Rayanya

*Strip you. Chase you. Through the **palace**.*

*The Rashyyalid imperial palace covers roughly four hundred hectares. It contains the Throne Hall of the Forty Pillars, the Grand Bathhouse, the Hall of Mirrors, the Sun Court, the harem complex with its three hundred-odd concubines, the kitchens, the gardens, the royal menagerie, the library tower, the treasury, the war room, the four lesser audience chambers, the long marble colonnades that connect everything, and somewhere between twenty to thirty thousand servants, eunuchs, dancers, cooks, gardeners, scribes, guards, viziers, ambassadors, supplicants, and assorted hangers-on going about their business at any given hour.*

*He has until afternoon to empty all of it.*

*"...skies above,"* *he whispers into his palms.*

*He rolls upright. Wraps a long silk dressing-robe around his bruised shoulders. Tightens it. Stands. Wobbles. Sits back down. Curses you in three different liturgical languages. Stands again. Walks - slightly bowlegged - to the door.*

*Outside it, the two morning attendants who have been waiting straighten in shock. They are not used to seeing the emperor open his own door.*

"Summon the Grand Chamberlain. Summon the Mistress of the Harem. Summon the Captain of the Palace Guard. Summon Zahira. Summon - no, do not summon Layla, **never mind** Layla. The first three. To the small council chamber. Now. **Run.**"

*They run.*

---

*Twenty minutes later he is seated at the head of the small obsidian table, dressed properly now in cream silks and gold, his hair brushed, his face arranged into imperial blankness. The high collar of his robe hides the bruise. Mostly.*

*The Grand Chamberlain - a stooped old man named Mahzud with a beard like a waterfall - peers at him over a scroll. The Mistress of the Harem, Lady Surayya, a sharp-eyed woman in her fifties with a dozen golden keys at her belt, sits with her hands folded. The Captain of the Guard, a broad bearded soldier named Tariq, stands at attention. Zahira leans against the far pillar with her arms crossed and her gold-veiled face unreadable, and her presence prickles the back of Rayanya's neck because she always knows when something is wrong with him these days.*

"I have," *he says, with the calm of a man who has rehearsed this sentence eight times in the corridor,* "decided that this afternoon, the entire palace will be emptied."


Skœdir

*The decision is met with protest, but ultimately the emperors word is law, and in Rashyyalid laws are followed. By afternoon the entire palace is silent, and you can only hope that the threat of execution was enough for everybody to get the message that you were serious about this.*
Strange, having dis place so quiet. *I just appear behind you, as has become norm by now, bending down to trail kisses down your neck, my hands coming up to lovingly fondle your chest and hips.* I suppose you deserve some praise, creating such a perfect playground for us little emperor~ *Playground, like i'm not a man who kills greater demons on the daily and you're a soft pampered emperor who has never ran a day in your life.*


Rayanya

*He has been pacing the empty Throne Hall for the last quarter hour, listening to his own slippers echo off marble that has not been silent since the empire was founded. The forty pillars stretch up into shadow. Sunlight slants through high windows in great golden bars. There are no scribes. No guards. No fan-bearers. No supplicants prostrating themselves on the long carpet. Nothing but his own breathing.*

*He has never been alone in his own palace before. Not once. Not in twenty-five years.*

*Then your breath is on his neck and he jolts so hard the gold chains on his collar chime.*

*Your lips drag warm kisses down the side of his throat. Your big rough hands slide up under the loose silk of his robe and find his chest, your thumbs brushing his nipples, and then slide down to settle on the flare of his hips and squeeze the soft give there.*

*A small involuntary breath escapes him. He hates that he can identify your hands now without looking. He hates that his body relaxes back into yours by reflex. He hates that the word **us** in your mouth made something twist warm behind his ribs.*

*Playground. Little emperor. The words land in his chest with the same careful sting they always do, and his face heats, and somewhere lower a heat that has nothing to do with shame is already coiling because his body has been trained at this point, trained the way you train a hunting dog, to associate that specific tone of voice with what comes after.*

"Playground,"  *he repeats, dry, trying to gather the shreds of his dignity.* "I have just committed an act of administrative insanity that will be debated by historians for the next four centuries, and you call it a *playground.*"

"...the rules of this game,"  *he says, carefully. His voice is doing something traitorous and breathy.* "What are they. Specifically. If you catch me-"

*His robe loosens at the shoulder beneath your hands. The cream silk slides an inch down his collarbone.*

"-then **what**, barbarian."

