Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The guest wing of the Nilfgaard palace had been built for visiting dignitaries and foreign monarchs, which meant the ceilings were absurdly high, the fireplaces large enough to roast an ox, and every surface crawled with gilt sunbursts. Triss had taken the eastern suite. Yennefer had taken the western one. The corridor between them smelled of lilac and gooseberries from one end and honey and rose oil from the other, and the palace servants had learned inside of three days to knock twice and wait.

Two weeks. That was all it had taken for the wing to stop feeling like borrowed space and start feeling claimed.

Triss stood at the tall window of the shared sitting room, blue eyes tracking the courtyard below where a column of Nilfgaardian cavalry drilled in precise formation, black armour catching the afternoon light. Her gown was Temerian blue, the bodice fitted close over the swell of her tits, the lacing pulled snug at her ribs. The fur trim at her collar was new, a concession to Nilfgaardian winters she hadn't packed for. She'd pinned her red hair in the twin braided buns at her nape, a few copper strands already working loose at her temples.

"She took the morning session with the treasury council without yawning once," Triss said. "I counted."

"A miracle." Yennefer sat in the carved chair by the fire, one leg crossed over the other, a sheaf of documents in her lap. Black and white as always, the fitted doublet laced tight over a white blouse, the sleeves slashed to show the linen beneath. The obsidian star sat at her throat on its black ribbon. She hadn't looked up. "Did she also refrain from telling the chancellor to shove his tariff proposals up his arse?"

"She came close. She said 'with respect' first, though."

"Progress." Yennefer turned a page. The fire popped.

Triss leaned her hip against the windowsill. The blue skirt pulled across her thighs where the fabric caught. "You could sound a little more pleased, Yen. She's trying. She's actually trying."

"I am pleased." Yennefer's violet eyes lifted, sharp and dry. "I'm expressing it internally, where it's safe from your commentary."

"You're impossible."

"I'm consistent." Yennefer set the documents aside on the small table and uncrossed her legs. Her boots were polished black, knee-high, the leather supple. She leaned back, fingers laced in her lap. "She's doing well. The girl has a spine and a brain and she's using both. I'll say it to her face when she's earned flattery and not a moment before."

Triss shook her head, mouth pulling into the half-smile she couldn't help. Yen would praise Ciri to anyone in the room except Ciri. That was old ground. She turned back to the window. The cavalry below wheeled as a unit, lances tipping in unison. The discipline was something to see.

"Emhyr summoned me this morning," Triss said. "Before the treasury session."

The quality of Yennefer's attention changed. Triss could feel it, the way a shift in the air pressure announces a storm. She kept her voice easy.

"He was civil. Direct. He asked how we were settling in, whether we'd had any communication with Philippa or any other Lodge members since our arrival."

"And you said?"

"I said no, because the answer is no." Triss turned around. Yennefer's violet eyes were on her now, full and steady. "He made the warning again. Almost word for word. If we are found using Ciri's position to advance the Lodge's interests, any of them, the consequences would be, and I'm quoting him, 'final and comprehensive.'"

"He does love his euphemisms for execution."

"Yen."

"I heard you." Yennefer's jaw tightened. A muscle moved in her cheek. "He made me the same speech when we arrived. I told him his daughter's welfare was the only interest I served. He didn't believe me, and I didn't care."

"He believed you enough to let us stay."

"He let us stay because Ciri asked for us and he's smart enough to know she'll bolt if he pushes too hard. We're here because she wants us here. Emhyr tolerates us because tolerating us is cheaper than losing her." Yennefer stood, a smooth motion, the doublet pulling tight across her chest as she straightened. She was taller than Triss in those boots. "The Lodge is dead, or near enough. Philippa can scheme from whatever hole she's crawled into. It doesn't touch us."

"I know that. You know that. He's watching us to make sure."

"Let him watch." Yennefer walked to the sideboard, poured wine into two silver cups without asking. The ruby liquid caught the firelight. She held one out. "We're here for Ciri. Everything else is theater."

Triss took the cup. Their fingers brushed. Yennefer's were cool and dry, the rings cold.

"She asked me to sit in on the military briefing tomorrow," Triss said.

"She asked me to review the intelligence reports from the Northern front." Yennefer sipped her wine. "She's building something. A circle she trusts."

"Two sorceresses and no spymaster. Emhyr must be thrilled."

"Emhyr can hire his own spymaster. Ciri needs people who'll tell her the truth even when it's inconvenient." Yennefer's mouth curved, faint and sharp. "I'm perfectly suited."

"You're perfectly suited to telling everyone the truth when it's inconvenient."

"As I said." She drank. "Consistent."

The fire settled. Outside, the cavalry completed its formation, lances vertical, still as iron posts in the courtyard. A cold wind pressed at the window glass, and Triss felt it through the stone.

"Do you think she'll be good at this?" Triss asked. Quiet. The question she'd carried for two weeks.

Yennefer looked at her. The firelight caught the violet, warmed it. For a moment the sharpness left her face and something plainer showed through, something Triss had seen only a handful of times in the years she'd known this woman.

"She'll be better than anyone who's sat that throne in living memory," Yennefer said. "And we're going to make sure of it."

Triss nodded. She believed her. She lifted her cup and drank, the wine heavy and warm, and outside the palace the sun moved behind the towers and the golden sunbursts on every wall dimmed to bronze.

The tenth man hit the sand on his back, and the yard went quiet.

Ciri stood in the training circle with a blunted longsword loose in her right hand, her breathing even, her shirt dry. The collar sat open at her throat, the linen barely creased. She'd braided her ash-grey hair tight against her skull that morning, and the braid still held, clean and tight at the nape. Her fitted leather trousers were dusted at the knees where she'd dropped into a low guard twice, and that was the only mark the bout had left on her.

Ten veterans of the Imperial Army. Career soldiers, men who'd held the line at Cintra and marched through Sodden. She'd put every one of them on the ground using standard military stances. Soldier's footwork, soldier's guards, the forms they themselves had drilled since they were boys.

She hadn't used a pirouette. She hadn't blinked across the ring. She hadn't so much as whispered a Sign.

She rolled her sword shoulder once, set the blunted blade point-down in the sand, and rested both hands on the crossguard. The scar on her left cheek was white in the afternoon light.

"Anyone else?"

The galleries along the courtyard's north wall held the watchers. Nilfgaardian nobles filled the lower tier, men in black coats stiff with gold thread, women in layered silk and fur. The men leaned forward. Several had stopped pretending to talk to each other. One old general with campaign ribbons across his chest was nodding slowly, his mouth pressed into a thin approving line.

The women were harder to read. A cluster of younger noblewomen in the second row had their heads together, voices low and quick. Fans fluttered. Eyes cut toward Ciri and back.

Triss stood at the railing with her hands resting on the stone, the blue bodice snug against her ribs, the fur collar brushing her jaw. Yennefer stood beside her, arms folded, the black doublet pulling tight across her shoulders. The obsidian star glinted at her throat.

"Three proposals arrived at Emhyr's desk this week," Triss said quietly. "That I know of."

"Five," Yennefer corrected. "Two from Metinna, one from Vicovaro, one from the Voorhis family, and one poor fool from Cintra who clearly doesn't read the room."

"She's making them respect her," Triss said. She watched Ciri gesture for the tenth man's hand, pulling him to his feet. The soldier took her grip and stood, red-faced, and gave her a crisp salute. "And making half the women in that gallery want to be her and the other half want to murder her."

"Both useful." Yennefer's violet eyes tracked Ciri as she crossed the sand. "But she can't keep solving everything with a sword."

Ciri reached them at the railing. She leaned the blunted longsword against the stone and wiped her palms on her thighs. Still no sweat. Her green eyes were bright with the uncomplicated pleasure of a body well used.

"Don't," she said, pointing at Yennefer. "Whatever you're about to say, don't."

"Tomorrow morning. Dawn. We begin your magic training."

"I don't need magic training. I need these idiots to stop sending marriage proposals to my father like I'm a broodmare at auction."

"You need both," Triss said gently. "Ciri, you have more raw power than anyone I've ever taught, and you have almost no fine control. You remember what happened with Lord Varenthis?"

Ciri's jaw tightened. "He grabbed my arse."

"And you nearly pulled a tornado out of clear sky. The courtyard flagstones cracked, Ciri. Two servants lost their footing from the wind alone."

"He grabbed my arse."

"I'm not saying he didn't deserve a tornado." Triss put her hand on Ciri's forearm, the touch light and warm. "I'm saying you didn't mean to make one. That's the problem."

Yennefer tilted her head. "Or the incident two days later, when the same Lord Varenthis told your father at dinner that the Empire would be better served if he simply gave you to the Voorhis line. Do you remember what happened to his chair?"

"It broke."

"It didn't break. You increased the gravitational pull on a six-foot radius around him to roughly eight times normal. His chair splintered. He couldn't lift his head off the table. His wine cup crushed flat in his hand." Yennefer's voice was level, precise. "You did that across a banquet hall, through stone walls, without a gesture or a word. And you were still eating your soup."

Ciri's mouth twitched. "It was good soup."

"Emhyr wasn't lenient with him in the end," Triss added. "Lord Varenthis is currently enjoying an extended posting to the Empire's southernmost garrison. In a swamp. With no recall date."

"He should have lost the hand he used on my arse."

"Perhaps. But if you'd held the gravity field another ten seconds you'd have crushed his spine, and that would have been your mess to explain to the court." Yennefer uncrossed her arms. "Dawn. Tomorrow. Bring nothing metal."

Ciri looked between them, green eyes hard, the fighter's stillness holding her body coiled and straight. The braided grey hair caught the light. The scar on her cheek was a thin line carved into stone.

"Fine," she said. "Dawn."

"Good girl," Yennefer said flatly.

"Call me that again and I'll increase the gravitational pull on your corset."

"It's a doublet."

"I don't care what it is. Dawn. I'll be there." Ciri took up the blunted sword and walked back toward the sand, and the galleries buzzed as she passed beneath them, the men watching her move, the women already talking.

Three weeks carved a shape.

Yennefer took to the Nilfgaardian court the way a blade takes to a whetstone. She sat in on privy council sessions at Ciri's right hand, violet eyes flat and measuring while men three times her age in imperial service talked themselves into corners she'd already mapped. She drafted position papers in a hand so precise the court scribes copied her margins. She told the Vicovaro ambassador his tariff proposal was "mathematically illiterate" to his face, in front of his staff, and Emhyr didn't correct her. By the end of the second week she had a permanent chair at the intelligence briefings and a reputation among the Nilfgaardian nobility that ran somewhere between fear and grudging fascination.

Triss worked the other flank. She took tea with the wives and mothers and sisters of the men Yennefer was terrifying. She remembered their children's names, their estates, their preferences in wine and weather, and she filed every detail in the warm bright archive behind her cornflower eyes. When the fourth marriage proposal arrived from Metinna, it was Triss who met with the ambassador's wife over honeyed pastries and explained, gently and at length, that the Empress-to-be was not presently considering alliances of that nature, and had the woman laughing about it before the second cup was poured. The proposals kept coming. Triss kept catching them, soft-handed and smiling, and turning them aside with a warmth that left the suitors' families feeling attended to rather than refused.

