Kyra and the Swordstress Pt. 07

Marcus said, "You may know me as the Gryphon-Heart, my lord, but once, long before the red sands of the Varna arena knew my footprints, I was general of the indomitable army of the Eastern Citadel. Many battles I have fought. Many years of war mar my heart. I am weary of carrying a sword, yet for a righteous cause, I am ready to do so again."

Eldan then spoke. "General Marcus will bear my standard, and with my knights behind him, he shall act as the vanguard for the highland rebels against the Grand Army."

"The rebels will surely rally to Marcus the Gryphon-heart," Lady Genevieve Rowenhall pronounced. "So too will my knights!"

"And the knights of Estridsen," Lord Roderick joined, an unexpected fire in his voice.

Lord Maximilian smirked. He crossed his arms and stroked his beard thoughtfully. All the eyes of the amphitheater rested on him. The silence drew out the sounds of the breeze-whipped crackle of the torch flames and the deep groans of the grouse that nested in the eaves of the spruce.

"What say you, Lord Maximilian? Is it time to claim your debt?"

Lord Maximilian drew a deep breath before responding, coarse with emotion, "Our Lady Genevieve has quite the venom in her words regarding my character. Greedy. Vulturous. Coward. Only a few of the choice words she paints me with. Not the gentlest way to treat a fellow noble, but I am under no illusion that she alone harbors such sentiments. I am certain she speaks for the lot of you. And perhaps there's some truth to it. Perhaps I am all those qualities she claims I have. But there's one quality she forgets to mention, one that is as much a part of me as the very bones that hold me upright: my unshakeable loyalty to those I am lucky enough to call my friends."

Maximilian stood and faced Eldan. His voice firm, he continued, "Your chances of success in this plot are scant, Eldan, but without my knights, they are nil. Our houses rose together to great heights. If it comes to it, it is only fitting that we fall together to ruin. So let it be known in the annals of history that House Salmburg, for better or for ruin, shall commit its knights today to the cause and command of House Turracher. And all debts be damned!"

Eldan went to Maximilian and nodded as he offered his hand. Maximilian gripped the duke's forearm in the way knights do as a gesture of strength and solidarity.

"Then we are in agreement," Eldan said aloud to the amphitheater. "Our four great houses shall fight the king to liberate the slaves and return Varna to the path of righteousness."

"Long live King Eldan!" shouted a voice in the crowd. Others echoed the shout as a jubilant chorus, their voices rising together.

Scarlet turned to Mirela to see her reaction but found that she was not there.

"My lady!" Scarlet squeaked. She swiveled her head frantically to look for her charge, just in time to catch a silver glimpse of Mirela's dress passing between the thicket.

Scarlet hopped to her feet and chased after her.

"Your Highness!" she hissed. Mirela only picked up speed, storming off with anger in each stomping footstep.

Scarlet caught up to her and matched her speed.

"Your Highness, please!"

They had reached the end of the grove by the time Mirela stopped.

She sniffled, brushing away a tear Scarlet had not noticed before. The tears surprised Scarlet.

"What's wrong?" Scarlet asked softly.

Mirela shook her head. She brushed away another tear and heaved a heavy sigh.

"You object to your father's plan to free the slaves," Scarlet said.

"No. I object to seeing them face certain death. To choose the destruction of the Great Houses."

"Marcus is a great warrior," Scarlet replied. "He will lead their army to victory."

"I'm sorry, Scarlet, you are naïve! You do not understand what they have arrayed against them. Lord Maximilian is right to say they do not stand a chance."

"But their cause is righteous."

"When the goddess of death comes to collect their souls, she does not ask how righteous their cause, Scarlet. The king's coffers are limitless. He has allies that are more powerful than you can imagine. He will call on an endless train of mercenaries to destroy them if need be, and he's willing to impoverish his kingdom in the process."

"If you truly believe that, then perhaps if you just speak to your --

"Oh, he won't listen to a single word from me. He is as naïve as you are."

Scarlet huffed. "Call me naïve all you want, your highness, but you forget that I am the daughter to a murdered queen and former slave of Varna, and I have the scars to prove it. If there's anything I've learned in all my wretched life, it's this: sometimes, the only option is to fight. Countless people in this damned kingdom have been trodden on by so-called nobles for too long. It's a shame they hadn't fought sooner. Pah! Noble! What an empty title. What an absurd charade. Except in the rare cases where people are truly noble. To serve as a shield to the downtrodden? That is truly noble. You should be proud of your father, Your Highness, even if you believe his cause foolish."

