Day 6 - Step Siblings/Masochism/Maledom - Crusader Kings

Dungal had found a pair of shackles in their father’s chambers one day, and the two had hoarded them like stolen treasure.

Even if Petty King Brian was called a pretender, even if the Norse blood spilled in the sack of Leighlin was still so fresh on the ground than some said the bogs wept blood, and even if their barony castle was in such a state that most would-be-kings would have turned away - to the children none of this mattered.

Slaine, who had not seen the castle before the men with the large beards **** her grandfather out of it, was amazed simply at its size. From the tallest tower looking down, it was as if one stood on the precipice of the sky looking down at the world. Staring down the cliffside to the sea, far enough up to not feel the crash of foam, where the bird-messengers of The Morrigan would come to perch. They had been eating very well. When she saw the places where the walls had fallen, the empty larders, and the collapsed passageways, it only added to the place’s mystery.

Dungal, who had been just a babe at the time it happened, pretended to scoff at the damage the way he’d seen his father and uncle do. Apple of Brian’s eye, of course, and willing to do everything he could to give the impression he was becoming every bit the wee tyrant.

“By order of the king, you will be punished!” Dungal stamped his feet.

She hung her head, holding her shackled wrists in front of her as if in surrender - though the shackles didn’t yet fit her in actuality. Slaine had to hold them in place when they played, or press her arms against her body like she was shrugging.

The courtyard, where the gardens had once been, was a grey field of misty slate. Shaggy rocks like bits of broken glass, some quite sharp in their own right, made clinking and clacking sounds underfoot when the adults walked across them. Around them the walls rose toothy and incomplete, jagged and half-formed. Somewhere, Dungal’s mother was likely at her needlework. Where Slaine’s was, nobody knew. At least not that were telling. Brian and his men would likely all be at work shoring up some damaged wall or trying to clear some passage before winter struck. It seemed the older you got, the busier you got. And the more broken your things were, busier still. There were still a handful of the funny-talking beared men in the castle’s dungeon, Slaine didn’t understand why they hadn’t been released or killed yet.

Slaine stepped forward with her chin pressed to her chest, holding her shackled hands out until Dungal motioned her to turn around. She faced away from him while he strode behind her. Stamping his feet and kicking hard with each step to make the proper sounds on the shales.

“For your crimes, you will be made to suffer.” He said, in as authoritative a voice as a child only a few years removed from his weaning could muster.

“No!” Slaine gasped desperately.

“One cannot avoid answering for their sins.” Dungal tried on a phrase he’d heard his father saying. “You will have to walk the coals.”

He pointed severely at the shaggy stone walkway, as if dooming her to die. Though so far as she knew, their father had never made anyone walk any length of hot coals. Nor did they have near enough firewood in the long, lean season they were in the mist of to spend the coals on shows of pain and ****. Still, it had become his favorite suggested **** for his stepsister. Perhaps because the slate was not especially comfortable to walk along in bare feet, perhaps because it was simply what was at hand. A large part of her was sure it was also because it meant he didn’t have to lift a finger of his own to hurt her. There was something… soft… at Dungal’s core that seemed rooted deeper than any amount of talk or beating could remove. On the day they’d executed one of the nasty men with long beards, Dungal hadn’t been able to bring himself to look. And even not looking, he’d slept terribly for some time afterward.

She slipped the simple leather shoes off of her feet and winced slightly at the feeling of the cold slate. It was more the temperature than the stones, each day had enough frost in the air at this point in the year to make them feel far sharper than they were. None of the rocks - at least none of the ones close to the surface - were sharp enough to break the skin without tremendous effort. Though they were loose enough and haphazard enough that the horses had to be kept off of it. But when you walked, a hundred little corners that came right to the border of sharp prodded the soles and ankles of one’s feet. In the summers, the stones seemed to sweat and soft, in the winter, they seemed to harden. Right now, the pain was enough to make her take wobbling, baby animal steps. Holding her arms up and out like she was feeling her way along in the dark.

