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Part 21
Bright, early winter rays of sunlight woke the Royal lovers in their Imperial bed. The Queen rested a loving gaze on her Lord, who was stretching her limbs and rubbing her eyes, happy that morning had come for the night sleep kept her away from her Lord whom she missed.
“Good morning,” the Conqueror said, studying the look her wife gave her.
The Queen planted a kiss on her Lord's cheek, still warm from slumber. “A most excellent morning,” the Queen replied.
The Conqueror threw a glance out the balcony. “It appears that today will be a beautiful day,” she remarked and gathered a very contented Queen in her arms.
Lying on top of the Conqueror, the Queen relished the sensation to the point of feeling intoxicated. She caressed the muscles of her Lord's calves with her toes and rained random, lingering kisses on her Lord's chest then trailed their path with her tongue. The Conqueror hummed in pleasure and Gabrielle enjoyed the vibrations against her lips.
“If it pleases you, I wish to remain here with you and make restitution…”
The Queen did not finish her sentence when a movement and a crinkle in the Imperial antechamber drew their attention to the door and a brief moment later a knock on the door followed by the door opening caused the Queen to roll off the Conqueror's body and throw the blanket over them.
“Good Morning, Majest-” the Conqueror's attendant Thetis walked in and just as she was about to curtsy, much to her surprise, she noticed the Queen peeking from above the rim of the blanket that covered her up to her nose and concluded her greeting, “-ies.”
“Thetis,” the Conqueror greeted back and remained lying beneath the blanket on account of her nakedness.
“My apology, Majesties, I was under the assumption… I thought your Majesty…” she mumbled, embarrassed and blushing.
“Anything important?” the Conqueror asked, putting her attendant out of her misery.
“A few officials are waiting for your Majesty's audience,” Thetis informed, neglecting to elaborate on the particulars due to the state of shock she was still in.
The Conqueror looked at her wife, who was looking back at her with pleading eyes and the exchange did not go unnoticed by the attendant and it filled her heart with joy.
“Tell them I shall be engaged…” and after another look at her wife, the Ruler continued, “for a few days.”
“Yes, Majesty,” the attended confirmed.
“Short of an outbreak of plague, fire or war, her Majesty and I are not to be disturbed.”
“By your will, Majesty,” Thetis answered too gleefully for the Conqueror's taste.
And just as she was about to curtsy and leave, the Conqueror called out to her, “And Thetis,” making the attendant halt.
“Yes, Majesty?”
“Wipe that smirk off your face!”
“Yes, Majesty,” Thetis said but try as she might, the smile would not come off, despite the Ruler's command. She was too happy to see the Conqueror and the Queen together again, and could hardly wait to spread the gossip and bring cheer to the palace household and herald the end of the dark days.
Alone again in their bedchamber, the Conqueror rested her upper body over her elbow and pillowed her Queen's head, while her free hand roamed over her taut belly and firm, ample breasts.
"How are you feeling?" the Conqueror asked in reference to the Queen's bruises.
However, the Queen was in a too euphoric a state to be bothered by them. "Wonderfully well now that I am back in your arms again," she said, then a faint smile appeared on her lips. "There were nights, I tell you…" the Queen's fingers mindlessly played with a few strands of her Lord's hair, "that my longings for you were so awesome and the temptation to slip into your bed was so great that I had to ask Lady Astraea to lock me in my bedchamber so to keep away from you."
The Conqueror chuckled, "Queen of the Realm – prisoner of her own desires…"
But the Queen laughter was short lived. "Not of my desires but of my love for you," she corrected. "As I was watching you from the balcony ruling the lions with your whip, I thought to myself how every time, just when I think that it is impossible to love you more than I already do, I am proven wrong. It was the weight of my love for you that brought me to my knees that day." The Queen lowered her gaze. "And then I though to myself, 'how dared I…?' "
The Conqueror stopped her hand from roaming and simply wrapped her arm around her Queen's waist, and listened.
"That is why I came that night to your chambers… Only to learn, much to my horror and devastation, that alas reckoning had come too late."
"You never lost your place in my heart," the Conqueror assured. "I just made it very difficult to reach, not just for you but for me as well."
"You were brilliantly efficient, my Lord," the Queen said and shuddered at the thought. "I was… out of sorts with grief by the thought of losing you. I thought I would live the rest of my life in perpetual darkness."
