FIC: [Haven] The Witchfinder's Whore - Mature [1/2]
TITLE: The Witchfinder's Whore
AUTHOR: roseveare
RATING: R
LENGTH: ~18,800 words approx
SUMMARY: Nathan Wuornos hid his magic and took up bartering his flesh for coin after watching his father burned at the stake. But one day, an aggressive client cries "witch!" and Nathan finds himself in the citadel jails. An unexpected reprieve appears in the form of shady priest Duke Crocker, who offers to release Nathan in return for his services... both physical and magical... in bringing down his hated enemy, corrupt Crown Inquisitor Lady Mara and her consort William. Nathan has no intention of betraying another witch, but he'll take the chance for freedom... and to play with the delectable priest's guilty lusts while he's about it...
NOTES: Crack fantasy romance novel AU written for the Unconventional Courtship challenge.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, no profit, yadda, yadda, yadda.
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"It is a Dark Era, one when a lusty lad will do what he must to survive. Even if it means bartering flesh for a palmful of coins. . . Forced to watch his father burn at the stake, Nathan Wuornos knows the danger of the gift he inherited - a powerful magic that must stay hidden. Until one night when he's accused of witchcraft and Nathan finds himself behind prison walls, awaiting certain death with a roguish priest unlike any man of the cloth he has known. In reality, Duke Crocker is as far from holy as the devil himself, but his promise of freedom in return for Nathan's services may be his salvation. Locked into a dubious agreement, Nathan resents his plan to have him seduce and ruin his lifelong enemy. But toying with Duke's own lust for him is enjoyable, and he agrees to be his pawn while secretly intending to use him just the same..."
--Based on 'The Harlot' by Saskia Walker.
The roles could've gone either way. But I've been joking about writing hooker!Nathan since the season 3-4 hiatus, so~
The Witchfinder's Whore
Carts rattled as they came in under the gateway of the Great City -- to what they called the city proper, as it was deemed the poorer houses outside the city walls were not. Yet the people who lived in those houses had a better chance entering the city to find work, or to find business among the rich population. Prostitution was one such thriving business. The whores of the city would sidle in under that oppressive archway, pretending respectability, hoping not to catch the attention of a particularly difficult guard and be thrown out into the mud, at risk from the wheels of the rattling carriages.
Nathan had legitimate business selling potions and ointments from the heavy box he hauled around over his shoulder, the business his father had passed on to him. But he would never forget the day he had watched his father dragged into the centre of the city square to be burned at the stake. It had taught him that if he was going to offer any extra 'special' wares, it was safer to do so out of his own body than by offering the magical trade Garland had dealt in to truly earn enough to survive.
His father would not have approved, but he had been dead for years now, and had approved of very little Nathan had done while he was alive. Besides, he had everything he required to ensure the more unpleasant risks of his secret profession were no threat to him. He could use his oils and potions and magic to guard his health, and never advertise the fact the abilities were there.
Today, it was not raining, the first day of the week to escape such a fate, and the city was cleaner than usual for its prior drenching. The layer of muck that usually caked the streets had washed into the channels that would bear it down through the city walls, beneath the outer city below, emerging at the outlet where children scoured through the waste for items rich men had lost.
Nathan took up a position on an empty trading stand on a corner. He was a ruggedly handsome man, still young but less so than he had been, and anticipated perhaps needing soon to use spells to obscure the signs of his aging. Yet he still had an unlined face, square jaw, and striking blue eyes, and underneath his clothes, a body that was slim and solid in addition to well-exercised and skilful. And most of his clients were regulars who would only grow suspicious if he suddenly started to look younger.
He had sold two potions by the time a man came up to him and made the street finger-language sign for business? A potion more and he'd have settled for the earnings of the day and returned home, no extras required, but refuse a customer with no good reason and it could get around. Nathan made the responding sign for agreement, then sketched out his terms and charges wordlessly against his palm. The man nodded. Nathan closed up his portable shop and hauled it back over his shoulder, having no intention of leaving his wares. Then he followed the client down the nearby alley.
The King's Nose was down there, but the man veered away before that, into a discrete nook between buildings. Great, Nathan thought. No room, no bed, outdoors sex and the client wasn't even good-looking. He should have quit after selling those two potions.
He didn't particularly want to get on his knees in the dirty nook, even before the man started pulling on his hair and hauling his head around. Nathan resisted the urge to bite his manhood, but only managed to keep so much hold on his temper. "That's it!" He pulled back, angrily, losing a few tufts from his scalp. "I don't have to put up with--"
The man followed his movements, hands snatching to gain his purchase back, not just tugging Nathan's hair but circling one of his hands around his throat. Nathan choked as the hold tightened, the client dragging him back. "I'm paying you, I can do what I want with you." Nathan's head bounced off the wall they'd been making their transaction against.
In times like this, the magic came like drawing breath. Nathan heard the crunch as the man's fingers broke, all of them bending backward against the natural angle of the joints. The would-be client was slammed to the opposite side of the nook, and Nathan fell to his knees anyway, too dizzied to stay upright.
He was relieved, at first, when he heard the strangled noise of fear and the man's feet taking off in a fast retreat away from him. Then he heard the bastard open his mouth and shout the usual, well-worn shout: "Witch! WITCH!"
Swearing, Nathan tried to move, getting up to stagger along, leaning on the wall. He was still struggling to catch breath through his hurting throat. But there had been incidents before, and he'd survived before. He just needed to find the safety of anonymity. Somewhere there were lots of people.
Given that the wailing man had ten fingers visibly broken in a rather extreme manner, Nathan's magic had not been subtle or helpful when it came to keeping his secret. He might still be able to laugh this off, though. Enough people tried to call witch as an all-purposes tactic to cast blame that the city guard actually tended to take such accusations with a lot of eye-rolling. But trying to bluff his way out was still far riskier than ducking inside the King's Nose and hiding amid the drunken cavorting of the clientele there.
He fell inside and the guardsmen burst through the door at a run a moment later. Nathan's accuser was in their midst, shaking in rage and pain -- good -- while he tried to hold out a signet ring on a chain, between the heels of his palms.
Nathan's alleyway client, who had been too stingy to pay extra for a room and their comfort, was nobility.
Damnation! The guard weren't so easily going to laugh it off and give up early if there was the word of a noble involved. The eyes of the unpleasant man were scouring the room even as Nathan slipped into the back, hoping he remained unseen. The Nose had more than one secret exit, that was why it was so popular among rogues. He'd have to lie low for some time... could he even risk going back for his box of wares, abandoned in the nook? He'd have to build up his livelihood again without it, and if he was lying low he wouldn't be able to do any business in the other fashion...
Screw the box. He'd have to subsist off the wilderness for a few weeks and re-make those potions while he did so, make another box too. It would be difficult, but better than getting caught.
His luck wasn't even so kind as that.
His repugnant client must have spotted him as he slipped out the back of the taproom. The guard surged through before he'd set his hand on the panel that hid the drop-down into the cellar and the scramble out through the converted coal chute. He had a split second to decide whether or not to fight. Use his magic to fight, and prove beyond doubt what he was, and never be able to walk openly in the city again.
He chose otherwise. He feigned surprise, drawing back from their hands with a yelp of protest, and did not resist any more than any other protesting citizen that plied an illicit trade. "That bastard struck me -- hit my head against the wall! Damn right I broke his fingers. They all cry 'witch!' when a whore gets the drop on them, you fellows know that as well as us!"
A public whipping for whoring was better than burning, or permanent necessary self-imposed exile. Nathan pushed his magic down when the guard seized him and marched him off, while behind them his former client crowed.
***
The dungeons of the Great Citadel were as grim and gloomy as reputation had it. Nathan, in the half day and night he had spent there so far, had steeled his heart against the screams and settled merely upon the hope the people extracting them would not come for him. His magic was still there, a bright and brilliant thread undiluted by the priests' overconfident charms made in the name of a god that his powers obviously did not recognise. If it came to torture, he would have to fight and reveal himself, and any number of things could happen. Strong as his magic was, the chances were still considerable that it wouldn't end well for him.
Morning had long since slipped in through the narrow window high up above his head by the time the door creaked open and one of the black-robed priests finally entered.
Nathan shifted uneasily in his chains. He had not matched his powers against a witchfinder before, if that was what this man was. He looked forbidding enough, certainly, with the stark black of his robe making his complexion even paler; his trim beard and moustache and flowing long hair almost the same black. The only colour upon him was his eyes, which were brown. Too warm a brown for this place.
Realising he was staring, Nathan dragged his head aside, lest he be caught in some priestly mesmer. He stubbornly looked into the furthest corner while the priest shut the door and then paced a half-circle around his chained position, back and forth.
"...Well, aren't you interesting," the priest said.
Nathan clenched his jaw. "Whoring gets a fine or a public whipping," he said, sullenly, trying to strike just the right tone. "What am I doing here? When am I to be sentenced? Surely you don't believe that--"
"You are a witch," the priest rode over him. "And a strong one. I can see the threads of it glowing in you. Yet you freely admit yourself a whore, willing to face punishment for the lesser crime. And you have not manifested your powers against the guards, or against these prison walls, unwilling to call the life that you know over, when it may yet be salvaged by such nerve." He knelt in front of Nathan, bringing his strong-featured face on a level with his. "Don't," he said sharply, as Nathan flexed his power against his chains. The priest reached out and grabbed his arm, scattering the beginnings of the spell.
Nathan had been utterly surprised by the move, but gauged the strength put into the other man's disruption and knew that he could bring more to bear than the priest could counter. But he hesitated. The other man was very close, touching him, brown eyes brighter and warmer from this vantage, and it was strange--
"I believe you have a skill set that may be of great use. I think we can make a deal to both of our benefit."
"A deal," Nathan said flatly.
"Indeed." The priest stood up, turning his back momentarily. Nathan did not put an energy-dagger between his shoulders. "But first, I have been lax. Your name is logged as Nathan Wuornos on the current documents. Son of the executed Sorcerer Garland, if I'm not mistaken." Nathan merely grunted, putting no particular confirmation into the noise. "My name is Duke Crocker."
"Duke of where?" Nathan asked. "Of what?"
"It's merely a name." Duke -- Duke?? -- flicked a hand dismissively. Clearly his parents had had pretensions to nobility.
"That's almost as ridiculous as the idea a priest could have any deal to strike with me," Nathan said. "This is some new method of trying to extract confession."
"I know you're a witch," the other man emphasized dryly.
