A Queen's Hart

I urged my horse on, now listening for every sound. The dogs were nervous, whimpering low. I was worried.

My Queen came to a stop and so I stopped beside her.

"I reckon this is the best chance we'll get before the dogs get too anxious, Your Majesty," I murmured.

"Best get on with it then, Owain," she said coolly.

"Aye," I said. Feeling like an idiot beside her as usual.

I lined up my shot. Considered the distance and wind and the chance the brute might move. I drew my arm back, savouring the tension in the string. I felt savagely sick. How quick could I set up another arrow if this one smacked the tree trunk instead?

I set the arrow to flight. It didn't waver from the path I meant for it. The point took the bear's eye. With an awful cry of pain, like a roar sucked in backwards, the beast fell down. The lymers started barking and a couple of the horses squealed. The bear moaned again, quieter. Flailed. Shuddered. Was still.

Closer up, the arrow went deep, skewering the beast's brain. My heart was still beating too fast from fear to feel any pity. I suddenly noticed how long I'd been holding my breath and how white my knuckles were. I loosened my grip on my bow consciously but reluctantly. Fucking hell, I hate hunting bears.

A scattered cheer came up from the trees as other members of the group each decided to believe that the bear really was dead.

"Cracking shot Owain, lad!" whooped Morgan with her crackling laugh.

"Aye, well done Squire," said Sir Steffan, (almost cheerfully actually).

A light snow was falling. Nothing really. Thistle fluff.

We stood about and discussed the pelt and how much of the cleaning of the carcass we should do on the mountain. The Queen hadn't said anything of the kill at all, but as we stood in the circle around the fallen brute, she squeezed my elbow. It was just for a second.

The dark started to come on a bit fast. It does that in the winter of course, but there was a lot of cloud cover and no moon. It was bitter cold with it. Still snowing.

"Let's head away down," said Morgan, apparently finally sensible to risk, "This light's not going to last us to get back down the mountain."

"Aye," said Dafydd, "It'll do these horses nee good to be stood bout in this, let's get ourselves home."

"I don't mean to return without the hide," Queen Seren said sternly. Then she sighed. "I can't let you all catch your deaths of cold up here on account of it though. Why don't the rest of you set off back? I shan't be far behind."

We exchanged looks. None of us could reasonably challenge her, but none of us whished to leave her behind either.

"You can't be alone!" These were the first fierce words we'd heard Princess Teegan speak. "Mr Rees must stay with you in case there are anymore bears!"

The Queen's heart was immediately melted by her niece's courage in standing up to her.

"I would be perfectly fine alone," she insisted, "But as a favour to you my dearest, I will heed your wish." She squeezed her niece's hands and kissed them. The Princess glowed.

Queen Seren glanced at me now, "You'll stay with me?" she said, as if it were a question and not an order.

"Of course, Your Majesty, I'd be happy to oblige,"

We bid the rest of our party farewell.

***

I set about building a fire to keep us warm while we prepared the animal. The Queen was already at work with her knife, removing the organs and putting splits in the skin. We needed to work very fast, lest the scent of the meat draw wolves or brave foxes. Perhaps we should not have let our friends take the dogs with them.

"That was rather easy for you I think, Owain," was the first thing that she said to me now that we were alone.

"The shot? Easy? No, never." I said.

"It took you only a single arrow and barely a moment's preparation! Surely you recognise your talent?"

"And a good bit of luck on top of that," I insisted.

"It was the same with Cariad was it not?"

"Well... I suppose so. I've been lucky twice."

She looked at me very severely, as if sure I was a liar.

"Only twice?"

"Well... I've been hunting all my life... so, more often than twice..." I admitted. My mind reluctantly stumbled through memories I hadn't given too much thought to. "Maybe even... most times."

"Every time." The Queen said with complete certainty. "You've never missed. Not once in your whole life."

"Well... that can't be true." I laughed awkwardly, "I just don't remember the times I don't bring a beast home... why would I?"

The Queen was luminescent in her smile.

"What a puzzle you are!"

She rubbed the blood from her knife into a rag and beckoned me to assist her in removing the bear's skin. It came away easily; her cuts along all the right tendons meant that the hide could be peeled by hand away from the rest of the carcass, almost in one piece to the neck. The Queen then cut the head from the bear with a skilled and graceful motion that I had never seen done quite the same way before. Her expression took neither delight nor dispassion. Her thin, restrained smile acknowledged only satisfaction in a job well done.

