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There was something strange about his wife.
The thought occurred to Arthur now and again, drifting through his mind and latching onto something, like a burr onto a cloak. And, just like a burr on a cloak, more often than not, he didn’t notice it, and he could carry on with his life just as he otherwise would.
But sometimes he did notice. Sometimes he tried to pick at the burr – at the thought – and it stung his fingers, resisting every attempt of his to remove it. Even when he could remove the burr – the thought – it pulled at fibers of the cloak – of his mind – and left it not as whole as it had been before.
The damage didn’t come from removing the burr from the cloak, though. The damage was effectively done as soon as the burr latched on. Everything that came after that was inevitable.
Arthur didn’t know where those thoughts had come from. They were unsettling and sounded like a cryptic warning, though what he had to be warned against, he did not know. All was well in Camelot. His lands were at peace, within and without, and so far as he knew, no troubles either magical or mundane had arisen that would require his attention.
(Out of instinct, he glanced to the door. So often it seemed that trouble arose the very moment he thought there was no trouble. But the door remained closed, and all he heard were his knights in conversation, their words and laughter rising and falling like waves.)
Where had that worry come from, then? He tried to trace his thoughts back, to remember what he had been thinking of just before he was distracting thinking of peace, and then of burrs and cloaks. He had been looking about the hall, noticing who was present and who had ventured out either on a quest or in search of one, and his eye had fallen on…
His wife. Guinevere. His wife, who now made her way across the hall to him, bearing a cup of wine in her hands.
Arthur could not help smiling. She looked as beautiful as she had the day he met her. Her hair was bound back by silver threads, and her blue and white gown hung gracefully from her body, falling just short of brushing against the floor. She glided easily among the knights, as graceful as a dancer, without seeming to look at them. She only had eyes for him.
And he only had eyes for her.
(Not entirely. He did see her glancing slightly side to side, a subtle movement that was necessary only to keep that illusion of grace. A queen could not be seen to tread on her helm or bump against a knight. Arthur saw too a sharp, cold glance from Lancelot, one that passed so quickly he might almost think that he was imagining it. He almost did, except it caught at some part of his mind, the same part worn by that burr he had considered before.)
Guinevere stopped a few feet from the throne and sank into a graceful curtsy, somehow not once spilling the wine. “May I approach you, my king?” she asked.
Her voice was clear as crystal and twice as beautiful. Arthur smiled, indulgent and eager to appear so, and gestured for her to rise. “Come, my queen,” he said. “Approach my throne.”
She rose and joined him, holding out her hands so that he would take the cup. As he did, his fingers brushed over hers, and he took the chance to tug her closer. The wine sloshed toward the rim of the goblet, but not a drop spilled over.
(Arthur was not often a man to search for portents, not unless it seemed necessary. Still, in the back of his mind, he wanted this to be a sign of something, though he could not put his finger on what.)
When Guinevere was close enough that he could speak to her softly, he murmured, “Why are you so formal, Guinevere? Have you a boon to ask?”
Guinevere shook her head, a mischievous smile crossing her face. It had taken him weeks, if not months, to get her to smile so when they first had met. Every time he saw it now, it felt like a small victory.
“It amuses me,” she said, lowering her gaze a little. “To play the part, to be the supplicant before my king.”
“Though you know I will grant you anything I ask?” Arthur raised his free hand and ran his fingers over Guinevere’s cheek. It felt cool – oddly cool, he thought, though he could not explain why – and smooth to his touch, and for a fraction of a second she leaned into his fingers.
Then her head rose, and she was cool and collected and proud once more. “I know,” Guinevere said, and she fixed him with her gaze, looking at him as steadily as a snake looking on a sparrow.
(And why had he thought that? Why did he suddenly feel pinned to his throne, as though he could not move? Why was his mouth so dry?)
“What would you ask of me?” Arthur asked. He could not look away from Guinevere’s eyes. He could not even blink.
“Drink.”
Guinevere raised the cup to his lips, and Arthur’s lips parted, before he had even realized he meant to. Wine slipped over the edge of the cup, spilling onto his tongue, and a few droplets slid down his throat. He swallowed, unthinking, then paused.
The wine tasted strange.
