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Atticul laughs. “Get back to your whore, Damon, and leave me to mine. We dock in Attar tomorrow morning. This is your last chance to indulge your foul desires.” Atticul shuts the cabin door in Damon’s face.

Damon storms back to his cabin, enraged. Atticul might not have admitted that he dosed Lyr with foribunda, but he didn’t deny it either.

He returns to his cabin to find Lyr moaning on the cot, sheet flung on the floor and his naked body completely displayed. Damon freezes in the doorway looking at him. He feels his anger drain away. He is dumbstruck. Lyr is beautiful.

Damon’s cock thumps. He’s hard. His blood is so high.

Zai, he wants.

He could take him now, he thinks. He could pull Lyr naked from that bed and press him to the cabin wall and kiss him deeply. He could touch every inch of that marked skin. He could throw Lyr onto the floor and bury himself deep in that pretty ass. He owns him. Lyr is his slave. Part of his spoils from the ruin of Pellex. He can do what he wants. Who would know? What difference would it make?

Everyone on this ship thinks he’s fucking him anyway.

How much would the situation really change if he fucked Lyr now?

He walks over to the cot, slowly, like he’s approaching a sleeping wolf. Lyr looks up at him, eyes glassy. He looks almost surprised for a moment like he’d forgotten Damon was there. But that soon passes. He gasps and reaches for Damon.

“Please Damon, lie with me. Please. Use me. I want to please you. Please let me. Please.”

Damon kneels beside the cot. The lust he is feeling for this slave burns through him like fire.

He reaches out and puts a hand on Lyr’s shoulder, touches his skin. “You want this? Me?”

“Yes. Gods. Yes. I want it,” Lyr whines. “By all the Sidusia, yes.”.

“You know that you are drugged.”

“I wanted you before. I wanted you as soon as I saw you. You are so beautiful I cannot think. Please kiss me. Please.”

Damon’s heart hammers in his chest like a marching drum. He is balanced on the edge of a precipice. This will make him weak. But he also knows it’s too late. He’s not balanced at all. Not on the edge but already falling. He can’t stop this. No power in the Azurian Empire could stop him. The wrath of Zai means nothing. Even Atticul’s plotting means nothing. The fact Lyr is drugged, is a slave… he puts it from his mind. He leans down. He puts his mouth on Lyr’s. Lyr’s wild moan of desire as their lips connect goes straight to his cock like a sharpened dagger.

Damon answers it, growling his need into Lyr’s mouth, his own hips canting with his desire, need so great he wants to swallow Lyr, consume him. Lyr opens his mouth under Damon’s, urging him deeper. Damon slides his tongue into Lyr’s mouth with a profound urgency to take all of him, every last part of Lyr’s mouth, before either of them comes to their senses.

Damon slides a hand around the back of Lyr’s skull and pulls him closer. Their bodies meet. Lyr’s bare skin against Damon’s leather jerkin. Lyr’s slender, delicate chest against Damon’s broad muscle.

Damon holds Lyr, keeps their mouths connected as he swings a leg up on the cot. He puts his body over Lyr’s and pushes him down under him. Lyr is so pliable. So soft and sweet and open. Lyr is beautiful, moaning as Damon bears down on him, tongue deep in Lyr’s sweet mouth, hands on Lyr’s chest, waist, thighs.

They kiss and kiss on the cot. Damon’s soul is on fire. His cock is like iron. He will not be able to make love sweetly and gently. He will not be able to control his desire. He will take this whore roughly, cruelly. He will… He will…

“Please,” Lyr moans, a word leaking out through a tiny break in the kiss. “Please, Damon. Take me.”

Lyr is drugged, Damon’s conscience says. He’s drugged and he’s a slave. He’s a man. It’s a sin of the body. But it means nothing. The sweet life he has built for himself in Attar means nothing. Cannot compete with the way Lyr sets every part of him aflame, desire making him helpless.

His hands slide over Lyr’s skin. Touching him as he moans in response to every movement. Damon pulls back from the kiss and lifts himself, pulling back so he can look at Lyr, wanton on the cot, burning for him. He runs his palm over the centre of Lyr’s chest. The four runes there. He looks at Lyr’s arms, covered in spirals, swirls and small dots. Most are faint, just delicate pale lines. Old scars, not noticeable at a distance, but higher up his arms they are heavier, darker, some of them clearly branded there with irons, not cut. Damon can see all of it. The complex pattern of marks that cover Lyr’s skin. The most noticeable are the ones on his chest. Just four runes where every other part of him is crowded with marks and symbols. Those four runes catch the light. But the cabin is dim. The sun is setting outside. The candles on the table are unlit. Damon looks again. He realises the light comes from the runes themselves, glowing softly on Lyr’s chest.

He runs a finger over the lines of the four shapes. There’s some strange magic in him, woven into the scars on his body.

Damon pauses, “Who made these?” he says.

“Made what?” says Lyr, dreamily. He reaches up for Damon, his arms arching as if he wants to pull Damon back down into another kiss.

But Damon shakes him off. “These marks all over you. They are from rituals. They have magic in them. What are they? Did King Ramel do this to you?”

Lyr blinks, “Ramel, no. Jareleezi did them. Queen Jareleezi.”

“Queen Jareleezi? Ramel’s step-mother? The old queen. Why did she mark you so? Why would King Ramel allow that?”

Lyr smiles, sweet and soft. His voice is soft too. “Ramel had nothing to do with it. He had no say over what was done to me. I belonged to her. To Queen Jareleezi. I was never Ramel’s slave. I was hers. I wasn’t her whore. I was… something else. She was a sorceress. She used me for her rituals. Sometimes she used my body.” Lyr’s voice is still dreamy. He ends with a whining noise and tries to reach for Damon again. “Kiss me, please.”