“Because you sent for me,” he said, breathing already uneven.
“Because I can,” she corrected. “Because when I crook my finger, even the king’s most trusted man comes running.” Color rose along his throat. She watched it with interest. “Tell me,” she said, arching slightly so that her breasts brushed against his tunic. “What do you see?”
He swallowed again. His eyes flicked up to the mirror in front of them and then back down, as if afraid to be caught looking at the wrong thing. “I see my queen,” he said. “Beautiful.”
“Not good enough,” she murmured. “Surely you can do far better than that.”
Her hands slid down his abdomen, slow, unhurried, until they met the stiffness already rising beneath his belt. She pressed the heel of her palm there and felt him jerk. “Use your words, Captain,” she said, voice a velvet blade. “You command men with them. Command me.”
“Liora,” he rasped. “You’re… you’re the most enticing thing I’ve ever seen. Your skin, your mouth—” He broke off with aragged exhale as she ground down just enough to make him feel it. “The way you move. The way everyone in a room turns toward you, like they can’t help but look.”
“Better,” she said, approving. “What else?”
He obeyed because he always obeyed. He described her—her hair like midnight silk, the curve of her hips, the exact shade of her eyes when she was amused versus when she was angry. He spoke about the first time he had seen her, filthy from the road but already luminous, walking beside Wilhelm’s horse like she deserved to be there more than anyone.
With each word, she guided his hands, his body, steering him where she wanted him. His praise grew less coherent as she took control, but the meaning did not change: she was everything to him. Beauty, power, center.
The mirror watched them both. It showed the queen riding her captain as if she were claiming a throne: back straight, chin lifted, gaze on her own reflection even as her hips moved. Hunter, on the floor beneath her, clung to her like a drowning man, the muscles in his arms straining. His thick manhood throbbed deep inside her, stretching her with every thrust she demanded.
His sounds were rough, unpolished—low groans, bitten-off curses. Hers were deliberate. Every gasp, every moan was shaped as carefully as her kohl line, calculated to push him further, to pull her own pleasure tight. She ground her hips in slow, teasing circles, feeling the friction build against her swollen slit, her bare breasts bouncing with each deliberate roll. Sweat glistened on her oiled skin, making her curves shimmer in the candlelight that flickered across the opulent room, heavy with the scent of juniper and their mingled arousal. “Tell me,” she demanded as his control began to fray, as his fingers dug into her oiled skin, bruising her thighs with desperate grips. “Tell me who holds your loyalty.”
“You do,” he said without hesitation, voice breaking. “You, Liora. Always you. You are the one I would burn for.” His eyes dark with unspoken devotion, locked onto hers, the vulnerability in them twisting something sharp in his chest - a secret fire that fueled his every surrender.
She laughed, breathless, delighted. “Good boy.” The words pushed him closer to the edge, but she was not ready yet. She slowed just enough to keep him there, hovering at the brink, her center smoothing around his length as she lifted almost off him before sinking back down, torturing them both with the denial. Her own pleasure coiled low in her core, hot and demanding.
“Look,” she hissed, grabbing his chin and forcing his gaze up to the mirror. “Look at us.” He did. In the reflection he watched the way her body moved over his, the way her nails raked trails over his heaving muscles. He saw his own face—young, hungry, unguarded. “What do you see now?” she asked.
“Power,” he said hoarsely. “Yours.” The words escaped him like a prayer, his hands sliding up to cup her full breasts, thumbs circling her hardened nipples, drawing a hiss of approval from her lips.
That made something in her shiver. “Say it again.”
“Your power,” he repeated, hips bucking up to meet her, driving deeper into her welcoming heat. “You could bring down an army with a look. You could make kings kneel. Your beauty is lethal, intoxicating. I’d die for just one glance from those eyes, for the chance to worship you like this forever.” His words poured out, laced with emotion he couldn’t hide. His love for her showed in every desperate touch, every reverent thrust.
That pleased her almost as much as the rising crest of her own climax. The affirmations of her allure and command ignited her further, her core tightening around him like a vise, milking him as she chased her climax. She let herself go then, driving him harder, using his body like the instrument it was—herpersonal throne of youth, flesh, and devotion. Hunter’s groans turned to guttural pleas.
When the peak hit, it tore a cry from her throat—a sharp, triumphant sound that surged up from somewhere deeper than her lungs. It echoed off the stone, off the mirror, off the carved beams overhead.
At the same moment, far below, in the courtyard outside the stables, King Wilhelm happened to be walking back through the snow, cheeks flushed from the cold and from watching his daughter ride. He had left Shay with the stable hands, reluctantly agreeing to let her unsaddle Grimm herself—a small taste of responsibility. Wilhelm’s boots crunched on the packed path as he made his way toward the main stairs.
Then it came: a sound carried on the still winter air. Muffled by stone, distorted by distance, but unmistakably a woman’s cry. Laughter? Pain? He couldn’t tell. He paused, frowning, and looked up toward the queen’s tower. A curtain fluttered there, briefly, then stilled.
Another sound followed—the faintest echo of something like a groan, lower, longer. Wilhelm’s heart gave an odd, hard thump. He had never liked eavesdropping, even accidentally, on other people’s privacy. But that had sounded… wrong. Or perhaps it was only that he was unused to hearing his wife make any sound that was not carefully shaped.
He hesitated.
“Majesty?” a guard called from the archway. “Is everything all right?”
Wilhelm forced a smile. “Yes,” he said. “Of course. I thought I heard…” He trailed off. What would he say? That his queen had cried out and it had made something cold slide down his spine?
He shook his head. “Never mind.” He climbed the stairs, boots ringing on stone, the echo of that cry following him up and up.
When he reached Liora’s door, he did not pause to knock. Some uneasy part of him had already begun to form images he did not want to see.
He threw the door open.
Chapter three
A Royal’s Last Breath