"So are you," Nathan burst out, scandalized by the hypocrisy. Only another magic sensitive could have done the things he just had. The priest was undoubtedly also a witch. Was that the secret of the priesthood, that they were no better than what they hunted? He hadn't previously ever been close enough to any of the black-robed witchfinders to tell if there was any magic in them. If that was the case, calling out this man's power would help him nothing.
Duke Crocker's face fell into very severe lines, and he looked worn and tired. Humanity, however, looked better on him, stirring something in Nathan that his dark countenance had already begun to spark in the initial impression of him. There had been few enough people Nathan had ever truly lusted for, working as he did, with the secret that he kept. An atrocious chance that a man like this should prove to be one of them.
"So we both know enough to cast the other to burn," the priest said, genially. "A deal would seem sensible."
Nathan bit his lip and glared, the animosity he projected hopefully obscuring the heat in his body and regard. "Are you going to release me from these chains as part of your deal?"
Duke wafted a hand. "I should think you can do that yourself." But the keys were jangling from his hand when it rose again. He held off, but Nathan glared silently until he bent forward to use them, refusing to visibly reveal himself. This could still be a perverse trap.
"I will let you out," Duke said, his head hovering above Nathan's. "You will walk with me past the guards, into the citadel, to the abodes of the priesthood. There I will furnish you with finer clothes, and a new identity, and an excuse to be near to the enemy I wish you to bring down. Once there, with your magic, with the physical wiles of your profession, you will inveigle your way into her world, and by one method or another, find me a means by which to break her power."
"Her?" Nathan had not expected that. "Who?"
"Lady Mara, Prince Langinan's Royal Advisor and Chief Inquisitor, somewhat charmingly known colloquially among the court as the Beast. She has a consort, but they are known to take toys with no visible detriment to their marriage."
"You're insane," Nathan exclaimed.
Duke patted his face, the touch electric. Nathan surged up into it despite himself -- and despite the chains that still dragged down on him. Duke's cheeks tinged pink as he retreated a step from the unexpected advance. Nathan grinned at the outburst of colour in his pale complexion, proof that unseemly desire lurked in the priest as well as his unseemly magic.
"But you will do it," Duke said, the key touching the chains at the edge of the lock.
Nathan jerked his head. "What choice do I have?" Almost certain ruin or death, versus... a very complicated, dangerous situation, by report, but also the chance to inveigle himself not only into the affections of the priest's target, but the priest himself? He would take it.
"I thought you'd do," Duke murmured, and the chains clicked free.
***
Walking unencumbered out of the prison alongside the sleek, dark-robed priest was very strange. Upright and side to side, there was little discernible difference in their heights that could not be caused by Duke's better quality footwear, which clicked on the stone floors as he walked. Had Nathan's clothes been less poor and patched, he could have imagined himself equal to the man, free and striding beside him in such a setting. Certainly there was an ease in the other's manner he would not have expected. Duke had the paperwork and took him freely through all of the checkpoints.
Walking into the priestly quarters was even stranger. The buildings were grand and smelled of incense and smoke... but they were echoing and hollow, lofty and serious, and something in Nathan objected that they were no place for the man beside him to be.
Duke became flustered when they ran into other serious and forbidding men in the corridors, who stared at Nathan.
"You don't bring whores here often?" Nathan asked, teasing, but since he could be discreet, waited until the door had closed behind them and Duke clunked a heavy key around to lock them in again, this time in a large apartment that was at least empty of other people.
"There's no way they could know--" Duke started, then choked and looked annoyed as he realised he was being teased. "You can wash, and you can sleep -- if you need to. I'd imagine last night wasn't very restful."
"I've had better," Nathan murmured, distracted by looking around. He was aware that Duke was watching him take in his living space. Nathan opened the few doors and examined what was on the other side of them, closets all apart from the bathroom. He turned back and pointed at the large, lush canopy bed. "Your bed... What exactly do your priestly vows entail?"
He had the satisfaction of seeing Duke flush again, then grow cross. "Even if I wanted to, with an unwashed witch who's likely been had by half of the city in his, what, certainly over thirty years?"
"I wasn't doing that for all those years." Nathan stretched, easing knots out of his body that the chains had put in, twisting enough to raise the hem of his shirt to reveal a good slice of flesh, as well as show off the trim lines of his torso. "I'll wash," he said mildly. "You know... it isn't so many... I didn't start until after my father was executed. And magic, anyway, keeps me clean. Your dick would be safe enough from the raging croides, or anything else."
"I didn't bring you here for--!"
Laughing, Nathan went into the bathroom, leaving the door half open. He started to strip whilst running the water. "You could join me right now--!"
His only answer was the door being firmly, fully shut.
Grimness descended upon him with the privacy. Duke didn't want him, only wanted to send him off to the bed of a dangerous enemy. Perhaps Nathan should make his escape now -- the small window, with the help of magic, would perhaps suffice for that. Yet Duke could still ruin him, and despite what he knew, no-one would believe him if he made counter-claim of the priest having magic of his own, and such an action would still not save his own skin.
Worse still, he was reluctant to completely part ways with the strange priest. Being his spy might yet give Nathan chance to become closer to him.
He soaped up and washed down his body, getting rid of the prison grime and the dirt of the streets before that, enjoying the novelty of the abundance of warm water. In the priests' houses, it seemed they had heated water and heated floors, with pipes running below. A different world--
The towel on the rail wasn't fresh, and he thought happily of it being around the priest's body while he nestled it around his. He emerged from the bathroom with the square of cloth hanging around his hips, and Duke looked up and crossed himself and spluttered at the sight.
"You're doing this on purpose!"
"I wasn't going to put the filthy clothes back on. Besides, I'll be sleeping, so what would be the point?" He pulled the towel clear and used it to scrub a last few times through his hair while Duke looked away.
"For free," Nathan enticed, climbing into the bed and pulling back the covers for the other man to follow. "Help me to gage the character of my new employer."
Duke looked at him with horrified, reluctant want, and actually took a step closer before he stopped himself.
Then he didn't stop himself, and Nathan was a little surprised to find him swiftly in the bed, his hands on Nathan and smoothing over his damp and flushed-hot skin, sliding across his waist, his hips, up his chest. Nathan caught his fingers and pulled them up to kiss them, sucking digits one by one into his mouth. The priest trembled, like a virgin.
The idea only empowered him, that this powerful, status-holding man could truly be so naive in this one thing. Nathan rose up and kissed him, sliding a tongue into his mouth, claiming his breath. He teased Duke's tongue while the other man grunted protest, and searched amid the robes for a handful of flesh.
The breath left him as Duke abruptly pressed him onto his back and held him down, breathing hard, whole weight leaned upon the hands on Nathan's chest. "You are so beautiful," he panted, "and too keen. What mischief is this?"
"It's no plot." Nathan reached for Duke's face. "You're beautiful, too. I want you."
"A whore... a witch," Duke panted, shaking his head.
"Priests can have sex," Nathan asserted. He wasn't sure at all, because while he'd done business with a few, they'd hardly been openly flaunting the fact. Still, he knew that taking up the cloth didn't make them eunuchs.
"With women," Duke choked. "I... we... we don't have to...?" He made a gesture that caused Nathan to laugh.
"All my oils are in the box I lost when I was taken," he said. "So unless you have a substitute..."
Duke flushed red over as much if his skin as Nathan could see and shook his head.
"I can do plenty without you inside me, or me inside you--" Some preferred it that way. The assurance seemed to calm Duke, and he let Nathan pull at his clothes. Underneath the robes were a black undershirt and white long johns, which were a magnificent source of amusement, but the priest would not allow himself to be disrobed any further, moving Nathan's hands away when he tried.
"This is enough," he said. "Show me what you will -- like this."
Nathan nodded and moved to kiss him again. He manoeuvred them over, straddling Duke in the large bed, pushing his groin down into the other man's covered one. Duke moaned and stared up at him through slit eyes.
Nathan braced himself with a hold on the other man's shoulders and rocked there. His own arousal was slower than usual -- the situation was still stressful, and he did not wish to resort to magic with someone who could sense that he was doing so... Duke might get the wrong idea and take offence. But his cock was filling and hardening now, and he could feel the response through the staid underwear. He watched the changes in Duke's breathing. He could tell even through the cloth barrier that the other man's size would be pleasing.
He slid down Duke's body, hands trailing over the visibly defined chest beneath his undershirt -- a crying shame to hide it. When his head was level with the bulge of Duke's cock, he gripped both hands over prominent hipbones and tongued the bulge through the fabric. Duke made a new noise, a high pitched whimper that delighted Nathan. He put his hand down and continued to work his lips over the covered bulge, nuzzling and caressing it with his chin and his cheeks and his mouth.
"Oh, God -- God!" Duke whimpered.
"I'm not his work, remember," Nathan rasped. "Can I--?" His fingers teased at buttons that led into forbidden territory.
"Take it out!" the priest gasped, as Nathan had known he would. "Take it out!"
Nathan grinned. He had to be painfully compressed in those pants by now, and it was even hard to extract him once the buttons were unfastened. The first swipe of Nathan's tongue along the length of him from root to tip had him starting to come. Nathan mumbled a spell fast from habit and then engulfed him thoroughly, stroking with the movements of his throat, flexing his neck, and swallowing down as Duke came.
"You are... the devil's work indeed," Duke hissed, lying wrung-out on his back like a damp rag.
"Maybe," Nathan responded smugly, climbing back up the bed and taking his own cock in his hand under the sheets. "But I'm one of his best."
***
After the sex, Duke let Nathan sleep through the afternoon. Nathan was aware of him leaving, and much later of the priest standing over him for a while with a mixed regard, then crawling into the edge of the bed again. Even after all of that, and a night spent side by side, Duke was stiff and standoffish when morning finally came around. As if he'd reasserted to himself what this was about, he merely made sure that Nathan was washed and dressed in fine clothes, then sent him on his way.
Too much to hope that in one day he could prompt enough possessiveness the other man would be loath to share him with an enemy. The enemy was still more important.
"Mara is dangerous," Duke told him before sending him out. "She... has cursed her enemies before. She ill-used her own twin sister, her very twin, terribly, usurping her power and consigning her to be a near-prisoner in the palace tower."
"Is that who you avenge?" Nathan asked, disappointed by the reverence in the priest's voice. When, he'd said he'd slept with women, did he mean this woman?
Duke's lips went tight.
Nathan frowned. "If she can throw curses..."
"Magic." Duke voiced it almost in a whisper. "She uses it openly, for no-one would dare contest her."
Damn it, thought Nathan. This grew more dangerous, more complicated still.
