A Price Paid Ch. 09

Stevya's eyes looked left.

"She compels you to look at her."

"Look at her eyes alive with hunger for you."

"Look at her."

Unable to get the sight of it from her peripheral vision, her eyes were drawn to look at it dead on.

"You feel her hunger for you, don't you? You feel her need to consume you."

Time stopped, then her lips moved in the affirmative even though no sound emerged.

"Kiss her, Stevya. Kiss her mouth so her fangs may bite into your soft, tender tongue and allow her inside."

Her head jerked, trying to force herself to look away again even as her body moved closer to it.

"Yesssssss, princess. You resist, yet you can't. You have brought your will forward to surrender it to mine. Kiss the serpent."

"Please." The word was barely audible.

"Kiss it and be comforted to know that I am a kind Mistress. Tell her, Armis."

His enthusiasm pleased Bryana and thrilled her. "She is kind, Stevya. I am better now. I am better than I ever would have been without her. You will be, too. She lives inside my mind and I cannot escape. I don't want to. You won't either. I wasn't given a choice, but if I had known what awaited me, I would have begged for it. Kiss the serpent, my love. Choose it."

"She has no choice, either," Bryana corrected. "She will become mine because she must." Stevya drew close enough now to scent the femininity of the viper. "The difference is that you simply woke as mine. Stevya gets to experience becoming. Kiss it Princess. Kiss it knowing it waits to bite. Kiss it now."

Stevya still didn't understand the why of it all as her quivering lips touched its open mouth and she felt the bite as power did not just drip an ooze into her as before, but rushed into her like the first break in a dam with the force now pushing against the weakness around it all at once." She kept kissing, then closed her eyes and let her tongue be driven by memory and trace the serpent's fangs.

"Yesssssss." Bryana liked the rush herself, the connection between them completed and the power flowing. She bit her lip and looked to Kudan, "Feel the viper coil around you."

Kudan grabbed her waist firmly and Stevya wiggled her bubble ass in response, bleating when she could not break free.

"Feel the viper move between your legs. Do you feel it, Stevya?"

The kissing paused for but a moment. "I feel it." Unbidden, she reached back to touch it and she found that it was there, not with the ethereal realism of a dream that faded with the intrusion of reality. It was real. In that instant, she knew the viper was real and undeniable. The power it held was real and undeniable. She paid tribute to it and it had embraced her. She felt it rest itself just inside her.

"Now feel it fucking take you." Bryana pushed Stevya's head lower and the kissing continued in earnest as the viper began sawing inside her, filling her as she had been minutes before, taking her insides, Annissa's power flowing like a current, shorting out and dulling her mind. Stevya had never touched a woman in such a way before now and, as her mind began to surrender, hope sprang within that she pleased.

"The viper is inside now, Princess. My power is inside you and it will never leave you. I live within Kudan and he cannot escape. The symbol of my power fucks itself into you as you squirm like a whore to take it deeper." Bryana hissed and pulled Stevya's hair while she sighed and fucked back. When Bryana pressed her cunt to Stevya's mouth, she drove in deeply, her numbed mind exciting itself, believing it to be the viper's venom.

"It fucks your body and coils around your mind." Bryana's body demanded that she pause. "That's right." She collapsed onto her back, and looked at the intricate vine pattern on the black curtain before her while her hips and Stevya's tongue worked away. Bryana let herself feel the connection flow from her, through Stevya, and Kudan, and back again in a continuous loop of energy and ecstasy that Bryana knew was suffocating what will Stevya had left, and that, in turn, drove her to peak pleasure, her sounds of climax driving the other two to what sounded like glorious climaxes of their own.

Finding strength in her arms again, she lifted her body and pulled herself closer to a sitting position. Kudan continued to thrust, no longer a proper, dignified king, but a sweaty, heaving mass of flesh living in that moment to fuck other flesh. Stevya's eyes were locked to the eyes of the viper in lust and need so strong it made her heart break even as she had her palms on the desk to brace herself to give Kudan with the same ferocity she was getting. Bryana liked what she saw. There was no fear. There was no fight. There was no blankness. She saw what she hoped and expected to see: a thrall waiting to please her with Bryana's juices smeared all over her face. She decided to test that assumption.

