on.
“The last attempt, our brother was forced into the pits.” Drey’s head was jerked back farther by his hair. “Everyone needs to stay sharp. There will be a time when these men will be at our command and you can get yourself fucked as often as you like by as many as you like. We will have Firenze. We will have Wodell. And once we do, Airen will have no choice but to fall. We’ll burn The Enchantments and enslave the Nadirii and their magic to our will and Triton will be ours. But now, you have but one focus. You do…your duty…to…The Rising,” he bit, slammed Drey’s face into the slab and released his hair.
G’Drey was blinking away stars again when he felt Seph’s presence had left him, but it didn’t go far.
He knew this when Seph spoke to the others in the room.
“Leave him until morning in order that he can ruminate on his transgressions. Then have a recruit tend him. No Go’Ella see this,” he ordered. “And do not allow Jell or Liam anywhere near. Both of them are of the old guard and will be on a horse to Go’Doan to report this faster than you can say ‘Go’Doan Rising.’”
“Can those of us who want it use his arse before we go?” a voice Drey knew requested, and he winced when he flexed that area on his person as his answer to that.
“No,” Seph thankfully replied.
“Can we use his face?” a different voice he also knew asked.
“For fuck’s sake, fuck each other and stop bothering me with this absurdity,” Seph said on a sigh.
Drey heard shuffling feet and whispering robes, some of the candles were extinguished, and when the noises were mostly gone, he heard Seph order softly from a new position at his other end, “The recruits don’t enter until they have my leave.”
“Yes, my liege,” a voice replied.
Drey belatedly started trembling.
He heard a heavy door close.
But he knew he’d been left alone with Seph.
His liege.
At least…there. In Firenze. Where Seph was in charge of this part of The Rising.
There was silence.
Drey continued to tremble.
And he waited.
Seph finally spoke.
“You have a lover in Go’Doan, do you not?”
“Y-yes,” Drey answered.
“He is of The Rising,” Seph remarked.
“Y-yes. H-he recruited me.”
His voice was contemplative when he noted, “Yes. Our brother G’Fenn. Alas, it is unfortunate Fenn will lose his hole.”
After delivering that, an unmistakable noise came forth and Drey closed his eyes against it, thankful the flesh of his backside was so raw, he barely felt it, only felt the sting of the salt when Seph’s seed he’d milked through his own hand landed on it.
“I own you now, brother,” Seph whispered thickly. “I am no warrior, but trust me, I will use you well.”
Drey said nothing but the trembling did not stop when he heard the heavy door open and shut.
But what he thought was that his lover was far more powerful than Seph.
And Fenn would not like his “hole” used and definitely not abused.
He liked Drey’s bottom as it had been.
So when they were joined by Drey’s chosen, they would see who owned who.
And G’Drey filed vengeance against Seph amongst the other transgressions that would eventually have his attention.
Not to mention, the two of his brethren who had sought to use him against his will.
But first, they had an assassination to carry forth.
For nothing was as important as The Rising.
15
The Procession
King Mars Laches
The Crown Prince’s Bedchamber, Second Floor, West Corridor, Catrame Palace, Fire City
FIRENZE
“The queen, my king.”
Mars looked from tying the laces at the side of his waist to the servant boy who was speaking.
“Allow her entry,” he murmured, thinking that very soon, when anyone mentioned “the queen,” they would be referring to a different person.
A Dellish.
His clever, little monkey with a soul of molten silver.
And he did not mind this.
On this thought, his mother moved into his rooms and he turned his attention to her.
Using the creams and lotions and elixirs of their land since she was a maiden, her beautiful face was nearly unlined, simply a few across her forehead.
However, two small indents at the bridge of her nose had appeared since his father died.
Her hair was mostly black, with but a silver thread here and there.
And for the night’s events, she wore
a long-sleeved choli top covered in a profuse pattern of jet beads, the same beads at her waist and hips, from which flowed the sheers of her skirt that exposed her legs encased in leggings that ended at her ankle. Her feet were in beaded, flat sandals.
All of this was black.
Mars most definitely tired of all the black.
The extravagant ruby necklace at her neck was the only thing Mars liked.
He did not share that with his mother.
When his attention returned to her face, he saw she was running her eyes over him as well.
“So, you’ve decided. You’re changing the Firenz uniform, moving away from the blades,” she remarked.
“We ordered a number of these,” he replied. “They came with Cassius’s envoy. Only my men for now. We’ll then assess. But the leather of Airen is the best in all lands and they’ve made some improvements to their leather armor, which was already exceptional.” As he caught the look on her face, he shared, “It’s not as constricting as you’d think.”
“I shall miss the blades,” she murmured, stopping in front of him.
His father wore the blades, as did her father, as did her son.
It was time, in many ways, to move from olden things.
Ares had taught him that.
“It’s handsome,” she said, lifting a hand and resting it on his chest.
Mars couldn’t argue that.
A sleeveless, sandstone-colored leather upper that had no collar and fit to his skin closely. He was able to don it by loosening the leather laces at the sides. Trousers of the same, though buttoning at the crotch, therefore no laces.
But he wore his sandals laced up the leather at his calves. He was not yet ready for the heat and rubbing of boots.
“And I quite like the mantle,” his mother went on.
As did he.
A heavy crimson silk that went to his ankles at the back and cinched at his neck with a wide, gold clasp studded in the center with a large Firenz ruby.
The back of the mantle was embroidered with fire out of which rose the coiled Firenz black asp, its head raised, green eyes alert, mouth open, forked tongue snaking, fangs bared to strike.
The same snake was forged in gold with eyes of emeralds and these were affixed to his leather arm shields that were buckled to his forearms.