THE PRINCE OF NOTHING & THE LORD OF NOWHERE

by Decadentjackal, 2024
Originally published in OMEGATOWN, a dystopian omegaverse zine

✷ ✷ ✷

The day the matchmaker had come from the Order to inform Osprey that he was to find his match in the governor, he had nearly sprayed a mouthful of tea in her face before bursting into incredulous laughter.

Before he could begin to remark upon the absurdity of such a match, or even question how such a union could possibly come about between he and a lord of the Empire, the matchmaker assured him that the plans had already been set in motion, and disappeared before he could ask any more of her.

Osprey had never paid much mind to the Empire and its schemes, nor did he have any reason to. His planet belonged to the Empire only in name, and had otherwise been left alone due to its supposed lack of arable land and natural resources. It was for this reason that Osprey had known very little about the governor. He knew only this much: he was a young man, close in age to himself, by the name of Lilian. Rumor had it that he was one of the emperor’s many artificially-bred offspring, though he must have done something to appear unfavorable if he’d been shipped off to govern his icy, barely-habitable planet. It was an undesirable post to be sure, but it was still land and a title, apparently enough to elicit the envy of those of even lesser status among the Empire’s peerage.

Osprey soon learned that the arrangement, such as it was, had been made above his head months prior, a fact he found distasteful if not outright impertinent as the Prince Regent of his small and oft-overlooked world. With such a limited pool of options in his sparsely populated land, Osprey had long gone without any reasonable prospects for a mate, but he’d always thought he’d at least have a say in his own marriage. Instead, he’d found himself bartered around like a bull to market, nothing more than a puppet to the crimson-clad hands of the Order.

Such hands had conspired with one of Lilian’s lesser-titled cousins, who had bargained with the Order to have his kin removed from his post so that he might claim the land and title for himself. It didn’t matter to him what was done to the young lord after his removal— that was left to the Order. Some shrewd mind among the Order’s ranks had seen to the ousted lord’s use. With their own world’s tangled, often inbred bloodlines, their former governor’s refined imperial blood would make for excellent breeding stock.

In the grand scheme of things, Lilian was but a lowly lord cast out to one of the Empire’s most useless and forgotten satellites, and Osprey was but a caged prince puppeteered by unseen hands, a distinction that itself meant nothing beyond the frozen reaches of his home world’s atmosphere.

In the days leading up to his first meeting with his intended, Osprey had heard many things about the young lord Lilian. He’d been kept out of earshot from the plans and finer details, naturally; such dirty work was not for the pristine hands of a prince. Still, he had listened, curious and disapproving, as the events had played out somewhere beyond his reach. Their former lord had been abducted in the dead of night, and like a rare, exotic bird, caged somewhere in the confines of the palace’s labyrinthine underground corridors. Osprey had had little interest in looking for him. For his part, he’d heard more than enough from a certain loose-lipped member of the Order, who happened to be his own sister, Eider.

He supposed he was lucky his sister was so eager to gossip; normally, members of the Order were infuriatingly vague. From Eider, however, he’d heard more than his fill. He’d been informed, in many a guileful whisper, that the young lord was fittingly high-strung, that he was aristocratically proportioned and refined, if perhaps unduly slim; that he’d struggled valiantly against his captors, and had given them no small amount of trouble in keeping him. Of course, such rebellion was to be expected as long as Lilian still believed himself to be governor. He had been told nothing about his own cousin’s conspiracy, and it was forbidden to inform him.

A few days in confinement seemed to subdue their noble captive, and Osprey, at long last, found himself faced with the prospect of finally seeing the young lord for himself.

“He’s pretty,” said Eider with a conspiratorial smirk, after having been tasked with preparing the young lord for supper. “He takes well to the crimson silks.”

Osprey frowned. “I want nothing to do with him.”

In truth, he’d wanted nothing to do with anyone, at least in the way of marital duties. As prince, he was meant to produce an heir, but the work of breeding was fraught with risks, as he knew better than anyone.

His mother had died in childbirth, and his father, in his grief, had wandered into the ice fields beyond the heated stones of the palace and there lost whatever of his sanity remained. He had been retrieved, senseless, frostbitten and barely clinging to life, and in this state of inconsolable semi-consciousness the king had remained in his sickbed for most of Osprey’s life.

In a way, he’d never forgiven his younger sister for it, though the act of being brought into the world in such a way had hardly been her fault. He would never give her any indication of it; the girl adored him with an almost religious devotion, and it was best to keep her fickle temper appeased.

Eider’s reaction to their mother’s misfortune had been very different from his own. Seeing her death as a sort of martyrdom, his sister had foregone her own highborn title and chosen to devote herself to the religious order that oversaw the noble bloodlines and controlled the practices of breeding. Perhaps she had vowed to do better than those who had served their mother. Or perhaps, as Osprey sometimes thought, she was just as much a deranged fanatic as the rest of the Order.

Regardless, he did not trust her, even if she shared his blood. For all he knew, his own sister was among the shadowed council that decided his fate.

Still, there was no need to hide the fact that he found the act of breeding dangerous and distasteful. No one, not even Eider, would blame him for that, even if she didn’t agree with him. He had often wished he’d been born anywhere else with a body other than his own, in that vast stellar system that shunned the practice entirely.

The civilized worlds had abolished the practice of breeding long ago, but their tiny, dissenting world was not among those deemed civilized. For hundreds of years, their isolated enclave had slipped by with their traditional practices, overseen by careless, disinterested governors who did not seek to investigate the so-called barbaric practices of their provinces.

Osprey had heard how things were done in the other worlds. To be civilized, it seemed, was to designate the work of reproduction to the cold hands of machinery, to combine cells in perfect factory precision and grow them into living beings. These machine-made beings could not breed amongst themselves, even if they wanted to– not because they had been sterilized, but because every one of them was ensured, with mathematical certainty, to be of the same sex.

