“This way, your grace.”
Hermione follows the lady through a curtain of milky silk.
Her legs move like wood.
A vast room opens up; a blazing hearth casts an eager, licking heat on the marble walls and floor. Iron basins, held up by serpent heads, glow with half-melted candles.
To her right: a dark, carved bed piled with white furs.
Her heart thrashes at the sight of it.
The chamber vaults upward, flying buttresses meeting in gothic peaks like the holy cathedral of St. Morfin. She has no doubt House Slytherin deems their king’s boudoir the most hallowed of sanctums.
Their crest is, after all, a snake.
“My name is Lady Parkinson,” the courtier says.
She begins none-too-gently unlacing Hermione’s green brocade bodice.
Shock darts through Hermione.
How can she be expected to meet and marry the king,
the one they call the Butcher,
the merciless warlord who obliterated the kingdom east of her father’s borders,
without her wedding dress?
When Lady Parkinson’s quick fingers reach the delicate metalwork clasp of Hermione’s cincture, the bride finds her voice.
“This gown took weeks to make.” Her protest comes out as politely as she can manage. “My father sent for the fabric an ocean away to obtain the king’s colors.”
Lady Parkinson lets the silver lion belt clatter to the marble. She bends down and gathers up the hem of Hermione’s dress.
“I heard you lions have an odd way of sealing a marriage,” she says, muffled in brocade. “All marches and oaths and priestly pomp.”
“I had anticipated I would meet his majesty before—”
“Arms up, if it pleases your grace.”
In the firelight, her dress spills like molten emerald onto the floor.
Lady Parkinson studies Hermione, narrowing her gaze. She stoops again and grasps the linen hem of Hermione’s sturdy chemise, a garment weighted for the westerland’s coastal chill.
“No!” Hermione cries. “You can’t expect me to…!”
“Forgive me, your grace, it is House Slytherin’s custom to shed every item of a bride’s previous court. In this way, she casts off loyalty to her father’s house.”
Hermione lifts her frail shoulders.
“I understand.”
She hopes her new lady-in-waiting fails to detect the waver in her voice.
The chemise comes up over her head and she gasps like surfacing for air.
Every inch of her flesh prickles. The fine reddish hairs on her arms stand, though the hearth warms her.
Lady Parkinson hastens to the fire and casts the bundles of linen and silk velvet into the flames.
Hermione bites on her complaint, watching the vivid green blacken and shrivel to dust.
Her last shred of home.
The lion belt warps in the blaze, the metal pooling to a red-glowing puddle beneath the logs.
From a distant hall away, the clamor of feasting echoes. Her wedding celebration, going on without her.
The wrongness of it burns acidic. She presses a cold hand to her stomach.
Lady Parkinson returns with the finest breath of silvery fabric in her arms.
“Ah, you are handsome,” she says. “Your portrait was most becoming, but of course, on market day every heifer is promised to milk a thousand gallons.”
Hermione covers the tuft between her legs.
“You state your opinion very freely, Lady Parkinson.”
“Forgive me, your grace.” The lady curtseys. “I forget your house prefers more fawning manners.”
“Speak of House Gryffindor in such a tawdry tone again and I’ll choose a new chief lady-in-waiting,” Hermione snaps.
Parkinson bows again.
The lady keeps her mouth shut as she drapes Hermione with the lighter-than-air crepe shift. The garment gathers at the wrists and draws at the neck with a white silk ribbon. When Hermione moves, she glimmers like moonlit snow.
They remain silent as Lady Parkinson unweaves the careful plaits with which Hermione’s ladies tamed her hair for her wedding ceremony.
The ceremony that never happened.
How could her court—her father—so fail to prepare her for this strange place?
Her father’s army returned from the Ravenlands in crushed spirits, his ranks in shambles. One of Lord Weasley’s sons was lost, as well as Lord Lupin and his wife the mage. A bitter defeat. No one gave her more than rumors about the Butcher King.
