Kushiel's Chosen

slept ill, and dreamt, plagued by nightmares, waking with a stifled cry, my mouth half-stopped with gasping fear. I do not know what my lord Delaunay did at such times, when he was cast adrift in a sea of intrigue, bits of information all around like flotsam and jetsam, but none he could grasp, none that would bear his weight, no vessel to assemble. I was Naamah's Servant and Kushiel's Chosen. I cast myself on their mercies, and accepted another assignation.
    It has never been my wont to service more than one patron at a time, but I suppose I could not help thinking of the Twins, Eamonn and Grainne, when I accepted the proposal of the joint rulers of the Marquisate de Fhirze. What might it have been like, had the Lords of the Dalriada shared me? Would it have balanced them all the same? I did not know; I had never even wondered, before then. And I would never know, for Eamonn was dead, slain on the fields of Troyes-le-Mont, and his sister had carried his head home to Alba, preserved in quicklime. Well, and they were barbarians, but all the same, noble in heart and deed.
    Apollonaire and Diànne; no idle jest, the Hellene masks of sun and moon, but a play on their names, a long history in House Fhirze. They were not twins-Diànne was elder by a year-nor barbarians, but quintessentially D'Angeline. The de Fhirze estates lay in Namarre near the Kusheline border, where the blood of their House had mingled freely with that of Kushiel's scions, but they were creatures of the Palace and wintered in the City of Elua. It was a tall, narrow house with many stories, and multiple windows on every one, so peering sun and moon alike could illuminate its interior.
    One story entire was given over to their pleasures, and in truth, it was as well stocked with toys as any seraglio of the Night Court. There was a flagellary with whips and crops and tawses, pincers and feathered ticklers, trasses and trapezes and suspension harnesses, and aides d'amour sheathed in leather and carved from ivory.
    And all of these things Apollonaire and Diànne de Fhirze used on me, trading off in a well-orchestrated game, so that I must needs please the one while the other tormented me nearly beyond bearing. It was she who commanded the game, I quickly discerned, but she reckoned on him to carry it, for though he seemed quiet and bashful beside her, his stoic strength and endurance and prodigious endowment were near as obdurate as rock.
    Well, I am what I am, and after many hours, Apollonaire de Fhirze sank trembling and exhausted to the cushions strewn about the chamber, his handsome face slack and empty, small muscles jumping in his strong thighs.
    "No more, Diànne," he murmured, his once-awesome phallus damp and limp against his groin. "Enough."
    "Elua!" His sister jerked hard on the pincers clamped to my nipples, joined with a leather thong; a fresh wave of pain lanced through my body, doubled and suspended as it was. "Do you say it is enough?" she asked ominously, trailing a pinion-feather along the soft skin of my inner thigh, between my legs, parting my damp and swollen nether lips with the tip of it.
    One would think, after hard usage, the nerve-endings would grow dull to such finesse. Mayhap it is true with others. It is not true with me. I whimpered and closed my eyes, breathing the words of my response. "As you wish ... my lady."
    "Pfaugh!" With a disgusted sound, Diànne de Fhirze tossed aside the feather and loosed the catch on the pulley that held me suspended; I dropped with a soft thud onto the cushions. "You disappoint me, Apollonaire," she said, going matter-of-factly about unfastening the leather shackles that bound my wrists and ankles, and the pincers as well.
    Recumbent on cushions, he smiled at her with sweet contentment. "Do I?"
    She ignored him, laughing and toying with my hair. "You, though ... No one, man or woman, has ever outlasted my brother. No wonder the Dalriada went to war for you!"
    Catching my breath a bit, I drew myself up to kneel and compose myself. "The story is somewhat exaggerated, my lady."
    "All the best stories are," she said idly, reclining and eyeing me. "Tell me, Comtesse, what will you choose as a patron-gift? We have thrown open the coffers of Fhirze for this assignation, but I would not slight the traditions of Naamah." Diànne gestured with one languid arm. "Anything you wish, in this house, is yours. Only you must name it. It is something indeed, to ride Apollonaire de Fhirze to exhaustion."
    I