His own sex had been outlawed long ago. In his isolation, Osprey was among the few who had gone on past the great extermination, himself an oddity, a living relic of a time long since forgotten by the other worlds of the Empire.

As he reflected moodily on this, horns sounded in the adjacent hall, announcing the approach of his esteemed guest, who had surely been given even less a choice than he for appearing in the vast banquet hall.

He looked small, Osprey thought, as the great obsidian doors opened to reveal the young lord’s slight figure, though perhaps in such a grand room, anyone would. Like a pearl clad in fire he appeared with his pale skin and scarlet silks, the wild waves of his hair as dark as the towering basalt columns that framed the corners of the banquet hall.

The palace, built long before the Empire’s current era of decay, was a marvel of engineering as much as it was a work of art. Centuries ago, it had been built into a living volcanic mountainside, from which it derived its comfortable warmth. Despite the volatile storms and sub-zero temperatures suffered by much of the planet beyond the palace’s great basalt spires, Osprey had known only the pleasant warmth of heated tiles beneath his feet, his skin kept soft and moistened by the numerous steam rooms and elegant underground baths scattered around the palace. Osprey could see his guest quietly marveling at the dark grandeur of the banquet hall in spite of himself; even the great governors’ house he’d previously occupied had likely paled in comparison.

The hall where they would take their dinner was indeed vast, likely built for a more prosperous time in the history of Osprey’s ancient bloodline. It seemed almost comical, the vacuous expanse of the great room, the distance from which the two chairs were seated from each other at the needlessly massive dining table. Its surface was crafted of a great block of porous stone, its faint scent of sulfur mingling with the more prominent notes of their steaming supper. Osprey hardly noticed it, having been surrounded by it for much of his life, but he observed Lilian wrinkling his nose a little as he took his seat opposite him.

Osprey couldn’t help but study him, now that he was at last before him; this stranger that he was meant to imbue with his seed. He’d found it hard to believe that this son of the Empire was the most suitable option for his mate, but perhaps his own peoples’ bloodlines were more muddled than he’d thought. Still, the young foreigner was pleasing enough to the eye. He was indeed thinner than was proper, but as pretty as Osprey had been given to expect, if a bit intense in a way he found unbecoming. Beneath his handsome dark curls was a pale face of smooth skin, a thin, pointed nose and smooth pink lips that Osprey found himself thinking were quite lovely despite his distaste for the boy.

When Lilian raised his silverware to his plate, Osprey noticed the decorative cuffs around his wrists, connected by thin drapes of chain that clinked gently at his slightest movement. They might nearly have succeeded in looking purely decorative if Osprey hadn’t known otherwise. He raised his eyebrows curiously, wondering what trouble his guest had made for his captors, or whether the chains were merely a precautionary measure. Lilian seemed then to notice him watching and glared back at Osprey defiantly, the glacial blue of his eyes made all the more piercing against his crimson silks. Guiltily, Osprey quickly averted his eyes and trained them on his plate.

He was not alone in judgment of his guest. A number of members of the Order were stationed in each dim corner of the banquet hall, ready to seize and subdue their captive at the slightest disturbance. Lilian, apparently aware of this, seemed to be behaving himself, leaving their audience free to gossip quietly amongst themselves.

“Far too thin to bear a child, let alone several,” whispered one.

“We’ll soon remedy that,” said another, unsuccessfully suppressing an unkind laugh.

Despite their distance, Osprey was sure Lilian had heard them as well as he; even whispers carried easily in the cavernous room. From his stoic expression, Lilian appeared unbothered, though he plunged his knife into his cut of hare with decided violence.

While they ate, Lilian’s eyes darted occasionally up to Osprey; not with interest, as he might have hoped, but with cold analysis, as would a wartime commander strategically piecing together his opponent’s weaknesses. Osprey couldn’t help but find it humorous, given Lilian’s frail stature against his own well-muscled frame. He could hardly be sure what the young lord thought of him, or what weaknesses he might glean from a surface examination, but he knew he would at least not find him unpleasant to behold.

For a few uncomfortable minutes, Osprey wondered if he would bother to strike up conversation, or if that honor would be left to him. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, wondering if the two of them would simply eat in silence for the duration of their meal.

Yet Lilian did not let the silence linger for long. After he’d finished his first course and brought his cloth to his lips with the poise he would expect from one of his upbringing, he straightened in his seat, a confrontational gleam in his eyes.

“How does it feel, being one of the last of your kind?”

Taken aback by his boldness, Osprey paused between sips of his tea to consider, before deciding to grace his guest’s impertinent question with diplomacy.

“There are many of us here,” Osprey informed him in a tone that he hoped was merely explanatory. “Here… it is your ways that are strange.”

Hardly intimidated, Lilian tried again. There was an unmistakable meanness to his curiosity, a catlike curl to his lips, as though he was hoping to get a rise out of him.

“Does it not frighten you?”

At first, Osprey wasn’t sure what exactly was meant to frighten him. In the vastness of the Empire, his own kind with their barely-surviving practices were outnumbered by millions upon millions. Perhaps, with the eyes of one of the emperor’s own kin on him, he was meant to feel threatened.

“My lord, need I remind you— it is in my palace that you currently sup, and you who were led here in chains.”

Lilian only smiled, a cruel peal of laughter escaping his pretty lips. “Still, you do not answer me. Do you not know the reason your kind were exterminated?”

Exterminated. A decidedly cruel word for the massacre of all who shared his sex in the greater reaches of the Empire. The tales had been related to him often as a youth, of the rebellion hundreds of years prior, of the vicious lengths to which the ruling powers had gone to eliminate those they viewed as brutish and inhuman. Osprey bristled at the very mention of it. “Surely no reason would justify such extreme measures.”

