The Goddess of the Fallen Moon

"You're looking for Roina, aren't you, Archmage?"

The moment Mayli said it, the Archmage's expression changed. Ripples broke across the face that had been so indifferent, and wariness rose there. At the same time the air around them sank, and a heavy presence bore down on Mayli's shoulders.

Mayli went tense. This was the Archmage's domain. She could not be certain of the particulars, but if that man set his mind to it, someone like her would be disposed of in an instant. She swallowed in secret and, feigning that she was not nervous at all, went on in a smooth voice.

"I can help you. No—please, let me be the one to help."

When it was all over, Roberto lay sleeping at ease upon his bed, made tidy again, but she was still in the secret room hidden in a corner of the crown prince's bedchamber. She had even lost the little single room she had always been able to return to, however often Mayli invaded it.

Both arms were bound in chains and hung from the ceiling, and the wrists rubbed raw by the cuffs were dark with bruising. Her clothes were torn here and there and no longer served their purpose. A blindfold covered her eyes, and a ball-shaped restraint held her mouth so she could not close it. Because her lips could not come together, the moment anyone stimulated her she had no choice but to keep spilling moans, whether of pain or of pleasure.

Red marks and wounds dotted the white skin left bare. Those wounds alone were enough to tell how violent what had passed must have been, and so was the blood scattered around her.

Roina had been forced to bear the crown prince's rage in full. As if the recent days—when he had been gentle to a degree, and had led her toward pleasure—had been a lie, he showed no mercy. He brought out all manner of implements and ruined her completely.

Fondling him, and mimicking the acts of a beast at his command, had been nothing by comparison. That night he had trampled her, quite literally. He had consumed her body with thoroughness.

She was wretched and restless, and yet, ironically, once a little more time had passed she felt relief. Yes. This was normal. Through countless nights Roberto had handled the body called Roina just like this.

Roberto had not changed.

Roina mocked herself, hollow. She had thought she knew he had not changed, and yet, without realizing it, she seemed to have been nursing the notion that from now on he would not treat her with the old violence.

She clenched her teeth, endured the pain, and tried to set her toes properly against the floor. Shackles were locked around her ankles as well, so even that was not easy. Her body had been driven past its limits again and again, and strength would not come.

Sweat slid down the line of her spine. She had not meant to, but when she struggled her pale breasts were bared beneath the moonlight. Even ruined, she was still beautiful.

Then something warm—cloth—was drawn around that body. A warm embrace followed, and hot breath. Out of the dark, someone of a solid build wrapped her in a blanket and lifted her into his arms.

Her wrists had kept hurting where the weight dragged at them. She still did not know who he was, but the moment he took that burden off them she felt markedly easier.

Who…?

"One moment…"

A low voice, slightly hoarse. Ethan.

He stroked her wrists, undid the cuffs, and then removed, one after another, the things that had bound her. Each time he did, thick, rough fingers hardened with callus brushed dully across her tender flesh. His body ran a little hot, and every time his hand touched her a strange feeling stirred. When she flinched, the movement of those large hands grew still more careful.

At last she pulled the blindfold off with her own hands, and she could see the knight with a face a little harder than usual. The solid knight from a foreign land looked at her for a long while with eyes sunk deep. Then he fetched a cloth soaked in warm water and made to hand it to her.

Roina hesitated, then pushed that hand away. The upright knight had not expected to be refused. His eyes opened a little wider as he looked at her, and she thought the expression looked uncharacteristically gentle.

She spoke to him.

"Please wipe me yourself. I don't have the strength…"

Ethan looked as if her words had struck him with a sudden dizziness. For an instant his face flushed.

He hesitated, but he could not go against what she had said. Carefully he sat her on the table and began to wipe her, slowly, from the tips of her toes. The cloth, warmed to a pleasant lukewarm, traveled over the top of her foot, her calf, and on up to her thigh.

His hand stopped there. He rinsed the cloth once and repeated nearly the same motion.

