Two: Axe of the North“Leave us.”

  With a wave of his hand, Edmund Malveil, Earl of the South, Lord of House Malveil, dismissed the servants and sycophants, courtiers and councillors, lords and dies that littered his hall. The guards were st leave, hesitating at the door.

  “Leave!” he shouted. “Do you think I have anything to fear from—her?”

  The pudgy finger indicated Lady Aubriel, standing with hands csped before her and eyes demurely downcast. She stood at the bottom of the wide stone risers leading to her Lord’s seat. She could not have mounted the stairs to stand level with him even had she wanted or dared to, the tightness of her dress and the precariousness of her shoes making each step an exquisite challenge.

  House Malveil’s halls at the capitol were vish with conspicuous wealth accumuted over three generations of royal favour. Rich tapestries covered the walls, eborate depictions of the House’s glorious past. Gold glistened in the dancing light from a dozen heavy braziers, and the bright fire burned in the jewels adorning Edmund’s crown, sceptre and rings. Crown and sceptre y piled on a table near Edmund’s throne, discarded and ignored on a heap of fur-lined cloaks and richly embroidered clothing.

  In contrast to the rich opulence, the Lord of House Malveil slouched in his heavy seat, a corpulent, slovenly man, unshaven and dishevelled, dressed in the full trapping of wealth worn with absolute disregard. Once, he’d been regarded as a handsome man, a powerful man: tall, strong and fearsome, with dark eyes and a perpetual smirk. A tapestry triptych portrayed him at the front of the King’s armies at the Battle of Trath Hill, steeped in blood and sughter; carving a path through his enemy; and the final encounter with Lady Jahara, single-handedly defeating the heretical acolyte and fallen mother—a tale as fanciful as it was glorious, securing his house’s dominance for another generation.

  But those days were far behind him. Now, Edmund drew a sharp contrast with the surrounding fashionable trappings. His sister, the Lady Teneira Malveil, dictated the fashions of Court and the decorations of his hall, but she exerted little influence over him and he often seemed to derive a perverse, almost childish pleasure in ignoring her efforts at cultivating style and sophistication.

  Above all else, he exuded boredom—a dangerous, cunning ennui that found diversion in games pyed for their own sake. He exerted power because power existed to be exerted; for no greater reason than that.

  They were alone now. Earl Edmund Malveil slouched chin in palm and drummed the armrest with his fingers. Heavy rings glinted with the rhythmic movement. He stared down at the demure girl, his adopted daughter Aubriel, who remained standing with eyes fixed on the floor. Her handmaiden also remained. It never occurred to him to dismiss the servant; she was ubiquitous at her mistress’s side, and he almost instantly forgot her presence.

  He’d once diverted himself and taken pleasure in watching Aubriel’s gradual acquiescence to her role, her struggle and shame, the slow but inexorably erosion of her former stubbornness and submersion under yers of silks and ce, weighed down by jewellery and the constant, grinding minutiae of her life at Court. To see her there so tightly ensconced in femininity should have brought him exquisite joy, but it had been nearly a year now and instead he felt only the first stirrings of the old boredom. Yes; boredom, even though he had pnned for and anticipated this very day for the past year. There was little pleasure for Edmund in bringing a plot to fruition, not when its completion meant the utter defeat of his rival. He felt instead a rather strange sort of sadness; a familiar feeling, for this was hardly the first foe he’d destroyed.

  “House Mistress Castigan reports you are doing well.” He watched the girl carefully, judging her reaction. “You make a very pretty bauble for the Crimson Court.”

  Aubriel bobbed her head. “Lady Castigan is too kind, my lord,” she murmured. She had yet to meet his gaze.

  “How so?”

  “I remain a clumsy fool,” she said. “A silly and stupid girl.”

  Her response sparked his interest. Her previous—antagonism and seething resentment was absent; what had changed?