“Oooh! Oww!” Slaine hissed. It wasn’t so much the sound of somebody being tortured as the sound of somebody being vexed by an upset stomach. The one time she’d tried to really scream, she’d gotten both of them in trouble.

“Keep walking!” Dungal ordered.

At about the end of the bushes, she turned back, taking the dozen steps back toward her step-brother. Slaine made all manner of pained, agonized noises to punctuate the ****, continuing to hold the cuffs in front of her so they wouldn’t slip. She’d never been able to explain why she played these games with him when asked. He had other sisters, ones more comfortable playing games of conquest and princes and princesses. The wet nurse called these games morbid.

From somewhere within the walls, a strangled cry broke out and sounded through the courtyard. Both children froze, their eyes darting to the stone walls overhead, standing in the long shadow they cast. It was likely a sound they’d never been meant to hear, one escaping from some damaged porthole or doorway in some deep chamber. A scream of genuine, bloody agony. Ending in a high yip, the doggish bark of one of the mean outsiders with long beards. Something in his tone made even that mongrel voice chilling.

It took Slaine a moment to snap her head away from the stone walls, Dungal was still staring, his already pale face white and waxy as a corpse. His lips kept quivering.

“Come on,” Slaine made a slick move of slipping off the shackles and darting them into the recesses of her dress. Then she tugged his arm and pulled his face back to her. “Let’s go see what Cassie’s doing.”

He nodded shakily, glancing quickly to the side pathway they used to slip in and out of the castle. For the moment, glancing indoors seemed to make him shake again, so she pulled him along toward the front courtyard.

***

By the age of eighteen, he had hardened, becoming a lot more like his father and - more importantly - like his father wanted him to be. But Slaine could still see the flinch.

“We must send a message to these northmen,” Feargus was a man who had looked like a turtle even before age and old wounds had started to cruelly hunch his back. Now his drooping, wrinkled chin hung down nearly to his breast, his neck almost perfectly horizontal when looking at him from the side. Neither of them understood how you could look like that and still hold so much respect. But the longer something was, the more impossible it became to imagine a world without it.

“It’s a festival.” Dungal commented apathetically. “Dances, flowers, food.”

“You aren’t old enough to remember.” Feargus pounded the table, the older members of the council looked up at the young king severely, the younger exchanged a quiet glance. “This is not their land.”

“It’s a hard seed to uproot.” Dungal shrugged, though he tried to sound concerned. “It wasn’t pulled early, and now there are hundreds of them. If you want an inquisition, where’s the line? The half-northmen? The Irish converts?”

“To the former, proper education and integration is possible.” Conlach’s oily voice crept from his habit, salt-and-pepper hair making it hard to tell where the outfit ended and the man began. His crucifix was glittering gold. “To the latter, that’s for God to judge.”

Slaine could see the flinch happen, though Dungal by now was more than good enough at hiding it from the rest of them. That little reset of the teeth behind the lips, a heavy swallow, a quick flutter of the eyes anywhere else. It was easy enough to mistake for something harmless, if you hadn’t been seeing it your whole life.

“I don’t want purges under my reign,” Dungal tried to speak confidently, but his voice wavered enough to draw a glance between the older councilmen.

“Of course,” Feargus accepted a drink from one of the serving girls, and his near-lecherous touch of her hand as she took it made Slaine commit the girl’s face to memory. “The young lord abhors conflict.”

“I do.” Dungal responded testily.

“The young lord’s humility is to be lauded.” Conlach purred. “Glory is a false god.”

“Aye, but more Irish souls worship it than Odin or Ullr.” Feargus snipped. “His majesty may find it hard to sway men in times of crisis if he’s unwilling to confront them in times of peace.”

“A purge seems like crisis enough.” Dungal commented weakly.

“The common man loathes the heathen.” Conlach spoke confidently. “Even if you can’t grasp at the root of the weed, you can strengthen the soil against it.”

The flinch again.

“The common man has little fervor.” Dungal’s voice was almost childish. No matter how many correct answers his teachers had filled his head with, the lessons on sophistry had been wasted.