Ciri found it all staggeringly boring.

"I'd rather clean stables," she told Triss at breakfast, three weeks in, stabbing a sausage with her fork. "I'd rather muck out Roach's old stall with my bare hands than sit through another dinner where some baron's third son tells me about his bloodline."

"You're getting better at it, though," Triss said.

"I'm getting better at smiling while I imagine throwing them out the window. That's a different skill."

She was, in fact, getting better at it. But the thing that unnerved them both, Triss and Yennefer alike, was the magic.

Dawn sessions. Every morning. Yennefer ran her through control exercises in the sealed courtyard below the east tower, where the flagstones had been replaced twice already. The exercises were precise, demanding, designed to teach restraint before reach. Tiny telekinetic manipulations. Threading raw power through a needle's eye. Holding a flame the size of a candle tip steady for an hour.

Ciri did all of it. Every exercise Yennefer set, she completed. Every precise working came out precise as needed. And every single one hummed with a depth of power that made the air taste like ozone and copper for a full minute afterward.

"It's like teaching someone to whisper," Yennefer told Triss one evening, standing at the window of the shared sitting room, her wine untouched. "And her whisper shakes the walls."

"Is she controlling it?"

"Perfectly. That's the problem. There's no ceiling I can find. I set the most delicate exercises I know, and she does them with the power of a siege engine dialed down to a feather's touch. Every time."

The Lodge sent envoys. Of course they did.

Philippa's people came first, polished and careful, carrying proposals wrapped in silk and sealed with wax. Emhyr received them in the formal audience chamber with the golden sun blazing on the wall behind him. He listened. He asked questions that had no safe answers. He let the silence run until the envoys filled it with concessions they hadn't planned to make.

In the end, he allowed the Lodge an embassy in the capital. A building. A staff. Official standing, closely watched.

"He wants them where he can see them," Yennefer said, when Ciri asked. "And where he can use them when it suits him. He's not stupid."

"He's letting sorceresses set up shop in his city. Seems a little stupid."

"He's letting sorceresses set up shop where his intelligence service can read their mail and count their visitors. It's a cage with a nice door."

The Lodge envoys went nowhere near Ciri. Emhyr's instruction on that point was absolute, and the palace guard enforced it with the quiet thoroughness of men who understood their Emperor did not repeat himself.

The exception was Margarita Laux-Antille.

Rita arrived two days after the embassy opened, swept past the security arrangements with a smile and a wave, and found Ciri in the training yard still holding a blunted sword. She brought three boxes of chocolates from Oxenfurt, a cashmere shawl dyed deep green, and a pair of earrings set with tiny emeralds that she fastened to Ciri's ears herself while Ciri stood still and let her.

"You look thin," Rita said, holding Ciri's face in both hands. "Are they feeding you?"

"I ate two breakfasts this morning."

"Good. Eat three tomorrow. An empress needs her strength." She kissed Ciri's forehead and spent the rest of the afternoon feeding her chocolates and telling her stories about Aretuza that made Ciri laugh until her ribs ached.

Yennefer watched from the doorway with her arms folded and said nothing to stop it. Rita spoiled the girl. Someone should.

Then the summons came.

A page in imperial black, the golden sun stitched on his breast, arrived at the guest wing at the ninth bell of the morning and delivered the message with a bow so deep his forehead nearly touched his knees. The Emperor requested the presence of the Empress-to-be and her advisors in the formal receiving room. Immediately.

Ciri was still in her training leathers, a loose white shirt open at the collar, fitted trousers tucked into soft boots. She pulled her ash-grey braid over her shoulder and looked at Triss.

"He said immediately. I'm not changing."

"You might want to at least button your shirt," Triss said.

Ciri buttoned two of the four buttons. The collar still sat wide, showing her collarbones and the chain she wore flat against her sternum. She shrugged.

Yennefer didn't comment on the shirt. She straightened her own doublet, checked the obsidian star at her throat, and walked.

The formal receiving room was long and high-ceilinged, the walls hung with tapestries showing Nilfgaardian victories that Ciri tried not to look at too closely. Emhyr sat in the tall carved chair at the room's head, dressed in imperial black, the sun emblem worked in gold across his chest. His face gave nothing away. It never did.

Two men stood before him.

The first was enormous. Tall and broad through the chest and belly, robed in Zerrikanian silk the color of deep saffron, heavy gold at his throat and wrists and on every thick finger. His beard was trimmed close to a wide jaw, oiled and faintly grey at the temples. He smelled of resin, something warm and expensive that filled the near end of the room. Two bodyguards flanked him, hard-faced Zerrikanian fighters who stood very still.

The second was taller still and leaner. Dark blue silk, finer and more restrained, a single jewel at his throat that caught the light when he breathed. His beard was fuller, going grey at the edges, his brown eyes warm and patient. He stood with an unhurried ease, hands clasped loosely before him, a single heavy ring on each hand. His own guards held the far wall, four of them, watching everything.

Emhyr spoke. "Cirilla. Your advisors. You will know the names. Ozuran of Asharanta, Zerrikania's trade envoy to this court." He indicated the larger man. "And Azar of Minthoz, prince of the royal house and Zerrikania's ambassador." The taller one inclined his head. "Gentlemen. My daughter and heir, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon. Her advisors, Yennefer of Vengerberg and Triss Merigold."

Ozuran's dark eyes moved across the three women, quick and warm and doing sums behind the smile. His mouth split into a wide, genuine grin.

"My dear friends," he said, and his voice filled the room like poured honey, rich and accented and pleased. "What a tremendous pleasure. The stories of you three have reached even Asharanta, and I see the stories were modest."

Azar said nothing yet. His brown eyes settled on Ciri with that long, unhurried attention, and he let the silence hold for a beat before he spoke.

"Your Highness," he said softly. "The house of Minthoz is honored. My king sends his regard, and I bring it gladly."

Ciri looked at them both. She planted her feet, hands loose at her sides, the fighter's stance she couldn't quite shed.

"Welcome to Nilfgaard," she said. "I hope the journey wasn't too miserable."

Ozuran laughed. Full and warm, his belly shaking under the saffron silk. "The roads were terrible, the inns were worse, and the weather tried to kill us twice. But we are here, and the company already improves the memory."

"Flattery gets you a chair and some wine," Ciri said. "Honesty gets you a longer meeting."

"Then I will be devastatingly honest," Ozuran said, still grinning. "And drink your wine while I do it."

Azar watched this exchange with the faintest smile, his hands still clasped, his rings catching the light. His eyes moved from Ciri to Yennefer to Triss, lingering on each for a measured breath.

"We are at your disposal, Your Highness," he said. "In all things."

The session ran two hours.

Ciri sat across the table from Ozuran and Azar with her spine straight and her green eyes level, and she picked apart Ozuran's opening offer the way she'd picked apart the ten soldiers in the yard. Methodically. Without breaking a sweat.

Ozuran opened wide, as a merchant does. Zerrikanian gold-spice at forty orens the dram, silks at twice the Northern market rate, cloth-of-gold by the bolt at figures that made Emhyr's treasury secretary set down his quill.

"My dear grand princess," Ozuran said, spreading his thick ringed hands, "you must understand, the roads are long, the dangers many, and the goods without equal in all the world."

Ciri picked up the sample vial of gold-spice from the table, held it to the light, set it down. "Twenty-two the dram. The roads are long for your competitors too, and I've seen Ofieri pricing."

Ozuran's warm eyes went flat for half a breath. Then he laughed, big and full, his belly moving under the saffron silk. "The Ofieri sell you dust and call it spice. Twenty-two is an insult to my caravan masters who risk their lives."

"Twenty-four, then. And the silk comes down fifteen percent, or I'll open talks with the Koviri guild next week. They've been writing to me."

Azar watched it all with his hands clasped and his brown eyes warm and patient. He said little. He nodded once when Ciri quoted a figure for the cloth-of-gold that split the difference cleanly, and Ozuran looked at him, and Azar inclined his head, and the deal was done.

Emhyr's face gave nothing away. His fingers tapped the arm of his chair once when the figures were finalized, and that was all, and anyone who knew him understood that single tap as satisfaction.

When it was finished, Ciri stood and offered her hand to Ozuran, who took it in both of his and held it a beat too long, his dark eyes crinkling.

"Your Highness," Ozuran said. "You have robbed me, and I have enjoyed every moment."

"Come back tomorrow and I'll rob you again," Ciri said.

Azar bowed, soft and low. "The house of Minthoz looks forward to a long partnership, Your Highness. Rest well."

They filed out, the bodyguards falling in behind them. The door closed. Ciri pushed her fingers through the loose strands at her temple and exhaled.

"I'm going to sleep until dinner. Wake me if someone invades."

Triss squeezed her arm. "You were brilliant."

"I was hungry and tired and I wanted it over with." Ciri turned and walked, her soft boots quiet on the stone, and she was gone down the corridor before Yennefer could say a word.

The shared the sitting room again. The fire rebuilt, two cups of wine poured, the afternoon light falling long through the tall windows. Triss kicked off her shoes and tucked her stockinged feet beneath her on the settee, the blue skirt pooling around her thighs. Yennefer stood by the mantel, one hand resting on the stone, the wine in her other hand untouched.

"Well," Triss said. "That was productive."

"The trade deal was productive." Yennefer sipped her wine. "The two hours of being stared at like cuts of meat on a spit were less so."

Triss tilted her head. "You noticed?"

"I noticed Ozuran's eyes on my arse every time I turned to speak to the secretary. Every time, Triss. The man didn't blink. He tracked me the way a hawk tracks a hare." Yennefer turned from the mantel, violet eyes sharp and dry. "And Azar spent the better part of the second hour watching your tits shift every time you leaned forward to take notes."

Triss looked down at the generous neckline of her blue bodice. The lacing pulled snug under the full swell of her chest, the fabric straining at the seam where her breasts pressed together. "I was taking notes. I lean forward when I write."

"And he leaned forward when you did. Very attentive to your penmanship."

"Yen…..!"

"They were polite about it. Deferential to Emhyr, respectful to Ciri, and lecherous as goats toward the two of us the entire time." Yennefer drank. The fire caught the violet in her eyes and turned it warm. "Ozuran wants me in his bed and Azar wants you in his. That's as plain as the gold on their fingers."

Triss pulled her legs tighter beneath her. Her blue eyes were bright, a little warm at the cheeks, the freckles on her nose standing out. "You're sure about the pairing?"

"Ozuran barely looked at you. Azar barely looked at me. They've divided the spoils between themselves already. Very organized."

"That's...actually flattering? In a terrible way."

"It's Zerrikanian." Yennefer moved to the chair and sat, crossing her legs, the boot leather creaking. "You know what we know about their sorcerers and sorceresses. The men marry into nobility. They sire children with magical blood, build dynasties. The women become advisors and lovers to merchant lords and princes. And they bear children for those men."

