Chapter 28
ROUND TWO
Nesilhan
"Please," I sob, not even sure what I'm begging for anymore.
"Please what?" Another slap. "Please stop? Or please more?"
"More—gods—more—"
"Good girl." His approval makes me wetter than any touch could. "You take your punishment so beautifully. Such a perfect little empress, letting me mark this gorgeous ass."
He delivers three more sharp strikes, and by the last one I'm moaning, pushing back against his hand, completely undone.
Then his hands spread my cheeks, and I feel his breath against my most intimate places. "Now let's see how you taste after being such a good girl for me."
His tongue drags through my folds in one long, slow stroke, and I nearly come apart right there.
"Fuck," he groans against my flesh. "You're dripping. My hand on your ass made you this wet, didn't it?"
I can't form words. Can only whimper as he licks me again, his tongue finding my clit and circling with agonizing slowness. He's thorough, feral, alternating between broad strokes that make me shudder and focused attention on that bundle of nerves that has me rolling my eyes to the back of my head.
When he slides two fingers inside me, curling them to hit that perfect spot while his mouth works my clit, I nearly scream.
The shame is gone now. Burned away by need and fairy dust and the feeling of his mouth devouring me like I'm his last meal. I don't care that we have an audience. Don't care about anything except the pleasure building in my core.
"That's it," he murmurs, the vibration of his voice against my sensitive flesh making me gasp. "Come on my tongue, hatun. Let them all hear how loud you can be."
He adds a third finger, stretching me, filling me, his tongue never stopping its assault on my clit. The dual sensation is too much. I'm going to shatter, going to break apart.
That's when I hear it. A distinctly male groan from somewhere in the trees. Followed by a female moan, breathier, closer.
Our audience isn't just watching anymore.
The realization sends me over the edge. I come with a scream that echoes through the clearing, pleasure crashing through me in waves so intense I lose all sense of time and place.
Distantly, I hear answering moans from multiple directions, the sounds of our voyeurs pleasuring themselves or each other, unable to resist the erotic scene playing out before them.
Kaan doesn't stop. He works me through the orgasm and into another, his fingers relentless, his mouth greedy, until I'm sobbing with overstimulation and desperate need all at once.
When he finally pulls away, I'm boneless, trembling. But he's not done.
He stands, positioning himself behind me, and then he's filling me again with one brutal thrust that makes me cry out.
This angle is deeper, harder, and combined with how sensitive I already am, it's almost too much.
"Too much," I gasp, even as my body welcomes him, clenching around his thick length.
"You can take it," he growls, setting a punishing pace that has me scrambling for purchase on the slick stone. "You'll take every inch of my cock and beg for more."
His shadows join the assault, wrapping around my breasts like living hands, teasing my nipples with touches that feel almost solid. Another tendril slides between my legs, finding my oversensitive clit and circling in time with his brutal thrusts.
"Oh gods—Kaan—" I can't breathe, can't think, can only feel.
Around us, the sounds from our audience grow louder. Breathless moans, the wet sound of flesh on flesh, whispered encouragement in languages I don't understand. They're fully engaged now, fucking each other or themselves while they watch us, and knowing that makes me impossibly wetter.
"Listen to them," Kaan commands, his hand fisting in my hair to pull my head back. "Listen to how we've inspired them. They'll remember this for centuries, the night the Shadow Lord fucked his empress in the sacred springs while the whole forest watched and got off on it."
He punctuates the words with brutal thrusts that make me see stars. The new angle has him hitting something inside me that sends sparks shooting through my entire body.
"You're mine," he growls against my ear. "This perfect cunt belongs to me. These tits—" his shadows tighten around my breasts, making me whimper, "—mine. Every moan, every scream, every drop of cum dripping down your thighs, mine. Say it."
"Yours," I gasp. "I'm yours—only yours—"
"Damn right you are." His shadows press harder against my clit while his cock drives deeper, and the combination is destroying me. "Now come on my cock one more time. Show our audience how good I make you feel."
