Summoning the Incubus Ch. 07

The Queen dragged the poor wretch up from the floor.

"This man summoned me, and begged to be put into my service, which is where I have duly put him. I have no knowledge of his connection to you whatsoever,"

I turned on the unfortunate soul.

"So you'd put me on a pyre for my summoning 'sin' but gladly trade yourself to a succubus?"

It took him several attempts to make a communicative sound, and when he did it was a rapturous whisper, sentiment tumbling out all at once.

"I have come here to make amends to you for my crimes, they told me that you were a harlot and a devil - but when I saw you wreathed in flame - I knew that you were an angel of justice. I am come to pledge myself to you... once more.'

"He saw you wreathed in flame?" Lazuren asked in my ear with a raised brow and a sly grin. I shot him a warning look. He poured himself a drink.

"Why were you even there? I knew every man in that mob, but you were - and are - a stranger to me,"

The young man looked pained to hear that I did not know him.

"You are only unacquainted with me because you chose not to attend our wedding."

I felt the blood drain from my face.

"Heavenly bodies - what a drama!" Queen Lusaka squealed delightedly. Lazuren was silent. He put his goblet down.

"After we left the forest, I knew I wanted to marry only you," the boy insisted, "I had never seen or known you before that day, but I felt I saw your soul, pure as fire. Devine and righteous! So I have hunted for spell books and shamans to find my way to a demon who can help me find my way to you. I know that there is no way back. But if you would permit me to make my vows to you here, I need never go back to be utterly happy forever more." The boy's eyes were wide and dewy.

I was taken aback. And then I was angry.

"This is such nonsense,' I spat, "You know not a thing of me. Besides which, you had no reason to think I would accept your proposal, this is pure arrogance on your part."

"Arrogance? Does not the size of my sacrifice convey the earnestness of my heart? I love you!"

I was baffled. We had never exchanged words, never held each other's gaze, never brushed elbows in a crowded room. Yet he spoke of love that had already carried itself across realms and through deserts.

And he did almost love me. I felt it burning off him, his emotions swirling in the air like hot magic. It was not what he said it was - romantic and noble - but it was a kind of love. A feverish, religious adulation, part worship and part desire. And though I could end his breath with a vicious word - his strange devotion frightened me.

"No, it conveys your unthinking stupidity and not a thing more. Even if I did believe your fanciful talk, divinity is not to be shackled to you like a prize ox, it is to be worshiped. No adored woman should suffer the indignity of wifehood."

He threw his body upon the floor and sobbed like a sorry bairn.

"I -I - I- meant no offence, please, please. Hel-"

"Enough!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. A terrible truth was uncoiling itself in my stomach. He knew something that was not meant to be known. Something that belonged to me.

I flew across the room, grabbed the boy by his upper arm and dragged him to his feet.

I looked back to the Queen.

"Your Majesty, I will return your charge to you at my earliest convenience,"

"Don't be ridiculous witch. You aren't taking my prize anywhere," she snorted.

We both looked at Lazuren. He stood up, positioning himself in the space between us.

"My most esteemed Ladies," he cooed uneasily, "Pray do not fight,"

"Make her give me my pet back, Laz," hissed the Queen.

He took one look at my enraged face and knew better than to test me.

"My sweet Queen," he soothed, his hand slithering to rest in the small of Queen Lusaka's back, "Perhaps we should let these small people see to their trivial grievances and take some time for ourselves?"

I was too relieved that the Queen was distracted to begin bemoaning his method. The bemused guards looked to the King for instruction, but he was snoring in his throne, untroubled by any portion of the outburst. They let me pass. With a thankful glance back at Lazuren I hauled the idiot boy away by his elbows.

***

"You're so strong," Nicklas whispered admiringly.

"Shut your mouth. Don't say another word until I tell you that you can."

He nodded, jaw tight.

I pulled the boy through the library and into a small adjacent room used to store writing supplies. A broken incubus-sized chair gathered dust there waiting hopelessly to be mended.

"Sit." I commanded.

Clumsily pulling himself into the huge chair, he did as he was told. I locked the door behind us and began to scramble in a small chest for the totems and ingredients for my spell. To my great relief I found the needle and thread.

