IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS...
Following the orders of their Queen, Darya and Eluan went on their way to alert the Duchesses Dasha and Sung about the threat represented by the appearance of the mysterious Night Lord. As Princess Eluan continues her riding toward the distant city of Hadun, Darya meets with Dasha in the garden of the Ducal Palace of Vinevris.
Darya's embassy concluded with a success, but the success comes with an high price; in exchange for the employment of her troops, Lady Dasha demands for Darya to come back permanently at her service. And the evident lust that the Duchess feels in regard to Darya, as well as her proved hypnotic and manipulative abilities, cause great concern to the Lady Commander of the Sun's Guard...
https://www.literotica.com/s/daughter-of-the-sun-ch-05
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The room which the Duchess' attendants had prepared for Darya was a large and spacious environment, located on the fourth and uppermost floor of the Palace. The flooring, made of polished mahogany wood planks, was covered almost entirely by a fine carpet decorated with delightfully complex geometric patterns, most likely coming from the eastern distant lands of Tarbaste or Saad.
A large four-poster bed dominated the entire left side of the room, while on the right, towards the wall along which three high arched windows opened, an elegant ivory table was surrounded by four richly inlaid and painted armchairs, each one provided with thick, green velvet cushions. On the wall opposite the entrance, Darya spotted an arched door leading to another separate room, its sight hidden by a thick curtain of red velvet hanging behind the treshold.
Lady Sarissa Doran, commander of the Ducal Guard, had escorted her through a series of long hallways and of impressive great marble stairs. The Ducal Palace of Vinevris was a vast and labyrinthine building, in which it could be very easy to get lost, even for a person who had frequented it for a long time in the past like Darya. It was a building with over nine hundred years of history, and over the centuries the Dukes and Duchesses of the city had ensured that it became increasingly sumptuous, filling it with works of art, fine furniture, refined decorations and sculptures of any kind.
Darya had followed the woman for all the way long to the room without saying a word, in a silence full of tension and embarrassment. In her heart, Darya hoped very much that the Lady Commander of the Guard may have not understood what had happened between her and the Duchess, down in the garden, just few minutes before.
A forlorn hope however, Darya thought. The traces left around from her erotic encounter with the Duchess were so evident that only a blind person could have failed to notice them. Sarissa Doran had made her entrance in the garden while Darya was still in the final rushing act of getting herself dressed, fastening the belt of her trousers with hands clumsy in haste, her face still red from the intensity of the pleasure she had just experienced and from the anxiety at the thought of having been discovered.
To make the things worst, in the moment of her leaving the Duchess had abandoned on the lawn the pieces of armor and all the few items of clothing she was wearing underneath, obiousvsly not feeling ashamed to cover the distance from the garden to her apartments in full nakedness. Darya strongly suspected that the noble woman had performed this act intentionally, to leave further evidence that might cause further embarrassment to Darya, in a sort of sadistic, perverted game of the mind that only the Duchess could appreciate.
Darya also wondered if Sarissa may had overheard her high screams of pleasure. Also this time, she didn't have very clear memories of what had happened, after the Duchess had effectively put her conscious mind to sleep with the magnetic power of her gaze. She didn't even remember to have completely stripped in front of her. She remembered however to have screamed aloud at a certain point, in the moment in which Dahsa's skilled fingers, combined with her suggestive words, had provoked in Darya a tremendous, irresistibly explosive orgasm.
In any case, the expression of the commander of the Ducal Guard in the moment in which she had found her in the garden had remained unperturbed, as she had invited Darya to follow her to the guests chamber.
"The dinner will be served in a couple of hours," the tall, black-haired woman said to Darya, once they stepped into the room. "In the meanwhile, feel free to relax and enjoy yourself. Everything you can see in the apartment is at your complete disposal. There is also a bathroom, on the other side of the arch, behind that curtain; I thought you may have enjoyed a refreshing bath after your long days of riding under the sun. Would you maybe enjoy the assistance of one of the attendants for that?"
"I...uh, no, thank you," Darya hesitated a moment, caught by surprise by such an unexpected question. "I can do it by myself."
In all of her life, Darya had never fully understood the need of many nobles to have someone to assist them in a function as basic as bathing. Hailey herself was not entirely immune to this custom. In her Palace of Syfall, the Queen was often used to bathe accompanied by two young girls of the nobility, who immersed themselves in the tub with her and helped the Sovereign by washing her back and her flowing golden hair. And, after the bath, they further assisted the Queen by sprinkling her whole body with the most precious creams and ointments, brushing her hair for a long time until they shine, and taking care of the perfection of her fingernails and toenails.
Following her promotion to the rank of Commander of the Sun's Guard, Hailey had offered to Darya the privilege, reserved to the nobility, of having her own personal attendants as well. But Darya had stoically refused, preferring to maintain the old, military habit of washing by herself, sharing the bathrooms with the other members of the Guard.
In Syfall, the Guards' baths were a vast underground environment located right beneath the Palace itself, full of natural stone pools and hot steams, where everyone, males and females together, could relax, clean up and restore themselves after a long and hard day of training, in full nakedness.
Sharing the bathrooms was an ancient practice among the soldiers, which served also to cement the "esprit de corps" The women of the Guard had since long become accustomed to the frequent and conspicuous erections displayed in full view and without any embarrassment by their male colleagues, and it was not uncommon for the ladies to take advantage of this, whenever they wished. Sex, even group sex, was not a taboo among the members of the Sun's Guard and, thus not openly spoken and incentivized, it was absolutely not infrequent.
From her side, however, Darya had never taken part in such practices neither once, in her total and firm loyalty and devotion to the Queen only. The other members of the Guard, both men and women, were aware of Darya's sentiments and respected them, leaving their Lady Commander outside of the circle of their intimate intercourses.
"As you wish," replied Sarissa, at her denial. "May you be in need of anything, just pull that rope you see hanging beside the bed. It will ring a bell, and one of the attendants will come to you immediately."
She gave a quick military salute and turned towards the door. Darya was tempted to let her go like that, without saying any additional word, but her mind was restless. The doubt concerning what Sarissa could have seen or heard down in the garden was troubling her too much. She had to know.
"Lady Sarissa," she called, before the Lady Commander could trespass the threshold.
