Claiming Crystal (15 page)

She did not ask Rafael about his life, his dreams, or his hopes. She had not even asked his name; he had given it to her of his own accord, perhaps because he sensed that she would never show him the interest that was not indirectly for her own ends. If she had asked for his name it would be because she suspected something in the title, snooping around for hints of a royal lineage, or some familiarity that would give her predation on him some greater breadth.

He had given her his name because he felt that it was only fitting for his owner to know what to call her slave, and he had accepted the position without the indignity that prouder m
en might have at being owned by woman. It was not a common thing to happen in this land unless a man found himself under the lustful eye of a powerful green or monarch, in which cases the masculine pride meant little beside the powers that even a slave could invoke once he was slave to someone truly powerful. Giving oneself to another was not something sacrificial; Rafael was not offended by his position, nor resentful of it.

Giving oneself over to another, wholly and completely, was the way of the world, and it did not seem corrupt. In a way Rafael thought it beautiful; the ways a mother must give herself over to her child so that there was enough milk to sate, and the way a wife must give herself over to her husband so that he did not stray – the ways that a man must bow for a woman so that she will know she is worshipped, and the ways women must in turn bow for men so that they knew they were wanted. These were the ways in which relationships were made, and Rafael had the hard fought maturity of any poor born man who could not have the loftier ambitions that drove some noble people to lose their perspective on the world and decide to recreate the natural ways of things under their own image.

Rafael was not one for recreating the world. He did not fancy owning a kingdom, or a woman, but instead found himself exhilarated by the prospect of being owned by one who had the ambition to do much more than that.

He had always looked up to people greater than him throughout his life, turning his bright eyes towards the demeanors of princes and knights, wishing to imitate them someday, or perhaps work his way into their folds by taming their prized stallions. Despite his ready supplication to Crystal, Rafael was a man who simply did what he wished to do and did not think twice about his actions – for they had always steered him true. The night he had decided to leave the horse pens and sneak into the coronation ceremony for Crystal’s awakening, he had simply overhead word of the celebrations and gone to investigate themselves.

True he had been curious about the famed beauty of the lord’s newest daughter to come of age, but more than that he was plainly wanted something that was within reach and thus reached for it because he could. Like Crystal, Rafael was not a man for indulging in his own regret or guilt. He understood intuitively that the moment he committed an action, that action was his forevermore, and pining over its repercussions did him no good. He had seen too many men lose themselves to such indignities; drunks and tavern dwellers who made one single, terrible mistake and tried to drown themselves in distractions from the next day forth, as if those distractions could save them from the bad fortunes they had wrought themselves.

Rafael did not believe in such fortunes or such drowning. He allowed whatever happened to him, confident that his character would withstand its might, be it prison or slavery to one of the most beautiful and vivacious women in all the lands. To think that he had the eye of a precious jewel that made lords and prince fight over themselves for a chance to wear it – that was a blessing, and Rafael had never been rich enough to turn away blessings.

In this small way he was like Crystal.

Now he felt himself succumbing to her convictions in addition to her body. They whispered bac
k and forth as their bodies rode back and forth, himself wondering after her plans, herself soothing his wondering and seeking to distract him with the delicate maneuvers of her body against his. He buried his hands in her hair and then made love to her face in more ways than one, kissing it with his mouth and then kissing it with his cock – which she took gladly, again and again, for it was a tireless presence tonight that wished for release over and over.

With each thrust, she became surer of herself.

This would be a marriage ceremony unlike any other.

‘Give yourself to me,’ Crystal asked him.

‘Yes,’ was all he had to say.

‘Give yourself to me,’ she repeated, seizing him back, her fingers searching through his hair her mouth searching across his body for something to sate a lust that was awakening into something truly insatiable. The creature that Crystal had become splayed itself over him, and then mounted him with the strong press of a slave owner.

‘Tell me,’ he gasped as she clawed scored into his back. ‘Tell me what you will use me for,’ and then she did.

Crystal laid him onto his back and told him to close his eyes so that the world was only her voice and her body. He loosened the muscles in his arms and legs, slackening his body into the true supplicant fit for a queen. He tilted his head back, resting in the pillow of his own hair, and he finally let himself smile in a way that was not playful, coy, or some another snarky showmanship. He smiled because he was happy in ways that did not naturally come to him as he toiled in his hard-fought life, suffering at the whims of the knights and the lords – people who purchased his services and perhaps did not like the kind of services that he offered.

Rafael had no siblings. He had been born into a poor farm family who did not have enough hands to maintain their animals or their crops, nor enough money to pay for work. They had waited as the government of their kingdom began to encroach into their property, enquiring about their affairs and seemingly encouraged each time something fell into disrepair. Rafael had spent six years on his family farm before it was bought from them and they were sent off on a poor rickety cart with everything they owned and anything they could carry. Shortly thereafter his father had sold him into low wages at another farm several days’ travel from their own, and the money Rafael made there had been sent immediately to his family, since they owned their son and reaped all of his rewards.

That had been the arrangement suited for many children in similar circumstances. Rafael had been bed and given a bed with nine other boys and girls roughly his same age. He had slept in the hay with the horses and chickens, and he still remembered sneaking eggs from the mother hens to eat when the farm family forgot to feed him (and they often forgot, for maintaining a farm of such size was busy work, and their workers were nameless orphan children whose deaths would not raise a stir). Other children Rafael worked with had developed an intense dislike of people who were given better circumstances by the grace of their parents, and their parents’ accomplishments, but Rafael had been humble even at the age where most boys only wanted to sight and adventure.

