The throne room is never truly empty. Even at the grey hour before sunrise, ghosts linger: the weight of a thousand oaths, the echo of coronation trumpets, the memory of blood once spilled on these marble steps.
Tonight those ghosts will learn a new kind of blasphemy.
We enter through the hidden door behind the royal dais (a passage only the blood royal knows). The great hall is dark except for the first pale blade of light slipping through the high eastern windows. The twin thrones loom on the raised platform: the king's massive seat of carved oak and gold, and beside it the smaller, more elegant one of silver and moonstone (hers).
She stops at the foot of the three shallow steps and looks up at them. Her robe tonight is black silk, so sheer it might as well be shadow. The first hint of dawn turns her skin pearl and rose.
"Which one?" I ask, voice rough with anticipation.
She glances back at me, eyes glittering. "Both."
She ascends the steps slowly, deliberately, hips swaying with every click of bare feet on marble. When she reaches the platform she turns, sits on the edge of her own throne, and spreads her legs wide. The robe parts like theatre curtains.
"Come here, my shadow."
I cross the distance in four strides and drop to my knees between her thighs. The height of the dais puts her cunt exactly level with my mouth.
I do not tease. I have learned what happens when I tease.
I lick into her like a man possessed (long, hungry strokes that make her moan echo off the vaulted ceiling). She grips the carved arms of the throne, back arching, breasts straining against the silk.
"Lucian… gods… don't stop…"
I slide three fingers inside her and curl hard. She comes almost instantly, thighs clamping around my head, a sharp cry ringing through the empty hall like a battle horn.
Before the tremors finish, she is pulling me up by the hair.
"Inside me. Now."
I stand, shove my breeches down just far enough, and drive into her in one brutal thrust.
The throne creaks beneath us. Her nails rake down my back. I fuck her hard and fast, the slap of skin on skin loud in the sacred silence. Every stroke slams her against the moonstone backrest.
She wraps her legs around my waist and uses the leverage to meet me thrust for thrust.
"Look at me," she gasps.
I do.
Her eyes are wild, pupils blown wide.
"This throne is mine," she snarls between moans. "This kingdom is mine. And you—" she tightens deliberately around my cock—"you are the only cock that will ever sit in my lap again."
The words snap the last thread of my control.
I come with a guttural groan, pulsing deep, filling her exactly where generations of queens have sat in cold dignity.
She follows a breath later, clenching so hard my vision whites out.
We stay locked together, panting, sweat cooling on our skin. My forehead rests against hers. The sky outside has turned rose-gold.
She kisses me softly, almost tenderly.
"Turn around," she whispers.
I obey, still inside her, and find myself facing the king's throne (my father's throne), empty and waiting.
She reaches around me, strokes me back to hardness with slow, sure pulls, then guides me forward until I am standing between the armrests of the massive oak seat.
"Sit," she commands.
I sink into the king's throne, cock jutting up obscenely.
She follows, robe discarded somewhere on the steps, and straddles me again. This time she faces away, back to my chest, hands braced on the carved lions that serve as armrests.
She lowers herself slowly, inch by inch, until I am buried to the root in the most forbidden place imaginable.
Then she begins to ride.
Slow. Filthy. Deliberate rolls of her hips that drag me across every sensitive spot inside her. The throne was built for a warrior twice my size; there is room for her to move exactly how she wants.
I grip her hips, thumbs digging into the dimples above her arse, and let her use me.
She leans forward, hair spilling down her back like black water, and looks over her shoulder.
"One day," she says, voice husky and vicious, "I will sit the council in this chair with your come still dripping out of me. And no one will ever know why I smile."
The image destroys me.
I surge up, wrap an arm around her waist, and take control (pounding into her from below, hard, punishing strokes that make the ancient throne groan in protest).
She braces one hand on the lion's head and reaches the other between her legs to rub her clit in frantic circles.
We come together this time (her screaming my name into the empty hall, me spilling inside her again with a roar that would shame a dragon).
After, she slumps back against my chest, both of us trembling. Dawn has fully broken; pale light floods the hall, gilding the sweat on her breasts, the bruises already blooming on her thighs where my fingers were.
She turns her head, kisses the corner of my mouth.
"Carry me back to bed, darling," she murmurs. "I want to fall asleep with you still inside me."
I lift her easily (she is soft and warm and utterly spent) and carry her down the hidden passage.
Behind us, the two thrones sit empty again.
But they will never be the same.
And neither will we.