The Hated (Sleeping With Monsters Book 3) (13 page)

I threw away the last three pages I’d written for Yzin – honestly, I spent half an hour trying to call up enough power to burn them, I was so shamed by what I’d written. The ending of the story had been about the jewel waiting to be rescued, hoping that someday the rebels would find her, if only they got to her in time.

I crumpled them and threw them to the floor so zoomers would carry them off and started fresh.

No, instead the ending of this final story would be about how the girl trapped inside the jewel broke free -- then burned the palace down around her.

Joshan returned hours later, just as my story was almost complete, dragging a large box. “I believe these were what you wanted, my Queen,” he said, opening it.

It was full of candles of all shapes and sizes. “Excellent work, Joshan.”

I swept my papers aside and lined up the candles front to back and side to side, all facing the bed. “Is there anything else, my Queen?” Joshan asked when we were through.

“Yes,” I said, prying up a bent wick with a fingernail. “Go to my bed. I’ll meet you there in a second.”

When I was done arranging the candles in perfect height order, my entire desk covered in sweet smelling wax, I turned and saw Joshan standing where I’d told him to, patiently.

“Oh, Joshan,” I said, shaking my head at him.

“Yes, my Queen?” he asked, eager to please. He cared for me, in his own machine way, but now that I had Zaan I knew I needed so much more.

Still, though – I crawled up onto my bed and walked over to him on my knees to take his hand. “Come,” I said, and pulled him on the bed beside me. Then I took his shoulders and pushed him down, head up but facing the end of the bed. As I was still naked it was an easy thing to straddle his chest.

The only part of me that didn’t hurt from Zaan’s lesson was my pussy – which was good because it was the only part I needed to make this experiment work.

I rose up and crawled forward, till my knees were by his neck, my dark place inches from his mouth. “I need you to taste me, Joshan. You know how I like it.”

“I do, my Queen,” he answered, and then I lowered myself down.

His lips lapped at me as I sank slowly, his tongue tracing the outside of my folds, and up underneath my hood, before my petals parted to let him in.

After that, everything was simple – his tongue thrust up into me, where Zaan’s fingers had just been – and then licked forward, sucking my most sensitive spot.

For my part, I crouched over him on all fours, knees spread wide. My magic was already alive, I could feel it surging, up and down my spine and thighs. I held myself up on one arm and cradled my other breast, pulling that nipple tight – and then looked at the candles. They would burn. I wanted them to burn. I would call down fire upon them, and all of them would light.

Joshan’s tongue didn’t stop and neither did I – any time I felt too close I clawed myself back to attention.

The power was mine. It was in me. I controlled it. All of it.

The nearest candle flickered and hissed. Seeing it light mesmerized me, and I sank, grinding more of my pussy into Joshan’s face, his chin pressing in as his mouth sucked and tongue lapped.

The next candle, and the next one, the one after that – all of them took, one row, two rows, four, twelve – until every candle on my desk was waving a tiny spot of flame – just like the tiny spot between my legs that Joshan licked.

“Joshan!” I shouted as I came, bobbing my hips down deeper into him, clawing my hands into my bedding as I released. “Joshan –“

Zoomers – ten of them – crawled into the room and up the desk and made short work of quenching all the candles.

“I did it –“ I said, propping myself back up. “Did you see that?” I asked him.

“See what, my Queen?” he asked, looking only up.

I laughed. It didn’t matter. I knew what I’d done. I lay down and rolled over and saw Beza in the doorway, waiting.

“Did you see that, Beza?”

She shook her head. “No, my Queen.”

I looked between them. “Neither of you? You’re no fun.”

Beza took several steps over to the bed. “We do like to play with you, my Queen.”

I smiled softly and flung my arms out – and found Joshan’s hard cock pressing against my palm. I slipped my hand between the folds of his robe and took hold of him because it pleased me to do so, just as my mouth had pleased Zaan, and I traced his outline with a fingertip.

Why? Who would make a machine this thoroughly? And towards what end? Why would anyone care if I knew how to take a man?

Did someone know that fucking would unlock my magic from inside of me? If so, how?