"She may see you as being of interest because of your abilities," Duke said, "but beware. She can... manipulate... powers in others. She can alter--"
Nathan's breath hissed through his teeth. "You! That's why you have--" He saw the confirmation in the priest's stricken face. "She gave this to you? You are the one she cursed!"
Duke shook his head, almost angrily. "Not only me. Don't speak of it."
"It doesn't have to be terrible!" Nathan burst out, frustrated. Cursed -- cursed with magic! That was why this priest hurt so much... because witchery had been forced upon him in adulthood, was not a part of him naturally. Nathan was still offended by his stance. "But it can be a gift!"
"I said shut up!" Duke raged. "I don't want to hear it from your tainted lips! Don't tell me those things. I only need you to--" he panted the words, overextended "--to destroy her. Publicly ruin her. Discover her secrets. The source of her powers. Political scandal we might use for leverage. All I desire in the world is to see the day we can bring the true witchfinders down upon her, at last."
Nathan narrowed his eyes, disgusted at the thought of betraying another magic user to the priesthood. But he set his hand on his hip and nodded. He would act as he chose, he determined; he did not have to follow Duke's instructions. They parted ways ill at ease with each other. Duke loaded him into a carriage, giving his own instructions to the driver, and his parting words to Nathan were, "I will make contact about where we should meet." He gave no timeframe, and despite himself Nathan hoped that it would not be too long. He didn't fear sex, but the magic he hoped to rely upon to protect him might not be a boon, if Lady Mara was as strong as Duke claimed and liked to play with other witches. The priest was the one solid point of contact he now had, adrift in an uncertain world of spies and politics.
It was a nerve-racking journey across the city. A pretentious mass of black towers with crenulated walls marked Lady Mara's domain, and Nathan watched crows flock around the towers on their approach.
A woman met them at a service entrance low in the walls, ignoring the driver but taking Nathan's arm and hurrying him inside the door. He felt the spark of magic in her at the touch. Small, subtle magic, but for a man who hated witches, Duke Crocker had strange taste in allies.
"I managed to get you a place on her staff. A vacancy came up among her aides -- as it often does. I wasn't certain, but--" She flushed prettily and patted his arm and looked... faintly worried, for a fleeting moment. "I don't think there'll be a problem. You look just right. I'll show you around now."
"--Your name?" Nathan remembered to ask, managing to insert the words into the chatter. If he needed to find her again--
"Oh! Jennifer." She made a little curtsey. "I work here as a scribe, but... the kind of records I keep aren't at all the nice kind. When Father Crocker approached me--"
Nathan snorted at the title and she blinked at him. He waved it off. "I'm sure you're right." Hard to associate that title with someone whom he'd teased such ridiculous noises from yesterday.
"He's such an honourable and mystical man," Jennifer amended, as though he'd offended her. Nathan offered her his open palms. "What? He is."
"A man who swears we're the creatures of the devil, who yet uses witches for his own ends?"
"He understands that it's not our fault. We were born the way we were."
Nathan was looking for something better than that in a champion to their cause, but he let it go. He opted not to tell the girl that the holy man had so readily accepted his own advances in bed. A little starry-eyed glamour he should understand, given his own attraction to the priest.
"Why don't you start with this tour," he suggested, "and tell me what my duties here will be." He wondered if he could do them... With some degree of concern, in fact, he wondered, for he had never done anything but witchcraft and remedies and whoring. He could read and write -- his herb craft and lore required that -- and he hoped it would be enough to build on.
"Duties?" Her face went rather pink. "Oh, er. Yes, I'll show you around, and then I'll show you to the others."
It wasn't until he saw the other 'aides' that he truly understood. To a man they were slim, youthful and fine examples of manhood. Not a set of spectacles, nor ink stains, nor anything that could be perceived as a blemish of any kind among them.
This... he thought blankly, thinking of the collection of scared-faced boys long after Jennifer had left him alone in the tiny bedchamber that was his, among a corridor of identical rooms. This woman is not going to be brought down by sexual scandal.
If she could get away with this, and people knew and did nothing, there was no chance for any traction there. Thus was ruled out his one real expertise in the situation Duke Crocker had put him in.
If his primary weapon were not to be sex -- though undoubtedly this situation would call for that from him, sooner or later -- then what?
He would have to find something else.
***
It took four days for Duke Crocker to contact him again, and they were four days Nathan did not much enjoy. He caught the eye of Mara and her consort, William, on the second day he was in their employ, having decided it was best to lie low long enough to get a grasp on the workings of the place before he made any move. He had attempted to bury himself in actually aide-like duties while around the titled pair.
Yet on that second day Mara had looked right at him and crooked her finger for him to come. She had touched his face and critiqued, "Well, you're a little old." Then his magic had sparked in recognition of hers -- and hers was powerful; terrifying -- and her complaints had died. Her eyes narrowed and she said, "You. Tonight."
A few of the fearful, grateful fellow aides had filled him in on what she meant as soon as they were done. "You must do everything they say," one gibbered. "Even if it seems terrible, refusing will be worse."
As a matter of fact, they demanded nothing of his body that Nathan's experience did not already encompass, though he had to pretend awkwardness at first. He did not wish to be discovered as a whore and thus a potential plant. Luckily, his magic and his remedies had kept his body perfect and tight, and there was nothing physical to give away how practised he was in the sexual arts. There were always clients who appreciated more whimpers and groans as he was breached, and it seemed he convinced William, too, well enough that it was the first time he'd been so used, while Mara berated the sloppy performance of his head between her thighs. He was more distracted than usual by the element of danger.
It was not the sex. It was the way he felt her hands on his shoulders in the middle of coitus, and her magic creeping in through the touch to push and play with his. The knowledge she was doing that -- and that he didn't know exactly what she was doing -- introduced a reality to his whimpers.
When he managed to escape them and steal back to his room alone after that first encounter, he sunk himself in his witch-sight and looked inward to examine himself thoroughly, but could find no lasting changes. Her touch hadn't left a stain, and hadn't altered anything, but all the same, it was an alarming level of mystical assault, far too intimate, and nothing he had been prepared for.
He slept half the morning and Jennifer, figuring out what had happened, smuggled him lunch and treats to his room. By the afternoon, he'd resumed his duties and by the night they wanted him again.
Again, the sex acts were nothing, but the rest--
He tried, ever so carefully and subtly, to pull his power down and hold it back, so that she could only reach a small part of it, hoping that perhaps she could be persuaded he was not so interesting after all. He answered her steadily more piercing questions as though he were ignorant of witchcraft, untrained and unaware.
It seemed to work, for on the fourth day, she let him off and picked one of the other aides to warm her bed instead. He spent the fourth day assigned to the vilest of tasks in the fortress.
...Because the nights in Mara and William's chamber, even with her disturbing attempts to manipulate Nathan's magic, were not the worst part of this place.
Nathan's room, and those of the other staff, might feel like cells, but there were real cells in the dungeons underneath the fortress, and a world of stench and torture and depravity such as he had never imagined. Mara, let no-one forget, was the Chief Inquisitor of the crown, and there were many ongoing projects imprisoned behind her black walls.
At least, at least Nathan could be glad that she kept such sadistic things separate from the bedchamber. He might have been able to use his magic to block the pain and later to heal the damage, but he didn't want to have to, and he was already concerned enough by the plight of his fellow staff.
After watching Jennifer take down the confessions of a half-destroyed man into a ledger, in a session Nathan was required to assist with, he understood thoroughly why she had risked so much to rebel... and why Duke wanted to call an end to this experimentation and brutality.
On the fourth night, Duke finally showed himself again. Jennifer led Nathan down to the side door once again, from where he alighted onto a coach which journeyed across the city, back to the expansive church quarters of the citadel.
Amazing how much more friendly those cold and towering spires had become in the intervening time.
"You have attached me to a nest of horrors!" Nathan accused, practically jumping on the man when he found Duke awaiting him off the coach.
Duke pulled him off, his brow creasing. "Not here." And they went up again to his chambers.
Much of those first few days, Nathan had entertained himself with thoughts of how he would proceed when next he tried to seduce the priest... Get him, perhaps, to show more skin. But since the second night, that had been less on his mind. Now, Nathan found himself jittery and panicked, hardly the calm seducer he had hoped to be. Would Mara find out about the night time trip? Considering regular life in her fortress, what would he face if he were caught betraying her? And, Gods, he had to go back there.
"You're distressed," Duke said, after a few minutes of terse exchange about Nathan's progress. Nathan had been trying his best for a professional facade, but apparently that was not working.
"She's a monster," he said.
"I think..." Duke's tongue crept out over his lips, not entirely without nervousness. "I think you have to be more proactive in your efforts. Perhaps adding you to her household was an error. You need to perk her interest more than you have done, to get close enough to learn anything of value."
Nathan gaped. "I do not want her attention."
"You cannot do it?" the priest posed sourly. "Do you want to be back in the dungeons?"
A return to his cell might be better, so long as the prince didn't decide to send in his Inquisitor. "You would not send me back to the dungeon."
Duke looked back at him carefully. "No. But I do need you to go back to her. Think of the people she has hurt, and will continue to hurt until she is stopped."
Nathan thought of his fellow aides, who had not chosen to sell their bodies as a commodity, yet had intimacy and worse demanded of them anyway. He thought of the state of the prisoners he had seen. This was an occupation his father would have been proud of; he had always talked big about how witches were there to serve the community, contrary to the condemnations of the church. Nathan groaned and sagged his forehead into his palms.
Duke left the rooms. By the time, he'd come back, a few minutes later, Nathan had loosened his clothes and collapsed bonelessly into a plush chair. "You can relax here a few hours longer. I have asked the driver to wait."
A few hours... an oasis of safety. Chance to regroup, recover. The tension of being in that place only became fully clear upon leaving it.
"Are you going to help me?" Nathan asked huskily, looking up. He found that the priest's blushes yet managed to rejuvenate and invigorate something in him.
Duke looked dismayed though. "You've been in her bed."
"You put me there," Nathan returned. "She didn't leave any taint! I can take care of myself."
"Can you?" Duke searched his face.
"So now you're worried," Nathan pointed out, cattily. "Jennifer thinks you're such an honourable man." His sarcasm shot through the statement.
"I am..." He scowled. "You, who don't know what honour is, would--" He stopped himself, unexpectedly, while Nathan was rolling his eyes from what constituted hardly an unfamiliar diatribe. "No, I'm sorry. That's deeply unfair of me. You're prepared to go back. I should not have cast such an insult."
Nathan was not sure he believed what he read that statement to imply. Duke picked up his hand where it lay on the soft arm of the chair. "You wish me to lie with you? Is that what you want most, with so little time as you have? When you could be--" He made a vague gesture, which Nathan filled in with resting and doing mostly anything else.