  “True,” he conceded. “And yet I am pgued by courtiers expressing their interest,” he added. “They extol at length your charms and beauty: the sparkle of your eyes and the divine glow of your face and the fiery radiance of your hair. They speak of the sweetness of your breath, the allure of your full lips and the hope of a honeyed kiss.” He barked with ughter. “And your tits; yes, they speak of your full, snowy-white tits and your tight ass and the promise of a wet aristocratic cunt beneath those tight dresses.”

  Aubriel remained silent.

  “In other words, these men desire marriage, adopted daughter.” Edmund leaned forward, the chair creaking beneath his weight. “What think you of that, hmm? Of marriage?”

  Finally, Aubriel raised her eyes. Auburn curls tumbling back over her shoulder. Earrings twirled and between the emerald fre of gemstones, she stared up at her lord and in her eyes burned hatred and fury and shame and fear. But the flush of emotions was quickly suppressed. A flutter of the eyes and her pcid calm resumed, but the fsh was enough to briefly excite Edmund.

  She opened her mouth, closed it, and swallowed nervously. Her hand fluttered at her side before smoothing down the front of her dress. “It is an honour,” she finally said, “One I have never dreamed of.”

  “Never?” Edmund sneered. “I’m sure. Well. Think on it now, girl, it’s why we brought you into the family. The men are lining up. They want to fuck you, Aubriel, spread your legs and pnt their seed in your belly and secure an alliance with House Malveil.”

  He watched her shiver and took some delight in that, as he did in the thought of the girl perched in her towering shoes and bent over some insignificant minor lord’s table with her ass in the air, dress hiked up around her waist and legs spread and trembling in anticipation. Or on her knees, face impaled on the man’s cock, moaning with indignity and need.

  “After all, the king is dead, and the vultures are circling. Like—” He paused, as though in remembrance of old words. “Like flies to shit.”

  Aubriel’s eyes dropped.

  “Isn’t that what you used to say? Hmm?”

  Again, she remained silent.

  “Answer me!”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Yes, my lord,” he mimicked, in a little girl’s voice.

  But what she said next took him surprise. Her tone was gentle—tired and a little sad, but entirely absent of her old anger. “How can you hate me so much?” she asked.

  Her question angered him. It angered Edmund because he read in the question an implied power over him, a power he no longer held over her. To be able to provoke hatred, love, or any strong emotion within another was to have power over them, he knew, and he felt the diminishing of his own influence over this girl.

  And all the possible answers rushed forward from deep within and filled him with old anger and resentment. He could say: because not long ago, your presence was a constant reminder of what I used to be. Or: because of my dearly departed wife and the whispers that once filled the Court. Or: because your stubbornness and stupidity and blindness would have ruined us all, your love for that fool of a dead king would have destroyed this kingdom and denied me what is rightfully mine.

  Or perhaps even: but I don’t hate you and never have; that this is not hate; this is power and the nature of power is to be grasped and used or it is lost. Once, you had this power; you failed to use it; and now you are mine.

  But instead, he said, “because you insulted me,” which was also true—the pettiest and therefore most true of his reasons. “Behind my back and to my face. You were so full of yourself, so high and mighty, above us all and looking down at the Court, at courtiers, at the nobility and at men—at men like me.

  “You mocked me—openly!—and made a mockery of the games we pyed, believing yourself better as though there was greater honour in the open bde than the veiled knife. Perhaps you should have paid more attention and learned to py.” He ughed, an ugly sound from the back of his throat. “If you’d pyed the game better perhaps it would be you, sitting comfortably in this high chair and me in bonds of silk below.” His mockery died on the tongue, the idea of him—in her position—perched and pinioned by fashions of his sister’s choosing an impossibility, a hideous farce. He could never consent to such a fate; not as the fool below had.

  “Weak, you called us.” He sneered at the girl. “Soft, you called us.” With elbows on both knees, he leaned forward in his seat, fingers interced over the bulge of his belly. He gestured with a single, ring-den finger. “Who’s soft now, Aubriel?”

  “I am,” she whispered.

  “Show me.”

