Daughter of the Sun

IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS...

While investigating the mistery of the recent strange behaviors of Queen Artemis, Octavia discovers an secret chamber, whose entrance is hidden behind the mirror within the Queen's bedchamber. To her disconcert, the room proves to be a portal, an open channel directly connected with the source of evil which has corrupted Artemis' mind. And before she can attempt an exorcism to destroy it, even Octavia's mind is ensnared by the dark powers of the Night Lord.

In the meanwhile, far to the south, Darya has successfully completed the mission to deliver Hailey's letter into the hands of Duchess Dasha of Vinevris, with a request for her to gather her army and to join the Queen in Syfall, the Capital city. And after some days of preparation, the army of the Duchess is ready to move in response to the Queen's call...

The dense crowd which had spontaneously gathered at both sides of the wide road was jubilant and joyful, and was welcoming Dasha with loud, cheering shouts charged with vibrating enthusiasm, as she triumphantly passed by on her horseback, riding at the head of her army.

https://www.literotica.com/s/daughter-of-the-sun-ch-15

https://www.literotica.com/s/daughter-of-the-sun-ch-06

***

"Lady Dasha! Hurray for Lady Dasha!" many of them shouted.

"Feyner! Feyner!" others were calling, invoking the name of her ancient and noble family.

They were passing through a small settlement, one of the many villages of peasants in the countryside, composed by small huts made up of wood and stone located along the course of the Great Southern Road. Dasha and her army, made of heavy cavalry, infantry and pikemen on foot, and several regiments of archers, had been marching along that route for almost six days now, and within a short time they would have been finally in sight of their destination, Syfall, the Capital city of the Kingdom.

The twenty-six year old Duchess of Vinevris, covered in full armor and with her long, flowing black hair billowing in the wind like a banner, smiled amiably at the crowd, waving with her hand in return for that festive homage, pleased by that spontaneous display of love and affection which was coming from the inhabitants of the province.

From the side of the road someone threw a rose at her, a deep scarlet rose, just picked and still fresh and humid from the dew of the early hours of the morning. Catching it in mid-air, the Duchess brought the flower to her nostrils, deeply inhaling its intense and delicious perfume with a satisfied smile, before pinning that floreal homage to her thick black hair, right above her left ear, as if it were a precious ornament to her beauty.

It was gratifying to see how, even after so long time, those simple men and women of the common people had not forgotten at all what Dasha had done for them and for their salvation. Four years had passed since the last, tragic war which had invested the Kingdom of the South, drawing it into a harsh conflict against the oppressive and brutal forces of Reybrook, the ancient rival city located beyond its northern borders, on the other side of the line represented by the course of the Shield River.

At that time, the still twenty-two year old Duchess had been the heroine and the absolute protagonist of that conflict, covering herself with glory and honor on the battlefield thanks to her courage, her audacity and her unquestionable martial skills. Hers had been the sword which had put to an end the life of King Konrad Hanouten, the mighty, despotic ruler of the enemy city, in an epic duel that took place at the foot of the hill called "the Giant's Furnace", the exact same, long, single-edged sword with a curved blade that she was firmly carrying at her side even in that moment, as she rode on her imposing black-haired stallion with a thick mane.

A few days after that first, memorable triumph of her, the Duchess and her army had suddenly fallen upon the troops led by Prince Arjen, the youngest of the three heirs of the now deceased King of Reybrook, breaking in this way the encirclement with which he was tightening his grip on the soldiers of Syfall, led by the at that time twenty-six year old Princess Hailey, seriously threatening to take as prisoner or, even worst, to kill the second daughter of Queen Layla.

With Darya at her side, Dasha had personally conducted the massive cavalry charge that had marked the end of the last battle of that useless and senseless war. It had been the future Lady Commander of the Sun's Guard, at that time still a simple knight of ordinary rank, with her already considerable strength multiplied by the fury and by the secret love that she already carried in her heart for Princess Hailey, who had struck with a tremendous blow of her iron-clad mace the raised shield of Prince Arjen, breaking his left arm in several points and violently throwing him down from the saddle, leaving him on the ground stunned, almost more dead than alive, at the mercy of the troops of the Kingdom of the South.

