Chapter Text
“…chefant, you’re holding me too tight.” Ruby sighed in her sleep as she turned towards her lover’s warm body, the weight of his arm around her hips lightening.
“Haurchefant? My dear friend, I think it is time for you to awaken.” A low rumbling voice whispered in her ear, silky strands of hair tickling her naked shoulders.
The miqo'te jumped awake, her startled eyes opening to see none other than a naked Zenos Yae Galvus in her bed, staring at her sleeping form. The Twelve have mercy, did she drink herself into Zenos’ arms? She was wont to sleeping around, sure. but the Garlean Prince?! Despite his incredibly attractive body, she had always found his actions repulsive enough to keep her lust at bay.
She rose up to a sitting position, looking around only to see she was sitting on a gigantic bed of blood red bedsheets, placed in the middle of the room against a bay of high windows, marble white walls ran around the sparcely decorated room; there was little furniture in proportion to the size of it all, a mountain of pillows surrounded a low table, a large hanger that showcased Zenos’ armor along the right wall next to a rosewood wardrobe.
She took in the entire room quickly, before turning her attention to the Prince of Garlemald who was… nearly naked save for a pair of tight boxers that did nothing to hide his girth. He was merely staring at her with inquisitive eyes, leaning on his right arm and towering over her sitting form still.
“Why am I here? How did I get here?! Where is here?!”
A slow smile grew on his lips, his left hand rising to caress her naked shoulder; looking down at herself she realized she was not wearing her normal sleeping attire, but a sort of cropped black top that left her arms and belly bare as well as a tight pair of pantalette, black as well. The clinking of a chain as she moved caught her attention, and for the first time she felt a weight at her neck, she felt for a collar and found a magitek device that emitted a low vibration upon touching it, and a short chain that reached her collarbones.
She had felt pretty calm up until that point, knowing herself to have grown stronger than Zenos in the past months since their first encounter and that she could easily defeat him before he had a chance to make a move, but this device… she feared what it could do.
She looked out the bay windows and saw to her right mountains that towered higher than anything she’d seen before, and amidst those grey figures towers of steel with bright blinking light, a castrum?! To her left, the landscape lowered into a valley far below them, with a village spread out alongside a river.
How could she have ended up in Garlemald?! A cloud of fuzziness surrounded her most recent memory, she cast a cure spell on herself to clear her mind but found the spell fizzling out before it left her body. Was it the collar?!
A feeling of helplessness overwhelmed her, her throat tightened at the idea of being stuck in Garlemald without her magic, she turned to Zenos who was now smirking at her, having seen her fail to cast the spell.
Angered and cornered, she did what any self respecting Warrior of Light would do. She punched the smirk off his face.
“Tell me what happened, now!”
The punched landed right on his jaw, pushing him lying down on the bed, his lip started bleeding from the hit and a laugh rose out of Zenos’ throat as he licked his own blood. Seeing no response forthcoming, she leaned over him and punched him again.
“Yes, yes just so! To see the fire burn in you, how magnificient!”
He was still one second and the next she found herself caught under him, captive, his hands holding her arms up above her head and his weight preventing her from kicking him away.
“My dear friend, do you still not remember what happened?! Do you not remember the thrill of our fight, the clashing of weapons, the blood in our mouths as we embraced each other as equals on the battlefield?! How mighty you were, my beloved, an unstoppable hunter and I was your prey. You defeated me and I thought-”
Zenos looked for words as a maniac smile stretched his lips and one of his hands caressed her cheek in reverence.
“I thought I would not ever feel as alive as I did, I waited for you to strike the fatal blow that would have ended my existence in a blaze. But you fell to your knees, your divine Echo left you to my care, and I certainly could not leave my soulmate to the mercy of the Savages whose will you followed.”
He released Ruby’s arms as the memories came to her; Ala Mhigo, that crazed scientist, her first fight against Zenos, the Royal Menagerie, Zenos merging with Shinryu, defeating him, and after that… a vision? She remembered a feeling, like she had been teleported somewhere else, and a voice that she could not understand.
She had lost to Zenos and now she was his prisoner?! She feared what the answer would be to her next question, but she needed to know so she could plan her escape.
“Where are we? Is it… the imperial palace?”
Zenos rose up from the bed, still only wearing those appetizing boxers and Ruby had to pull her mind away from the gutter as a daydream of what climbing that man would be like. He clapped his hands and a door slide open with the whoosh common to magitek technology, a miqo'te appeared, placed a tray of food onto the table as quickly and discreetly as she could, the brown apron she wore and her attitude making her more akin to a mouse than a cat.
“This is my personal villa, far from the capital and palace.” The word was spat out like rotten fruit.
“None but I and what remains of the XIIth know where you are, there is no need to worry about useless matters such as politics.”
He lounged on the pillows by the table and motionned for her to do the same. She was famished and reassured by this news, indulged herself with a meal fit for a prince.
Her breakfast devoured, she curled up on the pillows, looking at Zenos through her eyelashes. “And what do you want from me, Zenos Yae Galvus?”
“Your company as we grow as equal, Hunting together and revelling in the thrill of battle. Perhaps your company in other ways too.”
He placed a hand onto her waist, his thumb caressing her hipbones and stopping shy of her underwear, teasing maddenly so. Ruby felt the need to squeeze her thighs, desire rising under his lustful eyes.
She reached for his hand and placed it around her neck above the collar, his thumb resting at her lips.
“For that you will have to defeat me, fair and square.” She nipped at his thumb and let his hand fall as she got up, stretching so Zenos caught a glimpse under her cropped top.
“Now, I think you owe me a grand tour, at the very least.”