“In his resting state,” Conlach gestured as if he agreed. “He wants for food, shelter, and to fill his carnal needs. You can cut out his eyes, remove his tongue, even castrate him, and he will still seek them. That’s the animal in him; that cannot be killed or tortured out. But the animal in him does not plant crops, build castles, or bathe. Fervor, like stone walls, is a blessing of abundance. There is no better time to harvest it than when all else is at rest.”

One of the ladies in waiting at the far end of the table snickered loudly, though if it was in conversation with a girl by her side or at Conlach’s remarks, it was too late to guess. All the men’s eyes flowed to her in unison, and she immediately bowed in response. Conlach’s face, while outwardly angry, suggested he didn’t mind having his grand speech punctuated by a sound of seeming approval.

***

The meeting let out not long after. Dungal becoming increasingly withdrawn and sullen as Feargus and Conlach talked the rest of the table - and each other - into the necessity of ****. By the time they were excusing themselves, Feargus in particular seemed almost red-faced with conviction. It was his conflict, if only because he was the sole remaining man who remembered its first day.

Slaine waited for Dungal to leave, and he was first out so she didn’t wait long, but she still held on for a few minutes more than she needed to. Then she left the hall quietly, smiling at the serving girls as she did.

On the way upstairs, her fingernails dug a biting furrow into the palm of her hand, enough to cut through at least somewhat and draw a little shiver from her. Very long ago now, she’d learned how not to stop, how not to slam doors. Some people hadn’t needed that instruction.

She opened the door to the royal chambers without knocking, half-expecting Dungal to be in a pile of his sheets on the floor and half-expecting him to be arguing with Cassierne. Instead, his room was seemingly untouched. Fully in order, sheets on bed, no moping young man on the floor near the fireplace. It almost gave her pause, it should have given her pause. But instead, she stepped inside. A second later, somebody threw themselves on top of her and she only barely held back a stream.

“Sister dearest,” Dungal breathed in her ear, his arms around her shoulders. “You’re very lucky I wasn’t armed.”

“I am not your sister.” Slaine corrected. “Not by any important metric. And if I feared harm from you, I would be more careful.”

“One day, you will catch me ready to defend myself.” He swayed from one foot to the other for a moment, seeming to turn his grasp on her into a hug.

“I’d more fear your wife ready to defend you.” Slaine glanced around. “She’s…”

“Away.” Dungal murmured gleefully. “And if you’re not my sister by any important metric, she’s not my wife by any important metric.”

“You did consummate, I’m assuming.” Slaine considered elbowing her way out of his embrace, which was getting increasingly predatory. “Did you send her away?”

“Yes, needn’t have.” Dungal seemed to be squirming in a strange way. “She questioned my manhood and my faith. I don’t think she’ll come back any time soon.’

Slaine heard him kick the door behind him. Then, a second later, she felt cold metal against her wrists. Dungal pulled one arm and then the other behind her back, locking them into a pair of shackles without ceremony - or permission.

“We do need to talk.” Slaine commented seriously.

“Do we?” Dungal huffed.

“Yes.” Slaine tried to take a step away from him, but he was holding her firmly in place. “I hope I’m not just a distraction to you.”

“These certainly are,” Dungal grabbed her breasts through her dress.

Slaine sighed and shuffled, feeling a sort of ache come alive, one she had been trying to ignore since the moment the cuffs had locked. She could feel Dungal take his hands off of her chest only long enough to start unlacing her bodice, then he seemed to realize the logistical problems its shoulders would present with her arms cuffed back.

“You’ll have to slide it up, bottom to top,” Slaine started to explain.

“Fuck it,” Dungal reached back around and yanked the collar of it down hard enough to pop her breasts out. His hands went right back, warm enough to make her wonder if he hadn’t been sitting by the fire in preparation.

For a moment, she let him grope her without protest. The callouses he had worked up on his hands didn’t feel especially rough for the genuine struggle he’d been through to build them. More than that, his fingers were agile, well-practiced. He had plenty of fun squeezing and rubbing and smooshing things together, but his fingers had special attention for her nipples, as well as a good understanding of what they wanted. Soft pinches and pulls, rubbing and stroking like a small animal, even the occasional half-joking twist or yank. Slaine started squirming right back, and she could feel a mutual problem pressing between them.