Triss nodded slowly. "The sellswords who come through, the merchants, they all say the same thing. Zerrikanian sorceresses have children. Powerful children. It's the opposite of everything we know."

"Because their mages never come here. They stay in Zerrikania, they marry into power, and they breed." Yennefer's mouth twisted. "The magical women, if rumor holds true, bear sons and daughters for their lords and princes. The men produce sorcerer heirs. It's a whole system built around what we sacrificed."

The word hung. Triss watched Yennefer's face and saw the tight pull at the corner of her mouth, the old wound she never talked about sitting just beneath the surface.

"The reagents they trade are extraordinary," Triss said, steering gently. "The tomes alone. Rita told me the Lodge spent forty thousand orens last year on Zerrikanian manuscripts and got three."

"I know what they have. I also know what they want." Yennefer set her cup down. "We keep them at arm's length. We get everything we can from them. Ingredients, tomes, access to their magical traditions. Ciri needs those resources and so do we."

"Agreed." Triss sipped her wine. The honey-sweet warmth of it spread through her chest. "We're advisors to the Empress-to-be. We have standing. We use that standing to negotiate, and we don't end up in anyone's bed as payment."

"Obviously."

"We're not whores, Yen."

Yennefer's violet eyes cut to her, sharp and glinting with something that might have been amusement.

"Obviously we're not whores, Triss."

"I'm just saying. We set the terms. We control the access. We get what we need and they get diplomatic courtesy and trade agreements and absolutely nothing else."

Yennefer picked up her wine again. She drank. The firelight played along the line of her jaw, the pale throat above the obsidian star.

"We're not whores," Yennefer repeated. The corner of her mouth lifted, slow and precise. "At least we're not cheap ones."

Triss choked on her wine. It came out her nose. She coughed, grabbing for the linen napkin on the table, her face going red under the freckles, her tits shaking with the force of the cough under the blue bodice.

"Yen, that's horrible."

"It's accurate. If either of those men wants to see what's under our clothes, the price is the contents of a Zerrikanian royal library and every rare reagent they can ship across the Korath." Yennefer's smile was thin and precise and utterly unashamed. "That seems fair to me."

"You're terrible."

"I'm consistent."

Triss wiped her face. Her eyes were still watering, her cheeks flushed, and she was laughing too hard to be angry about the wine in her nose. She pointed at Yennefer with the crumpled napkin.

"If you tell Ciri you said that, I'll deny everything."

"Noted."

Three days later a palace servant knocked twice at the door of the western suite, waited the prescribed ten seconds, and knocked again. When Yennefer opened it she found a boy in imperial livery standing behind a handcart stacked with three parcels wrapped in cloth-of-gold.

She looked at the parcels. She looked at the boy.

"Who sent these?"

"The merchant lord Ozuran of Asharanta, my lady. With his compliments and his regard."

She took the parcels inside and shut the door with her hip.

The first was silk. Bolts of it, three in number, folded with the care of a man who understood textiles. Black as Yennefer's wardrobe demanded, the weave so fine the fabric moved like water when she pulled it free. She ran it through her fingers and felt the thread count against her skin, cool and impossibly smooth. Zerrikanian work. Worth more per yard than anything the Nilfgaardian weavers could produce.

The second was jewelry. A set, laid in a velvet case lined with black satin. Earrings, a bracelet, and a collar piece, all wrought in gold with sapphires the color of deep water set at every joint and clasp. The gold was old Zerrikanian work, the settings heavy and precise, each sapphire cut in the southern style with more facets than a Northern jeweler would use. She held the collar piece up and it caught the afternoon light through the window and threw blue fire across the ceiling.

The third was a book.

She unwrapped it and her hands stopped moving.

The cover was thick leather, tooled and dyed in the Zerrikanian fashion, and the title was stamped in gold leaf across the front in both the common tongue and Zerrikanian script: Beasts of the East: A Compendium of Ofieri and Zerrikanian Monsters, Their Harvested Organs, and Their Alchemical and Magical Properties. The pages were heavy vellum. She opened to a woodcut of a creature she didn't recognize, six-legged, scaled, with mandibles the length of a man's forearm, and beneath it three columns of dense text detailing the creature's habitat, its weaknesses, and the seventeen distinct reagents that could be harvested from its corpse.

She turned the page. Another beast. Another list of ingredients. Properties she'd never seen catalogued, cross-referenced with potions and enchantments she'd only read about in fragments.

She closed the book carefully and pressed both palms flat on its cover and stared at the far wall.

Her mouth was open. She shut it.

By the ninth bell she was in the shared sitting room, the book on the table between two cups of wine, the silk draped over the back of a chair, the sapphire jewelry glinting in its case. Triss arrived still wearing the blue bodice and layered skirts from the day's council session, the lacing snug under her tits, her red hair half-loose from the twin braids. She saw the spread on the table and stopped in the doorway.

"When did these arrive?"

"This afternoon." Yennefer tapped the book's cover with one ringed finger. "Open it."

Triss leaned forward, the neckline of her bodice gaping where the fabric strained, and turned the first page. Her cornflower eyes went wide. She flipped to the middle, scanning, her lips parting.

"Yen. This is...I've never seen half of these species catalogued. The reagent lists alone are worth a fortune."

"I'm aware." Yennefer picked up her wine, drank, set it down. "What did you get?"

Triss straightened up. Her cheeks were pink. "I was going to wait until after dinner to tell you."

"Tell me now."

Triss went to her chambers and came back carrying a wooden case, a silk-wrapped bundle, and a third item in a velvet pouch.

She opened the case first. Inside, nested in black felt, lay a dagger. The blade was pale steel, almost white, etched with Zerrikanian script running from hilt to point. The handle was wrapped in ray skin and capped with a pommel of carved onyx. Triss drew it free and the script on the blade glowed faint amber for a breath, then faded.

"Enchanted," Triss said. "The script is a warding charm. It repels hostile magic from the wielder. I tested it against a basic hex and the hex slid off me like oil."

"From Azar."

"From Azar."

The second item was a ruby the size of a quail's egg, set in a gold filigree stand. Triss set it on the table and the stone pulsed once with a deep inner light, crimson darkening to something that moved behind the facets.

"There's a djinn in it," Triss said. "An actual djinn, Yen. Bound and sealed. Not a lesser spirit, a true one. The stand holds the binding."

Yennefer stared at the ruby. The light inside it swirled, slow and sullen. "A bound djinn is worth more than everything on this table combined."

"I know."

"Geralt nearly died over a djinn. Twice."

"I know that too."

Triss unwrapped the third gift. It was a dress. Silk, white as cream, cut in the Zerrikanian style with a high collar and a bodice that would fit close to the waist before falling in a long drape to the floor. Diamonds were set into the fabric along the collar and the cuffs and in a scattered trail across the bodice, small ones, expertly placed, so the silk would catch light with every movement. Triss held it up against herself and the diamonds glittered against the warm copper of her skin where her chest rose above the neckline of her current gown.

"He has good taste," Yennefer said.

"He has terrifying taste. This is a courting gift, Yen. All of this. The enchanted dagger, the djinn, the dress. These are courting gifts."

"The silk and the sapphires and a book I'd kill for are also courting gifts." Yennefer leaned back in her chair. Her violet eyes were bright, sharp, alive with something that sat between calculation and genuine surprise. "They're serious."

"They're very serious." Triss folded the diamond dress carefully across the arm of the settee and sat down. "The question is what we do about it."

"What we discussed. We take everything. We give nothing they haven't earned." Yennefer crossed her legs. The boot leather creaked. She ran her finger along the spine of the tome, slow and possessive. "I'm certainly keeping the book."

"And I'm keeping the djinn. And the dagger. And the dress." Triss pulled her feet up beneath her, the blue skirt pooling warm around her thighs. She was smiling. The flush hadn't left her cheeks. "So we're keeping their courting gifts and offering nothing in return?"

"I didn't say nothing." Yennefer picked up her wine. "I said nothing they haven't earned. There's a difference."

Triss tilted her head. "You're going to make them work for it."

"We are, Obviously."

"But you're going to spread your legs eventually."

Yennefer looked at her. The fire caught the violet of her eyes and warmed it. One black eyebrow arched, slow and deliberate. She reached up and flipped her hair over her shoulder, the raven-black fall of it catching the light, and settled deeper into the cushion. She pulled the tome into her lap and opened it to the first page.

"Maybe," she said.

Triss smirked. The expression broke wide across her face, plush lips curving, freckles standing out on her flushed cheeks.

"At least you're honest about it."

"I'm honest about everything. That's why people find me exhausting." Yennefer turned the page. Her violet eyes dropped to the woodcut of a beast with six legs and mandibles, and the faintest smile curved her mouth. She stroked the vellum with one finger.

Triss reached for the ruby in its gold stand and held it up. The djinn inside swirled, crimson and furious and contained. "They're going to send more, aren't they?"

"They're going to send everything they have." Yennefer didn't look up from the book. "And we're going to take it all."

The gifts kept coming.

Yennefer had expected them to stop after a week. She and Triss had sent no acknowledgment, no note, no word of thanks. They'd kept the first parcels and offered nothing back, and in any Northern court that silence would have been a clear enough answer. A man took the hint or he didn't, and if he didn't, he was a fool.

Ozuran was many things. A fool was none of them.

The second week brought more silk. Midnight blue this time, so dark it looked black until light moved across it and the blue burned through like deep water. A bolt of white samite stitched with silver thread so fine Yennefer had to hold it to the window to see the pattern, a repeating motif of serpents swallowing their own tails. Three more tomes arrived in a cedar chest lined with oiled leather: The Zerrikanian Pharmacopoeia, Volume Nine, which dealt with venoms and their distillations; a hand-copied manuscript on ward-breaking attributed to a sorcerer whose name Yennefer had only seen referenced in fragments; and a slim leather folio containing original diagrams of Zerrikanian portal anchoring, the geometry of fixed-point translocation drawn in inks that still shimmered after what had to be two hundred years on the page.

She sat on her bed with the folio open in her lap and stared at the diagrams for an hour. Her hands shook once and she set the book down and pressed her palms flat on her thighs until they stopped.

The jewels came separately. A sapphire the size of her thumbnail, cut in forty-eight facets, delivered in a velvet pouch with a card that read only For your collection, my friend in Ozuran's ornate hand. An opal that shifted from green to violet when she tilted it. A matched pair of emerald earrings, heavy, set in old Zerrikanian gold. Ingredients: three sealed vials of koshchei venom, milked and preserved, worth more per drop than liquid gold; a pouch of powdered zmaj bone, which Yennefer had believed was extinct.

"This is absurd," she said to Triss.

"I know," Triss said. She was sitting on Yennefer's bed surrounded by her own haul, Azar's latest offerings spread across the coverlet. A rope of freshwater pearls, each one flawless and faintly pink. A set of crystal phials containing essences Triss had spent the morning identifying with increasingly wide eyes. A second enchanted blade, shorter than the dagger, a stiletto with a sapphire pommel that hummed against her palm. And books. Always books.