"This will make a fine trophy," I said, mainly with a view to masking the ineptness with which I was removing the arrow from the eye socket with a little conversation.

"I've little interest in trophies," she said, "The hunt ought to be its own reward,"

"Aren't we only here in the dark and ice because you didn't want to return without a hide?" I laughed lightly.

"Owain!" she snapped, flicking the backs of her gloved fingers at my upper arm in half-jest. "Insolence doesn't suit you and neither does foolishness."

"Foolishness?" I said, mustering false casualness as I threw the bent bloodied arrow shaft into the campfire.

She gave me another of her exasperated, half-amused looks before simply saying, "Help me with this,"

We draped the bearskin with its head and claws over as high a bough as we could reach. The body of the bear was still just warm, but looked ghostly now, fat and tissue over the flesh and bone. We worked hard to cut the carcass into joints, casting unwanted debris into the fire and packing the good cuts into the snow.

Snow was still falling, ever thicker. It was getting very near black. I lit a candle in a lantern for Queen Seren, and then a second one for myself.

"I think we best set away now if we want to make it home with all these steaks in tow," I said, mainly to myself since it wasn't by any means my decision to make.

"Owain..." The Queen sighed, holding her gloved hand out into the dark and capturing many flat flakes of snow, "Must we go back home now?" She turned her doe-eyed gaze to me, her face was... wistful, I even daresay, forlorn.

"Well," I began, rather unsettled, "We passed a bothy on the way up that we could shelter the night in? Perhaps better than just trying to walk the whole way down the mountain if you're worried, Your Majesty." I folded and unfolded my knife in my hands, a little frightened honestly of what I might be suggesting.

The sorrow melted from her face.

"That sounds remarkably sensible," she said brisk, yet warm, "Let us do just that."

I nodded. My heart like a boxing hare in my chest.

We loaded our horses with the spoils of our kill, and proceeded to lead them on foot down the same path upon which we had travelled up.

***

Even in the mile of walking, and the tying up of our horses and the stowing of our goods; my heart did not settle down.

Queen Seren entered the little hut first and set her lamp down upon the hearth of the fireplace. I followed, closing the door only about as well as last time I'd had to close a door in her presence. Neither of us spoke as she lit the tinder with her candle, blowing softly on the embers to urge them into flames. My eyes could not leave her pursed lips.

Then she looked at me out of the corner of her eye, her smile knowing and inviting. I did not dare move. She took off her fur cap and her silver-blonde hair tumbled out onto her shoulders. She put her gloved fingertips to her mouth and with white teeth pulled each finger partway free.

"Owain," she said, her voice butter-soft in a way I'd never heard before, "Would you bid me a good night?" She pulled her hand free of her loosened glove and presented me with her pale bare knuckles, as if I were a gentleman of a station to be used to kissing fine ladies' hands.

I knelt before her, took her graceful hand as lightly in my glove as I could, and placed the barest touch of a kiss upon her delicate fingers. Though I relinquished my grasp, I did not move from the floor before her, but gazed up in perfect awe of her stunning beauty. In the shifting light of the fire, she was at once silver and gold, her hair sleek and shimmering, her eyes ice bright.

"Good night, Your Majesty," I murmured, almost overcome. I looked away. I could feel a tear forming in the corner of my eye. I was such a goddamned fool. Projecting my romantic nonsenses and crass desires upon such a singular woman. I swallowed the lump in my throat.

My Queen put her still outstretched hand upon my face. She held my bristled jaw gently and brushed her thumb against my cheek. I lost any ability to breathe, to think. She bent down a little way and pressed a soft kiss upon my lips. It scarcely seemed possible; I trembled at her touch, frozen, unable to reciprocate. She began to recede, her fingers running away from my face, her lips un-catching from mine.

I grasped at her wrist without fully meaning to and held her palm once more against my cheek. I tried to speak, but she soothed my babbling with a hush and her mouth -- warm against the cold winter air -- once more upon mine. And now I kissed her. Yielded to her tongue as she in turn welcomed mine, and was lost in the splendour, the velvet and the taste of her.