Arthur could not tell what was strange about it. It was the same sort of wine he’d always had, rich and red and slightly stinging on his tongue. The cup was familiar as well, and so was his wife’s hand. None of this should have been strange, but all of it was. A burr pricked at his mind, tugging at his thoughts, trying to draw his attention. He felt as though he was dreaming. Everything around the two of them faded. Only this was real.
The wine. The cup. His wife.
His wife, who was not his wife.
Arthur nearly choked on his next sip of wine. Several thoughts struck him at once, and he could not figure out yet which one was the most pressing, which one he ought to worry about first. His wife was not his wife. His mind was being toyed with.
And he had not stopped drinking the wine, even after nearly choking on it. Guinevere had bade him drink, and he was still drinking, as though bound beneath her spell.
She must have seen some light of understanding in his face, for she leaned close to him and whispered, “You can stop drinking. But keep your voice low, beloved. I wouldn’t want to alarm your knights.”
Guinevere moved the cup away from his lips then and tenderly wiped away a bit of wine from his mouth. The dark red stained her finger, but then she slipped it into her mouth, her eyes widening in innocence even as her lips and hand formed some parody of fellatio.
Somewhere out in the room, someone laughed. Arthur couldn’t tell who, or what they were laughing at. He feared they must be laughing at him.
“Who are you?” he whispered. He tried to raise his voice, but the words wouldn’t come out any stronger, and the effort strained his throat as though he had shouted loudly enough to wake the dead. “What have you done to my wife?”
Guinevere tilted her head a little, as though considering. She drew her finger from her lips and traced idle lines against Arthur’s cheek. There was power in her finger, or perhaps power in those lines. Arthur couldn’t tell where it came from, but he could feel it all the same, running through his body like water in a stream, or like wine down a throat.
“I am your wife,” she purred. “I am Guinevere. But if you mean to ask where the woman who was with you on your wedding night might be…”
“You know damned well what I mean,” Arthur snarled. (Quietly. He was still bound by whatever spell had been laid on him.)
“She is safe,” Guinevere said. “I’m not a cruel woman. I only want power. To hold it – to hold you – in the palm of my hand.” Her smile grew then, and it was indeed the smile of a powerful woman. It was serpentine, feline, draconic. Nothing in it was human. “Shall I give you a demonstration?”
A thrill of terror ran all through him then. He knew what she intended, and he knew that he had no power to stop her. “No,” he whispered.
He would have preferred it if she had not listened. Instead, it was all too clear that she had. Her smile grew, and her eyes lit up, and she took only the time to set the cup on the floor by the throne before running her hands over his body, beginning to remove his clothing piece by piece.
She began with the crown. Arthur thought he would always remember that.
Slowly, as though a veil were being lifted from around his ears, the sounds of the court came back to him. He heard some laughter – embarrassed, awkward – and a few snatches of conversation as his knights left in groups of twos and threes. They saw what was happening, and they thought they were being kind in giving him some privacy to be alone with his wife. He wanted to call out to them to stay, but he knew that having eyes on her would not stop this false Guinevere from her activities. For all he knew, it would only encourage her. It would allow her to feel more secure in the knowledge that she was bringing him down.
Perhaps this was all it would take. Stories of a weak king and a lascivious queen. He had done what he could to bring order to Britain, and now it would be brought down all around him. Arthur groaned in despair, and to his dismay, the sound came out almost hungry, sounding like the desperate keen of an eager man.
The last knight to leave was Sir Lancelot. Arthur could not read the expression on his face, could not comprehend all the tangled emotions it contained. His mouth opened, but the words were stopped in his mouth. He could not make so much as a squeak.
Then Lancelot was gone, and Arthur was alone, and Guinevere’s hands had drawn out his cock to the open air.
“I did not command you to stay still,” she said. “How curious. Perhaps you are in love with me after all.” Before Arthur could say a word to argue, she lifted one hand and pressed a finger to his lips. He told himself that was what silenced him, that there was power in her very touch. She was an enchanting being and had him ensorcelled. He could not bear to believe otherwise. “But you don’t have to worry about that now. You don’t have to worry about that ever. For now, what I want from you is simple.
“Enjoy yourself.”