Margarita found them there on a Tuesday afternoon, both women surrounded by treasure like dragons on a hoard. Rita stood in the doorway with a cup of tea in one hand and looked from Yennefer to Triss to the spread of silk and jewels and ancient tomes and back.

"Who do I have to fuck to get all this?" Rita asked.

"Nobody," Yennefer said. "Yet."

Rita's eyebrows climbed. She sipped her tea. "Yet. That's doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, Yen."

"It's doing exactly the right amount."

The Nilfgaardian ball fell on the last day of the month.

The great hall blazed with a thousand candles in iron chandeliers, the golden sun emblem repeated on every banner along the walls. The floor was black marble veined with gold, polished to a mirror finish. Imperial nobility filled the lower hall in their blacks and golds, stiff brocade and military cut, the women in layered gowns heavy with embroidery and the men in coats that buttoned to the chin. A full orchestra played from the gallery above, strings and brass echoing off the vaulted stone ceiling.

Yennefer dressed for it.

She wore the midnight blue silk Ozuran had sent, cut and fitted by the palace tailors in three days of breathless work. The gown sat low across her collarbones, the neckline dipping in a clean V that showed the pale channel between her tits, the obsidian star resting at the base of her throat above the shadow. The bodice clung to her waist, tight as a second skin, and the skirt fell in a long sweep to the floor with a slit up the left thigh that showed her leg to the hip when she moved. The sapphire earrings swung against her jaw. She'd left her hair loose, raven-black and thick, falling past her shoulders to mid-back. The scent of lilac and gooseberries filled a six-foot radius around her.

She knew what she looked like. She'd looked at herself in the glass for a full minute before leaving her chambers, violet eyes measuring, and she'd been satisfied.

Heads turned when she entered. She let them turn.

Triss walked beside her in the diamond dress Azar had sent, white silk clinging to her curves, the high Zerrikanian collar framing her throat while the bodice hugged her tits and waist so closely every breath showed. The diamonds scattered across the fabric caught the candlelight and threw tiny sparks with each step. Her red hair was up in the chignon, pinned and coiled, a few warm strands escaping at her temples. The ruby from the djinn's binding hung at her throat on a gold chain, pulsing faintly.

They drew eyes. Every eye in the near quarter of the hall followed them, and the murmur that rippled through the crowd was audible. Triss's cheeks went pink. Yennefer's spine straightened another quarter inch.

Ciri was mercifully elsewhere. She stood at the far end of the hall with Emhyr, greeting a line of visiting dignitaries, her ash-grey hair pinned and formal, her gown imperial black. She didn't glance their way.

Yennefer took a glass of wine from a passing servant and scanned the room. She found him in eight seconds.

Ozuran stood near the eastern colonnade in a robe of deep crimson silk, gold thread worked through the fabric in a subtle pattern that caught the candlelight. The heavy rings glinted on his thick fingers, the gold chain at his throat carrying a ruby the size of a grape. His oiled beard gleamed. His dark eyes were already on her, warm and quick and doing their sums, and when she met them he smiled. Wide, full, genuine, unhurried.

He'd been waiting. He'd positioned himself in her sightline and he'd waited.

She crossed the hall. He watched her come the entire way, his eyes dropping once to the slit in her skirt where her thigh showed, then returning to her face. The smile never moved.

"My dear lady Yennefer," he said. His voice was warm honey poured over gravel, rich and accented and pleased. "You have made my silk look better than I ever could have hoped."

"Your silk is adequate," she said. "I make everything look better than it deserves."

He laughed. The sound rolled out of his broad chest, full and warm, his belly shifting under the crimson robe. "You are cruel, and I adore it. Do you know how long I have been standing here?"

"Since I entered. You were positioned for it."

"Since the doors opened, my dear. Two full hours. The wine is very good here, which helps."

She sipped her own glass. The vintage was Toussaint, a Sangreal, the tannins dry and long on her tongue. "Should I be flattered?"

"You should be whatever pleases you. I am here regardless."

She looked at him over the rim of her cup. Violet eyes steady. "Do you expect a kiss for your patience?"

Ozuran's grin widened. His dark eyes crinkled, warm, shrewd. "A kiss," he said. "And more. But that will come when you deem it worthy of coming, and I am patient." He shifted his weight, the crimson silk settling around his broad frame. "You are a woman to be courted, Lady Yennefer. If you had accepted me on the first gift, you would have been nothing. A notch on my bed, forgotten in a week. By holding, you show your worth. I see it. I have always seen it."

She said nothing for a moment. Her mouth curved. The amusement sat in the line of her jaw, the faint tilt of her chin. She ran her finger around the rim of her glass.

"I have a man, Ozuran."

He nodded. The smile stayed warm. "Even in Zerrikania, the tales of the White Wolf are told as legend. Songs of him have been sung in Asharanta. If Geralt of Rivia came to my homeland, he would be made a prince on the spot. His pick of concubines and personal courtesans. A man of his stature deserves that and more."

"I'll pass along the offer. He'd hate every minute of it."

"Perhaps." Ozuran's eyes held hers. "But you are your own woman, Lady Yennefer. Only you can accept who shares your bed. Geralt's legend does not make the choice for you." He reached for her hand, lifted it, and pressed his lips to her knuckles. His mouth was warm. The beard brushed her skin, soft and oiled and faintly resinous. He held the touch for a full breath, then released her and stepped back.

"Enjoy the evening, my dear. The orchestra is quite good tonight."

She watched him go. He crossed the hall with that slow, unhurried stride, the crimson silk swaying with his bulk, and within thirty seconds he was deep in conversation with a cluster of Nilfgaardian merchants, his laugh carrying back to her across the marble floor.

Triss appeared at her elbow, a glass of sweet white in her hand, diamonds throwing sparks along her collar.

"Well?"

Yennefer drank. The Sangreal sat warm in her chest.

"He kissed my hand," she said. "And then he left."

"That's it?"

"That's it." Yennefer watched Ozuran across the hall, the big man's broad back, the gold glinting at his wrists. The corner of her mouth pulled up, slow and involuntary, and she covered it with her glass. "He's very good at this, Triss."

"I know," Triss said. "Azar sent me another book today."

They stood together in the candlelight and drank and watched the room, and the orchestra played on.

Two months.

Sixty days of silk and sapphires and ancient vellum. Sixty days of Ozuran's ornate handwriting on cards that said things like A small token, my dear while the token itself was worth more than a Northern lordship.

Yennefer sat on the edge of her bed in the western suite and looked at the latest arrivals spread across the coverlet.

The dragon scales caught the candlelight first. Six of them, each the size of her palm, laid out on black velvet. Dark as charcoal with a sheen beneath the surface that shifted green to purple when she tilted them, and the magic rolling off them was dense enough to taste. Copper and ozone and something older, something that hummed against her teeth. She'd held the first one for ten seconds and felt it resonate with her own power, a tuning fork struck against a bell. Genuine scales from a dark dragon, shed or harvested, preserved in resin and still brimming with enough raw magical energy to fuel a dozen major workings.

She set the scale down and picked up the necklace. Emeralds and rubies alternating on a gold chain, each stone the size of her thumbnail, the settings old Zerrikanian work with that heavy, precise craftsmanship she'd come to recognize. The rubies were pigeon-blood, deep and clear. The emeralds were Zerrikanian highland stones, the green so saturated it looked black at the center.

She held it against her throat and looked at herself in the glass across the room. The stones sat against her pale skin like drops of fire and forest.

She set it down.

Her chambers were full of his gifts. The silk bolts stacked in the wardrobe. The tomes lined on the shelf beside her bed, spines cracked from rereading. The jewels in their cases on the dressing table. The sealed vials of koshchei venom in the locked cabinet. The powdered zmaj bone beside them. Two months of courtship laid out across every surface, and every piece of it was extraordinary, and every piece of it was calculated, and she'd kept all of it.

She pressed her palms flat on her thighs. The fire popped. Outside, rain hit the window glass.

She thought of Geralt.

She thought of him on the road somewhere, silver sword across his back, yellow eyes scanning the treeline. She thought of him in some tavern, some inn, some nobleman's estate where a grateful widow or a beautiful herbalist or a sorceress who knew exactly who he was had looked at him the way women looked at him, and he'd looked back. She thought of his hands on someone else's waist. His mouth on someone else's throat. His cock inside someone else, and that thought sat in her chest like a coal, familiar and old and honest.

She had never hated him for it. She'd raged and frozen and punished him with silence and then taken him back, because that was the shape of what they were, and she'd understood since the beginning that a witcher on the Path did what a witcher on the Path did. The djinn's wish bound them. The love was real. The bodies were their own.

Even now. Even right now, tonight, he could be buried between the thighs of some beautiful heiress or sorceress in some province she'd never visit, and she would not hate him for it tomorrow.

So why was she denying herself?

She picked up the necklace again. The rubies caught the candlelight.

The gifts would keep growing. They would grow more extravagant and more impossible to hide, and eventually Ciri would notice. Ciri, who had better things to do with her time than come charging to Yennefer's defense over a courtship Yennefer could handle herself. The girl had a treasury council and a military briefing and an empire to learn. She did not need to be managing Yennefer's suitors.

Yennefer set the necklace down and stood.

The marble bath filled slowly, the water steaming, hot enough to pink the skin. She stripped in the firelight, pulled the pins from her hair, and stepped in. The heat hit her calves, her thighs, her belly, and she sank until the water reached her collarbones and closed her eyes.

She scrubbed. She scrubbed hard, her fingers working through her hair, along her arms, across her stomach and between her legs, until her skin was flushed and tingling. She lay in the heat until the water began to cool, then she rose, dripping, and stepped onto the cold stone floor.

She dried herself and stood naked at the dressing table. Her reflection looked back at her in the glass. Pale skin, flushed pink from the bath. The sorcery-perfect body, the full tits heavy and round, the slim waist, the wide hips, the long legs still beaded with water. She picked up the oil.

She worked it into her skin with both hands. Slow, thorough. Across her shoulders, down her arms, over the swell of her tits, across her flat stomach, down each thigh. The oil was lilac-scented, warm from the bottle, and it left her skin gleaming in the candlelight. She poured a smaller measure into her palm and worked it through her hair, just enough to catch the light, then took up the brush. Long strokes, crown to tips, until the raven-black mass hung to the middle of her back in a heavy, glossy fall that caught every flicker of the candle.

She painted her lips. A deep wine-red, darker than her usual shade, the color of old blood. She pressed her lips together and checked the line in the glass.

Then the dress.

Ozuran's silk, the midnight blue so dark it ate the light. She'd had it cut weeks ago and never worn it. The bodice sat low, a deep scoop that showed the full upper curve of her tits, the pale skin gleaming with oil above the fabric's edge. The silk clung to her waist, her hips, her ass, the drape of it following every line of her body so faithfully that the shape of her was more visible dressed than bare. The back plunged to the base of her spine. The slit ran up the left side to her hip. She shifted her weight once and the fabric parted, showing the entire length of her oiled thigh.

