The next month in the demon-prince's kingdom was...intense.
My display had caused no small degree of comment, and my destruction of the chief sorceror had created a power vacuum, and no small number of important nobles made themselves heard on the subject.
Some wanted me humbled, and punished for my insolence, but these were few in number and weak in spirit, and the cries of the weak are ignored by the strong.
Some wanted to see another demonstration, motivated by lust or mischief or both, and these were larger in number and did as I wished them to do, for manipulation is a tool that can be used to magnify one's strength many times over.
Some wanted to benefit themselves, and chief among these were the sorcerors who had served beneath the chief wizard and who now vied for his position, and others who fancied themselves magical practitioners, and these, too, did my work for me, for the more hue and cry that was created for my return the better.
But I could not be found.
They tried. They sought me with magical arts, conjurings, sometimes drawing forth other beings and sending them to seek me, but I refused to be found, save by the few such beings I chose to destroy for sustenance and amusement.
They tried summoning me directly, but the chief wizard had held close to himself his secrets, and the specific way he summoned me was lost upon his demise. I could have resisted it, or evaded it, but his paranoia had led him to render all his notes in tomes that disintegrated when he died, and so when his acolytes went to his rooms they found nothing but ashes upon his shelves.
They tried using their own powers to summon me, but trying to summon a being you do not know is a tricky business, and trying to summon a very specific individual without knowing their name or anything about them is taxing even to the skilled, and these acolytes were not skilled.
The demon-prince was first amused, and then agitated, and then irate, and then enraged. He had not loved his magus, but having the man so publicly and easily destroyed reflected upon him, for if such a man rose so high while being so weak who could say but that others might be as vulnerable? Perhaps the demon-prince himself?
Such talk, once begun, is difficult to quash, but without my presence, without a convincing show of his power, such talk was inevitable, and so it inevitably began. Whispers in corridors, furtive meetings in dimly-lit rooms, secret messages passed between enemies making common cause, all that and more began, which suited my plans well.
But there was one in that kingdom that could summon me, one that knew my name, one that harbored no love for the demon-prince.
His consort.
Genevieve.
Genevieve saw what was going on around her, and suspected that it was my intention, but she had other things to concern herself with.
She had opened her mind to lust when she invited me to share what I felt as I fed, and now lust burned within her. To be the consort to the demon-prince was to endure his depravities without giving her true feelings away, and she had mastered this art, but after feeling what I had felt she had begun to hunger for it.
At first she thought this was merely a late bloom of lust, of her body accepting his in a way she had not before, but it wasn't long at all before she realized what she was truly feeling.
It was when she had that realization that she decided that calling out to me wasn't merely something she was considering but was something she was very definitely going to do.
And so she did.
I prepared myself very differently this time than I had when I was first summoned to that realm. Then I had come in a dress, aiming to entice and to seduce the eyes and minds of those who watched. This time, though, what was called for was not seduction, or not of that kind.
What was called for, what she would react to, what would seduce her completely, was power.
And so I dressed in leather, severe and sexual, carefully-worked and formfitting and polished until it gleamed. The outfit brought out precisely the effect I wanted, domination and control and strength.
I did not want to merely be seen.
I wanted seeing me to bring those who beheld me another step closer to working my will.
Strength comes in many forms, and preparation serves often as the handmaiden to conquest.
Genevieve's time since my summoning had been...difficult.
To be in a kingdom bursting at the seams with political tensions is troublesome enough, but to be the figurehead attached to the monarch of such a kingdom is to spend each day upon a tightrope with jagged rocks far beneath. Add to this that her mind and body had been given over to lust far beyond what she'd known, and that the demon-prince had become more sexually demanding, and that she had begun to truly enjoy herself in ways she knew well to be inspired by corruption, and her state of mind could best be described as frantic.
And yet, to the outside world and most especially to the demon-prince, she had to remain as she had always been, calm and placid, grateful and generous, yielding willingly to advances she had thought odious before. She was observed constantly, as the consorts of rulers always are, and so she had to remain impassive, pristine, virtuous, obedient while inwardly she was consumed with lust, with need, with sexual demands she could not sate, could not meet, could not free herself from.
She tried to resist calling me, tried to resist for reasons she could not articulate even to herself, and yet from the start she had known that it was a resistance doomed to failure.
And so, one night, ten days after my first appearance on that realm, when the demon-prince was out on a short tour of his kingdom, she had dismissed her servants, locked and bolted the door, and prepared herself.
There were soundproofing wards in the door, and she activated them, she being a practitioner of small skill but some competence, and then she dressed, choosing a formless royal robe and nothing beneath. The robe itself was no tool of seduction, bulky and thick, but pulling it open to reveal herself instantly nude would be a powerful tool in a seductive arsenal, and moreover one that she could use to walk through the palace if she wished with none the wiser but she and her prospective lover.
