The Shadows(174)

“Trez…” she moaned, arching up.

When he finally released her core, he reared over her body and all but ripped off his clothes. As his shirt went fluttering to the floor and his pants were treated with no concern at all as he yanked them off, she smiled.

She was so ready for him.

He brought her knees up with his dark hands, bending her legs and moving them out to the sides gently. And then he gripped his erection and brought the head of it to the center of her need. Stroking her, he went up and down, glossing himself as he stared at where the two of them were about to be joined.

Pressing inside, he retreated and came at her again, his palm doing the work more than his hips. And each time he popped free, he bit down on his lower lip, his fangs compressing the flesh that had worshiped her.

For some reason, she thought about all her training as an ehros. She had been prepared to do her duty, had even been curious about the act, but these experiences with him, the choice to have him, the joy at giving herself not out of some trained obligation, but because she loved him and only him, was so much grander and more glorious than anything her station might have prepared her for.

Eventually, his control snapped and he groaned, sinking into her to the hilt. Propping himself up on his hands, he moved above her, his eyes traveling around her face until he dropped his head and kissed her.

Soon, his pumping became hard and fast, and she stretched her arms out, stroking his lower back, his buttocks, his hips.

As he started to climax, she fell still and felt him orgasm.

It went on for the longest time, his gasping breath, his groans, the sound of her name being wrenched from him as if his soul were being torn apart. And still his hips moved and his sex stroked, and then once again she was coming along with him.

When he collapsed on top of her, she wrapped her arms around him. He was so big, she could barely make it up onto his back, much less have her hands meet at his spine.

He was panting into her hair. Into her throat.

“I love you so much,” was all he said.





SIXTY-TWO


Maichen sneaked into the ritual chamber and checked on her mother before she tried to leave the palace once again. The Queen was still sitting in her mourning pose, her robes now red after having been changed by staff from those she had had on the night before.

All appeared well for another escape.

Tiptoeing across the marble, she headed for the cupboard in the corner, opening the door and—

“Did you think I would not know it was you,” came the words in the Shadow dialect.

maichen froze.

“You have fooled them all, but not me. I know my own flesh.”

Shutting the cupboard door, maichen fell into the posture of greeting, placing both hands on her shoulders so her arms crossed over her chest, and then lowering herself to her knees and prostrating her torso.

“My Queen.”

“I have allowed you your freedom around the palace.”

“Thank you, my Queen,” she said to the marble floor.

“Do not abuse my good nature.”

“I shall not, my Queen.”

“I believe you already have.”

“My devotion, as my service, is to you and you alone.”

“I can have another of you if I wish. You are as replaceable as anything else in this world of mine. Never forget that I am the sun around which this galaxy spins, and I can alter your destiny with the blink of an eye.”

Her mother’s head turned toward her, the red robing twisting around as if she were some kind of evil creature. And then AnsLai, the high priest, and the Chief Astrologer stepped into the room from a hidden door across the way.

Beneath her robes, maichen began to shake, and for self-preservation, she blocked her mind by repeating the word maichen over and over again in her head. If her mother or those two advisers got into her thoughts and recent memories, she feared not only for her own life, but for iAm’s.

How had her mother known?

“I shall excuse myself and go worship, Your Holiness,” she said, as she would have if she were but a servant.

“You do that. And you might contemplate the fragility of life whilst you are in your state of reverence.”

maichen ran out of the sacred room and escaped through the halls to her own cell. As she closed herself in, she was breathing hard, her lungs burning, her hands shaking as she tore the hood from her head.

She had been spared, she realized, only because her mother found the appearance of propriety more valuable than punishing a daughter who had gone on a wander: if it got out that the Princess had been compromised by interacting with commoners, or even Primaries, it would not reflect well on the Queen.

For a moment, maichen contemplated staying in her rooms, but she wasn’t going to get many other nights like this. The mourning was ending soon with a s’Hisbe-wide ceremony where the Primaries and the general population would join in the Queen’s up-until-now private “pain.”