Chapter 15 #2
The Four Horsemen are already seated at the table in the dining hall, awaiting my arrival.
They eye me carefully as if I’m a fragile bird that may spook from any sudden movements.
I had my cry. My pity party. Now, it’s time to embrace who I’ve become.
Who they’ve turned me into. A monster like them.
Conquest pulls out a chair for me at the head of the long table. “You look lovely.”
“Exquisite,” Death hisses.
Famine grins as he leans back in his chair and throws a leg over the armrest. “No longer a virgin, but a deliciously dark queen.”
“Our dark queen,” War adds with a grunt.
My skin flushes from his words, and an ache stirs between my thighs.
They invoke deep longing and feral appetites.
To be claimed by them means to be chosen.
To be brutalized and yet worshipped. The darkness in them stokes the darkness in me.
And they are all that I have left now. I am tethered to their damned souls for eternity.
“Will it be enough?” I ask after taking a sip of spiced wine. “Or is he still after me?” While they’ve assured me that no one, not even Saint Nick, can breach the wards around our lands, I don’t want to be confined to this castle for the rest of my days.
Death, the most stoic of the four, pushes a heaping plate of bread and cheese toward me. “No. Saint Nick took his penance. I don’t suspect he’ll bother with any of us anymore.”
War sets a long dagger down on the table by his plate, the hilt encrusted with rubies and emeralds. I can’t imagine how many lives he’s taken with it. “Yours was not the only village to pay sacrifice to him every Yule. There are other villages and other hunters. He will be sour but occupied.”
“However, we shall keep you inside the wards until next Yule as a precaution,” Conquest adds.
My heart sinks. I was hoping to travel to the ruins of my village. To see it for myself. And to gather any belongings that may have survived the fire. A fruitless endeavor, it seems. I need to let it go. To let Lucy go.
“Will you not grow bored with me?” I ask between nibbles of cheese.
Famine snorts as he tears off a bite of meat from a boar leg. “Not possible. We have been waiting for you for centuries.”
“You say that as if you mean me, Imogen, and not the proverbial me of whom any peasant girl could’ve fulfilled.”
Death’s eyes darken as they narrow at me from across the table.
“We were told of a prophecy many moons ago. A crone appeared to us in the woods one night after a gruesome battle. She spoke of an innocent, a maiden with flaxen hair and sapphire eyes. A virgin with a crescent moon birthmark etched into her thigh.”
Oh gods.
Conquest nods and picks up where Death leaves off.
“For centuries, we’ve brought sacrifices to Saint Nick.
But in truth, we were looking for you. Some have come close.
We’ve captured many flaxen-haired, blue-eyed girls.
But none had the mark. Until you. It was the first thing I looked for when I had you spread open in the cave. ”
My stomach knots as I guzzle down the rest of my wine. “I don’t understand. Why me? What did the crone say?”
War smooths his palm over the hilt of his dagger but never takes his eyes off me. “That finding you would free us from servitude. That you would let us reclaim you and keep you forever. And then we would remember how to love.”
He grinds his teeth as he speaks, as if he still doesn’t even believe it himself. Love has never been a part of the Wild Hunt. It’s predator against prey. Nature versus nurture. He can barely say the word, let alone entertain the thought of it.
Famine chuckles, his usual sadistic amusement returning.
“I knew it when I caught your scent in the woods. Your arousal. All the ones we sacrificed before you, screamed until their last breath. Their only scent, fear. You filled the woods with your longing, your lust, and your carnal desire to be worshipped. I didn’t need to see the mark. I knew you as I have always known you.”
His revelation threatens to steal the breath from my lungs. “Wait… you’ve been looking for me for centuries? And you never gave up…”
Death stalks toward me and clasps my hands in his. “Never. You belonged to us before you belonged to your body. Your soul and ours, like scattered stardust searching for its source. We took what was promised. And in return, you will never be without anything you want and need.”
I don’t know why this changes things, but it does.
I’m not some random peasant girl they found in the woods.
I am their virgin queen, though no longer a virgin.
I have always been their possession to claim.
This explains the depth of their lust. The extremity of their hunger for me. And my own as well.
They will never hurt me. Not unless it’s for my pleasure.
It makes our games more addicting, my obsession with them stronger.
And it lessens the burden of my guilt. There wasn’t an outcome that didn’t end with them claiming me.
I couldn’t save my sister or my village. The mark on my thigh made sure of that.
But something else gnaws at me. “And what of all those innocents you sent to the slaughter? What were their lives worth to you?”
