Chapter 9 #2
“That’s not how this works,” I told him scathingly.
“You’re going to get on your knees in front of me and take them off for me.
Then you’re going to see if you can make me come with your mouth before I decide whether or not to let you try it with your cock.
And if you can’t, I think the answer to that question is going to be pretty obvious. ”
His eyes flared with defiance for all of a moment but I simply tugged on his desire with my gifts and he dropped to his knees before me like a Reaper before the stars.
I leaned back against the wall as he unhooked my belt, once again focusing on the desire that surrounded me, the knot in my chest only tightening with every ragged breath that escaped my lips.
Jarod finally unfastened my belt, followed by my fly before tugging my trousers down with a sharp jerk which perhaps should have had me panting with the urgent desire to feel his tongue against my clit but instead had me wanting to snarl a curse at him.
I knocked my head back against the stable wall, trying to force my head into this but all it gave me was a view up out of the alley towards that same fucking tower which apparently had decided to haunt me.
Jarod gripped my undergarments and made to tug them down but I slapped him away with a force of air magic which had him on his feet and pinned to the wall to my right in the blink of an eye.
“I’m bored,” I told him cruelly, yanking my trousers back up and fastening them without even bothering to look at him.
“You…what?” Desire pulsed from him steadily but with a sharp tug I stole all that remained of his magic from him and with it the only thing which had made this interaction worth my time too.
“Just jerk yourself off over the idea of how close you came to getting what you wanted from me. It’s not the same but it’s the best you’re going to get.”
He growled angrily, a moo of protest escaping him but I only smiled, his desire so potent that I knew he was going to do it if for nothing other than to claim the release his body was now so desperate for.
“Bitch,” he muttered, fisting his cock and starting to pump it, his eyes still very much on me.
“You don’t know the half of it,” I replied cooly, stooping to grab my shirt and jacket from the ground and shrugging into them before striding away from him.
“Vesper.”
“Yeah, I hear you,” I snapped at the intangible voice. “But I can’t do shit about it.”
It called out to me again and I ground my jaw, pretending I couldn’t hear it despite the fact that I could barely sleep for the racket it made while crying out to me.
It was so insistent. I hadn’t been this loud before, not until…
I fell still, frowning to myself and wondering how I could have been so dumb. It had only gotten this loud, this insistent when I’d been right on top of the ley line the last time, the keystone within reach.
Was it possible that there was another one of those fractured points of power somewhere here? But if it was, then where?
I was so distracted that I didn’t even notice my prince approaching until he was practically on top of me, his fingers snapping tight around my arm and his fury burning brightly in my face.
“Have you forgotten what you swore to me, Vesper?” he hissed, tugging me against him firmly and I had to fight the urge to resist as his magic banded around us and launched us into the sky.
I said nothing, swallowing back the anger which burned through me as I realised what I’d just done.
I had forgotten the promise I’d made him, the way I’d sworn to belong to no one but him.
I’d forgotten it because when I’d made him that promise the only thing I had desired had been to become his creature in every way.
I’d been foolish enough to think he might have wanted me the way I’d wanted him for so very long but it came to me in a flood of realisation that now, I didn’t want that at all.
The thought of him owning me like that made me want to recoil.
He was a man who had chosen marriage to another so very easily, who had used and coerced me in every way he could and yet still he seemed to think I would hold to an oath I’d only made in foolish naivety.
We landed heavily on the balcony of his chambers and he kept hold of my arm, hauling me inside before slamming the doors shut with a gust of wind and encasing us in a silencing shield.
“You will not disrespect me so blatantly,” Dragor snarled, dragging me closer so that we were nose to nose and though my feelings for him were a tangled web of devotion, allegiance and honour, they were also tinged with a sour taste of betrayal I hadn’t wanted to admit to myself.
Because despite what lines he had drawn and what oaths he had coaxed from my lips, he had betrayed me.
He’d corrupted and manipulated me and made me believe in something which never could have come to pass.
