Summoning the Incubus 4

I had not known that it was possible to hate a place. A person, an idea, a chore; certainly. But a place? My whole life’s experiences had been made up of sturdy grey cottages in scenes of pastoral farmland, dewy meadows, meandering burns and dense pine forest. A hot sunny day was a rare happening, and it meant only the race to bring the harvest and laundry in before the storms that followed.

What I would have given for a goddamn storm!

The days in Azure were tiresomely long, dry and impossibly hot. I often felt faintly sick. I could not adjust to any aspect of the castle.

All the foods tasted like horseradish and ginger – yet stronger — and scalded my mouth no matter how long I let them to cool.

I paced my room like a colt box-walks his stable. The finery that had so impressed me became simply the matter-of-fact surroundings of my everyday; and I could find no pleasure at all in marveling at the painted tiles and splendid craftsmanship. I wanted only for wet strawberries and sweet showers and my mother’s patched quilt.

My routine grew purposeless and slovenly. I would lay on my bed dozing crossly through the heat of the day, then as the cooler evening approached I would head to the library. There I would continue my futile search for a book of scryglass instructions written in my native language, until the night grew winter-cold and I would shiver my way back to my chamber as ignorant as I was before I began the whole endeavor. Then the night would creep coldly by, while I lay restless and irritated having napped away the proceeding day. Sometimes I thought of Kasita’s soft body sleeping beside me. Sometimes I relived the Prince’s growl in my ear, ‘I can put fire on your skin and diamonds in your eyes.’ No matter whom I thought of, guilt tore the pleasure from the memories.

But lonely as I was, I did not speak with anyone at all. Incubus guards clad in gold Armour might nod as I passed them, but I never saw Maya or Lazuren in this time.
I didn’t even dream of him, which was both a great relief and a heavy weight. I felt myself to be nothing but a deep well of melancholy.

Until, some wretched string of time later, I did what I ought to have the very first night that I was held there.

Disinterested and without expectation I wrote out my sister Mildred’s name on the scryglass and whispered. The glass immediately came alive.

I saw Millie, in her kitchen, bouncing a chubby, wailing baby upon her hip while she stirred a pot of broth with her other hand. My latest nephew or niece had reached the world in good health. Fresh tears sprung in my eyes. I would never meet them. I would never see any of my four sisters’ children grow.

I inspected the image closely. Millie did not look well. Her eyes bore blue shadows, her skin was too pale and her hair was greasy. These things might only have been the ordinary consequences of renewed motherhood; but I knew my sister well and had never seen her so depleted.

xxxxx

From the edge of the glass, her husband, Willem, entered. His misaligned hands were still embroiled in yellow bandages. She stretched her lips into a smile, though she could not keep the distress from her face. She spoke, but the glass offered no sound. He bellowed back at her. Hurriedly, she pressed her babe into the arms of her eldest child and set to work at unwrapping the spoilt fabric from her husband’s fingers. The swollen wrists and hands were something sickening and putrid to behold. I saw the smell of them in Mildred’s expression. The bones had healed dreadfully, fused where they ought not to be. The skin was raw, purple and black, seeping thick fluid. Any common villager could have told you that without amputation the brute would surely die, and soon.

But my sister poured vinegar on the broken hands and wrapped them back up inside the same foul cloths, while her husband cursed through gritted teeth. His suffering was enough that I wept with shame for my actions. I hated him bitterly. But I had hate enough for myself also. No person should live in such condition.
When the task was done, Mildred spooned broth into his mouth while her children took care of one another. She burnt his lips. He spat. He roared. He rose. The children scattered from the room. He kicked Millie in her shins. In her stomach when she doubled. He kicked her over and over.
I forced myself to bear witness, but I cannot stand to retell it any further.

xxxxx

When it was over, I hated Willem all the more. My anger was boundless: I ought to have murdered him! I garbled the nonsense spells that witches reach for when we know prayer is useless to us. I condemned him to an instant death that would feel like a slow one. I promised to unleash a vengeance so terrible that devils would tell of it with wide eyes. I was so impelled by my rage that I snapped the scryglass clean in two.

The image fell from it. I screamed until my throat was burnt out of voice. My sister was hurt and I could not help her… I was powerless.