Emotion tightens Hermione’s throat.
But a wedding without a priest, without the holy incense or the bread and cup? The feast going on without her? Her mother, father, and the nobles loyal to the lion banner—not invited?
It’s too painful to swallow.
“I shall take my leave, your grace. His majesty, the king will be with you at midnight,” Lady Parkinson says.
Hermione lets her courtier slip from the room. She watches the drifting snow build on the outside lattice of the windowpane.
The fire snaps and hisses.
She should have asked that wretched lady how the royal bride ought to present herself to the king when he arrives for…
for…
…the act.
Hermione swallows hard.
Clambering on to the bed, the rope fastenings creak as she tries out several positions facing the curtain.
On her knees feels far too servile. She is a bond of peace, not just her people’s last desperate attempt to avoid an invasion.
She sits with her legs folded neatly to one side and fusses with the gauzy shift’s drape, tucking it outward hoping to conceal the stiffened peaks of her breasts.
No, that won’t do either.
Finally, she slides off the plush furs and stands as near as she dares to the hearth. Better to calm her shivering.
She knows her duty, of course. Mother explained it at length.
“Pain is to be expected. Lie there and let his majesty do it quickly. Do all that I’ve taught you to let his seed catch and he won’t visit you often. It is for the gods, not your own gratification, remember that.”
Simple enough, as long as she can keep her troublesome tongue leashed.
But what if he arrives drunk?
What if he really is as twisted and brutal as her people say?
What if he takes one look at her and ships her straight back to Gryffindor Tower, reneging the careful peace terms?
And then his army will rape and pillage the westerlands and Harry and Ron and everyone will be—
The echo of voices from the great hall draws nearer.
Hermione stands straighter, smoothing the shimmering fabric at her sides.
She whispers under her breath,
“Forti Animo Estote.”
She won’t let the snakes see even a glimpse of fear.
The voices hush.
The wooden door screeches unlatched and swings with a heavy groan.
Her belly flip-flops like a trout.
Steps approach. The wedding curtain rustles.
She raises her little chin.
“My king.”
Hermione side steps in her most formal curtsey, but she cannot drop her gaze.
Every mental image she had of him was wrong.
Instead of the gnarled warmonger who slaughtered three thousand Ravenclaw soldiers at the Fords, the king is young.
His russet waves flow around the white gold of the Serpent’s Crown. The angles of his cheeks glow with winter riding; she notes a wicked scar written above the far edge of his left brow.
How did this luminous, archangel youth conquer the Ravenlands and the Onyx Isles with all their fortresses and garrisons? She remembers he is only three winters beyond her.
Hermione’s face burns but she couldn’t say why.
When he steps closer, his armored shoulders don’t sway like the lords of her court. Like he has something to prove, no—he glides like a hunter with an arrow already nocked, his gaze sharp.
For a small respite from his dark eyes, she glances at the intricate metalwork of his breastplate: the serpent twined with pine boughs.
“My lady, Hermione-Jeanne of the House Gryffindor.”
The pure resonance of his bass invades her body and her thoughts scatter.
“Well, it would certainly be an inconvenient mistake if I weren’t.”
Hermione claps her hand over her mouth.
Heat blooms up her neck like a rash.
“Fuh-forgive me, your grace, I—”
“Tom,” the king says.
His face does not move, but something behind his expression shifts.
“In this room, and whenever we are away from the court, you will call me Tom.”
“Tom.” Her flush settles everywhere on her skin. “I like that quite better than His Majesty, Thomas II of the House Slytherin, King of the East and the High Rivers, Ruler of the Onyx Isles.”
Tom’s scarred brow raises.
Gods, she should just get on a wagon for the West Road now. She’s mucked up every word.
Might as well just heap it all out.
“I wondered why we didn’t have a formal wedding, Tom?” Here it comes. “In my court, weddings are a happy, convivial occasion for both houses. I miss my parents.”
Tom studies her, a coolness descending on him.
