An elf stood guard outside Meredith’s chambers, but his shift was close to its end. She lounged against an ornate, uncomfortable couch, a lively fire burning behind the grate in her hearth, painting her body in red glow and shadow. A pink, silk robe was draped over her, the panels open and exposing her breasts, the contours of her hips, a soft, inviting fsh of leg.

  She waited at rest, her pose carefully selected, for she knew a suitor would be arriving soon, and when he did, she would tempt him.

  Outside, soft footfalls alerted her to the coming relief. She looked to a clock on the mantle, saw its hands poised just shy of midnight, the seconds ticking away silently as delicate enchanting work propelled it ever onward. How she had marveled at those devices when first she had come to this pace, not as a pauper but its queen. She had never seen something so mesmerizing, so beyond her comprehension in those days, as the memories of all of those women who came before her awakened within her. In those molting days, it had been the study of enchanters’ crafts that kept her stable—as her mind was fyed apart by the power of Celesti’s Soul, as it stitched itself together.

  The pendant y across her supple breasts, a smooth, green stone held fast by a spiral of silver. The tooling of the pendant was simplistic, almost crude, and she had thought more than once to have it reset; but to be apart from it felt dirty, as if in letting it pass into another’s hands, even to have it fixed into a csp more befitting of a queen, was to taint its legacy, the gifts housed in those other womens’ memories.

  More footsteps carried the old guard away, and a pause in his repcement’s motions made clear to her that he was waiting for the other man to fade. There was no shortage of prying eyes in her pace, but shadow walking was forbidden here, in this hall, where the emperor’s betrothed slept.

  Thinking of him, a scowl spread across her face—there and gone as the door into her chambers swung inward, inviting better company. There stood an elf who was just taller than her, whose hair swam across his back and shoulders, a curtain dark as ink, and as smooth. He was dressed in gray military reliefs, and a knife bound In a leather sheath rested at his hip. He removed it, together with his belt, and set them on a table as the door fell shut behind him; then stepped into the firelight.

  She feasted on him. Her gaze traveled from those manic eyes—the smirk quirking his thin lips—along the edge of his throat as if she traced it with her own bde. Down to linger on his chest and shoulders, as he unbuttoned his tunic and let it slide away from thick biceps, across long, slender fingers. Down, then, across pallid flesh which rippled over a hard, defined core, to wait as he drew down his scks. She followed the retreating material over thighs whose muscles bounced as he pulled first one bare foot and then the other free, and then cast aside the obstructive garment, leaving him just in white briefs, a welcome sight.

  “I was overdressed, wasn’t I?” he said.

  “You were.” She agreed. “Now come to me.”

  A wicked grin spread across his lips, revealing a fsh of straight, white teeth. “I think not, woman. If I am to be of service, it will be on my terms.”

  Her eyebrow twitched upward. “Really, now. And what might those terms be?”

  “You will come to me, I think.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then you will be punished.”

  “The punishment?”

  “Depends on the severity of the infraction. I am growing impatient. Now, come.” He cpped his hands together.

  Her features twisted into a snarl of indignation. She shifted her position, her robe spilling over her shoulder, exposing cvicle and nipple. “Make me.”

  His sneer broadened. Bck shadow coalesced across his palm. He dropped onto his haunches and pressed one finger to the floor. Several inky lines darted away from his fingertip, zigzagged away in different directions and came together again at her throat, across her breasts and midriff.

  “Parlor tricks?” She said.

  “You don’t think I would do it?”

  “Fear is for lesser creatures, my lord.”

  “Ennui is for the gods.” Lord Elise whispered. “Yet it is I who grow bored with these games.”

  A throaty chuckle. She climbed to her feet, drawing the silken robe back over her shoulder, and as she crossed to him, those tracers dissolved. There were few things she enjoyed more than seeing a confident man shaken. Lord Elise may believe he was her match in power or better, but she was not like her predecessor. She had not grown up in the pace, and she had never believed her rule would be calcified under her without shedding some blood along the way.

  Power was for those who relished wielding it, who found exhiration in the throws of doing what they wished because they could. She had no illusions about her retionship to it. Whether by birthright or a random act of fate, she had been blessed with a power like few in the world possessed, and it had been given to her freely.

  Lord Elise leered at her, but she could see the workings of his mind in eyes that remained, for the first time, fixed on her. The will not fleeing but redoubling, like a mountain cat faced with a rare uncertainty, that his chosen prey may be too great a challenge for him to overcome.

  “Can you hear them screaming?” she cooed, her lips at his ear. She wrapped delicate hands around his waistband and teased his briefs away, feeling a tangle of wiry hair grinding against her fingers as she drew them slowly down.

  “Screaming into the silence?” She whispered.

  Her words, an echo from a distant past. The memory belonged to one of her predecessors—the mightiest among them, her favorite.

  Lord Elise’s cock was an iron rod, hot in her palm as she dragged it free. His breath came out in rapid flutters, carrying on it a fragrance of cinnamon.

  She slid it between her thighs, along the contours of her bias. Up and down, denying him entry, teasing him as he fell into her gaze, and his body went rigid under her press.

  “Do you want it, my lord?” she asked.

  She pulled away. He stood at attention, all of the good soldier, as she backed away from him.

  “Then come to me.”

  He obeyed, followed her to the couch.

  “You are a strange beast…woman.” He said.

  She took him by the cheeks. “I am as close to a goddess as you will ever witness.” And dragged him onto his knees, set his lips against her cunt.

  “Serve me.” She whispered.

  Obediently, he set to work.