Mirela considered Scarlet's words for a moment. There was an uncomfortable silence between them, except for Scarlet's heaving breaths and the soft sounds of the crickets in the garden. But then, Mirela wiped away her tears, then grabbed both Scarlet's hands and pulled her close to her, and said, "I believe I told you once before, stop calling me 'Your Highness.' Call me Mirela," and without warning, she leaned in and pressed her lips to Scarlet's.

Scarlet froze up. Her eyes widened. Her hands clenched tightly. She let out a muffled gasp but did not withdraw from the kiss. It was the first she had ever received, and although this circumstance was far from those in which she imagined her first kiss, it was as wonderful as she had hoped it might be. For a brief moment, she forgot everything else that had transpired that night. For that moment, however long it might last, it was just her and Mirela and that soft, warm kiss.

After Mirela released the kiss, Scarlet opened her eyes to see her puffy eyes and cheeks glistening in the moonlight. She wanted sorely to hug Mirela. To kiss her back and tell her that everything will be alright. That the cage door was open, and they were free to fly away together. But having been a slave for so long, she instinctively knew the truth. To fly was an impossibility.

***

Scarlet accompanied Mirela to her apartment in the castle. Her plan was to return to her own quarters to retire for the night once she had escorted Mirela to her apartment, but as she turned to leave, Mirela grabbed her hand and whispered,

"My handmaidens are with their families tonight. Stay with me a while?"

There was quiet desperation in her voice, almost fear.

"Okay," Scarlet whispered back, unsure what staying a while might entail.

"I'll need help with my gown. Come unbutton my back," Mirela said.

Scarlet's throat tightened. Undress Mirela? She had only fantasized about such a thing. Heart pounding, she nodded.

Mirela walked to the dressing room. Scarlet followed her there with intense trepidation and, in front of a gilded mirror, began to unfasten the golden buttons of Mirela's outer gown, starting with the one at the nape of her neck.

Scarlet's fingers trembled. Her breathing was labored, sounding loud in the stillness of the dressing room. Moonlight spilled in through the tall windows, providing enough light for Scarlet to catch their reflections in the mirror. She noticed the gleaming drops of moonlight in Mirela's eyes in the mirror while she worked on the buttons of the dress, making her conscious that she was attentively watched while she performed her task.

Each button she undid revealed a little more of Mirela's skin. Each one meant Mirela was a fraction more exposed. With bated breath, she watched the delicate curve of Mirela's spine slowly reveal itself, down to the stays wrapped around her midsection.

As the outer gown slipped from Mirela's shoulders, Scarlet caught her breath. She long yearned to see and to touch these small shoulders, which, she just now discovered, were sprinkled with lovely clusters of freckles. She brushed a hand against Mirela's skin, sending shivers down her spine, the electrifying sensation threatening to cause her to release a sigh of pleasure. She closed her eyes and tried with all her might to swallow the sound, as to betray her desire now would certainly mean a swift end to her fledgling career as house knight. Or would it?

"The stays, please," Mirela innocently said after the dress came off as if it were a menial task. As if she could not tell that Scarlet was struggling fiercely against her desires.

The stays were laced in the back, a neat pink bow holding the laces tight at the top of the stays. Scarlet pulled the bow loose, loosening the stays, then pulled the stays over her head, leaving Mirela only her cotton shift and stockings.

Mirela turned to face Scarlet. Scarlet took a step back instinctively. Mirela stepped towards her, then put a hand on her cheek. Her hand rested on Scarlet's cheek, and Scarlet let it rest there for a while, allowing it to warm her cheek. Then Mirela dragged her hand down to the collar of Scarlet's gown to the button at the collar to pluck it loose.

Understanding the duchess's intentions, Scarlet muttered,

"I don't think this is a good idea."

"Tonight is not a night of good ideas, Scarlet."

She leaned in and kissed Scarlet. The kiss was soft, just like the last time, only this time, the kiss was devoid of the tremors of fear and confusion. It was a fully committed kiss and conveyed a want of nothing else in the world but Scarlet, and it beckoned Scarlet to give nothing less than all her being to it. So she did. She gave back, pressing her body against Mirela's, pressing lip against lip, and letting slip her tongue into Mirela's mouth.

