1
A Shared Voice
His heavy brow scowl fared to siphon my malice-laden tongue. His tone, boisterous and contorted by his grimacing mouth— crooning me in crimson. I've not admitted a side, yet he's keen on the matter that I'm nowhere near being his ally, let alone being unbiased. From how my delegations lie on the map, I've masqueraded my political bidding under the guise of a frugal peace treaty.
His staunch approach parrots every decision made and turns my curled knuckles white beneath the table. I can barely curtail my temper.
"You've given them more than they deserve or what's fair, Dovahkiin."
I can scarcely stifle a sigh or resist rolling my eyes. Behind my ebony helmet, I'm allowed to display a dribble of annoyance. However, to anyone that looks upon me, I'm as stoic and unbiased as they come. I offer more of my proposals, slighting him with each land distribution for the empire. I give Ulfric less land and smaller cities, dooming his occupancy to hold a lighter weight once battle resumes. Guising this under pure inconspicuous disquisition, he stews with each disinclined agreement.
He gives a scoff when addressing anything outside the war, mocking those around us as if he were to beat his chest and thu'um us all into oblivion. I raise a brow he can't see, yet I know he knows I'm unimpressed.
The meeting ends. Everyone gets up, grumbling about the greater good of Skyrim or the impending doom of dragon mayhem, yet he lingers in the room. I'm the last to rise from my seat at the front of the table, the unspoken "Guest of Honor."
Standing beside me, he is attempting to intimidate me in height, to no success. I stand with my shoulders back, head tilted to look up at him. He may be as ruthless as the folk songs, the hushed stories, and the riveting rumors, yet I pay him little mind. I'm not the girl with smoke-engulfed lungs awaiting death as Alduin burned bodies into ash anymore.
The Dovah bow to my sword- still crisp remains filtered like gravel on my breastplate. Just as in his own from his fabled tale, my thu'um could rip him apart, limb from limb.
"Was there something further you wished to discuss?" I offer, mirroring his bravado. It disconcerts him, making him grunt out a response.
"Since you are a woman, perhaps it makes sense you would not understand how you've dealt me a poor hand."
The audacity of this bastard.
Perhaps I took his simplicity for a lack of intellect. He picked up on more than I intended.
"Ulfric, I was presenting you the fairest trade I could give. This is not political. It's about Alduin."
"Bullshit," he grumbles underneath his breath, only audible for me to hear.
I take a breath as he leans into me, his alluding figure consuming the space around us. Many have left already- too preoccupied in preparation to pay us any mind. Assumedly he's already told his puppet to wait outside without him.
"I thought you'd be of kin. You and I are not meant to yield to common men."
It's always down to this, isn't it? Nord Ulfric, the once supposed Dovahkiin Ulfric. If he can appeal to what one thing, he has in common with me, he credulously thinks he can win me over.
"I'm not," I reply through gritted teeth, passing by him in a sly shift of my shoulder. My armor bumps into his- as my concealed eyes aim directly for the door.
He doesn't follow me, and I wonder if he will fight the war as he does in conversation. With a little tact, and far too much pride.
Two
Between Mouths
I've joined the empire- yet the war is still relative in infancy.
After defeating Alduin, the trip to Wilhelm is laborious and albeit slothful. I go through companions like mead, as I dread my exploits have made my humanity like the sword at my hilt. A weapon sharp- used for slaughter.
Dovah now bow at my voice, past warriors come from the dead to brawl beside me. Deals with Daedric gods leave me sated with diluted empathy. To have come this far, the war feels unfamiliar, almost irrelevant. The Greybeards had preached this in warning- that like my forefathers I may become so entrenched in my pursuit of power I would lose sight of the common welfare.
I have become more reminiscent of my Dovah bloodline than my human counterpart- and it shows.
He is awaiting me at his throne, his silver band ring twisting between pinched fingers. It is not the first time I have traveled to his dwelling, and it would not be the last. The people he pledges his allegiance to are the same muttering anecdotes of his indifference, his spoils of grandeur. If you're not a Nord, he refuses to acknowledge you.
Yet here I am, and all he can do is sit there and assess me.
In an abrupt movement, he shifts upright in his seat, gripping the ring in a coiled fist.
Ulfric bellows out, speaking from the barrel of his throat, "You are either naive or prodigious in your impolitic impropriety." He stops, considering me, before continuing, a hint of diversion lacing his words, "Coming here. An enemy of war."
I sigh, behind my back his many spectators galvanize in their chatter, their cutlery as sharp as the diatribe they share for me. I roll my shoulders and raise my chin. If I could crush the skulls of dragons, then these men were nothing but tendon bit down between my teeth.
"I humbly inquire for your private audience, as I have a dire need to discuss with you…" Ulfric does not react, a bloated fog of quiet setting. The Jarl of Whiterun's axe weighs heavier at my hilt.
His emerald eyes narrow, his mouth forming a taut line.
I half expect him not to utter any response, for me to make the journey back to Whiterun empty-handed, having been imbued by his lack of humility.
He stands swift. Ushering me to the hall beside us, he beckons.
"Come."
I'm almost unnerved at his manner, regarding me like an obedient dog. I feel the thu'um rumbling inside my chest, yet I refuse to be as archaic as him. I tread light behind him- sensing those wandering eyes are pillars of lead into the skin as they follow my retreating figure.
I hate it here.
They can hate me as much as they like.
As long as the know to fear me.
He leads me into a quaint and dimly lit room, the center table covered in war paraphernalia. The honey yellow glow of a handing lantern casts shadows over the faces of the two men waiting inside. Such as sand through my fingers, I let their glares pass through me. Ulfric dismisses them with a tilt of his head. I need not argue.
