Work Text:
"So, is it true what they say about flesh magicians?”
As far as lines went, it was regrettably trite. Ianthe herself had heard it no less than thirty times that she could remember, and Corona, who was propositioned rather more often, must hear it every other day. In her place, Ianthe would have been sorely tempted to throw the contents of her wine glass on that little upstart’s face, but Corona gave a bright coy smile and said, “Well, I wouldn’t do that for just any girl. You know?”
The little moron swooned. Ianthe scowled into her drink, wishing once again that her sister had better taste.
On Ida, the brightest jewel in the Emperor’s crown, a certain level of debauchery was expected—nay, it was encouraged. The Third House was a place of overwrought drama and grotesque wonders, of excess and gluttony and thoroughly bad taste: the Emperor’s greedy mouth, hungry and wide open. The Third House knew how to throw a party, and they knew how to make it live on in infamy. And, when the lights were out, it was only natural to expect a little freakishness between the sheets.
There were many reasons to fuck an adept of the Third, but the pursuit of a unique experience was certainly one of those. For someone as famous as Coronabeth, Crown Princess of Ida and widely recognised as a powerful flesh magician, there were some expectations. Nobody would take to bed the Heir to the Third House and not expect some kind of—flavour. Courtiers and visiting Cohort officers and good-looking university students all gossiped about it.
Of course, darling Corona had about as much necromantic aptitude as Babs’s one-eyed kitten. But she was good enough at pretending otherwise—they were good, keeping up their ruse with flawless synchronisation, and Coronabeth was beautiful and universally beloved, and charming enough to pass as well-spoken; and she never wanted for lovers. She had also an unfortunate penchant for courtiers and uniforms, two groups with very little in common beyond an alarming tendency to gossip. They might talk. They might wonder why Corona’s famed skills didn’t extend to the bedroom—and then they might wonder about other things, too.
Ianthe emptied her wine glass and poured herself another one. Three seats over, Corona was asking that insipid girl to recount her tour of duty on Sicyon, as if supervising food relief lines for a shipful of necromantically inert refugees were any kind of feat. Corona had a keen instinct for sources of potential political news but that didn’t make up for how dull-looking her latest conquest, was her blandly symmetrical face and sallow skin for spending so many months in deep space.
“Oh, Lieutenant!” Corona’s voice was so loud and lovely that the entire hall turned to stare. Her face lit up with mirth as she laughed, eyes sparkling like jewels, and that simpering girl couldn’t have looked more enthralled. Her eyes, and those of half the table, never strayed far from Corona’s cleavage.
Ianthe sighed. Just then her sister caught her eye, a meaningful look that Ianthe had been expecting and dreading since their guests had been introduced with much flair a few hours ago. Well, not dreading, exactly. This could be fun. She only wished Corona had more discerning tastes.
Ianthe retired as soon as it was socially acceptable to do so, making her way wearily through the drunken partygoers and middle-aged bureaucrats that polluted the corridors of the palace like so many fleas.
Her apartments—hers and Corona’s—had been the same since they’d been old enough to move out of their shared nursery, although they’d gone through several renovations in the meantime. Ianthe’s bedroom was draped in mauves and dark blues and dramatic vermilions, with a four-poster bed on a side of the room that would see little action tonight. She undressed and changed into a nightgown that was flattering but not overly skimpy, and made her way to the common area of their shared suite to wait for her sister.
Theirs was a familiar routine. Just as in their shared lessons and their shared animaphiliac projects and their shared cavalier, the Princesses of Ida did everything together. Ianthe had been born with Coronabeth’s umbilical cordon wrapped around her neck, choking her slowly as it pulled her into the world, and sometimes she felt as though they were still shackled together. Always entangled, for better or worse.
When Coronabeth arrived, an hour later and quite tipsy, that insipid girl was with her. Her hands were all caught up in Corona’s clothes, her cheeks flushed and her lips kiss-bitten, and she was giggling stupidly and saying, “Oh, that’s…” as Corona’s lips found the curve of her jaw.
“Oh,” said Ianthe, standing up. She put on a decently surprised face. “Corona, dear, and…?”