  Her eyes widened. He saw a terrible dread there, the fear of humiliation, and it briefly excited him. But her fear faded quickly, sinking beneath the same pcid calm she’d carried with her into his hall. She stared back at him and he stared back at her and then slowly she raised her hand and brought it to her chest. Her fingers slid within the low neckline of her dress and curled into the softness of the flesh she found there. Under the watchful eyes of her lord, Aubriel pawed at her own breasts.

  “What do you feel?” he asked.

  “Softness,” she said.

  “Whose?”

  “Mine.”

  “Close your eyes,” he ordered. “And keep at it, girl. I want to hear you.” He allowed himself a moment of pleasure, watching Aubriel grope herself. Her mouth parted and she sagged slightly, a quiet moan escaping her lips.

  But the pleasure was fleeting and because her question still annoyed him, Edmund diverted from the script he’d long pnned for this encounter. He reached down by the side of his seat. He retrieved an axe where it y affixed, one of a pair mounted on either side of his throne. Unlike many of the weapons lining the walls of the hall, this one wasn’t ornamental. It was an ugly, brutal thing: a simple wooden shaft with a metal ball, dull iron and pitted at one end. The other end was edged and jagged and hooked. It was a weapon designed to kill rather than decorate.

  Edmund hefted the weapon. It was heavy but weighted for throwing. Below, Aubriel continued to pleasure herself at his command. How long, he briefly wondered, would she keep at it? But her debasement already bored him. With a grunt, he tossed the weapon. It fell with a loud ctter at her feet.

  The young woman’s eyes flew open.

  “Take it,” Edmund ordered.

  With some difficulty, Aubriel retrieved the weapon. The precarious height of her shoes and the tightness of her dress made bending or kneeling difficult. Slowly, and with exquisite grace born of incessant training and practice, she reached for the axe. She wiggled within her dress and bent slightly at the knees but mostly from the waist, with her ass high in the air. Heavy breasts hung pendulously, threatening to slip free of their bodice, and jewellery spun and sparkled as her hair cascaded nearly to the stone floor.

  Her fingers curled around the shaft. Their delicate paleness and vividly painted nails drew a sharp contrast with the dark wood and cold metal. With just as much care she straightened, and stood, with the axe held loosely in her hand.

  Edmund could see the strain in her slender arms and shoulders, yet she carried the weapon with ease and comfort. Weapon in hand, she seemed to visibly rex. Her entire posture changed and despite the cripplingly long and shaped nails that were the fashion of Court, the weapon somehow sat easily in her grip. When she looked up at him, he felt a delicious thrill of danger.

  “You thought us weak, once,” he said. His mocking smile was gone.

  From behind her veil of auburn hair, glimmering with its decorative net of precious stones, Aubriel considered the axe.

  “Who’s weak now?”

  She looked up at him. He thought he saw her tremble with the desire she must feel. Edmund watched her judge the distance between them and evaluate the weight of the weapon and her grip tightened slightly and—

  With a dull knell against the stone floor, the axe dropped to the floor.

  “I am,” she murmured.

  “Good girl,” he said, and felt both eted and disappointed. He gestured at the weapon on the floor. “That axe belonged to our great rival,” he added. “It belonged to Duncan McAsdair, the Axe of the North.” And he shifted his great bulk back into his chair, rubbing at an unshaven cheek with one hand. Edmund sighed. “And what happened to the Axe, I wonder, hmm, girl? Can you tell me that?”

  Her gaze dropped once again and she hid behind the lustrous fall of her hair. “He is dead,” she said.

  “Dead?” he repeated.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “And how did he die?”

  “In service to his King,” she answered. “Doing his duty.”

  “He died a failure,” Edmund spat. “And a traitor.”

  Aubriel flinched but remained silent.

  “Castigan’s taught you well, hasn’t she?” Edmund said and ughed, though the girl’s newfound composure continued to annoy him. “Tell me, girl: where’s that celebrated pride and arrogance now, hmm? The stubbornness? The anger?”

  Her lips moved in response, too quiet to hear. He leaned forward. “What’s that? Speak up, girl!”

  “… my true nature," she murmured at the threshold of his understanding. "My nature is manifest in the truths of the gentle grace that guides me to my pce.”

