Homelands Pt. 02 Ch. 08

Maybe I was willing to do things to gain power that others were not. This wasn't the first time it had occurred to me that this might be the case. But even I had limits. And I suspected that once I got to know my kids, the last thing I'd ever want to do is push them into something they weren't comfortable with.

#

Perhaps surprisingly, the Rite of Elevation demanded abstinence from the participants. I'd been hoping for it to require an orgy, but apparently there was even greater power in the ache that our kind felt when forced to forego acting on our urges as there was in the act of coupling. Or so Wendy claimed.

It also required thirteen of us. Dad, Cindy and Grandma refused outright, because of the abstinence. But between the rest of my family, my wife, and the vassals I forced to assist us, we got to thirteen. The decided lack of cooperation from House Farrier would not be soon forgotten, though, even if we didn't need them. The Rite required the expenditure of massive amounts of energy, and it would have been orders of magnitude easier to complete with Grandma in the circle. Dad and Cindy would have helped more than my vassals as well, though their absence was not as keenly felt as that of my grandmother.

The Rite consisted of the thirteen of us sitting in a circle around Holly, holding hands, visualizing her as a sexual being. When I expressed confusion over what exactly that meant, Wendy explained that the only written account she'd been able to find had been performed on an elderly couple, and it might not have been so trivial a detail in that case. Yet again, I deferred to her judgment.

Much as it pained me to admit, with women like Wendy and Iva around, my intellectual contributions to tasks such as this were minimal to non-existent. For that matter, my raw power hardly marked me as unique either. Were I not the king, it would have made little sense for me to direct the Rite rather than Iva.

Thankfully, the Rite was neither complicated nor lengthy.

It was, however, dreadfully exhausting. I blacked out afterwards, only to wake up in my bed nearly fourteen hours later.

A few days later, I decided to visit Holly. She and her family had returned to the mortal world, while Lily and I were staying in the Homelands until she was much closer to term. That meant Lily would hardly notice my absence.

I was stunned by the magnificent beauty that answered the door.

She wasn't exactly a whole new woman. If she looked better now than even in the photos Todd had showed me of her modeling days, it was a close thing. And he still didn't have the curves I preferred, though her breasts were a little larger than before. With her already thin waist a bit thinner, she almost had a proper hourglass shape. Only almost though.

But despite the fact that she was still thinner than I preferred, she had my knees wobbling the instant I laid eyes on her.

There had been a time that I'd thought that my cousin Brianna had the prettiest face ever. And if not for my nearly fetishistic obsession with seeing black hair combined with ultra fair skin, I perhaps would not have thought Holly any prettier than Brianna. However, if only because of that particular preference, I had to say that Holly was now the prettiest woman I could even imagine.

Of course, a pretty face is only worth so much. My newly immortal sister-in-law was still trying to figure out how to use her powers. And even if she hadn't been inexperienced in their use, she only had about as much raw power as Aunt Cindy anyway.

It was an enjoyable afternoon, to be sure. Like all immortal women, she had her own unique taste. And hers was especially sweet. Her juices had a peppermint taste that was vaguely reminiscent of candy canes. And while I couldn't bust out all my favorite moves, she allowed me to do things with her that I'd never have been able to do when she was still a mortal. Like growing an extra cock and fucking both her pussy and her ass at the same time. She also had greater stamina and flexibility, allowing us to try more positions than she'd have been able to handle in one afternoon prior to her Elevation.

All in all, I was very glad I came to visit her, and glad that she was so eager to express her gratitude for my part of Elevating her. I was even glad to hear her say that Todd seemed to have rediscovered her, and Sean was more persistent in chasing after her than ever before.

But I didn't stay as long as I'd thought I might, no matter that she repeatedly mentioned that she had the house to herself for several hours yet.

#

The next night, while Lily slept, I went to visit Brianna. She was less defensive than the last time I'd seen her, but no closer to wanting to return to the court. Remembering how she'd said she'd wanted to Devour me last time, I didn't try to sleep with her either.

A few days later, after a meeting with Wendy ended earlier than expected, I finally went to see my sister. In the middle of the day. At least, it was in the Homelands.

