The air inside the tent was a stifling trap.
Helene sat motionless on the fur rug. The heavy, metallic clang of Daniel's sword driving into the earth outside rang like a death knell through the canvas.
She had heard it all. Kaspar's filthy words. Rurik's silent consent. Daniel's violently suppressed rage.
None of it surprised her. Men were simple creatures, leashed only by their own fragile morality or the fear of a stronger predator.
As long as Thomas stood at her side, no one dared look at her with such naked hunger. She remembered the winter ball two years ago. Crown Prince Leopold, emboldened by wine, had let his hand slide down her waist to possessively grip her arse. Thomas hadn't spoken a word. A single, devastating punch. Royal blood had sprayed across the polished marble.
The Emperor had buried the scandal, but the message had spread like wildfire: She belongs to the Lion. Touch her, and bleed.
But that shield was shattered now.
Since the news of Thomas's defeat and capture at Dragonwatch, the elegant facade of the Arkenstadt court had rotted away. The nobles' gazes had grown predatory, stripping her bare in the hallways. Offers of "military aid" suddenly came with heavily implied conditions behind locked bedchamber doors.
She hadn't just left the capital to save her husband. She had fled a golden cage that was rapidly turning into a high-end brothel.
Here, in the Blackthorn Forest, there was no cage. Only the deadly woods. And herself.
Helene rose with fluid grace. Her fingers found the metal clasps at her collarbones.
With a soft rustle, the heavy ashen cloak pooled at her feet. She unbuckled her thick leather belt, letting her potion pouches and daggers clatter gently against the ground. The air in the tent was a humid, suffocating weight, but she needed to feel it against her bare skin.
Her hands caught the hem of her silver-threaded tunic, pulling it over her head in one smooth motion. Dark hair tumbled over her sweat-slicked shoulders. The combat dress followed. When the last piece of fabric slid down her thighs and dropped to the floor, Helene stood completely naked.
Her pale skin seemed to glow in the dim light of the magical lantern. Her full breasts rose and fell with her quickening breath, the faint, five-pointed star mark on her left breast already beginning to thrum. Her narrow waist, the soft flare of her hips, her long thighs—she bared it all to the damp dark.
Since crossing into the Blackthorn Forest, a depraved heat had been simmering in her veins. The wild, raw magical currents of the woods pulsed hot against her flesh. Something out there was calling to her.
For a mage, clothing was a barrier. Bare skin was the ultimate conduit, drinking in the moisture and raw energy of the surroundings. Shedding her armor wasn't an act of lewdness; it was a primal necessity to rip her magical senses wide open.
She needed to know what was calling her.
Helene took a slow, deep breath, letting the resinous scent of ancient pines coat her lungs.
But it wasn't enough.
Her right hand drifted down her flat stomach. Her fingers traced the trembling muscles of her lower abdomen, feeling the heavy, expectant ache building between her legs.
She parted her swollen, sensitive folds and pressed two fingers deep against her own wetness.
A sharp gasp tore from her throat.
She was already dripping. Hot, slick juices coated her fingertips instantly. Not for Kaspar. Not for Rurik. Her body was weeping purely on instinct, a carnal preparation to unleash the ritual.
Helene began to move her fingers. Slow at first, then demanding, circling the hard, throbbing nub of her clit. Pleasure detonated like a magical strike, racing from her wet core straight up her spine, setting her nerve endings on fire. The star mark on her breast began to radiate a soft, piercing light.
Outside, the mist swallowed the trees, leaving behind a suffocating, dead silence.
Daniel Keller leaned heavily against a trunk, three steps from the tent flap. He stared blindly into the impenetrable dark, fighting the drag of his own lungs. His hearing, trained to detect the faintest ambush, was now an instrument of absolute torture.
First, the soft, treacherous rustle of garments hitting the ground. Then, the distinct shift in her breathing—growing shallow, frantic, heavy.
And then, the sound that drove a spike straight through his skull.
"Ngh..."
A soft, wet gasp, forced through clenched teeth, bleeding right through the canvas.
