A/N: Sorry for the wait, this chapter was so difficult to write and eventually I had to split it into two, pretty big part of the Grimm universe will now feature in this story, I should have part II out soon though.
"Your highness, you will never fit in at court with such dreadful posture."
The etiquette lessons with Frau Krause had been grueling so far. On top of Klara's worsening morning sickness, her teacher offered her no respite and was casually cruel. Klara generally had excellent posture from her years of dance and gymnastics, but all she wanted that morning was to rest. She kept looking at the clock, every minute passing slower than the last.
Frau Krause was surprisingly young, a macabre beauty just a decade older than Klara. She was tall, intimidating, and sensual.
Klara wondered if she would have treated someone royal-born this way. Perhaps Viktor had requested she be harsh, not wanting to suffer the embarrassment of his wife being so common, that if she could look the part, he might be met with less disapproval.
"You are lucky his highness the crown prince requested that I do not cane you. You are certainly in need of it." The woman sneered, her black eyes somehow darkening further.
Klara balked, the book slipped off her head and onto the floor.
"Well, since I can't cane you like I generally do with my students, I'll have to find a different approach." Frau Krause's voice was tense with disappointment, she circled Klara, looking at her hungrily. She found the new princess's soft beauty intriguing, she knew what Viktor saw in her. She was like a genetic memory, almost out of place in the modern world, like she should be cinched up in a corset and clothed in romantic white frocks and large decorative hats held to her head with hatpins. "What's it like, having your only value being what's between your legs?"
"What?" Klara blurted, shocked by the question.
"The only reason the prince would marry someone like you is because of what's between your legs."
Klara glared at Frau Krause, getting an idea that she slept with Viktor at one point, and it faded her insecurities.
Klara was a princess, she didn't have to deal with the attitude of one of her husband's previous conquests. She tilted up her head and walked straight towards the much taller woman, looking her deep in her black eyes.
"One of my husband's scorned lovers?" Klara asked, her tone mocking. "Seems like what's between my legs is more valuable to him than whatever was between yours."
"Your posture is excellent, your highness." The woman said with a smile, her eyes twinkling with pride, brushing a strand of strawberry blonde hair behind Klara's ear. "That sense of superiority you feel? It shines on the outside. You should feel it whenever you walk into a room, the other royals will sense weakness if you don't." Frau Krause's face was so close to her's that Klara thought she was going to kiss her. "I believe our time is up for the day."
"No, it's not." Klara told the woman before her, her eyes shifted over to the book on the floor, pausing, Frau Krause could see the gears turning in Klara's mind. "Get me that book." Klara demanded, feeling a rush come over her.
Frau Krause obeyed, swiftly fetching the book and handing it to the crown princess, whose eyes were icy as the winds outside the castle walls. Klara placed the book on top of her head and proceeded to walk a respectable speed with perfect posture. The energy in the room was electrified with nobility, nobility that shouldn't have seeped so effortlessly out of a woman like Klara, but it did with a little provocation.
"Flawless, absolutely flawless." Frau Krause was otherwise speechless. Klara handed her the book.
"Thank you. I'll see you next week." Klara said tersely before leaving the room with her posture as regal as it was earlier.
"Your highness." A familiar voice called as Klara practically glided through the corridor, it was Ingrid, who hurried over to the princess. "Prince Viktor will return late tonight, we are making preparations for his return." Klara's face lit up at the news.
"Oh thank god." Klara blurted in relief. "I want to be woken up when he arrives."
"Yes, your highness."
"I have preparations of my own to make." Klara said, smirking to herself.
Viktor, eager as he was to return home, had none of the same cheeriness as his wife.
He failed his mission to capture Adalind's child. He had been gone for days, getting hot on Adalind's trail before losing them, six Verrat agents were dead, and he was a hair's breadth from being murdered by Sebastian of all people.
The newfound vigor Viktor experienced with Klara was snuffed out, he was sore, vexed, and tired. His age screamed at him, punishing his aching body down to the marrow. Along with that came symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, he could practically feel his brain throbbing against his skull. Viktor would have to step back from physical missions if he didn't want to deteriorate before his child could walk, he already could see the grim reaper in his periphery and he wasn't even fifty.
It was the early hours of the morning when he returned, and he returned alone, one hand clutching the wheel and another clutching his pistol, keeping an eye out for resistance members who might have lurked among the wooded areas surrounding the road. When returning the firearms to the armory, his heart dropped to his stomach when he realized he would have to inform the king just how horribly he had failed his mission. He stood motionless for several minutes, staring blankly at the firearm-adorned wall with ringing ears and breath that was near-silent. He was so deep within his own mind he didn't hear the footsteps behind him, he didn't perceive anything until he felt a small hand touch his arm. He jumped in surprise, taking him out of his trance to see Klara.