But he was far more occupied inhaling in harsh surprise at the unanticipated offer and squirming to his feet. "Yes..." Perhaps that was too eager, but after Mara and William, the chance of being in the bed of someone he liked...
He didn't give Duke much opportunity to get the words out, tightening his fingers around the hand he'd been gifted and reaching with his free hand for Duke's face. Moving in to kiss him, he walked the priest backward to the bed. There, he curled him over the edge of the plush mattress and pushed on top of him, pinning his hand, dragging at his clothes. Duke's magic, unwanted and maligned a thing as it was, flared and curled into his, as if Mara's treatment had made him more open to that. Which gave Nathan pause... But the magic in Duke felt right, for all that the man didn't want it; felt like another layer of potential intimacy, and not a threat. Still, Nathan dialled things back, not wanting to alarm Duke.
He would not risk anything spoiling this. He didn't think he'd ever wanted anyone so much.
Duke groaned under him and Nathan succeeded in wresting both their pants unfastened and gaping. He reached down to handle both their rods, pulling them into his fist together. Duke made a thin sound as Nathan's cock slid along the length of his. Nathan breathed hard and gathered concentration and thrust. Duke mewled and clutched both hands to Nathan's ribs. The feeling of being the one in control was heady, and needed, so needed. He moved until Duke's head was flung back prettily upon the sheets and his breaths were all but sobs as he spilled onto his own stomach and chest. Nathan kept his hand on his own cock as he let the other man's spent member free. He shifted his hips to hump Duke's thigh as he ducked his head to plant kisses on the priest's red-bitten lips.
"I dwelt upon this for four days, having sent you to her," Duke gasped, his hand finding Nathan's waist again, sneaking beneath his clothes. His other arm unexpectedly curled right the way around and dragged Nathan in close, tightly. "How could I forgive myself, for so using a man--"
Nathan buried his face and kissed Duke's neck. "I'm yours to use. Just promise me back -- when we're done -- you won't throw me away."
Duke groaned, not an entirely positive noise considering the question. Nathan briefly held the hope it was only because he'd felt the dampness soaking into the cloth over his thigh as Nathan came. But no. "I have never felt such things with a man before. You ask too much. I gave this much as a comfort, after what I had asked of you..."
Nathan bit him and made him yell, then rolled over and sat up.
He stayed there a minute, on top of the bedcovers, finding his balance. Duke, after his snooty declaration, seemed to have zoned out, spread-eagled on his back.
"We will need more than sex or scandal, or even the truth, to bring down Mara," he told Duke, bitterly. "You have the wrong spy. Oh, I'll go back -- but I don't think I can do it."
"You need to overpower her," Duke said, rough and quiet, "as you just did me."
"She's dominant," Nathan countered, "and there are two of them. She's also less interested in fiddling with my body than with my magic."
Duke sat up, curling his knees under himself lithely, looking at Nathan with a new spark of interest. "And there?"
"I don't know enough to -- I can barely hold her back. I've never had sex with a witch who could do that before. It's like she wants to have sex with my magic, too."
"I... I felt you, back there," Duke said slowly. "That was what you meant, wasn't it? That weird interaction. I don't have much sense of the magic -- I try my best not to. But... if practice is what you need... if it would help in this endeavour..."
Apparently, he did not wish to wait for a decision. He reached for Nathan's face and let the power in their bodies intertwine. That initiative was a little too like Mara, and Nathan stiffened, but reached up and held Duke's arm there as he sensed imminent retreat. If it felt like Mara's approach, after all, then all the better for practice.
He did not think either of them had ever experienced anything like the feeling of losing themselves in each other's power before.
They burst out of it together, both gasping, but Duke thrashing and physically flinching away. Nathan was merely stunned. Despite his best intentions to practice, that had ultimately not been like Mara.
"She's... different," he said roughly. "She can do things. We... we're the same. We touch each other, explore, but we don't change the geography." He grimaced and shrugged at Duke's evident distress. "Sorry."
"No." Duke shook his head. "More exposure to this sort of thing might still aid against being caught off-guard when she does it." He was trembling. "I'll... I could do it again, but... not..." He swore. "You need to go." He grabbed Nathan's arm urgently, indicating the clock on the wall. "Look how much time has passed!"
"Damn." Duke was right. Nathan stood and started rearranging his clothing, aiming for a modicum of respectability.
"I'll try not to leave it so long before contact, this time, but... you were unavailable, these last two nights."
"We still need more resources," Nathan said, fastening his belt. "This Lady Audrey, Mara's twin sister... does she know what you're doing? Is she an ally?" He had heard more things about the woman over the last four days, and anyone Mara hated so much was good with him.
"She is my benefactor," Duke said warily. "But as for this scheme..."
"Can you make of her an ally in this?" Nathan asked, a fraction desperately. "Is she a witch? If Mara is her twin, witchcraft runs in families." He and Duke were not enough to go against Mara, if it came to that, even without the complication of William's powers, which while not on Mara's level, William knew how to use far better than Duke did his. With a third ally, equal in power to Nathan or better, they might stand a chance.
"I... have never asked."
And nor would he have touched, with he a priest and she a noble woman. Nathan grimaced.
"I'll find out, on both counts," Duke said, with new determination. He clutched Nathan's arm. Magic played between them again, but less intrusive, more soothing and familiar. He blinked. "That's... new." He shook his head. "You must go, Nathan. Be careful. Stay safe."
His deep, soulful brown eyes looked gratifyingly agonised at the idea he must once again send Nathan away in such a fashion. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Nathan could see that the priest was at least partway ensnared, and he smiled.
***
As terrifying as the prospect was, Nathan couldn't escape the inevitability in Duke's advice to be proactive. He was not going to get any closer to Mara and William than he already was while he remained a passive plaything, and therefore he was not going to get anywhere at all.
Mara had selected Chris, earlier in the day -- a sulky, nervous older boy with some kind of wayward... charm, that Nathan suspected perhaps had been inflicted upon him as a joke, as it contrasted so startlingly with his dour personality. As the others retired to rest from the daily duties of the fortress, Chris nervously lingered in the main hall. In the centre of the hall, Mara and William were still making a laughing spectacle of some unlucky trickster-magician -- the white rabbit and card trick kind -- that another courtier had sent to them as a presumed joke. Nathan lingered, too, unseen.
When they tired of mocking the trickster and sent him on his way (and really, he had no idea how lucky he was that they didn't want to keep him), they switched their attention to Chris, and Nathan came out from the shadows. He set his hand on Chris' shoulder and turned him. The other man jumped under the touch, expecting no-one else to be there.
"Go," Nathan instructed.
"I-- I--" It was clear that Chris was afraid to go without Mara's say.
"What do you think you are doing?" Mara demanded of Nathan. William, highly amused, watched over her shoulder.
"You don't want him, you want me." Nathan jerked his chin up and defiantly brought all his appeal to bear -- bolstered by an undercurrent of witchery to at least equal Chris' peculiar charm.
Mara raised her eyebrows and William grinningly suggested to Chris, "Yes, why don't you go?"
Chris practically ran. The servants had cleared out, leaving silence under the echoing words of their exchange. Nathan was left alone in the vast, empty hall with the two sorcerers.
"I'm not like them," Nathan said.
"I had wondered if you had more to reveal." Mara stalked a circle around him. The tension was sharp. If it snapped a certain way, the result would be unpleasant. "So you are a knowing bearer of that power I sensed."
"I need to know what to do with it," Nathan said, trying to keep the tremble out of his voice. "I need you to teach me."
She laughed. "I don't need an apprentice."
"...But maybe there are ventures for which we could use another person able to wield power." William stepped forward to speak in her ear, while he caressed her neck. "And I've told you I like this one, love."
"You took his place," Mara said. "You realise that an obligation still comes with that, even were you to earn special status. We can already have you in any way we wish. You cannot think to trade access to tutelage for base seduction."
Nathan shrugged. "Also unlike them, I'm not afraid of your bed."
Mara's smile was broad and cruel. William grimaced and tipped his head in a certain long-suffering gesture behind her.
They did, indeed, test him for that statement that night. They knew sex spells he did not -- unsurprising, when most of his, he had created for himself -- and plundered his body to its limit. But though the pleasure-pain of it did test him to his limits, it did not spill over them: he was no amateur. He could still take what they doled out and return them pleasure.
Though that became its own source of anxiety. "You came here skilled."
"It would have been... stupid... to come here with nothing," Nathan gasped.
"It was stupid to come here," Mara said, "when you are no more than a street slut with a few tricks."
"I knew enough to keep myself clean… and enough to fool you." Nathan's heart thumped as he said the words, his breath and body strained by the precipice this discussion hung over, as well as what William was doing.
Mara's fingernails dug into his face. "You did not fool me. You merely managed to offset my curiosity for a few days. William likes you, but aside from that spark of power within, you are dull and too old."
"Let me show you the full range of what I can do, and you won't be bored."
"If I had wanted prostitutes--"
"Oh, let him try," William waved dismissively, and Nathan loosed his breath slowly, trying not to display too much of relief as William pulled out of him and the hot aura of power that had oversensitised all his nerves around the penetration faded. "He made it this far, and he played the part of the ingénue well enough. It could be hysterical to bring him to court and throw him at Cedric, to see if the big fool nibbles the bait."
Mara glared. "If we could do that, it could be done back to us," she hissed, and Nathan's life hung on a knife edge. "How do we know he is not my sister's? Or Crocker's?"
William laughed. "If he is sending whores against us, then we are living in unprecedentedly interesting times."
The breath Nathan had been holding released. It was clear from William's tone how little credit he gave the idea. A good thing Nathan had already been exercising such tight control of his breathing throughout their physical activities, for it hid that reaction, too.
"You do want to keep this one," Mara said, with a clear streak of sarcasm, the accusation of spying forgotten.
"I don't actually like your little mice, dear," William returned. "Full of fear and squeaking so distractingly when we play with them. I'd rather a loyal hound or trained hawk, capable of some function as well as decoration."
"Hmph." Mara tossed her head and lay back. "Well, let us see where these vaunted skills of his really lie."
If that was meant to be challenge or threat, Nathan was on home territory now. He lay between her thighs and worked keenly until he had Mara gasping and drumming her heels, then turned his attention back to William -- who was easier to please anyway -- once she lay sated.
"We should have been recruiting from the streets all along," William grunted as he finally came and Nathan swallowed him down. His fingers clutched in Nathan's hair and their spasmodic movements told of his pleasure.
"Only if you want nibbets and raging croides from most of them," Nathan said. "I told you, I'm unique."
