Daughter Of The Sun Ch 15

IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS...

Sent by High Priestess Meghane to investigate about the possible dark origins of the recent strange behaviors of Queen Artemis, the young exorcist Octavia finds unexpected help in two people within the Royal Palace: Patrus, a common soldier of the Palace Guard, and Yamile, one of the personal slaves of the Queen.

After having paid with an outstanding night of sex for the collaboration of Patrus and for the confidences of Yamile, Octavia is informed about the existence of an hidden chamber accessible through a secret passage within the Queen's apartments. Yamile is in possess of a copy of the key which could allow Octavia to sneak into Artemis' bedroom, an act that she could attempt as soon as the Queen would leave the Palace for a secret mission outside the city.

In the meanwhile, in the city of Heath Hill, Queen Alexandra prepares her army to face the incoming Gloomdorian forces of invasion which are coming from the south; before leaving for the battlefield, she appoints Roxana as her new personal squire, with the aim to subtract the beautiful girl to the nefarious influence of Ysenia and to her orgiastic plans, and also with the secret hope of being able to seduce her...

https://www.literotica.com/s/daughter-of-the-sun-ch-12

https://www.literotica.com/s/daughter-of-the-sun-ch-14

***

The inner courtyard of the Royal Palace of Troygrove was still immersed in the intense darkness that preceded dawn, but it was already crowded with a disordered mass of men, carts and horses, in a chaotic and frenetic bustle, barely illuminated by the dim light of the torches hanging along the perimeter walls.

Octavia watched the preparations for departure from behind the half-open door of a small storage room that looked directly onto the courtyard. From the top of a flight of stairs, the gruff Captain of the Palace Guard, commander Theo Lascaris, supervised the operations of his men, constantly shouting curses at the clumsier and slower to move soldiers, many of whom were evidently still dazed and half asleep at that very early hour of the morning.

There were about half a dozen wagons lined up in the courtyard, which the soldiers were busy loading with provisions and supplies, in preparation for what was evidently going to be a journey lasting several days, the destination and purpose of which, however, had not been revealed to anyone, perhaps not even to Captain Lascaris himself.

Of all the carts, it was the one at the rear that attracted her attention the most. A large, closed, armored wagon, made of solid wooden planks held together with sturdy nails, whose narrow slits, placed on the upper parts of the walls and just wide enough to allow air to pass through, were closed by thick iron bars. A typical prisoner's wagon, the kind usually used to escort the most dangerous prisoners and criminals to the gallows, or to some remote and desolate place of punishment.

It was not difficult for a smart girl like Octavia to guess who might have been the prisoner locked inside.

"They're transporting Princess Alanor somewhere," she thought, continuing to carefully observe from behind the shelter of the half-open door. "They must have taken her from the Tower of the Kraken during the night and locked her in there."

She knew well what had happened to the young ambassador, court sorceress and sister of Queen Alexandra of Heath Hill; it was High Priestess Meghane who told her what General Bardas had witnessed with his own eyes and had come to refer to her, just before setting out to the east with his army: how Princess Alanor had been summoned by Artemis to the Council Chamber, only to be suddenly arrested without any obvious charges, sedated and stripped, before being led and locked inside the ancient prison tower, on a rocky islet a short distance from the coast. An infamous act, designed with deliberate coldness to trigger the start of a new war between Troygrove and Heath Hill, its ancient rival city.

From a side gate, escorted by a pair of guardsmen, a group of about ten young women appeared in the courtyard, and were ushered into and seated aboard a large open wagon placed in the center of the convoy. Their presence did not surprise Octavia; as Yamile had revealed her, all of Queen Artemis's personal slaves, including herself, would have also took part in this mysterious expedition into the unknown.

It was difficult for her to spot Yamile in the midst of that small group. From that distance, all the girls looked incredibly similar to each other, decked out as they were in cloaks and many of them with their hoods raised to protect themselves from the cool night air and from a light but insisting rain that had just begun to fall, with the darkness making everything even more difficult to distinguish.

