Shivering, crouched by the sap sticky tinder she'd found before nightfall,<br/><a class="link link--external" href="https://68.media.tumblr.com/de2b1ec4372b20e38f3e99aeb945e092/tumblr_osn7psveYD1tppytvo1_540.jpg" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" target="_blank">Vesta</a>struggled to stop her hands from shaking long enough to strike the nodule of flint that was growing smaller every day against the steel stirrup taken off the saddle of a dead horse.  More than cold drove her to haste; her husband's rein on his temper was growing as sparse as the flint and while she didn't fear the blow he might deliver only a fool wanted to be struck.  She, Vesta Larenzac, Her Majesty the Royal Princess of Ostavia, she who had been Vesta Syropaulos, Princess of Byzantium, Born in the Purple, Serene Priestess of the Temple, Blessed of the One True Faith and Keeper of the Doves was wearing a dead woman's clothing and her fingers were rougher than a scullery maid's as she bashed flint and steel together to create tiny, pathetic sparks when once she could have simply conjured a swirling flame gentle as a candle or hot as a forge to light the fire or to dance merrily around them creating a curtain of warmth and safety.<br/><br/>Steel clicked on flint and a bright spark flared into life, landing in the tinder and she dropped almost onto her belly to gently breathe life into it, praying to Gods she worried no longer listened that they would stretch out and grant her this tiny boon.  Hope flared with the spark and then it went sullen and dwindled.  "No.  No no no no," she pleaded and breathed harder onto it, breath fogging in the chill morning.  When it died she shut her eyes, eyes that once were white pools around dark depths of sensual intelligence and that were all too often reddened by smoke or lack of sleep, shut and she tensed her shoulders expecting a blow or a boot in her side.<br/><br/>When none came, she quickly got back onto her knees and beat the steel and flint together furiously, careless of how much flaked off, until from the shower of sparks she had enough that one of them must surely bring the fire to life.  This time she was completely on her belly, blowing hard and never stopping until dancing flames flared and took hold of the rich sap for fuel.  Almost giddily she looked up, chin smeared with mud, looked up for the eyes of her husband hoping for a smile of praise or a nod of gratitude but he was turned away, his eyes searching the forest for the keys to a future that eluded him.  Almost she reached out to him, to attempt again to convince him, implore him!, to give up his stubborn insistence on remaining in this wretched, dark and cold forest and instead go with her to her father's empire and there raise armies, armies that this primitive land could never stand against, and restore him to his throne.  There would be the matter of the faith but her orthodoxy was not so different from his?  He could see it was the same Gods, only different priests and rituals and names.<br/><br/>Almost she reached for him but her hand went to her mouth instead as the nausea in her belly threatened to spill her secret.<i>No no no no no</i>she said again, but silently in her woman's heart.  Afraid she'd vomit and reveal her secret and quench the nascent fire, Vesta closed her other hand hard around the flint until the sharp edges of it cut into her hand and the sweet sting of the pain she controlled shoved the nausea back.  Still her jaws were locked as she sat up on her heels and continued to feed it larger and larger sticks until it was a proper fire.<br/><br/>"The fire is lit," she told him, back to her husband.  "I'll check the snares.  I need to make my water," Vesta said and rose without waiting for an answer.  For all she was growing dangerously thin, and she'd been lithe to begin with, for all her bruises and her ragged clothing Vesta stood straight and with the grace bred into her through centuries of patrician rule and her walk in the clumsy boots was sure footed and feminine.  A double dozen yards into the woods, then a double dozen more and she stopped, looked around, then carefully brushed leaf mold from the forest floor.  Two recently dug spots, barely as big as a man's thumb print, showed lighter colored in the dark floor.  One was barren, like she'd been the prior two years as his wife.<br/><br/>The other showed the proud green shoot of a blooming acorn.  Vesta looked at it for a moment, as if staring could make it go away, then stood up and ground her heel against both spots until they were obliterated.  It was not the first time she'd done this woman's magic, letting her morning water soak a spot of ground where she'd planted a seed, then placing an unwatered one near it.  Essences of her fertility, of her long absent fecundity, coaxed the watered seed into sprouting while its twin lay dormant.  That, the tightness in her breasts, and the sickness she'd started to feel in the mornings were all signs she was pregnant.  Her courses had stopped as well but that wasn't uncommon on a starvation diet she knew.<br/><br/>She was pregnant.  Her hands cradled her still flat belly.<br/><br/>After two years of hiding the reason for her seemingly barren womb from him, from her husband and her Prince, a child grew inside of her body and offered the promise of succession.