“The Queen says we may do as we like during this time together, that village ponies had that privilege even in their punishment, recreation together, and we’re to have it. She says when it’s time for us to rest up for our duties, they’ll come and they’ll separate us.”

“I never expected it.”

Sybil started kissing me. Her mouth was sweet and fresh, and her hair tickled me as it fell down around me.

“My dear,” I said. “Countless times tonight I’ve been called a little faun, a satyr, a god. But I’m not. I’m only human.”

“Oh, come now, Brenn,” she said.

And sure enough, I was rising to the occasion. I bore down on her, driving my cock into her, my hands holding her arms high above her head, my tongue lapping at her mouth, forcing it open. Not a thought came to my mind, not a flash of memory, only Sybil, as it had been only the Queen and before that only the King, and all fantasies of the past were gone like thin bits of silk caught in a wind and carried heavenward.

Before morning, I held her close and wept as I told her some of what had happened. I couldn’t possibly recount all. She was much calmer recounting her own adventures. She wiped my tears, and she did now and then become dewy eyed and a little soft with feeling, but she spoke more with distant amazement.

Sybil’s introduction to the kingdom had been much the same as mine, though obviously they’d bathed her in compliments since the beginning as to her irresistible attributes, and I didn’t see any reason to go on about the insults I’d received.

The infamous Lord Gregory had also paddled her to test her, and so had another prince whose name she’d never known, and also a “great lady” who had made her perform many servile tasks.

“I never found it so pleasurable before in my life to gather discarded garments from the floor of a room, or arrange slippers in a closet primarily with the use of my teeth.” She laughed. “And Brenn, the lady’s voice was so gentle with me, and loving and comforting all the while. And then do you know what happened, Brenn? I discovered that this ‘great lady’ was none other than the Queen! She put me in her bed and toyed with me as if I were a doll.”

In the great gardens, Sybil had been tethered to a huge X cross for exhibition, along with other new slaves, for the approval of the King.

“Brenn, it was liberating, being bound like that, my wrists up and far apart, my ankles near the base of the arms of the cross! I thought they’d blindfold me as some of the slaves were blindfolded, but they were crying frantically, and I was not. I’d been polished with silver pigment and oil beforehand, and they decorated me with all manner of pretty blossoms. I was there for hours in a swoon. I tell you, it was a positive swoon. Passing lords and ladies touched me, examined me, played with me. It never stopped for very long. I’d fall asleep and then waken to hands stroking me between my legs, soft voices talking of the smallest details of my body, praising my ‘little juices’ and my nipples, making me blush. But I was so sublimely helpless, Brenn. So free. I could twist and struggle and it didn’t matter. Indeed, they seemed to be amused by it. My groom told me to put on a good show for my masters and mistresses, and then laughed and said he needn’t bother to teach me a thing.”

She lay on her arm gazing into my eyes.

“Then this great lord came, the Grand Duke. He was most refined and spoke with such courtesy. I was told later he was the late queen’s uncle. He wanted me taken down for him to play with. He was most insistent in a gentlemanly way. He liked my eyes, my mouth. He wanted to see my bottom. He said he loved the texture of my skin.

“The groom told him he must walk behind the ‘scaffold’ and there he could see my bottom plainly enough. Brenn, when the Grand Duke spanked my bottom it nearly brought me to climax. All the while he had his left hand against the collar around my neck and he was speaking to me in the most cultured voice. ‘Darling, darling,’ he said, ‘you’re the finest of the new stock that I’ve seen. Some slaves are infinitely better than others.’ Brenn, his voice could have brought me to the pinnacle, without the sharp spanks.”

“I understand.”

“But my groom said the Grand Duke would have to wait to have me to himself. The Grand Duke didn’t give up easily, but he was never really rude.”

“Lovely,” I said.

“Brenn, it’s over, all our struggles, our hopes, our dreams. It’s over. We’re here!”

“For six months, Sybil,” I said. “We can be rejected in six months.”

