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Fortunately, despite the 'Blessed Scions'' determination to deny Lyudmila the rightful triumph of their defeat, there is still one prince left alive when the capital of Snezliyha falls. Their idiot priest-nobles had carried him off to the safety of their great cathedral. As if Lyudmila has any intention whatsoever of leaving it intact.
Their holy songs say that Snezliyha will never fall so long as the altar of this cathedral remains sanctified, after all. Really, the Snow Fox had brought it on himself.
If the priest-nobles thought that secreting Prince Valeriy away in his cathedral would bring him under the Snow Fox's protection, they had been wrong. She discovers him within two days of taking the city and securing the palace. Too late to keep the Scions from killing themselves and almost everyone else who lived under their great domes--but that 'almost' was her good luck. The few servants who escaped with their lives were already those whose loyalty to their masters did not extend to their own deaths, which meant she could find one willing to talk.
Her soldiers, primed by the palace, search the cathedral with swift efficiency, with each priest-noble and lay-servant moved immediately into the nave so that they cannot seek the boy out with poison or blade. If he seeks those himself, they may not be fast enough, but Lyudmila can only hope he doesn't. She needs him and the legitimacy he can give her if she's going to hold this land for her queen.
When the prince is dragged into the nave, one priest-noble breaks desperately past the soldiers guarding their huddle and outright flings himself between Lyudmila and the boy. "General, please," he pants, in their rounded accent, "he is only a boy-"
Two of Lyudmila's soldiers tackle the man and bring him down, one twisting his arm behind him so hard that she can hear the pop of his joint. His whimpers as he's dragged backward seem enough to dissuade the others from any similar heroism.
"Prince Valeriy," Lyudmila says, striding up to him. "Do you know you are the last of the line?"
He looks up at her. He is young, just old enough to have started growing a beard but not old enough for it to be anything but a wispy, scraggly thing. His chin-length hair is very pale blond, almost white, the way all the Scions' are--or were--and most of the priest-nobles seem bleached to emulate, and almost as wispy as the beard, seeming to float in its loose curls. His eyes are washed-out grey and very wide, and he trembles in his fur-trimmed white robes.
"Yes," he whispers. His voice, too, is wispy and thin.
"That makes you the only heir of Snezliyha's royal line." She will not call them 'Scions,' and even less so 'Blessed,' unless the Snow Fox himself shows up to prove that true. "Queen Nadezhda is gracious, and willing to show mercy. Snezliyha will become a protectorate of Khodeso under my command."
"My people," he whispers, eyes darting wildly to the cathedral's doors. "If I die...."
Those doors are flung open, all within half-visible to the crowd in the great square outside. The soldiers had rousted up a number of city-folk and herded them there so that they may hear, if not well see, the most vital parts of what will follow. There are other reasons for them to be there, too.
It's useful that he cares for them. Even admirable, though to believe their myth that the Snow Fox will bury their land in killing blizzards if his Scions are slain would require her to believe that the Snow Fox still cares about a bloodline he stuck his prick into once three centuries past. If that had been the case, he would have interfered long before this. The Snow Fox's tricks are infamous--yet she's had no spoiled food, no rashes of unseasonable insects, no more than the usual amount of lamed animals or broken wagon-wheels or venereal diseases among the troops. He's fucked off, as a fox would, done with his fun and off to some other entertainment.
"I told you, Queen Nadezhda is willing to show mercy. You can live--as Archduke to my Archduchess."
He looks horrified. Lyudmila isn't surprised. She's hardly anyone's idea of a beauty, wasn't that even on the south side of fifty, and the Scions breed only with their priest-nobles and even then only with the best. His lips part in a protest that he only half-mouths.
"You'll marry me here and now," she says, stepping in to look directly down at him and dropping her voice too low for anyone else to hear, "or I'll gut you on this altar and my soldiers will put down every riot that results."
She won't unless she absolutely has to. She didn't come here to kill anyone but his kin, and ideally only one of those. By her queen's command, she would have left all the rest alive had they surrendered. But Lyudmila is long inured to the slaughter that had been required along that path. And she is furious still at what she found at its end.
His eyes go wider yet, and then he raises his chin, doing his youthful best to square his shoulders. "For the protection of my people, I... I accept."
"Good." Lyudmila grasps his shoulder and walks him up the steps to the altar, then swings him around with her as she turns to face the nave. "I've brought a chaplain to marry us in our style, and one of this lot will do for yours."
"We will not!" one of said lot shouts.
Lyudmila gestures to the soldier closest to him. "Then you're useless, aren't you?"
The prince makes a small wounded noise when the blood sprays. Her soldier steps back, looking the group over.
"You." Lyudmila points at a particularly horrified-looking priest-noble. "How useful do you feel like being?"