I never should have hid in the forest. I should have gone back to her.

xxxxx

I vowed to change. No matter the heat of the day, I went to library at first light and studied diligently into the late evening. I no longer combed the shelves looking for texts on scryglasses. Looking on uselessly served only to torture myself. I was haunted by Mildred’s fate, which in the details was almost as Kasita had warned. No. Not Kasita. I had the realization the moment that the glass flickered under my sister’s name. Kasita could not be her true name. That was why the spell had not worked. She had lied to me. Directly. Explicitly. Even with my own hideous transgression, the naked lie she had told me stung fiercely. I felt myself released a little from my lingering love for her. But it was not extinguished entirely.

I did not know where to begin in seeking my means of escape, so I endeavored to know everything. If it was scribed in my tongue, then I read it from cover to cover.
Though inside I still felt that I was nothing but ash and sun-bleached bones, the occupation busied my mind enough that I could sleep at night. I entertained the dimmest hope that one day, I would go home.

The library was always empty. Sometimes I wondered whom it had been built for, with no other visitors than myself. But on this day, sat upon a bench at a long table, a book of translations open upon a stand and surrounded by an array of papers, was my Prince.

My heart pulsed with ardent joy! How I had missed his handsome face!

Colored light shone through the stained windows and tinted his beautiful blue skin with neat rainbow squares. A diamond of cerise light rested upon his sumptuous lips. His jewellery glinted. His eyes shone. He appeared perfectly contented and serene.
I had never seen him dressed. It was peculiar — and yet — how becoming he looked in his midnight tunic, embroidered with golden thread. Here he was civil, refined – still regal – but a diplomat and scholar, not only a warrior.

I paused in the doorway, soaking in the sight of him. I wanted to speak to him, but what was there to say? I wouldn’t apologize for being a disagreeable captive. Still… intentionally or not, I knew that I had wounded his pride if not his heart. I thought to turn to leave, but did nothing.

He lifted his head.

“Greta,” he said, his bright eyes wide in surprise.

“Lazuren,” I returned the greeting. It was strange to address one another this way. But then, it was over-due.

I took the few nervous steps to sit opposite him at the table, setting my pile of histories down on the polished wood. We faced each other, both with lips on the verge of smiling, but neither one brave enough to do so.

“What are you reading?” he asked, if only to break the silence.

“The Helgan Histories and Prophecies,”

“Ah,” now he smiled broadly, “You’ll be very familiar with all of those tales of course, but the prose is so excellent that they’re always worth returning to.”

I did not correct him, only nodded. He pulled the heavy book across the table to him, where it looked almost miniature in his hands. He opened it at a page he seemed to know the place of from memory, cleared his throat and began to read aloud:

“With fresh cobweb still wearing beads of dew, and needle of magpie bone; ye sinful witch doth sew her betrothed’s mouth shut that they might ne’er tell a soul of ye blackness of her deadened heart nor the letters of her cursed name.
– Isn’t that fine imagery?”

Not being versed in poetry, I was not precisely sure what imagery was, but I had read a great many spell books of late and knew plenty ways to make sure a man kept a secret.

“It’s no fiction,” I grinned, “We witches are a spiteful clan.”

“I suppose I have gotten off rather lightly then,” he said, a little strained.

“Strange as it may be, I think you may be the man who has wronged me least in my life,” I sighed, “I don’t think that there’d be much gained in bringing you to any harm.”

He chuckled, with that strange warmth that also held danger.
“I would not have given you any opportunity.”

“I’m sure the sinful witch’s lover felt much the same,”

He smiled fleetingly, then paused, perhaps choosing his words.
“Then I ought count myself lucky that I am not a witch’s lover.”

It is most odd how hearing a truth that you already know spoken aloud, can give terrible weight to that truth.

I nodded gravely before adding:
“But you should know that you are a witch’s friend,”

I extended a hand to him. I watched his yellow light cast over it. He took my tiny hand in his huge one, turned it over and set a light kiss, like a leaf touching the forest floor, upon my knuckles.

My cheeks colored a little. I half-hoped that he would not release my hand, that he would lecture me again on our inescapable destiny. But he let go immediately. (I chided myself for my fickleness.)

“I will ever have the utmost respect for you,” he said soberly, “As long as you are resident here I will be whatever friend, counsel or protection you need.”