Mirela's fingers undid the buttons of Scarlet's gown while they kissed. Scarlet still felt the pangs of trespass as her buttons came undone, but the anticipation of having her most deeply held desire was stronger than her will to keep the sacred nature of her oath inviolate. But alas, life was more than keeping an oath. There was a beating heart that needed tending to. A flame that needed stoking.

Once all the buttons down her front were undone, her gown came off over her head. Scarlet helped it off by shimmying her shoulders through the sleeves. Next came off her staves. Then her shift so that there was nothing more than her stockings on her body and the ribbons that held the top of her stockings to her thighs.

Her nakedness made her vulnerable. She was used to feeling vulnerable, but this was not the same. This was not the sort of vulnerability incensed with a primal fear she knew all too well as a slave, but one wrapped in an exhilarating abandon. The kind of vulnerability that emerged when the soul was stripped of all its heavy armor.

A cool breeze came through an opened window to brush against her naked skin. Mirela's hands joined the breeze, brushing first along the outside of Scarlet's arms, then over her breasts. Scarlet enjoyed Mirela's eyes dancing like flames across her body, taking all of her vulnerability in, leaving no naked part of her untouched with their gaze, each flickering glance filled with adoration as intoxicating and intense as the first sip of wine.

An intense, prickling warmth grew through Scarlet with every tracing stroke of Mirela's fingers and touch of her lips and tongue.

Scarlet succumbed to her vulnerability, yet she was not afraid, because now, she yearned to give herself to her mistress.

Mirela's kisses departed Scarlet's lips. They went down her neck. Soft sucking kisses left cool, wet spots that made her shiver whenever the breeze touched her skin.

"Will you stay with me tonight?" Mirela asked in a pleading voice.

Scarlet responded by uttering a restrained whimper through her teeth. Then Mirela's mouth went to Scarlet's heaving breasts. Her whimper became a moan when she felt lips wrap around one of her fully hardened nipples. Her knees buckled.

Seeming to take her response as a yes, Mirela took Scarlet by the hand to her bed, laid her down atop the plush expanse of the duvet, then straddled her, pressing their hot, wet loins together. Finally, she doffed her shift to reveal perky breasts that caught the pale moonlight at the top of them and shadows beneath. Scarlet reached up to put her fingers on them but retracted her hand as if she had put them too close to a hot iron. Not accepting the coyness from her knight-turned-lover, she took Scarlet's nervous hand and pulled it to one of her breasts. "Don't be shy. Do what you will with them," she said.

Scarlet took heed. She traced a gentle line with a forefinger against the soft contour of her breast, tracing circles around her areola, then tweezing her nipple gently, causing Mirela to let out a quiet squeal. She did the same with the other breast, reveling in the softness of the flesh and in the way Mirela responded to her touch. But she wanted more than touch. She wanted a taste.

Scarlet propped herself up on her hands and craned her neck, first to give Mirela a consolation kiss on her lips before diving into her breasts. She wrapped her lips around one of Mirela's pert nipples and sucked.

Mirela arched her back and clutched the back of Scarlet's head, tugging on her scalp. "Yes!" she squealed.

Encouraged, Scarlet sucked Mirela's enlarging nipple harder. She played with it with her tongue, enjoying the slight taste of salt from the night's sweat.

"You have no idea how long I wanted this," Mirela moaned.

Scarlet popped the nipple out of her mouth. She wiped her lips with her forearm and, with a growing smile, asked, "Tell me how long."

"As long as I can remember."

"Really?"

Mirela nodded the pain of an intense lust-driven hunger written on her face. "So much so," she replied.

The revelation caused Scarlet's heart to burst with affection. So Mirela had wanted her for as long as she wanted Mirela. What better feeling was there than to share a requited desire after so many years?

Scarlet moved from one nipple to the other, armed with fiery confidence. No more was she concerned about her knightly oath as this secret love, being a shared love, bound them together more strongly than any oath of words could.

When Scarlet was done with Mirela's nipples, she pushed her off her hips, then rolled over to top her, pinning her to the duvet at the wrists to go down on her, to bring Mirela to ecstasy in her loins with mouth and tongue.

Scarlet said before going down on her, "I, too, wanted you for as long as I can remember."

A smile grew on Mirela's face.

"Now you have me, Scarlet. Make me forget there's anything else in the world except you."

So, to satisfy her mistress's yearning, Scarlet finally went down on her, leaving prints of glistening saliva on her skin with slow kisses until she was down to face Mirela's blonde-brushed vulva, which emanated a pleasing heat.

Mirela spread her legs in anticipation of what was to come.