It is better if we are left alone.
However— despite myself, the recognition disseminates frissons. I swallow, faintly exhaling through my nostrils.
He shuts the door behind the men, and it offers a thump in closing. His presence is potent incense, consuming the room after they leave.
He glides over to the other end of the table opposite of me, and folding his arms over his chest, he peers dead into my eye.
"What is it, Dovahkiin?"
Without a moment to spare, I pluck the axe from my hilt and present it on the table. After assaying it, his jade irises meet mine once more.
"The Jarl of Whiterun requested me to give you this. And this letter."
I withdraw the letter and hold it out for him across the table. The skin of his hands is like leather as they skim against mine. Another shiver streams down my spine. Surely the reason has to be the bitter cold coming in through the cracks of his stone fortress.
He reads it. I shift my weight from foot to foot. He shakes his head and pushes the axe back over to me.
"There will be no use for this. My men will march upon Whiterun."
Of course.
He is without thought!
"Should you not consider your choice longer? You are choosing to unleash war upon an innocent city." I cannot quell the words as they breach past the barrier of my teeth.
How can he be so senseless?
He sneers, though not amused, and mutters low with gravel in his timbre a threat meant for someone not outside this room.
"If they are not with me, they are against me."
I cross my arms and scoff, "This is not a battle you can persist in. You should know where I will be when it takes place."
The frontline, having the heads of those imprudent enough to raise their sword in defiance. In their minds the enemy is the empire, yet the last person to deliver them to their maker will be me.
"Why choose to fight for the empire—" he grumbles out, "you squander your potential."
"If that is your attempt at flattery, I would hate to see what your attempt at vengeance is. Perhaps just as feeble."
His fingers curl in.
He circles the table, and before I know it, his hands are wrapped around my throat. My armor helmet prevents him from directly seeing my eyes and yet I have watched every emotion wither and wane across his countenance. His jaw clenches, the indent between his brows deepening like a slivered cut.
I don't respond, letting him hold my throat in his hands. In the pit of my gut, something awakens from slumber, a burning ember in my core. I could unleash the bounds of my voice and splay him across the room in scraps. I don't.
The tenor of his tone weaves its thorns into my chest.
"Everyone else may speak of you with grandeur, but you are nothing but a woman with her head on a guillotine."
My gauntleted fingers pull at his forearms, blasé. The simmer in me blisters hotter. He is stoking me into flames.
"You and I both know who is only a man. Do you think you can defeat a true Dovahkiin? You have spent your whole life in pursuit of being me."
His stare widens—and I take the moment of shock to tear his hands from my throat. He does not stagger backward, however; he remains close.
I pull off my helmet, my ashen mane cascading like madness over my face. The war paint beneath my pale eyes coal-colored stains, smudged and bled down my cheeks.
I listen silently to his short intake of air as his eyes truly meet mine for the first time since the beginning. From the beginning, when I was younger, we were both equipped to die on the same block. Not a word is uttered for a moment too long.
He is not appalled as I had anticipated. If anything, his contemplation unravels me, as if he were just inches from the crown.
It happens before I can register it, the clank of my helmet against the stone floor, his fingers laced in the strands of my hair at the back of my neck, his mouth on mine. My body was consumed in the flame— my mind numbed by bewildered awe. I hardly have time to register his movements, tongue pressed between my lips and in my mouth, his arm curling behind my back, pulling me nearer. The flurry of motion is all he is— a turning riptide, a cantankerous crack of thunder rushing in my ears. I gasp and he grunts, swirling his tongue around mine and half-moaning my name—not Dovahkiin— my name.
"Acacia."
I've never heard him say it, and I wish I'd never known because now it's imprinted in me like hot coal seared into flesh.
He holsters me upright, trailing his kiss down my jaw to my neck. My hands grip his cloak, the fur splaying between my coiled knuckles. I neither can push him away- nor pull him closer. The horror of realizing my resolve against even pursuing the latter makes me keen.
His lips enclose my earlobe, his staunch bravado breaking on a syllable. He's incredulous.
"You're ceaseless in provoking me."
I bite back a moan as his mouth puckers beneath my ear, sucking purple blossoms into my skin.
"You infuriate me." His fingers lace into my hair, tilting it to the side as his searing lips languish my neck. Fever sets in like I've been poisoned, my mind slurring, my body burning. His knee wedges between my legs, angled up to nestle between my thighs. There's too much metal to feel him press into me, and I lose half my mind for yearning for the sensation. I yank him by his hair, pulling it in from my jaw.
I cannot speak, as if the birthing of cowardice consumes me for the first time in many a month. I can't let it be known out loud, but my hands speak for me, gripping my boots and tugging them off one by one. He makes haste with me, choosing wisely not to prod at my choice, merely mirroring my impulse, unbuckling the strap of my weaponry from my waist, prying down the armor strapped to my ankles, my thighs. My exposed flesh would chill from the sudden exposure to cold if it weren't for his hands cupping my thighs, sealing the heat within me.
His eyes are ponderous— exploring the strain of my muscles and the curved ugly lines of scars embedded above my knee. His fingers are like wilting rose stems over the skin, the deep callouses of his finger pads scratchy and rough. My head tilts back and I bite my ebony armor knuckle. He doesn't touch me there, even though I'd suspected he'd be the type to plunge his fingers into me without prior prepping, without thought.
His forefinger graces itself in swimming circles around my clit, his thumb slicked by my glistened outer lips. I see his smile; I hear it in the gargle of his cooing voice when he leans in against my ear.
"You're dripping."