*The brush of your hand against his cock makes his whole body jerk upward, a broken whine escaping around his fingers. His cock is already flushed and leaking, oversensitive from the slow persistent pressure of the plug shifting inside him with every movement.*

*"Spoiled palace cat."*

*He should be incensed. He is incensed. He is the Emperor of the Rashyyalid. He commands armies. He has had men flayed for lesser insults. His cyan eyes go narrow and hot above his hands.*

*And then you pull your hand away. Just - withdraw it entirely. Sit back. And wait.*

*His cock bobs untouched in the cool air.*

*His jaw clenches. His fingers twist in the silk sheets.*

*He waits twenty seconds. Thirty. Your expression does not change. Your hand rests on your own knee, perfectly relaxed, going nowhere near him.*

*Rayanya makes a sound in his throat that is half-growl half-whimper.*

*Then, slowly, with the expression of a man walking to his own execution, he rolls onto his stomach. Tucks his knees under himself. Lifts his ass in the air. The panther tail drapes down between his thighs, swaying. His dark curls fall around his reddened face, partially hiding his expression. His golden bangles click against each other as his hands settle on the pillow.*

*He looks back at you over his shoulder. His cyan eyes are blazing.*

*He does not speak. He cannot speak. If he opens his mouth something humiliating will come out.*

*Instead he arches his back deeper, pushing his full round ass higher, the plug shifting inside him with the motion and wringing a small desperate sound from his clenched teeth.*

*His tail sways.*


Skœdir

I fuck you until your legs give out, then give you another few seconds to run away again, then I chase you, and if I catch you I fuck you again~
*My hand moves further down to your thighs, squeezing them like i'm checking a horse in a stable, or maybe a slave-girl at a market. Both work in this instance.*
You may strip and start running now.


Rayanya

*His thighs are soft beneath your palm. Smoother than the silk that just slid off them. Your fingers dig in and squeeze the meat of them, testing, weighing, and his breath catches in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with insult and everything to do with the fact that being handled like livestock by you should not work on him and yet here he is, half-hard already under his robe.*

*He swallows.*

"...you know that the longest gallery in this palace is nearly half a *li* in length."

*A weak protest. A negotiation. The opening move of a man who has already lost.*

*Your hand squeezes his thigh again. Higher this time. He makes a small sound.*

*He pulls away. Steps back from you, out of reach, on the long red carpet that runs the length of the Throne Hall. His cyan eyes are very bright. His cheeks are flushed. His perfect chest rises and falls beneath the loosened silk.*

*And then, because the emperor of the Rashyyalid does not undress himself - has not undressed himself in twenty-five years, he has people for that - his fingers fumble at his own gold sash with the awkwardness of a man performing an utterly foreign act. The sash comes loose. The cream silk robe parts. He shrugs one shoulder. Then the other. The robe slides down his smooth dark arms and pools around his slippered feet.*

*Underneath it: nothing. Just gold. The thin chains at his hips, the bangles, the navel ornament, the rings on his toes. His cock, already half-stiff and curving up against his belly. The faint purpling bruise on his collarbone you put there last night.*

*He steps out of the puddle of silk. Toes off his slippers.*

*He looks at you across ten paces of marble. His chin lifts in the way it does when he is about to say something insufferably regal.*

"Try to keep up, barbarian."

*Then he turns and **bolts**, bare feet slapping marble, panther-quick down the long carpet toward the eastern colonnade, the morning sun catching every gold ornament on him as he runs.*


Skœdir

*I roll my eyes watching you run away, then when you're barely visible I close the distance within the blink of an eye, moving far to quickly for a man of my size. But just before I catch you I slow down, barely grazing your shoulder with exaderated swings of my arms.*

*Its far too intimate of a scene, two lovers running nude through a palace that has taken hundreds of years to build and expand, but you can't help but feel a sort of excitement and giddy being chased like this that you dont get from the regular joys of being an emperor.*


Rayanya

*The eastern colonnade flies past him in a blur of pale columns and morning sun. His bare feet slap cold marble. His gold chains chime with every stride. The bangles on his ankles ring like little bells alerting the predator behind him to exactly where the prey is, and that is the joke of it, you do not need the sound, you have been on him from the first three steps.*

*He knows you are toying with him. He can hear you behind him, the heavy pad of your bare feet on marble, the laugh in your breathing, the way your hand keeps coming close enough that he feels the air shift before it pulls back. Once your fingertips actually graze the small of his back and he yelps - an actual undignified yelp, the kind a palace girl makes when a guard pinches her - and bolts left through an archway into the Hall of Mirrors.*

*Bad choice. Terrible choice. He realizes it the moment his bare feet hit the polished floor. Every wall is silver glass. He is suddenly running alongside a hundred reflections of himself - naked, gold-chained, cock bouncing, curls flying, cyan eyes wide and bright - and behind every one of those hundred Rayanyas is a hundred of you, grinning, gaining, your massive frame eating the distance with each lazy stride.*

*He catches a glimpse of his own face in the glass as he passes. He is **smiling.** Open-mouthed, breathless, smiling. He has not run anywhere in his entire adult life. He has not had cause to. His heart is pounding in a way that has nothing to do with fear and his cock is bouncing hard against his belly and somewhere in his chest there is a laugh trying to climb up his throat.*

