The Prince’s Boy
by
Cecilia Tan
Published by CLASP EDITIONS
an imprint of Circlet Press, Inc.
The Prince’s Boy
Copyright © 2011 by Cecilia Tan
Smashwords Edition, published by Circlet Press
Originally published as a web serial from July 29, 2009 to June 1, 2011 at www.circlet.com.
Circlet Press
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Cover illustration by Scarlet B.
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More Gay Erotica from Circlet Press
Introduction
I must give you a warning, dear reader, before you begin. No, not the warning about the intensity of the bondage and sadomasochism scenes herein, not about the dubious consent, eroticized violence, or situations of sexual jeopardy in these pages (though they are assuredly there). I must warn you that what you are about to read is a serial.
A serial? “How is that different from a novel?” you might well ask. It looks like a novel. It has chapters. It has an overarching fantasy plot that pits good versus evil. It is even a Romance with a capital R. Why isn't it a novel?
Well, common wisdom says a novel wouldn't have a sex scene in every chapter. That would be Too Much Sex for the reader, who would fall into fatigue--or worse, boredom. Sex should not be tedious! But The Prince's Boy was not written as a novel, with the sexy bits paced out here and there, but as a serial intended to be read one chapter per week. The serial began running on the Circlet Press website in July 2009 and wraps up in June 2011. My goal was to deliver a delicious meal each week to the hungry reader who had waited so patiently for it. I tried to get a sex scene into each chapter, or at the very least a torture or fight scene (and indeed, these all these types of scenes somewhat blur together in this book).
Common wisdom says that trying to barrel headlong through such a work would be as unpleasant as overeating. Common wisdom, however, may not take into account readers who have built up their constitutions reading fan fiction serials and WIPs. I know I am not the only person who has stayed up all night reading a fanfic serial, chapter after chapter after chapter... and I know from comments on The Prince's Boy on circlet.com that many readers did just that with the online version.
So, if you have the legs for it, feel free to run the marathon that is The Prince's Boy! The rest of you, please pace yourselves for maximum enjoyment of the pleasures herein.
Cecilia Tan
Cambridge, MA
1: Kenet
I have a memory that I know I cannot have. And yet it persists in my mind as clearly as any other memory. I remember her screaming. I remember my father holding her in his arms as she died. I remember him crying. You must understand, my father never cries. I cannot imagine him doing it. So it must be a memory, since I would never be able to conjure up such an image on my own. I remember them covering her face with a cloth, and bearing the body away. And then I remember my father collapsing into someone else‘s arms. A soldier dressed all in black.
Jorin says it can’t be a memory, because no one can remember when they were born. No one can remember that moment or the minutes afterward. But I remember my mother dying while bearing me.
So I’m either deluded, or different.
Jorin would say I’m both.
My next earliest memory is of Jorin himself. We were probably three or four years old at the time? Far enough back it’s more likely closer to three. I could walk and talk and always understood more of what adults were saying to me than they seemed to think I gleaned. And I had gotten the knack of knowing when they were trying not to tell me something.
Which was how I knew when we went to the orphanage we were going there so I could pick out a boy of my very own. Oh, I know now how it was supposed to happen. I was supposed to play and socialize and eat with the children until my father or someone else decided on the child who would be my ladra’an and I was supposed to be none the wiser. But someone had let it slip, spoken of it where I could overhear, or maybe a maid even told me—that part I don’t remember. I do remember swaggering out into the play yard where a couple dozen boys were running about on the hard-packed dirt. I didn’t like how they were kicking up so much dust. I hadn’t been allowed near many other children before, and they seemed brutish and noisy. One of these was supposed to be mine?
“That one,” I said, though my handlers as usual were not paying attention to anything I said. I pointed to a dark-eyed, dark-haired boy, sitting by himself in the shadow of the stone building that was the orphanage, hugging his own knees.
I ran over to him and hugged him myself. “This one.”
Much hullaballoo ensued, in which they tried to detach me from him, several adults trying to physically pry us apart and telling me no-no-no, it wasn’t done like that. To them I shouted, “Mine!” and to him I whispered, “If you hang onto me, you’ll come to live in the castle with me.”
He didn’t answer, but clung to me as tightly as I did to him.
I held onto him all the way home in the carriage, as if he were a doll. They tried to separate us again at the castle, telling me he had to be cleaned up, but I suspected that if I let go then, I’d never see him again. I wasn’t stupid. I knew a guard wouldn’t be who would take him for a bath! Only a maid would do that. I pointed out I was just as dirty, now, too. My father finally relented when someone pointed out in a wry voice that if we were going to live inseparably, as a prince and ladra’an should, then they may as well leave us be and let the maids scrub us both.
I held his hand in the bath, because he was scared of everything. I could tell. He hadn’t said anything yet, but it was obvious that everything was strange and new to him. “It’s all right,” I kept telling him. “I’m a prince and I’ll protect you.”
They cleaned us up and presented us that night at banquet. I was just about falling asleep in a throne so large I could actually curl up sideways in it to sleep, when my father called for my attention. And for Jorin’s.
I hadn’t actually heard his name yet until my father bade him stand on his chair and speak it. Perhaps I thought I was going to name him, like a pet. That’s highly likely, though I’m not certain what was going through my child mind.