It's too horrible to acknowledge, but I feel it cascade down my thigh. I blame it on anything— having not pleasured myself in months, having not been touched in maybe years by someone else— anything… anything but having to do with him.
He infuriates me.
The smug demeanor, the leather scent of his skin, and the smoky haze drifting over his stare. I grab at his cloak in two fists full of fur. He's unbalanced, so he slumps to his knees in surprise as push down onto his shoulders with all my might.
My hands tremble a bit as he looks up at me, confused. I take his chin in my palm, anchoring his stare with mine.
"Clean it up."
His nostrils flare. There's a pause, and I wonder if I've wedged too far under the skin. His eyebrows deepen and without unlatching his stare from mine, he leans in between my thighs, his tongue flat against the former drip on my inner thigh. He slowly drags his tongue until his mouth hovers over my cunt, breathing hot and fanning out over it.
He's waiting for something, but I'm not going to say please.
Curling my fingers into his hair, I tug him into my core, nestling him there. His mouth opens wantonly, tongue swirling around my clit, before sucking it between his lips.
I muffle a moan forming deep in my throat, humming in tremors from my senses being engulfed in shivering silk. He laps at my cunt, burrowing his tongue between my lips and fucking me with it. I groan his name and I feel him grin.
Gripping him tighter— closer— the urge coils within me, building and building. I cannot resist grinding my cunt against his face, taking him for all he's worth. Electricity tinges in my veins and feels myself going blank. He feels it too.
"Belong… mmmff. To… me," his muffled words hum against my core, and I feel myself snap, oblivion exploding behind my eyelids, expanding like long electric tendrils through my body. He pants my name like a prayer to his God, my cunt like milk and honey he's thirsty to drink. My knees buckle, and he clutches my backside, his fingernails digging into the soft flesh.
Mere moments pass after it's over before loud solid footfalls echo through the hall behind the closed door I am perched against. My eyes snap open in horror— my hands immediately drop their vice grip on his hair.
"DON'T COME IN HERE," he bellows out, almost as loud as his thu'um, ferocious enough as if he'd murder whoever set foot in the hall. A gasp and footsteps peddle away just as quickly as they came.
The loud clanking of boots echoes down the hall behind the door, and it's enough to rid me of my haze. I shove him off like a pickpocket, as I wheeze slightly from the amount of overstimulation. I hadn't been touched in… well.
He's dazed as well, but the howling of his discernment is barely audible to me as his servant patters away quickly from the hallway again.
We both linger in silence.
I make work of pulling on my clothes, each piece of armor strapped in too tight, like wedging stone into flesh. The pain reminds me of where I am, what I've done. I cannot even feel shame, all emotion seems to dissipate into steam when I see his face, still slick from my cum. He smears the back of his hand with it, smiling at me.
It's a knowing smile. As if I were the one on my knees just now, sucking his cock kind of smile. He may have bowed down to me, but he's won.
I'm sure of this, yet—
He doesn't seem content or sated for long. He seems almost reluctant, and soft. Such a word never seemed to come to mind describing the man.
"Join me," he murmurs, and yet he makes no move to touch me again, "you've unraveled me. I would be less of a man if I didn't admit it."
I swallow.
"End the war, and I'd consider…"
It's not the answer he wanted, and it shows. He scrubs at his beard, slouched against the table. His eyes stray from mine.
He gives me a humorless laugh.
"On your terms?"
It's not a question.
"It will end on my terms; regardless of your decision," I state, and he smiles unkind, dragging his nails over his hair, his jaw clenching.
"You leave here, you cement yourself as the enemy."
That word feels foreign— strange now that he's confessed and had appeared so soft. But he says it with ferocity, through grit and restraint.
"You'll regret this," he states, the last effort to get me to reconsider.
I crouch down, my hands on my helmet. I place it back over my head, my countenance now concealed from his prying stare. My hand creaks the door open.
"We both will."
3
Restless in Silence
In the coming months, we are submerged in war. Bodies blanket fields, blood-soaked snow crunching beneath my boots. There comes a time when burial plots are too gratuitous to dig, yet the Empire's troops are burdened by brotherhood and insistence. I watch fresh dirt cast over their gaping mouths and transcended eyes, and with absent thought, I ponder what their last goodbyes entailed. If they had time to reconcile with what they will never return to. What children are left fatherless? Motherless? Orphaned?
It's better when their faces are swallowed up by the weeds and soil, so that they can only haunt me in the places untouched by waking hours. It is worse when I cannot differentiate between my army and his, as the men and women are still so young.
That youth is now encased in perpetual silence.
Their solemn stillness sinks its teeth in my soul.
It is better than their screams.
With every overturned patch of grass, I bury myself in shallow graves. Each battle waged and the village charred I become more disenchanted with the world on fire. He must know. How could he not? My Dovah seized and devoured his warriors, limb from limb.
I cannot sleep.
For when I do, I only know the plague of ceaseless warfare— their phantom shrieks dredging open the earth below, as I take to the sky on the backs of my kin. In flight, amidst the clouds, I can no longer make out that they are human. They are mere specks, roaming aimlessly in reckless abandon.
Sometimes he visits me in the vacuity of one-off Inn stays, caught in the pale moonlight, stalking in the corner, watching me. Taunting me. His alluding figure, shoulders hunched as he approaches, hands reaching for my throat.
When he strangles me, it is almost a relief.
Sometimes he cradles my neck, his lips slipping over my shoulder, his breath a gentle draft in my ear. I smell the winter blistered into his being. Charcoal smoke, pinecone incense.
When he touches me, I no longer breathe.
I wake in bed, clawing at my throat and smoldering in my body, fumbling out of animal furs.