When I appeared in her apartment, she'd been entertaining five young gentleman, all of whom were black. At first, I thought they were all strangers, but then I realized that two of them were our cousins, Vince and Ismail. They were polite enough, but cool and detached.

I guess I couldn't blame them.

I'd thought I might put Skye next on my list of people I needed to visit, but the looks on her brothers' faces alone convinced me I'd better wait a while longer.

Natalie wasn't a whole lot happier to see me. At first, she'd told me to leave. She caved on that quickly enough, but still told me to wait outside while she finished up. And it was nearly a half hour before she came out onto her patio, wearing a bathrobe and nothing else.

As she tucked a cigarette in her mouth and lit it without the aid of matches or a lighter, she asked me, "The fuck do you want, Frank?"

"Good to see you-"

"Cut the shit. I'm in no mood for your lame jokes."

I drew a deep breath. "Since when do you smoke?"

"Since when do you give a fuck whether I smoke?" she asked, inhaling deeply. The cherry on the end of the cigarette flared. "Ain't likely to kill me, is it? Not like we're normal."

From someone else, that would have sounded like a boast instead of a lament.

"You ever hear from Rob?"

"Yeah, we play golf on Saturdays," she deadpanned. "Seriously, Frank, tell me why you're here or get the fuck out out my face. You could have at least let me know you were coming, you know. Pretty rude to just drop in on me like this."

"I didn't know I was coming, until some free time opened up-"

"That's just fucking great. I'm an afterthought. Lovely."

I grabbed the cigarette from her mouth, took a long drag, then handed it back. I didn't care for the taste, or the way it seared my lungs, but it did soothe the nerves. "I want you to come back, Nat. This isn't the life for you."

"It look like I'm retired? You do still recognize your cousins, right?" she asked. "Why don't you just say what you really mean. You miss me. You want to fuck me again." Then she barked a laugh, accompanied by a puff of smoke. "No, that can't be it. You've got more women than you can handle as it is. It's not my vag you want, it's my forgiveness. Am I right? Your poor conscience can't live with all the shit you've done, and you need to hear someone tell you that they understand, that it's okay, that you're not a bad person."

I didn't respond.

She was more or less right, of course.

"You should have said you wanted to fuck me. That, I might have given you," she said. Then she dropped the cigarette on the concrete, rubbed it out with a bare foot, and went back inside. She closed the sliding glass door, leaving me alone on her balcony.

Though we were only four years apart, I'd never gotten to know my sister that well. Not like I had Dom and Todd. Even Dom had a better relationship with her, and with six years separating them, they had less reason to be close. So the truth was, I didn't know how she'd react to what I was about to do. All I knew was that she'd made a few comments in the past to indicate she'd been disappointed that I wasn't more persistent in trying to get her attention. She was the girl, she'd said.

I took a deep breath and moved from her balcony to inside her apartment.

Nat was just getting to the couch upon which I now sat. She sighed, crossed her arms under her breasts, and glowered at me. "Still here?"

"Still here."

"I'm not going to tell you it's okay, Frank. Because it's not."

"I know," I said.

"Do you? Really? Because, I'll tell you what. I understand why you did what you did. And maybe, if I wasn't his mother, I could look at things objectively and say he had it coming. But none of that changes the fact that you killed my son. You may have done it with Iva's fucking cunt rather than your own hands, but you killed him all the same. I'll never see my baby again, never hold in my arms, never feel him inside me, and it's because you took him away from me. And ruined my marriage in the process. Sure, we were in rocky waters to begin with, but if not for this, we might have pulled through."

"I know it's not okay," I said, "and I don't expect you to forgive me. I can't even imagine what you're going through."

"So if you're not here for sex, and you know I can't forgive you, what do you want?"

"I don't know," I said. "I guess I hope that maybe someday you won't hate me. Not that you'd forgive me, but maybe that we could-"

My sister settled down next to me on the leather couch and draped a hand across my thigh. "I don't hate you, Frank."

"Really?"

She rolled her eyes at me. "Yes, really. I'm not sure I'd know how if I wanted to."