And then he’d tried to force me to accept the scraps he tossed my way in place of the feast I’d been promised.
But I was no dog to be beaten into submission.
I was a wolf worthy of feasting, or at the very least, creating a banquet of my own.
“You have a wife. I assumed you had no interest in what I do with my body now,” I spat, jerking free of him. “And you spoke of me seducing your brother too. So what difference does it make if I choose to claim my own pleasure from time to time? It’s not like you truly want me anyway.”
His eyes flashed with malice, the anger there awakening me to a truth which was so obvious that I realised I’d been staring at it from the very first moment I saw him.
“But that’s not the point, is it?” I said slowly. “The point is the choice and who gets to make it.”
“I am your prince, you swore an oath to me and that was a choice. You don’t get to simply change the terms which bind you, Vesper Dragonsbane.
You are my creature and you will act only in accordance to my commands!
” he raged and though nothing but vitriol burned in my chest at his words it wasn’t like I had any real reason to rebuff them.
I hadn’t even fucked the Minotaur and I had no desire to take a different lover either.
I had no desire for anything at all aside from the vengeance which he refused to allow me.
“Fine,” I bit out. “But if I’m a weapon then wield me. And set me loose on my enemy too.”
“As easy as that?” he scoffed and I shrugged, defeat clinging to me. “And if I were to allow you to seek the man who wronged you would you be content then? Would you come back to me and be the sword at my side? Would you fulfil every desire I have of you? Would you do all I asked of you?”
“I’ve always done all you asked of me,” I hissed, my voice breaking on the words. “And this is the only thing I ever asked for in return, yet you deny me it.”
“Liar,” Dragor spat. “You defy me at every turn, never more so than since you returned from that cursed Never Keep. Your head was turned by that place and the treason you committed there and you have never been the same since. You’re tarnished by it and I told you before, I want you perfect, not stained by anything at all. ”
“Perfect?” I released a hopeless laugh. “I have never come even close to that.”
Dragor surveyed me critically and I knew he agreed with me there at least.
I resisted the urge to say more, lowering my head instead and turning for the door.
“I’ll remember the oath to you,” I muttered. “So if there’s nothing else, I’ll just–”
Dragor lunged for me, grabbing my hand and jerking me back to face him again. I met his gaze defiantly, unable to cloak the roiling emotions which burned through my veins as he peered into my eyes as if hunting for something.
“What is it you want, Vesper?” he murmured, though the question seemed aimed more at himself than at me. “And why is it that when I look at you all I see is a desire for that Dragon you delivered to me?”
I flinched at that accusation, shaking my head in denial of it.
“He’s nothing to me,” I said though we could both taste the lie on the air as my words tainted it.
Dragor tilted his head as he considered me before continuing in a disparaging tone. “Don’t tell me you fell for the lies of another Avanis bastard. What is it? Are their cocks bigger than the men in Stormfell can claim?”
“You tell me,” I sneered, looking down at his crotch suggestively before tugging my hand from his grip.
Dragor chuckled, though a darkness simmered in his cold eyes. “I have no concerns in that department. But I don’t think that’s it either. You do care about him though, don’t you?”
“He was a means to an end,” I replied mechanically, forcing my pounding heart to calm, ignoring the way my pulse echoed through my skull with every lie I spoke. “An end which you are denying me.”
“Ah,” Dragor said, nodding as if he’d suddenly gotten the answer he wanted.
“Well you can calm yourself over the Dragon. I have him well in hand and I can promise you he harbours no longing for you in turn. He is in fact quite enamoured with the idea of your demise and would no doubt immensely enjoy it if I allowed him the chance to deliver it to you.”
I said nothing. I’d already promised Bastian my death and I had no plans to renege on that bargain – the stars would curse me for it if I did. Though I supposed I was like Dragor in that sense, twisting the terms of our deal to suit my own ends. The realisation was less than comforting.
“This is how it will be. Perhaps if you have clarity on that you will stop with this defiance and find yourself comfortable in your place here once more.”