"It is behind us, now," the Conqueror tried to ease her wife's mind.
"I feel like I haven't apologized to you enough…" the Queen said with some distress and then with even greater concern, she covered her mouth in dismay, "and your trust in me…"
The Conqueror gently removed the Queen's hand from her mouth and replaced it with a kiss. "I trust you."
But that was far from being enough. Still feeling that she owed a debt to her Lord, the Queen bore her gaze into her Lord's and said, "On pain of death, I vow before you, my Lord, to keep you forever first in my heart, to never betray your trust in me again, and to never allow another between us, not even our children."
The Queen sealed the vow she made with a kiss.
"I accept your vow to me and I shall hold you to it," the Conqueror stated.
The Queen was pleased and contented. "Please, do, my Lord."
After a few moments when they lost themselves to their passions, touching, embracing and ceaselessly kissing, the Queen clasped her hands behind the Conqueror's nape. "Now tell me all about the lions," she urged and elicited a hearty laughter from her Lord.
"What do you wish to know?" the Conqueror asked with a wide smile stretching her lips from one ear to the other, for she welcomed the opportunity to impress her wife and to boast about her uncanny prowess.
"Everything!" the Queen exclaimed. "How do you make them obey you?" the Queen asked.
The Conqueror's fingers wandered down past her navel and trimmed patch of golden down and painted lazy circles around the Queen's hardening bud, making the Queen's sharp intake of breath catch in her throat.
"The same way that I make all in my world obey me," the Conqueror remarked with an air of arrogance, "I simply am. "
The Queen held on to her Lord's shoulders, her nails digging into the muscles and her head pushing back into the Conqueror's forearm beneath it. Her entire body tightly arched under the Conqueror's teasing touch.
"It seems," the Queen rasped, "beneath you to be called "My Lion " now."
The Conqueror closely observed her wife's wanton response as she glided two fingers into the warm, succulent slit. Her tongue scaled up the Queen's neck and when it reached the Queen's ear, she whispered hotly in her ear, "But it pleases me when you call me 'My Lion,' " and when she sucked her wife's earlobe through her teeth and into her mouth, she felt her wife's womanhood sucking her fingers and heard her wife reach a shuttering zenith.
Seeing distilled lust in her Lord, the Queen turned in the Conqueror's arm to lie on her belly, wiggled the saturated opening which was still quivering with the aftermath of extreme climax against the Conqueror's length, and said, clutching the sheets with anticipation, "Please, sate your need."
The Conqueror's thighs pressed against the back of hers and the sweet, owning penetration into her depth rekindled the fire. The Queen bounced her hips against the Conqueror's loins while her Lord drove herself in and out with adulating grindings.
The Queen felt her Lord everywhere on her body. It felt like being encased, bound inside a cage with hot steel bars from which she never wanted to break free. To the Queen it was Elysian pleasure on earth, and when her Lord's first drops of moisture hit her buttocks, it sent her into a whirlpool of ecstasy soaring to a second crest. From above, she heard her Lord howl her release and felt a torrent washing her petal-like nether lips.
The Conqueror lay splayed, shuddering and panting on top of the Queen's back, recovering from the effort and the intense and raw eruption. Both knew that there would be no containing the emergence of their passion.
When she overcame her crisis, the Conqueror pampered the Queen's back with countless clusters of kisses then took the salve and applied it to the welts once more.
The Royals lay in bed, facing each other afterwards.
"I have trained the lions during the nights… I've spent most of my nights apart from you in the menagerie," the Conqueror explained.
The Queen lowered her head and wasn't sure if the burdensome feeling that was pressing her ribcage was shame or something else.
"I haven't been unfaithful to you and I did not leave my chambers to visit other women's beds," the Ruler spoke matter-of-factly but she strained to do so.
The Queen wasn't sure what she should say. The sentiment that gnawed at her most notably was that of being undeserving.
"But in all honesty I do admit that after I won the battle in Thessaly, I meant to take other women and if it hadn't been for the realization that Likos was on his way to Corinth, I would have quenched my lust with as many women at my disposal and I know I would not have failed in doing so."
The confession was difficult to listen to and it eviscerated the Queen's heart. She cried without tears and did not speak until she was confident that her sorrow would not play in her voice, so as not to trouble her Lord.