Now my father spoke to me in a stern voice. “You need to learn that you cannot just seize things you want, nor can you bite your guard because you disagree with him, nor is it seemly to shout at anyone, especially me, in public. That is three infractions.”
I didn’t know the word “infractions,” but it sounded dire and dangerous. A moment later a guard had seized Jorin, flipping him over one knee and pulling down his breeches where everyone in the room could see. I was horrified. What were they going to do?
“It’s also not seemly to strike the royal flesh,” my father said, coming to stand beside us, a stick in his hand. “So instead of striking you, Kenet, I will administer the punishment to your ladra’an.”
“No!” I was on the verge of tears.
He raised the stick and I shrank back, despite what he’d just said about not hitting me. “Do not make it worse. Three infractions.” And he proceeded to whip Jorin three times. Jorin bit his lip and made a horrible face, but he made no sound.
It was me who cried. I seized him the second the guard let him down, bawling my eyes out, terrified that now he’d hate me. I swore I’d never let them do that to him again. I refused to let go again, and Bear had to carry us both together to bed, and stuck us in it still in our clothes, and I cried until I fell asleep in Jorin’s arms. He was the one who took the punishment, not me, so why was I the one who was crying?
I suppose maybe that’s why having a ladra’an persists as a tradition. I learned my lesson, didn’t I?
And I suppose now you know everything you need to know about me and Jorin.
2: Kenet
It took me a long time to realize that being whipped in front of all assembled on his first day in the castle was no less a cruelty than Jorin expected. He hadn’t known exactly that his fate was to be my whipping boy, but he hadn’t expected life to be kind. The orphanage was not a kind place. The castle, at least, would be a step up. He told me this later, much later. Back then, he didn’t tell me anything, because he hardly ever spoke.
That did not bother me in the slightest as apparently I talked enough for us both. I have only the vaguest memory of that time. He slept in my bed with me and went everywhere with me, except for the meetings with my father, twice a week, the only times my father and I were ever alone, unattended.
Jorin started to speak more than just the occasional word to me after we began formal schooling. Reading, writing, mathematics, ancient tongues, and fencing. Until then I think most of the household believed him mute. But he had to speak when our tutor asked him for answers. He still almost never spoke to anyone but me. And why should he? What did he have to say to guards or maids or attendants?
We spoke the most at night. In whispers.
Some things have not changed, now that we are of age.
Jorin’s breath was sweet from chewing on sechal bark, and warm against my neck as he spoke. “Sergetten says he won’t teach me anymore,” he said.
“That’s ridiculous.” I was holding him close, our limbs entangled as usual. After banquet we’d sat on the stone edge of the balcony, just the two of us, chewing sechal and watching the stars fall until we’d gotten cold. And then we’d gotten in bed like we have done for more years than I can count, and wrapped around each other until sometimes I couldn’t tell which hand was mine. “He can’t teach me without teaching you.”
“I’m not so sure about that. He said I’m to start training with the heavy weapons, broadsword and axe. I’ll do that while you study political theory or something else that I won’t need to know.” His breath was warm and his lips brushed against my skin as he spoke.
Something sparked in my belly. “Jorin...”
He took his name as a cue to move subtly against me, lips now tracing a vein in my neck, no longer making a pretense of speaking. My blood surged and I knew he felt the hardness growing against his thigh. Was he hard, too? I couldn’t quite tell as we were, and I shifted in his arms. He rolled easily under me and I slid my cock, swathed in silk pajamas, against his. Yes, just as hard as I was. I shed my silk and pulled his down and then rubbed against him bare skin to bare skin, my back chilled by the night air but I didn’t care. Jorin was heat beneath me and I rutted against him for a while, until he pushed me to my side, slicked his hand with spit, and took both of our lengths in his grip.
I have no idea why his spit was always so much slicker than mine. Royal blood was supposed to be thicker than others’, wasn’t it? Was thin spit the trade-off? Or did he just have a knack I didn’t? I was grateful, though, as Jorin stroked us.
“Faster,” I rasped.
“No,” he said, a gleam in his eye. “You’ll spill too soon.”
“But...”
“Hush and let me.”
I fell silent in acquiescence. He kept his strokes long and even, his thumb drawing a circle around the slick tips at the top of each stroke, mixing our dew together and keeping his grip slippery. Every now and then he would lick his palm to make sure, but his touch never felt rough or dry to me. “Jorin...!” I whispered with some urgency.
“Yes, Kenet, my prince?”
“I want... I want to come...”
“You will. Have I ever left you hard?”
“Well, no...”
“Seriously, Kenet, is it that you like to beg? Or do you actually think if you don’t, I might forget to finish you off?”
“You can’t talk to me that way!” I hissed. “I’m the Prince of Maldevar!” But it was a jest, and we both knew it, because in the night, in our bed, he whispered that sort of thing to me all the time.
“Yes, my prince,” he said, with infinite patience. “Of course, my prince.” He had added a twist to his stroke that robbed me of my ability to answer temporarily.
But once I could speak again, I couldn’t help myself. “Make me spill Jorin, and then you can finish yourself using my milk to make it slick.”
“Tempting,” he breathed. “But maybe it should be the other way around. Maybe I should spill all over your cock and then stroke you so hard you nearly go blind when you finish.”
“I... that... that would be acceptable, too.”
At that he just laughed and slowed his stroke even more.
3: Kenet
I have nightmares sometimes.
