Ring of Cren [18+]

Chapter 11

Anastasia's POV

The next morning, my Crows have gone early to the baths, so I wake up alone in my room. I use the time to get ready, and I can feel how it's extra chilly out, even with my fire roaring in the hearth.

I pull out a new costume, this one a thick dress, with one difference. The middle is exposed, around my waist – it's an area I've left for a slave chain, fashioned into a belt.

I also take the shackles fashioned into bracelets, and I put them on my wrists.

I would always show the women of the Cren Court that I was connected to all of them in our combined misery of slavery and submission.

If a princess and Ice Seer could wear such things as fashion – it was no longer a vice, it lost it's meaning as just weight on our bodies.

I'm in the bathroom, making sure everything is centred, the glacier-coloured wool, the bronze arm bands. Lastly I dust some bronze sparkling powder to my mouth.

I brush out my hair one last time and then stand back. The material hugs my breasts but you can see the belt looping around my skin in the middle, and it looks dangerous – like I'm a chained up lunatic.

As I admire myself, I did not hear my bedchamber door open, because I get a fright when Damion walks around the wall to appear in the archway to my bathroom, looking at me – while he wears his trousers, his bronze torso clean and uncovered. I know what they expected of me today – and I was quietly looking forward to their seduction again. I loved thinking about his mouth between my legs, lapping up my desire, but it will have to wait until I address the people.

Damion pauses to take in the chain, the unlatched shackles, and my new dress.

He keeps in his amusement, no outright laughter thankfully, but I see the look in his eye.

"I have questions," I ask formally, "Perhaps you can answer me openly, Crow?"

Damion slowly paces toward me, "...Good morning, Anastasia..." he paces to my back and around to my other side, inspecting the outfit, "Ask."

Instead of turning to him and his glorious hard body, I look at myself in the mirror as I pat down my dress a few more times.

"When people Vanish... like my family – when they were murdered, do you benefit...?" I already know the answer, but I want Damion to tell me if my Crows are secretly enjoying the waves of death throughout our lands.

"It has always been that the bone spirit reaps the living and then magic is spun in the Eye, by the Mal," Damion explains slowly and gently, "The magic was waning, the bones were gone, so the price was high to refill the Eye... we were human once, too, Ana, and we knew this, we learned to tap into the realm and system already in place. Axe, Rurx, Krystoph and I were great strategists, and perfect comrades... but we were sick of fighting with our mundane hands, battles that never ended, knowing one day our only reward was old age, disease and death. We wanted to match the monsters beyond who feed off our own Vanished. The journey is too long to tell you now. But the end result was the same. Now we not only live eternally but we can also harness that death magic as our weapon. We will always be warriors first and monsters second. When we were named princes and sorcerers of the Eye... it was more the majesty of such titles for our achievement... but we are and always will be defenders of mortals," I nod because I appreciate the detailed answer. I feel like Damion despises me slightly less now for being in command of him – he even trusts me to hear their truth. I give him my approval with my respectful silence, absorbing all that information. He then drawls to me, generously offering, "Any other questions, princess?"