The First is one of Hippolyta's handmaidens

Some time later, a thick bubbling reached Winston through the canvas, close enough to pull his attention from whatever had occupied it. The river lay farther off and sounded nothing like this, so curiosity eventually brought him through the flap.

Steam greeted him outside. A broad tub had been settled onto level ground and braced with stone and timber, its surface shifting gently with the heat still trapped beneath it. Empty pots waited beside the fire, blackened at their bottoms, and the damp earth around them showed how many trips filling the thing must have taken. Whoever had arranged it had finished before he thought to ask what they were doing.

Winston stopped beside the tub and looked toward Hippolyta. “What is that for?”

The question seemed to puzzle her more than the sight had puzzled him. “Your bath.”

The woman standing beside it was not one of the four. Blonde hair, too lustrous to be fully hidden by the white wrap that bound it, caught the light in a soft gold sheen. Her mouth was a wet, high-gloss red. The gown was white where it wrapped her hips and waist, bleeding into deep crimson on the falling drapes; it was cut so low that the swell of her breasts sat almost free of the cloth, the gold discs at her shoulders looking less like jewellery than the last two things keeping the fabric from sliding off her entirely. One hand still rested at the back of her head, as if she had been waiting in the pose and saw no reason to abandon it when he arrived.

“This is Saruka,” Hippolyta stated. “One of my handmaidens. Until more arrive, she will draw your baths, wash you, wash what you wear, keep this tent, and wait on you. She is the first of the three I told you would come.”

Something in the woman’s attention put Winston slightly on edge before he understood why. Saruka looked at him directly enough, and the bow that followed was proper in every visible respect, yet it came a fraction later than he had begun to expect from the women around him. The hesitation was tiny, barely more than a breath, though after a week of living beneath constant scrutiny he had become sensitive to pauses like that.

“My king,” Saruka stated. “It was an honour to serve Hippolyta. It is an honour to serve her through you.”

There it was. The wording settled the unease that had begun with the delayed bow. Hippolyta remained the centre of the honour in Saruka’s mind; Winston occupied the place authority had forced between them. Courtesy covered the distinction almost perfectly, though a faint reluctance still pressed beneath it, too disciplined to become open disrespect and too real for him to mistake once he knew where to listen.

The slight in Saruka’s wording did not pass unnoticed. Helisparga’s attention shifted first, quietening in a way Winston had learned to recognize as displeasure. Aurascyra’s eyes sharpened from where she stood near the flap, while Xanthibarqa’s jaw set for a moment before discipline forced it still again. Penthascara looked closest to speaking; the line of her mouth tightened, held, then eased only after a glance toward Winston made the choice for her.

Saruka noticed none of the restrained offense around her. Her attention remained on Winston, composed and properly deferential, while the others withdrew without comment. The flap settled closed behind them, shutting out the last of their displeasure and leaving only the steam rising from the tub between them.

With the tent quiet again, Saruka lowered her gaze in the manner of a servant awaiting permission. “Your clothes, my king, if you please.”

Every movement that followed had the assurance of long practice. Fastenings came loose beneath careful fingers, garments were folded rather than dropped, and each piece was set aside as though the smallest disorder might reflect badly on her service. Courtesy governed everything Saruka did, though warmth never quite reached it. Her attention remained respectfully lowered while she worked, speaking only when the task required it and leaving Winston no easy breach in her manners to seize upon.

The others had made a convincing enough show of leaving, and Winston had almost believed them. While Saruka worked at the last fastening, a faint movement near the flap drew his attention. At first he took it for the wind, until the canvas shifted again and opened a narrow gap wide enough to reveal the glint of an eye watching from the other side.

A second shadow crowded close behind the first, followed by the suggestion of another shape trying to find room without disturbing the flap further. Whatever dignity their departure had possessed was rapidly collapsing into a badly concealed audience. Winston kept his face still and said nothing, curious to see how long they intended to maintain the pretense.