***
Continues...
Or read on AO3
AUTHOR: roseveare
RATING: R
LENGTH: ~18,800 words approx
SUMMARY: Nathan Wuornos hid his magic and took up bartering his flesh for coin after watching his father burned at the stake. But one day, an aggressive client cries "witch!" and Nathan finds himself in the citadel jails. An unexpected reprieve appears in the form of shady priest Duke Crocker, who offers to release Nathan in return for his services... both physical and magical... in bringing down his hated enemy, corrupt Crown Inquisitor Lady Mara and her consort William. Nathan has no intention of betraying another witch, but he'll take the chance for freedom... and to play with the delectable priest's guilty lusts while he's about it...
NOTES: Crack fantasy romance novel AU written for the Unconventional Courtship challenge.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, no profit, yadda, yadda, yadda.
--------
"It is a Dark Era, one when a lusty lad will do what he must to survive. Even if it means bartering flesh for a palmful of coins. . . Forced to watch his father burn at the stake, Nathan Wuornos knows the danger of the gift he inherited - a powerful magic that must stay hidden. Until one night when he's accused of witchcraft and Nathan finds himself behind prison walls, awaiting certain death with a roguish priest unlike any man of the cloth he has known. In reality, Duke Crocker is as far from holy as the devil himself, but his promise of freedom in return for Nathan's services may be his salvation. Locked into a dubious agreement, Nathan resents his plan to have him seduce and ruin his lifelong enemy. But toying with Duke's own lust for him is enjoyable, and he agrees to be his pawn while secretly intending to use him just the same..."
--Based on 'The Harlot' by Saskia Walker.
The roles could've gone either way. But I've been joking about writing hooker!Nathan since the season 3-4 hiatus, so~
The Witchfinder's Whore
Carts rattled as they came in under the gateway of the Great City -- to what they called the city proper, as it was deemed the poorer houses outside the city walls were not. Yet the people who lived in those houses had a better chance entering the city to find work, or to find business among the rich population. Prostitution was one such thriving business. The whores of the city would sidle in under that oppressive archway, pretending respectability, hoping not to catch the attention of a particularly difficult guard and be thrown out into the mud, at risk from the wheels of the rattling carriages.
Nathan had legitimate business selling potions and ointments from the heavy box he hauled around over his shoulder, the business his father had passed on to him. But he would never forget the day he had watched his father dragged into the centre of the city square to be burned at the stake. It had taught him that if he was going to offer any extra 'special' wares, it was safer to do so out of his own body than by offering the magical trade Garland had dealt in to truly earn enough to survive.
His father would not have approved, but he had been dead for years now, and had approved of very little Nathan had done while he was alive. Besides, he had everything he required to ensure the more unpleasant risks of his secret profession were no threat to him. He could use his oils and potions and magic to guard his health, and never advertise the fact the abilities were there.
Today, it was not raining, the first day of the week to escape such a fate, and the city was cleaner than usual for its prior drenching. The layer of muck that usually caked the streets had washed into the channels that would bear it down through the city walls, beneath the outer city below, emerging at the outlet where children scoured through the waste for items rich men had lost.
Nathan took up a position on an empty trading stand on a corner. He was a ruggedly handsome man, still young but less so than he had been, and anticipated perhaps needing soon to use spells to obscure the signs of his aging. Yet he still had an unlined face, square jaw, and striking blue eyes, and underneath his clothes, a body that was slim and solid in addition to well-exercised and skilful. And most of his clients were regulars who would only grow suspicious if he suddenly started to look younger.
He had sold two potions by the time a man came up to him and made the street finger-language sign for business? A potion more and he'd have settled for the earnings of the day and returned home, no extras required, but refuse a customer with no good reason and it could get around. Nathan made the responding sign for agreement, then sketched out his terms and charges wordlessly against his palm. The man nodded. Nathan closed up his portable shop and hauled it back over his shoulder, having no intention of leaving his wares. Then he followed the client down the nearby alley.
The King's Nose was down there, but the man veered away before that, into a discrete nook between buildings. Great, Nathan thought. No room, no bed, outdoors sex and the client wasn't even good-looking. He should have quit after selling those two potions.
He didn't particularly want to get on his knees in the dirty nook, even before the man started pulling on his hair and hauling his head around. Nathan resisted the urge to bite his manhood, but only managed to keep so much hold on his temper. "That's it!" He pulled back, angrily, losing a few tufts from his scalp. "I don't have to put up with--"
The man followed his movements, hands snatching to gain his purchase back, not just tugging Nathan's hair but circling one of his hands around his throat. Nathan choked as the hold tightened, the client dragging him back. "I'm paying you, I can do what I want with you." Nathan's head bounced off the wall they'd been making their transaction against.
In times like this, the magic came like drawing breath. Nathan heard the crunch as the man's fingers broke, all of them bending backward against the natural angle of the joints. The would-be client was slammed to the opposite side of the nook, and Nathan fell to his knees anyway, too dizzied to stay upright.
He was relieved, at first, when he heard the strangled noise of fear and the man's feet taking off in a fast retreat away from him. Then he heard the bastard open his mouth and shout the usual, well-worn shout: "Witch! WITCH!"
Swearing, Nathan tried to move, getting up to stagger along, leaning on the wall. He was still struggling to catch breath through his hurting throat. But there had been incidents before, and he'd survived before. He just needed to find the safety of anonymity. Somewhere there were lots of people.
Given that the wailing man had ten fingers visibly broken in a rather extreme manner, Nathan's magic had not been subtle or helpful when it came to keeping his secret. He might still be able to laugh this off, though. Enough people tried to call witch as an all-purposes tactic to cast blame that the city guard actually tended to take such accusations with a lot of eye-rolling. But trying to bluff his way out was still far riskier than ducking inside the King's Nose and hiding amid the drunken cavorting of the clientele there.
He fell inside and the guardsmen burst through the door at a run a moment later. Nathan's accuser was in their midst, shaking in rage and pain -- good -- while he tried to hold out a signet ring on a chain, between the heels of his palms.
Nathan's alleyway client, who had been too stingy to pay extra for a room and their comfort, was nobility.
Damnation! The guard weren't so easily going to laugh it off and give up early if there was the word of a noble involved. The eyes of the unpleasant man were scouring the room even as Nathan slipped into the back, hoping he remained unseen. The Nose had more than one secret exit, that was why it was so popular among rogues. He'd have to lie low for some time... could he even risk going back for his box of wares, abandoned in the nook? He'd have to build up his livelihood again without it, and if he was lying low he wouldn't be able to do any business in the other fashion...
Screw the box. He'd have to subsist off the wilderness for a few weeks and re-make those potions while he did so, make another box too. It would be difficult, but better than getting caught.
His luck wasn't even so kind as that.
His repugnant client must have spotted him as he slipped out the back of the taproom. The guard surged through before he'd set his hand on the panel that hid the drop-down into the cellar and the scramble out through the converted coal chute. He had a split second to decide whether or not to fight. Use his magic to fight, and prove beyond doubt what he was, and never be able to walk openly in the city again.
He chose otherwise. He feigned surprise, drawing back from their hands with a yelp of protest, and did not resist any more than any other protesting citizen that plied an illicit trade. "That bastard struck me -- hit my head against the wall! Damn right I broke his fingers. They all cry 'witch!' when a whore gets the drop on them, you fellows know that as well as us!"
A public whipping for whoring was better than burning, or permanent necessary self-imposed exile. Nathan pushed his magic down when the guard seized him and marched him off, while behind them his former client crowed.
***
The dungeons of the Great Citadel were as grim and gloomy as reputation had it. Nathan, in the half day and night he had spent there so far, had steeled his heart against the screams and settled merely upon the hope the people extracting them would not come for him. His magic was still there, a bright and brilliant thread undiluted by the priests' overconfident charms made in the name of a god that his powers obviously did not recognise. If it came to torture, he would have to fight and reveal himself, and any number of things could happen. Strong as his magic was, the chances were still considerable that it wouldn't end well for him.
Morning had long since slipped in through the narrow window high up above his head by the time the door creaked open and one of the black-robed priests finally entered.
Nathan shifted uneasily in his chains. He had not matched his powers against a witchfinder before, if that was what this man was. He looked forbidding enough, certainly, with the stark black of his robe making his complexion even paler; his trim beard and moustache and flowing long hair almost the same black. The only colour upon him was his eyes, which were brown. Too warm a brown for this place.
Realising he was staring, Nathan dragged his head aside, lest he be caught in some priestly mesmer. He stubbornly looked into the furthest corner while the priest shut the door and then paced a half-circle around his chained position, back and forth.
"...Well, aren't you interesting," the priest said.
Nathan clenched his jaw. "Whoring gets a fine or a public whipping," he said, sullenly, trying to strike just the right tone. "What am I doing here? When am I to be sentenced? Surely you don't believe that--"
"You are a witch," the priest rode over him. "And a strong one. I can see the threads of it glowing in you. Yet you freely admit yourself a whore, willing to face punishment for the lesser crime. And you have not manifested your powers against the guards, or against these prison walls, unwilling to call the life that you know over, when it may yet be salvaged by such nerve." He knelt in front of Nathan, bringing his strong-featured face on a level with his. "Don't," he said sharply, as Nathan flexed his power against his chains. The priest reached out and grabbed his arm, scattering the beginnings of the spell.
Nathan had been utterly surprised by the move, but gauged the strength put into the other man's disruption and knew that he could bring more to bear than the priest could counter. But he hesitated. The other man was very close, touching him, brown eyes brighter and warmer from this vantage, and it was strange--
"I believe you have a skill set that may be of great use. I think we can make a deal to both of our benefit."
"A deal," Nathan said flatly.
"Indeed." The priest stood up, turning his back momentarily. Nathan did not put an energy-dagger between his shoulders. "But first, I have been lax. Your name is logged as Nathan Wuornos on the current documents. Son of the executed Sorcerer Garland, if I'm not mistaken." Nathan merely grunted, putting no particular confirmation into the noise. "My name is Duke Crocker."
"Duke of where?" Nathan asked. "Of what?"
"It's merely a name." Duke -- Duke?? -- flicked a hand dismissively. Clearly his parents had had pretensions to nobility.
"That's almost as ridiculous as the idea a priest could have any deal to strike with me," Nathan said. "This is some new method of trying to extract confession."
"I know you're a witch," the other man emphasized dryly.
"So are you," Nathan burst out, scandalized by the hypocrisy. Only another magic sensitive could have done the things he just had. The priest was undoubtedly also a witch. Was that the secret of the priesthood, that they were no better than what they hunted? He hadn't previously ever been close enough to any of the black-robed witchfinders to tell if there was any magic in them. If that was the case, calling out this man's power would help him nothing.