"Klara." It was the only intelligible word Viktor could say before reflexively pulling her in and kissing her lazily, taking his time to quench all his desperation to be touched.
"You look awful." Klara said when she was afforded room to speak, there were dark circles under his eyes, his facial hair overgrown, he looked noticeably thinner, almost older. "You smell awful too." Klara almost gagged when she smelled him. Klara's morning sickness was worse and she was deliriously horny for the stretch of time he had been gone, she had hoped to rip off his clothes as soon as she possibly could, but he was in a sorry state. She steered him out of the armory and towards their bedchamber.
"I have to call the king, tell him wha-"
"No you don't, it can wait." Klara snapped, wondering if he realized the sort of state he was in.
Klara drew a bath for him, stripping him of his rank clothes, her fingers drifted down the grooves of his ribs, had he not eaten in those days he was gone? Viktor grimaced when he stepped into the steaming water.
"Are you hurt?" Klara asked, removing her modest, floor length robe to reveal green lingerie (her husband's favorite color according to Archambault) that didn't receive the appreciation she wanted it to. She sat at the edge of the tub, lathering a generous amount of shampoo into his hair, massaging his scalp gently.
"Nothing serious, nothing not age related anyways." Viktor told her before letting out a low moan as the tension faded from his scalp.
"I'll be right back." Klara told him, leaving the bathroom and returning with a drink, handing it to him so he could nurse it while she continued to wash the residue of that mission off of him. "Don't you have people who are supposed to do dangerous things for you?"
"God I wish. No, it's tradition for royalty to be fairly involved in their youth. I'd get laughed out of every event from Balmoral to Tokyo."
"Forty-eight isn't young, and you're hurt." Klara said softly, the reality of her husband being older and that would entail threatened to overwhelm her. He looked young enough and was good enough in bed that it hadn't crossed her mind. She didn't need her husband to speed run towards frailty in the name of tradition.
"Don't rub salt into the wound." Viktor snarled, his young wife was the person he least wanted to hear about his aging from, she was lucky she was pregnant and he couldn't blight the creamy skin of her ass with red welts and handprints for her impudence.
If he had the energy for it.
"I'm just really concerned for you." Klara said sheepishly.
Viktor's sighed, if she was this concerned, he wouldn't make matters worse by telling her he evaded death not even a day earlier.
When he was clean and the hot water did its work to soothe his aching body, the pair left for the bedchamber to find there was a meal waiting for them. Klara, having eaten earlier, snacked on almonds to satisfy a dull craving, more to keep herself occupied, while Viktor had his first meal in days and had the table manners to match, saying nothing as he devoured what was on his plate.
Klara knew she was next on the menu when he finished eating. She wondered how he might act in bed. Would he be weaker than usual, or would he be more feral? Klara sat in anticipation, smirking to herself as she imagined finally getting to cum after days. She didn't dare touch herself in that time, even though she wasn't instructed to abstain, the lack of release manifested through tears mostly.
"Come, straddle me." Viktor instructed. Klara did so eagerly, swinging a thigh over when she mounted him. He unceremoniously pulled down her bra to expose her tits, seizing them with greedy hands and raising her right breast up to his lips, sloppily suckling and biting at her teat, closing his eyes and moaning as he savored the warm, malleable flesh. His previous headache subsided, his mind increasingly blissed with every soft wave of pleasure. To him, there was nothing in the world except for him and the heavy, full breasts he was having his way with, the being those breasts were attached to not even present in his mind.
Even with his self serving pawing and sucking, after days without contact, Klara threw back her head, moans rose from her throat with the seamlessness of smoke from a fire. There was something attractive about his vulnerability, his desperate need to touch her, how bent out of shape he was from doing god knows what god knows where.
"Bed, now." Viktor's command was thick with exhaustion and arousal.
Once in bed, Viktor positioned her on top and facing away from him, moving her green thong to the side, her bra still disheveled, taking in the view of her silhouette as she slowly lowered herself down his shaft until her shapely ass made contact with his slender hips.
Klara rode him gently, waiting for instruction, but Viktor never gave any, he was more interested in exploring her body with his hands, the joints in his fingers soothed as they settled into a weak grip, appraising her with weak moans. He came quickly, to Klara's disappointment, but she'd keep her thoughts to herself and nestle into her husband's arms.
"How's our child?" Viktor asked.
"Probably not much different than when you left, it's still really early." Klara chuckled, she wondered how impatient he would act in the months before she really started showing, not having something tangible to feel and measure in his hands.