Subtlety had never served Xanthibarqa particularly well, and the glint of one gold eye through the opening gave her away almost at once. She watched with the same unwavering concentration she brought to the perimeter, apparently incapable of treating even this as something that required less than her full attention. A second shape shifted behind her when Penthascara tried to recover some scrap of dignity without surrendering her place, only to find Aurascyra already occupying the better angle. Their silent struggle moved the canvas enough to betray both of them.

Farther back, Helisparga revealed herself only by the faintest disturbance beside the flap, close enough to see and careful enough to avoid joining the competition at the opening. Hippolyta showed no such concern. When Winston finally found her beyond the others, she met his look directly, the pleased curve of her mouth making it clear she had no intention of pretending she had wandered there by accident.

Saruka remained unaware of the audience. By the time Winston was bare, the gap had narrowed again, though not before he caught one last flash of gold and the unmistakable satisfaction on Hippolyta’s face.

He decided not to mention it.

Not yet.

Once he was ready, a hand came lightly beneath his wrist to guide rather than pull. “The water has been prepared for you.” Saruka brought him to the rim, waited until he had stepped into the steam, then gathered the cloth and soap already laid beside the tub. Another small bow accompanied the final offer, polished enough to sound rehearsed. “If it pleases you, my king, I will attend to your washing.”

Hippolyta’s voice reached them from behind, mild enough that Saruka did not seem to recognize the correction until her own name was spoken. The hand at Winston’s arm stilled at once.

“Saruka, you will bathe him as you bathed me. He is your king, and I expect the same care from you here that you gave in my service. I did not send you to attend a stranger with proper titles and nothing more. See to him with the dutifulness you once gave me, and do the work as it should be done.”

Shame or embarssment climbed slowly into Saruka’s throat. She bowed deeper this time, composure holding until the answer left her mouth. “Yes, my queen.”

The mistake landed between them before she could hide it. Her head dipped another fraction. “My king.”

After Hippolyta’s correction, Saruka returned to the bath with greater attention to every part of the task. She tested the water once more before Winston settled into it, arranged the folded cloth beneath his shoulders, and worked soap through the washing cloth with the ease of long practice. Discipline had smoothed away the earlier reluctance, though nothing in her manner had yet become genuinely warm.

Some time into the washing, while the cloth moved carefully across his shoulders, she spoke with a trace of pride that had been absent before. “I was chosen for this personally.”

The remark caught Winston’s attention. Something about the way she said it made the distinction sound important to her. “Hippolyta chose you?”

“To attend her person, yes.” Pride straightened Saruka slightly as she rinsed the cloth and drew it along his arm. “Many servants could carry messages, prepare meals, or tend clothing. She trusted very few with her private chambers or with the care of her person. Being permitted that closeness was an honour.”

The meaning beneath the polished explanation settled slowly. She wanted him to understand what those hands had once been trusted to do, and whose body had once received the care she was now giving his. In Saruka’s mind, the privilege still belonged to her service of Hippolyta; Winston had merely inherited access to something he ought to appreciate. The implication irritated him more than he expected.

“You enjoyed serving her,” he said, watching for the answer.

Whatever restraint Saruka had kept around the rest of the conversation loosened at once. A softness entered her face before she could contain it. “Very much.”

That answer told him more than the words themselves. The affection behind it had been waiting close to the surface, old enough and familiar enough that speaking of Hippolyta required no effort at all.

Watching the cloth disappear beneath the water, Winston let the warmth in her answer settle before pressing any further. “More than the work required?”

For the first time since Hippolyta had corrected her, Saruka hesitated. The cloth remained submerged a moment longer than necessary before her hands resumed their practiced motion. “I admired my queen.”

The title caught at him. “Former queen.” He said it quietly, though the authority behind the correction needed no volume. Beneath the surface, Saruka’s fingers paused around the cloth before she lifted it again and wrung the water carefully back into the basin.

“Regent,” she amended, and the word came with enough reluctance for Winston to hear how recently the distinction had entered her world.

Silence lingered while the washing resumed. He had promised himself that whatever power lived inside his words would be used carefully, yet the meaning of careful had grown less fixed with every choice he made. Saruka could still admire Hippolyta. He had no wish to strip that from her, and telling himself so made the next step easier. “You can keep what you feel for her. I have no reason to take that from you.”

