"Release me you DOGS!"
I bellowed the command, summoning my last reserves of strength, fury and poison. Yet even to my own ears, it sounded plaintive, wheedling - like the whine of a petulant child.
I hammered on the sturdy door with my fists, but my feeble onslaught yielded only a dull rattling from the cast-iron hinges. Trapped, then - and with my father breathing his last mere floors above. I collapsed onto the bed, an elegant four-poster, exhausted.
I knew every inch of this bedchamber. I had spent hours feverishly pacing its length and breadth muttering vague plans and curses. Like most rooms in the palace, it boasted opulent decorations and eye-wateringly expensive furniture. Yet all the finery in the world could not disguise the fact that my lodgings were a gilded cage.
My confinement had come on gradually. When my father the king had been taken ill, I quickly found that my visits to his bedside were limited. In order to not excite him and risk his fragile health, I was told by his physicians. Next, I was barred altogether from visiting his chambers, despite my strident protests. I was relocated from my bedroom, usually adjacent to his, and forced to take up residence in this room several floors below. As one final indignity, I arose one morning to find the door to my chambers locked from without. For days I had shouted, raved and hollered at the unyielding oak door, but my orders went unheeded. I could only stew in my richly appointed prison cell and imagine my dear father slipping away in his bed, wondering in his last moments why his only son could not be at his side.
It was with this horrifying scene playing out in my mind once again that I at last fell into a fitful sleep.
Rough hands shook me awake. The hour was late, the room plunged into a twilit gloom, and I could not see the faces of my captors. Despite my groggy objections, they dragged me from my bed and, with strong hands clamped about my shoulders, steered me from my room and into the corridors of the palace. My feet slapped against cold stone as I demanded answers from them, but with grim-set faces, they ignored my every word. It was clear that whatever authority I enjoyed as the king's son and heir had evaporated completely during my confinement. These men were handling me like a common prisoner! I tried to summon some indignation but a cold fear had seized me, and I swallowed my bile.
The darkness rendered the corridors of the palace alien and unnerving, and I'd soon quite lost my bearings among the myriad twists and turns that they propelled me down. Only when we reached the familiar carved doors of the throne room did I realise where we were. The doors opened for us and my companions thrust me rudely inside. My foot caught on a raised lip of flagstone which tripped me, and I collapsed into an ungainly pile on the floor.
With my father on the throne, the grand hall was perpetually lit by the orange glow of several large fires which would dance merrily in their grates. Now the cavernous room was like a sepulchral tomb, enveloped by a murky darkness pierced with silver shafts of moonlight. Bathed in a pool of this cool glow, I saw the outline of a woman draped lazily over my father's throne.
On recognising the figure, the mystery of my imprisonment was solved in an instant. This was all her doing. Liliana, my father's new bride. What a fool I had been! She had poisoned him against me with her cunning wiles and honeyed words. She had won over the guards and courtiers with her sly connivings and had me locked in my rooms like a stinking thief! Worst of all, she had robbed me of being at my father's side during his last moments. I burned with hatred for her.
"So good of you to join me" she cooed, her voice soft as velvet yet somehow filling the chamber.
"I was given little choice" I spat back through gritted teeth.
"Perhaps so, but nonetheless I am glad to see you. I have important news - for your ears alone."
She raised her chin in silent command, and I heard scuffling behind me as the guards exited the chamber, securing the doors behind themselves. How eagerly they jumped to her orders while ignoring my own!
"Out with it then, what news do you have for me?"
Seated with her leg hooked over the throne's armrest, the slit in her skirt revealed a pale length of thigh. Despite myself, I found my eyes lingering on that glimpse of soft flesh. Noticing this, she fixed me with a sardonic smile, her eyes alight with mockery. I suddenly became painfully aware that I was standing before her in nothing but my nightshirt. I self-consciously tugged the hem downwards to better cover myself which elicited a maddening giggle from her.
My face turned scarlet and I cursed inwardly. She had always had this peculiar effect on me. Although I despised her for bedding my father and knew that she manipulated him for his wealth and power, I often found myself transfixed by her. Her beauty was undeniable, with piercing eyes that twinkled mischievously as if inviting you to share some scandalous private joke with her.
Her body defied the courtly expectations of slenderness and was instead fulsome and plump. One could not gaze upon her without imagining what it might be like to press one's fingers into that tender flesh and feel its warmth as it yielded to one's touch.
What made it all the worse was her knowing looks, the way she understood the effect she had on me and used it to toy with me, even in my father's presence. It made me feel like a hapless, tongue-tied teenager.
"News most grave, little prince" she affected a tone of mock-seriousness, betrayed by the spark of joy that danced in her eyes. "I'm afraid that your father passed away two hours ago. Such a shame that you couldn't be there..."
My breath caught in my throat as I spluttered, choking on my grief.
"How dare you!? How dare you sit on his throne? How dare you deny me an audience with my father in his dying hours?! I will see you hanged for this you... you treasonous whore!"