  “Enough prattle!” He growled in the back of his throat. He recognized the litany, of course, and had heard its women’s words on their lips often enough. And though her apparent submission made his pns all the easier, there remained something unnerving in Aubriel’s newfound capitution to her role.

  “Undress,” he ordered.

  Aubriel started. “My lord?”

  “You heard me,” he barked.

  This, too, had never been part of his script, the orchestration of his foe’s final debasement. Edmund had seen her naked often, from her initial imprisonment in the dungeons below these very Halls, to the days of her training, blindfolded and broken, in the dimly lit and cloyingly scented back rooms of the pleasure dens of Petal Street.

  She gaped at him for a moment, lips forming a very pretty painted ‘O’ of dismay. She looked around for an ally and found only her handmaiden Maya once again at her side. But the handmaiden remained impassive and offered nothing. A slow flush blossomed across her chest and crept up Aubriel’s neck.

  “My lord, it is—” She struggled to find the word to adequately express her feeling. “Improper.”

  “For a merchant to inspect his wares?” Edmund sneered.

  “I am— more than goods to trade.”

  “As you are mine,” he answered. “I give you to my friends. You are an unmarried woman; my daughter; you are chattel.”

  “But—”

  “Do as I say!” he roared, his voice echoing across the chambers. Spittle flew and he heaved himself to his feet, gesturing imperiously at the girl below. The door to the hall flew open; a guard stood at the threshold, sword half-drawn from its scabbard: “OUT!” Edmund thundered, and the door smmed shut once more.

  He spun back to Aubriel. “Undress! Or I’ll undress you myself.”

  Aubriel, aristocratic dy of the court and his adopted daughter, flushed and trembled with the effort of suppressing her rage and humiliation. And yet she submitted, eyes dropping away from her lord’s mocking, angry gre.

  Edmund licked his lips and watched with keen interest. With the handmaiden’s help, off came the long, tight dress, an undertaking of no small effort. But once the ces were untied and the garment loosened and carefully tugged down the girl’s hourgss form, Aubriel was finally able to step free of it and then she stood before her lord in corset and stockings, heels and panties.

  She glittered with the reflected light like a brilliant ornament, the multitude embroidered gemstones in her undergarments and hair casting back the light of the braziers. Her cheeks and lips gleamed, and her whole body flushed red with shame as she shivered in her partial nakedness.

  He took an unexpectedly fierce pleasure in seeing her diminutive form and womanly curves. He knew little of such things, but the corset seized the girl around the waist like a vice; he could only imagine its discomfort, or the annoyance of suspenders and stockings, the difficulty in affixing them and the distracting tug that must accompany every move. Some part of him wondered how she endured it, the constant grip, the enforced assiduousness of every gesture and step and the incessant petty details that now comprised her life, one so different than before.

  Next, the handmaiden loosened the long ces of the shoes that wound up Aubriel's calves to just below the knee. Again, Edmund marvelled at this pulling back of the veil, the revetion of feminine mysteries to which he’d never paid attention—with scorn, of course, and mockery, yet he couldn’t deny a grudging recognition of his rival’s mastery of such foolishness. To even stand in such precarious, fluting things, the tapering heel and high arch and tall ptform; not just stand yet alone walk—impossible; yet hidden behind the shifting hems of their dresses, the women of the court manoeuvred in them daily. As did Aubriel, Edmund thought, and smiled.

  With great care, Aubriel stepped down from her tall footwear. Then the stockings, which the handmaiden gently rolled down her mistress’s legs.

  Maya stopped at that and stood next to Aubriel. Both girls stared at the floor in silence, as though in shared suffering under the oppressive gre of the man standing over them.

  “Well?” He licked his lips, swallowed and pointed. “The rest of it!” he demanded.

  Maya gnced up, as though ashamed to meet his gaze—or rather, ashamed by his demand rather than by her position. But her voice was clear and cool when she answered. “Lady Castigan has instructed the Lady Aubriel’s corset should not be removed without her express consent.”

  “Am I Lord of this House, or she?” he roared. “Remove it!”