“Joshan, sit up.” My hand went with him as he moved, until he was kneeling on my bed, looking back at me. “Beza – come here.”

“My Queen,” she said, and let me pull her onto the bed. I wrapped my hands into her hair as Zaan had trapped mine, and pushed her mouth down to take Joshan’s cock. He groaned as she throated him, and like a jacar’s kitten she began to purr.

I watched her take him, rocking back and forth, arms and ass as he stood still, hips thrust slightly forward. I pushed her hair back so I could see how far her lips slid up his shaft, and how wet his cock was when it slid back out.

“Keep going,” I commanded, getting another idea. I ran to my desk and found a candle roughly the size and shape of a cock, and returned to my bed. I flipped up Beza’s hem, until her perfectly curved ass swayed in front of me with each of her mouth’s strokes. I stroked both soft sides of her ass and then reached between them and down to find her dark place with one finger – and then gently pushed the candle in.

Beza moaned, muffled by Joshan’s cock in her throat.

“Is that good?” I asked her, stroking her back. She made another pleasured muffled sound, and rocked back farther toward my hand.

“Good,” I whispered back. My magic stirred in me again as I orchestrated them -- whatever Zaan had done had broken walls and now I felt it rushing, trapped inside me, like a lilan fluttering against a gilded cage – it needed a way out.

I pressed the candle in another inch. Then two, watching her petals push open as if grasping to take more of the candle inside. I reached around her to touch her bright spot, circling it before rubbing it carefully, while pulsing the candle in and out.

“Can you take this, my Beza? Can you take so much more?” I felt the thrill of the conqueror controlling her, just as Zaan had done to me. At the head of the bed, Joshan’s hands were tangled in her hair.

I started fucking her with the candle, using it just like a cock. She moaned, the sound still muffled, but her honey spilled out over my fingers, and I was tempted to pull away to taste a drop – but no – I rubbed the top of her folds so gently, and then became more rough, feeling her body rock with the thrusts of the candle, her mouth trapped around Joshan’s cock.

Everything about her was still for a moment, and I knew she was on the verge of release. I pounded the candle into her as my fingers sped up and in moments she was screaming against Joshan.

Good Joshan, loyal Joshan, had waited until that moment – but now his hips thrust madly against her face, pulling on her hair the same way Zaan had mine, until he made a guttural sound, and pulled back.

“My Queen,” he said, a look of worry in his eye.

“Good, Joshan –“

“No – my Queen –“ he untangled a hand from Beza’s hair and pointed behind me.

I turned, and gasped.

#

Empowered by Ilylle’s blood, I surged down the halls in my smoke form, finding the exit and wending my way out and down, until my feet landed on the road outside, unseen.

The marker I’d left on the woman called to me. It was closer this time though, so I followed it as a man, changing my smoke-armor to match what other men wore on the street.

Daylight did not do the city around the palace any favors. Refuse piled on corners where children ferretted through it with small hands. I didn’t know what they were looking for – I didn’t want to know. This was so different from Aranda of my time. There’d been poverty, yes, but the very air stank of desperation here – desperation and the foul breaths the metal beasts put out as they traveled on the roads. I had to leap out of their way several times, the drivers inside not seeing or caring if they hit me.

Soon my marker led me to a sewer grate inside a long alley. I looked down at it and frowned. I could turn into smoke to get in, but I didn’t know what was below, and as smoke I could be trapped. I waited, hoping the woman with the marker would emerge, but when she didn’t I dissipated myself and sunk in.

I stayed near the ceiling of the sewer, following her pull. There were just as many tunnels under here as there had been in the palace – in fact, if my sense of place was accurate, I had doubled back beneath the ground to be near the palace’s underbelly.

Why was that woman down here? I knew I was getting close, the pull was stronger – I reached what I knew would be a final door, and sunk below it, finding the woman and several others in a heated conversation.

“We’ve got to do it now, Elissa.”

The men she conversed with were wearing strange armor, covered in metals, and they stood to one side of a massive Rixan beast. It was the size of one of the metal-beasts outside
roaming the roads, but it had a proboscis of sharp spinning wheels that narrowed down to point. I had never seen its like before, but I could use my imagination – it was the worm I’d heard her speak of, and they meant to breech the Feather Palace’s lower walls.