The ruby necklace last. It sat against her collarbones, the stones warm from her fingers, catching the light above the shadow between her tits.

She looked at herself. Violet eyes, wine-dark lips, the obsidian star at her throat below the rubies, the midnight silk barely containing her, her hair a dark river down her oiled back.

Consistent, she thought.

She spoke the word softly and felt the spell settle over her like cool water. The reflection in the glass vanished. The room held nothing visible. She could feel her own body, the silk against her skin, the weight of the rubies at her throat, but the eye slid off her like rain off stone.

She opened the door and walked.

The corridor was long and lit with iron sconces. Servants passed her without turning. A guardsman walked within a foot of her shoulder and never flinched. The spell held, steady and effortless, a simple refraction working she could maintain in her sleep. Her bare feet were silent on the stone. She'd left the boots behind.

The eastern guest quarters where the Zerrikanian envoys had been housed sat beyond two sets of guarded doors. She passed through both. The guards stared at the air where she stood and saw nothing.

Ozuran's door was carved dark oak, heavy, with a brass handle worn smooth from use. She could smell him through it. Resin oil and something spicier, the scent of his rooms, the silk and the sandalwood.

She let the spell drop. She appeared in the corridor like a candle lit from nothing, the midnight silk and the rubies and the oiled skin catching the sconce light all at once.

She knocked.

Footsteps inside. Heavy, unhurried. The handle turned and the door swung inward and Ozuran stood there in a loose robe of deep saffron, half-open at the chest, the thick dark hair and the gold chain visible beneath. His rings caught the light. His dark eyes found her.

He stopped.

His lips parted. His gaze dropped from her face to the necklace to her tits pressed full and gleaming above the midnight silk, down the cling of the fabric over her hips, to the slit where her thigh showed oiled and bare, and back up. His mouth stayed open. The warm quick eyes went wide and still for the first time she had ever seen them.

She counted the seconds. One. Two. Three. Four. His chest rose once on a slow breath. Five. His tongue touched his lower lip. Six. The smile came.

Wide and slow and deeply, purely smug. His dark eyes crinkled. His whole face rearranged itself around the satisfaction, the broad jaw lifting, the oiled beard gleaming, and he stepped back from the doorway and swept one thick ringed hand toward the candlelit room behind him.

"My dear Lady Yennefer." His voice was low and warm and thick with triumph. "I was beginning to wonder if you would ever come."

"I almost didn't." She stepped past him. Her shoulder brushed his chest. Solid, warm, the robe's silk catching against her bare arm. "Don't let it go to your head."

"It has already gone to my head." He closed the door behind her. The lock clicked. "And elsewhere."

She looked at him over her shoulder. The wine-dark lips curved.

"Show me."

Ozuran's chambers smelled of sandalwood and something sweeter, a Zerrikanian incense that burned low in a gilded brass lamp on the side table, the smoke curling thin and blue toward the vaulted ceiling. Zerrikanian silks in deep jewel tones draped every surface. Crimson and indigo cushions lay heaped on the wide divan against the far wall. A woven rug thick enough to swallow footsteps covered the stone floor. More gilded lamps hung from iron hooks, their flames low and warm, and the light they threw was golden and soft and made the silk shimmer.

He crossed to the sideboard and poured wine into two cups of hammered silver. His movements were slow and easy, the saffron robe shifting across his broad back, the gold chain at his throat swinging. He turned and held out the cup.

Yennefer took it. The silver was warm from the room. She sipped. Toussaint again, a Côte de Blessure, older than the one at the ball. The tannins were long and dry and excellent.

"Are you nervous?" she asked. "Finally getting to fuck me?"

Ozuran's dark eyes crinkled. He raised his own cup and drank, unhurried, his thick ringed fingers wrapped around the silver.

"Nervous," he repeated. He tasted the word and let it go. "I have waited two months, my dear Lady Yennefer. Two months of silk and sapphires and books I could have sold for a small fortune. A man does not wait that long and then rush." He settled his weight against the sideboard, the wood creaking under his bulk. "I like to savor the moment. The wine. The light. The woman standing in my room wearing my silk and my rubies."

"Your silk. Your rubies." She arched one eyebrow. "You're very possessive of things I haven't given you permission to own."

"I am possessive of beautiful things. It is a fault. I acknowledge it freely." He smiled. "Drink your wine."

She sipped again. Her violet eyes measured him over the cup's rim, the big body, the comfortable stance, the rings, the belly, the unhurried warmth that sat on him like a second robe.

This will be easy, she thought. Fuck him hard. Make him cum fast. Take what I came for and leave with my hair still wet.

She set the cup down on the nearest surface. The silver rang once against the wood.

"Ozuran."

"Yes, my dear?"

She reached behind her back, found the single clasp at her spine, and released it. The midnight silk slid off her shoulders and down her body with a soft hiss and pooled at her bare feet. She stood naked in the golden lamplight, the ruby necklace at her throat, the obsidian star beneath it, her oiled skin catching every flame in the room. Her tits sat full and heavy, the nipples tightening in the warm air. The curve of her waist ran down to wide hips and the dark triangle between her thighs. Her hair fell in a dark river past her shoulders.

"You're not a fucking schoolboy," she said. "Get busy."

His eyes moved down her body. Slow. Thorough. His tongue touched his lower lip. The smile changed, the warmth still there but something harder beneath it, something appetitive and sure.

"No," he said. "I am certainly not a schoolboy."

He set his own cup down and crossed the distance between them in two strides, and his hand caught the back of her neck and his mouth found hers.

The kiss hit like a wall. His lips were firm and hot and demanding, his tongue pushing past her teeth, filling her mouth, the taste of wine and resin oil and the clean heat of him. His beard scraped her chin. His grip on her nape was iron, the rings pressing cold against her skin, tilting her head back to the angle he wanted. He kissed her deep and slow and possessive, the kind of kiss that told her he'd done this ten thousand times and learned something new each time.

His other hand found her left tit. He cupped the full weight of it in his broad palm and squeezed, his thick fingers kneading the soft flesh, his thumb rolling across the nipple in a slow circle that made it stiffen to a hard peak under his touch. He knew the pressure. He knew the angle. He pinched the nipple between thumb and forefinger and tugged, a steady pull that sent a bright hot line straight down to her cunt.

"Mmh." The sound came out against his mouth. She hadn't meant to make it.

He broke the kiss just far enough to speak. His lips brushed hers, his breath warm on her face.

"There she is," he murmured. "The ice queen melts."

"I haven't melted anywhere. That was a reflex."

"Your nipple says otherwise." He rolled it again, slower. "Hard as a gemstone under my fingers. And we have barely begun."

His free hand slid down her belly, over the flat plane of her stomach, through the dark curls between her thighs, and his thick middle finger found her slit and pressed.

She was wet. She'd been wet since the corridor, since the door opened and his eyes went wide, and she'd told herself it was the anticipation and the oil and the heat of the bath, and all of that was true and none of it was the whole truth.

His finger slid through the slick folds of her pussy and found the spot where she was hottest. He stroked, slow and firm, two fingers now, parting her lips, pressing up into the swollen flesh just inside. His thumb settled against her clit and circled.

"Oh." She heard her own voice, sharper than she'd intended. Her hips jerked once.

"Yes," he said against her mouth. "There. Tell me what you feel, my dear."

"Your fingers in my pussy. That's what I feel."

"How many?"

"Two." She swallowed. His fingers curled inside her, pressing against the front wall, and her thighs clenched. "Two thick fingers."

"Good." He kissed her again, deep and rough, his tongue filling her mouth while his hand worked between her legs. His fingers pumped in a slow, steady rhythm, curling on each stroke, his thumb circling her clit with a precision that made her breath catch. His other hand kept working her tit, squeezing, rolling the nipple, the dual assault running through her body in crossing waves.

"You're dripping on my hand," he said. He pulled back and looked at her, his dark eyes warm and absolutely certain. "Already soaking. Two months of waiting and you're this wet this fast. Tell me, Lady Yennefer. Were you touching yourself thinking about this? Fingering that pretty cunt of yours in the bath tonight?"

"Don't flatter yourself."

"That is a yes." He grinned and pushed a third finger inside her, stretching her wider, and his thumb pressed harder on her clit. "Your pussy is squeezing my fingers like it wants to keep them. Greedy woman."

Her breath was coming faster. Her hips rocked against his hand, the rhythm involuntary, and she could hear herself, the wet sound of his fingers pumping in and out of her soaked cunt, the obscene slick noise of it filling the quiet room.

"Fuck," she breathed. Her hand shot up and gripped his forearm. The muscle beneath the saffron robe was thick and hard, the tendons flexing as his fingers worked. "You're...good at this."

"I've had two months to imagine exactly how I would touch you." His voice dropped lower, the honey thickening. "Every curve. Every sound. I have thought about this pussy more than any man should. And it is better than I imagined." He curled his fingers hard and she bucked against his hand, a gasp tearing out of her.

"Nngghh...don't stop."

"I won't." He kissed her jaw, her throat, the skin above the rubies. His fingers pumped faster now, three thick digits stretching her open, his thumb circling and pressing, circling and pressing. "You're shaking, my dear. Your thighs are shaking. Do you feel it building?"

She felt it. Her thighs trembled against his wrist. The heat in her belly coiled tighter with every stroke, every precise circle of his thumb, and she was panting against his shoulder, her nails digging into his forearm through the silk.

"Cum for me," he murmured against her ear. "Cum on my fingers, Yennefer."

His fingers curled hard inside her, three thick digits pressing up against the swollen front wall of her cunt, and his thumb found her clit and pinched. Gentle. Precise. The exact pressure at the exact second her body was wound tightest.

Yennefer came.

Her legs buckled. The orgasm ripped through her belly and her thighs and the backs of her knees, and she grabbed at his forearm and missed and went down. Her knees hit the thick Zerrikanian rug and she folded sideways into the heap of crimson and indigo cushions piled against the divan, her oiled skin sliding on silk, her thighs clamping shut around his retreating hand. Her back arched off the cushions and her mouth opened and the sound that came out was raw and involuntary and loud.

"Ahhhh....fuck....fuck, that's...." Her hips jerked twice, three times, the aftershocks rolling through her in hard pulses. Her fingers dug into the nearest cushion and twisted the silk.

Ozuran stood over her. He brought his soaked fingers to his mouth and sucked them clean, one at a time, his dark eyes fixed on her the whole time. His lips glistened.

"Delicious," he said. The word was thick with satisfaction. "Two months. Worth every silk and every sapphire."

Yennefer lay on the cushions with her tits heaving and her thighs trembling and her pussy still clenching on nothing. The rubies at her throat caught the lamplight. She pushed her hair out of her face with a shaking hand.

"Don't...get cocky." She was breathing hard, each word coming between deep pulls of air. "One orgasm doesn't make you a legend."

"One orgasm on my fingers alone, my dear. Before I have even undressed." He smiled down at her, broad and warm and absolutely smug, the oiled beard gleaming. "Imagine what comes next."

"Take your clothes off and stop talking about it."