Arthur didn’t know whether it was the words or merely her hand stroking him up and down, but he could not help the arousal burning through him. His cock twitched and leapt in her hands, which moved as easily and comfortably as though she were his own wife. As he gazed at her, and at the hungry look in her eyes, he could not help but wonder how often they had done this. How long had she been here, playing at this masquerade? How often had she taken advantage of him and cast her spells over him? Was this the first time he had noticed, or had she plucked the memories from his mind like berries out of brambles?
He thought of the burr again, of the warnings his mind must have been trying to send to him without his realizing it. He wondered how deep into him her thorns had sunk.
Guinevere – he could not think of any other name to call her – bent down then and wrapped her lips around the tip of his cock. He gasped sharply, holding back a cry more through willpower than through magic. She lapped and sucked at him, as lazy as a cat toying with a spider, and all Arthur could think of was how desperately he hoped someone would come in and stop this, and how equally desperate he was for no one to see his helplessness.
(That wasn’t exactly the only thing he could think of. The trouble was that his other thoughts shamed him even more than his fear did. He thought of how beautiful she looked, when all her attention was dedicated to this one task. He thought of how easy it would be to sink into the pleasure and lose himself. He thought of his wife – his real wife – and wondered whether she had ever done this for him, or whether this had only begun when the false Guinevere had made her way to Camelot.)
Mostly he didn’t think at all. Mostly he gasped, and thrust, and groaned aloud, trusting in her magic to make sure that no one could hear him. When the thought struck him that he was relying on her, he could have wept, but then her tongue swirled around him, and that thought was lost as well, gone into the oblivion he teetered on the edge of.
Arthur didn’t know how long it took him to realize that Guinevere was toying with him. Too long, probably. Somewhere during one of the times she slowly drew her mouth upward, as though she intended to release him, only to drive herself down again, swift and terrible and glorious as a hawk in flight.
She wasn’t just toying with him. She was enjoying this.
His hands gripped the arms of his throne, tight enough that his knuckles went red, then white. His body convulsed, but he could not manage to climax. Guinevere, still watching, seemed to smile around him. She knew what he wanted, but she would not give it to him.
Not unless he begged.
Arthur could only hope that all this had happened before, for that would mean that his pride might have had a chance to hold out longer. Perhaps, sometime, he had withstood her mouth and her eyes and her touch for several minutes, perhaps close to an hour, before he was finally broken down into pleading for release from her. (The image that came to his mind then was too alluring, though: his body nearly exhausted from her relentless assault, his mind worn down to nothing, the only word that could come from his lips a desperate, barely understandable plea. It was a strong enough image that it must have been a memory.) Perhaps, if he had held out longer before, it made it more forgivable now that he gave in so readily.
“Please,” he gasped.
Guinevere was merciful, if any of this could be called mercy. Arthur felt something within himself unlock, and he came, his hips bucking one last time into her mouth. Guinevere swallowed every drop he spent, as though she had done this a thousand times before.
Perhaps she had. Perhaps not even all of them had been with him.
Arthur slumped back against his throne, worn out. Guinevere, as cool and calm as she had been before, rose and looked down at her handiwork. Looked down at him. After a moment’s consideration, she picked up his crown and placed it back on his head. She ran her fingers through his hair with such tender concern that Arthur almost found himself leaning into her touch.
“Would you believe you almost fought me the first time you realized what was happening?” she cooed. “I can’t decide which is more charming: your attempts at ferocity or how readily you sink into my hands.” She smiled then, and bent close to whisper in his ear. “Don’t worry, beloved. Once you’re mine, I’ll take very good care of you. And I’ll never let you go.”
Then her lips were on his, and Arthur could feel himself melting against her. It was all he could do to wrench himself backward, pushing her away.
Guinevere didn’t seem at all distressed at that. She only smiled again and said, “Forget.”
He could feel the magic settling over his mind. Arthur forced himself to his feet, adjusting his clothing, staring at this stranger, this sorceress as though he could pin every detail of her into his mind. Something. He had to remember something. He had to find some way out of this spider’s web he had been woven into.
By the time Guinevere was out of the room, everything that had happened felt foggy. Something was wrong – there was a burr in his mind, tugging at his thoughts.
He had to figure out what was wrong, but he didn’t know where to start.