The death in battle of King Konrad and the subsequent capture of Prince Arjen, occurred at such short distance in time from each other, had forced Princess Carlyze, the eldest daughter of the deceased King and elevated as consequence as new Queen of Reybrook, to sign the surrender, less than a month after the outbreak of the conflict.

Thanks to Dasha's intervention, the losses for the Kingdom of the South, both in terms of soldiers and civilians, had proved ultimately to be minimal; upon her return to Syfall, Dasha had received a triumphal welcome across the crowded streets of the Capital, and had been granted by Queen Layla herself with the honorary title of Defender of the Realm.

Days of great celebrations were planned to be held in her honor once Princess Emily, the firstborn and heir to the throne of Syfall, would have also made her return to the Capital, having led her troops as per the Queen's orders to fight much further north, in support of the allied Kingdom of Lothorel.

But the elder sister of Hailey and Eluan, and mother of Iulia, would have never returned home.

On her way back to Syfall, her troops had been ambushed by a vile trap set by Prince Raynard, the second and by far the fiercest descendant of the late King of Reybrook, and the Princess herself had been captured in the subsequent battle. The account of what had happened next, reported by one of the few surviving soldiers who managed to safely return to the Kingdom of the South, had sent chills down the spines of all the members of the court who were gathered in the Throne Hall.

The Princess had been stripped naked and brutally sodomized by Prince Raynard himself, in front of the excited eyes of Reybrook's gateherd soldiers, and under the helpless and desperate eyes of her husband, Lord Matthew Darrington, who had to forcibly witness to the scene while tied to a pole and gagged. The long and terrible ordeal had ended only when Raynard, having stisfied is outrageous lust, had seized the handle of his battle axe, and had shattered with it the skull of the Princess heir to the Throne of Syfall, reserving the same fate to her husband just few moments later, wanting to avenge in that infamous way the death of his father and the defeat of his Kingdom.

Upon learning of those terrible atrocities from the messenger's lips, Queen Layla had immediately collapsed, unconscious, violently striking her head on the polished floor of the Throne Hall, to never recover. She had died in her bed, after having passed three days in an irreversable coma. And with that, what was meant to be a joyful celebration of victory, had abruptly turned into a terrible time of mourning for the Val Lumenar family and for the entire Kingdom of the South. An event that had remained indelibly marked in the souls of all of them, Hailey, Eluan, Darya, and Dasha herself, and after which none of them would have ever been quite the same.

"Lady Dasha! Lady Dasha!"

An acute, girly voice, full of excitement and enthusiasm, overcame for a moment the loud noise of the crowd, causing her to emerge from those tragic and painful memories. Full of curiosity, Dasha turned her gaze to her right; the young peasant lady who was conspicuously gesticulating from the side of the road, waving her arms above her head as if to attract the attention of the Duchess, shouldn't have been older than twenty, a natural beauty with long, flowing black hair held in place by an orange band, splendid blue eyes as clear as the purest water, and a warm, radiant, smile which would have easily melted a stone.

A truly juicy, delicious, little flower, thought Dasha, looking intently at her for some moments with her emerald-green eyes. A delicious, little flower that Dasha would have picked more than gladly, and with which she would have happily adorned her bed, during one of the incoming nights.

"Lady Sarissa, please," covering her lips with her gloved hand, Dasha murmured to the tall Lady Commander of her personal Guard who, as her usual, was riding to her right, cladded in her bronze armor, "would you go and find some information about that lovely girl over there? I really would love to know who she is."

With her keen, experienced eyes, strengthened by the many months passed in her service, Sarissa Doran took only a few moments to spot among the dense crowd the target of the Duchess's freshly aroused interest.

"Your will, my Lady," she then replied, without betraying any sign of emotion. Quickly, she made few gestures to a couple of armored soldiers who were riding immediatley behind them. Promptly, they nodded in understanding, before silently leaving the marching column, careful to not attract the attention of the gathered crowd too much.

