She scoffed at the chancellor. It was more apt Bay disliked the man for having made him seem a fool. "Forget the Trojan. I know what manner of man emerges from the Troad. They are arrogant, defiant, and sow dissent with the air they breathe... but above all, they are predictable. The prince will not lift a finger without the say of his king." She renewed her pacing, the pressure building again in her skull. "The woman, Bay. She's a northerner. Have you forgotten what treachery those island scum are capable of? Why is she here? What do you know of this Helen of Sparta?"
Bay blinked, taken aback by her question. "The princess? There is little to say. She was quiet mostly. Hardly the sort to conspire with criminals."
Twosret rolled her eyes. Of course he hadn't considered Helen to be a threat. The chancellor was blinded by the false superiority of his sex. A woman could not be a real danger in a man's world. Twosret swore that blindness would prove to be her greatest asset.
"You're taken with her..." The accusation hung like a death sentence between them.
"I am not!" Bay responded forcibly, his eyes wild and darting away from her unforgiving glare. "She is practically a barbarian. What beauty she holds is perverted. The Spartan is the flickering light of a candle beside the blazing heat of your sun, Your Highness." He fell to his knees, this time with the full respect deserving of a future queen of Egypt.
Twosret buried the spike of hate growing in her heart. Bay was loathsome, but she needed him. His network of spies and underlings was unmatched in the Lower Kingdom. And while his lustful nature disgusted her, the thought that he might desire another disturbed her more. She wanted this Spartan out of her country. Like ripples in a pond, the effects of her beguiling presence were already felt. The other wives whispered of Helen's courage and strength, and her exotic charms lowered the defenses of the men sworn to Twosret's purpose. She could not afford the distraction the princess presented. Not when her plans were so close to fruition.
She gazed down on Bay, the man still prostrated before her. She'd beat him to her will, if that was what it took. But such brutal methods were best used by men.
"Am I still the beauty that stirs your heart, Bay?" Her question drew his head up in a flash. "Is this the temple you wish to adore?" She pulled the string holding the top of her gown in place, exposing her bosom to the balding official. Bay's eyes bulged in his head.
A wicked grin spread across her face. She let her hands trail over her breasts, savoring the hunger reflecting back at her from his eyes. "Do you desire me?" The question dropped like honey from her lips, and she trailed her fingers down her abdomen, one hand slipping beneath the hem and grabbing her sex.
"Princess?" his breaths were coming in quick gasps.
Twosret delighted in teasing the man. Bay was a simple creature, but he was her creature. And he best not forget it. She pulled her hands free and planted a foot on his shoulder, shoving him down on his back. As he gazed up at her, she let her dress fall to the floor.
"Have you any idea what Pharaoh does to men who dare touch his property?" She moaned as she continued to stroke herself, Bay's hunger and fear arousing her far more than the touch of her experienced fingers. "They slice off his manhood and feed it to the crocodiles while he is forced to watch," she continued, the words rolling off her tongue like poetry.
She straddled Bay, lowering her body over his with the serpentine grace of a cobra. His stiff erection pressed against her throbbing sex, the thick material of his robes denying him real satisfaction.
Bay quivered, his eyes darting nervously to the chamber doors and the imminent threat of exposure. She had only to raise her voice and his life would be at an end. She could almost taste his fear.
"After the beasts have been given a taste, the infidel provides the main course." Twosret rubbed against him harder, her words rising and falling with her heavy breaths, her chest heaving with the effort. "Jaws snap, bone splinters, and the man's screams are drowned in the thrashing, until he is pulled into pieces. They don't like to share, you see. And neither does Pharaoh."
And neither do I...
She kept her breasts maddeningly out of reach, his lips bare inches from her taut nipples. With one last thrust, the sweet shivers of orgasm swept over her, and she cried out softly.
Twosret closed her eyes and moaned with pleasure, the sound catching in her throat with a guttural purr. It never ceased to amaze her that she could please herself far better than Seti could.