"I would have forgiven you with all my heart and without carrying a grudge," she said then paused, "and I would have done so not out of my own guilt."
The Conqueror let out a long, deep sigh, "I know," she finally said.
"Please, hold me in your arms," the Queen requested with a weak whisper, feeling a desperate need to be close to her love.
The Conqueror gathered her wife in her arms and held her as tightly as possible without crushing her.
***
When the Queen's mysterious absence was explained by Thetis' incredibly good news about the Royals' reconciliation, a spontaneous celebration ensued in the palace kitchen. The household staff, including Lady Satrina, the Queen's and Princess Sieglinde's ladies in waiting and the Shamaness, cheered and clapped their hands in mirth and relief. It sounded almost too fantastic to be true
"Are you absolutely sure, Thetis?" the Lady Satrina insisted, nearly grabbing the attendant by her frock's lapels.
"There was no misconstruing what my eyes have witnessed in the Imperial bedchamber, Lady Satrina," Thetis maintained most adamantly.
"Oh, dear me," Lady Satrina fanned her palm against her chest with some shortness of breath.
To further convince the steward, Thetis went on to say, "I was even ordered to wipe the smirk off my face."
"You smirked in the Lord Conqueror's presence?!" Lady Satrina questioned with a raise of her brows.
"I couldn't help it," Thetis said in her defense.
"On the contrary," said Lady Satrina with a smirk of her own, "I admire your restraint."
The steward sent Princess Sieglinde's ladies in waiting to make haste and deliver the auspicious news to their mistress, to the Conqueror's mother and to Princess Terreis' governess.
But as soon as the Princess' servants were about to exit the kitchen, they were accosted by Lady Cyrene. "One could hear the racket you're making throughout the…"
But Lady Satrina rushed to the Conqueror's mother with words shooting out of her mouth, "The Lord Conqueror and the Queen have reconciled."
Lady Cyrene was careful not to get her hopes up. "How do you know?" she asked suspiciously.
"Thetis saw them together in the Imperial bedchamber."
"Hmmm… The bedchamber, you say…" Lady Cyrene contemplated out loud. "That rings as the truth to me," she mumbled and moved away from the entrance allowing the ladies to go about their business, and as always when she was happy and feeling great relief her mind turned to food and feeding. As she was standing in the palace kitchen, she took control over the familiar domain and instructed the cook to make an especially hearty breakfast consisted of freshly baked bread, poached goose eggs, goat cheese, vegetables and fruits. She then instructed the maids to take it upstairs to the Imperial chambers and leave it in the antechamber so as not to disturb the Conqueror and the Queen.
"I know my own business…" the cook grumbled. "I've been doing very well on my own for years now."
But on such a merry morning, the two elderly women were simply too happy to engage in a war for dominance.
Realizing that her task had been completed, and knowing that it would be days before the Conqueror and the Queen would remerge from their chambers and be seen again in public and wishing to take advantage of the comfortable weather, the Shamaness packed some provision for the ride back to Amazon Lands and said her goodbyes to the women in the kitchen.
But she had one stop to make on her way back home – Cynna's lavish villa.
The Heir's mistress was most surprised to see her old mentor standing on her spotless doorstep. The meeting grabbed at her and threw her back to another life she had shirked off her and deserted.
"Shamaness!" Cynna exclaimed.
"How are you, Cynna?" the Shamaness asked.
"Very well," Cynna answered. "Excellent, in fact."
The Shamaness wondered if the fact that Cynna had yet to invite her in was due to her not wanting to blend the old life she had discarded with the new one she had so eagerly adopted.
"What brings you to Corinth ?" Cynna asked.
"I have come to pay a social visit to our Queen."
"A social visit?!" Cynna's response suggested she did not fully believe the Shamaness' reply and suspected the old Shamaness was being less than forthcoming and perhaps even hiding things from her. "And how is her Majesty these days?" Cynna asked.
The Shamaness wondered if Cynna's question was indeed sincere. "She's doing ever so well. She and the Lord Conqueror have bridged over their differences."
Cynna smacked her lips. "I am glad to hear it," she simply stated.
The Shamaness half-expected Cynna to exhibit some semblance of scruples since she had had a hand in the matter, at least in part, but it was apparent that the young woman she had mentored was long gone.
"May I ask what has changed?" Cynna inquired, trying to appear nonchalant.
"How do you mean?" asked the Shamaness.