I put an arm around her shoulders, pulled her against me, and kissed the top of her head.

We sat there like that in silence for a while. Eventually, she turned the TV on, and we watched some stand-up comedy. Had a few drinks together. Just hung out, as if we were ordinary siblings. Nevermind that I was wearing jeans without a shirt, and she was wearing even less. Nevermind that I had allowed our aunt to swallow her son whole with her pussy, or that the two of us had fucked each other's brains out many times in the past. We couldn't have been less normal. But, for a while anyway, it didn't matter.

For a while.

Eventually, though, between the drinks helping our inhibitions to take some time off, and just being around each other, laughing, being ourselves, it started to become pretty obvious where things were headed, no matter that I'd claimed I hadn't come for that.

One second we'd been laughing, the next I was pulling my sister into my lap.

Natalie looked a question at me as I lined my cock up with a hole no brother should have even considered violating. But whatever the question was, she didn't ask it. Just held her breath and waited for her big brother to slide inside her.

As with the last time we'd had sex with each other, we skipped the supernatural flourishes. At first, anyway. We began with slow movements and intent stares, then worked our way up to furious pounding, cursing, and not so soft love bites. I wondered if I'd ever have the kind of tender, affectionate sex I preferred most of all with my sister, the way I often had with our mother. Before she'd left me.

Maybe I didn't deserve anything but angry sex from Nat though.

After my sister popped like a champagne cork, I poured her down onto the couch and gave her the full treatment with my hands and mouths. From her toes to her earlobes, there wasn't a remotely sensitive part of her that I wasn't stimulating either orally or manually. Blue bolts of ecstatic energy shot out from my hands now and then, bringing her to climax instantaneously when they touched her skin.

She then did much the same for me, though she was nowhere near as powerful as I was anymore. Once, she had been. But we'd followed very different paths since our parents had first initiated us. She wasn't weak, though, and she was more than up to the task of milking several loads of cum from me. And, unlike last time, she didn't cough any up on me. Most of it, she swallowed, but some she asked me to shoot on her face and breasts.

After we climaxed together, the two of us collapsed onto the couch.

"You know I still hate you, right?" Nat asked.

I slapped her bare ass. "Right. Like I'm falling for that."

"I wouldn't have expected you to think so before either," my sister said with a smile. "What do you say we go a little easier for round two, by the way?"

"Fine by me," I said.

#

Lily didn't love giving up our third child, our first daughter, but she dealt with it a lot better than the previous two. A lot better. Yet, despite that, she decided she didn't want to have any more children for a while and began a vigorous campaign to talk me into stepping down. She recognized that it would be unfair to try to insert ourselves into the children's lives while they were still growing up, no matter what we planned to do when they came of age. We'd given them away to loving adoptive families, and we couldn't go back on that. But she was itching to raise children, from infancy, and my position had always been that we'd do so after I handed the throne over to someone else.

So I decided to have a talk with Iva. Heck, as much as I didn't like thinking about it, I had to admit that if I didn't name her as successor and step down soon, I might find myself being pushed out the door. And rightfully so, really. Iva was running the court these days, not me. With more than a little help from Wendy, of course. Offering her the position of prime minister was likely to be remembered as the best decision I ever made as king.

My aunt and I sat at a folding table atop the roof of the royal palace, drinking coffee.

I stared out at the landscape, surveying what would soon no longer be my kingdom. As it was every day of the year, not that years had any real meaning here, it was the middle of autumn. The rolling hills were packed with ancient trees. An ocean of red, orange and yellow stretched as far as the eye could see, at least to the north and east. To the south and west, the hills were dotted with manor houses and sprawling estates.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" I asked, still staring at the foliage.

"Sure is," my aunt said, sipping her coffee.

"Before I knew what I was, fall was my favorite time of year. I used to love driving through upstate New York on the weekends. The trees were just gorgeous. So does that make it especially fitting that I turned out to be who I was, or is this, here, why I loved fall so much in the first place? You suppose Daphne's got grandkids out there somewhere, in some fake mortal world that they believe is real, who just love winter?"

"You're in an awfully wistful mood. What's up?"

