At His Majesty's Pleasure Ch. 03

But it did trigger a memory. "You still owe me a fact about yourself, you know."

He was still wrapping the second layer of linen about her arm, over and under. "Hmm?"

"The bet," she clarified. He had probably nothing in mind at all at the time, and was only speaking to lure her into the game - but she would call him out on it all the same, if for no other reason than to see how he would react to it. There was so little she knew about how he operated. "If you did not find my hiding place, you would tell me something about yourself that no one else knew."

He looked surprised, but then a smile stole over his expression. "Ah yes, of course. I was going to tell you that, as it so happened, I'd actually been after that 'state secret' recipe of yours for some time."

"Really." That wasn't what she had expected.

"Of course. Had I not been so tempted by your cuisine, I may not have come to the masquerade at all," he said lightly.

She suspected he was simply making fun of her now.

Having finished the redressing in full, he made the effort to run his fingers lightly over the linen, tucking in looser bandages here and there.

Goosebumps had surely surfaced from the surrounding skin by now. Again, she caught herself fighting against the instinct to pull away. But even more horrifying was the counter-instinct to linger underneath the dancing of his fingertips, which felt annoyingly pleasant. As that brief exchange just attested to, he could be charming when he wanted to be, and his teases could be almost gallantly benign - again, when he wanted them to be. Why, then, did he have to be... the way he was?

She supposed she knew why. It was the Continent's worst kept secret.

"There now," the King said, patting her arm - the unbandaged part, mercifully. "I think that should do."

Her gaze flitted toward him, albeit briefly and uncertain. It felt too absurd to thank him for the effort. "Well... goodnight, then."

He inclined his head in turn. And yet - he didn't move. Nor had he released his grip, and there it remained, like a shackle about her wrist. She was made conscious again of their proximity - she could count the bristles in his stubble, could see the rise and fall of his broad chest. She had never been aware of how very blue his eyes were until now, when they were looking down on her from so close an angle. Perhaps it could only be expected that his gaze passed over her with a suggestion of impropriety, lingering a moment too long for comfort. She saw the desire there.

Her heart began to thunder anew. It was not out of the question that he might...stay. There were practical reasons to wait until marriage, of course, but that meant nothing if he really wanted to take possession of her then and there. Who would stop him?

Alais sat stock still, feeling almost numb, and waited for the prolonged moment to come to an end.

Finally, the King rose to his feet, to a height that towered even further over her. "Not just yet, I think."

She felt panic begin to set in.

"...After all, I wouldn't want you to go to sleep hungry." What? In her confusion, she watched as he went to the door, beckoning a servant in.

A substantial bowl was set upon her table, the contents of which appeared to be a hearty meat stew. The aroma already began to drift favorably toward her.

"I noticed that you didn't eat much during our dinner," said the King, with a solicitous smile. "Perhaps you might partake now. We still have a long road ahead of us to travel."

Her attentions gradually converged upon the uneasy vacantness in her stomach. She drew a breath. The result was nothing short of innocuous, but...she knew he had misled her on purpose. Something in her fumed with flustered annoyance, though this gradually gave way to relief.

He turned to the corridor. "Goodnight, princess."

It wasn't long before his footsteps subsided into the distance.

And it was only after the King was far and away that Alais picked up her spoon, pulse still thundering in her ears.

*****

Though Alexander was guilty of his hedonistic tendencies - some a little more depraved than others - he also believed in the value of controlling his impulses when it mattered. Patience was occasionally a virtue.

Nonetheless, he found it difficult that night to concentrate on his work. Every now and then, his mind would wander, and his quill would pause.

He thought of the princess - of her supple curves and her porcelain smooth skin, barely concealed by the mists and vapors of the bath. And later, of that generous decolletage, shrouded only by a small slip and gauzy robe, and the slender long legs that curled so apprehensively away from him. Part of him had only reluctantly acquiesced to logical thinking. After all, she would be his. She was his. All that remained was a formality, and it would have been so very easy to have borne her to the bed and ravished her as he liked.

But no, she was not some common whore or even a spoil of war - she was to be his queen, and he intended to enjoy her at the proper time. He would save her away to savor in full.

In the end, he'd made use of a pleasure slave to discharge his impulses. Alexander usually preferred dalliances with noblewomen, as he found it more sporting, but slaves did have their utilities depending on the occasion. And he'd been told this Scalyrian girl had a way with her mouth.

As the slave swirled her tongue expertly about his head, he leaned back and closed his eyes, imagining with what relish he would despoil his princess. He imagined tangling his fingers in those soft curls, imagined kissing that delicate neck and the swell of those pretty breasts. His hands would grapple those long legs, spreading them far and wide, all the better so that she would be helpless as he thrust himself slow and deep inside of her. And then how she would moan and quiver as he fucked her.

The slave's hands were cuffed behind her, and so she was defenseless as he lay his hand against the back of her head and pressed her all the way down. Muffled groans thrummed pleasantly along his length, as the slave bucked and gagged, which did nothing to deter him as he continued pumping her head up and down with his hand. The girl was, of course, well trained, and even under duress kept her lips tight and wet; neither would she have dared shift away, even if she could. When his hot load emptied into her mouth, she swallowed fully, continuing to suckle and milk for the last of his cum until he grew soft.