“Thank you,” I whispered, “And I you.”

We did not part then, but sat in warm companionable silence tending to our separate work.

…Or in my case, only pretending to. I stole glances at him over my pages, noting the way his light panned across his papers while he read and admiring his unblemished calligraphy. Sometimes he hummed strange flat tunes absentmindedly under his breath. (Later, I would become more familiar with Azurian music and come to hear the beauty in them, but for now I always thought their songs dreadfully flat.)

I pondered how so few words had remedied our feud and wondered why I had not found him out for myself in all this time. But then again, perhaps so few words would not have sufficed without a good deal of time passing. I had to be ready to feel something other than anger.

“Will you take your meal with Maya and I today?” His voice broke into my wonderings, “If you’d prefer not to-”

“No, no, I’d like to,”

“Good!” he laughed his booming laugh and I couldn’t help but beam. My capricious heart fluttering in my chest.

xxxxx

Late evening meals upon Maya’s balcony became the daily routine. It was a great mercy to have the regular company of the pair of them. Lazuren sat in the huge chair that was kept in there for him, providing us with detailed reports on the realm’s politics and warfare. At first, I could not follow any of it, but within a few weeks I was familiar with the cast of ruthless generals, ambitious bureaucrats and foreign royals. I had never given any thought as to how a Prince must spend his days governing his land. It was a surprise to learn that it was not all feasts, hunting trips and posing for portraits.

Amidst this, Maya’s presence kept me from acting upon any self-indulgent destructive impulses, and as I grew to know her, her abrasive manner no longer troubled me. (Although I still found the food wholly unpalatable, which the two of them found endlessly amusing. And I did not.)

And though my studies did not yield what I most wanted, for a short time, I was almost content.

xxxxx

The blasting of war-horns shook me from my reading. My blood turned cold. They had never sounded in all the months that I had resided in the castle. Suppressing panic, I headed at a pace for Maya’s room. She would be especially vulnerable if the walls were breached. I wrapped on her door.

“Maya!”

“I’m here, child.”
She was safe. I clutched her close to me; something I had never done before. She was brittle and small.

“Are we under attack?” I asked urgently.

“Goodness no, you’d really know about it if we were under attack. It sounds to me as if we have visitors.” She clutched my hand.

Reassured, I walked out onto the balcony to survey perimeter, my arm threaded through Maya’s. We found the Prince here, doing much the same. He acknowledged me with a glance; bit offered no words of comfort. Below were scores of Azurian banners — golden yellow with their blue geometric designs — signalling a small but elite force. There were a dozen small gold carriages, pulled by puzzling creatures that were something like deer and something like goats. At the center of the formation was a covered lectica with extremely long handles, allowing it to be carried by a dozen flying incubi dressed in white tunics.

“They’re our troops,” I said with great relief. (Though I blushed that I had said ‘our’ so readily. The days of considering myself a captive had drifted away, and this was the moment that I noticed it.)

“Almost.” Maya said though tight lips. I looked at her quizzically, but she did not elaborate.

The Prince for his part exuded anxiety and – though I was reluctant to admit that I sensed it — a note of fear.

“It’s my father,” he said, explaining without explaining anything.
Maya nodded, understanding the situation perfectly. I only understood that there was reason to be on edge. (Although, given the character of my own father, you might have thought that I would know better.)

“I’ve ordered that your beds and personal possessions be moved into my chambers,”
He looked at me, his dim eyes welling with apology.

“You won’t be best pleased by this, but for your own safety, until the King leaves, we will have to make… pretenses.”

I had already guessed what these “pretenses” would be. He was quite right. I was not best pleased.

xxxxx

The introduction to the King was a perplexing but wholly necessary engagement. It required a low bow, a simpering tone and the wearing of a ceremonial gold chain about my waist that marked me out as an incubus’s property. In principle, I objected to all of these things, but Maya’s advice was prescriptive.

“If you do not allow Lazuren to introduce you in this way, then the King will consider you available to… fulfill his own needs.”

And while I had idly considered the prospect of indulging myself with one of the many incubus soldiers that lived in the castle barracks, the hurt that I knew this might inflict upon Lazuren had always prevented me from entertaining the idea for too long. A tryst with his father was altogether out of the question. (Although, if I had had any ideas of this sort, they would surely have evaporated upon meeting him!)

