After perhaps a week, Bellenora knocked on Cariad’s door one morning. As had become her habit, she entered without waiting for a response, behaviour Cariad was very conscious she would have to curb once she joined her husband in the marital bed. She wouldn’t want to embarrass her betrothed.

And besides, Cariad thought, if she was to be head of the household below her husband, all their servants would have to learn their places.

She sat up in the bed, looking blearily at the woman who had become an ally and a confidante, if one who was significantly outranked. “Yes?”

“It’s today,” Bellenora answered, but the hushed excitement in her voice meant her response was almost inaudible.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s today, my lady.”

“What is?”

“The wedding, my lady!” Bellenora hissed. “I got it from the cook. He’s been told to make something very special for lunch, but something light and refreshing for dinner. To keep you lively, my lady.” She grinned, but even without that there was no mistaking her meaning.

Cariad’s eyes almost shone with delight. She clapped her hands together. “Wonderful! Quickly, now!”

A Erethnian noblewoman could often take up to three hours before being ready to be seen, and that without a special occasion to attend to. Cariad was not at all sure she had three hours, and it certainly would not do to leave Marcus waiting.

The white gown that had been made for her was plain in its cut but not in its material; until she was being helped into it, and the lacing at the back drawn taut and tied by Bellenora, she hadn’t realised quite how sheer it was, the silk so fine that it seemed more a lightening of her skin than an outfit, except for the knees and below where it flared out enough to be visibly a gown. Her body was much more clearly on display than she’d anticipated.

Her eyes turned to the mirror and she looked at herself thoughtfully. She had already carried several children and some of the signs of that were still on her, but she felt that her body still held up well to examination, and certainly Marcus had smiled fondly on her bare form as she had sat on the deck of his ship.

She wondered if, perhaps, she was always to be on display except when those outside Marcus’ household were around; it seemed very much something he might do. Marcus seemed to have total control within his home, a level of loyalty and respect that even her former husband had never really reached.

Sir Cadryn…

It occurred to her only as Bellenora was bringing out the wrap in grey and white, its ends a deep green - the colours of the House she would represent until the wedding ceremony - that she had not thought of her lost husband for more than a moment in weeks, not since the night that Marcus had stepped into the chapel and won her heart…

Cariad blinked. That wasn’t what had happened. The chapel had been just a place for them to meet, the wedding already assigned. She hadn’t felt a moment’s panic at the sight of a stranger; why would she? She had known exactly who he was from the very beginning.

Nor had her heart been won in the first few minutes; she hadn’t walked out of the chapel in darkness, her heart light with relief. Marcus and she had talked for hours, first about the practicalities of coexistence under the new alliance between their houses and then, as they found more and more common ground together, they had started to unburden themselves of homes, dreams, and desires, confessing all to the other as they understood how closely their hearts would beat in time, all in a strange, euphoric rush of delight that the complex game of politics had, as it so rarely did, dealt them both something they could be happy about on a purely personal level.

Her mind was playing tricks on her, she felt; everything since that first meeting with Marcus, normally so clear in her memory, sometimes found itself overlaid, a split vision, as clear but clear in two contradictory ways.

In that case, she thought, was it any wonder she hadn’t thought about her former husband in some time? Besides, he couldn’t compare to Marcus, was a candle to the sun that Marcus’ love shone upon her. She had given him so many years of her life only because she had not known what was waiting for her on a walled country estate just outside Calos.

As Bellenora settled her wrap around her shoulders, Cariad found that it had been carefully tailored, and the way that it hung would hide much that her bridal gown revealed. The fine, fine white silk that showed so much would only hint at what lay beneath until her betrothed removed it from her shoulders during the ceremony, where those assembled would see exactly what was now his.

She wondered if the guest list had been tightly curated by Marcus. He was a merchant, and she knew he had to have much contact with the other merchants of the city and beyond; yet it seemed that his own estate was just his own.

Would he be taking advantage of the ceremony to show off his latest acquisition to his colleagues and rivals?

Cariad lifted her head high, pushing out her chin. If so, she would be sure to make him proud. Yet she would be just as happy if she was revealed only to his trusted servants, if he kept it close; Marcus’ loyal men and women were the foundation of his power, and so she wanted them to be glad he had chosen well for a wife.

She’d do whatever she had to in order to make that clear.

*

They waited another hour in Cariad’s room before a knock came on the door and one of Marcus’ guardsmen was outside when Bellenora opened it. Bellenora handed Cariad a bouquet of red roses and blue delphiniums, roses for love and delphiniums for goodwill, the goodwill with which a loving and dutiful wife serves her husband.