As the heady feeling of his orgasm faded, he released his grip on the slave's hair and allowed her to crawl back in place to her kneeling position by the foot of his desk. The night was young still, and he was inclined to partake again at some point.

In the morning, a messenger was swift to inform him that the princess had agreed to his terms, and had presented a letter accordingly, to be sent to her family alongside his own. He was not surprised by the "decision" - as the princess was anything but stupid - and duly handed her missive off to his codebreakers.

As it turned out, she had written, 'I'm fine. Everything is fine. Sorry for being a colossal idiot.' There was a sketch of a cat chasing after a canary, for authenticity probably, and nothing more. An instilled awareness that the missive was assuredly going to be inspected for suspect content had probably crushed notions of pouring any more sentiment onto the paper, and for that he could hardly blame her.

In the end, the codebreakers only found one message, written in now-invisible lemon juice. When they held a candle to the parchment for their King to see, it read only 'I resent that Your Majesty is reading this.' in small letters, at the very bottom. And to that, Alexander could not help laughing.

He had half a mind to act as if he knew nothing of her secret postscript, if only to encourage her to think she could use such methods later. But the probability was small that she would be thus fooled, especially when she already knew her letter was being examined. And so, as their journey began, he found himself slowing to ride alongside her carriage-cage, looking through the narrow slits of windows. He had let off the ropes and gag for now, though the carriage remained sealed.

"Our letters have been sent," he informed her. "I hope your grandfather proves to be as reasonable as his reputation holds." He glanced sidelong at her, not quite able to hide his amusement. "The lemon juice was a nice touch."

There was no longer the same urgency as before, of course, but Alexander was eager to make good time all the same. The rumble of the caravan followed them as they led the way closer to the heart of Obsivia, and now that they had bypassed the outskirts of the country, the civilizations they encountered were more common and dense. They journeyed through the merchant city of Chaeline, crammed with as much reeking fish as it was colorful silks, and the town of Mallowmont, a study in red clay and ivory thatch. At nightfall, they took rest in the manor of a Lord Esterwynne, whose brick walls were a welcome relief against the heavy storm that happened upon them that night.

The morning after, they chanced upon shouts and commotion, and discovered the work of bandits who were midway through robbing a host of merchant wagons. It was to be expected that they left the forest path with several more piked heads than it started with, but he observed her surprise at the relative charity he showed to the victims; he allowed them the use of his horses, and sent a squad of soldiers to protect them the rest of the way.

Days later, they at last reached Kastalus, his capital. It was midday when they first saw its high stone walls crest over their hilly path, high and lofty in the distance, and smelled the sea breeze that rolled from its small ports. Alexander sent messengers ahead of them, and the result was that its gates - thick iron, at least twice the size of the River Fort's doors - opened wide for their procession, as the soldiers hailed their King from the sentry towers. The city itself was enormous, one of the largest on the Continent, and its sights were varying and its people diverse - it was filled with both noblemen and beggars, mercenaries and scholars, holy monks and brothel workers.

Most of them swarmed to the procession. The streets should have been broad enough to allow their caravan to march in full, but there was such a crowd of gawkers and onlookers that it impeded their progress, and they moved with torturous slowness. So many called out to the King that it was an indiscernible din, and the clamor of yells and blessings were in no danger of ceasing as they continued forward.

Alexander's wars had not inspired dissension so much as patriotism in his people, perhaps even zeal - it mattered that he was winning. It had not always been this way. A growing sense of disillusionment had manifested during his father's reign, for although the late King Aeneas had not been cruel, he was perpetually appeasing; the result of a decentralized government, while it had its merits, favored the nibbling greed of noblemen, and that was to say nothing of their voracious neighbors to the north. Symbolic wounds ran plenty, from the late Queen's...ordeal to the constant ceding of borders (what had they come to? had they become so toothless?), but this was nothing in comparison to what really mattered: with a burgeoning population and unsteady resources, famines flared with cruel consistency.

Not so when Obsivia was the one doing the devouring. The benefit of ransacking a country - and subjecting most of its citizens to slavery - was a steady stream of wealth and free labor, and despite how affluently Alexander lived, there was plenty enough to spill over. Obsivia had gotten fat on pride and savagery. This was helped along by a generous campaign of propaganda (glorifying every victory and semi-victory and quasi-victory) and comparisons to the Obsivian golden age (valiant tales of bloodshed that had never quite faded from the public consciousness). The denizens of the capital were especially pampered, subjected as they were to impromptu feasts and dazzling events of violence.