The female moans around us are getting higher, more desperate. I can hear at least two couples now, their rhythm matching ours, chasing their own pleasure while they watch us fall apart, and the knowledge that we're all racing toward the edge together pushes me over.
I shatter with a scream, my inner walls clenching around him so hard he groans. Around us, I hear answering cries as our voyeurs find their own releases, the clearing filling with the sounds of collective pleasure.
Kaan follows moments later, his roar of completion vibrating through my entire body as he spills inside me, his shadows tightening almost painfully around my breasts and clit before finally releasing.
We collapse into the water together, both trembling, both completely spent. The sounds around us gradually fade as our audience disperses, satisfied and presumably scandalized in equal measure.
The bioluminescence seems brighter now, dancing across our skin like living starlight.
"I think—" I try to catch my breath. "I think I might actually be broken."
His laugh is exhausted but genuine. "You're not broken. Just thoroughly satisfied."
"Can't feel my legs."
"Good." He gathers me close, pressing kisses to my damp hair. "Then I did my job properly."
We float there in the heated water, limbs tangled, both too sated to move. The forest hums with ancient magic around us, accepting our presence, blessing our joining.
"We should go back," I finally murmur, though I make no move to leave his arms.
"Probably." His hands trace lazy patterns on my skin. "In a minute."
"Morwanna will have questions about where we disappeared to."
"Let her question. I'm sure her voyeuristic subjects have already reported back in detail."
The thought should embarrass me. Instead, I find myself smiling against his chest. "You're terrible."
"And you love it."
I do. Gods help me, I really do.
Eventually, we drag ourselves from the water, helping each other dress with hands that linger and lips that can't quite stop stealing kisses. The walk back to the palace is slow, both of us pleasantly exhausted, his arm around my waist keeping me steady.
"Kaan?" I say as the crystalline spires come into view.
"Mm?"
"Thank you. For this. For..." I struggle to find the words. "For making me forget. Even for a little while."
He stops walking, turning me to face him. In the moonlight, his eyes are impossibly dark, impossibly tender.
"Anytime, hatun," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to my forehead. "Anytime at all."
And as we slip back into the palace, past knowing smirks from the guards and the occasional giggle from passing sprites, I carry the memory of his undone expression like armor against whatever fresh hell awaits us.
Because tomorrow, we will be back in the Shadow Court, back to prophecies and the weight of saving two realms.
But that moment? That moment was ours.
Queen Morwenna's private chambers are carved from living ice that never melts, walls that pulse with their own cold heartbeat. She sits behind a desk made from what looks like crystallized winter, reviewing documents.
"Ah," she says without looking up, "my favorite political chess pieces. Have you reached a decision?"
Kaan and I exchange a look. We both know we never really had a choice, not if we want to save the Shadow Realm.
"We accept your terms," I say formally.
"Excellent." She sets down her pen. "Then let us begin the sealing."
"Sealing?" Kaan's voice sharpens. "The terms were clear. Territory, Elcin's service, Nesilhan's monthly visits. What else requires sealing?"
Morwenna's smile is ancient and patient. "Every bargain of this magnitude requires a truth offering, Shadow Prince. The deeper the alliance, the deeper the truth." Her gaze slides to me. "Your wife's pain will seal this contract more surely than any signature."
"Absolutely not—" Kaan starts, but Morwenna raises one elegant hand.
"There is also the matter of your bond," she continues, as if he hadn't spoken. "Fae law requires individual consent. A bond as deep as yours muddles where one soul ends and another begins. I cannot accept her truths as wholly her own while your emotions bleed into hers."
The implication settles over me like ice. "You want to sever our bond."
"Partially. Temporarily." Morwenna rises from her desk with fluid grace. "Enough to ensure the truths you offer are yours alone. The bond will heal—eventually. But for now, I require clarity."
Kaan moves in front of me, shadows coiling with protective fury. "Find another way."
"There is no other way." Morwenna's voice carries the weight of centuries.
"This is Fae law, not my whim. Refuse, and there is no alliance.