“I conquered your father’s army on the field of battle in the Ravenlands. I require his loyalty, not his friendship. Once the first is proven, the second is given.”
“Of course. And that’s why I’m here.”
Hermione smooths her garment, her mind reaching for her mother’s dutiful detachment.
“It is,” Tom murmurs.
His gaze follows the slide of her hands down the silvery crepe.
He reaches out slowly, almost coaxing.
He palms the soft give of her breast, his thumb circling the dark stain of her nipple visible through the silk.
“You are here for me,” he says so deep, she feels him in the cradle of her pelvis.
“And why no vow?” She locks her eyes with his, daring him right back. “Why no public declaration of your intent to keep me? How will your people know I’m your queen?”
He smiles, and ice slides down her spine. Instantly, Hermione understands why he is called the Butcher King.
This regent will annihilate continents before he will bend to anyone.
He spreads his warm hand just below her navel: his grip tender, but lethally possessive.
Her heart thuds.
“This is my vow,” he intones, “That I will make my House with your body.”
Hermione starts to shake.
“As for the people, soon enough they will see you carrying the future of the realm and they will know you belong to me.”
She jerks away from him.
“You say I’m nothing until you get what you want from me? No risk, all reward? I refuse to believe my father agreed to this—this is utterly barbaric!”
He catches her flailing arm and she tries to twist free.
In the firelight, their magnified shadows battle across the room.
He draws her in close, crushing her soft surfaces against his broad plates of armor.
The metal presses cool on her nearly-bare skin.
“You mistake me.”
“I’m thinking Lady Parkinson’s cow metaphor was more fitting than I thought,” she snarls. “Let me go.”
She slams one fist down on his breastplate with a hollow clanging sound, smarting her knuckles.
Only then does it occur to her that she struck the Butcher King.
Tom’s patient, low-lilting laugh fizzes down her spine.
She stops struggling.
“Listen to me, my lady,” he purrs.
Slowly, like lowering a child into the bath, he sinks to one knee before the hearth, drawing her down to in front of him on the warm marble.
“My people hold ceremonies with enemies. With an ally, we make a bond at our table. With a wife, we build in them a sacred home where no one else is invited.”
The flames play in his jewel-dark eyes.
“I thought I was a token from your enemy,” she says, her throat oddly tight.
“When I forged the agreement with your father, yes. We had a great show of formality at the Fords.”
He leans over her, the brutal Shepherd of his people; his armor plates clink like baleful music.
He coils the tip of his finger with one of her wild curls. Her pulse races.
“Here is where I wed you,” he whispers.
Hermione’s heart hammers in her throat, wondering if it’s a trick.
Wouldn’t that be a fitting punishment for her father’s allyship with House Ravenclaw against the king: sending the gullible princess back to House Gryffindor with a serpent bastard in her belly?
“Come, take off my armor.” he says.
Cooly final.
With great trepidation, she stands.
This is why her family sent her here.
Better he destroy her than raze her homeland and spike the heads of everyone she loves.
Her lip trembles. She blinks back the moisture muddling her vision.
Tom grasps her wrist.
“This is the first phase of our ceremony, little lioness. You disarm your king.”
He guides her hand to his shoulder, where she finds a strap of leather tucked under the metal plate.
The fastenings and the heavy iron confound her nervous hands.
“Oh, it’s stuck—”
“Ah, ah. Like this.”
“Drat it.”
“...There you are, clever girl.”
He leads her with soft-spoken words and gentle nudges like an old farm dog with a fresh born lamb.
When she lifts off the scaled gorget piece from his neck, her fingertips brush his dark-gleaming curls: unimaginably soft. In this intimate proximity, his scent rushes to her head like wine.
Rivermint and cedar.
She kneels before him to unfasten the breastplate, her bare feet curled innocently under her. The buckle under his arm snags with an indecorous tug and his fond chuckle pours into her like melted honey.