“Sabina,” said Coronabeth. “Ranked Second Lieutenant of the Cohort. From Tisis, but most recently with the Dead Sea Fleet.” As per usual with Corona, she listed off the girl’s middling military rank as if it were erotic poetry. “She just returned from Sicyon and is part of Commodore Trina’s contingent. Sabina, you’ve met my sister…”
“Charmed,” Ianthe said, only half lying. There was something charming about the Lieutenant’s provincial eagerness, her wide-eyed gaze as she took in the room around them.
“We’ve been talking at dinner. You know, Sabina said we met all her expectations. She heard about the revels of Ida, and you know…” Corona smiled beautifully. “I invited her up to my room…”
“I see that,” Ianthe said. She looked at the girl. “Are you here to ravish my sister? Or do you want to be ravished yourself?”
The Lieutenant’s face flushed even brighter, a very charming look on her complexion. With her hair mussed out of her practical updo and her jacket dishevelled by Corona’s handiwork, she looked far more fuckable than she had at dinner.
There was a distinct hungry gleam in Corona’s eyes. “I don’t think she’s decided yet.”
“Oh,” Ianthe arched her brows, a familiar reaction when confronted with her sister’s more foolish pursuits. She swept her gaze from Corona to her little companion, and saw the Lieutenant finally begin to catch on. “Well, if she can’t decide, I think you should take the decision out of her hands. She is a guest, baby, and you are the Crown Princess. I keep telling you to be more assertive with your lovers.”
“Wait…” the Lieutenant said. Clearly, the night was unfolding differently than whatever she’d pictured. “Wait, are you…”
It was all she could manage; she looked a touch overwhelmed, and Ianthe said, “See? Come on, take the girl to bed. She’s obviously desperate for it.”
Corona smiled her most charming smile, the one that had persuaded scores of their tutors into believing she held even a crumb of necromantic aptitude. “If you don’t have any objections, darling?”
“Fuck, no,” the girl said. No one could tell Coronabeth no when she smiled like that. She licked her lips. “Is your sister, I mean…”
“Yes, I think I will,” said Ianthe. “If you don’t mind?”
Corona nodded as if it were a real question, as if Ianthe hadn’t been expecting this moment since they’d set this evening in motion. She took the girl’s hands. “Darling, you said you wanted to experience what it’s like on Ida. Well, you should see what we do here.”
The silly girl looked like her brain had just short-circuited. She turned her eyes from Coronabeth to Ianthe. “Do you…”
“Share lovers? But of course,” said Ianthe. “My sister and I share everything.”
“Oh.” Emotions flashed in her bright dark eyes—some revulsion, some curiosity, most of it lust. “Oh,” she said.
Coronabeth’s laugh rose loud in the room. “Well, Sabina, think that when you get back to the front you can tell your entire squad that you fucked two Princesses of Ida.”
That did it: the reminder of their station, being shared as a royal treat. The Lieutenant looked flattered, although it was obvious that one of the Princesses was more to her taste than the other. Well, if it hadn’t been for Corona, Ianthe wouldn’t have looked at her twice, either.
In her sister’s bedroom, Ianthe watched as the wide-eyed Lieutenant fumbled her way through removing Corona’s dress, the many pins in her hair. It fell slowly, a cascade of gold spilling over Corona’s bare shoulders and down to the top of her breasts, and Corona was laughing as she stepped away from where the dress had fallen on the floor. Naked and tall and strong, bathed in the soft warm lights she preferred in her room, Coronabeth looked a vision.
Their guest seemed to think so, too—she breathed sharply, nearly a gasp, and it didn’t even sound feigned. “Oh, Princess…”
“I told you, you must call me Coronabeth. And you are overdressed…” Corona tugged at the Lieutenant’s clothes, helped her undress—and she was pleasant to look at, Ianthe had to admit, with the powerful body of a Cohort front-liner and gorgeous bronze skin that looked far more appealing by candlelight.
She watched, savouring the first stirrings of interest, until Corona huffed, “Ianthe will you stop looming and come here,” and the both of them turned to look at her—Corona with serenity, the girl—Sabina, she would forget again in five minutes—as if she’d only just remembered Ianthe was there.
“You know,” Corona said, conspiratorially, “my sister is quite shy.”
“It’s because you suck all the air out of the room, Corona, darling…” And Corona winked at the girl and said, “See? Shy.”