A little of the tension left Saruka’s shoulders. Gratitude softened the answer when it came. “Thank you, my king.”

That response gave Winston room to continue. “If serving Hippolyta was an honour, then serving me should carry that same honour.” The cloth slowed against his arm, and for a moment he considered leaving the thought there. In his own mind, he was asking for dignity rather than affection.

By then Saruka had made her hierarchy plain enough. Service to Winston carried less weight in her mind because the authority surrounding him still felt borrowed from Hippolyta, and the fact that he was a man only sharpened the distinction. Correcting that seemed reasonable to him. He had already accepted the obligations of kingship; accepting contempt disguised as obedience felt like another matter entirely.

The cloth resumed its path across his shoulder after a brief hesitation. “Yes,” Saruka said carefully. “It should.” Winston let the answer settle before pressing further. “And serving me should carry no lesser meaning.” This time the pause was shorter. Whatever resistance remained had already begun changing shape by the time she answered. “No. It should not.” The words came slowly, as though she were testing a conclusion she had previously refused to consider and finding less wrong with it than expected.

Curiosity carried him into the next question while she continued washing. “What made serving Hippolyta matter so much to you?” Surprise flickered across Saruka’s face before memory softened it. “She trusted me.” Winston heard how quickly the answer came. “That mattered to you.” A small nod accompanied the cloth back into the water. “Very much.” He waited, leaving enough silence for the rest to emerge on its own.

“She never made closeness feel shameful,” Saruka continued after a while. “When I washed her hair, she would speak to me. When I dressed her, she asked what I thought of the day ahead. Sometimes I would forget who I was standing beside until she said something that reminded me.” Each memory loosened something in her expression, and the affection there had grown too deep to mistake for pride in service alone.

Winston watched the affection gather in her face until the conclusion became difficult to avoid. “You loved her.”

The cloth stilled beneath the water, and for several moments Saruka seemed to lose track of the bath entirely. Ripples moved against the side of the tub while she searched for an answer that preserved the shape she had always given those memories. “I served her.” Winston let the distinction hang between them before answering. “That was not what I asked.” Her gaze dropped to the water, and the quiet admission that followed carried more uncertainty than resistance. “I know.”

He could have allowed the subject to end there. Instead, the curiosity that had brought him this far pushed against the limit he had promised himself he would respect. The same thought returned with greater certainty, and when Winston spoke again the authority within the words settled into them almost before he chose to acknowledge it. “You loved her.”

A swallow moved through Saruka’s throat. The answer took time, though once it came something in her seemed to loosen around it. “Yes.” Memories that had once belonged safely beneath duty began finding another shape, visible in the way her expression softened as she looked back through them. Washing Hippolyta’s hair, dressing her, being invited into private hours, all of it seemed to acquire a meaning she had spent years leaving unnamed. “I think I did.”

The first warning twisted low in Winston’s stomach, brief and unpleasant enough that he noticed it before choosing to ignore it. “Serving someone you love feels different.”

“Yes,” Saruka admitted, the word coming easier now that she had finally named what she felt for Hippolyta.

“Then serving me should be allowed to feel different too.”

That brought her attention fully onto him. For the first time since entering the tent, the careful servant’s courtesy fell away enough for confusion to show plainly. “I do not know you.”

“You will.”

Her brow tightened. “That is not the same.”

“No.” Winston chose the next words carefully, though by then careful had begun to mean something very different from restraint. “But you should be able to enjoy taking care of me without feeling that doing so betrays what you felt for Hippolyta.”

The authority beneath the sentence settled into place almost invisibly. Saruka’s shoulders eased as though some private tension had finally been given permission to loosen, and when the cloth returned to his skin the movement carried a gentleness that had not been there before. “That would be easier,” she murmured.

Winston noticed the difference at once. She checked the water again without being prompted, adjusted the cloth beneath his shoulder when it slipped, and frowned faintly at a trace of soap she had missed before washing it away with more care than the task required. None of those things were dramatic on their own, which made the change harder to dismiss.