Cheeks red, she lifts off the last piece.
The king sets aside the Serpent Crown and shrugs out of his black leather padding, leaving only a white shirt tucked into his formal breeks.
The armor didn’t exaggerate his lithe, warrior’s architecture.
She heard whispers that he leveled the Riders of Ravenclaw with a broadsword of obsidianite smelt: the weight of two swords.
She could believe it now, studying the span of his back, the columns of his shoulders as he gets up, crosses the room and pours two chalices with wine.
Yes, he must swing that blade like a toothpick.
When she shifts on the marble, the ankle she was sitting on feels cool with dampness.
Hermione swallows hard.
“Now—” Tom returns, gesturing with a small silver plate in one hand. He sets it and the two chalices before her.
“We eat here by the hearth,” he says. “Like my Slytherin ancestors.”
Hermione isn’t certain she could stomach a bite. And besides, this prospect is nearly too intimate, too raw. Like she and Tom are the first woman and man alive.
She picks at a tiny bit of dried fruit, at the very least to nod to his er, ancestors—oh wait, he’s shaking his head.
“Not that way.”
He crowds behind her, looping an arm around her waist before she can argue and sliding her slippery silken form into his lap.
Her skin prickles all over with him so close: his heart kicking against her shoulder, his arm slung loose around her hip, his lip brushing her ear. She settles her arse tight against him, nearly gasping at the sensation of his hardened menace.
He makes a deep gravel sound in response.
Selecting the reddest little slice of meat, Tom brings it to her mouth without the faintest trace of irony.
Hermione cranes her head back like a recalcitrant cat.
“Oh no, really, I won't.”
“For tradition.”
He coaxes his offering into her, grazing her teeth like he’s not afraid of her bite. The meat melts dark and rich on her tongue.
“Heart of venison,” he says. “I shot it this morning.”
“You surprise me, I thought the sword your preferred weapon.”
He smirks, cruelly sweet.
“No, my lady, I am an archer at heart.”
She plucks up a piece of meat for him.
“Men rally behind their king’s sword,” he continues, “but the real power is in stalking the enemy, tracing his tracks and striking with a bolt to the heart.”
He takes her arm and runs the flat of his tongue up a glistening red stripe of blood dripping from her fingers. Her skin awakens like the air charged before lightning.
He lingers a kiss on the pulse-tender paper of wrist.
“Is that how you always win?” she baits him, her breaths staggering, “Slithering through the trees, cutting your enemies down when they least expect?”
“No. I win because I am more. More of everything.”
Slowly, he pulls her hand to his lips and bites the heart from her fingertips, teeth rasping her skin like a delicate threat.
Hermione gasps.
He kisses her hand, crushing it in his grasp like a sparrow in a hound’s jaw. Her veins burn, her breathing rising to a sharp staccato.
Tom tugs the end of the ribbon at her throat, loosening the gathered fabric and letting it spill from her shoulders like water.
The flames’ heat licks warm at her naked back; her nipples pebbling up under his gaze.
The king traces down her sternum, his fingertips like matches striking fire. His lips part, dusky lashes low making his eyes unreadable.
With her blood pounding in her ears, a panic stirs in her—is she enough? How could this haughty conqueror ever be satisfied?
“You will do,” he says, flashing her a canny look.
Curse him! Is she really so obvious?
“I’ll do? I am the only daughter of the King in the West. Before the Ravens War, an impetuous hill-tribe lord could have never aspired to such a match.”
“Yes, lioness.” His lip ticks with a tenth of a smile. “I’ve bled and rallied and outschemed to take for my kingdom the very best of this continent. And now it is mine.”
“How flattering,” she snorts.
A pleased sound rumbles in Tom’s chest and her insides flutter like a flock of insipid doves. Under no circumstances can she let this wicked killer know how he makes her feel.
He maps her skin with a featherlight touch, sending little darts and shocks to her clutch. The silk shift pools around her waist and his hand disappears in it, searching for her secret place.