“The historian says he needs another day.”

The leader of the armored men put his hand on the hilt of some weapon. I recognized the gesture from my own past – and the note of exasperation in his voice. “What difference will a day make?”

“You saw the tape – she doesn’t know about the outside world – about any of it. She can still be converted to our side. He goes to speak to her again.”

“And hopes she finally gets his gist? She’s been dense for three-hundred years now – that’s ten times as long as I’ve been alive.” Other men grunted at this.

“How about we go and talk to her ourselves?” said one of them, patting the side of the metal-monster they stood beside.

Elissa’s eyes narrowed and she looked among them coolly. “Remember that this plan is his plan – and that without him, we would not have this chance.”

“And you’re sure he hasn’t changed his mind? I mean, he waits long enough and he gets to live forever.”

“It has taken him a thousand years to infiltrate up until this point. So yes, he plays a longer game than you and I can comprehend – but he is not a liar.” She looked among them, waiting for one of them to challenge her. “You’ll have your answer today. But make no move till then.”

The man nearest her ground his jaw but then shrugged. “If he’s truly waited a thousand years, I can wait twenty-four more hours. After that, though –“

“Understood.” Elissa nodded curtly and left the room. I swirled up to where the metal-beast was aimed, and marked the wall.

It took me time to flow out and double-back to the palace again, but Ilylle’s blood kept me strong until I reformed and started walking down the halls.

How had she lived for three hundred years? And Yzin for a thousand? The magically inclined lived longer, healthier, but one lifetime was enough for any man.

A clicking sound echoed through the halls. Had the men outside decided to release their machine? I ran forward to where my hall joined a larger one and saw a herd of zoomers racing eight-leggedly toward Ilylle’s great chamber and instantly changed to smoke to follow them.

I reached her room as they did – half of it was on fire and she was madly laughing, starting new flames just as quickly as zoomers could put them out. I gathered myself and swirled around the room’s perimeter, extinguishing all the flames out in my passage before reforming in front of her. She was naked, standing beside her bed where her two servants lay.

“Are you mad?”

Ilylle looked suitably chastened. “No. It’s just – I can do it now. I just wanted to see –“ she pointed at her couch, and a flame arose from the center cushion. The nearest zoomer sprung atop it and extinguished it, then switched paws. Needle and thread emerged, and it began to patch the hole. “See?”

“I see.”

She crossed her room and pulled on a robe, tying its sash loosely. “All I had to do was help Joshan fuck Beza and –“ she made a gesture, indicating the surrounding destruction – the
marks on the ceiling, the ruined tapestries, the pile of melted wax. And as if to defy me, she grinned, and lit a different spot on the couch alight.

I’d left her unsated? When I thought she could take no more? I would not be making that mistake again. I slashed my hand through the air. “All this is impressive, but you need to stop.”

“But I have power now!” she said, leaning forward. Her robe slipped open, showing the belly-curve of one round breast. I thought of throwing her on the bed and fucking her until we set the room ablaze, but I didn’t let it show.

“Power, without control, is nothing.” I stepped back from her and surveyed the room’s destruction. “Right now you’re as likely to immolate your people as you are to save them.” When my gaze returned to her I saw her shoulders fall. “Though I am glad you have learned how to access it on your own. It seems we will not need to fuck again.”

I watched her when I said it. I wanted to see the effect it would have on her – if what I gave her could be so easily replaced with metal-puppets. The look she gave me then was dark and pained, and something low inside me stirred. I knew then I’d planted a hook inside her, but she answered, “Whatever you think best, my King.”

“Precisely,” I said. The first wave of zoomers started leaving the room, now that they’d caught up with her destruction. I sat down on the couch, inspecting the hole that’d just been fixed, unable to tell a flame had ever been there.

Chapter Twelve

“Tell me more about Yzin,” he commanded, from his spot on the couch. I tugged my robe closed and tied it tighter so that none of my skin showed. He didn’t want to fuck me anymore? Why? Had I done something wrong? I walked back to my bed and sat on it, half a room away from him.