He could have stopped there. Curiosity carried him further instead. “You liked being close to her.”

Warmth touched Saruka’s face as the memory returned. “Yes.”

The answer gave Winston the opening he had been circling. He knew the force available to him now, the same authority that had worked on Hippolyta, the certainty that once his will entered the words they would leave more behind than sound. “You can like being close to me. You will want that closeness for yourself, without measuring it through what you felt for Hippolyta, and being a man will give you no reason to reject it.”

The washing cloth stayed motionless against the rim while Saruka raised her eyes to him. For a moment he could still recognize everything that had been there before, the guarded courtesy, the preference she reserved for Hippolyta, the distance she maintained while serving a king she had never chosen. Then the strain around her mouth began to ease. Something warmer settled into the scrutiny of her gaze, tentative only for a moment before the thought seemed to find a place where it belonged. Colour gathered across her face despite the heat already filling the tent.

“Yes, my king.”

Nothing in the answer sounded forced. Saruka spoke with the calm certainty of someone who had reached the conclusion herself, and Winston knew well enough by now that this was precisely what his power did.

The knowledge unsettled him more than open resistance would have, he ad without properly thinking it through used his authority once agian.

The change continued through the remainder of the bath in ways too small to dismiss once Winston had begun watching for them. Saruka still spoke of Hippolyta with the same old affection, though the guardedness that had accompanied every reference to Winston had faded. Her hands no longer cooled into mere efficiency whenever the work returned to him. She checked the water before it needed checking, let the cloth linger lower than the washing required, and took greater care over the parts of him she had only passed over the first time.

Gradually, the attention itself became harder to explain as service. The cloth traced his chest, then his stomach, then stayed, her palm following under it as if she needed the shape of him and not only the soap. She leaned in closer than the tub demanded, the low fall of her gown brushing the rim, her breath near his temple. A strand of wet hair had fallen there, and Saruka brushed it back before either of them seemed to realize she had chosen to do so. His quiet thanks brought an answering pleasure to her face that lingered too long for professional satisfaction. The expression faltered only when she noticed how far her other hand had already gone.

It stopped halfway down his stomach. For a moment she stared at the cloth between her fingers, then lifted her eyes toward him with the bewilderment of someone who had discovered a thought already fully formed. “Oh.”

The small sound tightened something beneath Winston’s ribs. “What?”

Saruka glanced toward the closed flap, toward wherever Hippolyta waited beyond the canvas, and the memory of her seemed to pull several older memories into alignment. “I thought I envied you,” she said slowly. “When she touched you. When she looked at you. I thought I was angry because she had given someone else a closeness I had always been proud to receive.” The words became more difficult as their meaning clarified. “I told myself it belonged to her attendants, that seeing her give it elsewhere was what bothered me.”

Understanding reached Winston before she finished, cold enough that he wished it had not.

The confusion in Saruka’s face softened into something almost embarrassed. “I wanted her.” Saying it aloud seemed to surprise her, though once spoken the confession settled easily among everything she remembered. Then her attention returned to Winston and remained there, warmer now, carrying the same recognition in a direction that had not existed when the bath began. “And now I want you too.”

Winston had no answer ready. The water moved quietly around him while Saruka stood beside the tub, newly certain of feelings that his careful corrections had helped place there.

Saruka seemed almost relieved by the realization. Years of unspoken feeling toward Hippolyta had found a name, and the same emotional shape had begun forming around him with terrifying ease.

She stole the kiss before he could decide whether to allow it.

Leaning over the rim, Saruka took the kiss before either of them had agreed it would happen. Wet mouth, open, the red of it smearing as steam clung between them and the heavy fall of her breasts pressed the soaked edge of her gown to his chest. Tongue found his without asking, slow and searching, tasting soap and heat, drawing a sound out of him the bath had not. One wet hand slid from his shoulder into his hair and held him there. The other went under the water, closed around the hard line of him, and stroked with the same careful attention she had given the cloth.