"What made the Conqueror and the Queen end the quarrel and make peace?"
The reason for Cynna's question suddenly became disappointingly clear. "You needn't worry," the Shamaness replied, not guising her discontent. "It had nothing to do with you. As far as I know, your circumstances haven't changed," she took a long pause then added, "yet."
"Yet?!" Cynna scoffed in a derogatory manner.
The Shamaness folded her arms over her saggy bosom and said, "I have come to give you a chance to return back home with me."
Cynna began to laugh, "What is there for me on Amazon Lands? Deer hunting, wood chopping and freezing communal bathing in winter? I have a good life here. Everything I want, I receive. I am the future Ruler of the world's lady, remember?!"
"For how long?" The Shamaness was not in the mood to mitigate the harsh reality about to hit Cynna hard, especially in light of Cynna's disrespectful behavior.
"For as long as I wish," came Cynna's confident response.
"The Conqueror's Heir will be back in Corinth within a fortnight and you will soon discover that along with the Conqueror's Throne, she inherited other, less appealing…"
"What is some rough treatment in bed compared to all the riches and power in the world?!"
"You silly child…" the Shamaness sighed in frustration. "Our Queen is convinced that I've made a great err in judgment with you, but now I see that I did not. I've simply began to train you as a shamaness prematurely."
"What am I suppose to take that to mean?" Cynna asked somewhat unnerved.
"You will understand in a fortnight, I'm sure," the Shamaness with a mysterious smile, which Cynna read as near insidious, and before the Shamaness turned to leave Cynna's luxurious villa, she muttered, "From your current position - The fall will be a long and painful one."
***
Close to noon, the Conqueror and the Queen finally left their bed in search of food. The Queen took the silver tray and set the table for them to dine on the sunbathed balcony.
"Athena will soon be back from the Nordic Lands," the Queen commented as she loaded the Conqueror's plate and placed it in front of her.
"And straight to the arms of that self-serving harpy, no doubt," the Conqueror's countenance wore a severe expression as she ripped the bread in half.
"That would be a fair description of her, I suppose," the Queen muttered pensively and took her seat opposite the Conqueror.
With a lascivious look, the Sovereign beckoned her Queen to come and sit in her lap.
The Queen smiled for she was happy to see that her Lord did not bear any ill-feelings towards her on that score. She approached her Lord and facing her, she seated herself on the Conqueror's knees, straddling the lengthy form casually reclining in the roomy seat.
"So you see it too, then?!" the Conqueror asked, very pleased with herself to the point of appearing gloating. Behind the Queen's back she dipped the bread in the liquid yolk resting in the plate on the wooden table and brought it to her wife's mouth, and when a yellow drop trickled down her wife's chin she sensually licked it.
"I've suspected it for quite awhile," the Queen said as she pelted her Lord's calm face with small kisses. "But when she hosted a feast in her villa while you and Athena were out defending the Realm, I've realized what you knew all along."
"A feast in Corinth during wartime?!" the Conqueror asked as if she did not believe her wife, as if some record of vulgarity and indecency had been broken.
"I wouldn't have believed it myself had I not seen it with my own eyes," the Queen said, and took half a fig off her Lord's mouth.
"What were you doing in that woman's villa?" The Conqueror was intrigued.
"Sieglinde asked my permission to invite Cynna to the palace during the war, so that Cynna would be safe with us and would not be alone whilst Athena is away, so for Athena's sake we went there in person," the Queen said then added with a wicked smile, "The wife you've chosen for Athena, my Lord, is a greater woman than I."
"Is she, now?" the Conqueror teased and vigorously kneaded Gabrielle's left buttock while with the other she toiled to extract her wife's breast from under the thin fabric covering it. "How so?! Do tell, wife of mine…"
"I do not think that I would have it in me to show such grace to any mistress of yours," the Queen purred with delight as her Lord pleasured her and felt immense gratitude that her Lord had never put her in the position to know for a fact.
The Conqueror covered Gabrielle's mouth with hers. "I think you would have if you thought it would please me," she said and Gabrielle knew her Lord was correct. "She came to see me yesterday, did you know?" the Ruler asked when the kiss ended.
"Sieglinde?" the Queen asked.
"Yes. She said that she came to beg me for a quick death for her brother but had a change of heart and instead decided to beg me to forgive you, as you have been forgiving me for years."
