** Warning - this chapter contains mature content.**

Her voice was no more than a warm whisper against his lips, her eyes dazzled and uncertain. Heavy and pleading.  He understood what she needed of him — why she needed it of him. For if he did not accept then this thing between them now was not some agreement of terms, but something else altogether.

Something she could not agree to. 

Of course, he longed for it to be this other thing — a desire consumed, a need abated, a longing finally met — but he would accept these terms nonetheless.  He would accept whatever terms she imposed. So completely under her thrall was he. So desperate was he for her now.

So desperate in fact that it no longer seemed like weakness to him. It seemed like necessity.

'Yes princess,' he said as he lay her upon the bed. 'I accept your terms.'

He saw some tension ease off from her, her body softening in his arms. When she closed her eyes, dark gold lashes resting upon her flushed cheeks, he wondered if it was so she could imagine he was another. Her husband. That soft boy prince she had loved so.

A stab of envy scored through his chest.

'Look at me,' he commanded, his voice harder than he intended. She blinked open her eyes, the black centres expanding as she stared up at him. He saw the silver light from his own reflected in them. 'You are mine this night, Fara of Calate and Azura. I would hear you say it.'

'I am... yours... this night,' she said, her voice gentle but scraped raw. Doubt hovered in her eye, embers of reluctance. He wanted to pluck them out and crush them to dust in his fist.

No matter what he had said, he could not wipe her memory of Galyn of Azura's death - only the High Visier could tamper with memories unwanted - but Gods he wished for the ability now. Not only to rid her of the pain of it but to rid her of the prince's memory completely. To have her come to him now as though she had never felt another's touch upon her, as though he was the first to know her.

He felt envious. Not only of Galyn of Azura but of every other gaze which had fallen upon her before his.  Envy at every touch she had received, at every soul who had brought a smile to her lips or a warm thought to her mind.

When he examined his own conduct, deeds and words which had brought her nought but misery and pain, he felt shrivelled with guilt and shame.

'I am yours this night, Theodan,' he said.

Her wide gold eyes flooded with hesitation, with the desire to defy.

'I am in your bed willingly am I not?' she said. 'Just as you assured me I would be - is that not enough?'

He wanted to tell her that it was likely he would never have enough of her.  Even if he had her every night forth he would continue to yearn for her.  A longing so deep it could never be met.

Instead, he moved between her legs, parting them gently with his body. He felt the heat from her sex scorch him, raw and loud against his own. As he rolled his hips into her she gasped, her body spasming with surprise.

'I am not easily satisfied, female. As you will learn soon enough.'

The embers of defiance in her eyes caught fire. 'You practically glow from satisfaction, Leoth.'

He smiled at her boldness. 'Oh, but that is not satisfaction, princess. Not yet at least...'

'And if I should fail to satisfy you?' She asked, breathless. Was there a hint of worry in her eyes? 'Will you renege on our agreement?'

He pretended to consider it. 'No. But mayhaps I will send for Iaria of Asalla the moment she steps from the ship.'

He had meant it as some light jest, but when he felt her harden beneath him, her eyes darkening, he knew he should not have said it. She turned her head from him and he gripped her chin and forced it back.

'I commanded you to look at me,' he said.

Rebellion glittered in her eyes as she stared up at him and his need grew from it. If he had once thought to grow tired of her constant need to challenge and defy him, he had been mistaken. He revelled in it. Bathed in it. Her fire warmed the cold harsh parts of him and he welcomed its glorious burn.  He longed to thrust himself inside her, to smother the challenge from her if only for a time, but his desire to enjoy her was greater.

He lowered his mouth and pressed a kiss to the hollow of her throat, just below where the steel collar lay. He had an idea to remove it then, to have her lay with him without its presence to remind him of how she came to be here. But since the key lay across the other side chamber it may as well have been back in Azura for how great the task to retrieve it seemed.