A carrier bird soars East past the horizon, through storm, and throughout several dawns. I know where it will find him, shacked up in a tent positioned outside a major city, regrouping with recruits to negotiate deals. My inside knowledge of this event happens on a whim, Tullius' blind trust in me blooming with each black and blue bruise I bare beneath my armor. His regard for me resounds as thunderous as the lightning I call upon the weather to strike our enemies with. The scent of their flesh still burns my eyes, and I blink back the thoughts as he pays me no heed.
He is all pride.
His pride echoes in choirs of cacophony, the Empire's boisterous warriors too brazen to admit the trepidation boiling up in their stomachs every time we approach the trench of battle.
I try to avoid their presence, their drink, their lousy folksong rallying.
For it is when they look at me with their displaced faces— their shifting glances and stilted speech, that I am reminded of how I am no longer a stranger in the crowd.
It is not a look of pride, but fear.
I'm not one of them.
I am Dovahkiin.
Despite this, I find myself in between a drunkard spilling out his septims over the bar, and a recruit for the empire peaking at me in fidgeting glimpses, nursing the same bottle he purchased an hour ago. Being outside of my room causes the rest of the soldiers to gawk and spoil any reprieve I could find in drinking. Still - I knock back another bottle of mead.
Its Nordic signature taste of honey leaves me laconic.
Those Nords. Those Stormcloaks. With their senseless plights of casting aside families and cities, all in the pursuit of faith.
Ulfric.
If only he would set aside his pride. If only he would reign in his cattle. Then we wouldn't be positioning our men for slaughter.
4
The Mistress of Mist
Entrenched in the night, before another battle begins come that sunrise, I find myself creeping out of my room, and out into the forestry. A neighboring babbling brook beckons me, and I disrobe. Stepping down into the bitter cold waters, the ritual of rinsing their spirits from my skin commences. I scrub my skin raw, the water lapping at my shoulders. The moon is half-lit, a faint candle in the sky. Its hues engloom the surrounding forest in wax yellow.
Paarthurnax's words resonate within me.
"The will to power is in your blood."
I curl my fingers through the strands of moon dew. I remember his wheat blond hair slipping underneath my nails, the ticklish sensation it left. Sinking below the surface, I hold my head underwater.
When I return to my room, my dreams are fluid, flowing over me, carrying me in one seamless direction.
It is before the monotony of morning. A cawing bird rouses me from slumber. Opening the window seal, the carrier pigeon lands on my wrist, tipping his head. Strapped to his leg, above the bird's talons is where I find it. I unravel the parchment paper, and his words are in a scrawling script. Ink blots from each letter, smudging syllables, yet I can still make out the exact coordinates of his location, a place not too distant from me.
Below is a command.
Come to me.
I reread it too many times.
A command? A plea? Does he mean to negotiate or…something else?
Combing a hand through my locks with a sigh, I begin to dress in all my armor, strapping my potions and daggers to my hilt, fingers twitching at my helmet.
What am I doing?
Deflating onto the bed, I watch as the abyss of night eases into amber twilight. I get up, donning my helmet and disheveling the bed, gentle in opening all the drawers of my nightstand and plucking out any septims I find.
The distressed room eats at me as I push open the window, momentarily relieved I am on the first floor. Everything is in disarray.
I leave knowing they will postpone the attack, as without me – they wouldn't stand a chance.
What am I doing?
I saddle my horse and make my way down into forestry, having to get deep enough into the woods and far enough away from the Inn and surrounding settlement.
Days and nights are elusive, the passing hours pull at me, cascading me down hillsides, and back up to the mist of mountains. I ruminate in my head, a lineage of thought –
This is the only way.
I grip the straddle tight, gritting my teeth.
Vengeance churns within my stomach.
Something else swelters and conspires in my soul.
A dense mist spills over the mountainside, an eerie cast of white coating the night air. Crickets chirp and lightning bugs hover in a fuzzy glow. I've traveled this way before and mapped it out many months prior. Like a nocturnal animal, closing in on its prey— I even know where his men hide.
Snow trickles from the heavens, my vapor breath obscuring my sight. His men tuck themselves into the shelves of mountains. Their dwelling was a cluster of tents scattered out across the area below me, a firepit placed in the center. Its orange haze illuminates the ground, yet it casts no shadows. Everyone is asleep.
Cloaked in an invisibility potion, I make my descent, heart in my throat, smoke building in my lungs. I traverse behind the brush, listening in for voices, yet none come.
There, an adequate distance from the rest of the tents is that of a modest shed.
A place fit for a king.
5
Transpiring in the Dark
The door isn't latched, and when it creaks open, I half expect him to be in the midst of sleep. I slither in, sealing the door behind me, before taking in the surrounding room. It is quaint, with a makeshift bed burrowed against the left wall, and a desk positioned up at the back wall. The air is fragrant with notes of nightshade and thistle, as a flickering candle casts the room in sashaying silhouettes. Ulfric is hunched over his desk with his back facing me.
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
His shoulders stiffen, and I remain still.
"So, you have come to me so soon," he sneers, wheat hair tangled in the catch of his fingers, his posture upright and rigid, anchored to his chair. He sets down a quill pen and lets it roll from his grasp.
I have gone all of this way, and it is as though I am encased in a dream. Except now I am the creature of the night, creeping into his room.
Offering no immediate response, he shifts in his seat, elbow propping the hand over his mouth, holding his chin. My potion has run dry— and I know I am caught in his sight.
He leers at me, mouth tightlipped and jaw clenching. My gaze follows as his other hand reaches down, grasping the handle of an axe near his bedside. He grips it, yet doesn't move, and I take in the entirety of him, disheveled, chest barren in the dead of winter, adorned only in his undergarments. I dare not take my eyes from him, my hand feeling for the dagger at my hilt.