The Queen was not surprised, for she knew that Princess Sieglinde was virtue and grace and such an altruistic act was not beyond her; but she was deeply moved by the great gesture of intervening in her behalf and especially one which had been made with great risk to herself, facing the dark Conqueror with such a delicate matter.
The Conqueror went on to say, pulling her wife out of her musing, "I was able to listen to her because she was not you and I wasn't trammeled by my fury towards you when she pleaded in your behalf. I saw your light glittering in her."
"She is an extraordinary young woman. She could have easily resented me for picking Athena's side during the division between us, but her actions and conduct were exceptional and beyond reproach. A young lass from the Nordic Lands has taught me a lesson in humility and has done so by example," the Queen said. "You could not have chosen a better wife to Athena and a better future Queen to the Realm."
The Conqueror smiled and gently stroked the Queen's cheek with the back of her fingers. "When I first saw her, she reminded me so much of you. Her answers to the questions I posed to her spoke of her modesty, selflessness and compassion… How I hoped that Athena would discard that bed-warming termagant of hers and eventually grow to… at least care for Sieglinde if not cherish and adore her."
The Queen kissed her Lord's grooved forehead, trying to ebb the worries away. "I suspect you just might get your wish, soon," she said and tangled her fingers in her Lord's mane.
"I spoke with Athena before she left for the Nordic Lands and she kept on defending that awful woman to me," the Conqueror claimed. "Do you know something that I do not?" she asked, deriving great pleasure from her wife's fingers fondly combing through her long tresses.
"Some time ago, Athena complained to me that Cynna was willful and demanding."
"Did she, indeed?!"
The Queen could not curb a smile when she saw how delighted and gleeful her Lord was upon learning about Athena's expostulation regarding the former Amazon whom the Conqueror hated with passion.
"She also alluded to the fact that Sieglinde was more clever than she had initially thought and also generous and kindhearted."
"Is that so…?" The Conqueror's smile grew wider and her brows rose higher.
The Queen nodded in the positive. "And before leaving for the battlefield, Athena came to see me, as well, and receive my blessing."
Upon hearing her wife's words, a grim shadow crossed the Conqueror's features when she remembered how she had left for the battlefield without so much as a farewell to her wife, and what if she had not returned alive from the battlefield? The notion was too desponding to contemplate.
"She did not wear her own sword which you had given her around her waist but a different sword with a sumptuous, foreign design which I believe had been given to her by Sieglinde," the Queen continued. "When I looked outside from my balcony I saw her halt and turn back. She looked up. At first I thought her eyes were searching for me, but I quickly realized she was looking at the direction of Sieglinde's chambers. It was her that she sought after."
The Conqueror was the picture of content. "That is indeed most encouraging, my Lady," she commented.
"It is my opinion, my Lord, that it is only a matter of time before Athena grows tired of Cynna and forms deep affection towards her wife. Sieglinde's light shines bright and Athena will see it and cherish it eventually and even sooner than you think."
The Conqueror showed her gratitude by planting a kiss between her wife's partially bare breasts.
Gabrielle embraced her Lord's head and pressed it harder against her body, still yearning for constant contact.
After a few moments that passed between them in wordless bonding, the Queen was the first to break the silence.
"May I offer you a word of advice, my Lord," she asked.
"Of course you may," the Conqueror immediately replied.
"Afford Athena a clear path to you with neither confrontation nor rebuke, for when she realizes her mistake it will be difficult enough for her to admit she'd erred, especially to you more than anyone else." The Queen ran her fingers over the lines curved in the Conqueror's stalwart shoulders. "She has her pride and is very much capable of carrying on with Cynna rather than admit to you that you've been right, and whether you are aware of it or not, my Lord, she is in constant competition or rivalry with you." Her fingers roamed down the Conqueror's biceps. "I beseech you to refrain from adding insult to her injured pride." The Queen directed her gaze into her Lover's, and after a short pause went on to say, "Yours is a hard shadow to come out from under and she is to succeed you one day."
The Conqueror kissed the Queen's lips. "My wise wife," she said affectionately, "I shall act as you advise."
The Conqueror rose from the table, carrying the Queen in her arms. The Queen immediately wrapped her legs around her Lord's waist.
"Would you join me in the bath?" the Ruler playfully asked.
