"The fentifeledes," Rhoethella whispered.

She studied the elixir in her hand with a tight, satisfied smile. She turned over the thick glass tube filled with a substance supernaturally pearlescent in her fingers with a slow twirl.

It held an emerald green tint enfolded in it's ivory sheen that separated light in mesmer inducing patterns.

"It attempts to beguile you," Rhoethella continued, "the elixir knows your presence nearby. You see how it seems to change when I roll it with my fingers? This substance is so evil it corrupts the very light it touches."

She placed it back on the felt board inside the metal box he had presented to her. She turned her gaze to him and she frowned.

"Sieur Kel Télsarràs, your boots reek of the shit of the roads. Gather yourself up to my quarters before anyone else sees what you are treading through Castle Barso."

With that order, he now stood in the foyer of her living quarters. Silent, alone, longing for a bed to rest his body and a pillow to rest his head. He would sleep eighteen hours if he could to make up for the slumber he lost on his vigil.

The servant girl brought in a whicker basket. She placed it to Télsarràs side. Rhoethella followed in behind her.

"Sit," Rhoethella ordered him. He immediately complied with his Queen's demand.

She kneeled before him.

"Give me your foot."

He raised his foot. She began to undo the straps of his hard leather boot.

"Oh, gods," Rhoethella stammered as she removed the boot.

From the wicker basket, the servant girl placed a squat ceramic vase and a pair of boots of coral snake skin on the floor.

Télsarràs noted the pair of boots were well-matched with his urban wear just as well as the mambo skin ones. They would not be of much use on an expedition, however. Rhoethella removed the other boot with a derisive snort.

She stood up and allowed the servant girl to remove the terry cloth bindings that padded his feet from the boots rough leather. Noting the girl squinched her nose, Rhoethella handed her a knife.

"Lizzi, just cut those free."

Once the servant-girl was done, Rhoethella soaked a wash cloth inside a pitcher vessel of water and she applied the cloth to his feet.

After she removed the lid from the vase, Rhoethella dipped her hand in it. In her palm she held an ointment whose aroma smelled of sandalwood and lavender. Rhoethella applied the ointment and massaged it in with an expertise that only a former haetera could provide.

He closed his eyes and relaxed for a rare time since the expedition began.

"Now, Télsaràs, report to your queen the findings of your quest and your service. I suggest you leave nothing out, or," she shook her black mane with exaggerated emphasis. "The Abysmal Mother may have mercy on your soul, but I shall not."

He began with the voyage across the gulf, and his association with Abicore.

"You, the battle-hardened knight became alefellows with an ardant?"

"With common purpose all fruitful things are possible."

Rhoethella finished the foot rub. She stood up and gave a nod to the servant-girl. Lizzi clapped her hands stridently. Seven servants marched in. Each man carried a large ten-gallon pitcher to the bath chamber.

Rhoethella ordered him to stand. Soon they marched back out of the chamber. The servant girl came back over to Rhoethella's side and bowed her head.

"Lizzi. Those worn out boots of Sieur Télsaràs', place them in the wicker basket along with the bandages. Please see to it they are burned."

'With all due haste, Your Majesty."

"Return in four hours with a light breakfast, but not before then."

Lizzi left the chambers, Rhoethella threw Télsarràs a smile. She took his hand and led him to the bath.

"Proceed with your account, Sieur Télsarràs."

He started where he left off. While he recalled the events, she ordered him to raise his arms. Rhoethella stood two inches taller than the knight, so she had no trouble removing his tabard, his cauldrons, and his jerkin.

Though never having done so before she stripped him down nonchalantly, until he stood in front of his Queen entirely nude. Her eyes grazed over him appraisingly.

Her smile broad with sparkles in her brown eyes dancing in the lamp light. With her smile, fetching and bowed low, his cock grew excited.

He felt conflicted. She had just completed her third month of mourning, and only after nine months more could he rightfully claim consort.

Her voice betrayed none of the longings the dark bronze of her face expressed so well.