But it wasn't her friend Yamile her eyes were really looking for.

They were looking for him.

And finally they found him, busy checking the bridle of his horse, not far from where she was, already armed and armored but still without a helmet, the orange cloak of the Palace Guard with the hood raised, ever present on his sturdy shoulders.

He was beautiful, with his blond hair always messed up on his forehead, his handsome, clean-shaven face with a strong jaw and soft lips, absolutely worthy to be kissed for hours and hours. By looking at him, the girl was once again overcome by a burning desire to belong to him. That man, so impetuous and arrogant, had possessed her like no other man had ever done before, submitting her completely to his desires. Maybe, Octavia thought while biting her lower lip, she had secretly fallen in love with him.

Octavia decided to take the risk for which she had been hiding in that closet for some time, well before the first soldiers had appeared in the courtyard. Opening the door a little wider, she bent down to pick up a small pebble from the ground which she then threw with precision, sending it falling with a soft clinking near the soldier's armored boots.

The call worked; for a fleeting moment their eyes met from the distance. With trembling satisfaction, she watched Patrus mutter some unintelligible words to his nearest comrade, perhaps some apology regarding some forgotten item, or a request to watch his back as he walked away for a moment, before turning to the door and striding in its direction, careful not to attract the unwanted attention of the irascible Captain Lascaris.

"You shouldn't be here," the burly soldier told her reproachfully once he was inside, closing the door of the dark storage room behind him. "This is a secret mission. If the Queen were to find out that you know about it, she wouldn't hesitate for a moment to treat you the same as she had treated Salty, if not worse. What the hell are you doing here?"

There was a kind of incomprehensible anger in his voice, a sort of palpable irritation that hurt the heart of the young priestess of Neryss, as if that man had not liked at all the fact of unexpectedly finding her there in front of him in that very moment.

"I know," Octavia replied in a low voice, partly so as not to risk being heard from outside and partly feeling intimidated by his unexpectedly aggressive and brusque approach. "But I wanted to say goodbye to you before you left."

"Seriously?" there was an almost mocking tone in the soldier's voice that did not fail to irritate the girl. "And you took this enormous risk just to come and say goodbye to me? You are crazy, my girl, completely crazy," he concluded tapping his temple with the tip of his index finger to emphasize his words.

"And also to tell you to protect Yamile," Octavia murmured. "Please watch over her while you're on the road."

Though they were little more than an excuse, those last words of her were not entirely without truth. After what they had been through together, after Patrus had turned the two of them into his personal little harem for an entire night, Octavia had developed a sincere feeling of affection and closeness for the Queen's beautiful and sweet pleasure slave. The thought that something bad could have happened to her new, close friend during this mysterious expedition made her stomach clench.

Patrus, however, greeted those tender words with a harsh sound that was very similar to a mocking laugh.

"Have you seen how many fucking soldiers there are out there in the courtyard?" he snapped. "At least twenty, all big, armed and armored. Your little friend will be safer than a damsel in a fucking castle. So what the hell are you worried about?"

Octavia lowered her eyes, blushing violently. She had naively hoped that the man in front of her would have been happier to see her and that he would have shown, if not outright love, at least a little more of affection for both her and her friend. Not without a pang of pain, she realized how both herself and Yamile, like any other woman probably, even Princess Alanor who Patrus had boasted of having taken to bed, were nothing more than mere pastimes for him, simple sex toys to have fun with from time to time, to then abandon at the appearance of a fresher and more inviting novelty.

And that, for some perverse reason rooted who knows where in the most hidden recesses of her psyche, she terribly liked this fact.

Suddenly, Octavia was no longer able to contain herself. In an instant, she leapt on him, greedily gluing her mouth to his, embracing him and sinking a hand into the thick mass of his blond hair, kissing him with all the vibrant passion she had in her body.

"Take me Patrus," she whispered in a breath, giving free voice to her desire, breaking the kiss only for an instant. "Take me one more time before you go, please. Make me yours once more."