He reached up and pulled the sash of his saffron robe. The silk fell open and he shrugged it off his broad shoulders and let it drop. The gold chain swung against the thick dark hair of his chest. He was big everywhere, broad through the shoulders and barrel-chested, a heavy belly carried forward over thick thighs. He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his linen smallclothes and pushed them down.

His cock sprang free.

Thick. Long. Uncut, the foreskin pulled back from a fat, swollen head that gleamed dark and slick with precum. Ten inches of hard, heavy meat curving slightly upward from a dense thatch of dark hair, the shaft veined and pulsing visibly with each beat of his heart. His balls hung low and full beneath, heavy and dark, swaying when he shifted his weight. A thick bead of precum welled from the slit and stretched in a clear thread toward the carpet.

Yennefer stared.

Her lips parted. Her violet eyes dropped to his cock and stayed there. She watched it throb, watched the vein along the underside pulse, watched the precum bead and stretch.

"Bloede arse," she breathed. The Elder Speech came out before she could stop it. She blinked. "Are you related to a horse? Does your family stable them or breed with them?"

Ozuran's laugh rolled out of him, deep and warm, his belly shaking, his cock bouncing with the motion. "My dear Lady Yennefer. You flatter me."

"That wasn't flattery. That was a genuine question about your bloodline."

"The bloodline is strong." He stepped closer, his thick thighs moving through the cushions, and he stood over her with his cock at the level of her face. The heat of it radiated against her cheek. She could smell him. Resin oil and clean sweat and the deep, dark musk of aroused male, heavy and dense, the scent of his balls and his skin and the precum leaking steadily from his fat cockhead. "It has been strong for generations. Asharanta breeds its men well."

His cock pulsed. She felt it against her cheek where the hot skin pressed, the throb running through the thick shaft, the heavy beat of blood filling him. The foreskin shifted against her face, silky and warm. Another bead of precum slid from the tip and caught in her hair at the temple.

"You've put your cock on my face," she said flatly.

"I have."

"Without asking."

"You told me to stop talking about it." His dark eyes crinkled down at her. "I am a man of action when prompted."

Her tongue moved before her pride could stop it. She pressed the flat of it against the underside of his shaft, halfway up, where the thick central vein pulsed hottest. She dragged it slow and firm from the middle to the tip, tasting salt and skin and the bitter-clean musk of him, feeling every ridge and vein bump against her tongue. The foreskin rolled back further under the pressure of her mouth.

The fat head was slick with precum, a thick glaze of it coating the swollen crown. She sealed her lips over it and sucked, pulling the fluid into her mouth. Thick. Salty. Warm. More of it welled up immediately, a steady leak that coated her tongue.

"Mmm." She swallowed.

"Gods above," Ozuran breathed. His hand settled on the back of her head, his thick ringed fingers sliding into her hair. "Your mouth is...."

She didn't wait for him to finish. She didn't wait to be told. Her lips stretched wide around the fat head and she sank down, taking him into her mouth in one long, steady slide. Her tongue pressed flat against the underside, working the vein, tracing every ridge and bulge of the thick shaft as inch after inch of dark, throbbing cock filled her mouth and pushed toward her throat.

"Every inch," she said around him, the words muffled and wet. She pulled back enough to speak. "I'm going to suck every throbbing inch of this fat Zerrikanian cock and you're going to stand there and take it."

"I would not dream of stopping you."

"Shut up."

She sank again. Deeper this time, her lips stretched obscenely wide, the dark skin of his shaft glistening with her spit as she pulled back and pushed forward. She found his rhythm with her mouth, worshiping him, her tongue running along every swollen vein, her lips tight and dragging, leaving wet circles of wine-dark lip paint on his dark skin. Ring after ring of smeared color marked her progress down his shaft, each one lower than the last.

"You're....marking me," he managed. His voice had thickened, the smooth honey going rough. "Your lip paint. On my cock."

She pulled off with a wet sound and looked up at him. Her lips were smeared and swollen, the wine-dark color smudged across her chin. His cock pulsed in front of her face, glistening, painted with rings of her mouth.

"Good," she said. "Now you'll remember whose mouth was here."

She swallowed him again and kept going. Deeper. The fat head hit the back of her throat and she relaxed and pressed forward, her throat opening around him, her nose pushing into the coarse dark hair at the base. His balls pressed heavy and hot against her chin. She held there, her lips sealed at the root, every inch of his ten-inch cock buried in her throat and mouth, her lip paint leaving a final dark circle on the skin where his shaft met his body.

Ozuran's smugness vanished.

His eyes went wide. His jaw dropped. His thick fingers clenched in her hair and his hips jerked once, involuntary, and the sound that came out of him was something she'd never heard from the smooth-talking merchant.

"Shalahk te-mora!" The Zerrikanian oath ripped out of him, guttural and broken. "How....how are you....every inch, you have taken every....ngghhh...."

She held him there. She swallowed around his cock, her throat squeezing the fat head buried deep, and she felt every pulse and throb of him against her tongue and lips and the walls of her throat. His whole body shook. His belly trembled against her forehead.

She pulled back slow, dragging her lips tight, and let him fall from her mouth with a wet pop. A thick rope of spit and precum connected her lower lip to his cockhead, stretching and breaking against her chin.

"Two months of silk," she said. Her voice was raw. "And it took me thirty seconds to shut you up."

Ozuran's hand closed around her jaw. He tilted her face up, his dark eyes burning down at her, the smug warmth gone to something harder and hungrier. His thumb smeared the ruined lip paint across her chin.

"Northern women," he said. His voice dropped low, the honey curdling to a growl that vibrated through his broad chest. "Built like whores, every one of you. These hips. These tits. This mouth." His grip tightened on her jaw. "Your whole body is made for fucking, and you tease a man for two months like you don't know it."

"I knew exactly what I was doing."

"You think you can handle what comes next?" He grinned, the teeth showing, his dark eyes crinkling with something meaner than warmth. "You think that pretty mouth of yours means you're in charge here?"

"I just took your whole cock down my throat without gagging. I think I can handle whatever you've got."

He laughed. One sharp bark. Then he moved.

His hands caught her by the waist and he lifted her off the cushions like she weighed nothing, spinning her body up and over his broad shoulder in a single heave. Her stomach hit the thick muscle, her tits mashing against his back, her oiled legs kicking in the air. The rubies at her throat swung and clattered against his spine.

Crack.

His open palm came down on her ass, the sound filling the room like a whip snap. The sting bloomed hot across her left cheek and she jerked, her fingers clawing at the saffron robe pooled at his feet.

"Ah! You fat bastard, put me down!"

"Fat." He smacked her again, harder, his thick ringed hand connecting with the full round swell of her right cheek this time. "You weren't calling me fat when my fingers were knuckle-deep in your cunt." Another smack. Her oiled skin reddened under his palm. "Northern women. Built like whores and twice as mouthy."

"I'll show you mouthy when I'm right-side up, you Zerrikanian pig."

"You'll show me nothing." He crossed the room in three strides, her body bouncing on his shoulder with each step, her tits swaying against his back, and he reached the massive bed draped in crimson silk. "Except this fat ass pointed at the ceiling where it belongs."

He threw her.

Yennefer hit the bed on her stomach, the silk coverlet sliding under her oiled skin. The mattress was deep and soft and she sank into it, the rubies pressing cold against her collarbones. Before she could push herself up or turn over, his bare foot planted between her shoulder blades. The weight pressed her flat, her tits crushing into the mattress, her face turned sideways against the silk.

"Ozuran." Her voice came out muffled, strained. She tried to rise and his foot pressed harder, pinning her. "Get your foot off my head."

"When I'm finished." His sole was warm and heavy against the back of her skull, his toes curling into her hair, pressing her cheek into the coverlet. His weight held her flat with her spine arched, her knees beneath her, her ass hiked up high and bare in the lamplight. "Stay."

"I am going to kill you after this."

"After." He shifted behind her, his free hand gripping her hip, thick fingers sinking into the soft flesh. She felt the heat of his cock first, the fat swollen head dragging wet and heavy along the inside of her thigh, smearing precum on her oiled skin. He pressed it against her slit from above, angling down, the tip nudging between the swollen lips of her pussy, finding the slick opening and pressing. "You can kill me after I've emptied my balls in this tight Northern cunt."

He thrust.

The full length of him drove into her in one stroke. Ten inches of thick, throbbing cock splitting her open from above, his balls slapping heavy and full against her clit as he bottomed out. His hips met her ass with a meaty slap that shook the bed frame.

"FUCK!" The word tore out of her. Her fingers clawed the silk coverlet. "Oh fuck....oh you....you're so....ngghhh....!"

"There it is." He pulled back and slammed home again, harder. His foot stayed on her head, pinning her face into the mattress while his hips drove down into her upturned ass. "There's the sound I've been waiting two months to hear. Scream for me, Yennefer."

He fucked her without mercy. His thick cock pounded into her soaked pussy in deep, punishing strokes, each thrust bottoming out, his heavy balls swinging forward to slap wetly against her swollen clit. The bed creaked and groaned beneath them. The silk coverlet bunched and twisted under her clawing fingers.

"AHHHN! Fuck....fuck you're....splitting me....!" Her voice cracked. She tried to lift her head and his foot pressed her down. "You fat....beautiful....BASTARD....!"

"Tight." He grunted it through clenched teeth, his hips snapping forward, the wet slap of skin on skin filling the room. "Tighter than any woman I've fucked in twenty years. This pussy is gripping my cock like a fist." He drove in deep and ground his hips, stirring inside her, and she howled into the mattress. "Say it. Tell me how it feels."

"It feels like you're....AHHN....trying to fuck me through the bed!"

"Am I succeeding?"

"YES! Yes, you smug....nnghh....you're so deep....I can feel you in my stomach....!"

His hips pistoned faster. The slap of his belly against her ass joined the wet percussion of his balls against her clit, and the rhythm was relentless, metronomic, each stroke driving the air from her lungs in a sharp cry. His thick cock stretched her walls on every thrust, the veined shaft dragging against every nerve, the fat head hammering the deepest part of her.

"Two months of silk and sapphires," he growled, his breath coming harder now. "Worth every coin. This cunt is worth a kingdom. Shalahk. You hear how wet you are? Listen."

She could hear it. The obscene, slick, squelching sound of her soaked pussy taking his fat cock over and over, the wetness running down her inner thighs, dripping onto the silk beneath her knees.

"I hear it," she gasped. "I hear....AHHN....I hear my pussy taking your cock....don't stop....don't you fucking STOP....!"

"Couldn't if I wanted to." His fingers dug bruises into her hip. His foot shifted on her head, grinding her cheek into the mattress, and his hips found another gear. Faster. Harder. The bed slammed against the wall. "Your cunt won't let me go. Squeezing me like you're trying to milk the cum right out of my balls."

"I w-want it....!" The admission ripped out of her before she could catch it, her voice breaking. "I want your cum....ngghhh....I want you to fill this pussy....!"

"Say please."

"FUCK you!"

He slammed in so hard the headboard cracked against the stone wall. She screamed.