Shame came too late to stop him answering. Water lapped at the rim while her breath broke against his mouth, the slick pull of her hand and the heat of her lips leaving him with the knowledge that he had put this in her.

The kiss ended on her side first.

“I will serve you faithfully,” she stated, voice low, still close enough that he felt the words. “Forever, my king.”

Letting him go did not return the water to ordinary work. He sat in the cooling tub with his mouth wet and his cock aching, nowhere decent to put either fact, the wanting still ahead of the shame. Cloth was already in her hands again.

“If it pleases you, my king,” she stated. “I will dry you.”

Getting out of the tub took a moment. His foot found the packed earth, slipped once on the wet, then held. Water sheeted off his shoulders and down his back, dripping from his cock, his knees, the hair on his stomach. Steam lifted off him into air cooler than the bath and left his skin tight with it.

Saruka was already waiting with the cloth. She started at his chest, both hands in the linen, working in slow circles over the wet plane of him until the cloth dragged across a nipple and he twitched. She did it again. Lower then, following the run of water down his stomach, pressing the fabric into the line of hair there, wringing it out against his hip so the next pass would still be warm.

The gown had gone dark where steam and splash had found it. When she bent to his thighs the low fall of red-and-white cloth opened, the heavy curve of her breasts close enough that he felt the heat of them before the cloth reached his cock. She wrapped him in the linen and stroked him dry the way she had washed him: base to head, a firm, lingering pull, the cloth catching on the wet head of him until he thickened fully in her hands. His breath went ragged. Another drop of bathwater slid from his hair to his collarbone and she leaned in and kissed it off without looking as if she had decided to.

Clothes came next in pieces. Shirt first, drawn over still-damp shoulders while she stood close enough that the wet fall of her gown brushed his hip. Then she stopped with his underthings still in her hand.

What she had left bare held her. The look went over him slowly, from the wet hair on his stomach down to the thick, flushed length of his cock, still standing from the cloth and the kiss. A small smirk touched the red of her mouth, private and pleased, as if the wanting she had just discovered had found exactly what it meant to serve.

That smirk came down with her. Warmth closed around the head of his cock before he had finished drawing breath, red lips stretching, spit already making the slide easy. The inside of her cheek dragged along him as she took more than the first inch and hummed into the taste, one hand holding his hip while the other wrapped the shaft she could not swallow at once and stroked in time with her mouth.

Firelight and trees did nothing to hide the wet sound of it. Each pull drew him deeper, each retreat left him shining, and then she took him again, slower, then hungrier, throat easing around him until heat gathered low in his crotch and swelled him against her tongue. The next swallow made his knees threaten. She only took him farther for it, working the head of his cock into her throat as the climax broke.

Heat gathered low in his crotch, a thickening pressure that swelled him against her tongue until the next swallow took him past holding it. His hips jerked. Breath tore out of him, and the climax broke in hard, helpless pulses over her tongue.

Saruka took them, gulping, working him down her throat in greedy pulls until he had spent himself. When her mouth left him, a last smear of it shone on her lip. She licked it away, smirked up at him, and cleaned what remained from his cock with the cloth, then her mouth.

His underwear and pants came last in her hands. She drew them up his thighs with the same unhurried attention she had given the cloth, settled him, then fastened his trousers over the mouth-wet heat she had just left there.

“It was a pleasure to serve you, my king,” Saruka said, still close enough that the warmth of the words reached him with her breath. “And a pleasure to serve your pleasure.”

The answer stayed with Winston as she took his wrist and guided him back through the flap, using the same practiced touch that had brought him to the bath. Warm air and steam gave way to the closeness of the tent, where Hippolyta had already settled on the wool as though she had known exactly when to expect them.

One look was enough to make Winston suspect she had guessed more than he wanted her to. Her attention travelled from his damp hair to the colour still lingering in his face, unhurried and entirely satisfied, while Saruka remained beside him with a familiarity she had not possessed when the bath began. Nothing in Hippolyta’s expression asked what had happened. The answer appeared to be standing in front of her.

“Well,” she said at last, licking her lips as if eyeing Wintson like a meal. “You look attended to.”