An ember cracks in the hearth the moment he slides an inquisitive touch along the inside of her thigh. Hermione’s heart leaps, a new sensation for her: a gush trickling from the petals of her tight heat.
Desire glows in her belly like melted iron, as if with one touch the smelt could pour, scorching through her.
The king works teasing strokes closer until she’s panting, breaths sieving from her open mouth. He gleams up at her, such malicious pleasure he gets at her unraveling. And he’s not yet breached her.
Her tender slit weeps and gulps for him: finally, finally he pets its edge and Hermione chokes.
“How perfectly your cunny begs for her king,” Tom burrs, his bass swirling in her middle. “So obedient.”
Hermione’s brows draw together but she loses focus.
He pushes two fingers into her clinching quim, its trembling mouth gripping his descent all the way to the knuckle. Without pause, he pumps; dragging curved fingers along her walls with little jolts of shock panging through every inch.
Tom grips her hips, holding her still.
His chest rises and falls beautifully, little glints of dark curiosity flitting across his face as he methodically, purposefully works her to open and gush on his hand.
Hermione’s governess said once that noble ladies are often too tight to be seeded after their wedding, but she can see the king has no intention of leaving her womb empty tonight.
His thumb swipes the fire red point at the apex of her slit and she cries out.
“Yes,” he growls, “give over to me, my lady.”
“Not my lady…” she grinds out, “It’s your—-ah! Your grace… I am… Hah! I am the queen!”
Tom’s deep laugh fills the cavernous room.
“You are moments from becoming the queen.”
Faster than she can think, he scoops her off the hot marble and storms to the bed, tossing her on her back with a massive groan of the ropes. The furs swallow her, her hair fans out around her face like a frizzy halo.
Tom looms over her, the mountain of his nation—a monolith who will be forever remembered for their swollen borders. Who is she to resist his invasion?
He casts off his clothing and his naked body gleams. The king is of cruel perfection: every carved slope both as beautiful and deadly as the High Rivers.
Hermione stops breathing.
She read that in serpent country, they call him Rex Lengua Argentum, the Silver Tongue, but really all of him is silver.
A moonlight-cast, shining idol.
He grasps her thighs and pulls her, cunt-side-up to the edge of the mattress.
The king leers down at her, her legs lolled open, her fruit split and seeping, her breasts trembling as her breaths swell and valley. He exults in her surrender.
“When I mount you, I will break you open and pour all of myself into you, do you understand? You will be Hermione-Jeanne of the House Slytherin, the mother of serpents.”
Hermione bares her teeth.
Mother of serpents, perhaps, but she will always be a lion.
“Do your worst.”
With his fingertips pacing her clit, he knees her thighs deeper aside. He draws the red heat of his tip along her slit, coaxing her petals aside.
Dark brows furrowed, he slides into the clenching grip of her cunt.
Hermoine arches her back, the fullness a surprising welcome. His thickness fights the band of her muscle but her blood hums exquisitely. Her mother knows nothing.
Her king pushes into her with agonizing patience.
His fingers dig into her hips with exertion, he snarls like an animal lashed down—he’s tethered himself from rutting wild and mad.
In and back, deeper and back, he slowly works her open around him. Petting her clit until his cock slip-slides in her eagerness.
When at last she has him at the hilt, she feels him in her throat; like her heart pounds against his ramrod length from the inside. She claws at the furs, gasping.
Then, the patience ends. Tom breaks her open.
Teeth gnashed, he fucks into her.
The sensation of his movement awakens her core, leaving her head spinning in a rush of blood to her belly. She tilts on the delicious edge of pain and pleasure.
Her cunt grips around him, pulling at him to stay, fighting force with force as they merge. Two halves of the same insistent drive to marry their bodies again and again.
He glides onto the bed and snatches up one of her legs. Hitching her knee around his hip, he pistons deeper: his cock a relentless siege against the mouth of her womb.