She put her other gloved hand to my lips. I thought she meant to stop me, but she pressed the rabbit-skin between my teeth with an expectant look. I obeyed, unsheathing her fingers with the same little bites that she had shown me. One at a time, I pulled each freed finger into my mouth and suckled upon it, and each time drew a contented sigh from my beautiful Queen.

She slipped off her shawl, and laid it out on the floor amongst the meagre straw that was to be our bedding. Her hands went to work on the fastenings at the high neck of her dress. I put a cautious hand to my own cloak. She nodded her yes, eyes glittering.

I shook myself free of the heavy cape, pulled shaking hands from sheepskin gloves and fussed uselessly with wooden buttons. My eyes were locked on my Queen the whole time as with each clasp she unfastened, another bright space of snowy flesh was revealed. Her throat, her collarbone, the lilac shadow of her cleavage. She stopped. Her dress split open to her waist, the corsetry of her undergarment still covering her midriff and embellishing her breasts.

She smiled, took a step closer to me, and with less flustered fingers than mine loosened me from my clothing. She spread her hands out across my chest, her fingers toying in the hair there. She wrapped me in another kiss, her arms locking about my neck. I pulled her tight against my body, my hands encircling the smallest part of her waist.

The longer that we kissed, the less doubt and bewilderment I felt. Our longing was a shared one, and it changed the flavour of every memory of our time together. To know that she had felt desire in all those odd moments where we were alone, that roused the fire in me. I felt I could ---

Seren broke the kiss. It was like being cut off from air. She pushed her hand against the middle of my chest, and I accepted her guidance to lie back upon the floor. Comfort be damned.

She settled in a straddle across me. Her thighs and hips lost in the sea of her skirts, but I could yet feel her womanhood pressing against the heat of my covered loins. Seren took a moment to rake her fingernails over my chest, before loosening the ribbons of her corset, so that the structure fell entirely away. Oh, the sight of her. Each teardrop breast, snowflake white and bejewelled with a pointed pink rosebud. Her shapely body was softer, rounder and more organic once freed from the formality of her regal garb. I clutched wantonly at the spill of her hips and she began a rolling motion, grinding herself against my hardened member.

I pulled her down to me, enclosing my arms about her bare back, feeling the sweep of her beautiful hair against my skin. In the cold or not, all I wanted to feel was the warmth of her flesh on mine. I could not bear for there to be any space between us. We kissed like people who'd never known such a thing could be done until that instant. Revelled in it. Her tooth caught my lower lip and I remembered -- as if I could ever truly forget - that my Queen was a huntress.

Now my hands urgently shifted skirts, slipping beneath white petticoats to roam calves, knees, thighs and buttocks. I traced my palms and fingertips over every plain and dimple of her shape. She unbuttoned the waist of her skirts, and with a momentarily concealed grin, lifted the whole stack of lace up and off over her head.

I muttered a curse when I saw her all at once. She smiled, but it was clear that anything less on my part would have offended her. She knew that she was a stunning woman.

I swear my whole body was shaking as she fished my cock from my trousers. Her beautiful pale fingers caressed me, now engorged and darkened. She squeezed me, testing, at the base of my shaft and softly cupped my sacs. I melted into muted groans as she toyed with me, running her fingernail slowly across my head. She swirled her fingertip in the seeping stickiness.

Her hand closed around me, causing my breath to halt. I was ridged and tense in her soft palm. For a few moments she worked my length in her fist. But there was no further work to be done upon me. I was as thick with excitement as I could ever be.

My Queen set herself across me again, open thighs aligned with the stiff rod that she gripped in one hand. Her other hand parted the thicket of hair that bordered her wet sweetness. My hands rested on her knees.

"Slowly." She said, stern, but ever smiling.

I nodded. I intended to obey, not another thought had a place in my head.

She pressed herself against my tip. Wet heat. I lifted my hips, urgent with the desire for her to be sunk down upon me, my whole shaft buried in her.

"Slowly." She said again, with a playful shake of her head.

And slowly it was. She slipped her way onto me one tiny motion at a time. It was all I could do to simply lay back and gaze upon her.