Unfortunately, her sexual appetites were sometimes as much a weakness as a strength. She had let herself get distracted, and Bay took advantage of the slip. The chancellor wrapped his arms around her, stroking her naked backside and pressing his lips to hers, his tongue forcing its way into her mouth.
Twosret shoved him off, kicking the impudent man roughly as she stood over him. "I am King's Daughter, and King's Wife," she sneered at the chancellor. "Such ambrosia is not for the likes of you. You may watch, Bay, but no more!"
"Forgive me, Princess," Bay blubbered, regaining his standing. "I did not mean to offend."
"Oh, shut up," she groaned with displeasure. She slipped her dress back into place, his covetous gaze dampening as she covered up the temptation. "I do not care that you desire more than the Gods have given you, but do not fool yourself that you will receive it without my blessing. Now, swear you will do as commanded."
He bent knee again and his eyes lit up with fear and awe, the hunger returning with that small promise of reward. "I am yours, Princess. Body and soul. In this world and all those to follow."
Twosret almost laughed. Nefertari and all her talk of grace and charm... The matriarch was a legend in her own time, but Nefertari only scratched the surface of what she was capable of. The true power of beauty did not lie with purity and coy behavior but in harnessing the desire it created. Amenmesse could rally all the troops of Upper Egypt, but one did not win a throne by strength alone. Twosret would find a way to restore power to the realm. Her way.
"Follow the prince. Find me some way to discredit him and bring shame upon Seti. Do this, Bay, and I'll give you his Northern bitch."
The chancellor's eyes lit up with a fevered gleam and he began to sweat. "It will be done, My Princess."
"Queen," she snapped as he rose to leave. He hesitated, flinching at the heat of her command. "I am your queen, Bay. And you will have no others before me. Now go and serve me well."
Chapter 17
A Boy and His Master
MENELAUS WAS DREAMING. He could always tell when he dreamed. The tense knot of emotions that resided in his gut, that sharp edge that made him battle-ready, disappeared. In its place a soothing calmness resided. For a man with one eye ever in search of enemies, dreaming was a dram of smooth spirits for a weary soul.
As usual, his dreams returned him to the memories of his youth. He was young, barely six and ten, and half the size he was now. Menelaus had been late to grow, and when he did, height came before girth. He was on the plains of Thessaly in a camp of exiles. His father, Atreus, had been slain three years prior. After their Uncle Thyestes had usurped the throne, Menelaus and Agamemnon barely escaped the capital with their lives. The fifty men left in the encampment were all who remained loyal to the true princes of Mycenae.
Finding refuge had been a complicated affair in those early years. Many neighboring kingdoms turned them aside in fear of Thyestes' new reign. Menelaus had lost count how many moons had passed since he had last slept inside walls. Those rough military encampments had become more home to him than the palaces of his childhood.
He sat before a blazing bonfire, the night heavy with the scent of horse and sweat. Smoke stung his eyes, but he continued to stare into the smoldering embers. Menelaus liked the pain. It reminded him that he was still alive, despite all the powerful men who wished otherwise.
He glanced across the camp to where his brother, with his inner circle of advisors, plotted their next movements. Since the day their father fell to the traitor's dagger, Agamemnon had changed. He
surrounded himself with brutal warriors and veterans of their father's many bloody campaigns. The crown prince was fixated on securing his revenge, and he and Menelaus had become strangers virtually overnight.
Not that they had a warm relationship prior. Agamemnon tended to treat family like competition he needed to obliterate.
Four other boys on the verge of manhood surrounded Menelaus' fire. Like he, they were exhausted from a day spent in training. Aniketos was Menelaus' age, but appeared older with signs of facial growth shading his broad cheekbones. Dolops and Dieneces, brothers and jokesters, dominated the conversation as they did every evening the boys gathered for meals. The brothers were adept at getting under Menelaus' skin, and though there were two of them, he often boxed their ears to the point where both boys begged for mercy. The last boy, Cisseus, was a year older than him, and because Menelaus was prone to long bouts of silence, he became the de facto leader of their small band.
Only one recruit was missing from their entourage: Sabineus, the best fighter of the entire group.