"Now we are talking," he replied, looking at her with a smirk that was half amused and half pleased. "That you're nothing but a horny little slut who can't stay more than a day without feeling the hard cock of her stud bull planted up her ass; that's what you came to tell me, right?"

Octavia didn't answer, too much excited, too much ashamed of herself to dare to even say a word, her face completely red with desire and embarrassment. But what the soldier had just told her, deep down, was nothing but the plain and simple truth. She had come here with the secret hope that he would have roughly fucked her one last time before he went. And they both knew it.

"Get into position, while I prepare the tool," he ordered her bluntly, as he wriggled out of her embrace.

There was no enough time to completely undress like during their first encounter, they both knew that. It would have been a quick and dirty thing, a pure release of primal mating urges between two unthinking animals in heat. Leaning forward and placing a palm of her hand against the cold stone wall of the closet, Octavia lifted her robe up to her kidneys, exposing both of her willing holes to his aroused view, offering them completely to his free choice.

"I hope you're wet enough by yourself, because I won't have time for fucking foreplay," Patrus said, while fumbling furiously with the laces of his pants, trying to free the impatient beast he hid inside as quickly as possible, and thus leaving no doubt as to where he would have penetrated this time.

Octavia couldn't have asked for more. She wanted nothing more than to be used and fucked like an object, roughly and with no regard at all for her own pleasure, pounded for just the time it took for him to come and squirt his abundant, hot seed inside of her.

He had just grabbed her soft hips tightly, ready to mount her, when the powerful voice of Captain Lascaris rang out from outside, calling everyone to attention, a sign that Her Majesty, Queen Artemis herself, had appeared in the courtyard, and that the group was now ready to march.

Patrus cursed loudly.

"Duty calls," the soldier growled, a grimace on his face, clearly not thrilled by the prospect of having now to ride for many miles on horseback with full balls and with a piece of rock in his pants. "You'll have to do it yourself, little one, until I get back."

Resting her back against the wall, Octavia watched him reposition himself, biting her lip in frustration and unsatisfied desire. Beneath her long gray robe, the fluids of her arousal slid freely down the inside of her thighs.

"Think of me, while you masturbate, alone in your bed at night, knowing that everything you touch belongs to me," he ordered, looking straight into her amaranthine eyes. "And say my name when you cum, with more passion and more devotion than you do with the name of your Goddess, when you pray to her. Will you do that?"

She nodded.

"Be careful," she said, leaning closer to him and kissing him once more on the lips. "I don't want anything bad happening to you."

Patrus sneered.

"I will. And once I'll be back," he said, suddenly pulling her to him and vigorously squeezing her ass, while through the fabric of her dress his fingers grazed the entrance of that hole that he had so wonderfully and long fucked two nights before, making her gasp, "all of this will be mine once again."

He left her like that, without even a final kiss of goodbye, turning and leaving to quickly return to his position, before the column of wagons and soldiers started to march.

Octavia looked out the half-open door of the closet, to cast a last glance at the courtyard. Queen Artemis was already mounted on her white horse, in full armor but without a helmet, and was watching the soldiers preparing themselves with an expression of haughty, cold contempt on her beautiful face. It was a fearsome face, a glacial gaze, long blond hair framing hard features, of a person incapable of feeling any form of compassion or pity.

Flanked by two of his men, Captain Lascaris stood at attention, saluting the Sovereign of Troygrove. She ignored him, and without a word, she started her horse toward the Palace gates, standing at the head of the column and raising an arm, indicating the men to follow her.

Octavia watched in silence as the column of horses and wagons slowly began to march through the rain, setting off toward their unknown destination, a mixture of emotions swirling in her soul. Only when the last of the armed men had passed through the large entrance portal and Captain Lascaris had returned to the Palace with the rest of his men, Octavia abandoned her hiding place and returned to her rooms, to allow herself a few more hours of rest, in preparation for the delicate and risky mission that she had decided she would undertake that very night.

***

The small silver key fitted perfectly into the lock of the large double doors, and the tiny click of the latch, however faint, seemed to reverberate like thunder in the dark and empty corridor of the Palace.