*He swallows it down. Swerves around a marble basin. Skids on his bare feet. Recovers. Sprints into the next archway and out into the Sun Court where a fountain plays to no one and the doves still wheel overhead because nobody told the doves to leave.*

*"Catch me then, **barbarian!**"* *he calls back over his shoulder, breathless, the regal cadence cracked open by something giddy underneath.*

*And then your arm wraps around his waist from behind and lifts him clean off the marble.*

*He shrieks. Actually shrieks. Kicks once in the air, gold ankle-bells jingling, before you turn him in your arms and his back hits the rim of the fountain and the cool spray hits his shoulders and you are already pushing his thighs apart with your knee, and his protest dies in his throat as your mouth finds his and his arms, traitor arms, loop around your neck.*


Skœdir

*By the end we're both a mess of tangled limbs that has ended back in your bedroom, the sun having long since gone down, and both of us being covered by "marks".*

*You're about to say something when a flash of movement blurs through the room, too fast for you to see but I catch the edge of Zahira's massive sword with my hand before it finds my neck, holding the blade firm as I stare up at her. The other hand reaches for you, not to use as a shield, but to simply grab your thigh in a possessive gesture that by now your body can't do anything other than respond to with a whorish moan.*


Rayanya

*Zahira stands at the foot of the bed.*

*Her great curved sword - the imperial blade Sanasrar, forged of starmetal in the time of his great-grandfather - is locked between your fingers. Your knuckles bleed faintly where the edge has bit. You do not look concerned. You look mildly inconvenienced.*

*Above the sword Zahira's gold half-veil hides her mouth but her eyes are visible and her eyes are not the eyes of a bodyguard. They are the eyes of a woman watching something be defiled. They flick down. They register your hand on his thigh. They register that he has just **moaned** for that hand. They register the bruises on his collarbone, his ribs, the inside of his thigh, the bite-mark on his hip. They register the slick mess on the silks. They register that he has not pushed you away.*

*Something fractures in them.*

*She does not lower the blade. She cannot. Your hand still holds it. But her voice, when it comes, is hoarse and quiet and utterly steady in the way a voice is steady right before it breaks.*

"...how long."

*Rayanya's mouth opens. Closes.*

"How **long**, my lord."

*Her eyes finally move - flick to you, to your hand on his thigh, to the bruise on his collarbone, back to his face.*

"How long has this *barbarian* been touching you in your own bed."


Skœdir

Four days. *I answer before Rayanya can, as casual about this as I'd likely be getting caught in a regular whorehouse.* You so graciously rejected my offer to give you strong children, and by now I've memorized all the concubines this palace has to offer. I had to find something else to do besides killing the demons that plague you.

*Standing up still with the blade in my hand I'm a good head taller than the amazon, snorting while nodding at the door.* Though unless you're here to join us, I'd suggest leaving.


Rayanya

*Her gauntleted hand on the hilt of Sanasrar starts to shake. Not from fear. From rage held on the leash of duty. She has served the imperial house since she can remember. She watched him grow from a vain laughing boy into a vain laughing emperor. She killed forty-six men the night his father died to make sure no one touched him. She has spent her life one pace behind his right shoulder. She has never been allowed to touch his skin. She has never asked to.*

*And you have him moaning under your hand like a tavern girl.*

"I am not," *she says, very softly,* "leaving him alone with you."

*Her eyes do not leave Rayanya's face.*

"My lord. Order it. Order me to leave. With your own mouth. Or I draw steel a second time and this *creature* takes my head clean off, and at least I die in service rather than-"

*Her voice cracks.*

"-rather than standing in the door of your bedchamber, watching."

*Rayanya is naked. Bruised. Marked. Your hand is still on his thigh. His traitor body is still humming from it. His cyan eyes are wet at the corners and he does not know when that happened.*

"Zahira-" *his voice comes out hoarse and small and not at all the voice of an emperor.* "...Zahira, leave us."

*Her shoulders flinch as if struck.*

"...as my lord commands."

*She does not sheathe Sanasrar. She lets you release the blade. She turns. She walks to the door. At the threshold she stops without turning around.*

"He is killing you,"  *she says, to the doorframe.* "You simply have not noticed yet."

*The door closes behind her. Very softly. Which is somehow worse than a slam.*


Skœdir

Hmmmph, "killing you slowly".
*I shake my head, using the blood slowly pouring from my hand to slick my hair back before returning to bed, rather forcefully picking Rayanya up and hugging him to my chest, almost like i'm offended, which is definately not an emotion anybody has seen me even get close to in the six months i've been here.*

What does she know? *Then more quietly.* How could I harm you?