  “It is locked, my Lord.”

  “Then unlock it!” In a rage that took him by surprise, he reached down the other side of his throne. He yanked the second axe, the twin to the one that remained at Aubriel’s feet, free from its mount and brandished it at the girls. “Or must I come down there and slice her free myself?”

  With unnerving, impassive confidence, the servant stared back at him before giving a little shrug and returning to her mistress. She retrieved a tiny key from a hidden pocket and with it released a lock that secured the panel over the concealed ces. A few minutes more, and she loosened her mistress’s corset and assisted her in releasing the busk closures. The corset opened and fell away and was carefully id out on the stone floor over Aubriel’s dress, a colourful swath of embroidered steel and ce.

  Aubriel nearly swooned with her release. She took a deep, shuddering breath and caressed her sides. Maya gently moved her arms up over her head and undid and removed the simply cotton shift worn beneath the corset, so that when Aubriel finally straightened and turned back towards her lord, she stood naked but for the final silky scrap of fabric preserving her modesty. Her rge, rounded breasts hung free, and the scented oils from her morning bath gave her skin a luminous sheen in the firelight.

  One hand drifted to conceal the delicate panties, the other trying in vain to cover her fulsome chest. Again, Edmund marvelled at—and took dark pleasure in—the extent of her transformation, at how her body had moulded itself to the enforced curves of her corsetry and retained that shape even when released from it.

  “All of it,” Edmund ordered.

  Maya went to draw the panties down but Aubriel looked at her and shook her head. Staring up at the man standing high above her, she slowly slid the underwear down her lithe legs and stepped free, kicking the scrap of silk aside with a flick of her foot.

  They stood like that for a moment, a frozen tableau of two young women and the man standing over them.

  “And so there it is, finally.” Edmund broke the silence. “The so-called Axe of the North.”

  The 'Axe of the North' was tightly wrapped in a filigree prison of finely woven fiments, a steelsilk sleeve as delicate as it was strong, tautly restrained between her smooth thighs and tied back between her ass cheeks to a thin gold chain encircling her narrowed waist. Within the sheath, Edmund could she Aubriel’s cock, impressive in girth and length, semi-engorged with denial and humiliation, but painfully constrained. Castigan has expined to Edmund that the web and spiral of wire-thin threads promised pain should its contents swell too rge. The final humiliation was an intricate cing of decorative bows and pretty decorations adorning the masculine organ.

  "So tell me, girl—” Edmund stopped and ughed, though with little humour. “Enough of this. So tell me—Duncan—once Earl of the North, the Lord McAsdair and sovereign of all that house’s territories and holdings; yes, do tell me, so-called Axe of the North—my soft and weak adopted daughter—what shall I do with you?”

  Standing naked but for the cage around her penis, Edmund’s emascuted foe remained silent. Edmund walked towards her—towards him; it pleased him to think of Duncan, now, this foe, his conquered enemy; there was greater pleasure to be derived from funting his victory over the man than some insignificant girl.

  “How do I marry off a girl with—that—between her thighs?" he mused as he descended the stone steps separating them. He still held the axe in his hand, and its ft edge bumped against his thigh. “What man is going to want to marry a girl with more meat between her legs than he, hmm? What do I do with you?”

  Duncan continued to watch him in silence and in shame. He hugged his naked frame with slender arms and dropped his eyes to the floor. He hid behind the fall of auburn hair.

  “Perhaps I could sell you to one of the pleasure paces of Petal Street,” Edmund said. “A girl of your beauty would fetch a good price. They’d find a use for your defect, I imagine.”

  Duncan gasped, looking up with eyes wide in horror. Edmund saw in those eyes the memory of the time spent in those soft-cushioned rooms. Lady Castigan’s training and punishment early into Duncan’s transformation had done a lot to break the man’s initial resistance. Edmund recollected his own visit with great pleasure, the sight of his rival kneeling before him, blindfolding, tightly bound, tits on dispy, mouth open and inviting….

  Duncan’s arms drew tighter around his slight frame in fear. “No—you swore an oath!”