"H-"

"Hold you tongue." I said. I was decanting bottles of jet-black ink into a washing bowl. Muttering spells. Soaking the thread in the ink. I spat into it. My hands were shaking. I was working on an explanation and struggling.

"I need to perform a spell upon you,' I told him feverishly, "Because I, well, because... I cannot trust you to tell me the truth." My hands and voice felt like they belonged to someone else I had so little steer over them.

"I would never lie to y-"

"Enough!"

I tried to thread the needle but I shook too hard. I clambered up onto the chair so that I could look down upon him.

"How did you even know I was here?" I despaired, "The forest was the last time you saw me,"

"We went back to find you - Heidi and I, I mean - but Katherine told us you'd left. That you'd come here..."

"Heidi? Katherine?" My panic was molten. "Who's Katherine?"

"Heidi wanted to look for you, so did I, we went together. We met Kat-"

"Heidi wanted to see me?" I began to sob hoarsely; it was this strange blade of sunshine in the storm of my frenzy.

"Yes. We went into the forest... at night... that was a mistake," he grimaced, "But we found the cottage and Katherine and..."

"Shut up, shut up. You spoke to Kas... after I was gone..." My whole body was ice cold and sick inside. I held the needle against his face. "Did you... and this is very, very important... did you tell Kasita my name?"

"Tell... Kasita? You mean Katherine? You two were friends were you not? She was there that day..."

"Did you tell her my name!?"

"Well... she would have known it already surely? I'm sure we would have used it... We were there for you after all..."

"Fuck!"

"I don't understand, Hel-"

I slapped him across his jaw. He recoiled with a puppy's howl. My palm tingled with a mild hot pain. His eyes were wet. He moved as if to leave the chair, but I sat across his lap and pinned him in place.

I was trying again to thread my needle. Angry with myself that I was enacting my plan so ineptly. I should have got the spell done before asking any questions.

"Open your mouth." I said.

"Why?" he said gormlessly. I pushed a rag between his teeth and over his tongue like a horse's bit.

"This spell," I told him, "Is to make sure that you can only tell me the truth, do you understand?" He nodded, tears fell from his wide eyes.

I grasped at his bottom lip between my thumb and forefinger and turned it inside out. I began my embroidery into the soft wet flesh. With each dip of the needle, the surface flooded scarlet again. He groaned and sobbed. I kept myself straddled across him, holding him into the seat with my thighs. I felt the dull heat of him.

I ignored both his physical agony, and his hot shame for his arousal. Self-preservation was the only instinct I could follow. Even as I whispered the words of my dark spell into his ear, my hand clamped tight across his mouth, his cloth-constrained cock was hard against my thigh. But I was single minded in my goal.

The incantation completed, I pulled the rag out from between his swollen bleeding lips. I dragged the textile roughly over his mouth to soak up the worst of it. I held his jaw in my hand; I felt the lump where I had struck him. But I did not feel my remorse yet.

"Tell me my name," I said.

He opened and closed his mouth like a fish. Not a sound came out. His face was horrified. I almost relaxed.

"My true name is Greta," I told him, "What is my name?"

"...Greta," he responded eventually, his voice thick and morose.

"Very good," I said, breathing normally for the first time since entering the store room, "Now I know I can trust you."

"You could always trust me," he whispered. He gasped at the sound of his own words, then almost smiled. I felt his relief flood him too. As if he hadn't been certain that this was true until he heard himself say it under an honesty spell.

Not that this was the real purpose of my spell of course. I ignored him.

"How is my mother?' I asked.

"She is well, she runs your father's mill since his... injury... He is well also, aside from his, his, his blindness,"

"I did not ask after him!" I snapped. That my father had recovered but was blind was reassuring and harrowing together. It was certainly what he deserved, but I had put my mother in such hardship. She had already spent her life cooking and cleaning for him, and I had given her all the more care to do.

"My sister Mildred?"

"Her baby son was born healthy. She is widowed."

"I did not ask after them," I hissed again, though I knew that these things were part of the same question. "How does she fair?"

"She inherited a little of her husband's money, but who can say how long it will last. She takes in mending and washing, but nobody needs it, it is only charity. The whole village gossips of who she ought to marry next, but many fear ...witchcraft."

"But she is safe? Happy?"