Lilian scoffed. “What sort of history did they teach you, prince? How do you think the great pestilence was spread, all those years ago?” He seemed to want to go on, but an ominous look had crossed the shadowed faces of the members of the Order in attendance, and a hush fell over him, his gaze falling back to his plate. Osprey wasn’t certain, but he thought he saw the slightest flash of fear in his eyes.

Of course, Lilian’s version of the truth was not entirely unfamiliar to Osprey. He had heard the Empire’s stories just as well as his own peoples’ histories. He knew that they believed that the extermination of his own sex and the practice of breeding had saved them from some ancient disease. Such claims, he’d been told, were nothing more than over-blown propaganda.

“Perhaps,” he said appeasingly, “there are many versions of the truth.”

“Well then, whatever the truth is, let us hope the Empire’s extreme measures were enough to eradicate that scourge for good.”

Osprey’s mind whirred with questions for the remainder of supper, but Lilian talked no more of ancient history. The two of them were quiet as they moved from course to course. Every time Osprey dared to look Lilian’s way, he seemed uncommonly engrossed with his plate.

When the dessert wine was poured and their final course was brought sizzling to the table, Lilian’s previous facade of cold indifference seemed to crumble, his well-shaped eyebrows betraying a hint of curiosity. With his gaze set on the steaming multicolored crustacean-like creature before him, he seemed to be fighting an inward battle, one that Osprey couldn’t help but enjoy watching.

He was sure that Lilian had thus far found the other fare at the table familiar; much of it was of the Old World, at least, what little of its flora and fauna could survive in his hard and frigid world. What thrived in his world was a strange assortment. Hares, ever prolific, had adapted almost too well and were in constant need of culling, and the rhubarb purposed for their sweet dessert wines could grow at a frightening pace even in total darkness. The creatures placed before them, however, were native to Osprey’s own world, harvested straight from the geothermal pools beneath their feet. He was sure that even in the comfort of the governor’s house, Lilian had never once encountered one.

He seemed reluctant to betray his ignorance, but as the creature began to cool, his guest finally relented. “What is this?”

Osprey smiled, allowing himself to feel a little smug as he spooned the creature’s jelly-like underside into his mouth. “You must try it for yourself,” he said with cryptic reserve. “They are a rare delicacy on our world. It’s forbidden to waste their meat.”

What he did not tell the young lord was that in addition to being a rare and sacred indulgence, the creature’s flesh was also a powerful aphrodisiac.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as his guest mirrored his movements with unpracticed awkwardness, wincing a little as he pried open the creature’s shell to expose its steaming underside. Yet his reaction to the flavor was as Osprey expected, his initial surprise turning to intrigue. Its essence was difficult to describe– at once salty and sweet, with an exotic heat and piquancy that brought an amorous blush to the skin of all who imbibed it.

Whether it was genuine appreciation for the flavor or rivalrous intent, Lilian finished his plate quickly, and Osprey, already lost in the erotic thrall of his own serving’s effects, saw the characteristic signs of its power over his guest. A delicate pink flush bloomed on Lilian’s pale cheeks, his eyelids growing heavy with soporific lust. For a moment, Osprey could almost convince himself to ignore the cruelty of his previous comments, for as he drooped elegantly against his chair, he looked strikingly luscious and inviting.

Yet before he could follow this line of thought any further, two members of the Order appeared on either side of Lilian’s chair to lead him back to whatever hidden chamber they kept him in. Osprey found himself inwardly cursing their promptness as they led him away with hardly the time for goodbyes. As he and his detainers disappeared in the halls beyond the great obsidian doors, Lilian betrayed nothing more than a last, sluggish look over his shoulder, though a pleasant scent drifted through the disturbance of air in his wake.

Osprey rose from his seat, breathing in the fragrant melange of expensive import oils that lingered after his guest, attempting to detangle the heavy cloud of saffron and sandalwood from the more intriguing musk beneath. The scent of him was faint but exquisite. He found himself trailing after Lilian, hoping to catch more, until the hand of his sister halted him.

“Now, dear brother, you must wait. I’m sure you are eager, but the two of you must not mingle again before the ceremony.”

He had previously wondered what point there was to a meeting so brief if it was only to be followed with more waiting, followed by a ceremony in which he and Lilian would be wed, still little more than strangers. But in that moment, he understood. He’d been given a mere taste meant to tantalize him, like dangling a rare and exquisite cut of meat above a dog and wresting it away again. But he was not a dog; he was not driven by such base desires as scent and lust. Lilian was pretty enough, but he was still a contemptible little Empire-born boy who’d only spent the night taunting him. Osprey frowned to himself, disappointed at his own weakness of will.

“He will be very different when next you see him,” Eider assured him. “After a week of preparations, he’ll be begging for your touch.”

Osprey wasn’t sure he liked the sound of this; it seemed more like a removal of free will. To some extent, he knew what the preparations of a bride involved. All manner of concoctions had long been put to such uses, referred to quite blithely as love potions. They were much more than that— powerful, heat-inducing herbs, mind-altering chemicals, rare substances harvested from the geothermal pools that bubbled deep beneath the palace.

As a youth, he’d seen what they’d done to his mother. It had disgusted him then, seeing the aching need in her, her body supple and heavy with lust. Even if it hadn’t been the potions that had ultimately killed her, one should never see one’s own mother in such a state.

And yet, once that fretful week had passed and Lilian was again brought before him in his wedding attire, he found, with somewhat of a shock, that he felt quite differently. Lilian, too, was different, just as Eider had alluded. The crimson silks draped over his body were somehow even more lacking than those he’d been clothed in for their previous meeting, and considerably more sheer and gauzy. Osprey was sure he’d had little choice in the matter; he could sense the scorn and humiliation rippling off him in waves, along with something far more enticing.

The scent he’d caught only a hint of in the vastness of the banquet hall had since become overwhelming, such that no amount of perfumes and bath oils could disguise its potency. Osprey wanted to close his eyes to better isolate the intoxicating aroma, but found himself too enthralled with the sight of Lilian to keep his eyelids shut for long.