  “Still, seems a waste,” Edmund continued, ignoring her. “And I suppose Castigan would be furious. Though angering that bitch and reminding her of her pce could be reason enough…?” He pretended to seriously contempte the idea and forced a grin at his enemy’s fear.

  Finally, he shook his head as though dismissing the idea. “Nevertheless,” he continued. “No. I am sure there are better uses for you. Marriage seems most prudent. It is why we needed another daughter, after all.” Though a year distant, Edmund still felt a certain—regret—at the loss, at the necessary sacrifice of a valuable pawn. “Following your failure to safeguard the original, hmm, Duncan?”

  It amused him to see that the shame and regret of his supposed failure still haunted his defeated rival.

  “It was—”

  “Your duty,” Edmund chided. He descended the final step and stood before Duncan. He towered over the other—man—now: free of those ridiculous shoes, and with his once formidable height and build melted away, Duncan’s diminutive form barely reached Edmund’s shoulders. The rger man took Duncan’s chin between his thick fingers and forced those beautiful eyes up to meet his. He gazed into those deep, green and earth-brown eyes behind their full, feminine shes, framed in precisely painted colours, and sought the tightly bound, furiously raving man that he knew must lurk behind the doe-like pcidity. “And failing in one oath,” he added, and brushed the back of his beefy hand across his cheek, “You accepted another.”

  “But not this,” Duncan whispered. “Never—"

  “And so to marriage,” he continued, “as must any dutiful daughter.” From cheek to neck: he shifted his grip and held Duncan firmly by the neck and forced her head this way and that, as though inspecting for damages. “But then, to whom, hmm?

  “After all, I imagine there are more than a few Lords, both lesser and great, who would love nothing more than to have the great Duncan McAsdair as their subservient bride?” Edmund’s smile was cold and calcuting, as his thick fingers roughly pushed through Duncan’s tresses. The earrings he wore, and the pendant; they were familiar to him, though he couldn’t recall why. Relics of the household, he suspected, heirlooms of the past. Castigan would have chosen them for reasons beyond him, some petty veiled code, the irrelevant nguage of female fashion. “As their personal pything, hmm, don’t you think?

  “Would you enjoy that, Duncan? A lifetime of mincing about in dresses servicing the needs of an Ancaster or a Mals or a Pollox? Imagine the pleasure Lord Aln Togruk would take in your debasement? The joy that old, fat sadist would derive from your suffering? What would he have you do, I wonder? Can you imagine what he would make you wear, the bindings, the torture, the humiliation?”

  “You swore an oath,” Duncan whispered.

  Edmund’s touch slid down the slender form, caressing sloping shoulders and skin as smooth as that of any expensive Petal Street prostitute. He relished the way Duncan trembled beneath his touch. “As did you,” he said, and grabbed the man’s breasts. His grip was rough, and he pinched the nipple and enjoyed the way his victim whimpered. “An oath, hmm? Before the Old Gods and the New, in the full knowledge of everything that entailed.”

  “Not—” Edmund twisted the nipple between his fingers, and Duncan gasped in pain, knees buckling, and moaned and swayed and squeezed his eyes shut as though to escape his predicament. “This; I never—”

  “Thought it would lead to this?” Suddenly bored, Edmund shoved the man away. Duncan stumbled and fell the ground and cpped his small hands to his rge breasts. “No, I don’t imagine you did. You were never much of a thinker, were you, hmm? Good with an axe; not so good with a brain.”

  Shaking his head in mock disappointment, Edmund turned his back on his former enemy. “And yet, as much pleasure as it might bring me to know of your girlish suffering under some minor ally, it still seems a waste of a valuable resources. You should thank me, really: as Aubriel, you don’t need much a brain. You are, after all, a very pretty girl.

  “The promise of marriage to the right family could help secure their support for the Throne,” he mused, as though this decision hadn’t been made a year ago. He turned to face Duncan, who remained crumpled to the floor with a look of resignation on his pretty face.

  “But as I said—who would marry you when you have—that?” He pointed at the pce between Duncan’s smooth thighs. “Hmm? Not with that; no.”