The feast to welcome the King had already begun as Maya and I followed Lazuren to the banquet hall. Strange side-winding music tumbled down the passageways and conversations in tongues I had never heard before bubbled over the awkward melody. The King had not arrived unaccompanied. Several sovereigns — all manner of demons and devils – from other kingdoms were in attendance as his guests.

We passed them as we proceeded towards the King’s seat at the head of the long dining table. I was entranced. The succubae were so beautiful that I could not bear to tear my eyes from them. Tall as their male counterparts; but lithe with a slender athleticism not often seen upon human women. Their faces were harshly shaped, with square jaws, plump purple lips and severe cheekbones; giving them the fearsome, regal beauty of predators.

I watched my favorite with adoring eyes. She was dressed flimsily, in a sheer shift that reached her feet, but hid nothing of her splendor. Her lavender skin was carved with the patterns of her clan; concentric circles that seemed to radiate from her navel and nipples, emphasizing the lavish roundness of her breasts. That a creature so nimbly built should have such ample breasts seemed in itself supernatural. Her wings were torn almost to shreds — skeletal purple forms with lacy remnants of translucent lilac skin draped between them. Her black hair had a green sheen — like a magpie’s wing — and she wore it bound up in a peculiar coil on top of her head. A slim silver crown perched above her brow – but her presence alone would have told you that she was a Queen. Her eyes glowed like strange moonbeams, with light that was somehow grey and heavy. As if her gaze was metal, and could cut.

I longed darkly for her.

But I could not permit her to distract me for long, for we were swiftly approaching the King.

King Azurel was old and gnarled certainly, but had such massive physicality and as to be indisputably in charge. Dug into every visible inch of his blue skin were the evidences of his victories. Even his face had met an artist with a cutting tool. Were it not for his enormous grin, he would have been fearsome to behold.

“Welcome father,” announced the Prince, “I wish to inform you that I have taken a new captive.”

“You’re only here to tell me not to touch her, Laz. There was hardly any need for so much fanfare!” The King had a hearty, boisterous manner; which spoke by type of a love of rich foods and grand parties.

“You know full well there was every need. You don’t keep your promises unless there are witnesses.” Despite the breeziness in his voice, Lazuren flashed an uncharacteristically nervous smile.

“Such jabs at my trustworthiness! Care you nothing for my reputation, lad?” was the King’s response, before he collapsed into roaring laughter. The demons sat nearest him laughed too. It was a crass guffaw that I knew well from men who cut down small trees.

“I am going to this trouble for the sake of that very reputation. I want my new guest to be treated as Maya is treated. Complete freedom to go anywhere she pleases unpestered. Treated with total respect. And exclusively mine.”
The King rolled his eyes.

“Well, I suppose when you take a woman as rarely as you manage Laz, you’re not much in the mood for sharing, which is a real pity,” the King’s illuminated gaze panned my body while I diplomatically suppressed my discomfort. The light of his eyes flashed on the thin chain belt that now clasped my waist. Maya wore one too, but the King did not acknowledge her. “What’s your name, whore?”

“Greta,” I fell to my knees and pressed my nose to the ground as I had been instructed. When I rose I did not lift my eyes.

Lazuren gritted his teeth and grew impatient.

“Will you grant me this or not?”

“Yes, yes. As ever I will indulge your chivalrous nonsense. But know that I think it quite unnatural.”

“What you think of it is neither here nor there. Good night, Father.”
The Prince dipped his head by the smallest fraction that could still be described as a bow. We did not stay for the feast.

xxxxx

Though I was to say the least uneasy about the change of sleeping arrangements, I had to acknowledge that it was not so degrading to be staying in the Prince’s rooms as I had first thought. Lazuren’s chambers were spacious, and for the duration of our stay divided into sections with heavy dyed-linen curtains.

Besides this, there was a certain girlish joy in gossiping with Maya late into the night. We whispered like sisters.

“How did you get here, Maya?” I had always wondered, but had never had the courage to ask before.

“The same way that you did, of course.” She paused, smiling kindly in the blue dark, “Well, I suppose not quite the same. You’ll have noticed that I am no witch,”

“Yes… does that mean that you and Lazuren never…?”

