If Autumn had spent any time at all imagining what the Evil Wizard King would look like, she would have likely arrived at something very close to reality. He had a goatee, and short black hair, and the ripples of a permanent frown etched in between his eyebrows. His limbs were long and slim, but unlike her knight who seemed skittish and awkward, the king exuded the easy grace of a large predatory cat. He wore a long, embroidered black coat with silver clasps, its high collar barely letting her glimpse the high collar of another black shirt underneath. His hands were covered by black leather gloves, and his black leather boots went all the way up to his knees. The room felt suffocating with him in it.
He greeted Autumn in his throne room, a long, echoing hall with an obsidian floor and high columns. Muted beams of light came at interval from narrow windows with red and orange stained glass and delicately woven dark lace curtains.
Her knight walked her all the way down that obscenely gloomy hall, her hand gently resting on his elbow. They stopped at the edge of the dais, where he bowed first at his King, then at her, and finally stepped backwards to stand at parade rest between two columns.
Autumn glanced up at the silent king, then decided that she wasn’t going to greet him from the bottom of his steps like some commoner. She was about to be his wife (allegedly), so she could very well permit herself to look at him face to face. She stepped up onto the dais and came to stand barely a meter from his throne, head high. She bent her knees in the most brazen suggestion of a curtsy that she thought she could get away with, and waited.
The Evil Wizard King met her eyes and smirked.
“The lady Autumn, I presume?”
“Princess Autumn,” she corrected coldly.
“Not here, I’m afraid. In this kingdom you will be a lady, and then perhaps you will be my wife.” He leaned back languidly on his throne, spreading his knees in the very picture of ease. “Have my terms been explained to you?”
“Your terms are perfectly clear. I survive two months and then you wed me.”
The Dark King huffed. “Survive. Must we be so crude about it?”
He rose to his feet, and Autumn reflexively took a step back. The king paused. There was an expression on his face that she couldn’t quite interpret.
“Lady Autumn, surely you are not scared of me?”
It was her turn to huff, all bravado and no truth. “I have my own terms to state, if you will deign to hear them,” she told him, making her voice as firm as possible. Best to make it clear from the start that she would give him as good as she got, even if she wasn’t quite willing to go as far as to follow her sisters’ suggestions and push him back on his throne to straddle him.
He smirked again. She got the unpleasant impression that there would be a lot of smirking in the days to come. “Please, go ahead. What are your terms, my lady?”
“You are not to touch me until the day of our wedding,” she started. “And in exchange of that wedding, you will swear my kingdom protection.”
For some reason, he seemed to find her words amusing. The smirk stretched, turned more predatory; he took another step towards her, stopping just shy of brushing the folds of her dress. This time she didn’t step backwards. Autumn held her ground, although she knew that her tension must have been obvious to anyone with eyes. The king tilted his head and let his dark eyes roam up and down her body, lingering on her waist and the curve of her heaving chest. When he met her gaze again, his smile was still amused and his eyes shone with hunger.
“You have my word that I will not touch you before our wedding, and on this land my word is law,” he murmured, his voice dipping into the register of warm honey on a cold night. “But be advised; if you are still living and breathing in my castle when two months have passed, by the rules of magic I will own you. I understand, however, that your people do not consider a union valid until wedding and… consummation.” On this he paused, and while he didn’t quite come closer, his presence got sharper, somehow, more overwhelming. Autumn swallowed. “If you want to have this protection your family is so desperate for, then the contract must be fulfilled according to both of our kingdom’s laws.” His eyes swept down and up her body once more. Heat crawled up the back of her neck. She was distinctly aware, all of a sudden, of her plunging neckline and of how her corset pushed up her breasts. “It doesn’t have to be unpleasant.”
Her entire body shivered in response to the dark, sinful promise in these words. She took a halting step back at last, stuttered some reply that she wouldn’t even remember afterwards. The king dismissed her until dinner, and her knight took her away and brought her to a plush room where her luggage was already waiting for her. All the while Autumn could only curse her own reactions, and reflect on how badly she was screwed.
The Evil Wizard King, it turned out, was not just attractive, but highly fuckable. And she had just told him not to touch her.
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