  Beautiful eyes widened with realisation. “Please, no,” Duncan moaned. “Not again,” he said, and trembled with must have been remembered pain.

  “But your transformation is so nearly complete, Duncan.” Edmund smiled. “Removing that final vestige of the past is doing you a favour! The pain should be mercifully brief—there’s so little that remains, after all.”

  Duncan whimpered. “But it’s all I have left, all that remains of—”

  Edmund sneered. “Of—what?”

  Duncan stared up at him. Vivid, fertile eyes, deep and rich and yet, Edmund realised, unchanged from his previous life—longer shes and cosmetics and naturally wider expressions may give those eyes their feminine expression, but they had always been beautiful.

  Duncan sagged, shoulders slumping.

  “Of—nothing.”

  Edmund smile was a thin line of triumph. “Precisely. And so must it be. A sweet, tight, wet nothing between those thighs. And as for marriage—”

  And here he paused for dramatic effect. His smile grew, and he felt a wicked thrill of anticipation race through him. This was his moment: the moment in which the North fell, the McAsdairs crumbled, and the throne became his.

  “I can think of no better marriage than to Angus McAsdair, Earl of the North and sovereign of its nds.”

  His moment of triumph did not go as intended.

  One second, Duncan was on the floor, an utterly defeated enemy, soft and weak and pathetic, a mewling helpless, naked girl entirely at his mercy. And the next—

  Duncan was behind him. A sharp blow to the back of Edmund’s legs dropped him. His knees hit the stone floor and he gasped with pain. He filed out with his arm—still holding the axe—there was a sharp, sudden pain at the elbow—then numbness—and the weapon dropped.

  It was in Duncan’s hand before it hit the ground; but then, it had always been his, Edmund remembered, the weapon had always belonged to the Axe of the North.

  One sharp bde was at his neck. Edmund tensed as Duncan pressed up against him. He felt the knee in his lower back and the pillowy softness of naked breasts pushing into the thick meat of his shoulder. He felt the cold metal sleeve poking into his thigh, and a sharp prick at his crotch: the second axe was there, the barbed hooked end digging into his scrotum.

  He had forgotten: forgotten what it meant to be the Axe of the North, the almost supernatural speed with which the greatest warriors of those brutal nds carried themselves. It had been too long—he had come to believe the jealous lies of Court and the casual dismissal of the stories that trickled south. Edmund had suppressed his own memories of battles long ago alongside his once friend and brother—then rival—now daughter—the way Duncan moved, the elegant dance of carnage as he flitted among his enemies and the heavy hewing of the axe, the spout of blood, the cries of agony, and his exultant songs of sughter. One man in a generation earned the title Duncan bore; and he had never passed it on to a successor.

  It had been a mistake to strip his foe of clothing, Edmund realised, a foolish indulgence to give in to his desire to see Duncan humbled and naked. Released from the tight dress that limited his stride, the corset that constricted and the shoes that crippled, the Axe once again danced and cut.

  “Perhaps you’d like to join me, Edmund,” Duncan purred. “In having a wet slit of your own?”

  And it excited him, the female nakedness pressed up against him; it excited him, the edge at his neck, the bde at his cock. This close, the scent of bath oils and floral perfumes wounds its tendrils around him and Edmund grew hard and his breathing boured.

  But he dared not move. Erotic or not, Edmund had no intention of dying and knew Duncan would not hesitate to cut his throat if he called out or struggled. Olds Gods and New, but the man had reason enough to cut him down.

  But for his oath, of course.

  “Just like old times, hmm, Duncan?”

  Duncan’s breath was hot on his cheek. “We were brothers, Edmund,” Duncan hissed. Even in anger and betrayal, his voice remained lilting and melodic. Auburn tresses tickled Edmund’s cheeks as his enemy spoke. “At Trath.” Edmund felt his gaze drawn towards the tapestry, the triptych of his glory at the Battle, guided by the gentle insistence of the bdes at neck and groin. “Why don’t you tell me, you fat fucking slug, what you see there.”