“Well… this is great for you…” Slaine breathed after a few seconds, trying her best to keep her voice even. “It doesn’t leave me with many options for getting off.”

“Mm?” Dungal seemed to be paying very little attention. His chin was tucked against her shoulder, looking down the top of her freckle-covered chest at where his hands were working. At this point, everything was still on the playful side of needy, but only just.

“I am… getting off tonight?” Slaine asked a little more desperately.

“Mm,” Dungal gave her breasts a final squeeze before pushing her softly away. Adjusting his tunic as she turned as if he had any reason to hide his erection. “You will have to be punished, of course.”

“For?” Slaine asked semi-jokingly.

“You did trespass in the King’s quarters.” He moved over toward the fireplace, where two chairs were sitting not far apart from one another. Slaine made her way over patiently, sitting as carefully as she could without her hands. She could either basically sit on her hands, or sit as hunched as Feargus, for the moment she chose the latter.

When she was in place, Dungal moved behind her and turned the chair with her in it, facing the other. Then he turned the empty chair and sat in it, reaching forward to give her hanging breasts another quick rub. At last, he snapped to attention and picked up the tongs, lifting a ruby-red coal from the inferno.

As soon as it was in the air, they both shifted. Dungal immediately looked nervous, only more so as he swung the tongs slowly toward her. Not as if he was scared of hurting her, he wasn’t that stupid, but clearly afraid of hurting her wrong. Even with the coal still a good distance from any exposed skin, she could see he was already losing his nerve. She wondered if he’d already been pushed too far today.

For Slaine, it was a rush. There was a fixation that had rolled and changed shape with time like a growing mudslide. A knife, a sharpened doll’s legs, a slightly too powerful fixation on the torment’s of a church window. Not a love of pain, you couldn’t love something sharp. But something that could border on obsession in love’s place. As the coal grew nearer to her, she felt her stomach dropping, seemingly into her groin. The cold spike of fear and discomfort only seemed to make the burning, itchy feeling of need between her legs more powerful. A pressure like she was going to wet herself, and maybe she was.

“Your foot.” Dungal said nervously.

Slaine extended her leg wordlessly, she had seen her expression enough times to know that it wouldn’t make his job any easier. A cowering, **** look. The brain reacted coldly to the spectre of the wound, then sharp and hot to the wound itself. First the flinch, then the blow. The drunken, almost bleeding euphoria that came the moment after it was too late to avoid a scar. All fear, all resistance, and the line between excitement and payoff passed in that moment. But you did have to pluck the fruit to get there.

Dungal lowered the tongs toward her foot, bringing it right up into the curve of her arch where the red light of it played against the soft white of her skin. Even now, she could feel the heat of it beyond the level of comfort. It would have been easy to move her ankle and do the rest of the job herself. But that wouldn’t be any good. For one, it would mean a tremendous amount of apologizing, even some crying, from the young majesty. Regardless of how many assurances he had of whose fault it was. For another, it was not appealing to hurt. A migraine did not excite her.

He hesitated one moment, then another. Slaine realized he wasn’t going to do it probably before he knew it. And then came the flinch.

It broke out in the form of full-body shivers, something like repulsion or terror of his own. Dungal flicked the coal back into the fire almost desperately, as if he was the one whose skin it was curling and searing. Slaine swallowed a groan, feeling the heat on the bottom of her foot fading fast. There was a small bit of a smart where it had been the hottest for the longest. That would have to do. The recoil, that drop of fear and excitement, faded just as quickly. Though she still felt a now-frustrated need between her legs.

“I’m sorry sister-” Dungal started.

“It’s okay, I understand.” Slaine repeated a phrase she’d used more times than she wanted to think about.

“I-I can’t.. I can’t-” Dungal continued.

“One day you will.” Slaine sighed hopefully.

