Chapter 26
The cool edge of a blade pressed to her throat awakened Bloom at dawn.
First instinct was to laugh. As if a simple holo-blade could harm her!
Then, the warm body beside her snuffled, still lost in the bliss of sleep. Flora nestled deeper in the sheets, pressed against Bloom's body, completely vulnerable. This blade may not hurt Bloom in any significant matter, but it could harm Flora. Flora who was soft and tender in all the right places, who relied on Bloom to be her strength.
Vision turned red.
In the blink of an eye, Bloom had the offending wrist crushed between her claws, the blade falling from thick fingers and clattering to the ground. Disarmed, Bloom rolled over and threw her would-be-assassin to the ground. Imagine her surprise when she recognized the man trapped beneath her body, her knee to his chest and her hands wrapped around his throat.
"You dare threaten to me? You dare to threaten my mate," Bloom snarled, claws squeezing until Riven's face turned a blotchy red.
He clamored to free himself, grasping pathetically at her arms. One hand tried to pry her fingers away while the other grasped something: a sheet of heavy card stock closed with a red, waxy seal. He waved it in the air, drawing Bloom's attention.
With a push, Bloom let Riven go, leaving him to heave and gasp on the floor. Her cock was still with her, hanging flaccid against her thigh. Riven stared at it, eyes bugged out of his head. Though, that could have been from oxygen depravation. These creatures needed so much of it to survive.
Weaklings.
She snatched the letter from Riven's hand and broke the seal. However, she didn't get very far. All she read was the final line, the line where the signatures went where one stood out much larger than the others.
Icy.
...
"You send an assassin to my rooms?" Bloom bellowed, bursting into the dining hall with intent to kill. No one stopped her, either. Not her own soldiers nor the Army of Decay. They let her march right up to where these witches were feasting on breakfast platters, fattening themselves like queens.
"Whatever are you talking about, Your Majesty?" Darcy asked in as simpering, guileless tone.
"The bastard with the purple hair who had his sword to my throat," she sneered, throwing Riven's broken blade upon the table, rattling the dishes and cracking eggs. "You sent him to kill me."
Icy cleared her throat and set down her utensils. "I sent him to wake you. And to deliver a message."
"That we are to go to war?"
"That we would like to enter negotiations." Icy fixed Bloom with an assessing gaze, lowering her fork and knife so that nothing distracted her. "We aren't stupid. We know that you've had a taste of conquest, and you like it. I can see it in your eyes. Like I told you before, we are both powerful women. We know what we want, and we take it."
"Speaking of, how is your little fairy pet?" Darcy asked, casually buttering a slice of toast with a devious smirk. "Was she everything you wanted and more?"
"I heard her screaming last night," Stormy said lewdly, tossing her head back and letting out a gross exaggeration of Flora's moans. "Oh, oh flower! Fuck me!"
Bloom's cheeks blushed a furious red. Those sounds were private. Those sounds were hers and hers alone.
"Next time, try soundproofing the walls if you don't want the whole castle to know you're fucking," Darcy said before Bloom could even protest, glaring down in Bloom direction. She took a vicious bite of her toast, brushing the crumbs from purple lips. "That's what Riven and I do. It's common courtesy."
Stormy rolled her eyes, and Bloom heard her mutter, "yeah, right."
That earned Stormy an elbow to the ribs. The rumble of thunder that came with Stormy's yelp of pain was unexpected, but no one reacted like it was out of place.
Oh, so that was the angle. The witches were mad that Bloom laid hands on Darcy's little boyfriend. Well, Bloom should have been even rougher. That was the price they would have to pay for the threat of harm to her person or her mate.
"Riven is a big boy. He can handle a little rough play," Bloom said cooly, never breaking eye contact with Darcy, enjoying the way the witch's eyes darkened even further. She could feel the urge Darcy had to use her flame, to scramble Bloom's mind into spaghetti. But she held back. She kept munching on her toast, no doubt imagining it was Bloom's head.
"Are you two done with this dick measuring contest?" Icy asked, impatient. She sighed and stood from her spot at the head of the table. It chafed Bloom the wrong way - Icy thinking she was still in charge.
"For now." Bloom turned her attention to the ice witch. "What about these negotiations?"
"I won't discuss such heavy things over breakfast." Icy threw her napkin down on her plate. She stepped around the table, in front of it, until she was a few feet from Bloom with one hand extended. "If you had bothered to read the invitation Riven brought, you would have found a request to join us for dinner to discuss our joint futures."
"Joint?"
"There's some benefit to working with succubi, I must admit. Just as there is benefit to you for working with witches. Power, for one. Our army, for another."
Fine. Let them work under the guise of allies. Let them believe that these negotiations would be fruitful. Bloom could play the long game. After all, she had been waiting for a shot at the witches who betrayed her for a year now. Some wounds still turned, and sometimes, late at night, Bloom could feel their fingers digging in her chest, picking her Flame apart.
That Flame called to be whole once more. It whispered her name, sweet as any lullaby, the sound increasing the closer she stepped towards the witches who wielded it without the right.
Bloom closed her clawed hand around Icy's colder, more delicate one. They shook once. A gentleladies agreement.
But Bloom was no lady. When the time came, she would tear these witches limb from limb.
...
In the dungeons, Bloom found peace and solidarity. There was something so very right about being in the dark, in the damp. The cold was not her ally; no, she was greater suited towards the heat. But Bloom would take comfort where she could find it and relish in the pleasure discomfort brought.
