1
Bryony
“Corinne, if I have to wait another moment to taste you…" Declan's rasp trailed off into an agonized sigh, his fingers gripping the Lady of Henwood Manor's waist like a vise.
Corinne's body arched toward Declan, the refusal on her ripe lips wavering beneath his dark gaze.
"Your Highness, they are arriving."
My brow furrowed, my own fingers as tightly wrapped around the book as the disgraced knight Declan's hands were around his beloved. The air shimmered warmly around me, my heart racing with the passion provided from the page, my core hot and clenching. Out of the right corner of my eyes, my handmaid bounced anxiously on her toes, waiting for me to stir from my window seat in the library. And out of the left corner of my eyes…
I knew perfectly well the men were arriving. Every single, eligible man under fifty in Kimmery would be forcibly encouraged to attend a royal choosing ceremony. I could hear their voices shouting gaily to one another through the crack in the window, could see the dark trail of them just beyond the white jasmine-dressed gate as they gathered for entrance. The peace of my favorite place in the castle—the sight of the gardens out the window and the sea glittering in the horizon—was now marred by the rowdy sounds and bustling bodies of men. It was time for me to face my choosing, and not even my favorite book could delay this moment. All at once, the hint of desire I'd felt moments ago with my reading, vanished.
"The dowager queen is—"
"Yes, Una, I understand," I said with a sigh, and rose from my seat, turning my back on my formerly favorite view and sliding my beloved book into the deep pocket of my dress.
The dowager queen, my grandmother, would be growing impatient if not openly irate with the servants the longer I lingered. I'd already delayed the day of my first choosing for five years. Even my younger sister, Camellia, had taken her pick of men twice, and she'd only been of age for three years.
But how could I choose men when I failed to crave them when face to face? A man might be as perfectly formed as a work of art, but he didn't stir anything in me the way a hero from a book would. I was faulty. Broken in some way.
I followed Una out of the library and through the castle, down to the great hall where the choosing was about to take place. I could've managed the trip alone, certainly, but my grandmother was unlikely to leave me unchaperoned until I was pinned firmly beneath her hand, facing the sea of men I would have to draw lovers from.
I'd been a witness to both of Camellia's ceremonies, my grandmother of the incorrect opinion that watching my younger sister tackle a grown man to the floor and mount his barely erect cock would be some inducement to me to take my own Chosen. Instead, it had only made my own confusion more persistent.
Why could I feel heat and desire and the power of the queen's line—our legendary and potent Hunger—while reading a book, but never when faced with a man in real life? The Hunger was the dominant magic that sustained Kimmery's prosperity and power. Grandmother maintained her own small harem of Chosen but stepped down from sustaining her Hunger a few years ago. It was traditional for the queen's line to have at least two women keeping the Hunger rich and our people happy. If I joined my mother and Camellia, Kimmery might see an even greater golden age. I wanted to be a good queen for my country, wanted my people to be happy and healthy and wealthy.
All I had to do to ensure it was take a group of men to bed and slake my desires on them. Desires I had yet to feel for anyone in real life.
Una paused by the door, returning to her nervous bounce as my steps slowed in my own approach. The great hall was opened up and polished for the occasion, and I winced as I stepped into the room, sunlight catching on a dripping chandelier and casting a blinding ray into my eyes. Male murmurs sounded by the far end of the room, the procession trailing in at a single file, walking toward the platform where I would sit and observe them, making my choices.
My grandmother was there already, tall and imposing with a willowy figure and a stern gaze that moved from the men and fastened onto me. I resisted the urge to duck my chin as I would've as a child, and instead held my head high, ignoring the trail of men as I hurried to the platform to take my seat on my throne.
Grandmother's hand pinned me in place before I had finished bending. "You've been putting this off for years, Bryony."
"I know, Grandmother," I said softly.
The men were stripped down to their stockings and underwear. Some even less, as if I might be more tempted to choose them at the sight of their dangling flesh bouncing listlessly between their thighs. I had seen plenty of men and their cocks in my twenty-three years, and I wasn't convinced that buck naked was a man's best presentation. They took their place in organized lines so I could view ten of them at once, speeding up the process of the choosing, and their reflections bounced off the mirrors around the room and blurred over the ornate gilding until the great hall was an abstract of flesh.
"Your sister, Camellia, will have snatched up all the good ones by now," Grandmother said.
My face twitched as I wrestled down the urge to wrinkle my nose. I didn't like Camellia's men at all. But Camellia must have because ever since her second choosing ceremony, the only time I saw her was when she had one between her thighs. She was doing her part for the kingdom.
Now it was my turn. That was my only consolation—what I lacked in desire for the men trailing into the room, I at least had for seeing the betterment of my kingdom.
"Although, he's not bad, now is he?" Grandmother murmured, and this time I couldn't withhold my wince as her fingers dug into my shoulder at the sight of one of the men in the front line. "Millie, grab that one there. No, the one to the right of him!"
The man in question stepped out of the line and up to my grandmother's lady-in-waiting with a nod. He was terribly tall, much too tall for me, surely? And he did remind me a bit of the way men were described in the novels I loved so dearly. Ruggedly handsome with a dimpled chin and curling dark hair falling over his brow. He had thick, defined muscles and more dark hair curling over his chest and down his thighs. At least he was wearing underwear.
"Drop those, let us see it," Grandmother barked at him.
The man's eyes flicked to mine—a kind of cheerful, agreeableness in his gaze—but he was as careful as I was to keep his face neutral in front of the dowager queen. His thumbs hooked into the laces of his underwear, and he shimmied the fabric down his hips, exposing his cock.
Can't fit, I thought, blinking at the over-generous appendage.
"Oh yes, that's very nice," Grandmother murmured. "Fluff it up for us a bit, won't you?"
I had seen sex. I had seen men waiting for their turn to worship my mother, and my sister seemed to revel in thrusting her sex life in my face. The women in my family were not shy in their appetites, nor were they expected to be. The queen's line must be virile, must have the Hunger. It was our duty and our gift to the kingdom. And yet I still shied away from the sight of the beautiful man reaching down to his own cock as he tried to stroke it to life for my grandmother's perusal.
"Very impressive, that's enough," Grandmother said. "Unless you'd like him now, Bryony?"