Chapter Six
When I rouse from my nap, Marie has left a book beside me on the bed. It’s large, swathed in her signature light blue silk, and embellished with diamonds. I flinch at the soreness between my legs when I sit up. It isn’t unbearable, but it does feel strange. Pushing the covers back, I get to my feet and make my way to the tall oval looking glass. There, nestled between my folds, a pale pink pearl dangles on the golden ring that passes through my intimate skin.
The sight of it sends a flush of blood to the affected part, tightens my nipples. I endured that pain, I think proudly. I remember Luthian’s hold over me, how I couldn’t struggle to free myself from the needle. In hindsight, perhaps I wouldn’t have. He could have ordered me to sit still, and I would have obeyed. But being overpowered had been as arousing as Sarta’s tongue on me, or watching Luthian pound into her.
This world is new and exciting and terrifying. It’s pain that becomes pleasure and pleasure that turns into unbearable pain. Nothing in my life has ever prepared me for anything like it.
And the magic…
They use magic here as if it will never run out. Mother warned of temperance. Of not relying on magic. The dangers of overuse. Here, as in most things, there is no taboo. Only flagrant, joyous use of magic with wild abandon.
At that thought, my eyes fall upon the book. I go back to the bed and sit gingerly cross-legged, dragging it into my lap.
I open the cover and a scrap of parchment falls out.
C.
Please forgive me for leaving before you woke, but I do have other clients. Here is the wardrobe I have chosen for you. Use the pins to mark the pages and the garments will appear on the mannequin. I apologize that I can’t dress you, but that requires magic I cannot work from afar. However, Luthian is an expert at handling women’s clothing. I’m sure he’ll help as needed.
S.
“Use the pins?” I wonder aloud. I open the cover fully and note a ribbon fixed inside, holding several long, diamond-topped pins. I turn the first page, decorated with a “C” constructed of loops and swirls, to find a table of contents listing types of clothing. I flip to the first page of gowns.
“I expect to see you apply some of your new knowledge at dinner tonight. Dress appropriately,” Luthian said.
I examine the sketches, each of them accompanied by swatches of fabric, thinking about what my guardian considers “appropriate.” Certainly not the riding habit with the full sleeves and jacket with tails. Perhaps the clinging, pearlescent white gown that hangs from tiny straps that tie behind the neck. I imagine Luthian slowly untying the bow. Or untying it myself, for him. I want to impress him with my boldness, to make him see that I am learning, that I understand what will be expected of me.
I choose instead a gown of black silk so sheer it feels fragile between my fingers. Black leather encircles the waist in a tight band, scooping up beneath the wearer’s exposed breasts.
Luthian will certainly find this appropriate, I think to myself as I select a pin from the front of the book and slide it through the page. The dress appears on the mannequin as promised. The moment I touch it, the fabric flows down my arms and crawls over my body until it is perfectly tucked and fastened.
I check my reflection and know at once that my guardian will be pleased.
* * * *
It’s only when I’m on my way to his chambers that I consider we might not be dining alone. The thought only excites me more when I imagine how pleased Luthian will be to see me, barely dressed, in front of guests.
Mother never instilled any sense of shame in me regarding my body, but she did teach me a sense of propriety. The court she came from—the one that had cruelly rejected her—doesn’t behave as freely, as indulgently as the Court of Pleasure and Torment. Before Luthian, I never would have imagined a scenario when my nakedness would be put on display, or that I would so enjoy it. I’m crestfallen when I enter his parlor and find it is only him waiting for me.
His reaction quickly dispels my disappointment. He rises as if in a trance at the sight of me, silver lips parted. “Cenere. You look beautiful.”
I’ve left my long hair down, but brushed the ringlets out into soft waves and two slender braids that cross each other in a band over the crown of my head. I toss my hair over my shoulders, revealing my bare breasts framed by the sheer black silk. “You did say to dress appropriately.”
“You’ve succeeded. Please, come in.” He gestures to the doors, and they shut behind me. There is a table with food, but only one plate, one goblet, one set of utensils—although there are many of those. “Sit.”
He takes the only chair.
I go to him, not bothering to look for another seat. I know I won’t find one. I arrange my slit skirts around my otherwise bare lower half and take my place on his knee.
“Good girl.” His mouth slants in an approving smirk. “It’s time for another lesson.”
He leans around me, one long arm pouring wine from a crystal flagon into the goblet.
“You can’t just make it appear by magic?” I ask.