I sighed and finally turned to look at her. "I want to ask you something, and I'd really appreciate the truth. Whatever it is. Don't much care what the answer happens to be. Honestly. I just want to know that you're being straight with me."

"Oh, dear," she said.

"If I don't step down soon, I'm going to seriously regret it, aren't I?"

"You think Mel is-"

"Not Mel, Iva. Come on."

She looked shocked. Genuinely appalled. "Frank. Please tell me you're not seriously accusing me of what I think you're-"

I took her hand in mine. "Asking. Not accusing."

Iva looked away, blinking back a few tears. "No, Frank. I'm not...no."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't really think so, but I've been away so much, and you've got almost as many vassals-"

"You told me to-"

"-that you're queen in all but name already. And, quite honestly, the court is much the better for it." I paused to let that sink in. I felt the defensive shield that had suddenly surrounded her Libido start to recede. "I just assumed that if I can see that, surely you can too. You're you, after all, and you don't miss anything. And we both know Wendy would prefer to see you on the throne. Heck, if there's anyone out there who would prefer me to stay on, they're keeping awful quiet."

Iva fell silent.

"Am I right?"

"You really think so? That the court would be better in my hands?" she asked.

"Absolutely," I said. "You and Wendy make a great team."

She blushed. "That's...I don't know what to say." She took a sip of her coffee before adding, "I actually think you've done a lot of good for the court, you know. Especially before you went and got yourself that wife. You haven't been the same since she showed up."

I laughed. "That's nice of you to say. But all I ever really did was fuck noblewomen, either to reward them for becoming my vassals or to encourage them to do so in the first place. And, yeah, I guess I'm good at that, because over time, the little extra trickles here and there have added up to a very nice steady stream of energy. And putting Wendy in charge was certainly a good move. But other than that?"

Iva waved my comment away. "So what? For the first time, the nobles feel like the court exists to help them live their lives the way they wish. It takes a wise and humble man to delegate to those who can more effectively get things done rather than trying to control everything themselves. And you can make light of all the time you spend distributing patronage, but I assure you that your supporters appreciate it. And they talk about it too. No one sang Brianna's praises like they do yours. Let's not forget peace with the First Autumnal Court either. I think Jack deserves more credit than he's going to get for paving the way for you, but even so, you brought it home."

"Well, it was me who negotiated an agreement declaring peace. But declaring peace and bringing peace aren't the same," I said. "It's not like we were at war anyway. I know, I know, it still makes a difference. But let's not oversell it. And though she doesn't seem to believe me when I tell her this, the truth is that I did it in no small part so that Lily could go free. Besides, there are a lot of nobles who will never know their sons and daughters because they were forced to bear the cost of bringing that agreement about."

My aunt nodded. "All true enough. But that's politics for you. There are no heroes. Only heroic narratives about people whose policies created as many losers as winners, or who happened to be in the right place at the right time." She paused, tipped back her mug.

I wanted to disagree, but maybe I was just too idealistic.

"Anyway, my point is, yes, I do think I've got a knack for this, and yes, Wendy and I work well together. But neither of us cares if you get most of the credit for what we do. What matters most to me is that you're not a tyrant like your cousin was, or like my mother was, for that matter. I think I might like to sit on the throne when you've decided you've had enough, assuming Melanie and Sean can be persuaded to wait a little longer. But if my turn doesn't come for some time yet, or never does at all, I won't complain. I find what I'm doing now to be plenty rewarding." She reached across the table and smacked my wrist, "And if none of that was true, I'd tell you."

We leaned across the small table and kissed.

Settling back into my chair, I said, "Well, as I'm sure Iva the All-Seeing has already guessed, I'm stepping down."

Iva sipped her coffee without comment.

"I have only one condition. Or maybe it's more like a request, because there's no sense in trying to bluff with you. If you say no, I'll be sad, but the throne will still be yours."

She raised an eyebrow at me. "And that is?"

"I want you to issue an official pardon for Brianna."

"Of course," she said without hesitation.

"Really?"

Iva kicked my shin gently. "Yes, really, stupid. Remember when I told you how pleased I was that you showed her mercy? Why wouldn't I?"