The two of them left for the main hall and Cariad discovered that in fact this was neither a wedding for Marcus’ fellows to behold, nor a show of his power to his loyal servants; even Bellenora was dismissed from her side with a curt gesture from Marcus, who stood almost alone in the hall except for a cleric - and the cleric looked almost drunk in the way he stood, a dreamy smile on his lips and a vacancy to her eyes.

As she made her way up the aisle Marcus produced his flute, raised it to his lips with a flourish, and began to play.

Cariad felt her lips settling into a winsome, happy smile, and then she felt that same smile, that same happiness, flow outward from her lips until it filled her up, engulfing her to the exclusion of all else.

She saw the cleric draw himself up, standing straight and ready to do his duty.

Ever after, Cariad would remember that the cleric spoke clearly and authoritatively, speaking to marriage both as a sacred institution and as a bond of love. She would remember that he talked about the duties of a husband to love and provide for his wife, and the duties of a wife to bear children, manage the household, smile and offer herself to her husband whenever wanted.

He stressed that while this might seem one-sided, it was all perfectly right.

Cariad would remember the thrust of his message, and how firmly she had agreed with every part, for the rest of her life, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember any of the words he’d used, anything that had been said.

She remembered Marcus slipping his hands under her wrap around her shoulders and brushing it backward, sending the House Wyles livery colours tumbling to the ground discarded. Remembered the greedy intake of breath he made when he saw her body revealed again in the sheer silk gown.

He must had paid for the gown, she realised, and it must have been expensive, for such fine material would fetch a fine price on its own but someone capable of working with it would, if anything, cost more. She hoped, seeing it on her body, he felt it was worth it.

She hoped she would prove worth it.

The cleric continued to talk in the background, doing the job of marrying them, but Cariad gave him no heed. Her eyes were on Marcus’ face, watching her husband’s delight in her, feeling that delight drive her own arousal, her own desire. And as his hands lingered on her gown, so thin his touch might as well have been on bare skin, she lived too in her sense of touch, her need crying out to her to press herself to him.

All the same, she didn’t; it was for Marcus to start things, if they were to begin. All she could rightly do would be to give him the strongest hint she could that starting something would be welcome.

She was starting to wonder how when the tips of his fingers started sliding lower, from her shoulders down past her collarbones and on to the plunging neckline of her gown. His touch made her feel alive, more alive than she had been since before she became a widow.

She bit her lip, trying to keep the moan that bubbled up inside her from breaching the air of this sacred ceremony, but she was loud enough that she could still be heard, and she flushed with embarrassment and arousal all mingled together.

She arched her back, pushing out her chest, inviting Marcus’ hands to wander lower; it was the nudge and the hint she’d been wanting to give, and it hadn’t even been her decision; it was pure instinct.

And oh, gods, his hands crept lower, he rewarded her by putting his hands on her tits and groping her, and the cleric kept on talking as if he didn’t notice and Cariad didn’t care, her husband (finally she could say that) was groping her in front of the clergy and the gods themselves and she was writhing and wriggling hungrily under his touch, so delighted, so eager, so needy.

His thumbs found her nipples, his fingers tightened around the sensitive underside of her breasts, and her whimper became a squeak, then a groan, and then Cariad was moaning, whatever witnesses were or weren’t there, unable to stop herself, half-embarrassed and half-delighted.

Her husband was taking ownership over her. That was what it was. And Cariad had no objections to that, not in heart nor in mind, as one hand continued to fondle and grope her breast while the other slid down her side to her hip, and then behind her, grabbing her by one buttock to pull her closer to him, and her moan became an excited, exuberant squeal.

The cleric was still talking but Cariad didn’t care; she could feel Marcus’ erection through the hose he was wearing and the gossamer-thin gown protecting the modesty she had already surrendered to him, and that was all that mattered, even as his hands continued to wander.

“I vow to have, hold, and to use you,” he began. “I vow to keep you well and in luxury, and to make the most of my wife. I vow that you will never be unhappy to serve me or to be under me. And I vow that you will always be mine.” His voice was low, and commanding, and there was a lust and a hunger to it that throbbed between her thighs just to hear. “Do you accept my vow?”

“With all my heart, beloved,” Cariad answered him.

Marcus’ thumb and forefinger came together on either side of a nipple and tugged, and she gasped, her head resting just under his chin.

“Give me your vows, then,” he told her firmly, and by all the gods - and in front of them - she wanted him to steer her life like that at all times, to command and take charge, to use her and to give her opportunities under him to serve him, whenever he felt like it. He released his grip on her, and he put his flute to his lips, and he began to play as she spoke.