"Are you there, Princess Stevya?"

The smile was filthy now, in addition to still looking a little drunken. She stretched herself to kiss the serpent with divine reverence. "Yes, Mistress."

"Where is my power?"

"Within me." She listened to the smacking of his body against her ass and it made her happy. "Fucking me. Your power is coiled around my mind and fucking me forever."

"You will obey."

"I will. The pride in that was unmistakable.

"I live in his mind and he cannot escape. The serpent is part of me, and it is therefore part of him. Your love for him is boundless because I am within him, just as I am within you. His love for you shall be boundless because I am within you as I am within him. You are united with one another in that, and your love of service to me."

It was always true, she just didn't realize it until now. "Yes, Mistress."

"When I return to you, or send others in my name, you will obey in all things, without doubt or question."

"Without doubt or question, Mistress."

"Very good, Princess. There is still much to teach you before I go." "Stop, Armis. Stop and pull that cock from her."

He complied at once and Stevya was pleased. "Princess, I promised your betrothed that he could fuck me as a reward for his obedience." Looking to him, she crooked a finger, "Come, Kudan. Come and rut as you please."

The princess envied Kudan. He had been obedient for so long, and that made her all the more anxious to truly begin her service. She paid it no mind when he stepped to Bryana with such force that he took her off balance, pushing her to the side. It was right for her to be pushed aside as if nothing when he would fuck Mistress because, compared to her, the princess was less than that.

He sank himself into Bryana in a single thrust, knowing that no feeling could match the feeling of being inside her, though he knew that, from this day forward, Stevya would come so close now that they were both chained irrevocably to the same soul. She commanded him to rut as he pleased, so he did, fucking her with the same ferocity as he used to fuck all the nameless whores that had never mattered. He fucked her with the same ferocity as she commanded the night she made him her tool.

He yearned to know what she would teach Stevya and the commands she would leave on their minds, but that would come in time. For now, he fucked. He fucked and, while watching it, for the first time in Stevya's life, she envied a man his penis. He could fuck, Mistress. He could be wrapped in her wet folds and use that flesh to make her make those satisfied sounds that came from her now.

"You look lonely over there, Princess." Bryana noted with whimsy. "You may stay there and pleasure yourself as you please or you my climb on onto this lovely desk and I will allow you to feel what my love calls 'the viper's kiss.'"

She could not climb the desk fast enough.

When her clit nestled neatly between the fangs and she began to rock gently up and down as she felt the first tingles of Mistress's power began to flow, she knew even the Goddess Herself could not be so kind and benevolent.

Or feel so good.

* * *

The young woman dabbed the tears from under her red, swollen eyes and cleared her throat, trying to compose herself, with only partial success. It had been so since she had sat before Court and began telling her story, answering the questions asked of her to the best of her ability, even if recounting the things that she had seen and heard in her short years of service was nearly torture for her. The only thing that brought her any comfort was the fact that she could see sympathy in the eyes of most of the heads of the great Houses that comprised it.

She sat in a chair before the table that formed a semicircle and served as the focal point of the room. The walls were an eggshell white and adorned with gold leaf. The heavy columns evenly spaced throughout gave it a sense of power and importance, even without the fact that this single room had been steeped in centuries of history. A kingdom had been born within these walls. Wars of all kinds had been fought within these walls. It was said that if Erette was a ship, this would be where you would find its rudder.

"I realize this is difficult for you, Ms. Colls," Pan Baylor, head of another of the Houses, assured her, doing his best not to pressure her, but wanting to conclude his questioning with his remaining time, moving through yet another of the heinous acts noted in detail in Strannix's ledgers and explained in detail by his lead servant, Kav. "Can you continue?"

She cleared her throat a second time and nodded quickly. "Yes, I'm fine. I apologize, Lord Baylor."

"That's quite all right." He scratched his smooth cheek. "And you know that your employer is responsible for trashing the store of the glass merchant Lokis?"

