“I have to be sure you have not hidden it anywhere else. I know better than to think you would be too demure,” Hann said. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he deliberately pulled her chemise up. The hem tickled against the backs of her legs until it was all bunched in his hands. Her buttocks and cunt felt the coolness of each night draft, and still she was not fazed.
His breathing grew labored and he pulled her chemise over her head, revealing her completely nude body to his remembering eyes. He knew her, knew every inch of her body ever since she had captivated him three months ago, back when he had mused aloud on the contents of the king’s coffers while draining a pint at the alehouse. She had told him that she knew how to get in without the king’s sorcerer knowing—she had raised the dragon keepers and knew their favorite foods, and she was deceptively light on her feet to avoid the detection of any guards. They agreed to split the earnings before escaping to another land. Lydia should have known that their meeting was more than just fortuitous.
His long-fingered hands cupped her breasts, pressing them up and squeezing none too gently. His fingertips grazed the undersides, as though to make sure she hid nothing beneath them. Her tongue touched her lower lip as they drifted down her stomach to slide between her legs, searching between her folds. Her teeth caught her shining lip when those fingers entered into her, feeling for any sign of the Oculum in any place she might have hidden it. Her eyelids fluttered, but she made no sound.
“One more place to check,” he said breathlessly. His cock was a long, hard branch in his pants. The head pushed against her stomach. Her glistening eyes were even more effective than her hand on him, making him tingle like a thousand feathers were stroking his body. His fingers that were not otherwise occupied touched her lower lip and felt the moisture there. As he continued to fill her with his other fingers, he entered her mouth, probing her cheeks and stroking her tongue and hard palate. Empty.
She sucked those fingers as he pulled out of both ends. A grunt and a brief closing of his eyes was the only sign he had come. In better light, she would be able to see the stain.
“Where is it, Lydia?” he asked when he had composed himself. The warden’s voice had returned.
Lydia stood still and shackled and naked, but she was not ashamed, nor was she humiliated by his actions against her. “You can tell Micah he will never see the Oculum again.” Her voice was soft yet somehow filled the room. “And after tonight, you will never again know the touch of another woman.”
He took one step back in surprise, then stumbled against the cell door, pointing at her. “You cannot curse me. You do not have that kind of power, witch!”
She did not blink. Not one time since Hann entered had she blinked. “Call it a broadening of your horizons. I should curse you for betraying me.”
Hann snatched her dress and chemise from the ground, then fumbled with the keys in the lock. “You will burn,” he snarled. “And whatever power you have will burn with you.”
He opened the door and slammed it shut. Through the small window, he peered in at her with hardened eyes. “I will return your clothes to you when they have been searched.”
After even the most devoted drunk had fallen against an alley wall to sleep in his own vomit, Lydia pressed her hand to her sternum, then slid it up her neck. Inside her mouth, she curled her tongue to draw the chain from her throat. When she tasted gold, she let her lips fall open. A necklace floated over her tongue and into the air before her. The fire opal, set within intricate golden filigree, glinted with rainbow flaws in the moonlight. She stared at each flash of light, and her slight grin deepened with satisfaction. Content with the success of her mission and flush with secret knowledge, she swallowed the Oculum once again.
The next morning, the executioner—arms thick and rippling from the regular use of his ax—looked out of place with a torch in his hand, waiting to the side while the crowd stared and shouted up at Lydia’s pyre. She was strapped against the stake, kindling piled at her feet. Her hair swept over her face from the force of the wind, and because her arms were bound behind her, she could not brush it away. She was wearing the same clothes Hann had stripped from her. The skirts were ripped from the removal of all the pockets and jewelry she had fastened into her clothing, and they had been hastily repaired enough for modesty with thick, mismatching thread.
The crowd was in a celebratory mood; the air smelled of bread and smoked meat. An execution was always a spectacle; while a burning lacked the bloody excitement of a beheading, it did last a lot longer. Decapitation was over in a matter of moments, but there was never a guarantee that a real witch would be truly rid of her demonic spirit. With a burning, the fire purified the corpse, ensured that the demon within burned along with the person it inhabited. With a burning, they could watch the witch scream.