It is unnerving. His presence resounds within me like that of my own voice.
He stands, and we watch one another like territorial predators.
The candlelight dips and streams over pale skin, into the hardened fine lines of his temple. It bends over the blunt of his nose and the rift between his brows, casting a shadow over his stare, before revealing the gleam in his emerald eyes. There are phantoms in his glare.
The golden incandesce slips down his throat, past his sinewy shoulders, and slinks over the veins of his arms. His prodigious hands were calloused and strong, their size dwarfing mine. His chest rises and falls, ringlets of his chest hair traveling down to his navel, disappearing beneath the band of his sleep trousers.
I feel my breath become heavy, looking at him with half-hooded eyes. He lets the axe handle release from his fingers, where it rests back against the wall with a dull thud.
Dangerous.
"I am here to speak to you."
I mean this to be blunt, yet it comes out in a languish of syllables. I bite my tongue, steeling myself to no longer glance below his chin. He relaxes his shoulders but deepens his brow.
"You snuck in," he replies unkind, scrunching his nose.
"You told me to come," I mutter unbothered, and he huffs, dragging his hand over his face.
"I expected I wouldn't be conversing with you with that on," he imposes, gesturing towards my helmet.
Donned in Dovah boned armor, it is different from that in which he saw me before. However, my helmet still shields my countenance, and I waver. The helmet weighs on my head like the dead that weighs on my shoulders, and I stretch my fingers again toward the dagger at my hilt.
I could spring it on him, delve it deep into his throat.
My fingers splay and curl, motioning.
I lift my helmet over my head instead.
Ulfric watches in strange intrigue, sage meeting ice as his stare widens if only by a minuscule, his apathetic demeanor shifting if only for a fleeting moment. Without warpaint slathered black over my skin, he finally sees me. He takes me in for the first time in months, and though he offers nothing in reply, his eyes tell me countless stories I cannot yet comprehend.
Something shifts— his composure diluted in the space between us. I feel myself being cornered. One step forward, one step back. Yet I can't afford to reveal the heightening of my pulse. He steps closer, his body building like clouds before a storm, cast above me. I look to him like a Dovah in the sky; determined to subdue, yet persistently in awe. I hold my breath.
"There is only one reason women come to my room," he states, inching nearer, to where his chest grazes the boning of my armor. I suppress a wince, clenching my fists, my stomach churning.
A sneer etches itself into the corners of his lips, and the hostility in his tone turns to gravel.
"You wish to bed me, Dovahkiin?"
It is a jeer. I tilt my head at him, derisive in response, playing coy.
"You forget who plead that I come," I taunt, ignoring the heat that's begun to seep between my thighs as his stare wares down on me.
"I came to negotiate."
The word riles him, and his insincere smile dips. He doesn't touch me, yet his fingers curl in as if to keep from doing so.
"Negotiate," he parrots, balancing the word on his tongue, peering down at me, and meeting my eyes with an intensity like that of the river, running cold over my skin, threatening to drown me.
"With words?" He inquires.
"How else will I have you listen to me?" I bait back, chest bumping his own.
His stare darkens.
"By showing me," He goads, using his height as leverage as my back knocks into the wooden door. I tilt my chin up at him. He is domineering in the blade of his timbre, provoking me into silence.
This is what he wants.
I don't speak, and his palm touches my cheek, his thumb cascading over the plush of my bottom lip, and I hardly resist the urge to jerk away in shock. My heart thumps in a deafening manner, heightening the hazy slur of light surrounding us. He watches me with unraveling resolve, brows pinched, dragging his fingers over the side of my temple, over my chin. His countenance is chiseled moonstone, brushstrokes of crow's feet and the scruff of his beard, the indents of his frown. His hand moves down my jaw and splays over my neck.
It's there— the enduring spectra of his fingers, the way he pressed in before. It is coiling inside me, tightened, and on the verge of snapping.
"You are deliberate in undermining me." His eyes harden. "You have been countering all my efforts with defiance— aggrandizing the empire."
His stare drops to my lips. He hunches over, his warm breath fanning out over the incarnadine flush of my cheeks. He leans in, cupping the underside of my jaw, lips a slight gap from mine. I look at him beneath my lashes, waiting for something—
"Torture me with what you wanted to say," He murmurs.
I swallow, and he can feel it under his thumb.
"Unless your intentions haven't yet been made apparent."
"I have been trying to reason with you," I insist, trying to settle what has begun to grow inside me. However, out of my peripheral, I once more notice his desk, where the candle's feverish dance continues. There, a stack of clandestine parchments is spread out in disarray, and it is with immediacy that I realize what he'd been reading.
His letters I had burned.
All of mine he had kept.
I dare not betray this boiling uncertainty, this wavering acknowledgment of something I was not meant to be privy to. I look back at him, and his gaze is unreadable.
My fingers coil snugly around his wrist.
"Call a truce," I mutter back whilst broadening my shoulders and straightening my posture, as he contemplates me.
His face contorts, and he smears his other palm across his saturnine expression, a humorless chuckle forming deep in his throat.
"Ulfric," I admonish as I begin to pull at his hand, prying his fingers down. It even sounds patronizing to me, yet I must insist.
"No one else will have to die—"
Incited by fury, he tightens his grip around my throat, my head softly bumping into the door behind me.
"I should kill you," he bellows out not willing to capitulate and holds me still.
He holds my voice in with his fingers pressed over my skin just as before, meaning to contain my power. No one else can do this— get close enough to live another day, can subdue me even from their knees. The thought causes compunction to fester in my chest— and my nails bite into his skin.