Daniel turned to stone. Beneath his steel helm, his face burned dark red. He knew exactly what that sound was. It wasn't pain. It wasn't fear.
It was the raw, helpless sound of pure lust.
His massive hand clamped around his sword hilt until the bones popped. I am a Master Knight. I swore an oath. He could not—he must not—picture his untouchable lady naked in the dark, her fingers buried in her own slick flesh...
But the sounds wouldn't let him go.
"Aah... haa..."
The stifled moans unraveled, shedding all aristocratic restraint. It was the urgent, unrestrained sound of a woman drowning in ecstasy. In the dead quiet of the forest, her voice pierced Daniel's armor like a poisoned needle.
Ten steps away, by the dying campfire, the air suddenly shifted.
Kaspar froze mid-movement. He jerked his chin up, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed the damp air like a hunting hound. His dark eyes blew wide, a feral, predatory gleam igniting in the depths. He had caught it. Cutting through the stench of rot and smoke was the heavy, intoxicating musk of female arousal.
A depraved, filthy grin stretched Kaspar's mouth. He stared dead at the tent, then at Daniel's rigid back.
Rurik slowly turned his heavy head. The giant's jaw muscles bunched. He took a slow, deep breath through his nose, his fingers clamping so hard around his axe haft that the wood groaned. He closed his eyes, violently fighting the vivid images flashing in his mind.
Kaspar swallowed audibly. He stared at the tent canvas, watching it tremble slightly with the rhythmic movements inside.
"Hear that?"
Kaspar whispered, his voice a gravelly rasp.
"Our untouchable Imperial Countess is in there finger-fucking her dripping wet cunt."
Daniel felt the wave of raw, animalistic greed rolling off the two mercenaries. He whirled around, stepping directly into their line of sight, his massive frame blocking the tent. He fixed them with a promise of absolute murder. Yet, his flushed face and heaving chest betrayed the devastating storm of arousal wrecking his own self-control.
Inside the tent, the moans shattered into a breathless, high-pitched cry. The wave of her orgasm crashed violently, threatening to completely incinerate the crumbling sanity of the three men standing in the dark.
Helene collapsed backward onto the furs. Her chest heaved. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead, plastering dark strands of hair to her skin. Her sharp gasps plumed into white mist in the air.
The temperature inside the tent had plummeted to freezing. The cold poured directly from her.
Between her spread, trembling thighs, her swollen, thoroughly abused sex glistened. A thick, clear stream of her own juices slid down her inner thigh, dripping softly onto the fur rug.
Right there, intimately curled against her wet, pulsing folds, an indigo-blue serpent mark slowly began to fade. Seconds ago, it had writhed and burned like a living entity beneath her skin. Now, as the devastating high of her climax receded, the magical serpent coiled tightly and sank back into slumber.
The unnatural frost in the air vanished with it.
Helene opened her eyes.
For a few seconds, her pupils were stark white, her soul skimming the edges of another dimension. Slowly, the calculating, cold emerald green bled back into her gaze.
She had crossed the threshold of High Magic years ago. The five-pointed star on her breast was a decoy. A lie for the world to see.
The indigo-blue serpent hidden between her legs... that was her true secret.
An archaic, terrifying branch of House Auen's bloodline. The serpent awoke only when her body was pushed to the absolute precipice of physical pleasure. A state she had previously only reached while being relentlessly fucked by her husband.
When her body convulsed in orgasm, the bloodline shattered her mortal limits. Her magical senses ripped wide open, amplifying until the very souls of the trees whispered in her ears.
She hadn't touched herself out of some desperate need for a man's warmth. She had done it out of a cold, ruthless hunger for power.
Because deep in the Blackthorn Forest, something ancient was calling to her. Something that beat in the exact same dark, corrupted rhythm as her own blood.
Helene reached for the discarded linen tunic. Her face was an emotionless mask as she wiped the slick, wet evidence from her inner thighs. Her movements were clinical, precise, as if the moment of wild surrender had never happened.
She hadn't pinpointed the exact source of the call yet. But she knew one thing for certain.
The deeper she walked into the Blackthorn Forest... the closer the answer came to her.