The Tyrant's Queen

43: two sadists

Just four buttons down her back, that was all he had to do.

Lucien leaned his cane against the wall, put his weight on his left leg, and stood behind Thalia.

Naturally and easily- as if they'd always been dressing each other for some time- Thalia took hold of her hair and pulled it aside to one side.

Bloody gods of Aesna.

With a quiet indrawn breath, Lucien took in the details of her back- the pale, slender neck, the slope of her shoulders, and the little strands of hair that fell back to her shoulder.

Slowly, carefully, he went down the dress. With every button the fabric parted slightly to the sides.

Beneath, of course, was her inner white dress.

But when his eyes came over the skin of her back visible through the corseted area, he looked away, and with a slight fumble, undid the last button.

Turning back to face him, Thalia gestured for him to turn around. "Your turn, sire."

He'd tried so hard to quieten his breathing, to quell the heat flushing to his face.

She looked perfectly unfazed, only just drowsy from the little sleep.

Would she have been so blasé, had Karlieus been the one to unbutton her dress?

Taking up his cane, Lucien turned his back to Thalia.

As soon as he felt her fingers graze against the top button on his shirt, instinctively, he stepped away.

Replacing the flush of heat through his body, was a bone-chilling, wintry cold.

The sensation he hadn't felt for some time- as if all organs and liquids in his body were as hard and numbed like blocks of ice, as if not even the hottest flames in hell could warm the chill.

The coldest, acutest and most humiliating sensation he'd ever been plummeted into- fear, fear of a woman's touch that Estel had taught him.

The fear exploded back to the surface, from a simple graze against the button of his clothes, even when it was Thalia.

How arrogant he'd been, to think he would be all right.

"Sire?"

He swallowed, but his throat was sandpaper dry.

Taking a step back towards Thalia, Lucien held on tight to the cane. "It's nothing."

Just imagining Estel's fingers, reaching out to-

With a soft click, the first button came undone, accompanied by Thalia's voice. "You will promise, sire? To not harm Lady Casarine."

Like snow faced with the morning sun, all the coldness in his body dissipated as quickly as it had come.

Thalia's voice, it was doing that to him.

"...Tell me what you want done to her. I will have it done."

"You know better than anyone, sire." Another button came undone. This time, the pit of Lucien's stomach stirred. "That it is-"

As the next button came undone, she stopped, quiet.

~ * ~

Thalia had seen men who'd returned from war, bearing scars of different shapes. Long, short, circular, oblong.

Most, unsurprisingly, were from either from arrows or swords.

Despite the differences in their shapes, most the scars were jagged and uneven.