The Will of the Gods Ch. 01

"Regina!"

"Crestoff, I-" She jumped back from the bound figure. "Is something wrong?"

"Wrong?" He crossed the room in three strides. "I'd say so. I came to see how you were getting along with breaking him, and I find you tending to his wounds like a field nurse." He grabbed her wrist and bent it back at a painful angle to expose the incriminating scrap of gauze in her hand, discolored by blood. "Did you forget that the entire point was to hurt him?"

"No," she yelped in protest, trying to wrest her wrist from his grip to no avail. "I just struck too hard, and I didn't want it to mark."

"Why not?" He looked the man over. "There's no reason to preserve him."

"He'd sell quite high on the market as a pleasure slave."

Crestoff cocked his head to the side and raised an eyebrow, rounding his attention back to her. He released her wrist and gently placed his hand on the crook of her neck, stroking her collarbone with his thumb. "You were trying to see his value on the markets, then? Is that why you opened his shirt, dove?"

When he said the nickname, he grabbed the flesh of the curve of her breast near her armpit and pinched it hard. Regina winced.

"And you have decided he's pleasing to your eye. Would you like to keep him for yourself—like Courta?" He spat the name out like a curse.

Regina had never met her grandmother, Queen Courta. She was a strong-willed woman, gifted in the art of breaking slaves, ambitious, and full of life. The painting of the Duchess which hung in the great hall of the castle showed her to be a curvaceous woman with long, blonde hair which she wore mostly pinned high, though she let a few scandalous curls fall from it and hang over her shoulder.

Regina had always envied the painting. She had long, looping tendrils of auburn curls that she loved to see cascading down her back, but her father had never allowed so much as a stray hair out of place. It showed poor breeding in Eldon. Only lower ladies and peasants allowed their hair to fall from its buns. Hair movement was a symptom of the lower classes.

The painting of Regina's grandfather, the late King of Trandon, showed him to be a thin, dark-haired man. When their son was born with a shock of red hair, the whole castle was scandalized. Red was not a common color in this country. However, it was a common characteristic of the neighboring Fadra, where Queen Courta's favorite slave was from. Tongues wagged, but nothing was ever proven, and when Prince Bryton showed himself to have his father's keen intelligence, eye for detail, and the tendency for overreaction, the tongues wagged less. When he proved himself in the Battle of Canter Hill, the tongues stopped wagging altogether.

That is, they stopped wagging until the Heilauns loosened them up again. The small people care little for politics until the coffers are drained, and there had been many years of fighting with the people of Fadra. Instead of offering aid to the small folks, the king had raised their taxes in the name of defending the country. The poor were frustrated. So, when rumors began to slowly spread that the man on the throne might himself be Fadran, many small folks turned their eyes to the next noble family in the royal lineage, the Heilauns.

"Wouldn't want to be like your grandmother, princess," Gregar commented wryly.

Crestoff backhanded him across the face. The blow was sharp enough that it broke the skin along the ridge of the man's right eye. A trickle of blood ran down it.

"You even look like her," Crestoff sneered, rounding back on Regina. "Your hair is falling."

She raised her hand to the high pile of braids on her head that kept her auburn tendrils in check. He was right; she could feel where the pieces had loosened.

His voice was venom. "Go to your room, Regina."

"Already? We were having fun. Weren't we, Regina?"

"No." She glared at him. "We were not having fun. I had gotten him to admit that he is Gregar of Heilaun."

"Admitted is a bit strong," the man corrected.

Crestoff scoffed. When he spoke, his voice dripped with sarcasm. "Right, Regina. The usurper is here with a handful of soldiers to do what exactly?"

"Kidnap the princess," the prisoner explained.

Regina's intended gave a stiff laugh. "You have spirit, man. I'll give you that. Leave, Regina. I'll work on him until the Ceremony. Shouldn't be more than a few hours before the fires are ready. Go to bed and think about how inappropriate you've been. If you can name five things you've done wrong in the morning, I'll let you come to the Ceremony, and I won't tell your father I found you cooing over a slave."

She turned on her heel, too angry to muster a rebuttal. Behind her, she heard Crestoff deal another blow. It sounded like he had brought his fist into the prisoner's stomach. She heard the breath go out of him.