Menelaus settled into his dream. He remembered this evening vividly. The chirping cicadas in the summer grass drowned out the raised voices from a dozen other campfires—heated voices that spoke of imminent war. The stars burned bright in the night sky like the celestial hearth fires of deceased heroes who had transitioned to the Isle of the Blessed. Their brilliance, along with a waxing moon, lit up the encampment to great detail. From the tents on the outer perimeter, the private quarters of Agamemnon's high-ranking officials, Sabineus stormed toward their camp.
The conversation died off immediately as their friend took a seat on a nearby log. His face was a bloodied mess, and the boys stared openly at him. The gash over Sabineus' eye trailed blood, and a vicious bruise discolored his throat, the markings a perfect outline of the fingers that must have constricted his breath. His lip was split, a nasty cut that would require stitching if he didn't wish to be an oddity for the rest of his life. But Sabineus didn't move to see a healer. He just sat by the fire and bled.
"What did he do to you?" Menelaus broke the silence, a cold fury building within him. Sabineus refused to answer. He stared blankly into the flames like Menelaus had but moments before.
"You need to report him," Cisseus added, shock lending him gravitas.
Sabineus shot an angry glare to the elder boy. "To whom? He is the general of our forces. Who am I compared to him?"
The other boys shared nervous glances, knowing Sabineus spoke true. Greek boys were required to submit to their masters. Their chosen elder tutored the boy in lessons of society, higher learning and sexuality. The pairing was one of instruction, never meant to last longer than a few years and never to harm. But Xanthos, the general of their exiled host, had always been a cruel master, and when his king was slain, his appetite for causing pain increased. It was this sadistic nature that made him such a valuable asset to Agamemnon.
Menelaus' friends turned to him, wrongfully hoping he could intercede. Agamemnon didn't give two shits what happened between a boy and his master. Menelaus knew it.
And so did Sabineus. The raven-haired young man stared at him from across the fire, a sad resignation in his dark eyes. "I'm not going to report him." Bitterness seeped from Sabineus' voice. "I won't give him the satisfaction."
After ten minutes of silence, Cisseus could bear it no longer. "Damn it, Sab. At least request a new master. You have to do something—"
"LEAVE HIM BE," Menelaus snapped. "He doesn't need you pestering him like a harpy."
Cisseus sniffed, taking some offense. Gathering the other boys, he exited the camp, leaving Sabineus alone with his prince.
For a while they sat in silence, the crackle of the night fire thundering in his ears. Across its orange haze, Menelaus could not help but stare at his wounded friend.
"Does it hurt?"
"No," Sabineus lied, but there was a crack of vulnerability behind his facade of strength, as though he unconsciously relived the moments of what must have been an epic beating.
"He deserves to die for this." Menelaus growled, a dark resentment growing inside him.
That minor compassion only provoked Sabineus to further ire. "Ah, to hell with you, too. I don't need your pity." He kicked a smoldering log, sending flurries of burning ash into the sky. Before the smoke cleared, Sabineus had stormed off to his tent.
Menelaus followed his friend without thinking. Not even the muffled sobs from inside the tent deterred him from entering. He tossed aside the hide and stalked over to Sabineus' huddled back, pulling the large teen around to face him.
Tears streamed down Sabineus' dirty face, laying tracks between the blood and soot. He tried valiantly to keep his nerves together, but it was a losing battle. "Don't look at me like that," he begged. "Not you, too, 'Laus."
Something primal took hold of Menelaus. He felt protective in a way he'd never experienced before. He trailed his hand over the wounds Xanthos had inflicted, a burning fury mounting. "You deserve better than this." Without thinking, he took Sabineus' face in his hands and pulled his friend to him in an impassioned kiss, tasting the blood on Sabineus' lips, its metallic tang tinged with salt.
Sabineus froze at his touch, shocked by the embrace, his back stiff as though fear rooted him to the ground. Menelaus pulled back, and the two boys stared at each other with wide-eyed confusion. The only sound in the tent was from their heavy breaths.