“I vow to place my body at your disposal, my lord,” she began. “I vow that you will always find a smile on my lips and a willing acceptance in my words. I vow a warm welcome in your bed each night.

“I vow to be as loyal to you as your hounds, as affectionate as your kittens, as fertile as your mares.

“I vow that I shall never lose sight of your place in my life. I am yours, I am under you, and I serve you, and I will ensure that everyone else who serves you is dutiful and ordered and that your life is as smooth and pleasurable as I can ensure.

“I vow that I shall have no other causes and no other delights than you.”

She could feel the music flow through her as she spoke, and it was as if her vows were being sewn into her very self on cords of the finest, softest satin.

Marcus grinned in approval and the smiled back, and the cleric, his voice less clear and less aware again, said “You may kiss your bride.”

Marcus hooked his arm around her neck and pulled her head in, and his lips met hers and he kept going, a kiss that didn’t just meet her body but which invaded and conquered it. Her head was spinning, enchanted and excited and delighted and helpless and lost forever.

He turned aside and picked something up, and he settled around his shoulders a cloak in the blue of his own crest, and she knew that it was done now, and that she was forever his.

*

She knew there was a fabulous feast prepared, but as soon as the ceremony was over, Marcus pulled her in close and took a buttock in each hand. She grinned and giggled, startled but excited, and then he lifted, and she squealed and wrapped her thighs around him, hands tight around his neck.

“I’ve been thinking of nothing but this for the past week,” he told her, his voice lower and gruffer than it usually was.

“Me too, my lord,” she said softly. She shifted slightly, rocking her weight to be able to grind herself against his crotch, but he wasn’t to be distracted or denied as he marched out of the main hall to the cheers of his watching guards.

They raised their spears into the air then brought the hafts down on the ground, sharply, once, twice, then three times.

Marcus laughed along, even released one of his hands from her body to wave back. “They know what’s coming,” he told her.

“Yes, my lord.”

“What did you call yourself earlier? My kitten?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And my broodmare.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Should I treat you as an animal, then?” He was grinning. “Put a leash around your neck and lock you up when in heat?”

“Unless you can think of better things to do with me while I’m in heat, my lord, I shall be honoured by whatever you choose.” She lowered her eyes, demurely, but her smile showed that she knew exactly what was she was saying to him.

Marcus laughed. “You’ll accept that judgement on yourself?”

“I made my vows, my husband, and you know I made them only in truth.” She made it sound like she was pouting, like she was coy, but her heart was hammering with excitement. Marcus shouldered open the door from the courtyard into the tower that contained his private quarters and Cariad squirmed against him, feeling herself wet and sticky against his belt.

“My prize is mine,” he told her, carrying her to the stairs. “Aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” she beamed. “But not just your prize, my love. If I remember right, you thought me a much juicier prize than the alternative.”

Marcus laughed. “Oh yes. And ripe for the plucking.”

“Mmm… yes, please, my lord.” She realised with a start she was actually blushing.

It was strange, rising up the stairs backwards, someone else carrying her. She was absolutely in his hands. Just as she always would be.

He braced her against the doorframe of the room to his chambers while he shifted around and booted the door open.

“Something else I told you then,” he said. “Do you remember? A Calosi saying?”

“At any given time, in any group, only one truly gets what they want,” she answered. “I remember, my lord.”

“You must think that it’s you.”

“Of course, my lord.”

He set her down on the floor and she stepped back, steadying herself, and smiled up at him trustingly.

He took the neckline of her gown in both hands, gripped tightly, and began to rip it off her, pulling it so that she could feel it tearing and splitting at her neck, then across her shoulderblades, and then finally down her back and across her buttocks.

The sound of the thin fabric giving was the sound of the shiver she felt down her spine as it happened.

He looked her naked body up and down with a smile. Marcus had certainly seen most of her several times in the past weeks, but she had always had something around her hips to hide her modesty.

A wife, Cariad now fully believed, could have no modesty where her husband was concerned. A wife’s role and duty was to be as immodest as possible whenever their husband indicated it should happen.

“You’re wrong,” Marcus said. “Everything that happens in my estate is my desire. It is my will that drives this. And it is my choice, my pleasure, and what I truly want that is about to happen.”

Cariad opened her mouth to question this, but Marcus put a single finger across her lips and she fell obediently silent.

He put his hands either side of her neck, fingers stretching up into her hair, thumbs in front of her ears, and pulled her into a kiss.