Instantly, I know it is the wrong thing to have asked. He puts the flagon down and uses the same hand to grip the hair at my nape and jerk my head back roughly. “Who do you think you are to question the strength of my power?”
“I-I wasn’t—”
“But you were,” his grip tightens, tugging at my scalp. “Do you think the king will allow you to speak to him in that way? Do you think he would issue you such a kind warning?”
“No. I’m sorry, Guardian.” I lower my head as much as I can to display my obedience and remorse. “But may I ask you a question?”
He loosens his grip and nods.
“You talk about the king. I thought I was going to court to seduce a prince.” It made sense to me that Sarta would say so; that he might not have given her the whole plan. But now, he speaks of the king as an inevitability, as well.
“Of course, you’ll seduce the prince.” Luthian combs his fingers through my locks, soothing my tender scalp. “But you’ll be the talk of the court. The king will at least sample you. Perhaps, he’ll take you as a mistress. But remember, his death is already arranged. You won’t find yourself in his company for long.”
“And the prince will still want me?”
“I dare say you’ll inspire a rivalry between them,” he says, and takes the goblet in his hand. “There is nothing Arcus loves more than displaying his power, especially over his sons.
“Food is an important component of court life,” he changes the subject, his tone studious. “Refreshment is available in nearly every room. The meals are sumptuous banquets that last for hours, with dozens of courses. You’ll dine upon fruits you’ve never seen before, creatures you’ve never heard of. But you will do it, as you will do all things, with sensuality. You will be provocative in your manner. For example...”
He dips two fingers into the wine glass and touches them to my bottom lip. I open and suck them in, gratified by the crease between his brow as he watches my lips slide closed, down to his middle knuckle. I swirl my tongue around them, sure that some of the skills I learned today would be effective on other parts. My instinct is correct, because he makes a noise low in his throat before he removes his hand.
“And how would you share the wine with me?” he asks, still distracted by my mouth.
I reach for the cup, but he withholds it. “No. I don’t ever wish to see you feeding yourself at my table. I wouldn’t have you even touch a fork or glass. While you are with me, you are to be fed. It might amuse courtiers to do so, as well.”
He presses the rim of the goblet against my bottom lip, and I take a sip. I hold it in and lean forward to kiss him. He drinks the wine from me and claims a dribble from the corner of my mouth with his tongue.
“Good girl.”
The praise is effervescent in my veins. I’m doing well. I’m going to have the power he promised me, and the wishes, too. I’m going to see Thrace in chains, humiliated. I think of displaying him before my throne at court, leaving him there to be leered at the way he’s leered at me ever since he married my mother.
“Cenere?” Luthian’s voice brings me back to him. “You’ve wandered off.”
“Please, pardon me, Guardian,” I whisper, my cheeks flushing with shame. He needn’t know the contents of my fantasies, though. “I was considering other ways I might serve you the wine.”
I put two fingers into the goblet, withdrawing them to drip wine above the peak of one breast. I paint a wet circle around my rosy nipple and lift my chest toward him.
“You’re better at this than I expected you to be,” he says with a smirk.
Then he lowers his head and sucks my nipple into his mouth and it’s as if lightning has struck directly to my core. My clit throbs and the new piercing stings. I squeeze my legs shut against both.
“Thank you, Guardian,” I say in response to both the compliment and his tongue playing in delicious circles over my flesh.
He lifts his head and puts the goblet on the table. “You must be hungry. Here.”
Luthian picks up a fork and spears a slice of a root vegetable. “There’s no way to make an arousing display out of this, surely?”
I consider the challenge. I never would have considered eating an arousing activity, in the first place. But I assume, based on the way his chest rises and falls as he watches me wet my lips, that it’s my mouth that’s meant to tempt him.
And so, I lean toward the bite he offers me, chin lifted and chest tipped to give him a better view of my exposed breasts, and ever so slightly show my teeth before I take the bite, my lips lingering as I pull back.
The smile he gives me fills some long neglected well in my heart. I’m pleasing him. I want to please him.
I should want to please the prince, I realize. That’s my goal, the entire reason I’m sitting in Luthian’s lap right now. And not just the prince; I’ll likely find myself in the king’s bed.
“Perhaps while you feed me, you can tell me about the king,” I suggest, walking my fingertips up Luthian’s chest.
He considers me a moment, evaluating my performance. “Cut back the simpering. Not too much. But you come off as transparently wheedling.”
“Oh. Thank you, Guardian.” I wait for his next instruction.