Duke Crocker's face fell into very severe lines, and he looked worn and tired. Humanity, however, looked better on him, stirring something in Nathan that his dark countenance had already begun to spark in the initial impression of him. There had been few enough people Nathan had ever truly lusted for, working as he did, with the secret that he kept. An atrocious chance that a man like this should prove to be one of them.
"So we both know enough to cast the other to burn," the priest said, genially. "A deal would seem sensible."
Nathan bit his lip and glared, the animosity he projected hopefully obscuring the heat in his body and regard. "Are you going to release me from these chains as part of your deal?"
Duke wafted a hand. "I should think you can do that yourself." But the keys were jangling from his hand when it rose again. He held off, but Nathan glared silently until he bent forward to use them, refusing to visibly reveal himself. This could still be a perverse trap.
"I will let you out," Duke said, his head hovering above Nathan's. "You will walk with me past the guards, into the citadel, to the abodes of the priesthood. There I will furnish you with finer clothes, and a new identity, and an excuse to be near to the enemy I wish you to bring down. Once there, with your magic, with the physical wiles of your profession, you will inveigle your way into her world, and by one method or another, find me a means by which to break her power."
"Her?" Nathan had not expected that. "Who?"
"Lady Mara, Prince Langinan's Royal Advisor and Chief Inquisitor, somewhat charmingly known colloquially among the court as the Beast. She has a consort, but they are known to take toys with no visible detriment to their marriage."
"You're insane," Nathan exclaimed.
Duke patted his face, the touch electric. Nathan surged up into it despite himself -- and despite the chains that still dragged down on him. Duke's cheeks tinged pink as he retreated a step from the unexpected advance. Nathan grinned at the outburst of colour in his pale complexion, proof that unseemly desire lurked in the priest as well as his unseemly magic.
"But you will do it," Duke said, the key touching the chains at the edge of the lock.
Nathan jerked his head. "What choice do I have?" Almost certain ruin or death, versus... a very complicated, dangerous situation, by report, but also the chance to inveigle himself not only into the affections of the priest's target, but the priest himself? He would take it.
"I thought you'd do," Duke murmured, and the chains clicked free.
***
Walking unencumbered out of the prison alongside the sleek, dark-robed priest was very strange. Upright and side to side, there was little discernible difference in their heights that could not be caused by Duke's better quality footwear, which clicked on the stone floors as he walked. Had Nathan's clothes been less poor and patched, he could have imagined himself equal to the man, free and striding beside him in such a setting. Certainly there was an ease in the other's manner he would not have expected. Duke had the paperwork and took him freely through all of the checkpoints.
Walking into the priestly quarters was even stranger. The buildings were grand and smelled of incense and smoke... but they were echoing and hollow, lofty and serious, and something in Nathan objected that they were no place for the man beside him to be.
Duke became flustered when they ran into other serious and forbidding men in the corridors, who stared at Nathan.
"You don't bring whores here often?" Nathan asked, teasing, but since he could be discreet, waited until the door had closed behind them and Duke clunked a heavy key around to lock them in again, this time in a large apartment that was at least empty of other people.
"There's no way they could know--" Duke started, then choked and looked annoyed as he realised he was being teased. "You can wash, and you can sleep -- if you need to. I'd imagine last night wasn't very restful."
"I've had better," Nathan murmured, distracted by looking around. He was aware that Duke was watching him take in his living space. Nathan opened the few doors and examined what was on the other side of them, closets all apart from the bathroom. He turned back and pointed at the large, lush canopy bed. "Your bed... What exactly do your priestly vows entail?"
He had the satisfaction of seeing Duke flush again, then grow cross. "Even if I wanted to, with an unwashed witch who's likely been had by half of the city in his, what, certainly over thirty years?"
"I wasn't doing that for all those years." Nathan stretched, easing knots out of his body that the chains had put in, twisting enough to raise the hem of his shirt to reveal a good slice of flesh, as well as show off the trim lines of his torso. "I'll wash," he said mildly. "You know... it isn't so many... I didn't start until after my father was executed. And magic, anyway, keeps me clean. Your dick would be safe enough from the raging croides, or anything else."
"I didn't bring you here for--!"
Laughing, Nathan went into the bathroom, leaving the door half open. He started to strip whilst running the water. "You could join me right now--!"
His only answer was the door being firmly, fully shut.
Grimness descended upon him with the privacy. Duke didn't want him, only wanted to send him off to the bed of a dangerous enemy. Perhaps Nathan should make his escape now -- the small window, with the help of magic, would perhaps suffice for that. Yet Duke could still ruin him, and despite what he knew, no-one would believe him if he made counter-claim of the priest having magic of his own, and such an action would still not save his own skin.
Worse still, he was reluctant to completely part ways with the strange priest. Being his spy might yet give Nathan chance to become closer to him.
He soaped up and washed down his body, getting rid of the prison grime and the dirt of the streets before that, enjoying the novelty of the abundance of warm water. In the priests' houses, it seemed they had heated water and heated floors, with pipes running below. A different world--
The towel on the rail wasn't fresh, and he thought happily of it being around the priest's body while he nestled it around his. He emerged from the bathroom with the square of cloth hanging around his hips, and Duke looked up and crossed himself and spluttered at the sight.
"You're doing this on purpose!"
"I wasn't going to put the filthy clothes back on. Besides, I'll be sleeping, so what would be the point?" He pulled the towel clear and used it to scrub a last few times through his hair while Duke looked away.
"For free," Nathan enticed, climbing into the bed and pulling back the covers for the other man to follow. "Help me to gage the character of my new employer."
Duke looked at him with horrified, reluctant want, and actually took a step closer before he stopped himself.
Then he didn't stop himself, and Nathan was a little surprised to find him swiftly in the bed, his hands on Nathan and smoothing over his damp and flushed-hot skin, sliding across his waist, his hips, up his chest. Nathan caught his fingers and pulled them up to kiss them, sucking digits one by one into his mouth. The priest trembled, like a virgin.
The idea only empowered him, that this powerful, status-holding man could truly be so naive in this one thing. Nathan rose up and kissed him, sliding a tongue into his mouth, claiming his breath. He teased Duke's tongue while the other man grunted protest, and searched amid the robes for a handful of flesh.
The breath left him as Duke abruptly pressed him onto his back and held him down, breathing hard, whole weight leaned upon the hands on Nathan's chest. "You are so beautiful," he panted, "and too keen. What mischief is this?"
"It's no plot." Nathan reached for Duke's face. "You're beautiful, too. I want you."
"A whore... a witch," Duke panted, shaking his head.
"Priests can have sex," Nathan asserted. He wasn't sure at all, because while he'd done business with a few, they'd hardly been openly flaunting the fact. Still, he knew that taking up the cloth didn't make them eunuchs.
"With women," Duke choked. "I... we... we don't have to...?" He made a gesture that caused Nathan to laugh.
"All my oils are in the box I lost when I was taken," he said. "So unless you have a substitute..."
Duke flushed red over as much if his skin as Nathan could see and shook his head.
"I can do plenty without you inside me, or me inside you--" Some preferred it that way. The assurance seemed to calm Duke, and he let Nathan pull at his clothes. Underneath the robes were a black undershirt and white long johns, which were a magnificent source of amusement, but the priest would not allow himself to be disrobed any further, moving Nathan's hands away when he tried.
"This is enough," he said. "Show me what you will -- like this."
Nathan nodded and moved to kiss him again. He manoeuvred them over, straddling Duke in the large bed, pushing his groin down into the other man's covered one. Duke moaned and stared up at him through slit eyes.
Nathan braced himself with a hold on the other man's shoulders and rocked there. His own arousal was slower than usual -- the situation was still stressful, and he did not wish to resort to magic with someone who could sense that he was doing so... Duke might get the wrong idea and take offence. But his cock was filling and hardening now, and he could feel the response through the staid underwear. He watched the changes in Duke's breathing. He could tell even through the cloth barrier that the other man's size would be pleasing.
He slid down Duke's body, hands trailing over the visibly defined chest beneath his undershirt -- a crying shame to hide it. When his head was level with the bulge of Duke's cock, he gripped both hands over prominent hipbones and tongued the bulge through the fabric. Duke made a new noise, a high pitched whimper that delighted Nathan. He put his hand down and continued to work his lips over the covered bulge, nuzzling and caressing it with his chin and his cheeks and his mouth.
"Oh, God -- God!" Duke whimpered.
"I'm not his work, remember," Nathan rasped. "Can I--?" His fingers teased at buttons that led into forbidden territory.
"Take it out!" the priest gasped, as Nathan had known he would. "Take it out!"
Nathan grinned. He had to be painfully compressed in those pants by now, and it was even hard to extract him once the buttons were unfastened. The first swipe of Nathan's tongue along the length of him from root to tip had him starting to come. Nathan mumbled a spell fast from habit and then engulfed him thoroughly, stroking with the movements of his throat, flexing his neck, and swallowing down as Duke came.
"You are... the devil's work indeed," Duke hissed, lying wrung-out on his back like a damp rag.
"Maybe," Nathan responded smugly, climbing back up the bed and taking his own cock in his hand under the sheets. "But I'm one of his best."
***
After the sex, Duke let Nathan sleep through the afternoon. Nathan was aware of him leaving, and much later of the priest standing over him for a while with a mixed regard, then crawling into the edge of the bed again. Even after all of that, and a night spent side by side, Duke was stiff and standoffish when morning finally came around. As if he'd reasserted to himself what this was about, he merely made sure that Nathan was washed and dressed in fine clothes, then sent him on his way.
Too much to hope that in one day he could prompt enough possessiveness the other man would be loath to share him with an enemy. The enemy was still more important.
"Mara is dangerous," Duke told him before sending him out. "She... has cursed her enemies before. She ill-used her own twin sister, her very twin, terribly, usurping her power and consigning her to be a near-prisoner in the palace tower."
"Is that who you avenge?" Nathan asked, disappointed by the reverence in the priest's voice. When, he'd said he'd slept with women, did he mean this woman?
Duke's lips went tight.
Nathan frowned. "If she can throw curses..."
"Magic." Duke voiced it almost in a whisper. "She uses it openly, for no-one would dare contest her."
Damn it, thought Nathan. This grew more dangerous, more complicated still.
"She may see you as being of interest because of your abilities," Duke said, "but beware. She can... manipulate... powers in others. She can alter--"
Nathan's breath hissed through his teeth. "You! That's why you have--" He saw the confirmation in the priest's stricken face. "She gave this to you? You are the one she cursed!"
