Brodia was in a celebratory mood that season.

Queen Lumera and her daughter, the Divine Dragon, had arrived to the kingdom for a consolation pilgrimage, interested in distributing donations amongst the mountain farmers and clearing the roads from bandits and vagabonds. It is an important event to share resources between the four realms, none of them secure and self-sufficient in the rule of their territory, and now, after lending security forces around, it is time for them to receive.

During their stay, King Morion assigned his sons as bodyguards for the guests, with Diamant responsible for Queen Lumera, while Alcryst had Alear to take care of, something that made him quite nervous. His father said that the religious figure would be doing research and visitation to far-flung temples, and so a more mobile unit like him would be preferrable, while his brother was more adept into organizing troops at the capital and serving in courtly capacities.

He tried to hoist the responsibility into Citrinne or Lapis, but they said that, if he was taking care of the visitor, someone had to take care of him, and Amber had to do terrain recognition on their way to the mountain holdings. Therefore, he had no choice but to do it himself.

It is not as if this is that much of a chore, or that he hates the visitors from the holy lands. Much to the contrary, he respected and admired them too much to let their lives rest in his incompetent hands. Furthermore, Alear made him feel too nervous, and that is bound to interfere in his already pitiful performance.

Case in point, three days into their tour and he had already lost sight of the Divine Dragon. That certainly had not passed between Diamant and Queen Lumera, of that, he was sure. In his frantic interrogation, the guards said that she had left less than a quarter-hour prior, on her way to the clearings downhill. His retainers were sent to one side, while he headed towards the river.

He does not look where he was going, just running and screaming her name to the top of his lungs. He knows that the rugged terrain was dangerous and he was giving his position to any assailant that might be hiding amongst the trees, but his priority was to find his ward, and that trumped any other concern.

After a few moments of panic, Alcryst had finally found her in the banks. She was conducting research with a few specimens she found in the area with potential for magic and chemical applications. She was dutifully picking a few into some sample glasses.

"Good afternoon, Prince Alcryst." She greets politely. "Did you have a pleasant lunch?"

"Your Grace!" He breathed out in relief and some exhaustion, stomping all over the flowers she was studying. "Where were you?! I was so worried!"

Her eyes widened slightly. "Oh, my apologies. You seemed rather tired from following me around, so I thought that you could want to have a time off in peace this afternoon. Since I was just coming into the river, I needed no escort."

"Even still, I… I…" He began to speak, but was soon chocked by the pollen released.

Alear had seen that there was something unusual in his eye, a brightness to the crimson depths, a flush to his cheeks, heavy breaths. The prince, while lean, was not properly unfit, as she knows that he often goes out in the mornings to practise with his bow and arrow. The maids that served her gushed about how handsome he was with his shirt off in the summer, and how his calloused fingers worked with such precision the weapon he brandished.

The cleric places her hand on his shoulder. "Your Highness? Are you feeling quite alright?"

The young man keeps coughing desperately, leaning on the Divine Dragon for support. His face flushes and a look contort his face in a strange grimace, of pain and elation. The touch of her hand against his shoulder burned, but it burned so pleasurably, he wanted some more of it.

Looking over at his black boots painted over with a yellow dust and considering the reason why she had come down to the river in the first place, it was when things began to make sense to Alear. As it turned out, as the prince had huffed out and puffed out and groaned against her ear in between pinning she between his muscled thighs and working her plain cotton standard-issue underwear down past her thighs, it had not been simply the exertion of a day's practise.

She places her hands on his clampy face, hoping to hold his focus. "Your Highness, listen closely. You've stepped over a bunch of Devil's Eyelash flowers, and you might have inhaled too much of its pollen. They are used as sexual stimulants by impotent husbands, but they can be highly poisonous if taken in excess. I can help you, but you have to keep calm and talk to me. How are you feeling?"

"I… It burns! If I… I don't… I feel I'm going to die…" He coughed desperately.

Prince Alcryst is not the kind of man who is prone to exaggeration, at least not with anything that was not related to his dignity or lack thereof. That would suggest that he inhaled a very considerable quantity, and that he could not be healed simply by drinking some water and washing off his boots. She could give him an antidote, she had prepared some in advance in case anything happened, which did, but those are slow to take effect and she would not be able to take him back to the castle on her back while it was acting on his system.

If Alear gave him the concoction, he would pass out almost immediately and stay unconscious for about twelve hours. It was just past noon. They would have to camp there for a night, but she did not bring any supplies nor she could spot any wood good enough for a fire, or hope that someone comes across them. Even that seemed rather unlikely, as the canyon was steep and one could not see the bottom from the top.

Well, there was one other option available to them, which was to just let the pollen run its course. However, that would require them to…

The longer she had looked into those blown wide eyes and that lovely, pleading face... The longer she had listened to his whimpers and noticed the sheen of sweat on his forehead, the surer she had been that she had to help the poor man out in any way that she could.

He was the one who would be most affected, so she should just ask him.

"Prince Alcryst? Listen to me. You have breathed in too much pollen and there is no easy way to heal you. I have some antidote on me, but that is going to take you out until late at night. I can find a way to allow us to camp here, but it is not going to be pleasant. I can give it to you, or… I can take care of it on a more direct manner. What would you like to do?"

"Please… Please…" He begs, desperately, pawning all over her. "Take this off me, now…"

She breathed out. "Very well, I am going to do it. Do I have your consent, then?"

