Prime Reaper (16 page)

“You disappoint me, Ari,” the queen said. “Can I not get even a tiny rise out of you?” Her
smile was ruthless. “Although, as I remember, the only thing I got out of you was a tiny spurt of
lust so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“You drugged me else I would not have taken you then!” he threw at her, unable to hold his
tongue. “Give any man an aphrodisiac such as what you had your men pour down my unwilling
throat and that bastard would hump you!”

“I’ve had far better men than you thrusting between my legs, Arawn Gehdrin!” she said.

“Even a lowly serf serves me better than you did that night.” She flung out an arm. “Strip him!”

Cynyr felt Arawn’s humiliation and could almost feel the rough hands of the guards taking hold of his arms to hold him as they did the Prime Reaper. He struggled in his sleep—reliving that terrible day just as Arawn had lived it—and in the doing knew the same helplessness Arawn had felt as the clothes were torn from his body.

“Oh my,” the queen said as she came to stand over him. “Despite all your faults, you are a
most delectable man, Arawn.” She put out a slippered foot to nudge his cock. “Such a waste of
that glorious staff.”

The guards had knelt down to hold him spread-eagled to the ground. He would not give
them or his bitch of a wife the satisfaction of seeing him struggle. He lay perfectly still with his
wrists and ankles pinned down, the cold of the wind coming in through the flap of the tent to
wash over his bare flesh. Though he had to bite his tongue to keep from groaning as Duvessa
pressed her foot harder upon his groin, he refused to look away from her hateful smile.

“Has the hurdle arrived yet?” she asked in a merry voice.

“Aye, Your Highness. It awaits your pleasure,” the captain of the guard reported.
Arawn could not stop the shudder that rippled down his body.

“And the gallows?” she inquired sweetly.

“On one of the wagons, Your Highness. Would you like us to erect it now?”

“Oh yes,” the queen said, and ran the bottom of her slipper up Arawn’s belly to his chest.

“Place it where his people will get a good look and make sure the rope is sturdy and will hold. He
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is a weighty man.” She rubbed the toe of her slipper on his pap. “We would not want it to break
before he does.”

Restless, Cynyr flipped over to his back, breathing hard as though he’d run a long race. He flung an arm over his eyes and whimpered. He was locked in the same nightmare in which Arawn was being held and he could feel the same emotions that were rocketing through Gehdrin—the fear of not being able to withstand the coming torture, the fear of unmanning himself, the very real fear that he would scream while he met his doom, the concern for his people, the weight of their souls settling upon his shoulders whether or not they lived or died—was a crushing burden that pressed down upon the King of Annwn.

She sent everyone away save her personal maid and the four guards who held her husband
staked to the floor of her tent. The sound of the gallows being hammered into place was the only
sound heard as her hands went to the opening of her gown and she unburdened herself of the
flimsy garment.

“Bring me the tenerse, Jocelyn,” she ordered.

Arawn clenched his jaw shut, knowing full well what she intended. His eyes were filled with
disgust, unbridled fury and a hopelessness that made him want to cry.
The maid squatted down at his head. In her hand was a crystal goblet filled with a cloudy
white liquid he knew was milk mixed in with the strong narcotic that was tenerse. She put her
free hand on his chin and attempted to pry his mouth open so she could pour the contents into
his mouth.

“Oh it will be a hard deed to accomplish, Jocelyn,” the queen laughed.
Squatting over him, Duvessa sat down on Arawn’s belly, the wiry hairs of her nether curls
feeling like worms crawling over his flesh. She bent forward and put her fingers to his nipples,
twisting them brutally in an attempt to make him open his mouth in protest.
Staunchly refusing to give in to the cruelty, Arawn kept his lips tightly closed although the
pain ricocheting through his chest was nearly unbearable. The weight on his belly made it hard
to breathe and when his wife slid down him so she could take his flaccid penis in her hands to
continue her torture, he squeezed his eyes shut.

“You’ll give in, Arawn,” the queen said. “You know you will. Why not open your mouth
and make it easier on yourself.”