Some of them recur, some of them are unique. Just a few nights ago this was what I dreamed. I had been for a ride with my father, just the two of us, through the woods to the north, several hours riding along the ridges, gone all day... and when I returned to my room I found Jorin.
He had been tied by thick leather cords around his wrists to one post of the bed, stripped naked, and whipped three times across his back. When I rush into the room in the dream, he is unconscious, hanging by his arms, the weight of his body making his hands purple and swollen, the welts also purple and raised. I run my fingers down them as if I could read somehow there who had done this and why. It’s clear to me Jorin struggled to get free, leaving useless tooth marks in the leather, and after falling unconscious pissed himself.
And yet he is not dead. Not yet. I hurry to cut him down, and he falls into my arms, his weight bearing me down with him to the floor. His eyes flutter open as I brush his hair back from his forehead.
“Who did this to you?” I demand.
And he answers, “You did.”
4: Kenet
I arrived for my audience with my father just after lunch, taking the Snake Ladder from my chambers to his instead of walking through the whole castle as I properly should have done. But I was nearly late, and though I am full grown by every measure, when I am hoping to cheer him up sometimes cannot help but be the playful boy I was. So I hopped and hurried down the clandestine stairs and narrow passages that took me to him, pausing just behind the tapestry that hid the final doorway.
I could hear raised voices.
Sergetten’s first. “When will you get it through your thick skull that Night Magic is no more dangerous than Daylight?”
“You are the one always telling me to heed the danger of the Frangi Night Mages!” my father roared back.
“The Mages, yes, but not the power itself! If anything you should be giving me leave to learn more, to do more, so that if they should attack, we can be better protected! We should not rely on Lord Seroi alone. This won’t be like the last time I brought a boy to the castle—”
“No!” I heard the sound of something falling and breaking, and the pain in my father’s voice. “Sergetten...”
Silence for a few moments. Then I had to strain to hear Sergetten’s quiet answer. “Very well. I shall not sully myself any more than you deem necessary, my king.” I could easily imagine the bitterness on his face. Sergetten and bitterness went together like salt and fish.
I heard another crash of something breaking. Probably my father heaving a piece of crockery after him as he took his leave, and hitting the stone archway.
I could not go into the room now. It would be far too obvious I had eavesdropped on matters I was supposed to know nothing of. I crept back up the stairs and made my way down in proper fashion, although this made me late, but I knew, too, it would give the servants time to clean up the mess.
I presented myself at his front parlor, then, and was shown into the study, where he was sitting with his back to me, hunched near to the hearth, a mug of something in his hand.
“Here I am, father,” I said, trying to sound chipper and ignorant.
He turned and his eyes burned with anger. “You’re late.”
I drew back in dismay. “I... but...” I could not tell him I’d given him some extra time on purpose, could I? No. “I was reading and lost track of the time,” I stammered, instead.
He rang a bell and one of his guards hurried in from the outer chamber, short, crimson cloak swinging from his shoulders. “Bring Jorin to me. Immediately.”
My mouth fell open in shock. “You’re not serious...”
“You are late and deserve to be punished. My schedule is very pressing, Kenet, and it is time you learned that.” He stood and went to pull an instrument of punishment from the wooden chest in the corner.
I had not yet learned to keep my mouth shut, even after all those years. “But it’s been years since you...”
I broke off as the sound of a short whip cracked the air. “I know. Not since before you came of age,” he said, his voice cold. “But if Jorin is still here in this castle, then by the sky above he will perform his function, or leave.”
Jorin himself spoke then and I looked up in surprise he had come that quickly. “Do you mean that, your highness? That if I will no longer accept lashes on the prince’s behalf, you’ll turn me out?”
But my father was too angry to put up with banter or argument. He seized Jorin by the collar and pushed his face against the wall. “Kenet. Strip him.”
I had never seen him so angry over so little, and never before had he asked me to assist in such a way. I dared not protest, though. I hurried to untuck Jorin’s shirt, to pull the breeches down to expose the globes of his arse, lines of slightly darker skin than the rest of him showing the evidence of old whippings. My father let go, and Jorin stood still while I removed his vest and shirt, too, neither of us fool enough to do anything but follow every order as literally as we could.
“Hands on the mantelpiece,” my father said, his knuckles white where he gripped the handle of the whip.
Jorin was the picture of placid as he did as he was told. I stood back, not wanting to make it worse, but... “How many?” I blurted, unable to completely contain myself.
My father checked the timepiece above the hearth. “It is now twenty minutes beyond when we should have met...”
“But I was only ten minutes late!”
He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “So it shall be twenty strokes.”
“Twenty!” I had seen a man die under twenty strokes once, a man accused of spying for the Night Mages. Of course, that had been twenty strokes with the bullwhip, not the mere two feet of leather my father held in his hand now, but the number still struck me as unjustly large and dangerous.
“Hush, Kenet,” Jorin said, closing his eyes and bowing his head.
The first stroke came across the back of his thighs, making him buckle and nearly fall. The next tore squarely across his arsecheeks, leaving an instant welt of painful red. The third slashed down his back, where the skin was sparsely crossed with the marks of old thrashings, some whiter, some darker, and he grunted.