Nothing, he thought, could have tempted him to leave this bed.

He kissed a hot trail from her throat to the rise of her collarbone, and then to the vein at her neck. She moaned softly as he licked and sucked at it, turning her head away from him again. It was not to escape him this time but to grant him better access.

His teeth pulsed against the fluttering flesh, hungry for the liquid gold that swam beneath it but he could not taste her here, not without her permission, and not without warning her of what it would do to her body and her mind if he did. With some effort, he urged his hunger to quiet and sucked with only his lips at the soft sweet skin that encased her honeyed blood.

Thinking it safer he moved his mouth away from her neck, kissing a trail down to the valley between her breasts toward the soft rise toward her nipple.  She gasped softly as his mouth closed around it, her fingers fisting the sheets by her sides, her breathing growing thin and ragged, her body arching up off the mattress in a soft feminine moan. 

Her breasts were soft cushions of flesh, the deep pink nipples pushed out in eagerness to meet his tongue.  He took care to turn out his nails when he grabbed hold of the other and squeezed it gently.  Her hips rolled upwards him, her heat teasing against his arousal, greedy and aflame. A sharp sweetness rose up between them as he moved his mouth across to her other nipple, one that his body immediately recognised: her arousal.

She desired him.

Whether she wanted to or not, whether she gave herself to him now in contract or not - her body could not deny the truth of it. A secret whispered to him under the moon.

He continued to suckle at her breast, his tongue and his lips a barrier between his teeth and her flesh. Her blood would be sweeter here, powerful and distinctly female, made for nursing, infused with nature's gift. Moving lower, he angled his body to settle himself between her half parted thighs. When he felt a slight resistance he stilled, turning his head to look up at her. Her eyes were wide and uncertain, swimming with some unnamed emotion.

'I would pleasure you with my mouth,' he said, his voice thick with lust. It was not only that he desired to taste her here: it was necessary.  Her body would need to be slick and soft before he entered her or his size would be too much.  Unease swam in her eyes and it made him wonder if perhaps she had never been taken here in such a way before. Surely her Azurian husband had claimed her thus? Azura's realm was famed for their pleasure and worship of the flesh.

Fara swallowed.  'It is only... I have...' she bit her lip, hesitant. 'I am not...' Then, as though losing patience with herself, she sat up and turned her thigh outward.

He did not understand at first, did not see it at first, but as she shifted it caught the light. A thin slice - no, several thin slices - marked the inside of her thigh. Silver against the golden pink of her skin. He counted seven in total. So small and delicate were they that only one who knew her intimately would ever notice them. 

Would he have noticed them had she not shown them to him?  Bewildered, he turned to look at the opposite thigh. The same markings. Placed deliberately distant from the vein it seemed.  His head swam with confusion and impossibility. When he looked at her face he found her watching him, curious but sombre.

'You will find nought but imperfection if you look hard enough, Theodan,' she said with quiet force. 'For there are many like it upon my body.'

Disbelieving, he turned his gaze back upon her body. They seemed to light up for him then, burning bright for an instant like beacons in the dark. Little clusters: Her wrist, around the rise of her hip, her navel, her ankle, the sole of her foot. Each about the same size and shade. Each small and thin. Meticulous slices into the smooth golden skin. Each different in age, each placed with thought and purpose it seemed, each in a place that would be unseen by a passing gaze. Healed but not forgotten. Visible only to herself or any who would know her intimately.

How was it possible he had he not noticed them before? In the tent. In the basin.

Then he remembered.

An arm thrown over her breasts, across her hip, her thighs pressed tightly together. Her back almost always turned to him. The light had always been dark had it not. Too dark.  He had never thought to see such a thing upon her and so he had not.

'Turn around,' he said suddenly, moving to sit up on his knees. Her gaze widened, flickering with pure defiant gold. 'Gods Fara, you are mine this night and for once you will do as I bloody well command you.'