Dasha allowed herself to indulge in a pleased smile; whenever she had asked Lady Sarissa Doran to "find information" about a certain girl, it was almost certain that said girl would have ended naked in Dasha's bed in a matter of few days at latest, and the lustful Duchess was more than confident that her right-hand woman would have not disappointed her expectations this time either.

The Lady Commander of the Ducal Guard was extremely efficient in this; flatteries, promises of favors or of conspicuous rewards in money, sometimes even threats if necessary, were usually enough to induce any girl to agree to present herself in the Duchess' apartments for a "meeting of acquaintance". Since the very beginning of her service, Sarissa Doran had proved to have a real talent for this kind of activity and, over the course of time, this particular skill of hers had only improved.

In the little more than twelve months in which Lady Sarissa had took her service as Commander of her Guard, Dasha had lost count of how many beautiful girls and women of any kind had crossed the threshold of her luxurious bedchamber. The majority of them were young women of low rank, simple girls of the city, daughters of merchants, of artisans, of innkeepers, whom the Duchess had accidentally caught sight of during one of her occasional visits through the crowded streets of Vinevris, or cheerful and lively peasant girls who had come from the countryside to buy and sell their goods, and whom she had happened to glimpse them from a window, in the market that regularly gathered once per week in the large square located right in front of the Ducal Palace.

Dasha always had a true weakness for the simplest and most naïve girls like those, however she did not disdain from time to time to indulge in pleasurable meetings with much more experienced and refined women as well. Vinevris was a city vibrant with life, and teeming with people of all types and of any social conditions coming from every corner of the world. There was therefore no shortage of greedy opportunities at all; ambitious theater actresses in search of fame and fortune, sinuous and sensual exotic dancers who performed in scantily clad veils or even completely naked in the thousand of the taverns and brothels of the city, models of painters and sculptors came to Vinevris to lend their sublime graces to the sake of the art, fascinating prostitutes and high-class entertainers, capable of delightfully combine the highest possible eroticism with the finest intellectual sophistication.

And, in the long list of her erotic conquers, there was no shortage at all of women of the highest social ranks either; Ladies belonging to the minor nobility of the city, Countesses and Baronesses of the surrounding territories of the Duchy, wives of rich and wealthy merchants, sometimes even some prosperous priestesses, caught in the mood to escape for a while from a life of imposed rigors and chastity.

The more cunning or shrewd among those women were prompt to quickly realize how they would have had everything to gain from spending even a single night of pleasure in bed with the Duchess of Vinevris, and they gave themselves to her gladly, even enthusiastically at times. From her side, Dasha was very generous with the ones capable to please her, and she always abundantly compensated those who freely offered their bodies to her to enjoy.

Others among them needed sometimes a little bit more of encouragement, and for Dasha to play with them the fine game of the seduction and of the courtship. Not that this fact had never represented a problem to her in any way; over the course of the years, Dasha had greatly refined her skills as a wooer, to the point that many men of her court could easily have taken lessons from her in the subtle art of seducing women.

But there were also the more indomitable and reticent ones, those who, either out of an innate, inexplicable sense of modesty, or because of too strong sentiments of loyalty toward their husbands, or even because, for some absurd and unexplicable reason, they found the very idea of ​​sex between women to be immoral or alien to their nature, categorically refused to give the Duchess what she desired, regardless of the type of approach she might have attempted with them.

And in that case, there was only one last resort she could attempt to bend their resistances, to convince them to strip down of their clothes and obediently please their Lady as she desired them to do, a last resort that she was always ready to use with a sense of particular, perverted satisfaction and pleasure.

Few women, if any at all, could stare for too long into the glittering emerald eyes of the Duchess of Vinevris, without slipping soon into a state of sleepy trance that left their minds passively open to the influence of the noblewoman's will and to her subtle manipulations, making them to become fully obedient to her every command and wish, at least for a while.

And, among these ones, Darya didn't certainly make an exception.

Shifting her gaze, the Duchess turned her attention to Darya. The Captain of the Sun's Guard of Syfall was riding on her left, her face tremendously serious, the gaze fixed ahead of her, into the void, completely indifferent to the festive celebrations of the noisy crowd all around them. For the whole duration of their march from Vinevris, Darya had remained mostly silent, distant, trying to avoid any conversation with the Duchess as much as possible.