Duke shook his head, almost angrily. "Not only me. Don't speak of it."
"It doesn't have to be terrible!" Nathan burst out, frustrated. Cursed -- cursed with magic! That was why this priest hurt so much... because witchery had been forced upon him in adulthood, was not a part of him naturally. Nathan was still offended by his stance. "But it can be a gift!"
"I said shut up!" Duke raged. "I don't want to hear it from your tainted lips! Don't tell me those things. I only need you to--" he panted the words, overextended "--to destroy her. Publicly ruin her. Discover her secrets. The source of her powers. Political scandal we might use for leverage. All I desire in the world is to see the day we can bring the true witchfinders down upon her, at last."
Nathan narrowed his eyes, disgusted at the thought of betraying another magic user to the priesthood. But he set his hand on his hip and nodded. He would act as he chose, he determined; he did not have to follow Duke's instructions. They parted ways ill at ease with each other. Duke loaded him into a carriage, giving his own instructions to the driver, and his parting words to Nathan were, "I will make contact about where we should meet." He gave no timeframe, and despite himself Nathan hoped that it would not be too long. He didn't fear sex, but the magic he hoped to rely upon to protect him might not be a boon, if Lady Mara was as strong as Duke claimed and liked to play with other witches. The priest was the one solid point of contact he now had, adrift in an uncertain world of spies and politics.
It was a nerve-racking journey across the city. A pretentious mass of black towers with crenulated walls marked Lady Mara's domain, and Nathan watched crows flock around the towers on their approach.
A woman met them at a service entrance low in the walls, ignoring the driver but taking Nathan's arm and hurrying him inside the door. He felt the spark of magic in her at the touch. Small, subtle magic, but for a man who hated witches, Duke Crocker had strange taste in allies.
"I managed to get you a place on her staff. A vacancy came up among her aides -- as it often does. I wasn't certain, but--" She flushed prettily and patted his arm and looked... faintly worried, for a fleeting moment. "I don't think there'll be a problem. You look just right. I'll show you around now."
"--Your name?" Nathan remembered to ask, managing to insert the words into the chatter. If he needed to find her again--
"Oh! Jennifer." She made a little curtsey. "I work here as a scribe, but... the kind of records I keep aren't at all the nice kind. When Father Crocker approached me--"
Nathan snorted at the title and she blinked at him. He waved it off. "I'm sure you're right." Hard to associate that title with someone whom he'd teased such ridiculous noises from yesterday.
"He's such an honourable and mystical man," Jennifer amended, as though he'd offended her. Nathan offered her his open palms. "What? He is."
"A man who swears we're the creatures of the devil, who yet uses witches for his own ends?"
"He understands that it's not our fault. We were born the way we were."
Nathan was looking for something better than that in a champion to their cause, but he let it go. He opted not to tell the girl that the holy man had so readily accepted his own advances in bed. A little starry-eyed glamour he should understand, given his own attraction to the priest.
"Why don't you start with this tour," he suggested, "and tell me what my duties here will be." He wondered if he could do them... With some degree of concern, in fact, he wondered, for he had never done anything but witchcraft and remedies and whoring. He could read and write -- his herb craft and lore required that -- and he hoped it would be enough to build on.
"Duties?" Her face went rather pink. "Oh, er. Yes, I'll show you around, and then I'll show you to the others."
It wasn't until he saw the other 'aides' that he truly understood. To a man they were slim, youthful and fine examples of manhood. Not a set of spectacles, nor ink stains, nor anything that could be perceived as a blemish of any kind among them.
This... he thought blankly, thinking of the collection of scared-faced boys long after Jennifer had left him alone in the tiny bedchamber that was his, among a corridor of identical rooms. This woman is not going to be brought down by sexual scandal.
If she could get away with this, and people knew and did nothing, there was no chance for any traction there. Thus was ruled out his one real expertise in the situation Duke Crocker had put him in.
If his primary weapon were not to be sex -- though undoubtedly this situation would call for that from him, sooner or later -- then what?
He would have to find something else.
***
It took four days for Duke Crocker to contact him again, and they were four days Nathan did not much enjoy. He caught the eye of Mara and her consort, William, on the second day he was in their employ, having decided it was best to lie low long enough to get a grasp on the workings of the place before he made any move. He had attempted to bury himself in actually aide-like duties while around the titled pair.
Yet on that second day Mara had looked right at him and crooked her finger for him to come. She had touched his face and critiqued, "Well, you're a little old." Then his magic had sparked in recognition of hers -- and hers was powerful; terrifying -- and her complaints had died. Her eyes narrowed and she said, "You. Tonight."
A few of the fearful, grateful fellow aides had filled him in on what she meant as soon as they were done. "You must do everything they say," one gibbered. "Even if it seems terrible, refusing will be worse."
As a matter of fact, they demanded nothing of his body that Nathan's experience did not already encompass, though he had to pretend awkwardness at first. He did not wish to be discovered as a whore and thus a potential plant. Luckily, his magic and his remedies had kept his body perfect and tight, and there was nothing physical to give away how practised he was in the sexual arts. There were always clients who appreciated more whimpers and groans as he was breached, and it seemed he convinced William, too, well enough that it was the first time he'd been so used, while Mara berated the sloppy performance of his head between her thighs. He was more distracted than usual by the element of danger.
It was not the sex. It was the way he felt her hands on his shoulders in the middle of coitus, and her magic creeping in through the touch to push and play with his. The knowledge she was doing that -- and that he didn't know exactly what she was doing -- introduced a reality to his whimpers.
When he managed to escape them and steal back to his room alone after that first encounter, he sunk himself in his witch-sight and looked inward to examine himself thoroughly, but could find no lasting changes. Her touch hadn't left a stain, and hadn't altered anything, but all the same, it was an alarming level of mystical assault, far too intimate, and nothing he had been prepared for.
He slept half the morning and Jennifer, figuring out what had happened, smuggled him lunch and treats to his room. By the afternoon, he'd resumed his duties and by the night they wanted him again.
Again, the sex acts were nothing, but the rest--
He tried, ever so carefully and subtly, to pull his power down and hold it back, so that she could only reach a small part of it, hoping that perhaps she could be persuaded he was not so interesting after all. He answered her steadily more piercing questions as though he were ignorant of witchcraft, untrained and unaware.
It seemed to work, for on the fourth day, she let him off and picked one of the other aides to warm her bed instead. He spent the fourth day assigned to the vilest of tasks in the fortress.
...Because the nights in Mara and William's chamber, even with her disturbing attempts to manipulate Nathan's magic, were not the worst part of this place.
Nathan's room, and those of the other staff, might feel like cells, but there were real cells in the dungeons underneath the fortress, and a world of stench and torture and depravity such as he had never imagined. Mara, let no-one forget, was the Chief Inquisitor of the crown, and there were many ongoing projects imprisoned behind her black walls.
At least, at least Nathan could be glad that she kept such sadistic things separate from the bedchamber. He might have been able to use his magic to block the pain and later to heal the damage, but he didn't want to have to, and he was already concerned enough by the plight of his fellow staff.
After watching Jennifer take down the confessions of a half-destroyed man into a ledger, in a session Nathan was required to assist with, he understood thoroughly why she had risked so much to rebel... and why Duke wanted to call an end to this experimentation and brutality.
On the fourth night, Duke finally showed himself again. Jennifer led Nathan down to the side door once again, from where he alighted onto a coach which journeyed across the city, back to the expansive church quarters of the citadel.
Amazing how much more friendly those cold and towering spires had become in the intervening time.
"You have attached me to a nest of horrors!" Nathan accused, practically jumping on the man when he found Duke awaiting him off the coach.
Duke pulled him off, his brow creasing. "Not here." And they went up again to his chambers.
Much of those first few days, Nathan had entertained himself with thoughts of how he would proceed when next he tried to seduce the priest... Get him, perhaps, to show more skin. But since the second night, that had been less on his mind. Now, Nathan found himself jittery and panicked, hardly the calm seducer he had hoped to be. Would Mara find out about the night time trip? Considering regular life in her fortress, what would he face if he were caught betraying her? And, Gods, he had to go back there.
"You're distressed," Duke said, after a few minutes of terse exchange about Nathan's progress. Nathan had been trying his best for a professional facade, but apparently that was not working.
"She's a monster," he said.
"I think..." Duke's tongue crept out over his lips, not entirely without nervousness. "I think you have to be more proactive in your efforts. Perhaps adding you to her household was an error. You need to perk her interest more than you have done, to get close enough to learn anything of value."
Nathan gaped. "I do not want her attention."
"You cannot do it?" the priest posed sourly. "Do you want to be back in the dungeons?"
A return to his cell might be better, so long as the prince didn't decide to send in his Inquisitor. "You would not send me back to the dungeon."
Duke looked back at him carefully. "No. But I do need you to go back to her. Think of the people she has hurt, and will continue to hurt until she is stopped."
Nathan thought of his fellow aides, who had not chosen to sell their bodies as a commodity, yet had intimacy and worse demanded of them anyway. He thought of the state of the prisoners he had seen. This was an occupation his father would have been proud of; he had always talked big about how witches were there to serve the community, contrary to the condemnations of the church. Nathan groaned and sagged his forehead into his palms.
Duke left the rooms. By the time, he'd come back, a few minutes later, Nathan had loosened his clothes and collapsed bonelessly into a plush chair. "You can relax here a few hours longer. I have asked the driver to wait."
A few hours... an oasis of safety. Chance to regroup, recover. The tension of being in that place only became fully clear upon leaving it.
"Are you going to help me?" Nathan asked huskily, looking up. He found that the priest's blushes yet managed to rejuvenate and invigorate something in him.
Duke looked dismayed though. "You've been in her bed."
"You put me there," Nathan returned. "She didn't leave any taint! I can take care of myself."
"Can you?" Duke searched his face.
"So now you're worried," Nathan pointed out, cattily. "Jennifer thinks you're such an honourable man." His sarcasm shot through the statement.
"I am..." He scowled. "You, who don't know what honour is, would--" He stopped himself, unexpectedly, while Nathan was rolling his eyes from what constituted hardly an unfamiliar diatribe. "No, I'm sorry. That's deeply unfair of me. You're prepared to go back. I should not have cast such an insult."
Nathan was not sure he believed what he read that statement to imply. Duke picked up his hand where it lay on the soft arm of the chair. "You wish me to lie with you? Is that what you want most, with so little time as you have? When you could be--" He made a vague gesture, which Nathan filled in with resting and doing mostly anything else.