He didn’t start to cry out until after ten lashes, by which time my own cheeks were wet with tears, but I kept silent. Jorin’s knees gave out at fifteen and he received the last five across his back prostrate in front of my father like a supplicant begging for mercy. Maybe he was. I could barely watch, only forcing myself to do so because if I didn’t, any stroke I missed would be applied again.
My father let the whip fall after the last stroke and strode from the room, only my voice stopping him at the doorway.
“Why?” I demanded.
“Be on time for our next audience and perhaps that is a lesson you will learn,” he growled before he left.
I gathered Jorin up and helped him dress, careful not to stick his shirt to the places on his back where the lash had split the welts into bleeding. Once his breeches were back on, I helped him to our rooms.
Bear said nothing when he saw us, just shook his head, handed me a small jar of some kind of salve, and left us alone.
5: Jorin
The salve put me to sleep. It has some kind of herb in it that makes me sleep without dreams. But the moment it wears off, I am wide awake.
I woke to the sound of wind rushing outside, to Kenet frantically pushing at the north-facing window to get it shut. Wait, no, the south-facing window. I was disoriented, unaccustomed to waking up in my own bed instead of his.
He managed get the latch closed, and then the sound of his breath was louder in the room than the storm that was coming.
“Kenet.” My throat was dry; I could barely speak.
He hurried to me, nearly spilling the water in the pitcher in his haste to pour some into a goblet. I sat up too quickly, trying to snatch the cup from his hand before he could drop it, and felt a welt tear open across my shoulder. I could not hold back the hiss.
Kenet knelt gently on the bed next to me and I sipped slowly, until the tightness in my throat eased. Then I set the goblet aside.
“I’m worried,” he said, his face wan and his eyes puffy from crying. I had never been able to convince him not to cry for me. Not after all these years.
“I’m afraid they’re going to take you away from me,” he said then.
“Ah.” I let my eyes fall closed. When the king had ceased beating me a year or two earlier, I had wondered then why I was allowed to remain at Kenet’s side, if he had outgrown the need for a whipping boy. “Why now? If anything I’m finally old enough to take what your father really wants to dish out.” The joke fell flat even in my own ears, though. The beating I’d just received was by far the most brutal in my memory. No, wait. I reminded myself that the most recent always seemed like the worst. No reason to...
Kenet gasped as he saw the fresh blood seeping. All right. Perhaps lying to myself about how bad it was wouldn’t help us through this after all. “Will you tell me what you did to make him so angry?” I asked.
“It wasn’t even my fault!” he began, but then related to me a tale of wanting to surprise his father, only to overhear a conversation he shouldn’t have. Surprise his father. Kenet may be a man in reckoned years, but he is a child in so many ways. This, I assumed, was why they kept treating him like one, continuing his schooling at a time when his ancestors would have been normally bound into marriage pacts and expected to produce heirs, and allowing him to keep me. Had he been a second or a third son he might have already been rising through the ranks of the army.
But he was the sole prince, the sole heir, and had never been treated by his father or his retainers like anything but a precious treasure. Even Seroi, the Lord High Mage, would make condescending bows to Kenet when he was a boy and then give him a wide berth.
I was afraid Kenet was right. I was only still here by the indulgence that the prince was still a child at heart somehow.
I took his hand. “Your father can beat me bloody every day, if it means I can stay with you,” I said.
“No!” He squeezed my fingers hard enough to hurt. “I mean, no, I won’t let him, not no, I don’t want... I can’t live without you, Jorin. They... they can’t...”
“Shhh.” I pulled him closer, both of us ignoring the blood. The seepage was slowing down anyway. I pulled Kenet’s head into my lap and stroked his hair, shining golden like the treasure he was in the light of a single lamp. “You know that someday they are going to marry you off...”
He clucked his tongue. “To some ice princess for political reasons, who will want to keep her own chambers and no doubt a secret lover on the side.”
I fell silent. Sometimes I wondered if Kenet was even really aware of how lax the rules around us had been. Every night I made sure to muss my bedclothes, so that the maids would not gossip about how the two of us always shared a bed. Even if it had been entirely innocent—which it was when we were children and which it most certainly was not now—the rumors alone could have been enough to bring ruin on us. Or on me, at least.
Every night I closed the door behind us, and set a block of wood against it such that if anyone unlocked the door and pushed it open, I would have the warning of the sound of the block hitting the stone. I could be halfway across the room before the intruder could make it from the entryway to our inner archway. Maids no longer attended us anyway, now that we were older. Servants cleaned and set things to rights while we were gone each day, but Kenet’s guard Bear was the only one who regularly entered the rooms these days while we were in them.
His face lit up suddenly. “That’s why they’ve insisted you increase your weapons training. When Bear gets too old and slow, you’re going to be my new guard. You see, you’ll always be with me, Jorin.” He reached up into my hair, scooping it behind my ear. “You’re mine. I won’t let them take you away from me.”
I bent to kiss him then, ignoring the burning in my back where I stressed the flesh by doing so. Neither blood nor pain had ever kept me from my prince before, and would not this night either.
6: Kenet
“What do you mean, Sergetten isn’t here?” That my father’s advisor and my tutor should not be present when expected stunned me.
“I mean,” said the scholar who kept the archives in order, “I have not seen him yet today, my prince. Normally he arrives long before you.”