"One night, uhhh, about two days after it happened, I was asked to serve drinks to him and his friends in his study. I don't know their names. I'd never seen them before that night. It wasn't a normal part of my job, but one of them thought I was appealing and just wanted me there."

"Anyway, I was pouring a drink and Mr. Strannix congratulated this man on the fire, saying that his life was now considerably easier thanks to it. He laughed that people were still talking about it."

Baylor puzzled, but pressed on, "But what made you think that Mr. Strannix was responsible? It's certainly in poor taste to revel in another's misfortune and look forward to the ways that that misfortune might benefit you, but what made you believe that Mr. Strannix was actually responsible for it?"

"Because the man laughed with him and told him, 'You paid me for noticeable, you get noticeable.'"

Several of the Lords and Ladies exchanged looks. This one told similar stories to the others in his employ. As did they did the direct testimony of his victims who felt emboldened by his absence and the inquiry to come forward and tell their stories. Some, like this, were typical thuggery, but they had heard stories from families that knew they had lost loved ones to the man in gruesome fashion just to feed his want, and even young women forced into sexual servitude to repay their debts, a family's debts or, in some cases just because they were pretty and he could do it.

It all conspired to paint a picture of a man who embodied the worst of Erette, but did so in finery. Some of the testimony had been so wrenching that they had visibly recoiled from it. This was one of the easier to endure stories, as she had told much worse, but it just added to the weight that they had all been forced to bear of late. Each worker in that house could make some part of those ledgers live; give them face and voice.

"They just said this in front of you?"

"It wasn't uncommon," she told him. "He treated us all like fixtures. He didn't care what we knew. It served him. If we knew what he could do to us, what, umm, he would do to us if we talked about what the things we've seen and heard, you learned quickly to keep your mouth shut."

"But not now?"

She dabbed her eyes once again. "When he left and the days start to stretch and he's not this...permanent darkness all around the home, you start to see the light." Devin went to the one witness that most would find unassailable. "You start to hear the voice of the Goddess inside you telling you what the right thing is and that it has to be done. I think about the glass blower and his family. They had to leave and start over. I often wonder if they were able to do so. I wonder about all of them that I know of, and I wonder about all the ones I don't know of. When I go to be judged, I at least want Her to know that I followed the path She has set for me to the best of my ability."

"My silence is a wrong and I can't bear anymore."

It was now time to strike where they lived, "When I heard of the inquiry and that it had started because Kav couldn't bear anymore either, I knew it was a sign. It was a sign that She decided to use you as Her instruments of justice." She met each of their gazes in turn and she saw several of them puff their chests outward with pride, liking the idea of heroism with little risk very much.

"We are all Her instruments. I can only tell the truth as I know it, and I have done so. You can be Her righteous voice in the world by taking the ill-gotten wealth of a man like my employer. We all have greed and we will all do much to get more of what we need or want, but is there no limit? Is there no point at which someone has done too much for power. I'm no one, but you have listened to me with love and compassion. I know that my queen and her court are the ones to say that that line is crossed. I know that you won't allow anyone else to be hurt, used, and abused as he has done."

She shook her head, and her eyes looked off into the future, "I am uncertain what will become of me after I have done Her will here, but I look forward to it, content in the knowledge that, when truly called upon, I have followed the plan She has set for me, and that you will as well."

Queen Evaline sat on her throne at the center of the table, hair piled high and in among her most regal attire to impress upon all the seriousness with which the proceedings were taken. She had spent the previous days enduring the testimony of the lives harmed by this soul. Evaline was hardened by years in royal politicking and did not show her feelings as some had, but she was no less repulsed by what she'd heard. The fact that some at the table dealt with the man for anything at all beyond the legitimate face he put upon things tarnished their image in her mind, but she comforted herself with the belief that no one at the table today was so vile that they would have associated with him for the worst of what they heard.

At least it was a belief, and not one she wanted to test.

As it was, they all knew it was the wisest course to have taken this case from the lower courts and deal with it themselves. Once the extent of Strannix' business became public, any hint that the High Houses knew or might have known would be, to put it mildly, poorly received.

