CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN #3
“If I do this,” I started, my jaw clenched, “if I bed you… you’ll tell me everything? Where she is. What she is. How I can find her?”
The witch's smile revealed teeth like shattered gravestones. “Everything, my sweet king. I shall tell you everything. But first, you must feed the hunger of ages.”
My hands trembled as I reached for the clasp of my cloak. The candlelight guttered, shadows shivering on the walls. Her eyes gleamed with ancient satisfaction.
The heavy fabric fell to the dirt floor with a soft thud that echoed louder than it should have. I stood there—Arthur Pendragon, King of Logres—on the verge of surrendering my cock to the foulest of beasts, not by force… but by choice.
Fingers—cold, skeletal—worked at the laces of my braies. I should have stopped her. Should have pulled away.
But I couldn't move.
My cock sprang free, heavy and throbbing. The air hit it like ice, but then—warmth. Her hand wrapped around my shaft, stroking slowly.
"There," she murmured. "See how easily you surrender?" It wasn't the voice of the hag. It was… her voice.
I opened my eyes and looked down.
And froze.
Guinevere knelt before me.
Not the witch. Not that rotted hag with her serpent tongue and grave-smelling breath.
It was Her.
White hair cascading over bare shoulders. Violet eyes gazing up at me through dark lashes. Full lips parted, pink and perfect. A smile curved across her mouth—soft, seductive, hungry.
"My king," she whispered.
Our treasure.
Then she released my cock and leaned back, bracing herself on her palms, as she slowly spread her thighs.
My breath caught.
There—pink and glistening, already wet—was the cunt I'd dreamed of. Perfect. Untouched. Mine.
"Is this what you want?" Her voice was velvet and sin. "What you've been lusting for, my king?"
"Yes," I rasped, unable to look away.
Her hand drifted down, fingers trailing over the swell of her breasts, down her belly, until they reached that slick heat between her legs. She circled her nub slowly, her head falling back as a soft moan escaped her lips.
Take her. Now.
I watched, transfixed, as she touched herself—teasing, stroking. Her fingers slid through her folds, glistening with her arousal.
"You want to taste me?" she whispered, her voice breathy. "Do you want to feel how wet I am for you?"
My cock throbbed painfully.
"Yes," I growled.
She smiled—wicked and knowing—and spread herself wider.
"Then come closer, Arthur," she purred. "Bury your cock in my cunt and take what is yours, what no other man will ever experience." She looked up at me and smiled. "Or perhaps I should taste you first?"
Then she leaned forward, tongue darting out to taste the head of my cock.
"Gods—" The word tore from my throat.
She opened her lips wider, taking me into the wet heat of her mouth. Her lips sealed around my shaft as she began to suck, slow and deliberate. Every pull sent fire racing up my spine. Her tongue worked along the underside, teasing, tasting.
Yes. Ours. Take her.
I couldn't think. Couldn't breathe. My hands tangled in that silken white hair as my hips began to move of their own accord. I thrust forward, pushing deeper into her mouth. She moaned around me—a sound that vibrated through my cock and nearly unmade me completely.
"Guinevere," I groaned, pumping faster now, desperate for more. "Take it. Take all of me."
She obeyed, relaxing her throat as I drove deeper still. Her hands gripped my thighs, nails digging in as if anchoring herself against my rhythm. The wet sounds of her mouth working me echoed obscenely in the small space.
I threw my head back in ecstasy, eyes clenched shut, lost to the sensation.
Closer. Harder. Fill her.
My release built like a storm gathering strength. Just a few more thrusts and I would—
I opened my eyes.
Blodeuwyn stared back at me from her knees.
Yellowed teeth. Blackened gums. That serpentine tongue wrapped around my shaft like a vise. Her withered lips stretched wide, saliva dripping from the corners of her mouth.
Horror slammed into me.
I shrieked—raw and animal—and ripped myself free.
"No!" I stumbled backward, nearly falling over the table behind me. "No, no, no—"
My cock hung between my legs, still hard, still slick with her spit.
I thought I might vomit.
I opened my eyes and pushed away from her, willing my erection to fade. The witch only cackled in amusement, no doubt thrilled by the angry flush of mortification and shame that was staining my cheeks. When I could breathe again, I looked at her.
“Come closer,” Blodeuwyn beckoned, her fingers curling like withered roots.
I didn't move.
"Don't you want to know where she is? Don't you want to claim her?"
We must find her!