Tom crashes his lips with hers, his prize.
He envelops her: invading, taking, claiming and a thought flashes in Hermione’s head with a vault of pleasure. He all but said she was the secret aim of his westward conquest.
With every pull at her unruly hair he seeks to embed himself, every crush of her breasts in his grip. Each thrust carves out a deeper space for him inside of her, a need she didn’t know she had.
“Yes, my precious one,” he rasps, “you are made for me.”
She stretches around him, her flesh growing wiser with the knowledge of his body.
By the time he starts huffing with bullish sounds, she has matched his pace: moving with him, her hips rolling in counter time, her skin sweltering with more, more, more until she hits her edge.
Tom’s iron grasp closes around her throat.
Zealously, he squeezes her.
“The Serpent Crown will rule all, yet my truest place is between your legs, my queen. No home but your sweet cunt.”
His pounding speeds up.
She shudders, lashes flitting.
A tide of silver water rushes across her vision. White heat burns all the channels and tributaries of her body, pouring pleasure-fire into her limbs. Her heart wrings in delicious agony.
The king shakes her by the throat as he spends, body tensed over her.
Hermione treasures the quick-flash of his cunning features illuminated so guilelessly with release. The moment sends an unexpected pang to her chest.
The world has overturned: a lion falling for a serpent.
Tom pulls out and her red-tender pussy cascades with little jolts.
He settles next to her in the furs, stroking her sweat-glossed, quivering skin with his fingertips. He whispers in the harsh mountain tongue of the High Rivers.
The rhythm of his voice washes over her with the drunken after-warmth of their coupling.
“What are you saying?” she asks.
“An ancient invocation to the Snake God.”
“For princes, I’ll wager,” she yawns.
“For protection.” His voice tightens. “Protection for a mother.”
Hermione tilts her head, her nose brushing his like a shy flower. She cards the king’s soft waves with her fingers.
They tangle their limbs together while the snowfall feathers against the windowpane.
“Does the Snake God look out for bloodthirsty kings as well?” she says softly.
“No.” Tom shuts his eyes. “I make my own providence.”
“You really mean to have it all? To conquer my homeland?”
“My queen, your homeland rolled on its back for me tonight.” He is radiant with smugness. “Its rightful heir takes root in your belly now.”
“My cousin, Harry, is next in line.”
“I think not.”
Hermione sits up.
“So it was all for nothing! I’ve wed you to save my home, but you mean to take it anyway!”
“I could take it tomorrow, or next year, or when your sons can rally your father’s nobles. Your lords will follow me.”
“You will tear the westerlands apart! I know what you did at Moat Rowena—how you hung the Lovegoods from the gate and how you spiked the head of every Burbage, young and old, at Raven Hall!”
“And now no one will resist me on my path to Gryffindor Tower. They will see the better option: bending the knee.”
Horror thuds in Hermione’s chest. His spend seeps between her legs and she thinks she might retch onto the floor.
“Come.” Tom takes her hand. “A kingdom united will bring untold prosperity for the realm. Peace.”
He lifts her like a doll and settles her onto his cock again, fucking into her with all the gentleness of one who‘s authority cannot be questioned.
Later, they couple again by the hearth, their skin slick on the hot marble. The king spends an endless time with his face between her thighs, patiently loving her bruised little sex with his silver tongue.
Gods help him, he truly cherishes her.
Hermione stares up into the ceiling’s endless black, her body given to the Butcher King, her mind piecing together scenes.
She sees herself in his war chamber, his throne room, at his council. Earning more than a ceremonial role beside him will take cleverness—and a mastery of her damned mouth.
She sees the curly headed, dark eyed children who will ride with him, who will swing his swords.
But she will be the one in their ear.
The one painting justice, mercy and honor for the next Serpent King.
She will sweetly pick apart the reign of violence like petals off a daisy.
Hermione sighs, letting Tom’s clever mouth bring her to another unraveling.
She’s going to undo him just the same.