She moaned into his mouth, discovering afresh how much she needed this man, how much she wanted him, her body almost flexing forward from her heels, her curves pressing against him, her hands wrapping around him, fingernails raking down the back of his shirt, feeling him react in turn.

His fingers stayed in her hair, curling into a tighter grip, and he took three quick steps sideways toward the bed, sending Cariad scurrying along with him. Marcus was smiling, and Cariad’s head was spinning, but whenever she reached out for a thought that might stabilise her, all she felt was the comforting sensation of satin wrapping around her, binding her, holding her in place…

Marcus spun her around to face the bed, cupped her crotch with one hand, and pushed her forwards with the other, leaving her bent over on the four-poster, hands plunged into the lush, soft mattress, ass up in the air.

She knew exactly what was coming and opened her mouth to encourage him, before remembering the feeling of his finger across her lips, binding her to silence. She closed her mouth without speaking, biting her lip, and simply waited, wiggling her ass invitingly.

She heard the rattle of metal, then a heavy metallic thud as his belt clasp hit the ground, and then his hands were on her hips and she was jerked backward, suddenly and abruptly, onto his cock. Her hands gripped at the light sheets atop the bed to help her stay at least somewhat balanced; at the same time she cried out in eager excitement, and as soon as she had her feet properly planted she started humping back against him, crying out her joy, her vision swimming even before her eyes crossed and then closed.

Something about crying out seemed to break the ward against speech in a way that groaning and moaning had not, and Cariad found her voice.

“Yes, my lord! Please! Yes!”

Marcus laughed, and Cariad found the sound strangely musical, and his confidence, his roughness, only urged her to buck back against him harder. If she was his broodmare, she was making this first ride a hard gallop, as if something in her sensed this was the best way to make her rider smile.

She felt his thighs slapping against her rear as she was well and truly fucked, and everything about her ached for the moment where he would fill her with his seed. It was his right as her husband that she give him the children who would cement the future of his line, and she could only hope it would begin soon, and continue for as long as her husband wished.

*

They barely left the bed that day; rather, only Cariad left the bed that day, when a knock at the door needed to be answered, and when she found Bellenora, her eyes demurely averted, offering a large tray.

On the tray was a big plate heaped with the best pickings from the wedding feast alongside a smaller plate, two small silver goblets, and a flagon of wine. Cariad accepted it from the maid without a word and made her way back to the bed, where she found herself offering her husband the larger plate before she had thought about it, even though their combined efforts had left her ravenously hungry.

Marcus ate his fill but set the plate aside before he was finished. Without wondering whether his bride was finished, he put an arm around her waist and pulled her back to him, and Cariad climbed up to straddle him and rode his cock, her own food entirely forgotten.

Some while afterward, when the rest of the food was gone, and when Cariad had drunk a little of the wine and Marcus had drunk most of the rest, he rose from the bed and dressed.

“My lord?” she asked, but he waved a hand and left the room. Cariad wondered whether she should follow, but decided he would certainly have summoned her if that was the case.

She lay back in the bed, enjoying for a moment the chance to luxuriate. In the weeks to come there would be duty and there would be work and she would be busy - and she even looked forward to it - but this was a moment where she could quietly celebrate her success. And yes, success, for had she not won the attention and the hand of the best possible husband?

Closing her eyes she writhed against the sheets, enjoying the way it all felt. Her arms stretched out in the emptiness of the bed.

Except that it wasn’t entirely empty; her fingers found something cold and metallic, hidden away under the covers. Surprised, she closed her hand around it and drew it out, staring in surprise at Marcus’ flute.

Her smile was dreamy, lazy, almost unthinking. She was no musician, unlike her husband. But this was her wedding day, and she had been well fucked, and yet now she felt she could be fucked even further.

She drew aside the bed’s sheets and lay on her back, legs parted, feet braced against the feather mattress. Lifting the flute to her mouth, she ran her tongue against its length, loving the coolness of its touch, feeling a strange tingle where it had passed.

The noise Cariad made was one she wouldn’t have thought she was capable of, an almost smugly unshakable satisfied contentment. Languorously, she reached down with the flute and slid it between her legs.

There was no word Cariad knew to describe the jolt that shuddered through her as it entered her, but she knew it was a cold touch and a firm object just where she needed it, and her hands were practised enough to use it to its best effect.

She found that the more she played with it, the more of that lovely satin feeling rose up around her, and she did not notice that she wasn’t stopping. Orgasm after orgasm flooded her satin-wrapped soul, staining it with the enchantment Cariad did not believe the flute to possess.