“Made love?” she chuckled dryly, “Well, not when I summoned him if that’s what you mean. I never had any knack for spell-casting you see, my sisters were all naturals, magic in their blood. But I was different…”

“You’re from a coven?” I couldn’t keep the yearning from my voice. A tribe of magical sisters. How altered my life would have been with such a blessing!

“Yes, all of the women in my family had powers but me. It was my mother who was most upset about it. I told her that I didn’t have any care for magic, but she wouldn’t listen. There was a young man who I loved. We made plans to marry, buy a small cottage and have children. A wholesome life,” she closed her eyes and I felt the warm glow of her unfulfilled daydream radiating from her.
I hid my distress as best I could.

“What happened?”

“My mother told my sweetheart’s family that I was a witch, and with no hope that he would marry me, she was able to convince me to go through with the ritual… If she’d ever told me that the spell required a virgin the whole mess would have been avoided. I’d loved him so much and been so certain that we would marry…”
The story suddenly came into sharp focus.

“Without virginity for the spell Lazuren couldn’t give you any magic; so you couldn’t please your mother. But your beloved’s family would never agree to the marriage; so you couldn’t be together either. So Lazuren asked you to come with him, and you did it,”

“That’s right,” She let out a long sad sigh, “He’s so frightening in the first moment that you meet him, but you know him, he’s such a charmer. And he was so kind and understanding — not angry I wasn’t pure. So I took his hand. Seventy years ago by now I imagine. And though we weren’t lovers that night, eventually we were… Until we weren’t.”

I realised that the sadness I felt from her now was always there in the background; like a cold crescent moon behind thin clouds. I just hadn’t taken it upon myself to notice, even for all my supposed perception.

“Do you regret it?” I asked, my whisper even smaller.

“If I could do it all again, I would run away with a man not a demon. But I loved Lazuren for a long time, and there were decades when I did not regret my choice at all. But no babe — whatever kind of babe it might have been — ever came. And that was all I had really wanted from my life. I resented him so much. I really made him suffer.” She blinked her glassy brown eyes.
It was hard to hear her story, hung next to mine, my father’s words ‘too ungrateful to marry’ held weight I’d never given them. I had done everything in my power to avoid the life of wife and mother that was all that Maya had ever wanted.

“How did it end?”

“Not all at once. It was slow, by degrees. I stopped sleeping in his bed and he started taking his meals in the observatory. There was no fight. Just one day I realized that I hadn’t seen him in weeks even though he was the only person I knew.”
Knowing this, it was now not so strange to think that when Lazuren brought me here he had envisioned a life for us together as lovers. I shuddered, remembering the haze of confused disappointment that had engulfed him that very first day.

“So you reconciled as friends, but never lovers?”

“In time. I missed his friendship, and he missed mine. But I wanted a human lover. A man I could have a family with. It didn’t matter anymore that I could never have those things here, it was simply too much to ask Laz to pretend that he didn’t know I wanted something else. To pretend he didn’t know that he was the love and life I was resigned to, but not the one I wanted.”
I nodded. A part of my heart unfurled. A curled over corner that if I’d searched for it, I would easily have found.

“I was resigned to Kasita too. Truly, I did love her. But I saw no other kind of future for myself. There was us in our cottage, or there was the cruel world outside of it. And she had saved me from my worst nightmares, to leave deliberately would have been thankless of me…”
I expected Maya to understand my opened heart immediately as the mirror to her own. But she was preoccupied.

“You had a woman for lover! What is it that so many witches are so oddly inclined?”

xxxxx

Before my conversation with Maya, I did not recognize how much guilt I had still carried over Kasita. I thought it lifted when I learnt I did not know her true name, but her wrong had not rendered my actions virtuous. Knowing that I might have left her one-day after all, as Maya had left Lazuren, made me thankful things had been cut short.

But now was the time to make the right choices. To return to the path of my own making. To live as my desire dictated.

“You won’t be reading today, Laz?”

“No, I’m afraid my Father’s guests all want favors, and none of them trust him enough to deliver them.” His smile was apologetic and little strained from having been exercised in-authentically too often in the past few days. “Its all chess games and trade talks today,”

I yearned for Lazuren. Yearned to lay beside him, soaking in the warmth of his body and stroking his handsome face. To lay under him and be the dusk into which his shooting stars fell. The longing was pain… and it was also pleasure. If longing were only pain, we would abandon it easily. But we cannot, for longing is laced with hope.