<br/><br/>A child that she was certain was not, could not be, that of her husband Prince Aicanassë Larenzac of Ostavia.  She knew, knew in her heart of hearts, who the child belonged to and it wasn't the legion of soldiers who had raped her.<br/><br/>The father of the cuckoo child in her womb was the Usurper and now King of Ostavia, Aica's uncle.<br/><br/>Almost she drove her bunched fists against her belly, as if she could force the child growing inside her to miscarry, but Vesta could never bring herself to do so.  Call it motherly instinct, call it compassion, call it cowardice but she could not harm the child even though it was a bastard and offered a new level of ruin and sorrow to herself and to her marriage to Aica.<br/><br/><i>"You'll let him go," she said, standing in a tower window looking down into the courtyard where Aica was tied into an oxen yoke, the weight of it and the kicks of his guards forcing him to his knees.<br/>
<br/>
"No," the Usurper replied, coming to stand behind her, one thick fingered hand calloused by the sword resting on her slender shoulders, the fingers pushing into Vesta's graceful collarbones.  "But I won't have him killed either.  Or tortured.  House arrest, this room if you desire, and you can stay with him.  Warm his bed and console him in his grief until he comes to terms with his new station in life."  His other hand rested on her hip and she closed her eyes.<br/>
<br/>
"I have your word?"  She turned, feeling his hand slip down to her ass and cup it possessively, touching that which had only ever belonged to her husband.  "I have your word?" she asked again, desperate to believe the answer.<br/>
<br/>
"As a king," he replied. <br/>
<br/>
It would have been easier if he was a monster, or fat, or weak featured but he was a burly man, a soldier and a leader, and his face as handsome as a demon in a girl's daydreams.  The distinctive eyes, so different from anyone else in the royal family, were intelligent and gleamed with lust, but a lust that had purpose and patience.<br/>
<br/>
Searching them, Vesta saw, or wanted to see, truth and so it was her hands, not his, that slipped the priceless silk gown from her shoulder to pool around her feet, and it was her knees that touched the floor as she knelt, knelt to kiss his hand and the royal signet.  It was her eyes that looked up at him, seemingly as tall as the Gods themselves, then looked down as her fingers undid the laces of his breaches to pull him out.  It was her mouth, her traitor mouth that made the agreement she should have known would never be honored, that took his cock into it and worshipped it to life.<br/>
<br/>
The cock that had put this bastard in her belly before he tossed her to his soldiers for the final act in his play of lust, betrayal, and murder.<br/>
<br/>
The collar dampened her magic.  It also dampened a secret that only the women of her family knew; none of them who could call the Gods magic through their bodies could bear a child so long as it coursed through them.  There were ways to hold it at bay long enough to conceive and to bear a child to term, collars like the one she wore but far more elegant and passed off as fertility charms never to be removed until birth.  It was the Usurper's fear of her magic that allowed his seed to find her egg and make life.  His collar that protected his soldiers from the fury of her abused and raped body.  <br/>
<br/>
She screamed.  Oh how she screamed through the first few invasions, then cried and sobbed through the next until a resigned calm took her.  Oh she still wept, she still screamed especially when they took to sodomizing her, but it was from a distant place far, far away from where her soul and mind went.  It was only when she felt her weak, battered and violated body being pulled up off the rack where they'd raped her that it returned.<br/>
<br/>
Fury, fury and the need for vengeance animated her then, no magic, though some of the soldiers stood back.  Vesta had shoved them off with a strength she shouldn't have possessed and stood tall and proud before her husband and her defilers.  Cum and blood streaked her thighs and belly and she reached between her legs to cup a palmful if it before slinging it in an arc towards her abusers, then spitting after it.  "Witness my oath!  I will have my vengeance in this life or the next upon all of you!  All of you!  All of you!"  She was still screaming her defiance when one of them cracked the butt of his spear across her skull, dropping her almost lifeless so she could be placed in the bag and thrown into the sea below.</i><br/><br/>Vesta, just Vesta now, shook off the memories and knelt to do the business she'd told her husband, once a prince but now a man reduced to naught.<br/><br/>The snare was empty too.  Vesta untied it and brought it back with her, not saying anything as she put it onto the cloak with the rest of their belongings.<br/><br/>"Husband, please," she implored, putting her hands on his sword arm.  "Please let us go to the East, to my father, and seek his help."  Vesta's eyes looked into his and implored him to agree this time.  "We can be there before winter.  I'll show you the baths I spoke of, and the libraries, and a thousand other wonders.  Please let us go and stop this wandering."