To my surprise, he offers me another bite and begins, “Neither he nor the prince will be impressed by a breathy, obvious show. But with the king, you must be more careful. He embodies the court, and so takes pleasure to the limits of torment, derives great pleasure from that torment. He will likely hurt you, in body and spirit. He won’t kill you or disfigure you. That ruins the game for him. But he will hurt you.”
I shiver, barely able to swallow the bite I’ve taken. I want to cling to Luthian, to demand why he’d hand me over to someone who would harm me. But I’m not supposed to question. “I trust you, Guardian.”
He goes quite still, searching my face. And after a very long, silent moment during which the sound of my own heartbeat seems to triple in volume, he says, “Very good. I believed it, for a second.”
“Thank you, Guardian,” I say, but I must look down.
If he doesn’t want to believe it, I can’t stand for him to accidentally see that it’s true.
“Guardian,” I begin, while he selects the next morsel for me. “Forgive me, but you said that you would... that we...”
How do I broach the topic of my inexperience? I’ve never considered it at all, until he brought it up. I’m not sure I have the words to describe what I’m asking, because it seems so absurd.
“Find your voice, Cenere. I do so loathe indecision,” he warns me.
“I thought you would couple with me. You seemed disappointed that I haven’t been intimate with another, before.”
The corners of his eyes crinkle with amusement. “Haven’t you?”
“Well..” I don’t remember it. Maybe he was with me while I was insensate with pleasure. But I remember keenly every moment of the agony he left me in that morning, twisting the pillows in my hands, arching my back, screaming under an onslaught of climaxes that I only escaped through unconsciousness. I would have known if he’d pinned me down with his body and pushed that massive cock into me.
“Do you think that what you did with Sarta wasn’t physical intimacy? That it’s not sex because you weren’t penetrated by a cock?” he asks and selects a roasted glimmer fern stem. He taps the end against my lips and I open for it, flicking my tongue across it before taking a dainty bite.
After I swallow, I answer him. “It was intimate. And not. It was instructive and pleasurable, but it did lack the passion I’ve read about in books.”
“It’s passion you want.” He isn’t asking me.
I discern that this is a trick. “It doesn’t matter what I want, Guardian. I know I’m learning the mechanics of it all. I shouldn’t have questioned you.”
“Some questions are useful,” he tells me, giving me another bite. “You will need to learn passion, both earnestly and how to feign it. But you’re correct. It’s important now to become skilled at the mechanics, so those become second nature. I promise, I will take you soon. When you’ve proven yourself a worthy enough lover.”
Worthy enough for him, or for the court, I wonder. I suspect that isn’t one of his “useful” questions. “Then, I’ll strive to earn your cock, Guardian.”
The named part shifts beneath me. His breeches can’t disguise it.
“You’ve become adept at manipulation rather quickly,” he chides me. “Or, did you have it in you this whole time?”
“The rules of these games seem fairly simple, Guardian. I say the correct things, and I am rewarded, either with pleasure or with pain, which I am to learn as another type of pleasure. It isn’t so complicated as you have made it out to be.”
“It isn’t?” He offers me another bite of the glimmer fern. “Your confidence may be your undoing.”
“Shouldn’t I present myself confidently at court?”
“Confident. Not cocky.” He taps the end of my nose. “Now, continue with this lesson. Don’t worry about the future.”
“But Guardian, I thought this was about both of our futures.” I blink innocently at him.
His expression darkens. He looks like the menacing faeries my mother warned me about. The ones that can’t be trusted, no matter what a heart might say. And while I’ve agreed to so many things, come willingly to his palace of depravity, allowed him to violate my body, I can’t lose sight of what he is. What he could be capable of.
Faster than a flash of lightning in the summer sky, he grips my chin cruelly. There is no friendliness, no pride or indulgence. Only fury at my disobedience. “You are not so skilled at manipulation that you should continue to try it on me. Unless you wish to be chained in my dungeon, under my spell, twisting and screaming from pleasure that will not stop, not even when you sleep. You know I can do it. I did it to you this morning. I can keep you suspended in such a state until the moment of your mortal death. Which I promise, you will plead for.”
My body trembles at the threat.
“Now, do you wish to test me?” he asks, giving my jaw a painful shake.
Tears roll from the corners of my eyes. “No, Guardian,” I manage.
At once, the Luthian I was growing fond of, growing trustful of, returns. He releases me and places a kiss on my cheek. “Good. Then let’s continue with our lesson.”
I suspect that I’ve just learned one far more important than table manners.