At the end of the dungeon there was an antechamber. Here is where they held Tecna, spread out on a rack, bound and gagged with clamps on her nipples. An Incubus fucked her with a phallus too large for her small body to handle while another twisted dials on a machine attached to the nipple clamps, jolting her body with electricity. The tears that leaked from her eyes were not from pleasure. No, they were from pain.
Bloom inhaled deeply, feeding off the raw, sexual energy.
"How goes the torture?" Bloom asked, knowing Wrathis was somewhere in the shadows. After all, she had commanded him to oversee torture until she could be there, herself. Seems as though he was not as gentle with their victim as she would have liked, but Bloom couldn't bring herself to be mad. No, she liked watching the purple-haired bitch writhe.
"We have yet to extract anything valuable from the fairy." Wrathis stepped out of the shadows and to Bloom's side, as if he were always there. He studied the scene before him with detached monotony. "If I didn't know any better, I would say she was immune to our seduction. Sexless."
"That isn't true," Bloom replied. "She and Musa were lovers in our school days. My first encounter with them was walking in on them fucking, and she sure as hell wasn't immune to that bitch's cunt then."
"Not all sexuality is as apparent as ours," Wrathis mused, stroking the smoky stubble on his chin. "Sometimes sexuality does not brim at the surface, but lie deep within. It must be coaxed out, persuaded, only by ones we trust most."
Bloom turned to her father fully, curious. "You are saying that Tecna only responds to certain stimuli?"
"Or certain people."
His eyes lingered behind him, to the hall of cells that held the other fairy traitors. Bloom knew what he was thinking then, the genius of his theory and spectacular observation.
"Find the lovers," Bloom commanded him. "Take them up to my room. I will handle them later."
"And now?"
"Now, I have negotiations to prepare for."
Just the thought of breaking bread with those witches set Bloom's vision red. But it was a necessary evil, another obstacle that must be swiftly tackled. She would not come to dinner unprepared to make a stand for her people, even if it was all for show.
"Is there anything else you would like to say to me, daughter?" Wrathis asked as Bloom walked away, cool and collected with both hands folded behind his back. "Anything regarding your mate?"
Bloom stilled. This time, her vision did bleed red with the sting of betrayal. She turned to Wrathis.
"Azazel told you - "
" - nothing. He told me nothing. He didn't have to. I can smell the fairy on you." Wrathis wrinkled his nose as if the scent caused him displeasure. He looked between Bloom's legs. "Besides, you have grown your phallus. That would only appear had you taken a female lover as your mate. The only new females to enter our sphere have been the prisoners, specifically the one you ordered to your bedchamber. Do you care to explain?"
"There is nothing to explain." Bloom snapped. Her hackles rose, ready to defend Flora from her sire. She had hoped Wrathis would take the news well. Clearly she had thought wrong. "Flora is my mate. Our bodies sing a song only we can hear. Last night, I claimed her as my own, and she is under my protection as sacred law mandates."
"I would not dare to interfere between the mating of my queen," Wrathis acquiesced, though warning lingered in his eyes. "However, I question your judgement to let a fairy so close to our affairs. I must ask if you had calculated the risks, especially since we are so close to seeking our revenge."
"There is no risk. Flora would not betray me. She doesn't have the strength."
"Are you certain?"
"Yes."
"Then all is well." Wrathis returned to his neutral state. "I offer my congratulations, daughter, on your mating. May you both bring each other years of boundless pleasure, as your mother brought me."
Bloom wished she could believe these wishes to be genuine, but her heart had hardened to the idea of anyone accepting she and Flora as a mated pair. It was apparent now that Bloom would have to fight for their love, and fight alone. So be it.
"The nerve of that fucking animal!" Icy fumed and threw another crystal ball at the wall, finding satisfaction in the way it shattered when it hit the hard stone.
"You're the one who wants to break bread with her."
"Yes, Stormy, because we have no other choice!" Another crystal ball fell victim to Icy's rage. Soon, Griselda's old office would be empty of them, and Icy would have to find something else to throw. "You saw how powerful she was. You felt it. And she came with a fucking army! We can't waste our time, our resources, our own power waging war on her before we've even left the planet!"
"So your grand plan is to what? Surrender?"
"Surrender? After all we've sacrificed? No," Icy asserted, slamming her fist down on the desk. "We are going to fight dirty. We are going to fight in the way of witches."
"You lost me," Stormy said, scratching her head.
"There aren't any real negotiations?" Darcy asked.
Fools, both of them.
"Riven!" Icy bellowed, drawing him from his stoop in the shadows. "Are you clear on what you have to do?"
"Get close enough to the succubus queen to knock her out, then put a stake through her heart," the soldier rattled off on his fingers, never losing that cocky grin. "Easy as pie. Now that I've got her riled up, she'll be too busy looking where I want her to look. Won't even see me coming."
"That is a terrible plan," Darcy said with a scowl. Icy didn't pay her much mind. The only reason that cow didn't like it was because it meant her boyfriend would have to spend time with a woman who wasn't her.
"Yeah," Stormy agreed, which was unexpected. Usually their youngest sister didn't exhibit much sign of intelligence. "Can you even knock out a succubus? They're like, indestructible."
"And we are the three most powerful witches in the universe." Icy marched over to the bookshelves and ripped a particularly dusty grimoire off the shelf. The leather shrieked when it opened, full of evils and secrets forbidden from students. They weren't students anymore. They could handle this grimoire, and any fucking succubus that got in their way.
"Bloom is creature just like any other in this forsaken universe. She can be betrayed. She can be poisoned. She can bleed." Icy tore through the pages, manic with rage, until she found what she was looking for. She spread her fingers across the words, let the power run through her. Yes, this would do nicely. "And she can die."