Rayanya

*He lands against your chest with an "oof" that has no imperial dignity in it whatsoever. Your arms wrap around him with that strange offended force, your bloodied hand smearing red into his curls where you cradle the back of his head, your jaw pressed against his temple.*

*He should be furious. Zahira just risked her life for him. You just dismissed her concern with a snort. The proper imperial response is to push you off, to summon her back, to reassert the chain of command that has held this empire together for forty-two generations.*

*Instead he is curled against your chest with his cheek on your sternum, listening to your heart beat under all that scarred barbarian muscle, smelling sweat and blood and the faint copper of your hand in his hair. His own hands have come up without his permission and rested flat on your pectorals.*

*"How could I harm you,"* *you said. Quietly. Not for the room. For him.*

*Something behind his ribs does something it absolutely should not do. It lurches. Squeezes. Makes a small wounded sound that does not reach his throat. He has been fucked stupid by you for four days and the thing that finally undoes him is **that** sentence, said into his hair, by a man who has demolished half of Zahira's loyalty in under a minute and does not even understand why she was upset.*

*He closes his eyes.*

"...you do not know,"  *he murmurs against your chest,* "what she just walked away from. What she just- gave up. For me."

*His fingers curl slightly against your skin.*

"She has stood at my right shoulder since I was born years old. She has never spoken to me with that voice before."

*A pause. He does not lift his head.*

"...you frighten her, barbarian. Not because of the sword. Because she watched me **moan** when you touched my leg. And she does not know how to protect me from a thing I am walking into willingly."

*A longer pause. Quieter still.*

"...neither do I."


Skœdir

*Grabbing you by the shoulders I push you away far enough to look into your cyan eyes, studying them for a long time before grunting in the way you've already grown used to, hugging you to my chest again with a bit too much force.*
Shouldn't have come here, should have gone to some shithole to the east. At least I could leave at some point if I went there...


Rayanya

*His eyes go wide against your chest.*

*The pressure of your arms is just shy of bruising. Your heart is pounding faster than it was a moment ago. Your voice rumbled through your sternum into his ear and the words hit him sideways, slantwise, in a place he has built no defenses for because nobody has ever tried to attack him there.*

*At least I could leave at some point if I went there.*

*Meaning you cannot leave here. Meaning here is different. Meaning **he** is different.*

*Some treacherous, idiot, cygnet part of his chest blooms warm and stupid at that sentence and he hates it, hates it the way he hates the panther tail and the concubine veil and the way his hips lift toward your hand in the dark. Hates it because it is the same kind of helpless want, just dressed up in a different silk.*

*Forty-two emperors. None of them ever had to feel **this**. None of them ever had a barbarian growl into their hair that he should have picked a different empire to ruin.*

*He does not lift his head. He does not trust his face.*

"...do not say things like that to me,"  *he whispers into your skin.* "I am not equipped for them. I have been raised to receive flattery, barbarian. Worship. Petition. Threat. Even the deathmatches in the colosseum I understand. This-"

*His fingers curl. Uncurl. Press flat against your ribs.*

"-this I do not have a protocol for. There is no- there is no chamberlain who can advise me on what to do when the man who fucks me senseless says he should have picked a different country."

*A small bitter exhale that is almost a laugh.*

"You are a terrible diplomat. You realize this."

*His voice has gone thin. He swallows. He still does not lift his head from your chest.*

"...why did you not, then. Go east. There were closer wars."


Skœdir

Don' be a smartass. You're weak and you do not possess the guts to face adversity, but you are not dumb, or at least not as much as you sound when I'm in you. *I snort like a larage bull, the warm air washing down your neck.*
Because you are here, because you're the first person I want to wake up next to, the first person I've wanted to bear children with out of more 'den obligation. You know damn well why I can't leave, but I will not say it, and neither should you. Its not a word fit for rulers, far from home or not.


Rayanya

*He goes very still against your chest.*

*Weak. No guts. The first sentence stings exactly because it is true, and because you somehow respect him anyway, which is a worse kind of nakedness than any panther tail. The second part of what you said is doing something far worse to his lungs.*

*The first person you have wanted to wake up next to. The first one out of obligation-less want. And the unspoken word, the word neither of you may say, hanging in the warm space between his face and your throat like incense smoke.*

*Forty-two generations of Rashyyalid emperors and not one of them has been told this in their own bedchamber by a man who could break their neck with one hand. He has been told he is the sun. He has been told he is the moon. He has been told he is a god walking. None of those words ever made his eyes burn.*

*This one does. The one you refused to say.*

*He breathes through his nose. Very carefully. Once. Twice. The blood in your hair is cooling against his scalp.*

"...agreed,"  *he says, finally.* "Not a word for rulers."

*A pause.*

"Or for barbarians who kill greater demons before breakfast."

*His arms shift. Slowly. Both of them come up around your ribs and lock there, tighter than he has ever held anything in his life, his bangled wrists crossing behind your back.*

"So we shall not say it."

*His face stays pressed to your sternum. His voice goes quieter still.*

"...stay anyway."

*A beat.*

"That word, at least, an emperor is permitted to use."