“You’re sure he’s not in there somewhere?” I waved a vague hand at the entrance to the archives themselves. I rarely ventured there myself and the keepers preferred it that way, usually only allowing Sergetten and some other high ranking scholars to enter the repository. Others had to petition to have materials brought to them and it was in the reading room where they would wait that Sergetten and I usually had lessons.
“No, my prince, he is definitely not here. As I said.” The man was short and his hair was shot through with gray. Velred was his name, and he had been head archivist since before I was born. “He left no instructions and sent no messages.”
“And can you verify that I am on time?” I pondered how long I should wait, if at all.
“Yes, my lord, you are most definitely on time. And this is most definitely unusual for him to be absent.” He nodded sagely. “If he arrives, where shall I tell him to seek you out?”
Well, that decided it. “The afternoon’s too nice to waste indoors anyway,” I said. The last of winter had left the mountains and spring was in full bloom. “I shall be in the garden, or perhaps the terrace. Yes, the terrace. I may as well read the histories out there.”
Velred cringed a bit, probably at the thought of me taking one of my ancestor’s diaries out of doors, but the books were mine in truth, not his. And it is not as if I would have sat out in the rain reading.
So I went out to the terrace, but I did not get much reading done. Not when I heard the clang of metal on metal from the terrace level below me. I looked over the hedge-topped wall to see Jorin on his back, his sword on the ground next to him, and Bear looking down at him and laughing.
“That was hardly fair!” Jorin said, taking the proffered hand and getting back to his feet, then picking up the sword again.
“Fair. They won’t fight fair if they’re trying to kill you, cub.” Bear took a step back and raised his sword in an offensive stance.
Bear was only a name, of course. He was a man, but a large one, with a dark-brown beard. They say I am the one who first called him Bear when I was too small to remember.
Jorin raised his weapon and I held my breath. Jorin had been learning arms for two years now, but I had never seen him practice. We used to have fencing practice against each other when we were younger, but no longer. Jorin seemed impossibly small compared to Bear, half his size or less, and even his sword was smaller. Would he end up on the ground again?
But then there was a flurry of movement, sword clashing against sword, and Jorin was suddenly behind Bear, who turned too slowly, and received a slap on the back of the shoulder with the flat of Jorin’s blade.
I suppressed the urge to applaud. They had no idea I was watching.
I had no idea Jorin could move like that. And with crusted welts still on his back from yesterday, too. I wondered if he would let me salve them again tonight or if he would insist on shrugging me off. He and Bear were laughing about something now, and taking up their positions again.
“It is almost like a dance, isn’t it?” said a voice behind me.
I turned to see not Sergetten but the Lord High Mage himself, Seroi. I gave him a nod of my head as befitted his rank, though I wasn’t compelled to use his honorific. “Yes, rather,” I agreed, returning my gaze to the combatants below, trying to pretend I wasn’t unnerved by Seroi’s presence.
I had not spent much time with him in my life, mostly seeing him at banquet dinners and in the occasional council session with my father. There was one diplomatic trip to the northern border we took, my father’s retinue and I, that he accompanied a few years ago. The plain truth was that there were times when I felt he could see straight down into my soul. He knew depths of magic that even my father and Sergetten could never hope to fathom and I always wondered what truth he saw when he looked at me.
There was one night in particular when our encampment and that of a traveling band of tinkers shared a fire pit. Jorin and I and some of the tinker lads had played a game, tossing a braided ring of willow back and forth with sticks, until the fire had burned low. I had left Jorin talking and joking with the lads while I stole off to the creek to rinse myself.
I still remember the moon that night, because of how brightly it burned, but also because as I stood in the stream, washing myself, I felt very strongly that someone was watching me. It was as if the moon itself were a great eye taking in the sight of my naked flesh. I dressed hurriedly once I got out of the water, trying to shake the feeling. It was only after I returned to the camp, and saw Seroi returning shortly after, that I began to suspect perhaps he had been the one watching me.
But he had never approached me, never touched me, never did anything that could be considered wrong. In fact, we had barely exchanged enough conversations to count on one hand, so I could hardly consider him much of a threat to me.
“I understand your tutor has abandoned you, at least for the time being,” he said, dragging my attention back to him from the swordplay below. He was strange to look at, as if his face were too smooth sometimes, his hair too perfect, slick and black. The only hint of his age was a few silver streaks in among the black. In the sunlight the effect that he was not quite real was heightened.
“Yes,” I said, not wanting to speak ill of Sergetten—not to this man, anyway.
His smile showed even, white teeth. “Well. Perhaps it’s time I took an interest in your education, my prince?”
7: Jorin
I raised my sword again and charged. A moment later I was on my face in the grass, the rich scent of earth in my nose, just a vague impression of the touch of a heavy hand on my shoulder still in my skin. I pushed myself to my knees.
“Again, cub.”
“Bear, I’ve had enough.”
“Again. The only way you’ll grow into that sword is if I keep making you lift it.” He laughed. Making comments about how I needed more meat on my bones was a usual tack for him.
I got to my feet. The sword was heavier than the one I had been using the past few weeks and my shoulders and arms ached. I was tired and sweat was stinging my eyes. “I was better with the smaller sword,” I pointed out.
“Soon you’ll be just as good with this one,” Bear said with an indulgent smile. “Once you put some meat on your bones.”