As she turned the corner, she bumped into a large man in a soldier's uniform. He was bigger than any of the guards she had been introduced to, but the turnover for castle guards was high, and a new member was not unexpected.

"Er... Looking for the prisoner," he explained.

She pointed down the hall. "Third door on the left."

---

In her bedroom, Regina fumed. She had not been cooing over a slave, and she had done nothing improper. Well, in the future she would not let a captive tell her how to break them. That must have been where it had gone wrong. She should also find a slave later and find out whether the whip was the best choice for inflicting pain.

Standing in front of the mirror, she looked over her dress. The captive was wrong; it suited her quite well. It was the tree green of Trandon, and it brought out the color in her eyes. She could see his point about the skirt, however. It billowed widely around her ankles and hid her legs entirely from view. She undid the bodice and slid the dress down so that she stood in just her shift.

The satin fabric clung gently to her body. Without the structure of the corset, she realized he was right. Her breasts stayed just as pert without it. Her nipples pressed against the shift. Spring was fading, but the nights still had a chill, and the taut buds had always been sensitive. She slid her arms down to her small waist, pressing the fabric against her skin so that she could see the curves of her body. Her hips were wide, emphasizing her slight waist. She turned sideways to look at her buttocks.

"Not flat at all," she remarked under her breath, smiling at how her ass curved behind her.

Satisfied, she blew out the candles in her room and slipped under her covers. Outside, she heard the clinking of metal as the guards changed shifts. There was a knock, which she expected.

"Yes?"

The door opened.

"Everything alright, princess?" The voice called as it always did when the guard changed. It was male, which was unusual, but not entirely uncommon. Usually, Lady Eileen and Lady Trenta guarded her door, but every once and a while they would be called away for some other shift or get a night off and one of the other guards would fill their place.

"Yes, I'm fine." She replied without getting out of her bed. The door shut.

In the darkness of her room, in the quiet before bed, she felt an aching between her legs. Most people, betrothed for so long, would most likely have consummated the marriage well before the actual wedding. Crestoff and her father, however, had a passion for propriety. She did not mind she heard Crestoff's slaves sometimes screaming if she walked down his hallway. They sounded nothing like the cries of passion one occasionally heard from a kitchen maid and a cook rutting in some small closet. The girls with Crestoff sounded... pained. Regina feared the night of her wedding. She was terrified that Crestoff would show her exactly what was going on in his chambers.

As she grew older, however, her mind wandered in the darkness before bed to those things she had seen as she snuck about the castle. Usually, she played the part of the kitchen maid and imagined how it felt to have a man inside of her. Once, she had seen through a crack in the door, a soldier with his hand around Lady Trenta's throat. She could not tell who the soldier was, but Lady Trenta did not at all seem to mind the way his hand tightened around her windpipe. The sight had left Regina both confused and intensely aroused. That had become her favorite story. She imagined being a lady knight, pinned beneath the onslaught of the soldier's hips as he rammed himself between her thighs again and again.

But now she had a new story, one that glistened shiningly—even better than the Lady Trenta because the story had already been written with her at the center. She closed her eyes and let the scene he had spun take her.

She imagined herself bound, unable to move the way that Gregar had described—no matter what Crestoff said, she was sure it was him. She imagined herself protesting as his fingers snaked between the satin of her shift. Beneath the covers, she gently lifted her shift, imagining her hand was his. Her fingers—his fingers—slipped between her thighs, cupping the wetness of her sex. She dragged them across her slit, marveling at how she glistened even before she began to touch herself. Teasing the bud of her clit, she pulled back the hood, letting her fingers wander over her sex, building the anticipation for the moment that she let herself touch it. Too ready to wait very long, she brought her middle finger against the bud, spreading her legs wider so that the angle was perfect, she gasped as she rocked her finger against it gently.

"I hope you're thinking of me."

Her eyes flew open. The room was pitch black, the moonless night offering no illumination through the open window. Very vaguely, she could see the slight outline of a man leaning against her bedpost. She wondered how long he had been watching her.

"Crestoff?"

"Is that who you were thinking of?" The voice sounded at once amused and disappointed. "Pity."