This was Scarlet's first experience with another, but she had enough experience pleasuring herself to know what might please Mirela.

She dipped her fingers into Mirela's wet folds and easily found her hardened bud with her thumb. She rubbed it back and forth in circles, applying a little pressure while penetrating her. Her thighs went taut, and she arched her back. "Yes, Scarlet," she moaned.

Scarlet continued, not letting down the pressure, instead bringing her mouth into the fold. She put her lips around Mirela's clit and swirled her tongue around it, enjoying the taste of her sex. She pushed her finger deeper into Mirela's slit and moved it in and out.

Mirela's moans came faster, her breathing grew deeper, and her muscles quivered. Scarlet continued moving her finger in and out of her. Mirela gripped Scarlet's head, pressing Scarlet's face harder into her hot loins. Scarlet flicked her tongue more quickly, more robustly, keeping with the rising wave of Mirela's ecstasy, until finally, in one final explosive moment, her sex gushed all over Scarlet's mouth.

"Scarlet, that was so wonderful," Mirela breathed as she writhed through her lingering ecstasy.

Scarlet wiped her mouth and crawled up into her arms, happy beyond measure that she had brought her mistress to such height.

They held each other tightly for a moment, enjoying the silent glow before Mirela became restless. Her hand went down to between Scarlet's legs.

"Have you not ever made love, Scarlet?" Mirela asked as her fingers slid between Scarlet's folds.

"Does it show?"

"Not in how you performed -- you performed brilliantly... but in other ways, it certainly does."

Mirela pushed her finger deep into Scarlet, causing a sharp pain. Scarlet jolted and let out a yelp.

"Oh, please be careful with me, Mirela!"

Mirela giggled. "I like hearing my name. Say it more. Scream it if you must when I give you pleasure."

Then Mirela kissed Scarlet, moving her finger back into Scarlet's folds, pressing her finger in again. Gently this time, though, it was still a little painful.

Soon, however, as she got wetter, Mirela's finger slid in and out without effort or pain. Mirela moved it in and out more quickly and used her thumb to rub Scarlet's tender bud deftly.

Scarlet pushed against Mirela's finger, wanting it deeper inside her. So much pleasure simply from fingers. But she knew those weren't the only things to cause her pleasure. It was who the fingers belonged to that mattered because it could be Scarlet's hand at work, which knows her nether regions more than anything else but could not come close to producing the sort of pleasure Mirela was producing for her now. It was that Mirela was inside her that mattered.

Mirela went down on her. She kissed Scarlet's breasts. Played with them with her tongue, teasing them out to hardness with her teeth. "Oh, Mirela," Scarlet gasped.

Mirela went down. She planted kisses down and up Scarlet's thighs and pried them open to get to her blushing, aching fruit.

Then came the tongue to taste the nectar and how intense the feeling of that tongue was, flicking up and down, drawing circles around her tender, pulsing bud, and sliding into the folds of her wet lips.

A tempest of vibrant colors ran rampant through Scarlet's mind, vibrating with her ever-quickening heartbeat. She writhed uncontrollably against the onslaught of Mirela's tongue, clutching the duvet to hold herself in place because otherwise, she would buck too much like a wild mare. She bit her lip but then remembered that Mirela loved hearing her name and that she was permitted to scream it, and so she did. "Oh, Mirela!" she screamed as the powerful waves finally overcame her, causing her to release a powerful deluge of her sex as she curled up into a ball.

Mirela curled around her, held her, and planted soft kisses against her neck and cheek.

In the waning ecstasy, as Scarlet began to regain her faculty, she turned to Mirela and kissed her back. "Thank you, Mirela," Scarlet whispered, still shivering from the aftershocks.

Nuzzling closer to her and on the flickering edge of sleep, Mirela replied, "Thank you for being with me, Hyla of the Wind and Stars."

Then she shut her eyes, and the most peaceful smile Scarlet had ever seen came to her lips.

Hyla of the Wind and Stars. As jarring as it was to hear her true name, it was nice to hear it from Mirela. The fact that only she knew that name made it seem all the more special. It was now a thing only they shared, and she liked that.

As Mirela fell into a deep sleep, Scarlet watched her, keeping her arms tightly around her as she soon began to doze into slumber, realizing that tonight did nothing to bring into doubt the nature of her oath to protect her mistress but quite the opposite. Her resolve to protect Mirela was now doubly strengthened because, whereas before, she only had her knightly commitment to the duke, now she had profound love.