She feels, it turns out, like being very useful indeed. She walks them through the Snezliyhan vows, though she has to be encouraged twice to speak more loudly, and Lyudmila has to lean in and whisper to Prince Valeriy that the people in the square are useless to her, too, if they can't hear and thus witness the wedding. His voice shakes and cracks and in some places is thick with tears, but he's able to raise it after all.
A few of the vows she refuses. She owes no fealty to the Snow Fox; she will not vow to put Snezliyha above all else, though she compromises by saying that she will place it above all but Khodeso. The priest-noble stumbles at each change, but looks at her prince with something like concern and something like terror and carries bravely, if shakily, on.
Once the cathedral is torn down and a new administrative center chosen, Lyudmila will consider installing this one in said administration. They'll need at least a few locals, and loyalty to the boy might make her continue to be useful. Or, if that loyalty stirs the urge for sabotage and rebellion, she'll at least be where Lyudmila can keep an eye on her.
The vows her own chaplain leads them through next are much simpler. The Wheels aren't concerned with royal duties; those are for humans to sort out among themselves. The oaths she makes concerning her new rank will be made to Queen Nadezhda and to the new duchy itself, whatever it will mean to its various divisions to have those vows signed and handed out. Even marriage doesn't concern any of the Wheels but that of Life, and she's past childbearing. The form of it matters anyway, though. Her soldiers are listening just as much as the Snezliyhans are.
"Your oaths are recorded in the spokes of the Wheel of Life," the chaplain intones as those short and simple vows conclude. He's a small, bent man, though not old; he's also the favorite chaplain Lyudmila has ever been assigned, for he's practical and uncomplaining and sharp-eyed as any scout on campaign. "Dedicate your marriage now to it."
"How?"
"Like this," Lyudmila tells the prince, dropping from the commanding shout she'd been using to ensure her vows were heard in the square to a more reasonable tone, and begins to unfasten the buttons of her blouse. "I know you consummate marriages here."
"When they are of age," the priest-noble says, thin-voiced and determined. Oh, yes, Lyudmila will want her under her eye. "He has another year-"
"We did your ceremony. This is mine. And I am your Archduchess now," Lyudmila tells her, voice hard. She turns to the boy and adds, quieter yet, "And it is in your interest to affirm this marriage."
"H-here?"
"On the altar."
Horror, again. "That will foul it!"
"It will be desecrated outright," Lyudmila tells him evenly, "by the spilling of blood."
He swallows hard, nods, and then ventures, very small and soft, "But I... I am not-"
"Think of whatever girl or boy you want. But start here, on your knees," she pushes her unlaced trousers down to her own knees and points at the floor at her feet, "and whatever it takes, be ready for it when you stand up again."
Red-faced, tears in his eyes, he nods and kneels shakily before her.
Then, of course, because even if he's bedded anyone willing before she assumes a Scion doesn't kneel to their lover, he says, "I'm not sure what to do."
"Lick it," Lyudmila tells him shortly, and sinks a hand into her hair. "Wherever I put you, lick it."
She doesn't need to be hot for this; she'll let her triumph warm her as much as it can and gladly endure any pain she takes from being no warmer. The victory is worth it. But he needs to be, and the intent of all of this is that she be seen to rule him. He'll rouse his prick while on his knees to her, right here in full view.
He has no fucking clue what he's doing. Her direction only does so much. If he was a lover, Lyudmila would have the patience to walk him through in detail. Here she just shoves him about and grinds on his face and waits, waits, until the watching chaplain nods to her to signal that Valeriy is rising hot enough for their business.
"Up." Lyudmila punctuates that by yanking on his hair. He stands, shaky and flushed red, hand tucked under his rucked-up robes. She pushes him back and down upon the altar, then kneels, straddling him.
Like this, tears caught in his eyelashes, hair so pale and fine, soft pink lips slightly parted, he does look terribly young. But Lyudmila's daughter had been younger yet when that other prince, Valeriy's uncle or cousin or, hell, possibly even father, had come to King Ippolit's court, seen Iraida, and declared that her white hair and translucent skin and colorless eyes meant she was blessed by the Snow Fox and must be taken to serve the Scions. Her body was returned a year later with apologies that she had not passed the trials of a priest-noble, as if Lyudmila had not known what that man truly wanted her for.
King Ippolit and his eldest two children had all lost their heads for that, after five years of conspiracy with Ippolit's resentful youngest. Valeriy's arrogant relative would have died as slowly and painfully as Lyudmila's most inventive lieutenant could devise. This is no worse and far better than what her little Iraida must have gone through. Lyudmila has no pity left in her for this particular youth.
She sinks down upon him. There is a sting, but not too much of one; she is hot with fury, with the memory of grief, with the rush of a revenge she has been dreaming of for five long years. She relishes the moan he gives as she envelops him, startled and broken. Has he never dipped his prick in anyone before, or is it that he's never been the one forced into it? She rather likes the thought of the second.