But he was far more occupied inhaling in harsh surprise at the unanticipated offer and squirming to his feet. "Yes..." Perhaps that was too eager, but after Mara and William, the chance of being in the bed of someone he liked...
He didn't give Duke much opportunity to get the words out, tightening his fingers around the hand he'd been gifted and reaching with his free hand for Duke's face. Moving in to kiss him, he walked the priest backward to the bed. There, he curled him over the edge of the plush mattress and pushed on top of him, pinning his hand, dragging at his clothes. Duke's magic, unwanted and maligned a thing as it was, flared and curled into his, as if Mara's treatment had made him more open to that. Which gave Nathan pause... But the magic in Duke felt right, for all that the man didn't want it; felt like another layer of potential intimacy, and not a threat. Still, Nathan dialled things back, not wanting to alarm Duke.
He would not risk anything spoiling this. He didn't think he'd ever wanted anyone so much.
Duke groaned under him and Nathan succeeded in wresting both their pants unfastened and gaping. He reached down to handle both their rods, pulling them into his fist together. Duke made a thin sound as Nathan's cock slid along the length of his. Nathan breathed hard and gathered concentration and thrust. Duke mewled and clutched both hands to Nathan's ribs. The feeling of being the one in control was heady, and needed, so needed. He moved until Duke's head was flung back prettily upon the sheets and his breaths were all but sobs as he spilled onto his own stomach and chest. Nathan kept his hand on his own cock as he let the other man's spent member free. He shifted his hips to hump Duke's thigh as he ducked his head to plant kisses on the priest's red-bitten lips.
"I dwelt upon this for four days, having sent you to her," Duke gasped, his hand finding Nathan's waist again, sneaking beneath his clothes. His other arm unexpectedly curled right the way around and dragged Nathan in close, tightly. "How could I forgive myself, for so using a man--"
Nathan buried his face and kissed Duke's neck. "I'm yours to use. Just promise me back -- when we're done -- you won't throw me away."
Duke groaned, not an entirely positive noise considering the question. Nathan briefly held the hope it was only because he'd felt the dampness soaking into the cloth over his thigh as Nathan came. But no. "I have never felt such things with a man before. You ask too much. I gave this much as a comfort, after what I had asked of you..."
Nathan bit him and made him yell, then rolled over and sat up.
He stayed there a minute, on top of the bedcovers, finding his balance. Duke, after his snooty declaration, seemed to have zoned out, spread-eagled on his back.
"We will need more than sex or scandal, or even the truth, to bring down Mara," he told Duke, bitterly. "You have the wrong spy. Oh, I'll go back -- but I don't think I can do it."
"You need to overpower her," Duke said, rough and quiet, "as you just did me."
"She's dominant," Nathan countered, "and there are two of them. She's also less interested in fiddling with my body than with my magic."
Duke sat up, curling his knees under himself lithely, looking at Nathan with a new spark of interest. "And there?"
"I don't know enough to -- I can barely hold her back. I've never had sex with a witch who could do that before. It's like she wants to have sex with my magic, too."
"I... I felt you, back there," Duke said slowly. "That was what you meant, wasn't it? That weird interaction. I don't have much sense of the magic -- I try my best not to. But... if practice is what you need... if it would help in this endeavour..."
Apparently, he did not wish to wait for a decision. He reached for Nathan's face and let the power in their bodies intertwine. That initiative was a little too like Mara, and Nathan stiffened, but reached up and held Duke's arm there as he sensed imminent retreat. If it felt like Mara's approach, after all, then all the better for practice.
He did not think either of them had ever experienced anything like the feeling of losing themselves in each other's power before.
They burst out of it together, both gasping, but Duke thrashing and physically flinching away. Nathan was merely stunned. Despite his best intentions to practice, that had ultimately not been like Mara.
"She's... different," he said roughly. "She can do things. We... we're the same. We touch each other, explore, but we don't change the geography." He grimaced and shrugged at Duke's evident distress. "Sorry."
"No." Duke shook his head. "More exposure to this sort of thing might still aid against being caught off-guard when she does it." He was trembling. "I'll... I could do it again, but... not..." He swore. "You need to go." He grabbed Nathan's arm urgently, indicating the clock on the wall. "Look how much time has passed!"
"Damn." Duke was right. Nathan stood and started rearranging his clothing, aiming for a modicum of respectability.
"I'll try not to leave it so long before contact, this time, but... you were unavailable, these last two nights."
"We still need more resources," Nathan said, fastening his belt. "This Lady Audrey, Mara's twin sister... does she know what you're doing? Is she an ally?" He had heard more things about the woman over the last four days, and anyone Mara hated so much was good with him.
"She is my benefactor," Duke said warily. "But as for this scheme..."
"Can you make of her an ally in this?" Nathan asked, a fraction desperately. "Is she a witch? If Mara is her twin, witchcraft runs in families." He and Duke were not enough to go against Mara, if it came to that, even without the complication of William's powers, which while not on Mara's level, William knew how to use far better than Duke did his. With a third ally, equal in power to Nathan or better, they might stand a chance.
"I... have never asked."
And nor would he have touched, with he a priest and she a noble woman. Nathan grimaced.
"I'll find out, on both counts," Duke said, with new determination. He clutched Nathan's arm. Magic played between them again, but less intrusive, more soothing and familiar. He blinked. "That's... new." He shook his head. "You must go, Nathan. Be careful. Stay safe."
His deep, soulful brown eyes looked gratifyingly agonised at the idea he must once again send Nathan away in such a fashion. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Nathan could see that the priest was at least partway ensnared, and he smiled.
***
As terrifying as the prospect was, Nathan couldn't escape the inevitability in Duke's advice to be proactive. He was not going to get any closer to Mara and William than he already was while he remained a passive plaything, and therefore he was not going to get anywhere at all.
Mara had selected Chris, earlier in the day -- a sulky, nervous older boy with some kind of wayward... charm, that Nathan suspected perhaps had been inflicted upon him as a joke, as it contrasted so startlingly with his dour personality. As the others retired to rest from the daily duties of the fortress, Chris nervously lingered in the main hall. In the centre of the hall, Mara and William were still making a laughing spectacle of some unlucky trickster-magician -- the white rabbit and card trick kind -- that another courtier had sent to them as a presumed joke. Nathan lingered, too, unseen.
When they tired of mocking the trickster and sent him on his way (and really, he had no idea how lucky he was that they didn't want to keep him), they switched their attention to Chris, and Nathan came out from the shadows. He set his hand on Chris' shoulder and turned him. The other man jumped under the touch, expecting no-one else to be there.
"Go," Nathan instructed.
"I-- I--" It was clear that Chris was afraid to go without Mara's say.
"What do you think you are doing?" Mara demanded of Nathan. William, highly amused, watched over her shoulder.
"You don't want him, you want me." Nathan jerked his chin up and defiantly brought all his appeal to bear -- bolstered by an undercurrent of witchery to at least equal Chris' peculiar charm.
Mara raised her eyebrows and William grinningly suggested to Chris, "Yes, why don't you go?"
Chris practically ran. The servants had cleared out, leaving silence under the echoing words of their exchange. Nathan was left alone in the vast, empty hall with the two sorcerers.
"I'm not like them," Nathan said.
"I had wondered if you had more to reveal." Mara stalked a circle around him. The tension was sharp. If it snapped a certain way, the result would be unpleasant. "So you are a knowing bearer of that power I sensed."
"I need to know what to do with it," Nathan said, trying to keep the tremble out of his voice. "I need you to teach me."
She laughed. "I don't need an apprentice."
"...But maybe there are ventures for which we could use another person able to wield power." William stepped forward to speak in her ear, while he caressed her neck. "And I've told you I like this one, love."
"You took his place," Mara said. "You realise that an obligation still comes with that, even were you to earn special status. We can already have you in any way we wish. You cannot think to trade access to tutelage for base seduction."
Nathan shrugged. "Also unlike them, I'm not afraid of your bed."
Mara's smile was broad and cruel. William grimaced and tipped his head in a certain long-suffering gesture behind her.
They did, indeed, test him for that statement that night. They knew sex spells he did not -- unsurprising, when most of his, he had created for himself -- and plundered his body to its limit. But though the pleasure-pain of it did test him to his limits, it did not spill over them: he was no amateur. He could still take what they doled out and return them pleasure.
Though that became its own source of anxiety. "You came here skilled."
"It would have been... stupid... to come here with nothing," Nathan gasped.
"It was stupid to come here," Mara said, "when you are no more than a street slut with a few tricks."
"I knew enough to keep myself clean… and enough to fool you." Nathan's heart thumped as he said the words, his breath and body strained by the precipice this discussion hung over, as well as what William was doing.
Mara's fingernails dug into his face. "You did not fool me. You merely managed to offset my curiosity for a few days. William likes you, but aside from that spark of power within, you are dull and too old."
"Let me show you the full range of what I can do, and you won't be bored."
"If I had wanted prostitutes--"
"Oh, let him try," William waved dismissively, and Nathan loosed his breath slowly, trying not to display too much of relief as William pulled out of him and the hot aura of power that had oversensitised all his nerves around the penetration faded. "He made it this far, and he played the part of the ingénue well enough. It could be hysterical to bring him to court and throw him at Cedric, to see if the big fool nibbles the bait."
Mara glared. "If we could do that, it could be done back to us," she hissed, and Nathan's life hung on a knife edge. "How do we know he is not my sister's? Or Crocker's?"
William laughed. "If he is sending whores against us, then we are living in unprecedentedly interesting times."
The breath Nathan had been holding released. It was clear from William's tone how little credit he gave the idea. A good thing Nathan had already been exercising such tight control of his breathing throughout their physical activities, for it hid that reaction, too.
"You do want to keep this one," Mara said, with a clear streak of sarcasm, the accusation of spying forgotten.
"I don't actually like your little mice, dear," William returned. "Full of fear and squeaking so distractingly when we play with them. I'd rather a loyal hound or trained hawk, capable of some function as well as decoration."
"Hmph." Mara tossed her head and lay back. "Well, let us see where these vaunted skills of his really lie."
If that was meant to be challenge or threat, Nathan was on home territory now. He lay between her thighs and worked keenly until he had Mara gasping and drumming her heels, then turned his attention back to William -- who was easier to please anyway -- once she lay sated.
"We should have been recruiting from the streets all along," William grunted as he finally came and Nathan swallowed him down. His fingers clutched in Nathan's hair and their spasmodic movements told of his pleasure.
"Only if you want nibbets and raging croides from most of them," Nathan said. "I told you, I'm unique."
***
Continues...
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