Lydia’s demeanor was unchanged from the night before. Although she had an itch on her arm and cheek that she could not scratch, she was disturbingly calm.
There was a flourish of trumpets, and the king stepped out on the balcony overlooking the courtyard. Micah came out behind him, his eyes smoldering down at her in exultation, holding his staff tipped with a sphere of silver. After him came the queen, a third the king’s age and pale as a moth.
The king held up his hand.
“King Eberhard calls royal advisor and sorcerer Micah to present the charge.”
Micah unrolled a scroll, but he barely looked at it. Instead, he kept his gaze on Lydia, who stared back with cold lightning snapping in the night pools of her pupils. She knew that only he could see them; they were meant for no other body to see.
“The kingdom of Adal finds Lydia Witchthief guilty of trespassing in the royal treasury, thievery of the king’s possessions, and enchantments of a malicious nature against this kingdom and its inhabitants. For this latter offense, she has been sentenced to burn in fire. At this time, we ask her if she wishes to repent of her heinousness and return the Oculum, which has yet to be recovered from her thievery.” Micah lowered the scroll and raised one curled eyebrow with an affectation of inquiry. But they both knew Lydia would never do so.
“You will be cast from the castle’s tallest tower before I ever expose the Oculum to the light of the sun again,” Lydia said. Her honey voice carried effortlessly from the pyre to the balcony. “You are a coward, Micah Silvertongue.”
Micah’s face, embellished by curlicues and whorls of facial hair, contorted in almost comical anger. If her words were untrue, though, he would not be so furious. With a violent slash of his staff in the air, he commanded the executioner to set the pyre ablaze.
As the executioner lumbered to the base of the kindling, his feet quiet thunder, Lydia met those dark beetle-black eyes behind his hood.
“Mine is not the fire you wish to ignite,” Lydia murmured. Now her words were for him alone. “As my executioner, you will have a portion of what I leave behind. Do whatever you wish with it, with my generous blessing. Use it, abuse it, discard it if that is your desire.”
The fire quivered and snapped in his hand, but the rest of him showed no sign that she spoke to him at all. “God have mercy,” he muttered, not in awe or fear, simply his grunted prayer for her.
“I have no need of it,” Lydia said. She closed her eyes when the torch touched the kindling. If the crowd hoped for a show, they received none. Lydia was perfectly silent, even as her skin blistered and blackened and her clothing fell away from her cooking body. Ash and smoke rose in the air, and although Micah had not reclaimed the Oculum, he nonetheless smiled his spider’s smile. He set a hand on King Eberhard’s shoulder.
“The threat to Adal is vanquished, Your Majesty,” Micah said. “The enchantress is no more.”
“It is thanks to you that we have eliminated the evil of those enchantresses,” King Eberhard replied, and the royal party reentered their castle. “Without you, I would have never known the depth of their danger to this kingdom.”
“It is necessary that an enchantress’s devil-twisted
tongue be silenced before it reaches men’s ears. I seek only to protect you,” Micah said.
The lovely Queen Lilac cast her eyes down and kept silent. Neither man noticed her, as they rarely needed to. She was meant only to do their bidding, and so she followed them.
At the time of the burning, the days were warm, with the sun drawing sweat from men’s brows in their labors. Months passed until the warmth of the days was interrupted by cold breezes from the west. The air was dry and smelled of ozone as a crackling, sparkling wall of clouds came forth in the twilight.
The inhabitants of the cottage at the edge of town were unaware of the coming storm. From the window came the glow of the fire, and if anyone ventured that far out of the township—rare, since executioners were thought to be a tainted lot—they might have seen shadows on the wooden window shutters undulating. Approaching closer, they would have seen the silhouettes of two men moving together, one under the other. The two of them would not be so bold to do so with the window open if Bruin thought any townsfolk would see them, neither would the man beneath him moan so loudly. His cry carried on the wind and mingled with its whistling.