The Queen laughed. "Would you wash me in all the strategic places?" she salaciously teased and placed a special emphasis on the word 'strategic'.
"Do you not think I ought to make you dirty first?!" the Conqueror groaned in the Queen's ear.
"As dirty as you desire, my Lord," the Queen moaned and suggestively tightened her legs around the Conqueror's waist and grated her sex against the Conqueror's checkered abdomen.
With the Queen wrapped around her like a snake, the Conqueror walked across their bedchamber and into the bath-chamber. The Queen clung to her as the Conqueror leaned down to light the fire beneath the bath stone floor so to warm up the water. Then she starched back up to her full stature and pressed her Queen's back against the nearest smooth marble wall.
Secure between the wall and her Lord's body, with her legs encircled and locked around the strong, firm figure, the Queen's hands were free to sneak down the Conqueror's body. She parted the loosely hanged robe and guided the Conqueror's member into her gaping cleft.
They both grunted when the Conqueror rammed her length further into the Queen in full.
"This is how I worship you, my Queen," the Conqueror drawled and took the Queen's hands in hers. Their fingers interlaced in need to be connected in lust and in love.
The Conqueror's release burst first. She strived arduously for it on purpose, aiming to achieve fulfillment before her wife did. For her wife's release she had planned a different method of action.
The Queen sensed the tremors in her Lord's body and felt her Lord's come dribbling down her inner thighs but said nothing in spite of her surprise.
The Conqueror withdrew from the fleshy sheath, her shaft glistening with the Queen's slick moisture. She bent her knees and with a tap of her hand signaled the Queen to slacken her grip from around her waist and stand on her own feet.
With her back to the wall, the Queen stood as her Lord knelt before her. The Queen knew her Lord's mind perfectly well. Her Lord desired to taste her freshly from the oozing source.
When the Conqueror surrounded the Queen's sex with her lips and when her warm, slippery tongue flicked the Queen's pulsating nodule, bolts of fire coursed through her and the Queen tried to grasp at the wall, weakly emitting: "Have mercy," to her Lord.
Three custodial fingers cleaved into her, stimulating her soaking core when the pressure became unbearable and a series of intense explosions of liberating pleasure began to hit her clamping sex.
When the ecstasy subsided she slumped over the Conqueror's shoulder on her last legs.
Grinning, the Conqueror rose up and carried her exhausted, limp wife like a sack of grain to the bath. She dipped her hand to make sure the water was warm enough and gently lowered her wife into it, disrobed and entered the water, too.
The Conqueror derived great pleasure in watching the thin refined fabric of the gown cling to her wife's curvaceous body. The expression on her face made the Queen laugh.
The Conqueror took her giggling wife's feet and massaged scented oil into it. “I cannot understand it. I've just had you and I bear longing for you, still.”
“I feel the same,” the Queen replied and swam into the Conqueror's arms. “But I cannot understand it either.”
The Conqueror pilled away the gown from the Queen's body. Soon after, the Queen moved to sit behind her Lord and washed her hair, occasionally rubbing her breasts against her Lord's back.
“My Lord,” she whispered, “May I ask something of you?”
“You may, Gabrielle,” the Conqueror replied and ardently caressed her wife's thigh.
“I wish to repay Sieglinde for the infinite kindness she has shown all of us. Though a traitor, her brother is her only living kin. It will devastate her if he were to suffer the same fate as his coconspirators… and she has had very little reason to be happy since coming here and joining our family,” the Queen argued most vehemently.
The Conqueror sighed deeply and turned to face her wife. “My Love,” she said gravely for she knew she was about to disappoint her.
The Queen recognized her Lord's tone of voice. “My Lion,” she begged, “I will not ask you to do it for me. I will, however, ask you to consider this: you always pride yourself in owing nothing to anyone. Forgive me, but you owe a debt of gratitude to this young lass for all that she has done for us. I will repay her the debt that I owe her, myself, but I cannot repay her your debt to her. Only you can do that. Therefore, I urge you to extend her brother some leniency.”
“My Lady,” the Conqueror spoke heavily then after a few long moments of contemplating her wife's arguments, she said, “I will consider it.”
“Thank you, my Lord,” the Queen said with a smile.
When they finished bathing, the couple found supper waiting for them in the antechamber, and when they finished dining, they retired to their bed to quench their need for one another and become one as they had always been in the throes of passion.