The Island Ch. 07

Lux heard the sound of a chair drawing back, and the voices fell away, replaced by the sound of hundreds of chairs drawing back. The king was on his feet, and the citizens of Pantheon had followed his lead. She shifted forward, moving away from the Prince's legs as he stood also. The legs began to file out of the hall, and gradually the room quietened. The sound of clinking crockery took over as serving staff began to clear the lower tables first.

Lux wouldn't leave until the hall was clear. She felt strangely safe there, aware that the King probably wouldn't return to the hall. She studied the gap beneath the cloth, looking to see whether anyone was clearing the higher table yet, when she saw the glint of glass next to the Prince's chair legs. Creeping closer, she realised a near-full decanter of wine sat hidden slightly under the chair. She swiftly retrieved it.

For a moment, she held it and stared at it, a small smile on her lips. The Prince must have placed it there as he left.

*** So there she sat, under the table, trying not to think and failing. 'What is done, is done' She thought. She listened as the table above her was cleared.

Finally, the hall fell completely silent. She carefully slid out between the chairs, looking around her as she went, and silently crept through the passages and back to her room.

Once there, Lux strode directly into the bathroom. There were no bolts on any of the doors, something that in this place usually made her uneasy, but tonight she didn't care. She was shivering from cold and desperate to relieve the tension in her muscles. She stepped into the large, glass fronted shower, and turned it on so that an instant deluge of warm water opened onto her head.

She was still dressed, and her silk shift clung to her. Stripping it over her head and struggling out of saturated lace underwear, she turned the heat up, and raised her face into the stream of water, sighing as it began to ease the biting cold in her bones. She reached for whatever bottle came to hand on the glass shelf above, and stepping out of the stream for a moment, began to coat herself in floral-scented lather from top to toe, smoothing it over her aching limbs, massaging it into her hair.

Back under the steaming cascade of water, she hugged herself, trying to deal with the thoughts and images flying through her mind's eye quicker than she could comprehend them. Things she had done, on her knees, in the forest, or in the sands of a cave -- Gus. Promises she had made to herself, and to him...to make things right. Yes, that was what she was doing.

The cruel voice in her head was taunting her. 'This is your revenge upon them all? Sitting under a table, grasping the hand of the Prince as his father shoots his load into you willing throat?'

No. That was not the point. This was part of the plan -- how else to get close to them? She needed to be trusted, or at least have won them over. The closer she was to them, the better.

Even as she regained her certainty, her determination, the events of the evening were still playing in her head. Lux was rinsing the fragrant foam from her body. As her hands drifted down to her thighs, then up to the apex of soft curls, she acknowledged grimly the heat there, the build-up of moisture. She could not deny the excitement that had curled deep in her core this evening, evoked by what though... by the brief sense of power, or the humiliation?

That, she thought grimly, now that was not part of the plan. Perhaps it may make it easier, however...to go along with the King's desires...

One niggling thought remained, would not leave her, as she slipped between the soft sheets of her bed. It was the last thing she thought as her eyes drifted closed.

'If I'm not acting, then... what am I becoming?'