I stepped forward. Then again. Her scent surrounded me—decay, damp earth, pestilence. The firelight behind her threw a monstrous silhouette on the wall—more truth than illusion.
“Closer,” she whispered.
I forced myself forward, though every instinct screamed at me to run. Her gnarled hands rose toward my face, shaking with eagerness.
That’s when I saw it.
The flicker of triumph in her eyes. Not desire. Not hunger. Victory.
And suddenly, I knew.
I wasn’t trading flesh—I was trading everything. My dignity. My crown. My values. The very foundation of my rule. I was becoming exactly what I feared to be: a hypocrite, willing to embrace the darkness I’d outlawed, so long as it served me.
I caught her wrists before she could touch me. “No.”
Surprise flickered across her ancient face.
"This is not the way," I said, shaking my head as I pushed her away and stepped back toward the door.
Her eyes narrowed. "You would leave without your answers? Without knowing where Guinevere is and how you can find her? You would leave without gaining that which you came here for?”
“I would leave with my soul intact. Whatever Guinevere represents—threat or salvation—I’ll face her as a king. Through strength. Through honor. Not through desperate bargains made in shadows.”
Blodeuwyn's expression twisted into fury. “Fool! You stand at the edge of ruin! Without my guidance—”
“—without your manipulation,” I corrected, snatching up my cloak. “I’ve ruled Logres for years by my own judgment. I won’t surrender it now—not even to know what I want most.”
The hovel groaned. The door creaked open on its own.
Blodeuwyn's laughter followed me as I walked through it. Wild. Crooked. Mocking.
“Pride before the fall, Arthur Pendragon!” she shrieked. “Pride before the fall!”
-ARTHUR-
Seven Years Earlier
The Whispering Wilds did not like us here.
Even before we stepped into the clearing, the forest pressed close, branches knitting overhead like fingers trying to claw us back.
The air smelled of damp earth and old magic—older than Camelot, older than Pendragons.
The trees murmured as we passed, their leaves shivering without wind, as if they knew what we carried and wanted no part of it.
What he carried.
Uther lurched between Corvin and Lance, his weight dragging at them despite the tatters he’d reduced himself to. Once he'd filled a throne with sheer presence. Now he hung in their grip like a scarecrow, all jutting bone and fevered eyes, lips moving with a constant, broken mutter.
“…fire… fire in the bones… I am the storm, I am the storm…”
His voice rasped over the words, each syllable chewed by something that wasn’t entirely human.
The dragon pulsed under his skin, a flicker of heat in the night, an ember glowing in the hollow of his throat.
Every so often, that ember flared and his eyes went bright—too bright—like molten gold forced into a human vessel.
I forced myself not to look away.
If I could not bear to see what the dragon had done to him, I had no right to ask what I was about to ask.
The clearing opened before us, a circle of flattened earth ringed by stones half-sunk in moss and something red that I was fairly certain was blood.
Blodeuwyn had raised the wards already. I could feel them as we crossed the invisible threshold—a prickling, a pressing, the sensation of stepping through a curtain that wasn’t there and yet somehow resisted.
The stones themselves were nothing grand.
Old granite, rough and lichen-streaked, leaning inward ever so slightly.
What made them terrible was not their shape but the sigils carved into their faces.
They crawled in sickly green light, each line and curve shifting when I tried to look directly at them.
Runes older than Logres, older than dragons, older perhaps than the names of gods.
Blodeuwynn stood in the center of the circle, bare feet sunk in the dirt, her dark hair loose about her shoulders like a mantle of shadow.
Her eyes were the only calm thing in that clearing—green and clear and cold as deep water.
She wore no crown and no ring, no sign of court or status.
Power itself was her only adornment. And she was exactly that—powerful. Perhaps even more so than Merlin.
“You are late,” she said, without heat, her voice carrying in the charged air.
“Your forest slowed us,” Merlin replied, glaring at her. It was no secret that the wizened old wizard didn't trust the witch. But it was also no secret that his power wasn't enough—we needed her. “It does not welcome Pendragons.”
“It remembers what came before them.” Her gaze slid to Uther, and the faintest edge of distaste touched her mouth. “Bring him.”
Corvin and Lance dragged Uther to the very center of the circle, within a smaller ring of chalk and blood and ash. The stench of it coiled in my nose—iron and incense and something crisp and acrid, like lightning caught in a bottle.
Uther fought them then, all at once, a wild, convulsive thrashing that tore a snarl from his shredded throat. It was the most physical power he'd revealed in days.
"Hold him!" Blodeuwynn snapped.