With her heart pounding in her chest with apprehension and fear, Octavia looked around one last time to make sure that there was really no one who could have seen her, before pushing the door open and immediately closing it behind her, once she had rushed inside.

Leaning for a moment with her back against the surface of the finely carved wooden door, she closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying as much as possible to calm herself and regain control of her shaken nerves, tense as violin strings.

As Patrus had correctly told her, the Queen's bedchamber had remained unguarded since her departure and, at that late hour of the night, Octavia had not encountered a living soul on her way from her chambers to the threshold of the Queen's private apartments. However, she was well aware of the enormous risk she was running, by violating in that way the Queen's most intimate and private space; should have been discovered, the penalty for her would certainly be a cruel and painful death.

And there would have been worse, Octavia thought. Once captured, it would have not been difficult for those who would have tortured and interrogated her to trace back to the High Priestess Meghane, the one who had been the instigator of this nighttime incursion. Octavia loved the Head of her Holy Order with her whole heart, and for nothing in the world would she have wanted anything bad to happen to her.

Slowly, she opened her eyes, looking around. Outside the raining had stopped since several hours, and the silvery light of the moon filtered through the curtains left half open, through the large glass door which led onto the Queen's private terrace. It was a large room, but decidedly bare, a space almost entirely empty and furnished with only a few pieces of high-quality. An enormous canopied bed with golden columns dominated from its position, almost in the center of the room, so tall and imposing to almost resemble a small temple.

It was strange to think that this was the very place which had seen Yamile and her other companions participate in the nightly orgies in which Artemis sometimes indulged with her slaves and, although her prevalent orientation was towards men, the thought of all those beautiful and naked women, entwined one on top of the other in pleasure in the same bed, induced in Octavia a strange, inexplicable thrill of excitement.

The thought of her friend seemed somehow to give her a little more courage. With renewed determination, Octavia moved away from the door, heading towards the wall to her left which was entirely covered by an immense mirror, a majestic and impressive artifact, surrounded by a heavy and elaborate frame carved in precious wood and covered in gold leaf.

Light and agile, Octavia's fingers moved along the branches and leaves of the decorations carved in the golden frame, feeling, exploring, quickly searching in the darkness for the secret spot that Yamile had revealed to her after their night of shared passion.

It wasn't very difficult to find. One of the carved leaves seemed to be slightly more raised than the rest of the friezes; a very light pressure on it was enough to make a panel of the mirror silently slide aside, revealing a small and dark opening behind it, low and narrow, barely large enough for a single person to pass through.

With trepidation, she peered into the newly revealed opening. There was indeed a secret tunnel behind the mirror, a series of small steps roughly carved into the stone that sank into absolute darkness, disappearing into the bowels of the Palace, leading who knows where.

Octavia looked down at her mystical exorcist crystal that she always wore around her neck. Its internal purple light was pulsing even more intensely than on previous nights, when she had gone exploring along the corridors adjacent to the Royal apartments, an unmistakable sign that a source of evil mystical energy was nearby, almost certainly at the bottom of the passageway of which she had just discovered the entrance.

Gathering all of her courage, the young priestess of Neryss placed a bare foot on one of those slippery and worn steps, carefully venturing, one step at a time, into the secret depths of the tunnel.

It was a tunnel in which the most complete darkness reigned, and Octavia found herself grateful for the fact that the purple glows emitting from her crystal allowed her to have at least a minimal visibility of what was in front of her.

After descending for several meters, the tunnel turned sharply to the right, continuing to descend even further, deeper and deeper. Cautiously turning the corner, Octavia was surprised to spot a faint light coming from the bottom towards which she was heading, a sure sign of the presence of a light source or of an illuminated environment.

Holding her breath, she walked with extreme caution along the last steps that separated her from the very bottom of the tunnel, approaching with trepidation the opening in the stone that she was beginning to see and from which the light was filtering. It was an opening even lower than the rest of the tunnel, and Octavia was forced to bend down in order to be able to pass through it and to be able to finally cast her gaze on what it hid.