Beneath the shimmering crimson, the body that had seemed gaunt and frail a mere week before had taken on more than a hint of softness. From that bony, narrow form had sprung seductive curves, no doubt a result of a melange of potions and a rich and specialized diet. The flesh that gathered at his hips had widened to a pleasant roundness that Osprey found himself disconcertingly impatient to touch; at his chest, the budding swell of his nipples protruding from conspicuous tents of silk. Osprey’s pulse quickened. He looked away hastily, hoping Lilian hadn’t caught him staring.

Of course, nothing seemed to escape Lilian’s notice. The next time he dared to look up, he found Lilian’s eyes glaring heatedly back at him through the gauze of his veil, his irises newly ringed in saffron from the host of substances that had been added to his food. The result was striking and a little unnerving. He’d long been told of the glowing red-gold of a ripened vessel’s eyes, and had seen them on his mother once, but Lilian’s were magnificent, like a burning sunset in deep winter.

Osprey could feel his cheeks blooming hot with humiliation, but with Lilian set before him in such revealing garments, it was impossible not to look. A bride’s costume was designed not to conceal, but to accentuate the form beneath; pleasing dainties to view with hungry eyes and salivating tongue. Osprey resented himself for his own susceptibility, as surely as Lilian likely did.

In the Temple of Vows the two of them stood, Osprey in the ceremonial gown of a monarch, Lilian in the provocative crimson silks of a bride. On a thin platform between them was the great goblet from which they would together drink to seal their bond, along with a coalition of members of the Order as their witnesses, one of them stationed before Lilian and Osprey to perform the bonding rites.

All Osprey could think about, as he recited his oaths with a mechanical voice that seemed strangely removed from his body, was how desperately he wished to peel away the already sparse and gauzy garments that hung from Lilian’s newly luxuriant frame. He hated these sordid thoughts as quickly as they came, but his mind and body seemed intent on working in conspiracy against him, thrumming with desire all throughout the ceremony.

Lilian swore dutifully to each of the oaths posed to him, but in his words Osprey sensed a lingering vitriol, a cold resentment that lurked behind the soft blush of fertility that colored his cheeks. He appeared as though swathed in flames, the weak, rosy rays of the setting sun lighting the edges of Lilian’s crimson silk and the ends of his coal-black hair like glowing embers.

Through the thick, leaded glass of the temple’s arched windows, Osprey watched his world’s sluggish star as it fell, pink and swollen, to the oblivion of jagged mountaintops. He’d heard the nights came quickly in his world, though having never left it, had no basis of comparison. Still, at times it took him by surprise, the sudden way the change swept over the sky. As he and Lilian said their final vows, the frozen world beyond was already blanketed in the cold shadow of night.

“Now, drink, and your bond is sealed,” Eider commanded. For once, her tone was solemn and humorless.

Surprisingly, when the goblet was handed first to Lilian, he did not hesitate in bringing it to his lips. Osprey supposed he had since become accustomed to drinking strange liquids, or had otherwise found resistance to be futile when it came to the demands of the Order.

When Lilian passed the goblet to him, Osprey paused, eyeing the swirl of its contents. It smelled of mulled wine, its exotic blend of spices only partly masking less identifiable ingredients. The mixture was said to have potent lust-inducing effects, as he would expect on his wedding night, but with his body already so inflamed with desire, Osprey feared the thought of its additional influence.

His suspicion did not escape Eider’s notice. As he steeled himself and at last raised the goblet to his lips, a smirk leaked through her composed expression.

“Don’t you know, dear brother?” she whispered. “All this time, you’ve had your food laced with it as well as he…”

Eider’s voice faded into his periphery. He wanted to be angry with her, but could feel nothing but the pleasant sting of the drink on his tongue, the heat coursing through his body as it flowed through him. When he glanced up at Lilian, he appeared to be suppressing a snide laugh at his reaction, though beneath his veil, he appeared just as touched by lust.

The two of them were led together to their waiting bedchamber by another member of the Order. Osprey watched the scarlet hood bob in front of him, trying, with all his power, to keep his eyes trained straight ahead rather than straying to Lilian. Even without looking at him, his scent was overpowering. He hated him, he thought, yet he wanted more than anything to bury himself in that scent, to feel his warm body from the inside, to strip that cold, arrogant smirk from his face and replace it with desperate cries of pleasure.

At his side, Lilian moved close– not out of desire, it seemed, but more subtle intimidations. He spoke in a low tone, only loud enough for Osprey to hear him above the echo of their footsteps.

“You seem awfully resigned to their authority, for one of the few people in the position to challenge it.”

Osprey raised his eyebrows. They had not spoken since their supper the week prior, and mistakenly, he had expected Lilian more subdued by the power of the potions surely coursing through him. Perhaps he ought not have been surprised that Lilian, lustful as he likely was, had not given up his scheming. He must truly have been desperate, Osprey thought, to appeal to him of all people for allyship. Even if he wanted to help his new bride, he had little power over the Order. Unlike Lilian, his title had always been purely ceremonial, a useless relic that meant nothing when it came to actual ruling power.

“I have much less authority than you presume.”

Lilian eyed him with disapproval, looking thoroughly unconvinced. “Why not leave? Let them start a new bloodline. Free yourself of their schemes.”

Osprey nearly laughed aloud at the thought. “And go where? I am not so desperate as you to be rid of my position here. Being as I am, there is little for me elsewhere.”

“The prince likes his cage,” murmured Lilian, a cruel lilt to his voice. Osprey ignored him. There was as little dignity in refuting him as there was in fighting the Order’s demands. He would not be so uncouth as Lilian, gnawing at his restraints like a captive animal.

As they neared the royal bedchamber, the image of his mother flashed in Osprey’s mind unbidden; aching and frenzied, her belly swollen with the child that would be his sister, the fear in her eyes as the birthing pains came. It had been the last he’d seen her alive.