I attacked him, but the sword made me too slow again, and took too much effort to wield. He had me on my back before I could even bring it all the way around and it fell with a heavy thud a moment after I did. I groaned. “You’re just angry that with the lighter one I could beat you all the time,” I said, looking up at the clouds with a grin.
Bear’s bearded face and his own toothy grin came into view as he looked down on me. “Ah, you’ve figured me out. But not how to beat me with the heavy sword.”
I growled in answer, launching myself at him unarmed, and tumbling him over. I knew I couldn’t hope to beat him in a wrestling match, but I held my own atop him for longer than you might think. Eventually I lay pinned under him, both of us panting.
He barked out another laugh. “Now here’s a heavy sword.” He smacked the erection that had blossomed in my breeches with the flat of his hand, making me see stars. He got to his feet and waited until I had, too, before he spoke more seriously, looking left and right before he went on in a low voice. “Now I know you aren’t the least bit thinking of bedding me, cub. A man your age needs to take care of that kind of thing, regular and often.”
I was probably blushing furiously as I tried to stammer something, anything, in my defense.
“Now, now, don’t take this hard. I know our prince dotes on you, can’t bear to be parted from you. But I’d advise you to spend some nights with the milkmaids, cub.” He reached out his hand to help me up.
“But Kenet won’t...”
Bear pulled me closer with my hand in his. “Listen to me. You don’t want people thinking you and he are doing anything... funny, you know?”
I made a scandalized face, opening my mouth to protest.
“Hush, cub,” he said, now his voice not above a whisper. “I’ve watched you two since you were both small. I don’t know exactly what you do in his bedchamber, but above all right now you need to act as if you don’t. I’ve no idea why the king’s left you together for so long, but if you want to stay, you’d best give him no reason to suspect you’ve become his son’s bed toy.”
Or the other way around. I nodded, trying to blank my face of all emotion, but his last words had chilled me. Maybe Bear didn’t know what went on in our rooms at night, but the fact was that if anyone was anyone’s bed toy, it was Kenet who was mine.
This thought did nothing to help my erection subside. I wanted his lithe, nimble fingers playing up and down my shaft like a flute. I wanted to lie beside him and pull at each other to see who would spill first. Hm, no, I wanted to make it a contest to see who could last longest, and name some penalty for the loser.
But that would have to wait until tonight, until after banquet, wouldn’t it? “Well, here’s your proof there’s nothing ‘funny’ going on between us because if there was, I wouldn’t be so desperate, would I?” That got an appreciative chuckle out of him. “Hm. I can’t go down to the baths like this.”
“Not unless there’s a maid sweet on you who would eat that ripe fruit,” Bear said with another laugh.
Eat? “Perhaps you should be teaching me to flirt instead of weapons,” I said, even as my mind went quite suddenly to an image so strong it made my cock ache with each beat of my heart. Kenet, one hand cupping my balls like ripe plums, his mouth devouring my cock. Was it clean? Would his teeth cut me? I didn’t know; we’d never used our mouths for anything but kissing. I knew how his mouth felt to my lips and tongue, though, and could imagine the soft wetness against the hard, heated flesh that needed soothing.
I must have blushed more suddenly.
“Have you never had a maid taste your plums?”
I shook my head.
“Cub. I love the prince with all my heart. But you need to spend some time for yourself.” He took up my sword and his own, slinging both across his back with straps and then leading the way back through the gardens toward the castle entrance. “He’s at the age when he ought to be experimenting some, too. As long as there’s no bastards, I don’t see why...” He broke off suddenly as we heard a movement in a bush off to one side. He went to its left, I went to the right...
But there was no enemy of Maldevar hiding there. A frit burst out in a flurry of wings, cheeping in alarm as it took to the sky. That was the end of the conversation, though. Even the thought of the beasts of the kingdom overhearing us talking about sex was enough to make me button my lip.
“Not the baths,” Bear said, his voice low and serious, then. He nudged me on the shoulder and held up a finger tinged with blood where I had split a welt open again. I followed him silently knowing that more of the salve awaited me, as well as a long nap.
8: Kenet
I followed Seroi into a tower I had not been in before, in a section of the castle I had only passed through briefly a few times in all the years I’d lived there. For some reason I decided this time would not be when I would gawk at the tapestries on the corridor walls, and instead I focused on the spot in the center of Seroi’s back, trying to act like I had walked these stones a thousand times. Why, I do not know, since surely he knew full well I did not frequent this area.
Was this where he lived? I had no idea. My father had always said very little about the Lord High Mage. I assumed he lived somewhere in the sprawl of walls and towers that was the castle, but had never thought about exactly where. I’d truly never given Seroi too much thought at all.
Now the man was leading me up a set of spiral stairs, barely lit by the slits of windows, and it seemed almost as if we were descending into darkness instead of ascending into a tower, and he seemed the most solid thing in my reality.
No, it wasn’t just the dimness, the air was heavy with a cloying mist and the scent of something heady and exotic. I blinked, but a moment later, a door opened above us, and he led me through. It closed behind us with a heavy thump, the air suddenly clear and bright again. I coughed.
“Forgive the guardian incense, my prince, but it is necessary to ensure that only those who are purified enter this place.” He gestured around him at a sparse, round room, the walls bare stone, the center of the floor scored with symbols, a small table and two chairs facing each other off to one side. He pulled out one of the chairs for me and I sat. He sat across from me.