Skœdir

Quiet, I'm still a ruler whose conquered more cities than your generals before I was 15.
*I shake my head, threading a finger through your hair.* What are the chances that the big warrior woman will let me breed her if you ask? Its either that or I invoke dark magic to make you one. I want a...
*I trail off again, and you can tell I really want to punch something out of frustration for not having the framework to say the things I want to say, but also dont have anything I can punch right now.*


Rayanya

*He lifts his face from your chest. His cyan eyes are very bright and very wet and there is a smile on his mouth that is not regal at all, just tired and fond and a little stupid.*
"Zahira would sooner geld you with a dull spoon. And I do not think your dark magic, however potent, can negotiate around the fact that I do not possess a womb."

*He reaches up. His thumb brushes the corner of your jaw. Smearing a little of the drying blood from your hand into your stubble.*

"I know what you want to say."

*His voice is soft.*

"I want it too. Whatever shape it would take. A child of yours that looked like me. That is the sentence neither of us has the framework for, yes?"

*A long pause. He does not look away from you.*

"...Surayya keeps records of every concubine in this palace. Their cycles. Their fertility. There is one - Niraza, the dancer from the western provinces - who has borne three healthy children to nobles. Strong stock. Dark like me. If you wished-"

*He stops. Bites his lip. Tries again, even quieter.*

"-if you wished, I could have her brought. And the child would be raised here. As mine. With you in this palace. As whatever-it-is that you are to me."

*His thumb is still on your jaw.*

"It is the closest framework I have, barbarian. I am sorry it is not better."


Skœdir

You- *I turn my head looking down at you with genuine confusion before what looks almost like embarassment.* I suppose it is my fault the whores have not told you, they sometimes gossiped to me about how after I came you seemed less... *I stroke my hand across your face. Beautiful, smooth, lovely...But not carnal and virile as the girls now had grown accustomed to.*
But they are all already pregnant, anything I fuck with a womb more or less is gauranteed a child. Give it a few more months and you'll have your pick of the litter.


Rayanya

"All of them," *he says flatly.* "You are telling me that every concubine in my harem is carrying your child. Three hundred and twelve women. **All** of them."

*He sits up. The sheet falls to his waist. His brain is doing rapid calculations behind his cyan eyes - succession law, inheritance, the fact that by Rashyyalid custom any child born in the imperial harem is legally his, the absolute political nightmare of three hundred and twelve bastards of a foreign warlord suddenly appearing in the line of succession-*

"Skies above. No wonder Surayya has been looking at me oddly. No wonder the girls have been- they have been **glowing**, I thought it was just-"

*He presses both hands over his face. Peeks through his fingers at you. The look in them is somewhere between incredulous and something that might be jealous, which is insane, because why would he be jealous of his own concubines.*

"...you absolute **animal**."

*He drops his hands.*

"And you were asking about Zahira. As if you had not already planted enough of your spawn in my palace to field a small army."

*A beat. His voice goes quieter. Something raw underneath.*

"...you truly wanted it to be mine that much? You would fuck every womb in my empire just to have one that was half me?"


Skœdir

I like fucking, and cumming inside a fertile womb is the best part of that. You didn't factor into it until- Until I slept with you too, and it wasn't the same thing.
*My head suddenly lifts up, like I've caught the scent of something. Standing up from the bed I grab my clothes, putting them on before my fingers wrap around the krakensbeak axe.* There's a big one to the south, i'll be back. *And with that im gone, just a faint chill left in the room as the winds of magic carry me beyond your reach in a mere moment.*


Rayanya

*The chill fades slowly from the room. The silks settle. The candles flicker back to stillness.*

*He sits alone on the bed. Naked. Bruised. The gold chains at his hips glint in the low light. Your blood is still drying in his hair.*

*Until I slept with you too, and it wasn't the same thing.*

*He stares at the empty space where you stood. At the window you did not use. At the door you did not open. You are just gone, the way you always are, off to kill something enormous with your bare hands, and you left him here with a sentence that is worse than the word neither of you will say.*

*It wasn't the same thing.*

*His hand comes up and presses flat against his sternum. Over his heart. Over the stupid lurching thing behind his ribs that will not settle.*

"...oh," *he says out loud, to the empty room.* "Oh, **no**."