He looked to Lilian, who gave the appearance of one unconcerned by the dangers of the bedchamber. Osprey was sure that the Order had prepared him, in some capacity, for his part in the task, but Lilian had likely had little education in the ways of childbearing otherwise. There was no need for those in the greater Empire to consider it; Lilian, like the rest of them, viewed such indignities as dirty work best left to machines.

It seemed utterly nonsensical when he thought of it, an entire empire of Lilian’s kind, so long sheltered from the inherent hazards to their sex that they had since become cocky and incautious. Lilian was a prime example, strutting toward the bed as though he had not been kept in chains for weeks prior.

If there was any relief to be had for his unease, it was that he cared little for his mate. Lilian’s survival ought not concern him beyond the extent of his duty to produce an heir. It was cold, perhaps, but Lilian had been nothing but cold to him.

And yet, how beautiful he looked, even with the frown of disdain on his pretty lips. His eyes seemed to be glowing in the dim light of the bedchamber, his body magnificent beneath the futile cover of his silks. Osprey’s eyes traced the outline of his hips, the slight rise of his belly against its crimson shroud, and realized what he felt, despite his inner protestations, was a longing to possess him utterly.

He moved toward his bride with slow, measured purpose, treading lightly across the heated tiles, vaguely aware that his movements were that of a predator trying not to frighten his prey. There was no need, of course— Lilian looked far more impatient than frightened, his head tilted nobly upwards as he regarded him.

Osprey wanted to smother him— to grasp those delicate hands by their wrists and quell that infuriating tongue— but what he did instead, with whatever modicum of control he still possessed, was move in gently for a kiss. Lilian did not protest the press of his lips, nor the eager invasion of his tongue, though he did smirk a little, as though sensing his inexperience. Undeterred, Osprey pressed on, feeling Lilian’s body stir impatiently beneath his touch. He moved boldly for the ties of Lilian’s silks, but it was then that Lilian broke away from him.

“Must they watch?” Lilian hissed, and in a way, Osprey was glad the potions had not sapped him of his contrarian spirit. Preoccupied as he was, he had nearly managed to forget that the two of them were not alone, though it seemed Lilian was reasonably less tolerating of the Order’s presence. Osprey wasn’t exactly pleased with the audience either, but it was the way of things, as it had been for hundreds of years. A royal marriage-bed was not a private matter; it was the culmination of the Order’s work to ensure their prince’s seed planted.

From Osprey’s resigned look, Lilian seemed to grasp that his complaints of the Order would have little consequence. Within the walls of the palace, true privacy was an unknown luxury. A member of the Order was always at hand, simultaneously servant and master, providing all the comforts one desired as long as their demands were met. Osprey suspected Lilian was unused to abiding rules and order. With such a domineering spirit, it came as little surprise that he had fallen from the Emperor’s favor.

Osprey could see his sharp eyes surveying the room, picking out each of the members of the Order in attendance from their places in the shadows, surveying the bed and its silk hangings, peering carefully at the tapestry-hung wall for hidden openings and exits. Osprey knew that he would find none, but he watched, with curious amusement, as his scheming bride strategized.

What he did not expect was the touch of Lilian’s delicate fingers on his jaw, a threatening gleam in his eyes, and three words a captive bride ought not dare to speak to a prince.

“On your knees.”

Despite his soft tone, there was something hard and unyielding in him, a noble fire in his eyes that the potions had done nothing to put out. Rather, in his fine silks and newly lush form, they had only added kinding to it, had made him into something godlike and shimmering. Perhaps Lilian now believed himself impossible to resist.

Osprey scoffed at his impertinence. It seemed the Order had not punished their captive nearly enough.

“I said kneel before me, prince. I was once your ruling lord. I will not have you forget so easily.”

Osprey’s eyes darted from Lilian to the room’s dim corners, where the eyes of the hooded members of the Order remained ever stone-faced and impassive. It seemed they had no intention of intervening.

“Still looking to them for direction?” Lilian laughed coldly. “Then you should have no trouble looking to me.”

Lilian strode to the waiting bed, his silks fluttering behind him like a train of crimson feathers.

“Now, kneel, and you shall see what your Order has done to me.”

Somehow, it was this command that Osprey found himself unable to refuse. At the sight of Lilian’s parted legs, Osprey felt his blood rush, his cock throbbing with want beneath his gown. It felt as though Lilian had stringed him like a puppet, so compelled was he to follow, so utterly helpless against the beckoning form of such a luscious creature. It was the scent of him, as much as the sight— aching, throbbing, dripping lust, and with Lilian at last exposed on the bed before him, Osprey found himself falling to his knees at the foot of the bed if only to be nearer.

He moved as if by instinct, with greedy hands and eager lips, so intrigued by Lilian’s sumptuous figure that he momentarily forgot to hate himself for his weakness. Still, his bride seemed to be encouraging him, thrusting himself toward Osprey with haughty impatience, so he relented and bowed his head between his needful legs. Like sheer curtains he parted the silks that covered his prize, grasping greedily at the shapely flesh of Lilian’s thighs as he angled himself nearer.

Lilian’s opening bloomed furiously before him, its petals thick and dripping with decadent nectar, the delicate head of his cock like a stamen beckoning toward him. For a moment, Osprey, having never seen the bloom of a ready vessel, could only stare in stunned silence at the sight of it, so utterly enraptured that he momentarily forgot the sharpness of his bride’s tongue.

He was not sure that he could flush any deeper, that his cock could not inflame further with angry provocation. If he’d had his way, he’d have thrust it into him that very moment, but Osprey was beginning to understand that his way would not be had with a person like Lilian without first coating it with honey.