Every time, he halted before he drew near her most private place. He did not draw back the blanket he had laid over her, nor did he undress her. He only knelt, and in silence wiped what was already bare—just enough that she would not have to feel shame.

When he wiped that same place for the third time, Roina lifted a hand and cast the blanket off. What showed was a torn maid's uniform that served even less purpose than underclothes, and the white body revealed in the gaps between. Set against the black cloth, the curves of her body, and nipples of a faint pink that seemed about to show and yet did not, gleamed with an obscene light.

Astonishingly, her body was regenerating little by little, and the filth was vanishing. It was the effect of the magic laid upon her.

Ethan stood frozen, rigid, unable even to turn his head, and looked at her. Moonlight came in through the small window and fell across her once more. All at once he thought she was like a goddess of the moon who had fallen after being seized by a wicked man.

A moment later the knight bowed his head.

Then Roina thought, on impulse, that she would corrupt that knight. She did not know whether it was the lingering effect of the drug Roberto had fed her, or the moonlight breathing madness into her. In this moment she had been flung headlong into the mire, and she could not bear that the knight still stood there whole. He had to be ruined too. No—she wanted to make him throw off, with his own hands, the rein of never defying his master's command. He could do what she wanted to do now, and could not.

The instant he moved to draw his hand back, Roina caught it. She drew that hand up and laid it upon her breast. He was pulled along without strength, and somewhere in the meantime the wet cloth had fallen at her feet.

She held his hand and slid it slowly. His thick, hard fingers crushed across her nipple, and she let out a sigh like a lament.

Using his hand, she stripped away the maid's uniform that had become useless. The garment, nothing more than a scrap of cloth, came away as emptily as she had expected. First her top was drawn off, and then, as if it were only natural, she used his hand to undo the torn skirt that had barely clung at her waist.

Soon her white nakedness was laid bare. Moonlight came down and broke across that skin. Ethan swallowed without meaning to. Only after he had done it did he feel the irreverence of the act.

Roina wore a faint smile. Ethan's reaction was utterly new to her. This would be the first time this knight showed so wide an opening—and the last.

She had no intention of letting Ethan recover his senses. This time she slid his hand down between her thighs. In the aftermath of sex her sex was, inevitably, moist and swollen, and Ethan's finger slipped across it without resistance.

"Mmm—"

Feeling the man's hot hand graze her clitoris, she let a low moan spill out. Then she drew his other hand in as well and made him cup her breast. Without realizing it, Ethan moved smoothly to her lead and climbed over her. She lay sprawled across the table.

His right hand was already gripping her breast tight, and his left had parted her moist petals and was invading her with a wet, slick sound. He had no thought left but that he must give her pleasure exactly as she wished.

In that instant he came abruptly back to himself. He stopped his hands and tried to climb down from above her. But the goddess of the moon did not release him. She caught him by the neck, slipped a hand in behind his nape and past his ear, stroked him lightly, and drew his face to her just as it was. The goddess's lips were sweet and soft as a dream.

From then on he could not stop. Even knowing he was being swayed exactly as she intended, he set down every standard and every rule he had and gave his body over like a beast that had been tamed. For this moment she was his standard, and she was his rule.

As if he had never hesitated at all, he swallowed Roina's lips. He clung to her, panting, like a man who had found an oasis in the middle of the desert.

Squelch. Squelch.

His fingers moved and stirred her spring. The motion was not rough but gentle, carefully leading her body toward rapture. Inside she was narrow, and hot, and soft enough to drive a man mad.

Roina felt Ethan's fingers stirring slowly within her. Those fingers knocked, heavy and dull, upon the door of pleasure seated deep in her belly.

"Mmm, mm—"

Somehow Ethan had left her lips, and now he was kissing her white nakedness with something like devotion. The kisses, fluttering as a butterfly might, were strangely stimulating.

In all things Ethan was careful with her, handling her as preciously as glass that might shatter at any moment.