“Perhaps,” I replied, though nothing about the word offered agreement on that suggestion.
“Our most pressing concern now is the Void. Followed closely by the line of succession in our kingdom. My father is ailing and the time for him to choose his heir is fast approaching. All of my siblings have their own plans to turn his head and I need to know what they are. Evard wishes to use you as a key to gaining insight into me. You will encourage him in his efforts. Agree to wed him if he asks again and–”
I opened my mouth to protest but he held up a hand to silence me.
“And if it comes to it then you will bed him too – clearly your oath to be mine and no others’ does not stand. So we may as well make use of the full range of your gifts.”
The look on my face was clearly enough to convey my disgust at the idea of playing his seductress but he clucked his tongue dismissively and went on.
“Do not think this is something I ask of you alone. I have spies all over The Waning Lands who fuck our enemies and far more than that to keep their covers secure. Your flesh is the property of Stormfell just as every other part of you is, and despite your belief that you are a weapon best utilised on the battlefield I can see clearly enough that you are a blade which can cut both ways. And you will. You are my weapon so I will wield you where you are best suited to strike.”
“I’m not a whore,” I hissed.
“No one is offering to pay you for it,” he spat in reply.
“Now let me finish. Once I am crowned I will dissolve your marriage to my brother should you wish it – though you would be a fool to want to be anything other than an Aquila and you know it. But that is only one piece of this puzzle and by far the least important. The Void is our priority. We know that her power doesn’t stall the magic stored in runes so we are working tirelessly to imbue all manner of weapons with as much energy as we can in preparation of their attack.
But when we hit that battlefield your one and only task will be to capture her for our utilization.
Do you understand me? The moment you bring her to me I will deem your loyalty assured and you will be allowed to hunt the man who called himself Cayde Avior and killed your precious sisters. ”
“Is that all?” I asked scathingly, the impossibility of what he expected from me allowing little else because I was so close to snapping that I wasn’t certain how much longer I could stand there before I did.
“My wife desires a night with you in our chambers,” he added as an afterthought like my question had actually been in want of an answer. “Though I do not feel inclined to take pleasure in your flesh while the stench of that brute still clings to you.”
I recoiled, every piece of my devotion to this man peeling away like the shine falling from a statue, revealing the gold to be nothing but tin beneath.
“I’ll have you before Evard does,” he said, almost to himself, as if this were simply a matter of deciding what time to take his tea.
“In fact, why don’t you make him fall for you?
Get him to spill his little heart out and tell you he loves you – he pretends at brutality but has always secretly desired love like a babe desperate for his mother’s teat.
Then I’ll reward you with the fullness of my body and stain your skin with my touch before he marks you with his.
I think I’d rather enjoy the knowledge that our act would crush him.
It would go some part in payment to the bother he has caused me these last years. ”
In those words any last vestiges of delusional devotion I had felt to my prince shattered.
Did he truly think my desire to hunt and butcher Cayde would equal my agreement to these terms?
But the words of refusal which should have come at them didn’t.
Instead, a hollow acceptance fell over me.
What did I care if I had to fuck his brother or his wife or any other bastard in between?
If that was the price of vengeance then it was certainly simpler than any other I had attempted.
Easier than capturing a Dragon. Easier than dreaming of some non-existent bond between us which had clearly never been more than a power play on his part.
I’d been foolish enough to imagine myself a life with this man, his secret obsession, but now all I felt towards him was disgust. Not that it mattered. He was still my prince and he was still the only one who could offer me the vengeance I so desperately needed.
“Speak,” he commanded and I unfastened my tongue from the roof of my mouth.
“Yes, my Prince,” I said finally. “I understand your orders.”
A smile crept over his face like a snake slipping though long grass. “No more defiance?” he pushed.
“We capture the Void and you unleash me on Cayde at once?” I confirmed.
His eyes dropped to the vial of blood hanging at my throat and he nodded.
I nodded too then turned and strode from his chambers, the terms of my freedom clear at last.