Then he pushed her gently down on her knees and gestured to the bed.

"No, simply bring her," said the Queen.

And Prince Alexi lifted Beauty and threw her over his shoulder as easily as a Page might have done, or the Prince himself when he took her from her father's castle.

His flesh felt hot beneath her, and thrown over his back as she was, she boldly kissed his sore bu**ocks.

Then she was laid down on the bed and realized she was beside the Queen, looking up into her eyes, as the Queen, who rested on her elbow, looked down at her.

Beauty's breath left her in rapid gasps. The Queen seemed quite enormous to her. And now she perceived a great resemblance to the Prince, only as always the Queen seemed infinitely colder. Yet there was about her red mouth something, which might have once been called sweetness. She had thick eyelashes, a firm chin, and as she smiled dimples showed in her cheeks. Her face was heart shaped.

Flustered, Beauty closed her eyes, biting her lip so hard she might have cut it.

"Look at me," said the Queen. "I want to see your eyes, naturally. I want no modesty from you now, do you understand me?"

"Yes, your Highness," Beauty answered.

She wondered if the Queen might hear her heart beat. The bed was soft beneath her, the pillows soft, and she found herself staring at the Queen's great br**sts, the dark circle of a nipple beneath the gown, before she looked at the Queen's eyes again obediently.

A shock passed through her, collecting in a knot in her belly.

The Queen merely studied her in great absorption. Her teeth showed perfectly white between her lips, and those eyes, slanted, long, were black to the core and revealed nothing.

"Sit there, Alexi," the Queen said without looking away.

And Beauty saw him take his position at the foot of the bed, with his arms folded on his chest, and his back to the bedpost.

"Little plaything," the Queen said under her breath to Beauty. "And now I understand perhaps why Lady Juliana is so enraptured over you."

She ran her hand over Beauty's face, her cheeks, her eyelids. She pinched Beauty's mouth. She smoothed back her hair, and then she slapped Beauty's br**sts to the right and to the left and again.

Beauty's mouth quivered but she made no sound. She kept her hands still at her sides. The Queen was like a light that threatened to blind her.

If she thought about it, lying here so near the Queen, she would be overcome with panic.

The Queen's hand moved over her belly and her thighs. It pinched the flesh of her thighs and then the backs of her legs at the calves. And in spite of herself Beauty felt a tingling everywhere she was touched as if the hand itself had some dreadful power. She felt hatred for the Queen suddenly, more violently than she had felt it for Lady Juliana.

But then the Queen commenced to examine, slowly, Beauty's ni**les. The fingers of the Queen's right hand turned each nipple this way and that, testing the soft circle of skin around it. Beauty's breath became uneven, and she felt the moisture between her legs as though a grape had been squeezed there.

It seemed the Queen was monstrously bigger than she, and as strong as a man, or was it only that to struggle against the Queen was unthinkable? Beauty tried to regain some calm, to think of her feeling of release on the Bridle Path, but it eluded her. It had been fragile all along. Now it was nothing.

"Look at me," the Queen commanded gently again, and Beauty realized as she looked up that she was crying.

"Spread your legs," the Queen ordered.

At once Beauty obeyed. "Now she will see," Beauty thought. "It will be as bad as when Lord Gregory saw. And Prince Alexi will see."

The Queen laughed. "I said spread your legs," she said, and gave Beauty's thighs fierce stinging slaps. Beauty spread her legs much wider and felt graceless as she did so. When her knees were pressed down to the coverlet on either side, she thought she could not endure the ignominy of it. She stared at the coffered ceiling of the bed above her and realized that the Queen was opening her sex as Leon had done. Beauty bit down on her cries. And Prince Alexi witnessed all of it. She remembered his kisses, and smiles. The lights of the room shimmered, and she felt her own shuddering as the Queen's fingers felt the moisture in this secret, exposed spot, playing with Beauty's pubic lips, smoothing the pubic hair, and finally catching a lock of it to pull and tease idly.

It seemed the Queen took both her thumbs and wrenched Beauty open. Beauty tried to keep her hips still. She wanted to rise to escape, like some miserable Princess in the Training Hall who could not endure being so examined. Yet she did not protest; her whimpers were faint and uncertain.

The Queen commanded her to turn over.

Blessed concealment, that she could hide her face in the pillows.

But those cool, commanding hands were playing with her bu**ocks now, opening them, touching her anus. "O, please," she thought desperately, and she knew that her shoulders shook with her silent crying. "O, this is dreadful, dreadful!"

With the Prince, finally, she had known what was wanted.

On the Bridle Path, finally, she had been told what was wanted. But what did this wicked Queen want of her, that she suffer, that she cringe, that she offer herself or merely endure? And the woman despised her!

The Queen massaged her flesh, prodding it, testing it as if for thickness, softness, resilience. She tested Beauty's thighs in the same manner, and then pushed Beauty's knees so far apart and high on the bed that Beauty's hips rose and she felt she was squatting, sprawled apart, over the coverlet, her sex protruding, hanging down, her bu**ocks surely split so that she resembled a ripe fruit.

The Queen's hand was under her sex as if weighing it, feeling the roundness and heaviness of the lips, pinching them.

"Arch your back," said the Queen, "and lift your bu**ocks, little cat, little cat in heat."

Beauty obeyed, her eyes flooded with tears of shame. She was trembling violently as she took a deep breath, and against her will felt the Queen's fingers commanding her passion, squeezing the flame so it burned hotter. Surely Beauty's pubic lips were swelling, their juices flowing, no matter how bitterly she struggled against it!

She did not want to give anything to this wicked woman, this witch of a Queen. To the Prince she would yield; to Lord Gregory, to nameless and faceless Lords and Ladies who showered her with compliments, but to this woman who despised her...!

But the Queen had sat back on the bed beside Beauty, and hastily she gathered up Beauty as if she were a floppy doll and threw her over her lap, her face away from Prince Alexi, her bu**ocks surely still exposed to his scrutiny.