Her bare feet moved silently on the dirt path as she approached the executioner’s house. Her hair was loose and whipping in the wind against her face as it once had; her gown was different, a thick, jet-beaded black that trailed in the dirt behind her and yet remained as spotless as it began. Around her neck glinted a chain of gold carrying a flawed fire opal pendant set in golden filigree. Even in the darkness, it glittered with whatever light it could capture, which was now the light of the fire burning within the cottage.
The door swung open as though blasted by a violent gust. The man beneath Bruin started violently. He clutched for a blanket to cover himself, and the flush on his face drained away for a sickly pallor—and that was before he even saw the traveler at their door.
“You needn’t hide yourself from me,” Lydia said. The firelight made the cottage room too bright to see beyond the doorway, but then she stepped into the house. The door closed behind her. “I have already known you.”
Hann stopped scrambling to cover himself; he stared at her as if she were an apparition. Bruin’s face was mostly impassive, even though he had been caught completely naked and embracing another man by a woman who should be dead. Only his brows registered puzzlement.
“That is—th-that is impossible,” Hann stammered. “Impossible.”
“The amusing thing about burning a witch or an enchantress: a real one knows how to escape the fire unscathed,” Lydia said by way of explanation.
“The other witches I executed are alive as well?” Bruin asked.
Lydia smiled tightly and came closer, toward the fire and around the bed. “They are worm food. Micah eliminates the complication of his fornications by accusing his women of witchcraft. He underestimated me.” She stoked the fire. A spark rose up and settled on her skirt, but it went out without leaving a mark. Hann tried to pull on his pants, but they slid off him again, flung across the room by an unseen hand. Hann grasped at air. He whipped around to glare at Lydia.
She wagged a finger at him and clicked her tongue. “We have not discussed the subject of revenge, my dear, for betraying me.”
“You have already had your revenge!” Hann yelled, standing abruptly. “You cursed me that night when you told me I would never touch another woman. You made me into this obscene thing. You cursed me!”
Lydia floated to him and touched his cheek lightly. Her laughter was soft but not gentle. “I told you then that it was not a curse. I did not make you what you are.” Her fingers trailed down his chest and stroked the firm, lean lines of his abdomen. He was tall and lithe, but he was not weak, and she could feel his muscles twitch under her fingertips. He shut his eyes against her touch. “You have always been this way.”
“Not with you,” Hann protested. “At least not before. What did you do to me?” He reached to shake the answer from her, but she would not allow him to grab her. His hands met invisible walls. Instead, she slipped her hand under his scrotum and held him, stroked the fold of skin behind it. His cock showed a little interest, but she knew it was not for her.
“You think that I made you desire the forbidden taste of man’s flesh in your mouth. You think I attracted your eyes to the thick muscles of your lover.” Her nails threatened the sensitive skin of his perineum for a moment before she withdrew.
“Do you know what Micah and other small-minded sorcerers say of enchantresses? That they are so much more dangerous than sorcerers or witches because they have the power to manipulate men’s desires. That is why the laws of Adal forbid enchantments, while they do allow some witchery—the witchcraft of herbs and poultices and harmless potions. But if the woman has true power…well, then she is an enchantress and must be eliminated.” Lydia’s expression darkened and the Oculum glowed in her pupils. “But then, Micah is right. I have far more power over desire than his silver tongue or his silver staff has over the minds of men and the hearts of women.
“I could have entered the King’s treasury alone, but it was easier with a partner who had been inside, and I knew you would jump on the sheerest possibility that your lusts for squires and knights were simply an aberration of youth. I gave you my pleasures because it pleased me to do so. I had not expected you were deceitful from the start, under Micah’s silver-tongued guidance. I could not See that then. Then I released you from your enchantment upon your betrayal and my imminent death, as it were.” Lydia stroked the Oculum idly.