"Conniving woman—" The vein at his temple pulses, and a conflagration consumes me as I drop my hand to my hilt, plucking my dagger from its holster. He catches on too late, as I press the sharp tip of the curved blade against his own throat, right under his chin. It does not yet pierce the skin, yet he releases me in an instantaneous motion. I edge him back from me, inhaling deep, evoking the rise of a dragon's tongue. He backpedals, the back of his legs knocking into the bedframe. He loses his balance, stumbling and thumping down on the bed as I crawl over him. I straddle him, white-knuckling the blade as it grazes his throat once more, the weight of my armor stifling his movement.
Regardless of this, his contentious glare is fixated on my own, offering his restraint in the way he flares his nostrils and grinds his teeth. His eyes flicker to his axe, cast aside by the bed, then back to mine. I follow his stare. He opens his mouth and I push my hand over it, silencing his speech.
"You'll regret that," I warn, as he seethes behind my hand.
His muffled language falls on deaf ears. I take a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back and exposing his throat.
I need to kill him.
I need to end this now— and forevermore.
I pull the dagger back and feel him flinch beneath me, yet I don't plunge it into his pulse. I stab the wall beside me, sheathing the blade into the wood.
6
Language of Nocturnals
He startles at the splintering crack of wood, sage eyes widening and lips ajar. About to speak, I pull his hair once more, tilting his head to the side. He offers a grunt in disapproval, but I persist. Leaning down, I graze his earlobe with my teeth, sucking it into my mouth, eliciting a strangled moan from his throat.
The sound is pathetic— yet insatiable.
I suck lavender blossoms over the slant of his jaw and into the bobbing of his adam's apple, marring his skin with the color of my claim. He juts his hips up against my own—helpless. The friction must be sweet agony, the boning of my armor confining him. I feel his hand clawing at mine, untangling my grasp from his hair, his other hand lacing its fingers in the strands at the base of my neck, wrenching me back. My lips unlatch from his neck with a soft pop, my glazed-over gaze finding his. He motions upwards, sitting up and holding me in his lap.
Our chests heave in unison, his emerald irises merely thin ringlets surrounding blooming pupils, peering at me like a hibernating beast, brusquely disturbed from slumber. There is no moment of reprieve— as he surges forward, catching my mouth in his.
I cannot suppress the moan muffled into his mouth, his tongue syruping my senses and parting my lips, tangling with mine. I drag my nails over the brush of his beard, cradling his jaw as the stubble tickles my nose. Something akin to his name hums in my throat and I feel him exhale, air fuming out of his nostrils as he embraces me closer. It is torture— this descent of delirium from our iniquitous eclipsing mouths.
He pulls at my shoulder plates, prying them off without drawing his kiss from me. I move with him, briefly coming up for air to undress, a flurry of aided motion to unlatch my hilt, yank off my boots, and remove my chest plate. Each piece of armor pummels the floor in clunks and thuds until I am left in only my undergarments. I fumble with the linen binding of my chest, and with a sudden snap Ulfric extracts the blade from the wall, impatience wrinkling his brow. He dips the blade between the fabric restricting my breasts, slashing apart the linen in a fluid swipe. The binding around my chest falls, exposing my unbound breasts, and my pink nipples perked and pebbled by the frigid draft in the room. The severity of his stare causes a series of shivers to run up my spine, as he casts aside the dagger across the floor.
His mouth finds mine once more with vigor, his covetous palms enclosing my breasts. He grazes the callous of his thumbs over my nipples and my breath stutters, and he grins against my lips, humming his approval. He tilts my head to the side, trailing his kisses down the slope of my throat, indenting his teeth in my shoulder, and sucking hickeys into my collarbone. My nails drag through his dirty blond locks, as his head dips down to press his lips to my breast, lapping his tongue over the bud of my nipple in devious flicks, then swirling it in teasing rings. It attenuates my mind. Winter's embrace unleashes me as heat surges between my thighs, fuchsia flourishing over my cheekbones.
"Ulfric—" I pant, fisting at his hair as he encloses his lips around my nipple, hallowing his cheeks and sucking it firm into his mouth.
"Hmmph," he muses, pinching my other nipple between his fingertips. My head swivels back and forth, the slow-moving magma languorous in my core, soaking my undergarments with its indecency. Leveraging him nearer as he suckles hot kisses to my other breast, I shift into his lap. I feel him against me, thick and heavy, growing taunt against his trousers. His arousal heightens mine as my fingers trail from the nape of his neck down to his crouch, splaying out over his endowment. He pulses at the featherlight sweep of my fingertips, gasping against my nipple.
"Ah—"
I wedge my fingers under the band of his trousers, yet I can only flail my fingers and stroke the skin above him with my nails. He unfastens his mouth from my nipple, sloppily clasping my jaw in hand to kiss me on the corner of my lips, arm wrapping around the small of my back. At my hip his fingers slip under the cotton of my panties, skimming over my skin. I try to touch him, the straining in his fabric almost pitiful, yet he mutters hoarsely—
"Takethem off."
I oblige moving from his lap, immediate in how I tug at his trousers causing him to raise his hips from the bed. I watch as his cock springs free, standing fully erect and throbbing. I absentmindedly consider if I can even wrap my fingers around the girth, yet he catches my fingers in his before I can try. He swallows hard, licking his lips as his guttural tone elicits my shivering sigh.
"Not mine, yours."
Oh.