Marcus was absent from some hours, doing she knew not what, but she was still cumming on his flute when he opened the door and walked back into the room. She only came back to awareness when he started laughing, and her hand only stopped pumping the flute in and out when he told her to stop.

Cariad’s mind felt like it was just wadded up in musk-scented satin.

*

The cleric woke up, his head throbbing with the ache of a hangover. Drinking was not frowned on in the clergy, but drunkenness was; it had been some years since his head had felt quite so close to splitting open.

He opened his eyes slowly, hating the light that burned into his headache, and confirmed that it was sunlight, raw and unlimited by the edges of a window; he was outside. Which explained something of the uncomfortable angle he found himself lying at. Cracking open one eye, he surveyed the ditch he was in, one by the side of a dirt road just outside Calos.

He must had passed out and fallen into it on the way back from…

…from…

His brow furrowed. He had gone out to a merchant’s estate on promise of a hefty fee to officiate his marriage. And yet he couldn’t remember the name of the merchant, nor the estate he had been to.

Slowly, awkwardly, he pulled his way upright and even more clumsily he climbed back onto the road, where he wearily started back toward the chapel.

He didn’t, it occurred to him, have the promised coinpurse about his person. Which, he decided, explained the headache better than a hangover (even though it felt like a hangover), and explained the forgetfulness.

Clearly he’d been mugged, and left in the ditch, by cutpurses willing to risk divine wrath.

It was that or… well, he couldn’t conceive of another explanation.

Short of someone at the merchant’s estate having enchanted him, no other explanation could cover the facts as he saw them.

*

Cariad moved more slowly around the main hall than she had done just a month ago, but she was perfectly happy with that. It had been half a year and more since she married Marcus, and her belly was swollen with their first child together.

When company came to visit, she wore loose garments of satin; when Marcus and she were alone with the servants, she often went nude, as she was that afternoon. Marcus had told her, sometime in the first week, that she could feel free to go naked in front of his men and women; the day before, he had held the first of many semi-impromptu flute performances for his staff.

He seemed to use these, Cariad had noticed, as a way to balance loyalties; whenever there was frustration, or when rumours from other merchant houses led some of the servants to feel hard done by, Marcus would call for a flute performance, and attendance was mandatory. Sometimes he would perform when merchants were visiting with their retinues.

Cariad, of course, was always front and centre at these performances, seated where her devotion to her husband, her beauty, and her swelling body could all be seen and admired as an example.

All seemed to be in order in the main hall; she gave Bellenora an approving look and a nod, and the maid who had become, during Cariad’s pregnancy, her right hand in running the household, moved closer. “Where next, my lady?”

“I want to check the barracks,” Cariad said. “We don’t go in their often, but they’re still part of my lord’s household, and they should reflect his greatness.”

Bellenora nodded. “Of course, my lady. Is this the kind of check where they know we’re coming and have time to make right, or a surprise?”

“Let’s give them a chance,” she said, with a smile, and Bellenora looked in her turn at one of the youngest serving girls, who took off at a run following Bellenora’s nod of instruction. “I don’t want my lord to have to be disappointed in his men,” she explained.

“Why would I be disappointed?”

They turned to discover that Marcus had entered the hall while their attention was elsewhere, although from what Cariad could take in at a glance, most likely only moments ago.

Her lips parted in a warm, loving, welcoming smile and she began to waddle toward him. “My lord, welcome home,” she said. Her arms rose up around his neck and he bent his head to kiss her. They stayed that way for some time, her soft, yielding body pressed firmly against him.

Marcus broke the kiss in the end, and Cariad explained. “We’re going to ensure the barracks is in order, my lord.”

He was barely paying attention, nodding absently. “Good, good,” he said. “I have news, Cariad.”

“Yes, my lord?”

“There has been… political unrest… in your homeland.” Cariad took a moment to process this. Her homeland? Yes, that was right; she was Erethnian, not born herself of Calos.

“Yes?”

“Mmm. A brutal massacre.” His voice was softer than usual, but his thoughts were clearly elsewhere. “It will change a lot of my business for the next while… but that is not why I bring it up.”

She nodded.

“Among the dead is your eldest son. Your House is in turmoil.” It was said gently, if abstractedly, as if Marcus wanted to spare her pain.

Cariad listened to the news and felt the soft brush of satin against her. “Thank you for telling me, my lord,” she said politely. She didn’t really see how this news was relevant to her. “May I fetch you some wine? Or…” She smiled invitingly, “May I please you in some other way?”