“Dinner then?” I asked.

“I’m meeting the Queen of Heliotrope for dinner,” his bottom lip jutted out in play-acted sadness. I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t hold off my smile.

“Very well, I shall see you whenever your appointment ledger allows,” I conceded.
He gripped my arm gently as he moved passed me. Warm, dizzy infatuation flushed my body.

“I’ll find time for you,” he promised. He let go of my arm.

Yes, I would live as my desired dictated. Just as soon as this dreadful king and his parade of sycophants would leave!

I decided to walk the palace. It was not something I did often, but my head was too full of half-prepared speeches and giddy flights of fancy to do any reading. How does one confess love to another? Especially when you have already slighted that person. I was nervous of rejection, but not enough to be deterred. As I wandered, I crafted the perfect apology. I agonized over the perfect confession of my love. I planned out the very details of the perfect kiss; the way that I would press my whole body against his, the shape my lips would take, the flutter of my eyelids.

I was so lost in the splendor of my imaginings that my skin trembled with the beginnings of a soft white fire. It did not bloom into flames, but the quartz embers glistened on my limbs like strange hot frost. The ache within me whispered.

Embarrassed, I started back towards the sleeping quarters.

But something was wrong. There was an odd feeling in the air. It was difficult to discern. Not a feeling belonging to just one person perhaps? Or a feeling that was complicated and full of other darker feelings? I felt out the edges of it with my magic. I could not make sense of it.

With ash fluttering from my skin, I changed my route and set off back in the direction that I had just come from. I followed the cloud of feeling where it led. It was a numb, quiet, desperate little feeling. Yet it was huge, like it was screaming. I found myself on the passage that connected all of the guest rooms. The wave of emotion was getting stronger with each step. Despair. Fear. It was so overwhelming, that it was hard to walk towards.

I neared a door. I pressed my ear to it. There was no sound. The horror of the feeling was needle sharp. Then came a high female shriek. I whirled around to face the direction of the sound. A little way up the corridor, a door was slightly ajar. With building trepidation I crept towards it. I could hear a dim conversation in voices that I recognised. I whispered one of my better spells and became, not invisible, but unseen. I put my eye to the crack of light between the door and its frame.

Queen Luzaka of Heliotrope’s lust licked through me like the crack of a whip. She screamed again as the Prince of Azure thrust his fingers into her.
I looked away, unable to comprehend the sight before me.
I looked back, my heart in my throat.

The prince held her down on the floor, his bare foot in the small of her back, his hand pressed hard against her cheek. The fingers of his other hand worked in her sodden sheath. She beat her wiry wings and squirmed under him, hissing in the language I still could not speak.

I could not make sense of what I was seeing and feeling. I felt that I ought to save her, to fling bolts at my former lover and pluck her from his clutches. But her feelings made the air spark and sizzle; they were not the haze of fear that I had followed. She brimmed over with wanton impatience, cursing Lazuren, I now understood, for his teasing.

He laughed low and warm. That deep sound, like the threat of a summer storm. He chided her in their shared tongue, and with careful fingers plucked the tiny golden crown that from her head of tightly wound hair. He placed it delicately on a nearby table. Then he pulled her face up in both of his hands, dragging her torso from the floor as he did so. She wore an irritated expression as he unwound the long sleek braid of shimmering black hair from about her head, until it was simply one long plait that began at her cap and ended somewhere about her waist.

He grinned knowingly at her. She spat a curse at him. He laughed again and began to gather the plait around his hand, looping it three or four times about his palm. He tugged her face to the right and then the left using this rope. Then he decided that he could do better, releasing one loop from his hand to wind it around her lavender neck. He let it slack, then pulled it through, like a greyhound’s choke chain. She gave a small whine, but followed it immediately by stretching her full lips into a satisfied smile. She pushed herself up onto her knees, but awkwardly, holding her hands voluntarily behind her back. Seeing this Lauren stroked her face kindly. He said something soft and pleasant to her.

The succubus showed her teeth. Sharp canines in bone white. She was a hunter – she didn’t belong on a leash! Yet her bright grin shone as the prince pulled her this way and that by her hair. She loved their game, her pretense at helplessness. And he loved it too… his cock stood as ready and dripping as I had ever seen it. He straddled her and rubbed it lewdly between her breasts. His tip almost meeting her mouth over and over.