"Are you eating well? Resting enough?"
"Yes." Klara fibbed, she hadn't been resting well since he was gone, but she hoped that would change, feeling more at ease when her husband fell asleep, joining him for a perfect night's sleep.
Their peace wasn't to last. Klara could pick up on the heightened tension among staff the morning after Viktor's return, she put together that his mission to retrieve Adalind and her baby failed miserably.
Not retrieved, kidnapped was more likely.
Klara knew she would have to confront her husband, though she'd have to wait until evening, seeing as her husband was about as frantic as everyone else in the castle. Klara would spend the rest of the day trying to be reassuring to the servants she came in contact with, reflecting and feeling guilty about her readiness to treat Frau Krause as lesser than the previous day, she shouldn't have been so comfortable with that kind of power, but it felt good. Klara never had that sort of power in her life, she didn't have much power outside of what her looks might offer, that was until her fertility convinced a sterile prince that he should give her absolute power over others as he legally shackled her to himself.
Viktor, feeling physically much better than he had last night, entered his bedchamber, and where he had expected his wife to be in lingerie and presenting her cunt to him, he was met with a less alluring image.
Klara was dressed more modestly for bed than he had seen her previously, covered from collarbone to foot, she was not trying to entice him with sensual glances and pretty lingerie, her demeanor was serious and confrontational.
"I need to speak with you." Klara told her husband.
"Of course." Viktor's voice nonchalant, he would allow Klara to air her concerns if it meant he could get her out of that drab thing covering her body.
"Viktor, are you trying to kidnap a woman and her child?" Klara asked, not knowing how better to word the question.
"Klara, I wouldn't expect you to understand." Viktor condescended with a sigh.
"No, Viktor, I think I understand better than anyone in the world what that poor woman is enduring. I wonder how she escaped you." Klara snarled at Viktor.
"She is carrying my cousin's child, that child and ours are the only children with parents in the line of succession. The House of Kronenberg is in danger of falling, and before you give me some American drivel about democracy, you and our children wouldn't survive such a collapse, so I suggest you choose your side accordingly."
Klara stormed off, retrieving a pair of wool socks and lace up boots with a heel, putting them on before throwing a woolen robe that billowed behind her.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"I need fresh air." Klara told him in a faint, meek tone.
"I'll accompany you."
"I need to be alone." She said weakly. "I'm just going to the southeastern watchtower. I'm not leaving the castle."
Viktor let Klara go, only because he had an idea. He had to fight fire with fire, fear with more fear.
It was time to tell Klara the truth about his world. When she saw the truth, she'd desperately cling to him, be filled with distrust and suspicion of those around her. It would be so easy.
Meanwhile, Klara scaled the stairs to the southeastern tower that overlooked the waterfalls, breathing in the icy midnight air, allowing her fingers to sting red with cold, it distracted her from the insanity that was her new position as a princess in a family that seemed to consider kidnapping pregnant women an Olympic sport.
Whoever this Adalind was, she was clearly a much smarter, stronger woman than Klara. She wondered how Adalind was able to escape Viktor, different scenarios played through her mind, each one more fantastical than the last. Klara had resigned herself to her fate so easily and allowed her royal husband to do what he wanted with her body. Either Eric was less seductive, or Adalind wasn't as easily impressed.
Klara's period of reflection was interrupted by the sounds of feet climbing up the staircase to Klara's right. Klara did not turn around, she continued to stare out at the winter wilderness surrounding the castle, hearing a wolf howl in the distance. She barely turned her head to catch a glance, seeing her husband and multiple guards in her periphery.
"Brought guards to drag me back?" Klara scoffed.
"No, I'm quite capable of doing that myself." Viktor paused, moving closer, Klara strode away from the ledge to put distance between them, turning to face the men, taking a step back with each one her spouse and the Verrat took. "I've been keeping something from you, and as a man who thinks honesty is the foundation of a good marriage, I would like to tell the truth."
"Is this about Adalind?"
"In a way, but it's more about why you shouldn't be so willfully wandering the corridors at night, another reason why I put you under my guardianship." Viktor told her. The hairs on the back of Klara's neck immediately stood up, a sense of dread filled her, similar to the dread she felt during her wedding. "Steiner, Eichmann." Viktor said abruptly. The two guards approached. "Ich denke, es ist an der zeit, dass die prinzessin erfährt, was ein woge ist."
Klara understood what he said except for one thing. He wanted the Verrat to show her something, something called a woge.
What the hell was a woge?
Klara barely had any time to finish her question before letting out a high pitched scream at what transpired before her.