Neither was Alexander, despite his reputation, a stranger to more noble instincts; his fault lay not in incapacity for having such senses, but in operating at the extremes of his tendencies, good and bad alike. More often, bad. But his kindness to the robbed merchants was, for example, a small glimmer of the other side. As a younger King, during a siege on their castle, he had foregone the traditional lion's share of rations and ordered his excess (and that of other nobles, to their horror) be distributed to the starving masses. During battle, he shied not in riding at the front lines, putting himself at the mercy of his own strategies as he did his soldiers. Little schools and orphanages had crept up more and more in the city, with his funding. Such was motivated by pragmatic reasons, of course; these open displays soothed the sensibilities of the peasants and bolstered the morale of his soldiers. There was probably a little that came from a less calculated place, but that was not something he acknowledged.

Of course, he also had hapless knights killed in needlessly excruciating ways, mostly for his own amusement. So perhaps it was reasonable for his reputation to remain what it was.

"Give them some coin," Alexander instructed his knights, as he watched his people swarm. Those who profited would sing his praises at their neighbors, and it was an expenditure worth undertaking. If only his nobles and courtiers were so easily bought. "And don't let those urchins there leave empty-handed."

*****

Since the guards deigned not to speak with her, Alais took it upon herself to name them herself. At least the ones whose faces showed up more than once, bless their hearts. For instance, the one with the prominent cleft chin, she dubbed Clefty. For the one with no remarkable features to speak of, she labeled Milktoast (though she had heard him addressed as Ser Lionel before).

Her gaze was settled listlessly upon the back of Milktoast's greaves, the design of the metal halfway distracting enough to stave off boredom. She'd learned that he and Clefty occasionally had minor quarrels, and was wont to pay them more attention for that reason. The overwhelming duration of their journey, after all, was calm and monotonous.

Admittedly, having even the vaguest idea of what was to happen to her - and donning attire that was actually suited for traveling, for once - did manage to smooth the edge off her initial panic. Throughout the journey thus far, Alais was ever the model prisoner, keeping quietly to herself in her pretty, cushioned prison, rumbling over the uneven ground and all. In return, she was at least being treated a little less like an actual prisoner (no gag, no binds) and just a little more like a legitimate traveling companion, which was begrudgingly the more favorable of the two.

Now and then, her mind wandered to the serendipitous highway robbery (and the foiling of). Alais had taken no issue to the heads of these particular louts being nailed onto pikes, and the proceeding display of kindness from the King to the merchants almost made her think a little more of him. She had the level-headedness to allow that her captor had his good, even great, qualities.

As much as she resented his company for a number of increasingly... conflicting... reasons, she did not think she hated him. Chiefly because he did not deserve that great of an emotional response, though realistically because she had actually disliked certain others with greater fervor in the past. Had she ever hated anyone before? It wasn't for lack of trying. The scorned and affected child in her wanted to hate him, but that... was still too extreme for her tastes. This did not mean she had to accept what he was doing, or to overlook his more egregious tendencies. How could she? That would have been like, what, thanking him for the events of the past week? For Edmure too? How could she forgive and forget, just for the sensible fact that no one in this world was completely evil and thusly worth the effort of hating?

None of that mattered anymore, for as long as she was so... helpless. But sulking did her no favors either.

At the very least, she'd embraced her renewed and heightened aversion to being touched with increased zeal. Each time he seemed to draw close in proximity, she dodged or skirted away - or at least attempted to, and trying it very subtly to avoid further needless provocation - always aiming for at least an arm's length for... personal space. From him, from anyone. Nothing good ever came from being touched by these people.

In this sense, the carriage served as a protective bubble of sorts. No one bothered her in the carriage as long as she behaved, and for as long as she behaved she could enjoy her isolation and could almost pretend she had an idle interest in the vibrant sights and scenes blurring by.

Arriving at the capital had her draw further inward. Were circumstances any different, she might have embraced the scrolling sites with excitement, but here they only heralded an end to her brief reprieve, and made the ominous question of what now loom ever larger.

In the distance, the palace rose up before them, a magnificent structure that dwarfed every other building they had seen thus far. It was tall - tall enough that necks had to be craned to look upon it - but also wide and expansive, almost certainly capable of housing half the population of the city itself, if it came down to it.

But first, they had to traverse a bridge - a bridge that happened to be infamous for its prospect: dozens of gibbets lined the path, positioned with a sort of absurd care so that they matched the brick patterns flecking the wall. She had heard of this bridge, and it was before these macabre sights that she stirred, the details of her surroundings finally lingering in her thoughts beyond simple, cursory inspection. There were corpses trapped in gibbets, in varying states of decomposition, though many of them had the flesh picked nearly clean off their bones by crows by now. But many identifying elements, like scraps of cloth... badges... still remained. A pin flashed at her in the sunlight, shaped like a gleaming strawberry.

A strawberry pin.

She had given that to Edmure.

"Stop the carriage," she heard herself saying, almost crying as her hands suddenly gripped at the window. But without actually crying, since she'd promised herself not to. "Please, stop the carriage!"

*

Authors: We promise we're not just writing cliffhangers for the sake of it, but it so happened that they've all been well-timed just when a chapter would naturally end! As always, if you like the story, we appreciate any ratings/favorites/comments that you are kind enough to throw our way. And yes, we are particularly greedy about comments (as greedy as Alexander is about territorial expansion, haha), and we reply to most substantive things. So let us know what you think!