For a few seconds, Dungal was still visibly struggling to calm down. She noticed that, no matter his revulsion and hesitation, his erection had not gone down. Either the flinch wasn’t as strong as more basic urges, or it was simply used to working under these conditions.

“You can still use me, if you’d like.” Slaine commented softly.

“Are you sure?” Dungal sounded guilty.

“I am the king’s to punish as he sees fit.” Slaine tried to give her chest an enticing shake, though she was restrained and **** into an awkward enough position that it might have looked more like a struggle for freedom.

Dungal recovered quickly, after settling back into his chair and taking a couple moments to stroke her breasts again, he slid out of his pants eagerly. His entirely functional and adequate manhood practically already throbbing without being touched. He started to stroke himself, seeming to be perfectly happy to just sit there and masturbate while watching - and occasionally touching - Slaine’s breasts. She decided to take the initiative, shuffling off of the chair onto the floor, then crawling toward him on her knees. Finally lowering her cheek against his thigh, flexing her hands in the cuffs behind her back.

“Surely the king… wants more than just this?” Slaine asked.

“Does he?” Dungal responded almost wistfully. “As the king recalls, the maidenhead is off-limits even to him.”

“Yes,” Slaine responded, though some part of her was all but certain she wouldn’t put up a fight if he tried. “But the king could use his prisoner like a common whore in all of the other ways.”

Perhaps to demonstrate, she lifted her head enough to pop the head of his cock into her mouth. Slaine tried to lash him with her tongue as best she could, because the second she tried to take more of him, she felt like she was already ****. It was not a skill she had ever taken the time to develop, and that was before one factored in trying to keep her balance and support her weight on increasingly bruised knees and an increasingly strained and shaky stomach. Still, she did her best with what she had. Sliding her tongue underneath the skin that bunched around his head, flicking it over the tip, dragging it against his head as much as possible. He reached out and tried to push her a little lower, but she gagged so physically and so visibly that he immediately gave up. She almost wished he hadn’t, though she didn’t exactly find gagging pleasurable even in the sense of courting pain.

“One thinks a common whore would be better at this.” Dungal teased.

Slaine squeezed her eyes shut, feeling a sort of shiver at his words. His taunting, if she could ever figure out how to make him do it consistently, might be some kind of substitute for his lack of a stomach for pain. Though some part of her would also never fully swallow the sibling annoyance of it. She strongly considered giving his manhood a warning bite, but before she could, Dungal grabbed her hair and lifted her semi-gently off of his crotch.

His free hand pumped rapidly for a few seconds and she held her mouth open and her eyes closed. A warm reward splashed onto her tongue and over it, up on her cheeks and even to her forehead. She knew better than to open her eyes, though she would have loved to see the faces he was making. At the same time, the churning neediness between her legs had become an almost-panic. At the very least, he had no problem inflicting that kind of discomfort on her.

When she was pretty sure it was over, Slaine opened one eye and then the other tepidly, making sure a not-the-good-kind-of-pain surprise wasn’t waiting for her over either. As she did, Dungal wiped a bit of mess from one of her eyebrows. She quickly swallowed, then opened her mouth again and sucked his finger clean. He gave a few idle, deflating strokes.

“Thank you, your majesty.” Slaine purred around his thumb, leaning her cheek into the palm of his hand. At this point, she was hoping for anything more - though she knew nothing was coming. It didn’t matter if it was a slap, a kiss, a deflowering.

Instead, Dungal helped her to her feet and pulled her dress back into place over her breasts. She could feel cooling seed on her cheeks and chin. Her hands were starting to go slightly numb in the shackles.

Dungal quickly opened his door just a sliver and glanced outside, then mostly closed it again and leaned toward her.

“You still have your spare key?” He hissed.

“Of course.” She blinked, looking at him incredulously.

“Well then, good night, and safe travels.” He swung the door opened and gestured out.

She gaped at him for a moment. This was a new angle, and she didn’t know at all how she felt about it. Then she heard the sound of a serving maid making her way up the stairs down the hall. Slaine took off, feet slapping the smooth stones below.

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