"Gregar of Heilaun," she gasped.

He made a clicking noise with his tongue. "I thought we were past titles, princess."

"What are you doing here?"

"I thought I had made my intentions clear. My men and I came to the castle to take you."

She shook her head. Her brain moved sluggishly, not quite connecting the words he was saying with the reality of the situation. "You were joking."

A chuckle in the darkness. "Not quite."

From the other side of the bed, a hand covered her mouth. She could smell something sweetly acidic on the cloth held to her face. The already deep shadows of the room grew until her sight was completely consumed in inky blackness.

---

When she came to, the world was spinning. No, she realized as she fought back a fit of nausea. Her head was spinning, but the world around her was only bumping. Whatever the smell on the cloth had been, it left her loosely disoriented. She was, however, alert enough to realize that she was not in her bed. That was the last thing she knew for sure that she remembered. She opened her eyes only to realize that she could not see anything except an expanse of dingy brown.

The light of early morning peeked through what she realized was a blanket thrown over her small form. She tried to adjust slightly, only to find that her arms were tied behind her back. Each hand was fastened to the opposite elbow so that her arms crossed behind her. She frowned angrily and groaned. It went unheard against the round leather ball that had been fastened in her mouth. Voices came from above her as if she lay at the feet of the people who were speaking.

"Nearly locked me up with the others. Would have ruined everything, but the princess spotted me."

"Who'd they think you were?"

The first voice was definitely Gregar's. She could hear the jocular tone. He seemed ever in a bright mood, a controlled amusement as if everything and everyone around him existed to make him chuckle. He never faltered. Regina wondered at the second voice. He sounded gruff, without the pleasure for the situation that played in the lilt of Gregar's voice.

"A small lord. The princess figured me out. I expected them to hold me for ransom or kill me on the spot, but they didn't believe that the real Gregar of Heilaun would sneak into an enemy's castle."

"Good that they didn't. They might have killed you. It was a stupid plan, I told you from the beginning. Reckless."

"A war is not won without risk, Ivan."

"Risk is not the same as foolishness, Your Highness."

Regina rolled her eyes at the title.

"Foolishness? Ivan, how can you say that? Your king just kidnapped the princess."

A poor king, she thought, without a throne to sit on. She had heard stories of the way Gregar ruled. He had come from a dukedom, had served as a knight, and instead of ruling from the comfort of his castle, he prided himself on fighting alongside his men. In her mind, he did not carry himself much like a king. He was too ribald, for starters. Kings were meant to be somber and grave, heavy with the weight of their kingdom.

Gregar continued. "We'll start the Ceremony fire as soon as we get to the encampment. By this time tomorrow, I'll have a new slave, and the kingdom will be in my grasp. The Will of the Gods will be clear as day to anyone who cares to look."

Regina jerked at the mention of the Ceremony. The Will of the Gods. His words echoed in her head. The Will of the Gods was the name for both the brand and the ceremony in which it was burned into a slave's skin. The mark was shaped like a trident with one long line that split into three short ones. One line ended in a small circle, one in an arrow, and one in a crescent. They represented the Mother Earth, the Father Sun, and the Sister Moon, respectively. The brand marked a person as a slave and could never be undone or ignored.

In Eldon, it was believed that anything that happened did so by the will of the gods. If something was allowed to occur, it was because the gods blessed it and wished it so. One of the most obvious places this was seen was among the slave traders. While the generation's long war with the Fadrans certainly provided the people of Eldon with many slaves, the people within Eldon's borders still lived by the Ceremony. Were a slaver walking at night to come upon a man or woman who he sought to own, it was allowable for him to make it so by executing the Will of the Gods. Once marked, the slave would never again be allowed in the ranks of free men and women.

Of course, that was something Regina had always assumed to be the plight of the common folks. The daughter of a king, the heir to a kingdom, had little to fear of being taken by slavers in the countryside. Although, it was not entirely unheard of. From time to time, you would hear a story of a small lord whose son went missing and was presumed dead who then turned up at a wedding feast years later seated at the feet of a viscount or some such nonsense. Regina had always thought those stories were only meant to scare her. And certainly, she never expected to be taken in her own bedroom. It was not done.