She twisted his cock and yanked at it, pinched and scratched it until it bled yet he managed
to keep his mouth closed. She squeezed his balls unmercifully.

“Might I make a suggestion, Your Highness?” he heard one of the guards ask.
Duvessa stroked his cock gently. “Anything that you think might help would be of interest
to me, soldier.”

Cynyr groaned in his sleep. He knew it took a man to know how to hurt another man and he cursed as he struggled with the connection locking Arawn and him 86

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together in this brutal nightmare. He felt the wave of terror washing over the Prime Reaper at the guard’s words yet there was nothing he could do. What was tormenting Arawn now had happened long, long ago—on a different world and in a different time—and there was no changing it.

“When a man reaches maturity,” the guard explained, “his balls descend from his body
cavity.”

“Aye, I understand that,” the queen said in a bored voice.

“What comes down, Majesty,” the guard said, looking down at his prisoner, “can go back
up and when the balls are held into place, it is very painful.”

Arawn opened his eyes and looked into the merciless stare of the guard. The man was a
burly hulk whose face was pitted with acne scars.

“Show me,” Duvessa ordered.

Cynyr did not feel the brutal torture that followed but he felt Arawn’s shame as the guard’s hands closed around that most intimate part of his body. He heard the silent scream that reverberated through the Prime Reaper’s soul. Squirming on his bedroll as the agony went on and on for what seemed like an hour and when at last that silent scream became one that forced Arawn’s mouth open, Cree knew a defeat that nearly shattered his mind.

Sputtering a portion of the liquid from his nostrils as the tenerse-laced milk was poured
down his throat, his jaw clamped shut to make him swallow the evil potion, Arawn bucked
beneath the hold that anchored him. As soon as the tenerse flooded his system and his cock
jumped in anticipation of the wet cunt sitting so close it, impaling itself upon it, the maid
released her hold on his jaw and got up.

“Ah, now we can have some fun,” the queen said as she lowered herself upon him, taking his
cock in her hand to thrust it up inside her.

It was a maddening itch that had Cynyr writhing on his blanket. His own cock felt the fullness of blood rushing through it and he began to experience the burn of lust. He turned over, pushing himself against the folds of the blanket in an effort to relieve the ungodly need that boiled through his groin. But there was no release and he nearly woke himself with the whimper that pushed from his throat.

She rode him until he was bloody and so sore he whined with each lift of her hot cunt on his
flesh. He had come so many times inside her he could not conceive there was any more juice left
in his cock when at last she rolled off him to lie at his side panting, sated with such an evil grin
on her face he felt it to the core of his being.

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“You got me with child that time, husband,” she said. “I felt it.” She reached out to stroke
his chest. “Did you not feel it, Arawn?”

He had and it shamed him to know there would be get from this day’s wicked business. That
he would leave behind a child of his loins to be at the witch’s mercy filled him with despair. Tears
fell from the corners of his eyes and his lips trembled. Only the gods knew what harm Duvessa
would do a helpless child.

“It seems a waste to destroy such manly beauty,” she said as her hands wandered over him.

“If you will promise to be a good little boy, I might consider letting you live. Of course, this time,
I guarantee you’ll not break your chains and leave me!”

There was no way he would consent to being kept as her plaything. He despised her—had
long before he had ever been forcibly taken from his estate and forced into Joining with the bitch.
Her reputation had been one of cruelty, deceit and debauchery and he had wanted no part of her.
All he had ever wanted was Jilline and Duvessa had savagely destroyed that sweet, precious girl
long ago.

“What say you, husband? Would you rather live as my pet or die as my enemy?” she asked,
rubbing her hand over his raw and bleeding cock.

“I would rather die.”