He had lost his virginity there to a sweet girl who did not speak his language, yet he had not been jealous when she went with another larger boy who did her work in exchange for the favors of her body. Rafael had always been beyond these resentments. He was content to thieve the food that he needed and steal the shelter that was not afforded them, but he did not need to feel entitled to such things. In truth he felt entitled to nothing. He took what he needed and observed all else from afar – his eyes twinkling with the mischief of somebody who saw too much of a life as a game to truly become a sore loser.

The reason he did not begrudge Crystal or her parents was the same reason that he did not feel sorry for himself. Everything was shadows on the wall of a cave, and every man died,
and with every death, the worth of their toils and struggles were revealed as the same empty stardust that had created the wide world. In this futility he found freedom, and this freedom had finally led him into a livelihood that was uniquely suited to a man of his sensibilities.

He would have told Crystal that he was happy if he felt he needed to.

She already knew. It was evident enough between his legs.

****

Crystal’s mother was a beautiful woman, and as she aged into her forties the men of the kingdom began to whisper that she ma
intained her beauty through sacrifices of the young. There were stories about blood orgies in which she drank from the cups of murdered youths, or wiped herself in lotions made from the fats of burned criminals, but the truth of the matter was that Crystal’s mother was strong, and that strength had ratified her body against the weakness of wrinkles and age that most people succumbed to once their souls tired of living through the hardships of their mortal instruments.

She was in her gardens watching the stars when several of her spies approached her with word of conspiracy they had heard Crystal speak inside of her bedroom. She had many such people positioned throughout the kingdom, and had already heard of her husband’s plan to release her daughter’s poorly chosen suitor to her as a gift in the hopes that it might quench her appetites, ambitions, or whatever else the lord thought was leading her to continue to misbehave in these ways.

‘Is something the matter?’ she asked churlishly.

The spies paused. It seemed they were unsure.

‘Out with it,’ she ordered.

Crystal’s mother had always overcome her hardships. Even when she had been wed to the lord of this kingdom and used to sire many of his line from the tender age of sixteen, she had learned to find the silver linings of her circumstances. She had quickly proved her worth by the king’s side, listening keenly to the kingdom politics and commenting on them in ways that were often sharper than even the king’s official advisors. She had instructed one of her literate maids to read military books from the library and educate her on the history of the kingdom, so that she might better advise her husband on his many matters and responsibilities.

Her devotion had been rewarded, and her husband had soon learned to respect her, and allow her the space to pursue her own interests and talents. She had begun the garden that now flourished throughout the kingdom when she was eighteen, learning by trial and error, since there were no gardeners employed within the kingdom staff at all.

She found her own supplies and taught herself from experience, and now her plants were considered some of the most beautiful in the land. Other royal families visited annually to marvel over the blooming of seasonal plants, and Crystal’s mother began to become prized in her own way that was removed from the status her husband granted her.

She had borne him ten children, all of them healthy and fit and mentally competent, and she had not died even when she had her first child a year after marrying her husband. She had withstood the childbearing as she had withstood her circumstances, and although she had been distant with her children, as royal behaviors dictated for kings and queens with more important occupations than child rearing, but she had carefully selected the maid mothers to tend in her stead, and she had kept abreast of her children’s developments even once they were married off to the far corners of the land.

She was a woman of certain subterfuge, observing things from silent channels of unofficial messengers. Her tact had sometimes made her seem aloof, and she was well aware that many of her children likely had no idea that she doted over them as much as she did. Crystal, for example, she had watched carefully in the months approaching her second awakening.

She had been the one to instruct the maid mothers to look for signs, and while her husband had selected her potential suitors, she had been the one to greet each of them at the gate of the kingdom, assessing their personalities, attitudes and aptitudes in a stealthy and conversational way so that all of them left her company believing she was simply the welcoming wife of the local lord. She had given each suitor a rose, and she had not told them that this was only to distinguish each suitor apart from the crowd so that her many spies could watch them as they set up for their presentations and report back to her if they noticed any untoward behavior.

She had found that most men truly revealed themselves when they believed no one was looking, which necessitated some secrecy in order to authenticate the difference between royal facades and plain realities.

So it was not surprising that this mother was the first one to realize Crystal’s plan thanks to the expert eavesdropping of the many people under her direct employment, and it was also not surprising that she made no immediate plans to inform her husband right away.

She swore her spies to secrecy and then sent them on their way so that she could consider her daughter’s maneuver in private.

It seemed that Crystal had some of her mother’s verve within her marrow. The plan Crystal had hatched was ambitious, but not foolish. Its success depended on too many variables for her mother to be able to figure out herself. It was a chance roll of the dice, and it was fitting for someone who had ‘awakened’ her ambitions along with her lust – when lust was nothing but a hunger that sought out its own sating. Let her daughter try to take what she thinks is hers. Let her daughter try to make a place for herself in this world – the mother would be watching from the shadows as she always did, but perhaps this time she could help Crystal along with her plans by doing some plotting of her own.

And so she sent her messengers to round up every suitor that her husband had invited onto the premises to continue their presentations.