Jealously racked me. Jealously that a form other than mine could elicit such arousal from him. Jealousy that he could have her – the very succubus I had chosen as a favorite – but I could not. Jealously that they could be so well made for one another; in shape and size, in magic and power.

She opened her mouth wide, pushing her tongue out over her lip. But his shaft was thick and her teeth were fierce. Instead of pushing himself down her throat, he lay his dick across her tongue and slipped himself back and fourth across it. She wrapped her lips about the sides of his cock as best she could. He fucked her mouth sideways. A golden droplet of precum clung to the tip of his cock. It wobbled and shook with his every thrust. Then as he growled and flung himself forward fiercely, it burst, splashing against the lilac petal of her cheek.

I knew I ought to leave. That none of this act belonged to me. But I wept between my legs as I watched them. Such perfect creatures, so brutal, so sensual. And if I left, I would only be lonesome with my hurt, so why not burn myself with lust and pain together. Surely a better thing than pain alone? I knew better. Even in the moment I knew better. But I stayed all the same.

He had her on her hands and knees, pulling her hair back tightly so that her head tipped backwards and her back dipped gorgeously. The scent of her arousal filled the room. She gave her shriek again and I quivered in the sheer sexual glory of it. The prince shook too, his great cock pulsating as he slipped it into the heat of her depths.

The way he fucked her was pure selfishness. Deep and hard and fast. She gasped and spluttered between her screams, but he did not relent. His eyes were closed, and sweat coursed down his back as he only fucked her faster. Sacks smacking against her sex, his hands now gripped tightly around her breasts. Faster and faster — then — juddering. With a bear’s roar, he emptied his gold into her.

I found myself stood a single step inside of the room, not knowing when I had crossed the threshold and breathing as if I was the one who had been so roughly fucked. I thought it was all over and that I should make my escape, but it was not so.

She wriggled from his cock, crawling hypnotically on her hands and knees just a little way, before rolling languidly onto her back on the floor. She whispered something beguiling and opened her legs wide. That heady scent.

Depleted and compliant, the Lazuren dropped to his knees between her silken thighs. The Queen had regained all of her regal demeanor. She smiled a devil’s smile and laid an elegant hand upon his sweat-drenched brow. She did not need to command him. He lavished his tongue against her gushing opening, digging into her sex and drawing fourth clear sparkling liquid. She lent back carelessly upon her elbows, muttering dark unknowable words that only those who worship at her altar ever get to hear.

That is, but for me.

I heard the Queen’s voice heightening again. Her sharp black nails sank deep into Lazuren’s shoulders. Another wave of her pleasure flickered through me. I shied away from her feelings, just as, I now realized, I had shied away from Lazuren’s during this whole event. I built a wall inside my mind. So that when I watched her shiver and squeal in the cascade of her orgasm, I did not scream out with her.

I was crying. Silent, confused tears that ran shamefully down my face. Whatever was between them was indecipherable to me. Even if I spoke perfect Azurian, I felt could not have made sense of what had transpired. Was this merely some hedonistic tryst? Or was this how their kind expressed their sincere devotion?

The Queen kissed the Prince upon his forehead. He told her that she was beautiful, or that he worshiped her, or that he loved her. And she only told him thank you, or that she knew. Oddly bashful, Lazuren gathered his clothes and dressed himself. If he was upset, it was nothing compared to his satisfaction and tiredness. With an earnest smile and a graceful bow, he made to leave the room. I took the slightest step away from the door to let him pass me. He left without ever knowing I was there.

The Queen stood up on her impossibly long legs. She walked towards the decanter to pour herself a glass of something strong. As soon as her back was turned, I would go. But she did not turn her back. Instead, she looked me dead in the eye with her moonlight rays and gave me her demon’s grin. I was pinned in place.

“Did you think I hadn’t noticed you watching?” she crooned. She pinched my chin in her talons. “Some other time, pretty thing,” and she enveloped me in a succubus’ kiss. Magic surged in my blood.

I pulled away from her. But the room was empty — there was no one to pull away from. The air held a scent that I felt I half-knew.

Burnt lavender?

THE END OF CHAPTER FOUR