No army. No hope for your realm." She tilts her head, studying him with something like curiosity.
"You came here seeking twenty thousand warriors.
Did you think such a gift came without cost? "
The silence stretches between us, heavy with impossible choices.
"Do it," I say quietly, stepping around Kaan despite his sharp protest. "If this is what it takes."
"Nesilhan—"
"We don't have a choice." I meet his burning gaze, willing him to understand. "The Shadow Court needs this alliance. Our people need this. Whatever she takes from me, it's worth it if it saves them."
For a long moment, he doesn't move. Then, slowly, his shadows recede, not in acceptance, but in recognition that I've made my decision and he won't override it.
"If you harm her," he says to Morwenna, his voice dropping to something fetal, "no army in any realm will protect you from what I'll become."
"Noted," Morwenna replies, utterly unintimidated. "Now. Shall we begin?"
What follows is pain unlike anything I've experienced. Kaan stands in the center of a ritual circle carved with symbols that seem to writhe when I'm not looking directly at them, while Queen Morwenna begins the process of severing part of our bond.
The agony is immediate and devastating. I feel the connection between us, the emotional thread that's become as natural as breathing, begin to tear. It's like having part of my soul ripped away while I'm forced to remain conscious.
Kaan makes no sound, but I can see the moment the pain hits him. His shadows go wild, lashing out at nothing, and his face goes marble-white with effort.
"Almost finished," the Queen murmurs.
Then it's done. The connection doesn't disappear entirely—I can still feel him there, but it's distant now, muffled, like trying to hear someone speak through thick glass. Half our bond lies dark and empty, and the loss is staggering.
"Part one complete," Morwenna announces with satisfaction. "Now for the truth offering."
The truth-curse activates with renewed force, and I know I'm about to be stripped bare in ways that have nothing to do with clothes.
"Do you blame Kaan for your child's death?" she asks.
"I—" The words catch in my throat. "Sometimes. When the grief is worst, I blame him. But I blame myself more. I blame fate. I blame everyone and no one."
The truth is more complicated than simple accusation, and even under compulsion, it comes out layered.
"Do you feel comfort when the binding pulls you toward Yasar?" Morwenna continues.
"It's... different," I admit, each word pulled reluctantly free. "Not comfort exactly. Just absence of pain. With Yasar, I don't have to remember what Kaan and I lost together. But it's empty comfort. Like numbing a wound instead of healing it."
"And do you sometimes wish you had died that night instead of living with this grief?"
This one makes me close my eyes. "In my darkest moments, yes. But..." The compulsion forces the rest: "But then I think of Kaan alone with that same wish, and I know I have to keep living. For him. For us. For the chance that maybe someday the pain will ease."
The Queen seems almost disappointed by the complexity of my answers. She tries one more time: "If you could change the past, would you still choose to bind yourself to him?"
The answer comes immediately, surprising even me: "Yes.
Even knowing the pain that would come. Because the alternative is never having loved him at all, never having carried our child, never having known what it means to be truly seen by another soul.
The binding didn't cause our loss. It just means we carry it together. "
When it's over, when the truth-curse finally releases me, I'm shaking. But Kaan is there, his tendrils of night encircling me like a protective cocoon.
"I'm sorry," I whisper against his chest. "The things I said—"
"Were true," he finishes. "All of them. You do blame me sometimes. And you have every right to."
"But that's not the whole truth," I insist. "I love you. Even in my anger, even in my grief, I love you. The curse couldn't make me say otherwise because it's the deepest truth I know."
His arms tighten around me. "I know," he murmurs. "I felt it, even with half our bond severed. Some truths run deeper than magic."
I lean into him, exhausted and numb, but strangely lighter. The Fae trade in memories and emotions. I'd just handed Morwenna three of my most painful truths, and I suspected they were worth more to her than any territory we'd surrendered.
But as Kaan holds me in the aftermath, I find I don't regret it. Some prices are worth paying.
Even when they cost pieces of your soul.