I feel myself flush, yet he doesn't seem to dawdle in my fleeting embarrassment, instead placing his other hand on my hip, moving me so that I am standing off the bed. He swivels, sitting with his feet on the ground, glancing up at me for a moment, fingers curled at the fabric of my panties. He lingers– waiting. I know what he wants, but the usual strength that ignites me is now dripping between my thighs, and I cannot offer anything but nod, pulse thundering against my ribcage.
I let him pull down my panties, a tremor descending my spine as his half-hooded eyes follow, admiring my arousal stick to the fabric, coating my inner thighs. I try to calm my nerves, disgrace whiplashing me to my senses. Yet, it leaves just as suddenly, as he licks his lips— perhaps recalling the taste of me, all those nights ago.
My hand caresses the scruff of his beard, thumb tracing his cupid's bow and the pedal of his lower lip. I part his lips with my thumb, albeit smirking as he sucks it into his mouth.
He wants this.
I want this.
"Lay back," I command, and he gives me a serpentine smile, obedient in motioning back onto the bed, laying flat. I climb on top of him, placing my slick cunt over the base of his cock, quivering at the sensation. His hands grip at either side of my hips, slipping me over the slope of him, choking back a somber chuckle, my name made up of broken syllables—
"Acacia," he mumbles, and I take hold of him, smearing my arousal over the length of him, rising my hips so that the head of his cock slips over my clit— over, and over, and over.
It feels so fucking good and I close my eyes, ruminating on how he pants my name, hips stuttering up against me in a silent plea for entrance, to be enclosed in the velvet of my sex.
To have this supposed king beneath me, vulnerable, writhing.
To have Ulfric beneath me.
The thought is so immense that I cannot move, cannot bring myself to accept it—
All those months, writing back and forth in a loathsome script, stabbing the quill into parchment, like it was his flesh. The relentless and ruthless way we wrote to one another, yet there was always another carrier bird pecking at my window, rousing me from sleep, clawing at my daily thoughts.
Just take what you want and leave.
I open my eyes, and he's inspecting me, contemplating me. He must know it— he must see it on my face, feeling it in the way I hold still. This infuriates me— for how can he know anything? I cannot bare to look at him, can't bare to know how I've had no one else since him, how he had ruined me for wanting—
Fuck, fuck, fuck—
I push up on my knees, but I know it is not to stand. It is not to rightfully leave like I should, like all the divines would have it, like the Empire did not rest on my shoulders, willing me to collapse in every waking moment I persist in causes I was seemingly ordained to take a role in. I feel as though I am Dovahkiin in name only— the souls I've reaped not enough to make me forget the shackles I wore to a chopping block, listening to my meager sins warranting certain death.
We were both prisoners then.
What has changed? If anything?
He shifts upright, moves to cradle my cheek or kiss over my eyelids, and I hate him for it—
"Acacia," he whispers, and it is unlike any time he's said it before. It is soft, gentle, weary.
"I know what troubles you," he remarks in that same tone, and my nostrils flare. I meet his solemn gaze.
"I know we are the same," his fingers slip over my mouth, "so don't run away from me again."
"I'll give you what you want," he continues, his forehead pressing to mine, "what we both want."
You want all of Skyrim.
You want the empire.
You want endless power.
"What is it you want?" I susurrate. He proposes no hesitation, tasting my lips and then leveling my stare.
"You."
7
The Bear of Markarth
My mind is made up of sand he sifts his fingers through. His admission melted the marrow of my bones like wax, my breath weaving in the way his mouth collided with mine. He drops his hand from my face, sowing shivers along my skin, traversing down my spine and grabbing my backside in a clenching handful. I croon into his mouth when his fingers delve slyly between my lower lips, circling my clit with his thumb.
"You're so honest here," he coos against my mouth, "wet for me."
I drag my kiss from his mouth to the underside of his jaw, sinking my teeth into his flesh, before lapping at it in languid licks, my hand curling around the base of his cock. His fingers still as I purr into his ear, "you gloat too much."
I push at his chest, and he is compelled to lay down beneath me.
I straddle him at his hips, his cock bumping against my sex as I grip his wrists and pin them with one hand above his head, ceasing his touch.
I tilt my head to the side mocking coy, watching his chest rise and fall, his jaw clenching.
"Be a good boy and shut up."
I lift myself, knees cushioned by animal furs at either side of his temple, hovering my cunt over his face. I nuzzle his mouth against my clit, watching as he glowers at me. Regardless, his tongue flattens between my labia, stroking me in leisurely licks, and I keen, dropping my weight onto him, nearly smothering him. He jerks his hands from my loosened grip, squeezing at my ass, plunging his tongue inside me.
I moan, biting my knuckle whilst grinding and melding my cunt against his mouth, his eyes never leaving mine. The rhythm of his tongue guiding me closer and closer to the edge— to the divine— the sensation like that of soaring through the clouds, on the backs of my kin. An enticement no human is supposed to feel— no man can or could ever before emulate. His eyes close as he hums against my sex in an encouraging manner, the drench of my arousal coating the stubble of his beard. I feel him lift his hips, subconsciously thrusting up into the air, a desperate display.
Fuck. God. It's too fucking good.
I'm going to cum.
I try to rise from him, to cease this feeling of overwhelming titillation, yet he lifts his head, sucking on my clit, slurping at it whilst I start to shake.
"Yes—" he praises into my sex, "Cum for me, cum for me—"
My abdomen tightens and I feel its current rush from my head to my core, my eyes rolling back as I tremble on his tongue.
"Ulfric—" I cry, thighs shuddering and body convulsing, and I absurdly worry tears may spring to my eyes as cum dribbles down his chin.
A brief moment passes, and I feel myself begin to slump, mind comatose and senses slurred, as I wobblingly rise and sit on his stomach. I take a breath, a lazy smile lifting the corners of my lips, his chin and jaw glistening from cum, his eyes profoundly dark—like the time right before dawn.