"Well... safe for now. I couldn't truthfully say happy. All remark on how much more beautiful she is since Wilem's passing, but it only adds to the accusations of black magic."

"Humph. I expect she gets to sleep better at night now. Even with the baby."

He nodded in understanding. I hated him. He had known. This stranger from another village had known. Everyone fucking knew. No one did anything to help her.

I peeled his bottom lip back down and stretched it toward his chin. I did it only to hurt him, but I inspected my spell. Stitched into the inside of his lip was my given name: a word he'd never be able to speak again. Eventually, the black threads would bind to his body and be lost to the eye.

His cock wriggled when I hurt him. I felt a strange thrill of both disgust and intrigue. I quelled it.

"What of Heidi? How did you come to know her?"

"She came in search of me - to scream curse words at me mainly - but once I explained to her that I intended to go back to the forest for you... she simply wouldn't hear of not accompanying me..."

"And then what happened?" I sneered, "I lived in the forest for almost a year - I never saw you at all."

"No," he shook his head sadly, "We tried many times, but we were always waylaid. Weather, apparitions, beasts. When we travelled in the daylight it was as if tricks were being played upon us - we lost our path or were struck with dreadful headaches. When we travelled at night... well... I'm sure know something of the creatures in those woods..."

I nodded, though I could not quite understand why the lit journey should have been so difficult a task. I had managed it after all. As had he the very next day.

He continued, "When we did at last reach the cottage, you weren't there any longer - only Katherine was there - or Kasita? The witch who was with you the day of the... the... pyre. She is who I mean. She told us you had left our world altogether."

"Did she say why?"

"She said she didn't know, but she suspected that after she had rejected your family that you had wished to return your powers to the creature that had given them to you..."

This was an interesting interpretation. Perhaps if this was what Kasita thought then this whole panicked ritual had been unnecessary. Still, better safe than too dead to be sorry. I did not intend to end up as Marianne had.

Nicklas was staring at me with the large bright eyes of a new calf.

I kissed his bleeding mouth. Barely. Like you would a baby or a pet. I cannot say why. I suppose I was grateful. But as I backed away he leant in to kiss me again. I stopped him with three fingers pressed against his lips. Then I thought of Lazuren, by now no doubt buried to the hilt in Queen Lusaka. And not for the first time in my life, jealously made a fool of me.

"The Queen - has she treated you well?" I asked him, lifting my fingers away to let him speak.

"She brought me to you in chains! How can you ask if she has treated me well?" Colour rose on his cheeks.

"Did she take anything from you that you did not want to give?" I asked seriously.

"No." he said, small and defeated, "But it meant nothing. My love still belongs to you."

"I have no use for your love." I sneered. "And all I have felt burning off you while we've been here is excitement in any case." I sighed. I couldn't deny that I was curious. I had never been with an ordinary man.

"Do not chide me for desire that has led me to summon a demoness and leap a dimension in search of you," he pleaded, "All I want is to please you."

I looked into his dark eyes. Eyes that could reflect light, but never cast their own. I felt the haze of his emotions, fear and arousal, a willingness to suffer for a righteous cause, a taste for pain, the conviction of a convert.

I dug my fingernails into Nicklas' shoulders.

"I don't think that you could ever be enough for me." I said quietly, "But I'd like to give you the opportunity to try."

I set my kiss upon his lips, catching the faintest taste of his blood on my tongue. The iron in his blood scraped against the magic in mine. The friction was delicious, like sour gooseberries against sweet pears.

I kissed him with an effort, and felt the sparks of pain flash through him as I kissed his bloody mouth. He whimpered, but he made his efforts to return the kiss in spite of it. His hands fell to my hips, slipping under the decorative golden chain that symbolised my supposed slavery to an Incubus Prince.

I set my teeth against his pale neck. Not biting, just, taking note of his response, the way he relaxed to my will. I ran my fingers over his silver collar and chain. I could feel vibrating magic woven into the metal. This was a chain that only a succubus could break.

I ground my hips against his heat, working to summon my own. I liked the way that straddled across him, he fit so neatly between my thighs. He seemed smaller than me almost. And he was so much weaker. Delicate, like a fungus growing long and white in the moonlight.