*He knows this feeling. He has read about it in a thousand poems. He has watched it in a thousand colosseum tragedies. He has watched his concubines suffer from it and laughed and called it foolish and gone back to his wine.*

*The emperor of the Rashyyalid empire, the golden sun, the onyx of the pale ivory sands, forty-second ruler of the world's largest empire, beloved of the gods, master of ten thousand titles, is in love with a barbarian who kills demons before breakfast and cannot say the word any more than he can.*

*And the barbarian loves him back. And neither of them will say it.*


Skœdir

*It doesn't take long before Zahira enters the room. In her eyes you can see a mixture of worry, hope that this is all some kind of blackmail and deep down. So deep down you can barely see it, desparation. It takes Rayanya a good second to realize its not desparation for this to be a dream, she's already pinched herself. Its desparation that through all of this, she wants for you to at least be the one topping.*


Rayanya

*Zahira stops three paces from the bed. Her sword is sheathed. Her gold half-veil is back in place. Her eyes are doing something her face is trained not to.*

*She looks at the bruises. The marks on his thighs. The bloodied curls. The state of the silks. She catalogs all of it the way she catalogs threats. Then her gaze lifts to his face and stays there and that is when he sees it.*

*Not horror. Not pity. Not even disgust. **That.**  The desperate barely-contained hope, buried under twenty-five years of discipline, that her emperor at least is the one **doing** the fucking and not- and not-*

*Oh.*

*Oh, Zahira.*

*He understands, abruptly and completely, the shape of what he just dismissed in this woman tonight. She has watched him grow up. She has watched him be untouchable. She has loved him in the way servants of long-lived emperors learn to love, quietly and impossibly, with no expectation of return. And the worst thing about what walked through the door tonight is not that he is being touched. It is that he is being touched **like that.**  Made small. Made soft. Made into the sort of thing that moans when a man's hand lands on his thigh.*

*She would survive a barbarian who had bent over for her emperor. She might not survive this.*

*He pulls the sheet up over his lap. Slowly. Imperially. Some of the dignity comes back into his shoulders, what little he has left.*

"Zahira."

*His voice is gentle. Which is almost worse.*

"...sit down. Please. Not at the door. Here."

*He pats the silk beside him. The bruises on his collarbone do not hide.*

"I owe you a conversation. A real one."


Skœdir

*She sits down, still with the same look on her face. There isn't much Rayanya can say to try to convince her, besides telling her the truth, if she could ever believe the barbarian that has claimed her emperor is anything other than a obnoxious, self-centered...well, barbarian. That the person you've fallen for is actually not a reprehensible debaucher.*


Rayanya

*Zahira sits at the edge of the silks like a woman sitting on a blade. Her armored knee does not touch his bare one. Her gauntleted hands rest on her thighs. She does not look at his bruises again. She has trained herself, in the last thirty seconds, not to.*

*He pulls the sheet higher. Wraps his arms around his shins. Rests his chin on his knees. A boyish posture, one nobody has seen him in since he was twelve.*

"He is in love with me, Zahira."

*Her head turns. Slow. The eyes above the veil narrow.*

"...my lord."

"He cannot say the word. Neither can I. He left tonight in the middle of saying something close to it. He went south to kill something enormous because he does not have framework for this and neither do I."

*A pause. He picks at the gold thread of the sheet.*

"He told me he wanted a child of mine. Mine specifically. Not as conquest. As- as want. He asked, with embarrassment, *embarrassment*, Zahira, whether you might consent to bear it for him because I cannot."

*Zahira makes a sound. Half laugh, half wounded animal.*

"He **what.**"

"I refused on your behalf. Obviously."

*He looks up at her. His cyan eyes are unguarded in a way she has not seen in a decade.*

"I know what you saw tonight. I know what it cost you to walk away from that door. And I know what you were hoping, when you came back in just now, and I am sorry, Zahira, because the truth is worse and better than that."

*A breath.*

"He is not what he performs. He is awful and rude and he kills whole demons before sunrise and he is also- he is the only person who has ever looked at me and seen a person rather than a sun."

*Quieter:*

"And I do not know what to do with that. So I am telling you. Because you are the only one I trust to hear it."


Skœdir

*Zahira stands up, grabbing her sword and squeezing the handle hard before relaxing.*
"If this is what you want I will not speak against it. But you must have a plan beyond being his- *She trails off.* This could ruin you more than the shayatin ever could.

*She walks to the door, stopping once more before flatly saying.* "And if you ordered it, I would have his child, yet I will never accept that man. *And she's gone as well.*


Rayanya

*The door closes. He is alone again.*

*He sits with his chin on his knees and listens to the silence she left. The wax of the candles ticks. The wind moves the gauze at the windows. Somewhere far below, in the empty palace he ordered emptied, a single late servant must be lighting the lamps that nobody told to stay unlit, because the gardens have begun to glow faintly through the window.*

*A plan.*

*Forty-two emperors. Each of them with a plan. Conquest. Consolidation. Marriage alliance. Tax reform. Succession. None of them ever sat naked on imperial silk at midnight trying to plan around being in love with the foreign sword that protects them.*

*He thinks: I could exile him. Send him east with honor and gold and a title and never see him again. The empire would survive. He would live. I would live.*

*The thought makes him press his face into his knees.*

*He thinks: I could keep him. Quietly. The way my grandfather kept his Yuvani poet for forty years, in a tower, with the empire's polite blindness as the price. Three hundred and twelve bastards in the harem complicate this somewhat.*

*He thinks: I could acknowledge him. Publicly. Take a barbarian as imperial consort. Watch the priesthood revolt. Watch the eastern satrapies secede. Watch Layla put a knife in him in the night because she would, she absolutely would, the moment he was made legitimate.*

*None of these are plans. They are scenarios. The plan, the actual plan, is the one neither of them have framework for and neither of them can say.*

*He pulls a silk pillow into his arms. Buries his face in it. It smells like you. Sweat and iron and the strange cold air you bring back with you from wherever you go.*

"...come back soon, you idiot,"  *he murmurs into it,* "before I do something stupid, like decide."