"Turn around, Sieur Télsaràs. I must inspect for any damage to your person that you may have acquired while fulfilling your duties for your queen. I see you have on you bandages fastened around your right shoulder.

"Surely an incident that required care should have been given in your oral report. What say you?"

"I haven't gotten to the mêlée in the scrubland, yet, Your Majesty."

Rhoethella removed the bandage.

"A crossbow bolt would have likely gone all the way through. A dart?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

She pressed her fingers against the wound, spread the tender flesh out and brought her nose up to it.

"There is no infection I can spy. Though my nose may resemble my father's overcompensating arch, it is all my mother's heightened sensory perception inside of it.

"At least, one of the ardants is a healer, as is necessary for an expedition to possess. I can smell the medicines applied last week."

She kissed the wound, tenderly. With her canines, she pressed them down into the tendered flesh. She watched his reaction. He smiled, gingerly. Her tongue rolled over the scab sucking at the little punch her teeth just made.

"You've surely heard, Sieur, that the soul of one who is pure of heart is a demon's feast, and if a knight who is such escapes that fate, he will surely become revenant in his strident longing to fulfill his ultimate quest."

"I've heard such tales, Your Majesty."

"Would you mind if I open the wound a little farther?"

She wore a robe of thick brown terry cloth, and his glance spied pajamas and matching long shirt of silken purple, but even under the layers of clothing where her breasts grazed across his arm he felt the large erect stub of her nipple risen through it. It excited his cock to full length.

"I do not mind in the least, Your Majesty."

"Perhaps, a thousand years from now I will be a vampiress, and you will be my revenant death knight lover."

"An excellent lurid imagination you possess, Your Majesty."

She bit into his wound more intrepid this time. The canines like a hornet sting.

He gasped. She paused.

"Don't stop, Your Majesty, please keep on."

She sucked her canines deep into the wound. Her warm tongue rhythmically lapped at it. She did this for several minutes. Clasping his shoulders with her long fingers kneading his tendons like they were baguettes of raw dough while she kept at her blood feast.

Her cheek now smeared, her eyes and smile appeared frenzied wild with want. Only after the wound congealed did her bloodheat no longer have the best of her.

She relaxed her stance, held him by the back of his neck gently and cleaned the wound off.

"Sieur, can I be assured the people need not know their Queen has the appetites of a vampire? The Lords of Oblivion only know what my enemies would do with that rumor."

"Your Majesty, so long as I remain a brood of one in your thrall, there will be no one else to tell them anything."

Rhoethella giggled at his cheek. She cleared her throat. Her voice regal once more.

"Before the water turns cold, Sieur Télsarràs, take your bath."

He entered the water, sat down and rested his head down against the porcelain with his eyes closed. She rubbed his chest with the washcloth.

It had been dipped in a liquid soap. It smelled of florals of a tropical locale remote from Barso Castle. The suds built up as she scrubbed.

"Don't fall asleep on me, Sieur Télsarràs, or I'll let you drown."

"My Queen has little propensity towards mercy."

"Lean forward, Sieur."

He complied. Her fingers encircled his vertebrae and shoulder blades. She took a lava block and rubbed it in his muscles with her palm. With a small pitcher, she gathered a draught of water and poured down his back.

"Stand up, Sieur."

She helped him out of the bath, dripping wet on the ceramic tiles.

"Often," she continued to speak with her eyes deftly shifting from his own orbs down to his cock, "when a man on an expedition feels his mortality encroaching, his will to resist temptation collapses under the strain.

"Such a man will put his cock into anything that stays still long enough to bear the brunt of it. I need to inspect your cock to ensure my First Warden is still intact in his restraint. The defense of our nation depends upon your sanctity."

She held his penis up against the length of her fingers and palm up to her wrist.

"There are diseases that cause madness. We can't have our utmost general one day gone to the belfry to scream at bats as they shit guano on his face as happened to King Haderaöd II.

"No, I won't have it. If this cock does not pass muster in the service of its Queen, I'll send you packing from Castle Barso without so much as a glance back.