Evaline's resolute tone made it clear where she stood on the matter, "The records turned over to this body speak for themselves, and the witnesses have added their voices to it. While there are more witnesses to take statements from and examine, should this body choose to, I am of the belief that the horse is dead enough and needs no more flogging." Two of the nobles chuckled at that despite themselves.

"Enough evidence exists before the court to at least begin debate. Does anyone disagree?" When no one did she finally let some of the tension within her go. "Then I ask that you do so." She looked to her immediate right to the two seats occupied by House Jaye. Neral sat slightly behind her mother A'marin who often spoke for the House at court even though she had formally relinquished her title as Head of House when her daughter had been named commander of the forces of Erette, feeling that her then higher public notice and prestige would be of greater benefit to the family if she carried that banner as well. Neral wanted very much to be part of the hearings, but didn't dare trust herself to speak. It had taken all her discipline over these days to keep silent.

"General Jaye, if you would attend, there are matters of state that need our attention."

The last thing Neral wanted to hear in any event was anyone even attempting to defend or minimize the conduct of that man even though she believed it quite unlikely to happen. She knew she probably couldn't manage it without leaping the table for the throat of the defender. "Of course, Majesty."

The guards at the back of the room took the cue and opened the doors for her and Neral to pass and for two others on the other side who began escorting them at a discreet distance as they made their way through slightly more narrow, but no less opulently decorated corridors than the public spaces, remaining silent until they reached the main hall to the queen's private offices. As they passed, each pair of guards evenly spaced through that hall, stoic as columns themselves, paid her no mind and would not unless she addressed them directly.

Once the pair was safely ensconced within the office, The queen's personal assistant Bae appeared seemingly from nowhere, her tone somewhat somber given the circumstances, but not unpleasant. "Can I get you anything, Majesty? General?"

Neral shook her head, though the queen had a desire. "Something with which to scrub my brain clean of the things that I know about my fellow souls that I wish I did not."

Bae sympathized, "I have no such tonic, but a letter opener through either ear until handle meets bone will likely take care of it."

"Do not tempt me today, Wyla." She pitched the brooch that stood as the symbol of the royal house and her power onto the ornate desk with it stopping just before the opposite edge, wanting nothing to do with her status and royal formality at the moment. "People are disgusting."

"I can tell you stories."

She looked to Neral, not wanting to have dredged pain with regard to recent events, "Of course you can. The thought of Khylen in the clutches of someone like him." It chilled and angered her to think that the children she would have one day would be targets simply for being born. Hearing that Neral's child was safe after the events of that day caused her to sink into her couch and thank the Goddess.

The two had been friends since childhood, more than long enough for her to read the expression on her naturally rosy cheeks. "I didn't mean that, though yes, that. I only meant that soldiers, over the course of a career, tend to see the worst of humanity."

She nodded and tried again to cleanse herself of it. "How do you live with it?"

"I tend to focus on my family and the good aspects of humanity and, no matter the horrible things I have seen, I know that they are an aberration. Most people simply want to live their days and raise their families in peace." She shrugged as she straightened her uniform, "And I occasionally drink copious amounts of alcohol."

That perked her up. "Wonderful idea. Sadly, I cannot partake until the verdict is reached, the sentence set, and a royal proclamations made. Fortunately, it won't take long. I sounded out all the Houses before this began and it was clear enough that if the evidence and testimony were what they were rumored to be, no one would waste time before seizing his assets."

"And part them out amongst themselves."

"If they get something out of a righteous act, I can't make myself worry too much about it. It's enough for me that his ilk are excised from Erette."

"Others will take their place," Bae noted.

"I'm no fool, Bae, I know that. People will gamble for something to do, or in the hopes of becoming rich. Women have spread their legs for profit since the first one realized she could get on all fours of her cave, let a man fuck, then get a meal. And men have been profiting from that trade almost as long. People will always want the things society tells them they can't have and someone will provide those things. That's the order of things and I couldn't change it if I tried, so there's no point."