They were kissing when she joined them on the bed, Corona and the Lieutenant, and then Ianthe kissed the girl, too, and it was pleasant enough, all blushes and wide-eyed enthusiasm. Then Corona said, “My turn,” and took Sabina’s chin in hand so she could turn her head and kiss her deeply, pulling away just long enough to wink at Ianthe over the girl’s dazed face.
Right, Ianthe thought. She reached out to feel the minute workings of the bodies next to hers, both brimming with energy and in perfect health. Corona’s, of course, she knew like the back of her hand. As for the Lieutenant…
Many rumours circulated among the denizens of Ida about the things that a powerful flesh necromancer might want to do in bed, from the nuances of body control to outright theatrical showpieces. Heightened pleasure and over-sensitivity, orgasms denied again and again, orifices made tighter and delicate manipulations of the central nervous system. Skilled fingers and newly-made glands and flesh appendages to fuck with, warm raspy tongues to give more pleasure, the rusty aftertaste of bloodsweat on silk sheets.
Ianthe reached out with a small thanergy burst and tugged. The girl moaned a cute little gasp in Corona’s mouth, nearly melting into their embrace. To her, it suddenly felt as though several new erogenous zones had bloomed all over her body: on her throat, for Corona’s mouth to find, on her suddenly oversensitive breasts. And, Ianthe’s favourite party trick, in her mouth.
The next time Ianthe kissed her, the girl went in greedily. She groaned, trembling from just the feeling of Ianthe’s tongue sliding against her own, moaning breathlessly as Ianthe’s fingertips traced a path down her shoulder to her chest. She twisted the girl’s nipple in the way Corona liked—and now she liked it too, after what Ianthe had done to her body. She reached further down as the girl’s thighs parted eagerly and found her swollen and dripping wet, all ready for Corona to taste.
“Oh good,” Corona was saying. “Lovely. You two look so good together.”
Ianthe didn’t need to look to picture the expression on her face, magnificent in her victory. She’d seen it over the years, many times over. They had been fourteen the first time Corona had come to her with this new conundrum, a different facet of their plot that neither of them had considered. In their shared lessons, in their duties as twin Princesses, they could get away with always performing necromancy in the same room, but romantic entanglements were a more individual pursuit… or they had been, at the time. Coronabeth had a way of dragging Ianthe into anything she wanted to do; she liked the thrill of the chase, the sweetness of her triumph. And Ianthe liked Coronabeth—in a needy, possessive way, vengeful and nearly desperate. At least this was another way in which Corona needed her.
And now, years later, here they were. Rolling between Corona’s pale blue sheets with Corona’s little Lieutenant spread out between them, nearly out of her mind already. Coronabeth was kissing the girl on the lips, softly, then much less so—she bit down on the girl’s shoulder, nearly hard enough to break the skin. The girl’s startled yelp was nearly a scream; Ianthe cherished it, watching idly as she rubbed her aching cunt under her loose nightgown.
“I’m going to eat you out, my sweet, and you…” Corona kissed the girl’s neck with more tenderness, then her breasts, sucking a small brown nipple into her mouth. “You, darling, you’re going to do it to Ianthe. Slide back… you’re going to lie here. Open your legs, that’s a dear. I’m going to kneel here so I can get to you.”
She looked dazed as she complied, drinking in the sight of Coronabeth like this—commanding and eager and flushed pink with arousal, the Crown Princess getting on her knees. Ianthe’s mouth was dry. Corona’s eyes met hers and she smiled, that private sisterly smile that was the most beautiful of their shared secrets.
Then Corona said, “Ianthe, you’re going to sit on her face. Let’s see if I can make her come before she gets you off.”
That was a game, too, but one of Corona’s better ones. Ianthe knelt on the mattress, straddling the little Lieutenant’s face and arranging herself so she could look at her sister the whole time. Coronabeth was beautiful in her enthusiasm, as she feasted on the Lieutenant’s rosy little cunt and made her squirm and moan and twitch helplessly over the bed—and Ianthe felt all of it, intimately, trembling on the girl’s tongue. Corona’s gift to her.
The girl was good at it, and she was relentless. There was something to be said for giving your partners an oral fixation—the more she licked and sucked and worked her mouth the better it would feel for her, and she must be loving it—her fingers dug into Ianthe’s thigh so hard that it nearly hurt, and Ianthe knew it would leave a bruise. She always bruised more easily than Corona did, and maybe there would be a purple bloom tomorrow already, something for Corona to press into and tease at and kiss.