She held his stare a long moment, before turning slowly to bare her back to him. Shame hit him first, for Iaria's lashes were still red upon her skin, but there, beneath them was evidence of an older punishment. He had not seen them when he'd torn open her tunic. As he'd tied her without care to the post to be whipped, again. He had not even looked. As well as the whipping he found the same dusting of shallow cuts. At the base of her beck, at the seat of her spine. Decorative here almost, fanning out like rays from the sun.

Not self-inflicted then. Had he really hoped for such a thing a moment ago?

'Who would dare do this to a princess of the blood?' He demanded.

'I fell through a looking glass as a girl,' she said quickly. Too quickly.  'I was lucky to live.' Her voice was odd. Stretched thin and without any weight at all.

'You are lying.'

'I am not.'

He spun her around to face him, his eyes laced with murder. 'You will tell me who did this to you.'

Her defiance wavered, thinning before his eyes. 'What does that matter, Theodan? Unless you are to tell me that I disgust you now?  That you will no longer have me.' There was a painful vulnerability in her voice that he could not wrap his mind around.

Until suddenly he could.  

She was deeply unaware of her own magnificence. She spoke as though she considered it possible that some colourless scars bore even a chance against her radiance. Against a magnificence as powerful as the midday Azurian sun.

'These scars adorn you, Fara, but they could never hope to diminish you,' he looked at her directly. 'Neither the sun nor the moon shines as brilliantly as you do.'

She blinked at him. In disbelief or surprise, he could not say. When she spoke her lips trembled, a delicate petal on the wind.

'Then you... desire me still?'

Was that... relief in her voice?

'Yes, I desire you, Fara. More than I have ever desired any other before you.'

He did not know what drove his tongue to such lavish truths, yet he knew he could not prevent himself from speaking them.  No more than he could prevent the wildfire in his veins which raged only for her. It felt as though he could not remember a time before her before this need for her came to reside in him. It felt then as though perhaps he had been born with his longing for her carved into his very soul. As though it had always been her and him. As though it would always be her and him.

It happened suddenly then, some force moved through her, barely visible but ferocious in nature. Without a moment of hesitation, she sprang toward him, hooking her hands around his neck as she brought her mouth to his and kissed him. When she climbed up onto his thighs, straddling him, he hissed in delight, his arousal springing up between them again, it's energy redoubled.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her deeper into his body, sliding her soft heat across his cock as he pushed his hips upward. She moaned against his mouth, sucking deliciously at his lips.  With his hands fisted in her hair, he pulled her head back and dragged his mouth hungrily over hers, and then down the smooth scented column of her neck where he permitted his teeth to scrape lightly over the loud pulsating vein.

Gods he wanted to pierce her throat. Wanted to feel her lifeblood flood his tongue and pour down his throat while he thrust himself inside her. He summoned every scrap of strength he possessed, willing himself not to give in to the appetite which clawed at him, to the beast which threatened to take over and claim her for itself.

Whatever had unleashed within her he wanted to build an altar to it in which to worship. Her need for him had sprouted in full bloom, her body thrillingly alive now and more sensitive than any female he had ever known. The lightest touch of his lips, his tongue, the pads of his fingers, caused her to moan and gasp, sigh and tremble, undulate against him harder and more desperate. Each nook elicited some new note he had not heard before while she pulled at his hair and dug her soft nails into his keen skin. 

She smelled of heat and honeyed wine and he understood then why the sun desired her the way it did. Why her skin was golden and warmed through by its glare. Why it showered her with its kiss every moment it could. For he too could not bear to tear his mouth from her for fear he would never get to taste her sweetness ever again.

Shifting his body, he lowered her down to onto the bed and began trailing his mouth down her body once more. This time her thighs parted without hesitation and when he scented her arousal as strong as his own now his mouth flooded with a desperate thirst.  When he moved to lower his head between her legs again he paused, cautious, and turned his head to look up at her.  Her eyes were closed once more and her body glittered with a delicate sheen which he envied beyond all reason. Her sex throbbed loudly against his mouth, raw and hot. His cock roared.