Menelaus couldn't move. What he was feeling was wrong. Physical acts between men were restricted to a boy and his master, an endeavor of study never conducted with amorous intentions. His arrangement with his own master had been short-lived, the prince having a deep aversion for anyone who tried to control him. But when he kissed Sabineus, Menelaus was powerfully aroused. He felt himself drawing closer to the larger boy by a force he could not resist. When Sabineus took hold of him, wrestling him to the ground, he did not resist.
Hungry lips pressed hard against his own, and he tasted blood again. They tore at each other's clothes until they were both naked, the hard outline of their manhood barely visible in the dark tent. In the absence of light, Menelaus' other senses took over. He let himself become inundated with the taste, touch and scent of the young warrior. In that moment, Sabineus, his life-long friend, became more real to him than any person had ever been before.
Wrong. So wrong.
Menelaus knew he should not crave the succulent flesh of another man. It is unnatural, his mind screamed at him, though his body acted of its own accord. He savaged Sabineus' chest with his mouth, moving across the taut skin of sculpted muscles, down his abdomen, and circling lower. He took Sabineus' phallus in his mouth, suckling him. When the larger boy groaned in pleasure, Menelaus no longer cared what others thought right or wrong. He needed this release. They needed it.
The following few hours were the most erotic moments of his life, and the boys exchanged pleasures until utterly exhausted. Sabineus was fast asleep when Menelaus finally left his tent.
When the night was at its darkest, Menelaus visited the tent of the cruel Mycenaean general. In the morning, Agamemnon conducted a search of the entire camp in a vain attempt to discover who had killed Xanthos in such a brutal manner. The murderer had severed the general's stones and shoved them down his throat. Tied to his bed, Xanthos choked to death on his own blood.
Agamemnon never found the culprit, and from that day forward Menelaus never spoke of his first kill.
Menelaus woke from his restless dream, one arm draped over the back of his male lover. It took him long moments to realize his surroundings: the familiar contours of the servant's quarters adjacent to his royal apartments, and the person sleeping soundlessly by his side. Not Helen, but Sabineus, as he preferred. Past and present merged. He was home—as much as Mycenae would ever be home—newly returned to the Capital and to news of his wife's abduction.
A screech owl hooted outside the balcony, its piercing cry ripping through the fog of Menelaus's mind. It was early still, the night wa
tch had not yet been changed, and aside from a few broken moments, sleep had fled the Mycenaean prince.
He shifted on the lumpy mattress beneath him. At one point around the Hour of the Wolf, he considered retiring to the soft, and now empty, bed of his marital chambers, but Menelaus had never felt comfortable with the pampered luxuries his royal birth afforded him. He preferred the privacy of the windowless stone walls of Sabineus' room. In this simple, unadorned space, hidden from the scrutinizing eyes of the Mycenaean court, he was free to live as he chose.
He shifted again, trying hard not to disturb Sabineus with the restless activity. It was a pointless worry, however. The veteran warrior was able to find rest even on the eve of battle. No so for Menelaus. Ichor boiled in his veins preventing him from any real rest.
That treacherous Trojan. A cloud of red-hot rage tinted his vision, as it had when he first heard news of Helen's abduction. How dare that perfumed lordling take what is mine?!
When the messenger delivered the dark tidings on the Mycenae dock the night prior, Sabineus had been forced to physically restrain him. Menelaus had tried to board a ship immediately, to sail in pursuit. Fortunately, the raven-haired warrior saved him from the folly of that rash action. Though Menelaus longed to skewer the Trojan thief and bathe in his blood, a greater opportunity had presented itself. An opportunity he had sought for far-too-many years to count.
After all these years, Sparta can finally be mine...
He could almost feel the awesome power of that throne and the freedom it represented. Only one man stood in his way, a man Menelaus could not defeat with strength of arms. If he could set aside his pride and play these events to his benefit, the Spartan crown would be Menelaus' for the claiming.
This has to work. That plea sounded desperate even to his own ears. Despite half a night spent in counsel, Menelaus was unsure he was up for the task. Politics was not a sport for a soldier, it was a skill he had never mastered, and the stakes of this battle were no less dangerous than those of leading the vanguard.
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