The Dragon Queen – Part 2: Ember

The court's discipline was an enchantment of its own. She set him tasks and watched them carried out. She had him recite the oath of fealty until the words smoothed out like river stones. She had him kneel at the foot of the throne while she told him, in a slow rolling murmur, what a knight owed his queen, and what a queen owed him in return. She corrected every slip with a gloved hand under his chin, tilting his face to the firelight, and held him there until he trembled.

None of it was cruel. All of it was exact, ceremonial and absorbed, her severity as calm as the turning of a page, and under it ran a thread of unmistakable tenderness that he would remember for a very long time.

"Does the knight wish to continue?" she asked, every half hour, in the same deep voice.

"I do, Majesty."

"Say it plainly."

"I do. Thank you."

"The Dragon does not require thanks." But her eyes were soft.

At midnight she sent him to fetch a cup of wine from the long table and watched him carry it, carefully, without spilling a drop. When he knelt to offer it, she took it, drank and passed it back, and the small ceremony of it, the simple unhurried obedience, went through him like warm water.

At two the fire sank to embers, and the candles burned low in their sconces.

"Ember," said Draca, quietly.

It was her word. The crown came off and was laid on the arm of the throne. The cloak slid from her shoulders onto the stone. She came down from the dais in her stockinged feet, pulled a rug from the settle and sat on the hearth beside him, drawing it round them both.

"How are you?"

"Smouldering," said Edric, with a shaky, grateful laugh. "I think. In a good way."

"Good embers glow for a long time." She kissed his forehead. "You were wonderful."

"I've never felt so looked after."

"That's the whole of it." She leaned against him. "Eat something. There is bread and a very large cheese."

They ate in front of the dying fire, in blankets, sharing the flagon, with the great hall quiet around them and the dragon banner stirring in the draught.

"May the Queen require me again?" said Edric.

"At the next full moon," said Draca, smiling into the firelight. "I have a very long scroll of laws."

More consensual femdom stories: Velvet Contract · Silk and Steel · Gentle Hands, Gentle Femdom