Hann stumbled back. His thighs hit the bed; Bruin steadied him before he could fall. Hann jerked away. Lydia saw the brief flash of hurt in Bruin’s eyes. Hann strode to the other side of the room, looking away from both of them, his tormentors. He rubbed his hands over his face and through his light brown hair.
“I needed to retrieve what Micah stole and what was rightfully mine and made for me,” Lydia continued. “I have always been able to See, just as Micah has always been able to talk his way into and out of anything, but his staff was made to augment his power, and my Oculum was made to augment mine. Our talismans. His manipulations divested me of it for a mere moment—that was my error. Once I had the Oculum in my possession again, though, my ability to See into the truth of things clarified once more. And I saw your future, your love for this forsaken man, your self-loathing for it. It is not my curse upon you. If I wanted to curse you, I would make you impotent entirely, never again to know the pleasure even of your own hand.”
Hann turned around and looked at her with wide eyes. There was conflict in his expression, as though part of him believed that no desire would be better than the desires in which he now indulged.
“But then you would be of no use to me,” Lydia said, crossing her arms over her chest and smiling with grim calculation. “The rule of Adal will soon be overturned, and I will need a warden and an executioner under my control. Your secret will remain safe with me…if you obey me when I sit at the right hand of the future leader of Adal.”
Bruin sat back, widening his stance with no concern for his nudity, and considered her. But Hann strode back over to her, gesticulating wildly.
“So this is your revenge, to have me—us—under your thumb for the rest of our days lest you tell everyone of this…this…” He struggled to even say what he did with his lover, although Lydia saw as plain as his Roman nose that Bruin gave him true joy in their solitude.
“No,” Lydia said, pushing him toward the bed. “That is merely politics. As though you did not have a similar arrangement with Micah. No, my revenge is to watch.”
“Watch.” Hann’s calves hit the bed again, and this time he tumbled back onto it without Bruin to help him. Bruin still had that thoughtful look on his face.
“I want to watch what makes you ashamed, so that you will know that I have seen it,” Lydia hissed. “I want to see what the executioner does to you. I want to see you delight in the flesh of a man, and I want to be a part of laying you low. Then you
will know what it is that you did to me when you betrayed me, what it felt like to be caught by Micah, to be stripped naked by you, to suffer the indignity of a burning before the townspeople, to be condemned before all of witchcraft, even though I once preferred to keep my powers close and secret.”
She straddled his pale, long body, nails digging into his chest. “I want him to fuck you. And I want to take pleasure in it.”
“May dogs mate with you in Micah’s bedchambers,” Hann spat. “Even if I could want you, I would not want to touch your wicked-ridden flesh. Rot in hell and let demons consume those all-seeing eyes of yours.”
“Oh, now, now, Hann,” she murmured, pressing her lips to his forehead and leaving a wet, red mark even though her lips were unpainted. “Do you not remember the good times we had?”
“I care nothing for women, you sow. You saw to that.”
Lydia’s hand combed through his thick hair and tightened into a fist to tug his head back. “Would that make you feel better performing for me? If you felt pleasure at my touch again?”
She ran her tongue up the length of his neck, over his chin, then took his mouth, tasting and licking and sucking his lips and tongue into her mouth and making the most obscenely wet noises she could. She thought she heard a sound from Bruin behind her as Hann moaned, his cock twitching and growing against Lydia’s skirts.
The nights they had stolen in empty cells, in dark corners, in Hann’s room (never hers), came back to them, and Hann felt the sense memory of what it had meant to worship her body as one he had always wanted to worship, the relief of feeling straight and narrow…and the horror when he realized that feeling was gone, so many ashes in a witch’s pyre. He slid his arms around her, hands grasping until he found her shoulders and held on tightly. Then his eyes flew open, and he wrenched his mouth away from hers, gazing in terrible realization at the grinning enchantress above him. She felt good against him, her breasts heavy on his chest and her legs firm on his hips, but that goodness was only created by her; she was the last woman in the world he wanted to want. And in this bed, too.
Thrones of Desire Page 16