She pouted at me, sliding casually off the throne and drawing herself up to her full height, which was a little more than mine. She strode forwards, pausing a few feet before me, intoning softly: "I would not take that tone with me, little boy. With your father's death, the balance of power has shifted, and your outbursts may not be indulged as they once were."
Her statement provoked a peal of manic laughter from me. I could scarcely believe my ears.
"You dare counsel ME to watch MY tone? Are you mad? With my father's death, the crown passes to me, you fool! I will see you out on your fat arse, returned to the gutter that spawned you. You will never grace a hall like this again, of that you can be assured!"
She giggled at my invective, cocking her head at me as one might a child. "No, I don't think so. While you were...indisposed, I had our most ardent courtly scholars scour the archives for documents relating to the act of succession. And you'd never believe what they found...."
From behind her back, she withdrew an object that glittered under the moonlight. My father's crown. "A most strange and archaic tradition, but one that all agree to be quite legally sound. Without an heir present to hear the monarch's final words, he can use them to grant the title instead..." and here she described an arc with her hand, bringing the crown up to her head, "to his wife".
She let the crown fall onto her, nestling comfortably amidst her dark curls. "And so I really think it might be best if you were to bite your tongue whilst addressing me."
My disbelief robbed me momentarily of the power of speech. The sight of this hateful trollop wearing my father's crown - my rightful inheritance - was a blasphemy beyond any I could have conjured in my darkest nightmares. In the end, all I could offer was a strangled cry: "You can't be serious!"
Her eyes narrowed and she looked at me suddenly as one might look at a lowly worm. "I am deadly serious. Kneel."
I stood defiantly.
"I will never bend my knee to you, villain."
A smile quirked her lips, "of course you won't. After all, we both know that true power resides not in dusty scrolls of protocol, nor ritual and ceremony... not even in a crown. Power resides elsewhere. And you require a demonstration."
She raised a hand, and I saw a ring on her finger around which the very air seemed to shimmer and warp. Instantly green tendrils forced their way up through cracks in the flagstones beneath my feet. They twined themselves around my calves, constricting painfully as they wove themselves into thick, unbreakable robes. They hooked around the backs of my knees and dragged me down until my shins were flat against the dusty floor. Still more snaked around my wrists, holding me in place. I gasped. "you're a witch! Gods, this is how you ensnared my father - it was foul sorcery!"
Liliana threw back her head and cackled in what I suspected was an imitation of a witch straight from a children's storybook. "Witch I may be, but believe me I needed no magic to wrap your father around my little finger. Your father..." and here she leaned forward until I could feel her warm breath on my right ear "...was nothing but a dirty old pervert who let his kingdom slip from his grasp in exchange for a taste of young pussy."
"No!" I moaned. Grief, rage and the terrible longing that her proximity engendered in me plunging me into an emotional turmoil. With Liliana leaning over me I could not help but stare transfixed at the hypnotic roundness of her breasts, nor block out her intoxicating scent. Nor could I prevent my mind from swimming with the lascivious images that her words conjured. I told myself that this must be her enchantment working on me, but a part of me suspected that this may not be the case.
"Oh yes," she breathed. "Though perhaps his son might prove more... entertaining fare." She licked her lips, and with a gesture of her hand and a swift tearing sound, my nightshirt was suddenly rent in two and its shredded tatters flung to either side of me. My hands instinctively moved to cover my nakedness, but the vines held me fast. Liliana's face wrinkled with amusement as she spied my diminutive member "Oh! It appears not. What a pity".
My face took on the hue of a ripe tomato as blood rushed to my face and ears. I had always been deeply ashamed of my secret shortcomings, and I felt my pride wither under her ridiculing eye. She bent low, extended a finger, and flicked the tip of my cock. She giggled, amused by the way it dangled limply between my legs.
"Silly boy, how could you ever hope to command an entire kingdom while wielding such a pathetic specimen. Did you really expect to sire an heir with this?" her hand circled my balls and she gave them a warning squeeze. "Answer me, boy."
I winced at the pain, knowing that more would follow if I could not muster an answer, but I could only provide a panicked squeak.
"Not good enough," she said dismissively. She withdrew her hand and slapped me hard between the legs with an open palm. I grunted and moaned as the sensation shot through me.
"Tell me what you are, boy." The open palm became a fist as thin vines curled upwards between my legs and wrapped themselves around the base of my testicles, squeezing and separating each of them, presenting them for further punishment.
"I, uh-what?" I gabbled, panicking at the prospect of more torment.
Too late. Her fist shot out and struck me square and true. The impact juddered through my body, forcing all of the breath from my chest and leaving me gasping for air. There was no reprieve before the next blow landed, and the next. It was relentless, and soon she was hailing blows on my delicate nether region like a woman possessed. I could hear her sternly demanding answers from me, but I was lost in a miasma of agony, unable to respond even if I wanted to.
Through my delirium, I suddenly heard my own voice cry out.