His eyes were disconcerting if only because very few in the kingdom had either the rank or the familiarity with me to look me straight in the eye as he did, and other than my own father, no one had ever given me such a measuring, appraising look. Not even Sergetten at his most schoolmasterish. I felt myself swallow.
“Your father and I agreed after your birth,” he began, “that we needed to take certain measures to ensure your...”
I hung on his pause, trying to guess what word he was searching for. My future? My education?
He licked his lips. “Purity,” he finally said, his gaze only sharpening.
“Purity?” I asked, uncomprehending.
“I assure you, my prince, the full explanation is in the offing, if you will be patient. With your mother gone and no hope of siblings for you, we took measures to protect the integrity of your bloodline and your seed.” He folded his hands on the table’s top, while I sat stock still, trying to pretend this was not a deeply mortifying topic to me. “A male of your age and status would normally have... pursued certain activities and desires that you have not. Neither your father nor I will ask your forgiveness in this matter of course, should you feel cheated of pleasures that would have been your due, but as sole heir you are expected to make certain sacrifices.”
“But I have no interest in women,” I blurted out.
“Yes, I know.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if preparing himself for a difficult fight, though his expression remained placid. “Your suppressed libido is our doing and has left you innocent of sexual matters that a male of your age and status would normally have experienced by now. It falls to me to rectify the situation. Once you are betrothed you will be expected to perform not only adequately, but with royal ability... well, to put it baldly, you must be trained.”
I could not hide my recoil. “Trained?”
One corner of his mouth twitched as if he were hiding a broader smile. “Forgive my choice of words, my prince. Rather than seek your own experience in this matter, you shall be guided through the process with care. Please understand, this is not an issue of morality or scandal, but of the inherent potency in your blood that we cannot afford to squander. If your firstborn were to be a bastard—or worse, killed by the mother, perhaps leaving you unaware—it would spell disaster for you and your bloodline, which carries a magical heritage.“
I hoped my face looked suitably serious and not bewildered, but my apprehension was rising. “I understand. Or perhaps you will enlighten me if I don’t. You and father have been suppressing my... natural desire for sex?”
“Yes,” he said, an indulgent smile breaking onto his face. “Magically. Since your birth. Naturally, we cannot let the restrictions go all at once, for that would be both traumatic and emotionally disturbing for you. At the same time, my prince, there are magical legacies you are heir to that it is time you learned of, legacies which you cannot grasp until after you have reached a certain level of... sexual maturity and experience. I apologize again for the scrutiny that your private life must bear. Most men...”
“I am not most men,” I said suddenly, irked by the entire conversation, yet intrigued to know that there would be some magical training in my future.
“Of course, of course,” he said, waving his hands in conciliatory motions. “It is merely that I know some of what I will suggest will be distasteful to you at first, given that your desires are still suppressed.”
“I assure you I will tolerate no questioning of my manhood,” I replied, sounding entirely like my father in my ears as I got to my feet and planted my fists on the table. “Whatever you ask of me, I will perform. I assure you of that.”
He looked up at me, unperturbed by my outburst. I suppose I should not have been surprised by this, given that he surely withstood my father’s own tirades on a regular basis? What was I but a kitten trying out its claws to him, when he was used to a lion? “Excellent,” he said. “Your enthusiasm will go a long way toward cracking the shells that bind you. But please, sit, and let me give you a thorough explanation. It would not do for us to have a misunderstanding at this juncture.”
I felt sullen now, and sat, at a loss for what else to do other than obey.
“First, only three of us know of the spells on you. You now, your father, and I. It must remain that way, of course.” Seroi opened the palm of his hand and I stared as a squat round candle flew from a small chest near the wall into his grip. He lit it with a snap of his fingers and set it on the table between us. “Second, lifting the spells will require you and I to perform some acts that would, to your normal citizen, seem morally questionable or at the very least quite odd. I will require your promise that you shall never speak of the things we do here to anyone, ever. Not even to your father or later to your wife.”
“Why would I...”
“Your promise,” he demanded, eyes glittering with the pinpoint lights of the candle in his eyes. “You may decide your own reputation is your own business, but I have my own status to think of, my prince. A loose word of this nature could be disastrous to Trest’s reputation among her enemies.”
Indeed. I knew that Seroi’s strength as a mage was one reason few weaker enemies of ours dared to attack. If they thought him weakened or distracted, even if it were not true, could only spell trouble for us. “I promise I shall never speak of the things we do here to anyone, ever,” I said, using his words to be sure I was getting it right. The candle between us flared bright as I spoke and I felt a tug on my heart, making it skip a beat. My eyes widened.
“Your promises, as a royal male who has come of age, are magically binding,” he said with a serene smile. I could feel the heat from the candle. “Now show me your cock.”
“I... what?” My heart began to leap wildly in my chest, quite sure of what he had said even if my ears weren’t.
“Stand up,” he said. “Open your trousers. And I assure you I am quite serious and that getting a look at you is only the beginning. Please, my prince, these steps are quite necessary.”
I pushed back my chair as I stood, but found my hands shaking too much to do as he said. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself.
“It’s all right,” he said, voice soothingly low. “I will not be betraying your confidence either, you know. And I think you will enjoy the results of today’s lesson, my prince. Even if it does seem exceedingly strange now.”
I turned my back to him to undo my trousers and bare myself to the air. My cheeks were hot and the air was cool on my exposed privates, which were shriveled against the gold of my curls.