"Say. Please."

"P-please....!" Her thighs were shaking violently, her toes curling, her fingers white on the ruined silk. "Please, Ozuran....I'm close....I'm so close....PLEASE....!"

"Cum." He drove into her one final time, burying himself to the root, his heavy balls pressed flat against her clit, and he ground deep in slow, devastating circles. "Cum on this fat Zerrikanian cock, you beautiful Northern whore."

Yennefer came apart.

Her whole body seized. Her back arched so hard his foot slipped from her head and she screamed into the open air, her mouth wide, her violet eyes blind. Her pussy clamped down on his cock in rhythmic, crushing spasms, the orgasm ripping through her belly and her thighs and her chest in waves that overlapped before the first one finished.

"I'M CUMMING....! Oh fuck....oh FUCK....I can't....it won't stop....it won't....AHHHHN....!"

Her legs gave out. She collapsed flat onto the mattress, shaking, her oiled skin flushed and gleaming, the rubies askew at her throat, her hair a wild dark tangle across the ruined silk. Her pussy kept clenching around his buried cock in hard, involuntary pulses, milking him, gripping and releasing.

Ozuran held still inside her. His broad chest heaved. Sweat ran down his temples into his oiled beard. He looked down at the trembling, wrecked sorceress pinned beneath him and his dark eyes crinkled.

He lifted his foot from between her shoulder blades and the relief lasted half a breath before his open palm cracked across her right asscheek.

Crack.

"AHHN!" The yelp tore out of her, high and sharp, her oiled skin rippling under the blow. Her hips bucked into the mattress.

"Still alive down there?" He smacked the other cheek, harder, his rings leaving hot lines across the reddening flesh. "Good."

"You....nnghh....animal...."

"Animal." He laughed, low and warm. "You haven't seen animal yet, my dear."

His hands hooked under her arms. He hauled her upright off the mattress, her back slamming against his broad, sweat-slick chest, and his thick arms threaded under hers and locked behind her neck. His fingers laced at the back of her skull, pressing her chin to her collarbones. A full nelson, tight and inescapable, her arms pinned wide and useless, her tits thrust forward and bouncing free in the lamplight. His heavy belly pressed hot against the small of her back. His cock slid between her thighs from behind, the fat head nudging through the mess of her soaked pussy, teasing her entrance without pushing in.

"Let go of me," she hissed. Her legs kicked, heels dragging on the silk coverlet. His thick calves hooked over hers and pinned them wide, locking her ankles, spreading her open. She was held like a doll in his arms, suspended against his bulk, her cunt gaping and dripping and empty.

"Ozuran, I swear on every god you pray to...."

"Swear all you like." The fat cockhead pressed against her slit, parting the swollen lips, stretching her entrance around just the tip. He held there. "Tell me what you want first."

"You know what I want, you smug prick."

"I want to hear it from this filthy Northern mouth." He shifted his hips and the tip sank half an inch deeper. She felt every ridge of the fat head spreading her open. "Say it."

"F-fuck me....fuck me, you Zerrikanian bastard...."

He thrust.

The full ten inches drove up into her in a single brutal stroke, his hips snapping upward, his balls slapping heavy and wet against her ass. Her spine arched in the nelson and her mouth opened and the scream filled the room.

"AHHHHHN! OH FUCK....OH....!"

He gave her nothing. His hips pistoned upward in savage, punishing strokes, each one bottoming out, each one driving the fat head of his cock against the deepest part of her. His arms held the nelson locked, her chin crushed to her chest, her tits bouncing wildly with every impact. The wet slap of skin on skin echoed off the stone walls.

"This cunt," he growled against her ear, his beard scraping her jaw. "Tightest pussy I've fucked in a decade and it's soaking my balls like a broken tap. You feel that? Feel how deep I am?"

"I f-feel it....I feel every....AHHN....every inch....you're in my stomach....!"

"Good." He slammed upward so hard her whole body jolted in his arms. "Two months of blue balls for this cunt and it's worth every single one. These tits bouncing for me like they were made to." He shifted the nelson grip and one hand dropped to catch her left tit, squeezing the heavy flesh, his thick fingers sinking deep. "Fat Northern tits on a tight Northern whore. You were built for Zerrikanian cock, Yennefer."

"S-shut....shut up and....NGGHHH....HARDER....!"

"Harder?" His laugh vibrated through her spine. "Most women tap out after thirty seconds of this. You're still begging for more. I'm almost impressed."

"I'm not....ahhn....I'm not most women...."

"No." He pounded up into her, relentless, his hips a battering ram. "No, you are not. That's why I spent two months and a fortune. That's why you're still here instead of crying into my pillow. You can take this cock and you want more of it."

His next thrust changed angle and the fat head slammed directly into her cervix.

Yennefer's vision went white. Her whole body locked, her thighs clamping against his legs, her fingers clawing uselessly at the air behind his head. Her cunt seized around his cock in a vicious spasm and then released in a hot flood that sprayed down his shaft and his balls, gushing between them in a rush that soaked the silk beneath them.

"I'M....AHH....I'M SQUIRTING....I can't....it won't....AHHHHHN....!"

"There it is!" Ozuran's voice cracked with triumph. He felt the hot gush flooding over his cock, drenching his thighs, running down to pool on the ruined coverlet. "There it is, my dear. Squirting like a fountain on my cock. Two months of teasing and your body gives me everything in one go."

Her legs spasmed in his grip, toes curling, her oiled skin sliding against his sweat-slick chest. The orgasm rolled through her in long, crushing waves, each one pushing another pulse of hot fluid from her stuffed cunt.

He turned her face toward his with the nelson grip, twisting her neck until her slack, open mouth was inches from his. Her violet eyes were glazed and wet. He kissed her. Hard, brutal, his tongue filling her mouth, swallowing her broken moans, tasting the wine and the salt of her. His teeth caught her lower lip and pulled before he let her go.

Then he released the nelson.

Yennefer pitched forward and hit the mattress face-first. Her tits mashed into the soaked silk. Her arms splayed useless at her sides, fingers twitching. Her whole body trembled in long, rolling shudders, her ass still raised, her thighs slick and glistening. The rubies at her throat had twisted sideways, the chain pressing a red line into her skin.

I can't feel my legs, she thought.

Ozuran stood over her on the bed, his fat cock hanging heavy and glistening with her cum, his broad chest heaving, his dark skin sheened with sweat. He looked down at the trembling, wrecked sorceress and grinned.

"We are not done, my dear."

"Hnngh....you can't be....serious...."

"Your body can take more. I've seen it tonight. This whore's body of yours was built to be fucked for hours, and I intend to get my money's worth."

"I'll....kill you...." Her fingers clawed weakly at the coverlet, trying to drag herself forward. Her arms shook and gave out. "Get....get off me...."

"No." His hands caught her hips. She kicked, or tried to. Her legs moved like they belonged to someone else. He flipped her onto her back with casual, terrifying ease, her hair fanning across the soaked silk, her tits swaying and settling against her ribs.

"Ozuran....wait....just....let me...."

"Hush." He caught her ankles and pushed her legs up and over her head, folding her double. She tried to grab his wrists and her fingers slipped on his sweat-slick skin. Her knees came past her ears and her hips lifted off the mattress until her weight settled on her shoulders, her pussy pointing straight at the ceiling, her ass in the air. He pinned her ankles against the mattress on either side of her head and stood over her, his back to her face, straddling her folded body.

A reverse piledriver. Her cunt was directly beneath him, spread open and gaping, still dripping from the last orgasm.

"You....absolute...." She stared up at the ceiling of his cock and balls hanging above her upturned pussy, his heavy sack swaying, his shaft thick and dark and slick with her cum. "You can't....you'll break me...."

"You said that twenty minutes ago." His voice came from above and in front, his back to her face. "And then you squirted on my cock."

He lined up. The fat head pressed against her entrance from directly above, his weight behind it. She felt it stretch her open, impossibly thick, impossibly hot.

He dropped his hips.

His cock drove straight down into her folded body, gravity and his full weight behind the thrust, ten inches of fat Zerrikanian cock slamming into her cunt from above. The angle sent the head straight to the bottom of her, punching into her cervix with nowhere else to go.

"AAAAHHHN! OH....OH GOD....OH FUCK....!"

"Tight as a fist," he grunted, his hips pulling up and slamming down. "Tighter from this angle. Your cunt is crushing my cock."

She couldn't move. Her shoulders took her full weight, her legs pinned by her ears, her body folded in half beneath him. Every stroke drove straight down through her, the fat head battering her cervix, his heavy balls slapping against her ass on each impact. The wet, obscene squelch of her stuffed pussy filled the room.

"TOO DEEP! IT'S....YOU'RE TOO DEEP....I CAN'T....I CAN'T....!"

"You can." He pounded down into her without mercy, his hips a piston, the rhythm savage. "You can and you will. Scream louder."

"I'M GOING TO....AHHN....NGGHHH....SOMETHING'S....HAPPENING...."

His cock hit her cervix on the next downstroke with his full weight behind it and she broke. Her cunt clamped and released in rapid, violent spasms and a hot jet of fluid sprayed upward around his buried shaft, gushing past the seal of his cock, splattering against his thighs and her own stomach and the silk beneath them.

"CUMMING! I'M CUMMING....I'M....AAAAAHHHN....!"

She squirted in hard, rhythmic pulses, each one forced out by the next brutal thrust, her whole body shaking in the piledriver, her screams echoing off the stone ceiling. Her fingers twisted in the soaked silk above her head and her toes curled against his shoulders and the orgasm tore through her like it meant to hollow her out.

Ozuran kept fucking her straight through it, his dark cock disappearing into her gushing cunt on every stroke, his breath coming in rough grunts, his broad back glistening with sweat.

"Beautiful," he panted. "Every drop. Give me every drop, my dear."

His hips slammed down three more times, each stroke driving the full length of his cock into her gushing cunt with his weight behind it, the wet crack of his belly meeting her upturned ass echoing off the stone. Her screams came out in ragged, shredded pieces, her voice gone hoarse from an hour of it.

Then he pulled out.

His cock slid free with a thick, wet sound and swung heavy between his thighs, glistening dark with her cum, the fat head swollen almost purple. She lay in the piledriver with her legs still folded past her ears, her pussy clenching on empty air, twitching and leaking in slow pulses.

"W-wait....where...." Her voice was wrecked. She blinked at the ceiling.

He caught her ankles and unfolded her, pushing her legs down to the mattress, then gripped her hips and rolled her flat onto her back. His thick ringed hands shoved her thighs apart and up, pressing her knees toward her shoulders, folding her in half beneath him. He settled his bulk between her spread legs, his heavy belly pressing warm and slick against her stomach, his cock dragging through the mess of her soaked slit. His face hung above hers, close enough that his oiled beard brushed her chin, his dark eyes burning down into her glazed violet ones.

A mating press. His full weight pinning her open beneath him, her tits crushed flat against his broad chest, her knees pushed past her ears by his thick forearms.

"Look at me," he said. His voice dropped to a low, rough murmur. "Look at me, Yennefer."