As Lilian bid him, he lowered himself as would a dog, hungry-mouthed tongue to his bride’s cunt. The scent was as potent as the taste, a heady musk that was yet sweet and fragrant. Though his movements were hurried and unrefined, Lilian did not complain of them more, as he’d almost expected him to. Instead, he rutted desperately into him, a restrained moan escaping his lips.

He was taking too long. Osprey broke from the folds of his lips and moved upward, dragging his teeth against Lilian’s shapely little cock. This elicited a sharp intake of breath from his bride, so he did it again, harder, threatening to bite down.

“More,” came the heated breath above him, and so with tongue and teeth he laid siege to him amidst more thrusting and ragged moans of encouragement. When this, too, failed to finish him, Osprey took him the rest of the way with his hand, until Lilian gasped with pleasure and his hand was sticky with the pitiful harvest of Lilian’s seed.

Such a dainty little cock, he thought, as he felt Lilian convulse with pleasure beneath him, envious of his elegant form nearly as much as he was of his gratification. His own cock pulsed jealously in protest, aching in its unfulfillment. As Lilian panted beneath him, temporarily indisposed from his pleasure, Osprey took the opportunity to examine him closer.

He was nearly naked, but for the bangles draped around his neck and hanging from his ears, the silks discarded by his own greedy hands. The Order had dressed him like their doll, and he was certainly pretty as one; if not for the steady rise and fall of his chest and the angry, pink flush to his porcelain skin, Osprey might have nearly believed him to be. The effort of his indulgence had brought beads of sweat to his body like drops of pearls, his skin hot beneath Osprey’s hands. Strangely entranced, Osprey lowered his lips to him, following the slight curve of his belly up to the swell of his nipples.

Lilian jolted a little beneath him when he put his hands to his budding breasts, but he did not stop him, and was soon leaning into his touch languidly as Osprey lowered his lips to the sensitive flesh. How tender and pink they were; strangely unashamed of his fascination, he ran his tongue against each of the soft mounds of flesh in turn. In a few months’ time, they would swell and grow heavy, and from them would drip a nectar far sweeter than that which had run between his legs. At the thought of it, his face grew hot. He pressed his tongue hungrily against the budding nipple, as if to encourage it to ripen faster.

If he hadn’t been aware of it before, it soon became painfully obvious how deeply the drug of drink and pheromones had taken hold. He could hardly control himself, fruitlessly rutting his still-clothed cock between Lilian’s legs as he was, while his tongue still circled uselessly at his breast. His own body felt strange to him, as did the deep, needful moan that escaped from him when Lilian raised an elegant finger to his lips.

“You are as greedy and barbaric a lover as I expected,” Lilian murmured. There might have been the slightest note of fondness in his disparaging tone, though perhaps, in his pheromone-addled state, Osprey was only imagining it. For a moment, his bride was quiet, and Osprey thought to himself with blood and cock still boiling with unfulfillment that Lilian was certainly one to talk when it came to greed.

Despite his efforts, however, Lilian seemed to have found little relief, his cunt as throbbing and feverish as if it had been left untouched.

Lilian hissed miserably. “Will this oppressive heat never cease?”

Osprey eyed his inflamed form unsympathetically. “You ought to know by now. There is only one thing that will quell it.”

“Which would be your cock, I presume.” Lilian laughed coldly, though his skin still burned like hot coals beneath Osprey’s hands. After a moment’s consideration, he seemed to relent, and with a sigh, lay back upon the bed with the stony resignation of one who had exhausted all other options.

“Fine,” he spat, turning his gaze from Osprey. “Have me, then. I no longer care to fight.”

The fact that Lilian had managed to retain such resistance for so long in spite of the host of powerful pheromones coursing through him was a testament to his will. Osprey was impressed, if a little envious. He had found it all too easy to bow to the pressure of the need coursing through him, his body like one great chorus pleading in unison for Lilian. When he lowered himself to that newly supple form once more, he felt an aching heaviness between his legs, his pulse wild with desire.

There was no longer any need for convention. Lilian had laid himself open to him already, and Osprey, finding himself impatient to be rid of his remaining constraints, moved to free his straining cock from its bondage.

He realized that Lilian had probably never seen a body like his unclothed anywhere but ancient art. When he removed in quick succession his belt and gown and underthings, he could feel Lilian’s eyes on him, tracing his muscled abdomen down the slope of his hip bone. “Hm,” he said with noncommittal stoicism, frowning a little as he perceived Osprey’s overripened fruits of lust, thus far left untended. Osprey frowned back; he’d almost expected more of a reaction.

Osprey was no stranger to his own body. He had spent many a lonely night rutting into his hand on satin sheets, imagining with equal parts disgust and fascination the idea of some lithe, wanton thing beneath him. Sex had always been a vague notion boiling beneath his self-professed disinterest, an unavoidable inevitability of his position.

He’d had little opportunity to pursue such passions, even if he’d dared to acknowledge them. For all his life, he’d been kept in relative solitude, a loaded weapon on a shelf, patiently, if disdainfully, awaiting his target. Osprey was of a long and noble bloodline that the Order had gone to great lengths to control– they would not have him waste his bullets.

And so, he had been righteous, had kept himself away from all matters physical, more out of his own presumed revulsion of the act. Inadvertently, he had made the Order’s work easy, all the while keeping his desire contentedly locked away behind the bars of lofty distaste. Little had he known that the taste, once on his tongue, would be so sweet…

Lilian, still waiting beneath him, smirked up at him, his skin still flushed from their previous exertions.

“You’ve never done it, have you?”

His laugh was decidedly unkind as he spread his legs before Osprey, as if he believed him otherwise incapable of finding his cunt— as if he hadn’t just had his mouth pressed hungrily against it moments before.

Osprey didn’t deign to give him a response. He likely didn’t need to, anyway, with the flush of indignity burning in his cheeks.

“You’ve done nothing but tease and humiliate me from the moment you first laid eyes on me,” he said, hoping that Lilian would perceive the warning in his tone.