He gasps, wide-eyed and breathless, as she rises up and sinks down again. She feels his hips hitch up, and shoves them down against the altar. He has no control here. He and all his people had best learn that as soon as possible.
Lyudmila picks up the pace, encouraged by the way the gasps turn to whimpers and moans. This won't take long, not if he's this wide-eyed and astonished-looking, not if he's so hot for being ridden like this--for being pinned down and taken, for being shown his proper place before all who should know.
It takes no time at all before he comes. He has no restraint as he draws close, stiff and grunting underneath her with his hips jerking under the pressure of her palms. "Go on," she tells him, deliberately hard-voiced, the stern tone of command. To her satisfaction, his eyes fly wide open, and then he sobs aloud as he comes.
She sinks down on him one last time, clenching tight around his softening prick. There's still heat in her groin, the satisfaction of his surrender making her grow eager at last, too late to wrench proper pleasure out of him. Not at this angle, anyway. She could make him kneel again and lick his seed out of her, but that would be public disrespect to the Wheel of Life, even if she is no fertile soil. Later, maybe, when they're not sealing a marriage. She hadn't thought to bed him again after the consummation, but if this is his reaction to being beneath a woman--Lyudmila has always enjoyed that.
Leaning forward, she presses her thumb to his lip until his vague gaze refocuses on her, then dips her head to kiss him. She bites at his lip to hear him whimper, then harder, teeth digging in, feeling him squirm, listening to sounds that aren't just of pain. She hates to break the kiss and straighten, but she has one more thing to do.
He looks up at her, breathing hard. "Good job," she tells him. Another pulse of satisfaction goes through her when he draws a sharp breath at her words. Then she holds out her hand, and the chaplain hands her a small, plain dagger.
Valeriy looks at her now in sudden terror. "You- you said-"
"I'm not going to gut you," she tells him. "It only takes a nick."
Any blood would do, as she understands their notions of purity, but she wants it to be thorough. She shoves the point of the dagger into the meat of his upper arm, barely an inch, clear of any major arteries. He screams nonetheless, soft young pampered thing that he is. She pulls it out and lets the blood flow, the sacred blood of the Blessed Scions. A low moan of despair rises in the audience, and from his lips, as his blood drips down to finish the desecration of the sex-fouled altar.
This is the moment where her hubris might just come crashing down upon her. If the Snow Fox is really paying any attention, if the Snow Fox cares about his descendants after all, if the Snow Fox decides to punish her for this--well. It was worth it. Lyudmila could take the Snow Fox chewing her entrails for eternity to know that she's so shamed his blessed line. But she'll have some regret if her soldiers suffer with her.
Nothing happens. One breath, then another, her new husband sobbing outright beneath her, and the Snow Fox does not come. The altar sits there, pure white stone smeared now with blood, as boring as any other rock. For the first time in five years, Lyudmila smiles.
Rising up off of Valeriy, she wipes the dagger on the sleeve of his white robe before passing it back to the chaplain. She has her pants back on before he sits up, and is buttoning her blouse when he lurches upright and grabs at her shoulders.
"You- You-!"
"You have four dozen people here and I would say at least a thousand out in that square depending upon you to represent them in this marriage, Valeriy," she tells him softly, taking his wrists and pulling his hands easily away and down between them. "Was that fear only ever for your own skin? Or will you serve them? Under me," she adds, and feels him shiver.
"Yes- n-no- I mean, I'll serve." His voice cracks.
"Good."
She lets go of him to fasten the last few buttons, and gestures for her soldiers not to intervene when the priest-noble rushes up with her own mantle to throw over his shoulders and hide the bloody sleeve. That she'll have a medic tend later, just to be sure it doesn't turn--but it will scab over soon, and for now he needs the reminder that she can bleed him. Once they're both fully attired, Lyudmila reaches down and seizes his hand, folding their fingers and squeezing tight.
"Come along, Valeriy," she tells him when he tries instinctively to jerk away. "Let's go proceed among your people, and let all of them see their new Archduchess and Archduke."
He stops pulling and, with a resigned set to his jaw, nods. Lyudmila starts forward, a quartet of soldiers falling in around them as guards, the rest carefully herding the priest-nobles after them so that their submission, too, can be seen. Their altar is desecrated, their cathedral will be torn down, and their Scions have come to the end of their line; she is beyond bearing children, and she will make absolutely sure Valeriy touches no other woman but her for the rest of his life. When she's had enough time to train him, he might not even want to.
That pleasure, though, will wait for the bedchamber. For now Lyudmila revels in the one she has spent so long pursuing, bitter though its ends have been. The Scions may have stolen her daughter from her, but she has taken, in turn, their last living son.