'I would have you watch me while I pleasure you,' he commanded.

When her eyes opened to look at him, lust-filled and soft, each nerve inside him lit up brightly, a thousand shining stars. He took care as he lowered his mouth, angling his lips just so, so as not to harm her with his teeth. When he flicked his tongue over her lightly she bucked beneath him.

'Goddess....' she gasped, sucking air desperately into her throat. When he covered the secret piece of flesh and sucked hard she cried out. 'Gods, Theodan.... please...'

He growled in satisfaction at the sound of her saying his name. It was the sweetest song he had ever heard. It was like benediction. It sent his pulse into frenzy and his claws sprung fully to gorge a hole into the soft feathers of the bed. She writhed above him, her skin flushed and her eyes closed in pleasure as he worked for her climax.

It took less time than he expected. 

She tensed, her thighs bracing around the width of his shoulders as she pushed her body up and into his mouth. He felt the shudder move through her, waves of soft pleasure rolling through her body as it poured her nectar onto his tongue. When he moved up her body and positioned himself at her entrance it took more strength than a thousand varveh to stop himself thrusting inside her.  He slid his hand under her neck and raised her head to his, where with a kiss he spilled her own taste into her soft mouth.

'Gods Fara....' he groaned, weakening as he pressed against her entrance. 'What sorcery have you used against me?'

He felt her harden, her eyes opening to peer up at him.  As he breached her she gasped, his own growl so low and so feral that he almost did not recognise it as his. She was desperately small, a tight warmth that gripped on to him almost greedily. Her arms clung tight about his neck, her fingers sifting his hair, her eyes burning with pleasure.

Gods she was magnificent to behold. Blinding. Delicate as a petal but fierce as the sun. She gasped and moaned softly as he pushed into her, her slippery heat pulling him deeper and deeper.  When he met her limit he began to withdraw, raising his hips only to lower them again and push back inside her. Her head dropped back, her breasts pushing up to graze his chest.

'Theodan...' she moaned, her eyes closing in deepest pleasure.

Every thought caught fire then, every memory melting to cinder and ash so that he felt made of and for a single sole purpose - her.  Every slight movement of his body made her moan, made her tremble and gasp - every thrust of his hips, every touch of his lips against her silken skin. Watching her ecstasy build filled him with a power he had never known, each prayer to her Goddess bringing him ever closer to his own.

When she wrapped her legs around his back and dug her nails hard into his skin he felt his control loosen, a ribbon spooling free. When his climax tore through him it was like a violent storm, as loud as a battle cry. He felt her own rush forth, her body squeezing his from the inside as she gasped hard and clung tight. She rode her passion hard against his own, her breathless voice chanting his name over and over again as she did.

When his climax subsided he braced himself up higher on his arms to and brought his head level with hers.

'I did not hurt you?' He asked, his breath still ragged and thin. She gave him a look, as though concern for such a thing was quaint or foolish.

'You did not hurt me,' she said, breathless.

He did not want to withdraw from her body, was loath to separate himself from her in any way, but she had turned stiffer beneath him in the last few moments, whatever possession had taken her absent now.

With some difficulty, he pulled himself gently out of her body and moved to lie next to her. Their laboured breathing and the warm crackle of the fire filled the chamber.

He turned his head to look at her.  She'd pulled a fistful of bedlinen across her body, her hands clutching it tight to her chest, modest in her afterglow.

She looked like Azura herself. Carved from divinity. Infused with beauty and splendour. Latent pleasure high in her cheeks. Hair loose and wild about her shoulders.  He felt himself harden once more. Many moments passed before she broke the silence.

'I would know how you plan to kill the king of Zybar and his line.' She asked him, her voice was neutral, distant. 