I lift, ushering down his body until I hover once more above his cock, the head of him still seeping precum. I grab his scruffy chin in my hand, forcing him to look at me, my other hand rubbing his sex over mine.
"Beg for it," I demand. He scrunches his nose and grits his teeth. I dip the tip of him inside me, before letting it slip out, pleased at the way his adam's apple bobs in his throat.
He has perhaps never begged for anything in his life. He regards me with disdain–yet relinquishes control.
"Please," he grunts out, yet I persist.
"Please what?"
"Let me… be inside you."
He is hapless in response, though his face distorts the moment I sink down on his cock, clutching at the animal furs beneath us as I try to adjust to his girth.
"Ungggh..." He grumbles low in his throat, hands grappling at my hips, eyes clenched shut. I gasp, for it is insurmountable, stretching me open and filling me up completely, his hips rising to bring himself even deeper than I thought I could possibly take. I peer down at him, and for not the first time I find him beautiful, a flush coloring the tips of his ears, his lips parted in a silent prayer. An innate desire develops in my chest, in my core, flowering in my throat. I lean down, my hair cascading over my shoulders as I steal his voice with a kiss, my mouth silencing any nonsense he may speak.
I fear he can hear my heart for it beats with each rise and fall of my hips as I slide up the base of his cock to its head, before slamming back down. The gradual rhythm of up, down, up down— the slapping skin a soliloquy for things I cannot profess. Each thrust feels infinite, like the morning will never come and this is the eternal, a dreamscape where I have ascended my very being. It feels too right, too good, the motion of his hips grinding up into mine, the milk of his name cooing against his mouth, the way he offers praise each time I moan it— the yes, the so wet, the mine, mine, mine—
He twines his tongue with mine, letting me ride him at any pace I set, whether it be torturous, whether it prolongs the inevitable. I can tell he suffers in pleasure in the way his breath becomes labored, in the way he pulses inside of me, in the way his kisses become lax and sloppy, the irregular juddering of his thrusts.
I grip him at the base of his cock, slipping off of him with a pop. My thumb drags around the underside of his head, spreading precum down the side of his shaft. He juts into my hand, grunting in frustration.
"You want to cum, don't you?" I taunt, and he nearly growls at me, yet I squeeze him in my palm, feeling over the pulse of a throbbing vein.
"Please," He gargles out, and I simper.
I start up again, this pattern of sinking down on him before rising all the way up again. I do this— over and over until I am edging myself, and he is losing control.
"Acacia." He commands in a graveled tone, yet I pay him no mind, teasing him mercilessly.
"Ulfric—" I dismiss, yet he is no longer willing to be obedient. Plucking at my wrists, he rises upright in one sweeping motion, pinning me onto my back. He leverages each of my legs up, my ankles over his shoulders, placing his erection over the seam of my sex. Without warning he thrusts deep within me, causing my toes to curl and my head to throw back against the bed, body quaking, a disassembled whine of,
"Ohhmm—"
He pumps himself in and out of me, the sound of slapping skin obscene as vulgar curses spill from his mouth, eyes surveying me. My hands clutch at his backside, fingers tense over the pliable flesh, urging him on until he's hitting a spot that causes my vision to dissipate into stars.
"You feel so fucking good—" he shuts his eyes, the vein in his jaw pulsing, sweat building on his brow, "neverfelt so fucking good—"
His words are too much, like the tide rising up and over my head, intending to take me underneath, so far below that even the Daedric gods cannot reach me. I feel it coming, more potent than before, like a scream instead of a whisper I cannot control.
He muffles my mouth with his palm, hiding the noise I make, for it is too loud to be confined to this room. It is as though the earth is cracking open and we are entering the abyss, the floodgates finally breaking through years of refined restraint. I feel my sex clench down on him as I shudder, spasms coursing beneath my skin and down my spine, my body convulsing as I cum. He groans my name and I feel his hips stutter as his cock pulsates, filling his seed inside me.
He keeps himself nestled inside me for a time, before letting my legs slide down his shoulders. My breath rises and falls, the scenery of the room a stirring of golden hues, sandalwood scents, wind whishing sounds. He collapses beside me, squandering no time in pulling me to him, tucking me against his chest like I am something precious— his mouth pressing soft kisses against my fingers. Exhaustion consumes my limbs and I let him cradle me to him as seals the heat between us, pulling the animal furs over our bodies.
It is deeper into the night, when the lulling of his slow beating heart intends to keep me here forever, that I untangle myself from his sleeping form. As quiet as I can— I dress in my armor, stilling anytime I hear a hitch in his gentle snores. I tread to his desk, stuffing the many letters beneath my chest plate. Picking up my helmet, I hesitate in pulling it over my head, momentarily caught in place.
I watch him sleep for a second or two, pondering a morning when we could awake together, far removed from fate. If I was only a woman— not a vessel for the Divines, for Daedra, for an Empire. If he was only man— not a martyr for the Nords, the murderer of a High King.
He will loath me, just as he always did.
We will wage war against one another like nothing has changed.
I place my helmet over my head, hastening to the door and leaving the encampment before anyone could wake. Even when it is many miles away— when I have gone to cities far— when I have ridden a Dovah over the mountains and past the sea.
It is still not far enough.
I can never be far enough from you.
Silhouettes of bodies pass over skin
sowing shivers in the silk of silent hours,
He who fists the marrow
whose finger bruises bloom over my throat.
"Make of me a better man,"
he says with fingers in my mouth.
Made of slush red it's dripping,
and I can only bleed in his voice.
End of Part One