Lilian’s gaze drifted pointedly to the throbbing member between his legs.

“I was not aware the teasing was not to your liking.”

“Enough,” Osprey growled, and before he was fully aware of what he’d done, he’d grasped hold of Lilian’s delicate wrists and thrust the bulging head of his cock well past his weeping entrance.

Lilian gasped, straining against Osprey’s hold. “I did not ask for any of this, prince,” he snarled, and Osprey was sure, this time, that his lovely saffron-touched eyes were alight with fear.

“Believe me, my lord, neither did I,” Osprey countered, though both of their bodies seemed to have decided otherwise. As Lilian’s wrists twitched uselessly against his iron grip, he sank deeper inside, fighting the strain of Lilian’s body as he filled him. Whether or not it was his bride’s conscious decision, he couldn’t say, but the body beneath him seemed at last to relent. Slick and warm, the fighting ceased, as though inviting him deeper, and he could not help but sigh in pleasure as he sank into him. It was like easing into a warm bath.

Lilian would not meet his eyes, but Osprey was sure he heard a moan of pleasure escape his lips as he rolled his hips against him. His body temperature seemed unfathomably warm, no doubt an effect of the cocktail of potions he’d been fed. Osprey could feel sweat beading on his forehead, sliding down like humid rain upon Lilian as he rocked against him. He almost expected some strained exclamation of disgust, but Lilian seemed neither to care nor notice beyond weathering the rhythm of his onslaught.

The press of Lilian’s body against him was a sensation previously unimaginable. Osprey found himself delighting in it, hungering for more with each desperate thrust. The impulse to hate himself for it was a dim memory fading from his mind, quickly replaced with a newfound revelry in the profound and noble purpose he’d been imbued with since birth. How easy it was to at last accept his role when he was so rewarded for his efforts. He couldn’t imagine ever thinking any differently.

With each thrust of his hips, he could feel himself being rewritten, as though some untouched switch in him had at long last been flipped. His once provincial conception of the universe crumbled at Lilian’s feet, and he found himself anew– a vigorous stud, a ravening beast, ever eager to spread his seed between the legs of his bride.

Beneath him, he wondered dimly if Lilian could feel the same satisfaction in his purpose, if his desperate, needful moans were infused with some greater feeling than lust. He arched his back and whined beneath him, giving every indication of one gripped in the throes of pleasure, but when his eyes weren’t closed, they were elsewhere, unreachable; lost, Osprey assumed, in some unfathomable ecstasy.

It had somehow not occurred to Osprey how deeply alone he’d truly been. He’d been served, watched and waited on, of course, but it was a life otherwise untouched, observed through a gilded one-way mirror. In the delirium of pleasure, he was almost deceived into believing he had found, at last, a true companion. It did not matter that Lilian had been found for him, that he had taken no part in his procuring. Here was the company he so deeply craved— here, in this stranger, this prisoner who more than likely despised him beneath the honeyed cover of his moans…

“Faster, Prince,” Lilian snarled, pulling him from his drifting thoughts. Lilian, it seemed, had not been nearly so far gone after all. Osprey struggled to snap back to attention as he felt the desperate press of Lilian’s legs around his torso.

“Use my name,” Osprey found himself gasping, realizing he had been all the while hungering to hear the syllables drip from Lilian’s pretty lips.

“Then use mine, Osprey.” There was no fondness in his tone, his eyebrow cocked in an insolent display of pride that seemed to take up all his remaining effort between Osprey’s rhythmic thrusts.

“Lilian.” He sighed, almost ashamed of the lovesick quality of his breathless voice. Lilian, however, seemed too preoccupied with weathering the assailment of his cock to notice.

“Good,” Lilian hissed, his face contorted with the effort of a hysterical little laugh. “I see we are at last introduced.”

From there, he descended again to moans, Osprey to grunts and labored breaths, the last strands of his consciousness dissolving as he fell into a waking dream of lustful depravity.

It was a barbarous sort of fervor that took him, a deranged and animalistic desire. He hadn’t known himself capable of such feeling, but the presence of Lilian, like some rare and perfect chemical reaction, had brought it out of him. In such a hedonistic haze, one could hardly tell pain from pleasure. From his cries, Osprey couldn’t say which of them Lilian was feeling, what agonies and ecstasies each gasp described.

“Please—” Lilian strained, his delicate fingers grasping at the folds of the bedsheets beneath him. He gave no further words of direction, and Osprey did not prompt him to clarify.

Even if he’d wanted to stop, Osprey felt strangely helpless against the workings of his body. It was as though he was trapped in some hazy dimension of pleasure, and his body, masterless, continued on, machine-like in its purpose, incapable of diversion until it reached its objective.

Perhaps, he thought dimly, Lilian and his Empire were right to expunge those of his kind. Perhaps he was the very monster they all thought him to be.

And ever so monstrously, he gripped Lilian in his strong hands, he held him down with all the finesse of a rutting beast, he sank his teeth into his doll’s porcelain shoulder and relished the whimper it drew from his lips. Whether he wanted it or not, Lilian was his, all his. He would make him so.

The thought of it was too much for him to contain. With a sudden, triumphal rush, he felt a wave of ecstasy wash over his being, his cock pulsating into Lilian’s warm insides. Like some strange flower, he felt it bulge at its base, trapping itself and its bountiful seed inside.

Lilian squirmed beneath him, crying out in hysteric shock, in ecstasy and terror, his own body wracked again with quivering pleasure as Osprey filled him.

Osprey held the small, shuddering frame to his breast and waited— for their mutual heaving gasps to slow, for their blood to cool, for the throbbing pressure to lessen. It seemed to last forever, that moment with Lilian held tightly in his arms, with Osprey still lodged inside the sublime body of his bride.