“But they won’t reject us, Brenn. I know they won’t. I faced my worst moment with the Queen, obeying her instructions to straighten her quarters, and when she paddled me I only wanted to please her more! That is the key, Brenn. I love her and want to please her and I do not care precisely why.”

“What do you mean, ‘why’?”

“Do I want to please her because she is beautiful and sweet? Or does she seem beautiful and sweet to me because she is strict and demanding? I don’t know and I don’t care. We were all alone, the Queen and I. No one was there, and the Queen said that I had taught her things. I couldn’t imagine what. It didn’t matter what she said, it was the tone of her voice, her air of easy command, the way she felt of my breasts, cuddled me, kissed me, and punished me. I was so sore by then, and yet I was utterly pliant.”

She paused.

She kissed me lovingly, her tongue playing on my teeth.

“Brenn, you know how big the King is, what a tall man!”

“He’s larger than life in all ways,” I said.

“Yes, well, after the banquet, when I was given to him, I knew a kind of exalted fear. The sound of his deep voice produced a great dreamy and lofty abandon in me. He plunged his cock into me, Brenn, his cock, and it filled me as I’ve never been filled, worked me as I’ve never been worked. Oh, you do not mind my confessing this, do you?”

“Certainly not,” I murmured. “Go on.”

“He never stripped off his clothes or went near the bed, but simply took me as if I were a light, diminutive thing that he could taste effortlessly, pumping into me as he remained standing. And when he was finished with me, he had the groom slip a jeweled red glove over his right hand, and he plunged his fingers into me and touched secret places I hadn’t known existed, as if my most private parts were known to him, like a valley in which he’d wandered many a time. Brenn, I was gasping, groaning, out of my mind. I have never been so thoroughly worked, drained.”

“Yes . . . ,” I said.

“This was after the evening supper in the gardens, as I said, and I hoped and prayed he’d let me sleep somewhere in his chamber, anywhere, but he kissed me goodbye tenderly, and gave me over to Lady Eva and said to her that I must be trained in the Queen’s Stables, Brenn! That I was to be a pony girl for the Queen.

“Lady Eva said this was a great honor and that I’d be taken there very soon. Brenn, what can this mean? I know what the words signify, but what will it be like to become a filly in harness pulling a coach or a chariot!”

“I don’t know, Sybil,” I confessed. “But I’m to find out what it means to be a steed myself.”

“I hope it’s like the X cross in the garden,” she said with a deep sigh. She smiled sleepily and dreamily. “I love being bound! I love the feel of the straps on my wrists and my ankles. I love the fragrance of the leather and gilding. I love the grooms who have firm hands. They don’t all have firm hands.”

“No.”

“It was late, very late, when the King sent me off. The whole castle was quiet. Yet who should come down the passage but the Grand Duke? And Lady Eva allowed him some minutes with me in his chamber! I had not even been bathed since I was with the King, but when Lady Eva told the Grand Duke, he thought it amusing that she even cared.

“I was brought on hands and knees by a leash into his quarters. Why, it had the grandeur of an audience hall, his immense parlor, and he examined me all over, kissing me and squeezing my flesh, and burying his face in my hair. Such an elegant man. He said he was honored to share my little secret bower with the King. When he took me, it was with hard slow thrusts. He’s older, of course. But he was incomparable in his grace, his deliberation, his slow rhythm. He brought out of me all I had left to give when I’d thought I had nothing. And like the King, he was standing while he took me. He called me his sweet little parcel, and his finchling, and he teased me about being a plump little bird with a very red tail. It might have sounded vulgar coming from someone else, ‘tail.’ I mean such a common word! But from him it sounded affectionate and tantalizing to me.

“He did spank me a little, but then Lady Eva was standing by, and the great clock in his parlor struck the hour and he let me go.”

“Hmmm, I wish I had seen him,” I said, “known who he was. Sybil, you do realize the nature of this paradise, don’t you, that there are all kinds of strength, all flavors of mastery.”

“Yes, darling, and he was such a distinguished man!”

“Yes, an older distinguished man.”

“And then the King and the Queen and . . .” She sighed.