War huffs. “We are soldiers, Imogen. Deathbringers. Tasked to fulfill a duty. We didn’t make the rules, we just followed them.”
“Until you broke them… for me. Am I to believe you did it all for love? For freedom?”
Conquest folds his arms to his chest, annoyed. “What other reason could there be that’s more noble than that? Even monsters need love.”
Perhaps he’s right. Maybe it’s a concept I will never understand. “I know little about love between men and women. How am I to teach you?”
Death caresses my cheek tenderly. “You know more than you think, sweet doe. Love is pain. It’s sacrifice and torment. Burden and release. We will learn more together.”
That is not what the fables teach. The fairy tales read to me as a child were filled with gallant knights, delicate princesses, and good triumphing over evil. In my story, they will speak of how I let the villains win.
But there’s a fine line between good and evil, a slippery slope that favors the brave but also the most persuasive.
As I sit here eating this delectable feast while dressed in a gown that rivals the heroines of those long-forgotten fables, I know this was to be my fate all along.
The prophecy hummed in my bones every time I ever dared to dream of a simple life.
I couldn’t hear it until now. They’ve awakened me with the very power that flows through their veins.
But it makes me a villain too.
I stab another piece of meat with my fork. “You must promise to teach me the Wild Hunt.”
Their eyes light up around the table, pleased with my demand. Death comes around to the back of my chair and slides his hands down my chest. “Your primal instinct, your yearning, only makes us want you more. You will have everything you desire.”
He unlaces my corset, freeing my breasts from its tight fit. My breath hitches as he hoists me from the chair and lays me down on the table. “Have I become part of the feast, my lord?”
Famine chuckles as he dribbles mead across my nipples before licking it off. “You have always been the feast. Of course, you taste better than anything else on this table.”
War drags his knife through my skirt, shredding it open. He stares at my bare pussy, licking his lips as his mouth waters. He dips his finger into a thick lemon custard and smears a glob of it down my slit. “This is how I prefer to eat my dessert,” he declares.
I gasp as his fiery tongue lashes at my clit before he slides it farther down and laps up the custard from my flesh. He moans into it, exhaling his hot breath inside my cunt. “The gods are good. But we are better,” he growls against my thigh.
Conquest feeds me grapes from his mouth, sliding the crisp fruit across our tongues. I squeal in delight when it bursts in my mouth, the tart juice sending a sharp tingling to my glands as he kisses me hungrily.
Death taunts me with his blade, gently caressing my belly with the tip. He draws circles around my belly button. “Your blood is ours to taste. Isn’t that right, Imogen?”
As I gaze up into his dark eyes, the ache in my core deepens. His silky hair hangs loose around his shoulders, black as night. I reach up and wind a strand of it around my finger. “You may taste anything you wish, my lord.”
A deep growl erupts from his chest as he bows his head and tickles the tips of his strands across my belly, sending goose bumps across my skin. “Is this what you want, my love?”
I moan as he travels lower, letting his strands brush against my cunt while he leaves a trail of soft, sensuous kisses down my slick entrance. It’s impossible to understand how they anticipate my needs before I have spoken them or even know of them myself. “Yes, please.”
War presses the flat of his blade against my thigh.
“If you are to let Death whisper sweet nothings inside your cunt, then you must let me roar. Let me mark you with my brutality. That way, if you should ever wake in fear in the middle of the night, you will be reminded of the beast who slays the nightmares that dare to torment you.”
I arch my back, inviting their brutality once again. “Mark me, then,” I murmur. “Carve your star beside my moon. Let me bleed and cum for you.”
Conquest groans as he holds my shoulders down against the table. “You are perfect. Fucking hell, fortune has finally favored us by delivering you to us.”
I’m dizzy, flushed, intoxicated by their fingers and kisses and seductive words. “It is I who am fortunate. Destined to die but saved by your mercy. Your devotion. I was dead before, but now I have risen, alive for the first time.”
Famine whips his long blond mane against my belly with a slap, stinging my flesh. “From virgin to whore to queen.” He moans as he pushes a finger inside my cunt.
I buck as the first prick of the blade pierces my soft flesh. But before the pain takes hold, the pleasure erupting in my core wins out.
War works the knife in deep, ensuring that the scar he leaves will never fade.
They take turns licking the blood from my thigh.
And when it is done, they lift me from the table and fuck me on the floor in front of the hearth all night long.
Until I’m nothing but a filthy nymph whose carnal cries of ecstasy echo through the halls of the House of the Four Horsemen.
And as I drift off to sleep in a mountain of furs, a flower crown is placed upon my head.