The lords and ladies who ended up in slavery put their families in an uncomfortable position. No one dared challenge the gods once they had spoken. The family could not make any sort of protest. A rescue attempt would be useless. "Once willed, always willed," the saying went. Nothing could be done.

"Ah," Gregar was saying, having seen her jump at their talk of enslaving her. She felt a hand reach beneath the blanket and grab her bound elbow, pulling her out from under the covers. "Our little princess has woken up."

Gregar hoisted her into his lap with one hand, holding her as she kicked out wildly, trying to fight him. She screamed against her gag. The ball was too big in her mouth for her to scream around it. Her teeth could hardly close, and her jaw ached.

With his arms around her waist, it was clear that Regina was going nowhere. She might as well be fighting a statue for all the good her struggles did her.

"Good girl, that's it," he said soothingly as she began to settle against him, her kicks losing fervor. Beside her on the bench, Ivan turned to look her over.

"Small, isn't she?"

Regina glared at him. Most people in Eldon were large, born of the bloodlines of the shipmen and warriors centuries before. She took after her mother, who was foreign, small of stature, and slight of bone.

"Oh, Ivan. You've made her nose wrinkle." Gregar gave it a small tweak, which only made her wrinkle the skin more as she turned her eyes darkly to him. Gregar shook his head as if apologizing. "You'll have to forgive Ivan; he is not well-versed in the lady folk, princess."

Ivan gave a disdainful bark of laughter. "I'll warrant I know a bit more than you. I've taken half the slaves in the camp to bed with me. How many have you had?"

"I don't run through them as you do. I prefer one at a time, Ivan." He stroked Regina's cheek gently with his thumb. "A slave is so much better when she learns the way you want her. It takes a while to break the habits of other men."

Gregar took Regina's chin in his hand and pulled her eyes to his. Peering into them, he marveled at the luscious green of her irises, flaked with small, bright shocks of gold near the pupil. He could see her fright within them, but there was something else behind it. He watched her pupils grow as she looked up at him, a strange thing to witness, especially vivid in the bright light of the morning. He chuckled softly, running his finger along her jaw.

"Is it the talk of slaves that makes you so fearful?" He asked her, watching her eyes for a reaction. None came. He pressed further. "Or perhaps the thought of the Ceremony that will turn you into one?"

At this, he saw her catch her breath.

He clucked his tongue gently. "It does little good to worry about things to come. The Ceremony will happen. It will happen by the book. You'll have a few hours to attempt an escape. I'll give you that chance while the fires are built. Perhaps, like me, you will. If not, the Ceremony goes forward, and your fate is out of your hands. The gods will decide it, not you. Isn't that a comfort?"

She snarled at him, trying to shake herself out of his grip. He held her until she stopped struggling.

"Perhaps, then," Gregar frowned at her teasingly. "I can provide a different sort of comfort."

He positioned her so that her back leaned against his chest. His hand began to pull at the satin fabric of her dress, gathering it in his hand just as she had imagined between her sheets just a few hours before. She twisted in his grasp, but with one arm, he held her firmly against him.

"Come now," he said gently against her ear. "I told you already how I intend to break you. This cannot come as a surprise." His voice was ever mischievous as if they were engaged in friendly banter instead of a dangerous game of cat and mouse.

She pressed her thighs together tightly.

"Now then, I promised not to start with pain," his voice was still mirthful, but there was a warning in it. "I promised I would show you how much you could enjoy being a slave, didn't I? There's nothing to fear yet."

He pulled her leg with one hand hooking it over his, holding it against the wooden bench of the cart so that she could not pull it away. He did the same with the other leg so that her legs spread uncomfortably wide across his lap. Her sex was completely on display now, the hem of her shift bunched at her waist. She saw Ivan glance at her out of the corner of her eye.

"Red all over, then," he remarked as his eyes locked on the dewy curls of her sex.

"And wet as November," Gregar agreed as he cupped her cunt with his gentle fingers. He slipped his fingers between the soaked labia. Gently, he pressed the palm of his hand against her clit, applying just enough pressure for her to give a small quiver of desire. He smiled. "Are you ready to coo for me, little dove?"