When the swell of his cock finally eased, Lilian released himself from his hold, falling back onto the rumpled marriage bed with Osprey’s seed and his own slick smeared perversely between his thighs. As delirious lust faded from his eyes, the bitter realization of what Osprey had done to him seemed at last to be sinking in. His eyes glowed like cold flame, radiant with prideful indignation.

What had he done to him, Osprey thought— had he ruined him like a whore, or elevated him to a god? Osprey dared not touch him, dared not even meet his eyes, for fear of meeting that fiery gaze. He lay before his bride with eyes cast downward, panting and canine-like at his feet.

Lilian, however, surprised him once more. While he simmered in the guilt of his indulgence, he was interrupted by the delicate touch of Lilian’s fingers raising his chin, the press of his soft lips along his neck. It seemed an uncharacteristically cloying gesture until Osprey felt his teeth against his flesh, Lilian’s breath like hot razors against his ear.

“I’ll have you know,” the young lord hissed, “I’ve played along with your little game, made a proper whore of myself to you, only so that I might live. But I will find a way back to the Empire, and I will have the spawn you put in me extinguished, along with the practices of your loathsome world.”

With such fierce words, he had almost succeeded in appearing intimidating. Yet Osprey could not help but smirk at the threat, knowing that his captive bride had nothing to return to.

“You find this humorous, Osprey? Do you not know what they do to your kind in the greater Empire?” Lilian moved closer, his teeth grazing the rim of Osprey’s ear as his voice lowered to barely more than a breath. “There are those of your sex who live on in the Empire… kept in cages like animals, milked for their seed.”

When he heard Osprey’s breath catch in surprise, a low chuckle escaped from his lips. “Where did you think the machines harvested it from? Centuries-old semen? I’m sure yours would fetch a handsome price, though in a cage, you’d have no use for money.”

Yet again, Osprey could only laugh, and so he did— first snickering quietly, then doubling over with hearty barks of disbelieving laughter from the sheer gall of Lilian’s words, until he could laugh no more. He knew he was not meant to tell him, but the temptation was too great.

“My dear Lilian,” he whispered back, “I’m afraid you have nowhere to return to. Just as your own father cast you out to this cold, desolate world, your own cousin cast you here in order to usurp your title. You’re as good as dead to the Empire now.” He smiled pityingly. “You may as well enjoy the luxuries offered to you here… you will find none elsewhere.”

“My cousin— he wouldn’t dare,” Lilian murmured. He was quiet, though Osprey imagined he must have had some idea which jealous party among his numerous relatives could be capable of such a betrayal, and was silently reasoning with himself against the thought of it.

Osprey smiled, unable to hide his vicious glee. “He would. He has. He sold you to the Order, and is seated this very moment in the Governor’s house.”

“You lie.”

“I would not. I was not even meant to tell you.”

He could see the horror dawning on Lilian’s face. For a moment, he relished it, and then, as that noble face contorted with the slightest indication of grief, he pitied him.

“Surely,” Lilian said, “surely there is somewhere else we might go.” His pretty lips trembled, his words a last gasp of quiet desperation.

Osprey met his words with a smile, feeling a private smugness at Lilian’s inclusion of him in his senseless fantasy.

“There is nowhere else for us. There is only this gilded cage, and you and I in it, with nothing but pleasure for our comfort.”

And then, it was Lilian who began to laugh. It was quiet, at first, such that Osprey wasn’t sure if he was merely shaking from his exertion. And then his laughter grew— hysterical, unhinged, tears streaming madly from his eyes, his throat straining with it as the unending peals of laughter echoed from the bedchamber to the high-ceilinged halls beyond.

Osprey couldn’t have said how much of their exchange had been caught by their audience, but Lilian’s outburst had been enough at last to draw them from the shadows, two crimson-clad figures appearing on either side of the bed with such subtlety that it was as if they’d been simply conjured there from thin air.

Seeing them, Lilian started, turning to each of the figures with eyes alight with rage.

“You.” He snarled. “Is it true?”

The two hooded figures glanced at each other and smiled conspiratorially.

“Our revered bride’s home is here now, he needn’t concern himself with the Empire’s unworthy titles. To be chosen as our prince’s bride is the greatest honor we can bestow on one of his sex.”

Lilian spat in their faces, fury dancing in his eyes. Neither of the figures reacted beyond deriding smirks and patronizing glances, but Lilian said nothing more to them. There was no need.

“It seems our revered bride is anxious of the trials to come,” said one of the figures at last, breaking the uneasy silence that had lingered too long in the bedchamber’s humid air.

The other moved to prop up Lilian’s still-heaving body, pale and naked but for the jewels still strung around his neck and the smear of Osprey’s seed between his legs.

“Come, it’s time for your bath. The minerals will soothe these unseemly terrors of yours, and will enhance your fertility besides…”

When they reached for him, Lilian struck their hands away, a sneer contorting his noble features. “You will not touch me,” he hissed, but Osprey was surprised to find that otherwise, he obeyed them, following with whatever grace he seemed able to conjure for one so stripped of dignity. Osprey watched him hungrily, his gaze tracing the sway of his hips, the dripping excess of his own seed strewn uncaringly in his wake.

Lilian would never be a meek and muzzled mate to him, but he had no desire to tame him. Wild and haughty as he was, he would have Lilian, with or without his devotion. After all, what need was there for devotion, when there was pleasure of such indescribable bounds to be had. Whatever they lacked in love they would make up for in the devotion of sadism, the desperation of masochism, the binding force of the mutual act of creation.

Before disappearing behind the curtain that led downward to the baths, Lilian looked back at him with a deranged sort of smile. It was nothing like love, of course. Rather, a twisted, zealous sort of rage; in his glowing eyes, the look of one who would not accept his fate without going a little mad. But Osprey would have him, mad or no. He’d have whatever Lilian deigned to give him, and he’d take whatever he didn’t.

Perhaps he was going a little mad himself.

back to Lilian & Osprey main page