  “Glory,” Edmund answered without hesitation.

  “Lies,” Duncan spat. “That battle was won by me.” His grip on Edmund tightened, the bdes drawing closer; a bead of blood blossomed like a flowering bud and trickled down his neck. “Then, like now, by my sacrifice.”

  Edmund chuckled, though he felt only disgust at the memories Duncan provoked. “You were always quick to give yourself over to—a cause.”

  “For the good of the people,” Duncan said. “Out of loyalty to the King.”

  Edmund ughed, a grim sound. “Serve your king, then. For I will be King, soon; the Garnd Crown will be mine and House Malveil will rule for generations.”

  Silence, then. “You would marry me to my own brother and provoke the fury and disgust of the Gods,” Duncan said, and his little girl’s voice was appalled.

  “I would marry you to your brother and forge an alliance between our families that will bring unity to the kingdom and peace to the nd for generations.”

  “The people would not stand for a union steeped in sin.”

  “What sin? The people know only Aubriel, adopted daughter of House Malveil.”

  “The House Lords of the North would rebel.”

  “The House Lords of the North will abide by your brother’s decision when your own sacred rituals reveal that Aubriel is a true daughter of the North, and that fine, worthy Northern blood flows through her veins.”

  Edmund felt no hesitation in Duncan, no weakening, and the threatening bdes did not waver. Yet he also felt his foe’s boured breathing and confusion.

  “The Gods would destroy us. The taint of incest would be the undoing of the House.”

  At that, Edmund did ugh—a genuine ugh—at Duncan’s foolish adherence to old ways. “Still a fool, hmm, Duncan?” he said. “And such arrogance! The Gods have greater concerns than a man fucking and pnting his seed in his own transformed brother. The Gods do not care, Duncan.”

  “Those of the North do.”

  Idiotic Northern exceptionalism, Edmund thought, and realised he was once again growing bored—bored despite the threat of death, bored by this pointless discussion with his foe. “So be it, then. Throw the kingdom into chaos. Provoke a war between the Earls of the Compass. Destroy everything your beloved King Orndo built and—kill me.” Edmund grimaced. “But for the love of the Gods, enough of your idiotic prattle.”

  A long pause, and he felt Duncan’s grip tighten around him and for a terrifyingly exciting moment, Edmund thought he might actually do it: kill him; and he felt the cold pangs of genuine fear for the first time in years.

  Duncan girl’s voice was loud in his ear. “Even after everything you’ve done to me, taken from me—remember that small and weak and naked, I still beat you. I have you at my mercy; can gut you like a fish, slit your fat slug belly from cock to throat and let the filth spill out onto the floor.” Both bdes pushed into the soft, fat, yielding flesh beneath and in that moment Edmund realised—he’s going to kill me; I’m going to die; and his innards clenched with fear and—

  “Your oath, my dy.” The girl stood before him: Maya, the handmaiden, with her attention fixed on Duncan.

  “Yes,” Edmund repeated, voice high and shrill. “Your oath!”

  “Not to you, you stupid man!” Maya said, and her voice rang like a bell in his ears, and when she turned on him her eyes fred and his blood ran cold. Then her focus returned to Duncan, and she spoke gently. “To Untera,” she said. “To the Sister.”

  “Listen to her, Duncan!” Edmund pleaded.

  A long pause, a heavy weight before Duncan withdrew the axes from neck and groin. He gave a sniff. “You’ve shat yourself, Eddy.”

  Edmund groaned and heaved himself to his knees and cpped a hand to his neck and felt the blood there. And before him he saw—Aubriel, his daughter; not Duncan, his foe; even as she trembled and fell back and her eyes widened at the realisation of what she’d just done, and what she’d just given up.

  With a final, primal scream, she spun and flung first one axe, and the next, at his throne. With a dull thud, both weapons embedded themselves deep within the thick wood, directly where Edmund’s head would rest when sitting.

  And then with a final shudder, the girl stood meek and submissive before him once more, eyes downcast. “My name is Aubriel,” she said.

  Author's Notes:

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