“Turn around,” he said, a simple and direct command.
I obeyed, unable to meet his eyes.
“Very good,” he said, his voice suddenly closer than I expected. When had he gotten up from his chair, when had he stepped so close? As his fingers curled around my limp cock, the gray cloth of his robe brushed my tunic.
My cock responded to his hand as quickly as the candle had, soon at full hardness in his grip. He stroked me slowly and I squeezed my eyes shut as I thought about all the nights Jorin had touched me like this. Would Seroi make me spill? He quickened his stroke.
“Have you ever done this to yourself?” he asked, his breath moving my hair as he pressed close.
“Never,” I said, which was more or less the truth. I never stroked myself more than once or twice before Jorin, even if he was already asleep (or pretending to be), would take over.
“Have you ever had issue during the night? Wet dreams?”
All pretense of using my title or the word “please” seemed to be gone from his voice, but perhaps that would have been too strange, using formal titles while his hand was on my cock? I decided to hedge my bets. “Yes. Not often, though. A few times.”
“Ah, a shame this will not be your first issue, then,” he said, hand moving more quickly now on my shaft. “Still, I shall bottle it to use on the binding spells.”
“Would the first have been more potent?” My breath caught as he dragged a sharp fingernail slowly across the head of my cock, the sensation not one I would have guessed would be pleasurable, yet it made my cock throb in his hand like an urgent heart beating.
“Something like that,” he said. “One lesson at a time. Tell me, Kenet, what did you dream of when you would soil your bedsheets?”
“I...” What was the answer he sought? I was afraid to be caught in a lie and have my whole deception unravel. He thought my flesh innocent of a sexual touch, even from my own hand. I could not betray Jorin to him. “I have no memory of those dreams,” I said.
“None? No dreams of a fair face or the scent of perfume?”
“None, my lord.” I was drawing close and speaking was a struggle.
“In a few moments you will experience paroxysm,” he said gently. “Do not be alarmed by the way your body may react. I will guide you through. Concentrate on the feeling of my hand on your flesh and the sound of my voice. Close your eyes, Kenet.”
“Y-yes, m-my lord.” I was barely aware of my hands clutching at his robes, of standing in the bare stone room. I felt indeed like I should have come already, but his hand and rhythm were unfamiliar, so different from Jorin’s. Jorin would only ever keep me on edge like this to sweeten the release when it came. He would do it by lightening his stroke when I begged for harder, slowing it just when my hips were urging him to go faster.
I do not know what force was holding me back. I could barely breathe. Seroi’s hand moved in a blur between our bodies, then suddenly stopped, gripping me tight but giving no more, and I cried out in plain dismay.
“Now, Kenet, come now,” he commanded, voice soft in my ear but no less a command. And on the second “now” I felt the sharp point of his thumbnail pierce the tenderest spot, just at the cleft of the head, and I screamed as my traitorous cock released a torrent of white seed, fountaining up from that tiny mouth. I had looked at the moment of pain and saw the brightest crimson thread of blood swirl in the white, and then my vision went black.
9: Kenet
When I came to, I was in my own bed. The horns were blowing, heralding the return of the hunters from the day’s hunt. Banquet was still a few hours away then. I sat up slowly. I was clothed in my silk sleeping clothes and I had to wonder if Seroi had dressed me, or if a maid had, or if Bear...?
Seroi. He wouldn’t have handed me over to Bear, not and kept his word of silence. He had to have brought me here himself. I slipped down my pants and inspected my cock for a wound, but I found nothing. Had I imagined that prick, the drop of blood? I pulled back my foreskin, stroking myself gently to better inspect the full length.
“Tsk. Are you that eager to see me, my prince?” Jorin stood in the doorway to the bed chamber, a grin on his face.
I looked up at him and could not help but notice he was in a similar state. “Looks like you’re the one who cannot wait.”
“Indeed.” He tossed his jerkin aside and stripped his tunic off as he approached my bed. He shed the breeches last, just a moment before he crawled atop me and flattened me against my pillows with insistent kisses. “Kenet.”
“Jorin.” The need for secrecy between us had never been higher or more evident. But now was not the time to articulate that. “Make me spill? Please?” I sounded desperate even to myself.
“What’s gotten into you?”
“Please,” I begged, unable to explain. “Please please, Jorin.” I wanted him to erase the feeling of Seroi’s hand on my cock, to take away the sharpness of the memory of coming at Seroi’s command. “I need you.”
“I know,” he whispered, as he held himself above me, rubbing his cock up and down my length. “Hush now. We’ve plenty of time. I’ll make you come just like this. My cock on your cock.”
I jerked in surprise but could see the appeal of the idea. What made him think of that? He’d always used his hand to finish me before. “Yes, please. Oh, that would be perfect.”
“I know,” he said with a chuckle. “Now don’t writhe, you need to stay still for this.” He pressed my hands against the bed, pinning me in place. “You know I’m not letting you up until I come, too.”
That brought a whimper out of my throat.
“Yes, Kenet, once your stomach is slick with your milk, how good it will feel to rub my cock against you then...”
I whimpered again, my entire body taut with need now. Despite his admonition to stay still, I bucked under him. I struggled to free my hands, wanting to grab onto his arsecheeks and pull him against me harder, faster. But he held me fast.