He almost laughed, because although he could not imagine how he had forgotten. Had forgotten the godless sin he had agreed to in order to claim her.

He took a moment to consider his response. To measure his tone and words.  'And I would know how those scars came to be upon your body. For t'was the fault of no looking glass that much is certain.'

She turned her head to him. 'That was not our deal, Theodan.'

'Then call it a resolution to our earlier agreed-upon terms.'

Her eyes gleamed with betrayal. 'Now who looks to swindle and cheat?'

'There is no swindle, Fara - but I will have the name of whoever harmed you.'

She gave him a sharp look.  'Many have harmed me, Theodan, and many more likely will. But there are a great many more who suffer far worse than I.'

He frowned.  'I will not allow anyone to harm you again, Fara. Not while I breathe still.'

She looked at him and laughed. That same fickle laugh she had thrown at him in the cave.

He did not care for it but it Gods it stoked his need all the same. A temptress. Just as Azura had been to Leoth himself. 

With an impatient growl, he moved to cover her with his body, pulling the sheet from her forcefully as he did so that their bodies met in a searing of hot, damp flesh.

'What are you doing....?' she gasped, indignant and wide-eyed.

'Ensuring you fulfil your own terms, princess.' 

'I have met my terms, Theodan,' she panted, her body softening. He lowered his mouth to her breast and sucked hard, flicking his tongue over her still hard nipple. Against her own will it seemed, she moaned. 

'Then perhaps should have stated your terms more clearly, princess....' he whispered, reaching up to turn her head towards the window.  Beyond it, the moon hung high and proud in the night sky. 'For this night has much life in it yet....'

He pushed his arousal against her and she softened further, tilting her hips up slightly. He scattered soft suckled kisses across her breasts before moving his mouth up to her throat where he heard her blood begin to sing for him once more. Sweeter than the Liyiam bird in mating flight. He felt her body open fully to him and she welcomed his rough kiss with an open mouth as he slid inside her, both gasping against each other.

'Why must you feel like this...?' she whispered against his lips. 

He had no answer for her. No word to settle her. No great truth to deploy which would help her understand. And so he kissed her again instead. Hard rough lips on her pliant mouth. He began to thrust with fervour then, one that she herself soon matched. Turning onto his back he pulled her with him so that she sat astride him, her head thrown back and her fingers clutching his thighs as she moved so that it felt as though it were she who took him.

The third time was a slow melting together of damp bodies as the sun began to rise, their bodies drained of form and heavy with sleep but quick to reawaken.

After, as he slept with her pulled against him, the vision came. Not bright and loud like all the others, but quiet and soft.  A dream of a memory, spreading slow and serpentine into his mind. Like ink through water.

Fara lay on a bed of rich gold silk, the bed above her regal and opulent. Her hands fisted the sheets as tears wept silent from her eyes. He could scent her blood, her pain, both sweet and luscious like honey. A male hand held open her thighs, gripping the soft flesh hard.  A monarchial heir's ring on the forefinger, the sigil twisted away from him. A small ornate dagger lay discarded upon the silk.

He could not see the male's face but he heard his voice. Low and close and burning with tenderness. 'Your body is a marvel, my love. It betrays you even as you lay. Do you see what sorcery runs in your veins now? How strong your poison is? How completely I am your slave?'

He awoke in the darkness breathing fast and hard, his rage hot in his throat, his claws speared into the sheets.

The Heir's ring. The bedroom which could only be that of the Golden Palace. Galyn of Azura had been her tormentor. Her captor.

Had he... freed her from him?

His mind swam with bewilderment and confusion. Nothing made sense.  Her love for him was true, her pain at his death palpable. How could she find space in her heart for one who'd treated her so cruelly? 

He glanced down at her sleeping form, soft and open in repose. Reaching down he brushed his hand across her brow, furrowed slightly as she slept.

'What in the Gods are you, Fara of Calate and Azura?' He said in whispered wonderment.