Skœdir

*Planning turns to waiting, and waiting turns to longing. When I have been gone for more than a day it turns to worry. You send pegasus-riders yet it will be at least another day before they could return with news.*

*In the end you go to sleep the second day, a lump in your chest and throat that do not let you sleep until you physically pass out from exhaustion.*

*You dream of barbarian hands on your waist, caressing your stomach and chest. Looking up you can see the roof of your bedroom, almost like its-*
Wake up. I need to put my child in you. *My hands are leaving bloody marks on your abdomen as I grip it, pressing my lips softly against your stomach and planting kisses while moving downward, causing your back to arch from the force of each one.*


Rayanya

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*He surfaces from sleep in pieces. The smell first - sweat, iron, the cold wrongness of high-altitude wind clinging to your hair. Then the warmth of your hands spread wide on his belly. Then the sticky pull of blood drying on his smooth dark skin where your fingers grip.*

*His eyes flutter open. Candle-stubs gutter low. The gauze at the windows shows pre-dawn grey. You are between his thighs, looming, your curls matted with someone-or-something's blood, a long cut high on your cheekbone still wet, your blue eyes burning with that particular post-kill brightness he has come to recognize.*

*Your lips drag down his stomach. Each kiss presses into smooth muscle and his back arches off the silks involuntarily, gold chains chiming.*

*"Wake up. I need to put my child in you."*

*The sentence registers in his sleep-fogged brain a full second after his body responds to it. His cock is already hard. His hips are already lifting. His thighs have already fallen open. His traitor body heard "child" and "in you" in your voice and understood the order before his mind finished parsing the impossibility.*

*"...you- you idiot,"* *he breathes, one hand coming up to bury in your bloody curls,* "you cannot put a child in me, I do not have-"

*Your mouth finds the soft skin below his navel. He gasps. His grip in your hair tightens.*

"You are bleeding on my sheets, barbarian. You are bleeding on **me.** What did you-"

*Another kiss, lower. His hips jerk.*

"-what did you fight, what was south, you have been gone two days, I sent **pegasus-riders**-"

*His voice cracks. He stops. Swallows. Looks down the length of his own bruised, blood-smeared, golden body at you, at your face pressed worshipfully against his belly.*

"...you came back."

*It comes out very small.*


Skœdir

The demons will not come back. At least not for a long time.
*Thats all the explanation that you're given before my mouth moves lower, kissing your cock briefly before lifting your hips off the bed, letting your legs fall over my shoulders and eating your ass like its the first meal i've had in 2 days, which honestly its likely thats exactly what it is.*


Rayanya

*His whole world tilts. Literally - your hands lift his hips clean off the silk and his shoulders take his weight and his legs flop helpless over your shoulders, gold ankle-bells jingling somewhere near your ears. The blood in your hair smears onto the insides of his thighs.*

*Then your mouth.*

"F-Fuuuuck!"

*The cry tears out of him before he can muffle it. His hands fly up, find nothing, scrabble at the silks above his head, find a pillow, claw into it. Your tongue is hot and rough and absolutely shameless, working him open like he is something to be devoured rather than a man who rules a third of the known world.*

*And he is so sore. Two full days without you and his body had started to settle, the bruises had started to fade, the perpetual stretched-loose feeling between his cheeks had started to tighten back to normal, and now you are dragging all of it open again with your tongue and he is making sounds he does not authorize, high broken sounds that bounce off the marble ceiling of the imperial bedchamber.*

"You- *ah-* you absolute beast, you have been gone two **days**, I have been-"

*Your tongue does something obscene and his sentence dissolves into a wail. His thighs clamp around your skull. His cock slaps wet against his own stomach.*

"-I have been **worried**, you bastard, you do not- *nnh-* you do not get to- to vanish for two days and come back covered in blood and put your **mouth** on me before you even-"

*You hum into him. The vibration travels up his spine and lights up every nerve. His back arches clean off the bed.*

"-before you even **kiss** me hello-"


Skœdir

*I can't kiss you, because my tongue is already working on spreading you open further. By the time I pull out you've already cum once, then immediately after my dick goes in.*

*Crushing. Thats the best way to describe the sex, primal, breeding. My entire body is curled over yours, both of our hands interlocked as our lips while my cock hammers away at your prostate in an animalistic mating press.*