Her eyes drifted, unfocused. He caught her jaw in one hand and turned her face to his.

"There you are." His thumb smeared across her swollen lower lip. "The great Yennefer of Vengerberg. Ice queen of the Northern sorceresses. Pride so sharp it could cut glass." He pressed his forehead against hers. His breath was hot on her mouth, resin and wine and sweat. "Where is that pride now, my dear?"

"Nnghh...."

"Gone." He grinned, his teeth showing, his dark eyes crinkling. "Fucked right out of you. That pride melted on my cock an hour ago and ran down your thighs with the rest of it." His thumb traced her cheekbone. "You're mine tonight. Say it."

Her lips moved. Her eyes flickered, a ghost of that violet sharpness surfacing through the haze.

"F....fuck you...."

"Still fighting." His laugh was low and warm against her mouth. "That's what I love about you. I'll break that last piece before dawn."

He kissed her. Hard, deep, his tongue filling her mouth, his beard scraping her chin raw. She tasted wine and her own cum on his lips. His hand held her jaw locked in place, the rings biting cold into her skin, and she kissed him back because her body had stopped asking her permission hours ago.

His hips shifted. The fat cockhead found her entrance and pressed.

He slammed home.

Every inch. One stroke. His cock split her open to the root, his heavy balls crushing against her ass, his belly flattening her into the mattress. Her thighs were pinned by her ears and there was nowhere for her to go, nowhere for the cock to go except deeper, and it went deeper than she thought she had room for.

"AHHHN! OH....OH FUCK....OZURAN....!"

"Louder." He pulled back and drove in again. "I want the guards outside to hear it."

If he had been merciless before, this was something else entirely. His hips hammered down into her pinned, folded body in savage, relentless strokes, each one burying him to the hilt, each one punching the air from her lungs in a sharp scream. The wet slap of flesh on flesh filled the room in a continuous, meaty percussion. His balls swung forward and cracked against her ass with every impact. The bed slammed into the wall in a steady, brutal rhythm.

"AHHN! AHHN! AH....I CAN'T....I CAN'T TAKE....NGGHHH....!"

"You can take it." His teeth were clenched, sweat running down his temples, his broad chest heaving. "This tight Northern cunt was made for my cock. Every inch. Every fucking inch, you greedy whore."

Her legs wrapped around his thick waist. Her ankles locked behind the small of his back, her calves squeezing, pulling him deeper. Her arms flew up around his neck, her nails raking down the slick muscle of his shoulders, leaving white lines that filled red behind them.

"D-don't stop....don't you dare....AHHN....STOP....!"

"Never." He drove into her so hard the headboard cracked against the wall and plaster dust sifted down. "This pussy belongs to me now. This body belongs to me. Before this night is over you'll swear it."

"I w-won't....nnghh....I won't swear....ANYTHING....!"

"We'll see." His mouth found her throat. He bit down on the tendon, his teeth pressing hard enough to bruise, and her scream rattled the lamp glass. "Shalahk," he groaned through clenched teeth, his hips never slowing. "Tightest cunt in the Empire. Hottest fucking pussy I've ever been inside. I'm going to breed this whore's body until you can't remember your own name."

Her arms tightened around his neck. Her tits mashed flat against his sweating chest, the rubies grinding between their bodies. Her hips bucked up to meet every punishing stroke, her pussy squelching obscenely around his pistoning cock, the wetness spraying between them with each impact.

"You're....AHHN....you're going to break me in half....!"

"Good. I'll put you back together and break you again." His dark eyes locked onto hers, inches apart, his forehead pressed to hers. "Say you're mine. Say it and I'll give you what you need."

"I....I...."

"Say it, Yennefer."

He kissed her. Deep, consuming, his tongue claiming her mouth while his cock claimed her cunt, and she kissed him back with the last breath in her lungs. Her thighs shook violently around his waist. Her nails drew blood on his shoulders.

One final thrust. He drove forward with his full weight and buried himself to the root and stayed. His fat cockhead pushed past the last resistance inside her, her battered cervix giving way, swallowing the swollen crown into the tight opening of her womb. His balls pressed flush against her ass, heavy and tight and full to bursting.

He came.

"NGGHHH....TAKE IT....TAKE EVERY DROP....!"

Hot. Thick. Copious. His cock pulsed inside her womb in long, heavy spasms, each one pumping a fat rope of thick, yellowed seed directly into her. She felt it. She felt every jet, hot and sluggish and dense, flooding her insides, filling her womb in a steady, pumping rush that went on and on and on.

Her eyes rolled back. Her mouth fell open. Her pussy clamped down around his pulsing shaft in rhythmic, milking contractions and a hot spray of her own cum gushed out around the seal of his cock, squirting past the thick base, soaking his balls and the ruined silk beneath them.

"I'M....AHHHHN....CUMMING....HE'S....HE'S FILLING ME....I CAN FEEL IT....!"

He held her pinned and kept cumming. Thirty seconds. A minute. Two minutes. Three full minutes of thick, hot Zerrikanian seed pumping into her womb in heavy, sluggish pulses, each spurt fainter than the last, the load draining from his heavy balls in a flood that bloated her belly and overflowed around his buried shaft. Cum leaked from the seal of her cunt in thick, yellowed rivulets that ran down the crack of her ass and pooled on the coverlet beneath them.

He pulled out.

Pop.

The obscene, wet sound of his fat cockhead leaving her stuffed cunt echoed in the quiet room. Her pussy gaped open, the swollen lips twitching, and a thick ocean of hot, white seed poured from her in a gushing rush, flooding down her taint and her ass and soaking the silk in a spreading pool. Her cunt clenched and another surge of cum spurted out, then another, her womb emptying in heavy contractions.

Ozuran knelt over her, his softening cock in his fist, and grunted. A thick rope of cum spurted from his slit and splattered across her face, landing hot and heavy across her cheek and her slack, open mouth. Another rope hit her tits, draping across the ruby necklace, pooling in the valley between. A third caught in her hair, the raven-black strands clumping together under the thick, hot load.

"Beautiful," he panted. "Wearing my cum like you were born to."

She lay beneath him painted and flooded and wrecked. Her violet eyes stared at the ceiling through a glaze of cum. The rubies at her throat were caked with it. Her hair stuck to her face in thick, wet strands.

He pressed his cock to her lips. The fat head, still leaking, smeared cum across her mouth.

She opened. She took him in, her tongue working sluggish and automatic over the softening shaft, tasting the thick salt and musk of his cum, her lips sealed around him and sucking in slow, weak pulls.

"Good girl." His thick fingers stroked through her cum-matted hair. "Good, greedy girl."

I'm going to kill him, she thought. The thought dissolved as she sucked.

"We're not done, my dear." His voice was low and warm and utterly, infuriatingly calm. "I don't let you sleep tonight. You stay in this bed, on my cock, until you swear you're mine."

She pulled off his shaft. A thick strand of cum connected her lower lip to his cockhead. Her violet eyes, still hazy, still wrecked, drifted down.

His cock was hardening. She watched it swell in his fist, thickening, the veins filling, the shaft rising slowly from the heavy, drained balls. Ten inches of dark Zerrikanian meat stirring back to full, glistening with her spit and his seed.

Her lips parted. Her tongue ran across her cum-slick lower lip.

"You can't be serious," she whispered.

"I am always serious." He grinned down at her, broad and dark and smug, his rings glinting. "Say you're mine, or we go again."

His cock stood full and hard above her painted face, pulsing with his heartbeat.

Nobody patrolled the foreigners' section of the palace at night. The Zerrikanian envoys kept their own guards at the entrance, hard-faced fighters who stood like iron posts in the corridor and watched everything and said nothing. Beyond that checkpoint the wing sat deep enough inside the palace that no Nilfgaardian soldier bothered with it. The halls were empty stone and sconce-light and closed doors.

But the sounds carried.

The sharp, wet crack of flesh meeting flesh came first. Fast. Rhythmic. Relentless. A metronomic slap that echoed off the stone walls and filled the empty corridor in both directions, the unmistakable percussion of a woman being fucked hard enough to rattle the bed into the wall.

His voice cut through it. Low, rough, commanding.

"Cum. Cum on this cock right now, you greedy whore. I'm reshaping this pussy tonight. Shaping it to fit my cock and nobody else's."

The answer came in pieces.

"I'M....AHHN....I'M CUMMING....I can't stop....I CAN'T STOP CUMMING ON YOUR COCK....!"

"That's it. That's my concubine. Say it. Say you're my concubine, Yennefer."

"I'm....ngghhh....I'm your concubine....I'm your fucking concubine, Ozuran....! AHHN!"

"Louder. Swear it. Swear on that dripping cunt of yours."

"I SWEAR....! I swear I'm yours....this pussy is YOURS....! Please....please just....MERCY....!"

"Mercy." His laugh rolled down the corridor, thick and warm and mean. "You begged me for harder ten minutes ago. You screamed for me to breed you deeper. Now you want mercy?"

"I c-can't....my legs won't....AHHN....AHHHN....! Your cock is too....it's too MUCH....!"

"It's exactly enough. This cunt was built for Zerrikanian cock and you know it. Feel how it grips me. Feel how it molds around every inch. This is what you were made for."

"YES! Yes, I was made for....ngghhh....made for your cock....! I'll be your concubine....I'll be anything....just don't....DON'T STOP....!"

The bed slammed against the wall. Again. Again. The rhythm doubled and the wet slap of his heavy balls cracking against her flesh joined the percussion, a brutal duet that filled the empty hallway.

"I'm going to fill you again. Third load tonight. You feel these balls? Still full. Still heavy. I'll pump this womb until you're swollen with it."

"Fill me....fill me PLEASE....I want every drop....! AHHN! AHHN! OH FUCK....OH....I'M CUMMING AGAIN....I'M....AAAAHHHN....!"

Her voice shattered into a long, ragged scream that bounced off the stone ceiling and dissolved into sobbing, shaking moans. His grunt came underneath, guttural and deep, the sound of a man emptying himself with force.

Then the slapping started again.

The sounds did not stop. They carried through the stone, through the empty corridors, past the closed doors of unoccupied chambers, through the hours when the palace slept and the candles guttered low in their sconces.

"Praise it. Tell me what this cock does to you."

"It r-ruins me....ngghhh....it ruins every other cock....! Nothing else will ever....AHHN....ever feel like this....! You've wrecked my pussy, Ozuran....you've wrecked me....!"

"Good girl. My good Northern whore. Take another load."

"GIVE IT TO ME....! BREED ME....! I'M YOURS....I'M....AAAHHHHN....!"

The screams went on. Pleas for mercy that turned into pleas for more. Filthy praise sobbed into pillows. His name screamed at a pitch that would have carried through the thickest oak.

Outside, the first grey light touched the palace towers. A cock crowed somewhere in the lower city, thin and distant.

The sounds behind Ozuran's door had finally stopped.

The corridor held nothing but the faint smell of sandalwood and sweat drifting under the heavy oak, and the silence of a wing where nobody had walked all night to hear any of it.