"Now bring forth for your Queen the entirety of your manhood, Sieur."

She stroked his shaft to full length with long soft fingers that pulsed with a subdermal beat that as a haetera she learned to accentuate in near supernatural fashion for her clients pleasure.

It stimulated his cock shaft through her slow moving fingers. Télsarràs closed his eyes. He never imagined simple hand stimulation could feel that good.

Before he could get entirely lost in the moment, she pressed his cockhead with her thumb.

"There is a crud vexation that many a sailor has acquired while in the arms of a siren. It will weaken the muscle of the cockhead, causing it to flatten like a baby skull and puss out in a most fearsome manner."

She gave his cockhead a quick lick. Smacked her lips. Furled her brow.

"My elven senses find nothing unusual in the taste of your cockhead. One more inspection."

She enclosed her lips around his penis head and licked the tip with tiny strokes. She lifted her head back up.

"I can attest you kept your virtue, Sieur, while the whores of the sea enchanted the men of your schooner. I would taste even the cunt of a vex free siren on you still. It isn't easy to cheat on an elf, Sieur."

Her brows arched crossedly and she leaned up with the ends of her ears flapping with exuberance.

"I am not done with my inspection, Sieur. So don't feel you are in the clear just yet. Now along the shaft there is another vexation as all diseases venereal are called. The one for which I search causes little purple bumps to occur along the length.

"Now, I do not have visual confirmation that such a condition exists. Once again, the tongue is the proper instrument for diagnosis."

She lifted his cock to her mouth and slowly took it in full. Her tongue flipped up and down the length of the underside for several lengthy slow strokes.

Rhoethella released his cock from her mouth and licked the other side. As she did so Télsarràs gripped the sink basin with his two hands.

Rhoethella's eyes met his own. She smirked and giggled.

"Not a word, Sieur. Not a word. Just close your eyes and enjoy. This may take a long sweet moment of surrender."

She gave him fellatio with abandon. Abandoning any pretense of stately purpose. She threw herself into it, like a woman who missed a man for weeks thinking of little else but for his return.

For several minutes he felt the tug of her lips in a rhythmic stroke. When he couldn't hold back any longer, he let her know he was about to cum with several short gasp.

She did not stop, but engulfed his cock up to her chin brunt up against his scrotum. When he shot his load down her throat she jerked tightly. The back of her tongue folding and unfolding around his glans, keeping him stimulated and hard as she continued.

The sensitivity in his penis had made it an endurance test. He grabbed on her mane to urge her to slow down, but she would not be denied her willful play. He began to see red spots forming in his vision, his arms felt too weak to keep his grip on the basin, but endure he did.

When he gasped this time, she took his cock out of her mouth shot the second load on her cheek. Gasping for breath, he was utterly drained. Rhoethella had to help him down to the floor. She wiped her mouth and face with the washcloth.

"Sieur Kel Télsarràs, look at me."

He opened his eyes. She held in her hands a small brown glass bottle.

"Do you know what this is for?"

With his breath growing steady,

"I profess that I do not."

Her smile was as warm as seven suns.

"I'll show you, but don't you dare take your eyes off me."

She removed her slippers. She removed her terry cloth robe and she dropped it onto the floor. Through her silk top he could see that her nipples were fully erect. They were half as long and as thick as his thumbs. Truly remarkable.

She removed her shirt. As she requested, he stared at the breast she presented before him. A tight scar ran under her left nipple forming a crescent. Small were her breast, but contoured long against her torso in a supple high curve. The color of her nipples were a deep, dark red, as he expected given the rich shade of her mouth.

"On your knees, love. I want you to have an idea what you are to receive in full in nine months time."

As he only could for his Queen, Télsaràs complied.

She tilted her head back, mischievously. Eyes covered under long bangs, her thumb splayed along the waistband of her pajamas. She folded the waistband down where he could see along the top of her pelvis bone. Her pubic hair splayed along the length.