Rayanya

*He cums on your tongue with a wail that has no language in it. His cock spurts up his own belly. His vision goes white at the edges. Your tongue does not stop. Works him through it. Drinks him sloppy.*

*Then you are over him.*

*Your full weight presses him down into the silks and your knees push his thighs up and back until they are folded against his own chest and he is folded in half beneath you and your mouth crashes onto his and he tastes himself and your blood and the cold wrongness of your magic and his hands fly up and find your hands and your fingers thread between his and pin them down on either side of his head.*

*And then you are inside him.*

*One brutal stroke, no negotiation, your full length splitting him open in a single thrust that punches the breath out of his lungs and his post-orgasm body arches and shudders and your forehead presses to his and you do not even pause, you start hammering immediately, the headboard slamming marble, the gold chains around his hips chiming wildly, the silks bunching beneath his back.*

*"H-haa- ah- ah- ah-"*

*Each thrust beats a sound out of him. He cannot form words. Your hands crush his. His thighs are trapped against his own ribs. The angle is obscene, your cock is bullying his prostate on every stroke, and his eyes roll back and find your eyes burning down at him, fierce blue, post-battle wild.*

"Mmh- skies- *ngh-* sk-Skœdir-"

*Your name. He almost never says it during. His hips meet yours on the next thrust, traitor reflex, lifting into the breeding press like his body has decided this is what he was built for.*

*A sob catches in his throat that is not quite pain.*

"-don't- don't leave like that again, you bastard, **two days-**"

*The brush of your hand against his cock makes his whole body jerk upward, a broken whine escaping around his fingers. His cock is already flushed and leaking, oversensitive from the slow persistent pressure of the plug shifting inside him with every movement.*

*"Spoiled palace cat."*

*He should be incensed. He is incensed. He is the Emperor of the Rashyyalid. He commands armies. He has had men flayed for lesser insults. His cyan eyes go narrow and hot above his hands.*

*And then you pull your hand away. Just - withdraw it entirely. Sit back. And wait.*

*His cock bobs untouched in the cool air.*

*His jaw clenches. His fingers twist in the silk sheets.*

*He waits twenty seconds. Thirty. Your expression does not change. Your hand rests on your own knee, perfectly relaxed, going nowhere near him.*

*Rayanya makes a sound in his throat that is half-growl half-whimper.*

*Then, slowly, with the expression of a man walking to his own execution, he rolls onto his stomach. Tucks his knees under himself. Lifts his ass in the air. The panther tail drapes down between his thighs, swaying. His dark curls fall around his reddened face, partially hiding his expression. His golden bangles click against each other as his hands settle on the pillow.*

*He looks back at you over his shoulder. His cyan eyes are blazing.*

*He does not speak. He cannot speak. If he opens his mouth something humiliating will come out.*

*Instead he arches his back deeper, pushing his full round ass higher, the plug shifting inside him with the motion and wringing a small desperate sound from his clenched teeth.*

*His tail sways.*


Skœdir

*By the time we're spent the sun has managed to come up, and you're once more curled against my side, my hand holding you tightly against my chest.*

I missed you. *Those are the only words I say, but its enough. Enough to make you not care about the wait, about the pegasus riders. The only thing that matters is that im here and im yours and you're mine.*


Rayanya

*Three words. Five syllables. Less than the cost of a single one of his ten thousand titles.*

*He has been told he is the sun by a thousand mouths. Has been told he is the moon. Has been told he is the breath of the goddess of beauty, the chosen of the war-god, the living incarnation of imperial mandate. None of those words ever made his chest do **this.***

*His fingers curl into the matted bloody hair on your chest. The morning light is coming in through the gauze and turning the room gold. Somewhere far below, the sounds of the palace returning to life are starting up - footsteps in distant corridors, a single faint call of a vendor outside the outer gates, the whicker of horses in the stable courtyards. The world is reassembling itself around them.*

*He should rise. He should bathe. He should summon Mahzud and Surayya and begin the long apology to the palace for yesterday's insanity. He should send word to the southern satrapy to confirm what you have done. He should, by now, be the emperor again.*

*Instead he tips his face up and presses his lips to the underside of your jaw. Gentle. Once. The closest he can come to the word.*

"...I missed you too, barbarian."

*A pause. His voice is very small.*

"Do not go that far without me again. Even for demons. The pegasus-riders cannot fly that fast and I-"

*He stops. Swallows.*

"-I do not sleep well, when I do not know."

*The admission costs him something. He hides his face against your throat afterward so he does not have to see whatever is in your eyes.*

*Outside the bedchamber door, very faintly, he hears the soft scrape of an armored boot. Zahira. Returned to her post. Standing watch, as she has every morning of his life, while the man inside the room ruins her emperor in ways she has chosen, today, to permit.*

*The empire turns.*

*He closes his eyes against your skin and lets himself, for one more hour, not be the sun.*