Alcryst groaned, buried his mouth against her neck, pulling at her white dress to nuzzle into the curve of her breast and bite and suckle at the bare skin, making love bites bloom that she would surely have to explain to her maid come tomorrow morning. In between huffs, he had begun to thrust his hips against her so she could feel the heat and stiffness radiating from his crotch, his trousers tight against a generous endowment.

"I need…" He mumbles, kissing, biting, his gloved fingers unsurely tugging first at her skirts and then at her stockings and then digging into her thighs to part them. "Oh, gods, I'm so sorry... You smell so good... Ah, I've wanted you for years…"

Devil's Eyelash is not used only on aphrodisiacs, but also in moderately powerful truth tonics, as it lowers inhibitions and allows the users to speak more clearly what they think and desire, having all sorts of applications in medicine and recreative use. As it is expected, then, his tongue had been loosened.

Alcryst babbles on about how he has always watched Alear when he visited Somniel, idolizing her ever since he was a boy, how he has wondered if she is truly as soft as she looks, how he has wanted to palm at her breasts like this and kiss her like that since the earliest days of his puberty. In between, he grunts out apologies, desperately rutting his clothed cock against her in search of some kind of friction that may provide him with an ounce of comfort from the desire that licks all up his spine and muddles his mind.

Her own body thrums with the knowledge. The Second Prince of Brodia wants her and has wanted her for so long. He fantasises about her, perhaps in the same way she fantasises about him. Perhaps, then, he would not mind too much when she tells him that she had her mother arrange for him to be her guard in this trip, in spite of his early misgivings.

"Please, Your Highness…" She gasps out, her hands winding about his neck and tangling in his mussed raven-black hair, if only to give herself some kind of purchase. "I want to help. This is my fault. Do with me what you need to."

"I can't!" He whines into her neck, almost on the verge of tears. "I won't . . . Defile you like that. Not like this!"

"It is too late, Alcryst. We have no choice, or it is only getting worse." She responds, begging almost as much as him. "Help me. Help me help you."

"Yes… Yes…" He hiccupped in despair.

Assuming this is the best confirmation she is going to get, Alear take it into her own hands to unbutton his trousers, to work at the placket, to take his cock into her warm palms. It is stiff and aching, slick with precome, the tip flushed ruddy red.

If anybody sees them in the riverbed like this, it is going to be a scandal of grand proportions, but she cannot bring herself to care, not when he whines as she handles him, not when he groans chest deep and kisses her mouth fiercely as if he never wants to let her go.

His coat is thrown to the wayside, his shirt tore open, his trousers down about his lean, scarred thighs. Her dress is soiled without repair, her hair is loose wild against her back and her skirts are lifted to her waist.

He is a gentleman, even so. Her underwear is long forgotten, her slick soaking into the smooth rocks beneath them, but Alcryst will not take her virtue and ruin her in this manner even with the drugs and toxins of whatever flower this is muddying his mind. Instead, the prince of Brodia ruts between her legs, working his slick cock through the mess of her damp thighs, fucking into them as if they can work in her cunt's stead.

He is whimpering and moaning, sweating, his hair falling unbound about his shoulders in the messiness of all of this. Strong hands dig into her bare thighs above where the ribbons tied about her stockings keep the garments up. As he fucks her thighs, he presses his mouth against hers to muffle her whines and whimpers and his own growls.

It is all animal nature, two creatures leaning on one another in the most base of ways. The friction the slide of his cock provides to her own aching cunt is not enough, but she says nothing as his tongue slides against hers and his teeth catch on her lip and the nobleman uses her as she have always wanted to be used by him.

Alear senses that it is working in the twitch of his hands where they are fastened about her, the shuddering of his abdomen, the slack whine of his mouth against hers and the way he begins to breathe even heavier. His cock between her thighs seem to pulse, and before she knows it, he has pulled back from the kiss, groaning out.

"Gods… Fuck, sorry… It's coming… You're so lovely…"

As his seed pulses out in thick ropes, coating the ground and the backs of her legs, splashing against her poor untouched cunt. She knows that the prince was being a gentleman, she knows that he did not put his cock inside of her for noble reasons, but that knowledge does nothing to assuage the frustrated knot inside of her that she wants to be filled and she has not been.

With that, the effect of the pollen dies down. It is as if a spell has been lifted, as, even with the afterglow and the exhaustion, colour drains from the already pale Prince Alcryst and he realises the state that they are in.

"I am so sorry!" He gasps out, bending down with his forehead to the ground. "I am sorry, I could not help myself... I-I understand if you wish to turn leave Brodia immediately, I shall arrange for your journey back across the sea and I shall provide you with you and your holy mother might desire as reparation."

He tails away as Alear does not speak. She simply lay there beneath him, her dress in disarray and the mixture of her own slick and his come pooling on the pebbles beneath them.

She must be pouting. His eyes are not quite clear, but he looks down at her and a dry, throaty chuckle forces itself from his lips as he sees the disappointment in her face.

"Oh…" He breathes out.

For his first exercise of self-worth, Alcryst realises exactly what it is, what Alear wants, a smile breaking across his lovely mouth.

"I... I do believe I still feel a little out of sorts. I would appreciate your assistance, if you would be so kind as to accompany me to my bedroom."