I had so much I wanted to tell her. That I was compelled by her courage and grace and unbending will. That she was the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on. But that's what all men say whether we mean it or not; or at least, so think women. I said nowt.

She slid up and down me, taking her pleasure, biting her bottom lip. I reached out to weigh her breasts in my hands. Her sigh was music.

I was rapturous, my body beneath her a mess of heat, want and honest disbelief. The feel of her on me. The quivering grip of her around me. I wanted so to please her. To have my arrow meet her mark.

When she sank to the hilt again, I held her hips to bring her to rest there and moved her to grind back and fourth instead of up and down. Her eyelids fluttered a moment as I found the centre of her pleasure, then she moaned deliciously as I met her there again and again. Her fingers clasped around my shoulders and she fell to kissing me once more.

I moved my hands to her rear, mapping the luxurious shape with my palms. She rolled her hips in circles, raising her own excitement as much as mine as she forgot her own insistence on 'slowly' and began to pick up a pace.

Her head tipped back in ecstasy, and I groaned at the sight of her. The pale flesh of her throat, the rise of her breasts.

When next she looked at me; her face was aglow, her lips parted. Her breasts swung in small circles and her long hair cascaded down her back. She was ever hotter and wetter round me. Her moans! Her shuddering, clenching hot cunt! Her eyes fell closed. Her whole body trembled. And I knew with no shortage of satisfaction that we had fulfilled her desire.

My Queen's breath was shallow, her limbs shaky. I sat up, still within her, and pulled her close to my chest, wrapping my arms tightly about her. She laid her head against my shoulder. Her cunny still pulsed sporadically and each squeeze sent pleasure through me.

"Owain," she whispered. I put my mouth to hers. I loved her so.

With one hand firm about her upper thigh, I lifted her, quicker and quicker, up and down upon my shaft. I was desperate for her, bouncing her on my cock over and over, pushing up into her wet cunt. I felt that inevitable wave of gratification.

And with a final unrestrained thrust, I gave her all the seed I had.

***

A strange thing came about. After the bear, the Queen summoned me to her often. At first, she'd ask my advice on hunting and fishing, anxious she said, to keep the castle's food supply secure in the winter. But, we were nearer the spring by now, and I'd seen our full stores. Eventually, she called me without any specific question in mind, and I simply assisted her with her mare and pets though she'd never needed any help at all before.

But never did she speak of how I had held her on the mountain. Never did she reconstruct circumstances that I could know I was permitted to kiss her, to make her feel the way I knew I could.

In the first light of the cold early morn, she left the bothy with scarcely a word, though she slept the night soundly in my adoring embrace. I puzzled upon it every night when I lay upon my bunk. If her desire for me was over, why make any other sort of companion of me? If it was not -- why never indulge it again?

The riddle very quickly was an ache.

***

The castle had visitors. Well. The castle always had visitors. Gentry and clergy, and generals and the like. But these visitors were foreign royals, and so their presence was felt by everyone. Even us lads there by way of penance.

Now I can't claim to have ever known much about the politics of our kingdom, but it was well known that King Harold and his whole lineage had never been a friend of ours. Our grandfathers had wars. So our fathers had no fathers. So we sons were still bitter on their behalf. Most kingdoms have such a story I think.

On arrival, King Harold did not live up to being the villain I wished to paint him as. He had a jolly, boisterous manner - like a fat puppy - and had brought Queen Seren such a mountain of gifts that they required their own carriage. And he looked but a boy to me; golden-haired and surely not yet twenty-five. All the scullery maids swooned. I didn't like him.

The rumours were flying round everywhere. Even stable lads who'd never took no notice of owt the royals did were peddling castle gossip. One thing was consistent. King Harold was here to propose to Queen Seren.

Everything after that was a thick cloud of smoke, where all truths were obscured and so all possibilities were entertained.

The union might create a shared heir and peace between our countries ever after.

The union might provoke a revolt amongst the lords and ladies that lost family in the war and would not forgive, leading to bloody civil war.

The union might see our country vanish into the folds of theirs, our independence lost forever.

Refusal of the proposal might see the King declare war upon us in vengeance. (Or at least, damage trade. This is what the merchants were always saying. Though I couldn't fathom why who married who should make any bloody difference to the cost of brass and grain. But their faces was pale, so I reckon they knew something I didn't.)