Cynyr stood to one side and watched as Arawn was dragged from the queen’s tent. The hurdle—a framework made of rough branches—had been attached by a sling to the back of a mule and stood waiting as the guards pulled Arawn toward it. Naked, the King of Annwn was lashed down to the hurdle in the same spread-eagled position and the horse set into motion. On the hard framework, the Prime Reaper was dragged toward his castle, in clear view of the defenders who manned the battlements. Walking slowly beside the conveyance that carried Arawn to his fate, Cynyr could feel the weight of the eyes of Arawn’s people and their hopelessness. The man they loved was being taken to his death because of them, yet when he slipped gently into Arawn’s mind, there was no regret there—only an abiding hatred for the woman who had caused this to happen.

They had unlashed him from the hurdle then bound his hands behind him, pulling him
toward the gallows that stood waiting. The queen herself had dropped the noose around his neck
and had stood there smiling as they hoisted him up, legs scissoring as the hemp cut into his flesh,
cutting off his air, choking him. By the time they let him drop to the ground, his vision was
nothing more than a black blur with zigzagging stars spinning through the darkness.
Once more they lashed him to the hurdle but this time would be the last. He was more dead
than alive, gasping for breath, unable to speak, the rope burn around his neck stinging brutally.
In the distance thunder rumbled ominously and dark clouds began to form. A winter storm
was brewing. Lightning stair-stepped through the heavens to the west.
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He barely felt the first plunge of the knife into his belly but as his flesh was sliced open, the
pain became so intense it brought a cry from his lips. When the executioner reached into him to
pull out his intestines, he could not stop the godawful scream that trilled from his lips.

Cynyr woke as he felt the connection to Arawn broken and he turned over to see the Prime Reaper walking out into the desert. He got up and followed him.

“I had forgotten there was a link between us,” Arawn said as Cynyr came to stand behind him. “I am sorry I disturbed your sleep.”

“I am sorry that was done to you,” Cynyr said. He had never been one to embrace another man but he ached to take Arawn into his arms and hold him.

“The storm got much worse,” the Prime Reaper said. He was leaning against a cottonwood tree with his arms crossed, staring out into the night. “It was so violent they rushed Duvessa back to her tent. Hail as large as your fist began falling all around me but not once did any of it hit me.”

“Morrigunia,” Cynyr said.

Arawn nodded. “I was in such pain I wished the hail would knock me unconscious so I could die in peace. My guts were spilled out beside me, hanging over the frame of the hurdle. I could smell them and the stench was disgusting. I doubt I had a cup of blood left in me by the time She came swooping down out of the boiling heavens.” He glanced at Cynyr. “I don’t think anyone saw Her but me. She came down like some kind of giant white bird with Her wings fluttering. All I remember is Her picking me up and soaring over the mountains with me in Her arms. At some point I passed out or died. I’ll never know which. When I came to, I was lying beside Her on a soft fur rug with hundreds of candles lighting whatever room we were in. I do remember Her giving me the Revenant worm but after that, everything is a blank.”

“We know now there was more, don’t we?” Cynyr asked.

“Aye,” Arawn said, bitterly.

“I ache knowing how horrible your death was, Ari.”

The Prime Reaper shrugged. “We all had to die in some way, Cyn, or we wouldn’t be here together now.”

“Do you know whatever became of Duvessa?”

Arawn snorted. “The only thing I asked—the only thing I’ve ever asked of Her—

was to keep my people safe, to punish Duvessa for killing me. Whether She did or not is something else I don’t guess I’ll ever know. I can only hope She did and that Duvessa is rotting in hell and has taken on the title of Queen of Maggots.”

“I would never have imagined you to have been a king before your Transition,”

Cynyr said. “You don’t act like how I imagine a king acts.”

Arawn actually laughed at that. “No one is ever really what we think they are, Cyn,” he said. “Now? Now, I am just as much a slave to Morrigunia as you or Owen or Glyn.” He looked down at the ground. “Maybe even more so.”

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“Why do you say that?” Cynyr asked.

Arawn smiled grimly. “Think of the history here, Cree. We were told that Morrigunia eradicated disease, especially cancer, yet She allowed my lady to get that vile sickness.” He gave Cynyr a narrowed look. “Either allowed her to get it or gave it to her. Take your pick.”