After their last passionated encounter, occurred more than a week ago, Dasha had hoped for a moment to have finally succeeded in finally seducing that reticent beauty with dark hair and a sculptural body, and to have definitely conquered the heart of that magnificent woman who, for so many years, had become her true obsession, the main erotic dream that more than everything else was capable to ignite her lustful passion.

After all, in the end, that time Darya had entered into her bed and had given herself to her of her own free will... excluding only the small, sneaky, post-hypnotic trick with which Dasha had lured her into her chamber, unconsciously inducing her, at the stroke of midnight, to walk, completely naked and unknowing of that, through the long and silent corridors of the Palace, before finally arrive to knock on the door of her apartments.

Dasha still remembered with extreme excitement the thrill she had felt in the moment when she had opened the door of her bedroom and found herself facing the beautiful Darya, still dazed and confused from the light trance she had fallen into, clearly unable to understand what had happened to her, while with her hands she was trying in vain to hide her total and exposed nakedness from the greedy eyes of the Duchess, obiouvsly more eager than ever to turn around and escape but, at the same time, prevented from doing so by the invincible force of the strong, unconscious mental command that bounded her to stay and to walk into Dasha's chamber, once she had invited her to do so.

It had been a magnificent, long night of love and pleasure. Darya's kisses had been full of passion, intense, real, as full and real had been the many orgasms induced in her by the Duchess's exploratory fingers and by her velvet tongue. Darya had remained fully conscious, active and participating during the whole act, a fact which had contributed to make the whole event even more involving, magical and memorable for the Duchess. The morning after, the light of dawn had surprised the two of them still deeply asleep, tightly embraced between the sheets and nude, like a couple of perfect lovers.

But not even all of this had succeeded in removing from Darya's heart the deep, total, unconditional love she felt for her beautiful, blonde Queen. Once they woke up, after Darya had asked to borrow a dressing gown to cover herself in order to be able to return to her rooms, the Commander of the Sun's Guard had also asked for the permission to spend the remaining time until the completion of the preparation of the army and their departure from Vinevris outside of walls of the Ducal Palace, so she could have passed some days at the Red Oak Inn, the lodge still run by her parents which was located in the harbor area, and where she was born and raised.

Dasha, who from her side would have only wanted to invite Darya as first thing to share a hot bath together, and then to propose her to permanently relocate into her bedroom for the remaining of the necessary time, despite her burning lust had not felt like denying Darya such a request; and therefore, the two women had not seen or spoken to each other again until the day of their departure from Vinevris.

But now too much time had definitely passed, Dasha decided, and the moment had come for her to try to break the thick wall of protective silence that Darya had erected around herself.

"You are very silent, my dear," she observed, not missing to add a subtle note of provocation to the tone of her voice. "I wonder which and how many thoughts may currently dwell in that little head of yours."

"Please... stop mocking me," Darya murmured between her teeth, keeping her gaze fixed in front of her, trying to avoid looking at the Duchess at all costs.

"This is not the appropriate language to use when addressing to a noblewoman," said Dasha, feigning indignation. "But we'll have time to learn how to fix that, won't we?"

She didn't wait for an answer. Since the very beginning, since the moment in which Darya had handed her Hailey's letter in the gardens of the Ducal Palace, Dasha had been absolutely crystal clear about that matter; the deployment of the army that the Queen had so urgently requested would have come, but with a price. And that price would have been nothing less than Darya herself.

Dasha had thought and fantasized for long time about what Darya's future role could have been, once she would have been finally back to her court and, therefore, completely in her power. Her excellent military and martial skills would have undoubtedly made her an excellent Commander of the Ducal Guard, as Dasha had planned for her since the day she had victoriously emerged from the Tournament of eight years before; however, the Duchess was finding herself very reluctant at the thought of dismissing Lady Sarissa Doran from that role, just to make room for Darya... especially given the many additional, valueble services that the current Lady Commander was able to offer her. No, it would have been necessary to create a new and separate role for Darya.