That did it. She came like that, grinding down on the Lieutenant’s face, watching Corona’s golden head and thinking of Corona’s lips. The orgasm washed over her with a shudder and she had to close her eyes—she couldn’t look just then, it was too much. She rolled off to the side in Corona’s huge bed, loose-limbed and warm; the Lieutenant’s face was wet and sticky when Ianthe licked along her cheek and into her mouth, tasting salt.
“Corona.” Her mouth was dry. “Corona, baby, won’t you put her out of her misery?” Put them all out of their misery, truly. She wanted the girl out of the way, she wanted Corona all to herself. In another mood, she’d have enjoyed dragging it out—Corona had such lovely hands; the Lieutenant should count herself lucky to have one of them inside her to the wrist. But it had been a long evening after a long week, and so Ianthe pinned the girl’s arms to the mattress with all her meagre necromancer strength and took one of her tits in her mouth, tracing with her tongue the newly sensitive spots she had created there.
It was a minute’s work to play around with the feeling of her mouth, to make her tongue warmer and just rough enough that it nearly stung, an edge of extra suction so that the girl nearly arched off the bed when Ianthe sucked her nipple into her mouth. She didn’t last long after that, not with Corona’s fingers and tongue working her with single-minded determination. The girl came with a loud whining moan that was as sweet and needy as the rest of her, and her lips were bitten red.
Ianthe pushed herself off and to her knees, and pressed her fingertips to the girl’s forehead. The central nervous system was a joke, she thought ferociously. “Go to sleep, you little fool.”
It took about four seconds to send her into a deep slumber. Ianthe raised her gaze from the sleeping girl to see Coronabeth looking at her.
“Well, that was boring.”
“Please, she’s a delight,” said Corona. “I didn’t want to drag it out, I just wanted to eat her up. She was so sweet.” She sat at the foot of the bed and reached out, and Ianthe went easily. Corona kissed her hungrily, still with the taste of that girl in her mouth, her hands greedy and her naked body slick with perspiration.
“That looked—impressive,” Corona whispered into her mouth, nibbling on Ianthe’s lip. Her hands were at work unlacing what few buttons were left on Ianthe’s nightgown, still only half done. “Did it really feel that good for her?”
“Of course it did. And I didn’t even have to do anything flashy.” Maybe there was something to be said for Corona’s provincial tastes. She kissed the side of Corona’s neck. “Tell me what you need, baby. You didn’t even… you got on your knees for that girl...” She sucked on at that spot under the jaw that made Corona melt, and felt her shudder. “…And she didn’t even get you off? Tell me what you need and I’ll do it.”
“Oh, Ianthe.” Corona laughed then, but not unkindly. “She got me off twice before we even got here. We snuck into Daddy’s office to get away from the party. Oh, darling. You’re not jealous, are you?”
“Of course not… how can I be jealous when you give your attentions so freely?”
She pushed Corona down on the bed, next to the passed-out Lieutenant she’d found such delicious company. Corona was stronger than her physically, but they both knew what Ianthe could do. It was a back-and-forth with no clear winner except in moments like these, when Corona would pout up at her with those big eyes, and the magnetic field of the universe would shift.
“Ianthe. Oh, but you are a bit jealous, I think.” She licked her lips as she spoke. Her mouth was red and her legs parted invitingly—she was so wet that Ianthe could see the glistening of her inner thigh, and her knees bore imprints from kneeling on the carpet. “Are you going to do something about it?”
Ianthe could. She didn’t have to. She could just go back to her bedroom and her neat empty bed, without any Fourth interlopers in it. It was late, and her rest and her studies mattered more than Corona’s plays, and Corona could languish here and get herself off looking at her sleeping lover.
Corona said, “I think you could make me forget all about her.”
Of course she could. Ianthe knew Corona’s body inside and out: her beautiful skin and her unconscious tellings and all her weak spots, and the intricate labyrinth of her peripheral nervous system. She could make her sister come so hard that she’d scream her throat raw, and maybe the little Lieutenant might even wake up. She could wreck Corona like she deserved. She could make Corona remember that nobody else could give her what Ianthe could.
“Come here, darling,” Corona said, “don’t you want to remind me that I’m yours?”
And Ianthe went.