"I call her the Raven Forest. When you enter the Raven Forest, you enter a place of supreme mystery. The dusk secrets of her Earthy Lips, the intrigue that plays within the heart of her Crevice of Fire, the weird of the wet Watery Mound fastened beneath her proud Saber Craig. It is all here in her exquisite geology that lies beneath the Raven Forest."

She folded the waistband down one more length of her thumbs, with which she held her pajamas in place.

"Don't be shy to view. Care for a stroll through your Queens most private estate," she asked with her eyes throwing playful side glances.

"Run your fingers through the Raven Forest."

With his fingertips he whisked through her pubic hair. Pressed against the flesh, he outlined the taught muscles beneath. The skin beneath the Raven forest was no less bronze than the rest of her body. She inherited her dark skin tone from her father, a general born in a province in the deep southern reach of the Suüd. Her lithe long figure she inherited from her mother.

Rhoethella folded the waistband even farther down, leaving nothing to his imagination but her pussy which pinched within the silk fabric of her pajamas. Where her pussy outlined the fabric the silk was wet. Now he caught a feint whiff of her sexual heat

"Take my hair into your teeth," she requested. "Only a man who tastes of his woman's pubes is worthy of her, so I, Queen Rhoethella decree."

He raked her pubes with the top row of his teeth, and they sprung back against his tongue. The aroma of her sex began to grow strong as he did so.

"You can journey a thousand miles for her. You can swing a sword for her, but if you can't bury your face in her forest grove, what have you truly proved?"

His teeth latched upon several of her pubes and he pulled on them.

"Ouch," she said in slow mocking feign.

She pulled her pajamas all the way down and kicked them away.

"Now, look. Remember when I told you to not look away? Keep looking, but don't touch as of yet."

The Raven Forest was thick with healthy flora. So thick, he could not make out her vagina mound.

"Does my kitty hide in the Raven Forest? I believe she may be lost in there and in need of retrieval. I assure you she wants to come out and play. Call to her, dear Tél. Tell her she is most belovéd."

He did as she commanded, coaxing with soothing words. Rhoethella leaned against the basin with her back arched and her legs parted to give him a better view. She took her hands to the sides of her mound and parted the Raven Forest. The scent of sex overwhelmed causing a joyful buzzing in his head as he drinked in the aroma.

He eyed what lay in front of him. Her lips were like regal drapes, so deeply scarlett as to be outlined in a befitting royal purple.

Rhoethella reached for the small brown bottle.

"Now, I'll show you what I have in store for you. Spread my pussy lips, darling. But you must not attempt any penetration. That would break our vow."

He did so. Her muscular walls clinched in and out, spreading and releasing in a wet gleam. There was the beginning growth of a clear membrane lining just inside the wall.

"Don't get hypnotized, darling. Gaze back up here into my own eyes, just for a moment. You see this bottle it is part of the year of mourning. Every evening just before I go to bed, I rub in three drops along the inner cavity of my vagina."

She demonstrated this before continuing.

"By the end of that year in nine months, I will have fully recovered my hymen for you to penetrate and bleed. Would you like that?"

He kissed Rhoethella on her thighs.

"I cannot think of a greater gift."

Rhoethella bid him to stand up. They embraced in a long exploratory kiss.

"I have to tell you," she began. "As this is the beginning of our courtship. It is only fair to warn you. There is something, as a Haute elf, I am not capable of performing."

He nodded. "It is said the elven constitution is too delicate to engage in that."

"It is true unfortunately. As a hetaira I once gave it a go thinking my advanced sexual prowess made me better able to handle anal penetration. He was merely a grig, not sporting much equipment, after all, so I thought I was up to the task. I still bled for days on afterward.

"However," she smiled, her jaw slanted in reluctance to ask him. "A tongue is another matter. If you would be willing to . . ."

"Rhoethella, nothing would satiate my heart more than to give you the most intimate of pleasure."

Télsarràs put his arms around her shoulders and held her while squeezing her haunches.

"Now, lead me to your bed, dear Queen, and I will show you what I am capable of doing with it."