I was gentler when I undressed Nicklas. Unthreading the laces of his tattered shirt and britches, peeling back the dull fabrics to reveal his lithe body and lily-skin. He didn't blush to be seen, but I felt his craving for approval.

"You have beauty," I said quietly, running my fingers up and down his chest, my fingertips slipping through sparse dark hairs there, unsure of what to make of them. His ribs did not show through his skin, but I felt them there as my hands passed over. I could snap them, I thought, but I didn't linger on it.

His cock looked small to me, but I knew I'd no knowledge of human men by which to judge him. Against his white thigh it was ruddy and gleaming. When I wrapped my fist about him, I didn't completely contain his length. I was surprised by how much I liked the way that he felt. The skin was like warm silk. He was fragile. A pearl of his seed was beading at his tip. How odd for it to be white... The likeness to my own body surprised me.

I stood up, still on the over-sized chair, with one foot either side of his hips. I lifted my dress, exposing my mound to him. There was no need to provide him with instructions. He parted my labia with his fingers and put his mouth to my opening. I took a breath. His tongue lapped diligently for a time before scooping deeper into my cunt.

I held the back of his head in my hands. I could crush his skull... I thought. A shiver went through me. He mistook it for my pleasure and worked harder at his task. I began to stroke his dark hair instead, busying my fingers. Smoothing the troubling aspects of my desire away.

I looked down at him. His eyes were closed. He was a pretty thing, with his snowdrop skin and black lashes. Pleasure slowly started to take hold of me as I relaxed into the sensations of his service; his tongue circling my opening, slipping within, sliding without, tracing the teardrop of my clit. My knees weakened a little, I leant myself more fully against him.

I felt a ripple in my body, soft and gently begging. The whisper from within that sighs that most inexplicable desire... the need to be filled.

I pushed his forehead away from between my thighs. He looked up, a little mournful.

"Am I disappointing you?" he said quietly.

I shook my head and smiled lightly, tucking a strand of his dark hair back behind his ear. I liked him better when he had the good sense to be doubtful.

I knelt with my knees on either side of his square hips. I kissed him again, noticing that now that I had begun to pay attention to it, I could feel the iron in him even where he was not bleeding. His whole body was subtly laced with that which poisoned me and I felt a quiet thrill in recognising it. In the tangible sense of his rusted defences, common sense that he'd abandoned to chase... what was it? 'An angel'?

I laid my palms upon his chest, feeling the judder of his quickened heartbeat. He was unthinkingly lifting his hips from the chair and I liked that he had so little sense of himself as to know he was doing it. My body consumed him. He had no thought for his own even as it ached with need. His wide eyes drank my image in.

I'd had enough of contemplation. It was time to serve my body's plea. I plucked the stout cock in my hand and tipped the brim of my chalice against it. He gasped at the slick warmth as if he had already forgotten the work he had done to make my body ready for him.

I fed his length slowly into my cunny, leaning back a little, slipping over him. His manhood felt neat and comfortable inside me. So much less intense than that which I had known; and yet undeniably likeable. I wiggled a little bit; movements upon him were so easy!

When he was neatly buried within, I wrapped my arms about his shoulders, breathing in the scent of sweat and iron from his skin.

Nicklas put his arms around my shoulders just as I held him. He clung tightly.

I bounced gently on his member, finding it so little labour for sweet enough reward. No flame upon my body, no sweat running down my back... but a different kind of indulgence. To know the natural after the supernatural is not to find the natural diminished. It is to know the subtleties and graces of it that could not be understood without the gift of contrasts. If one has only ever seen cut gems, then the river-smoothed pebble is cast with the allure of the sublime...

And he was sublime. In spite of everything, I could not help but enjoy his sinewy arms secure about me, and his solid manhood so easily enveloped.

I moved more quickly, the heat I craved awakening in the pit of my stomach.

His body shuddered. His cock spat. He made no sound, only put his face against my shoulder. His eyes were wet.

Waves of his feelings struck me. So much shame. So much desire to be loved. Disquieted, I stroked his hair. I did not know how to comfort him without a lie.

"I may not be worthy of you now," he said without lifting his face, "But I meant every word I said to you. I love you ardently and earnestly and I have every desire to spend the rest of my only certain life with you."