Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions

"May I have this dance with you, milady?"

He executed perfectly the gentlemanly dip and everything.

Cora laughed into his face. "Can\'t you see how I\'m dressed, kid? I\'m sorry, but you\'re not my type."

Percival was unfazed. He kept his hand straight out.

"I could say the same about you, Lady?"

Sarcasm was laced in every single syllable.

Cora smiled. It was an amused grin at his playboy confidence. "Yes, I guess. I don\'t want to shoot above my station here, with Her Majesty\'s cousin. A Van Imperia!"

"You are not." Percival replied. "You won\'t. Unless, you\'re too chicken to dance with me. I mean, you\'re not much older than me. You\'re what, twenty? I\'m eighteen." Percival spied a round eye around the hall.

"The dance floor is getting packed. We should join. Unless. . .you won\'t dance with me because you\'d rather have a girl.

I\'ll let you know, I\'ve been told—more than once, that I look like one. So tell me, love, now in this moment, do you actually prefer pussy to cock?"

Cora\'s blue eyes shimmered.

"I AM NOT LES—"

"Then humor me, Lady Cora." Percival cut her out.

Corazón looked casually over to Rafel who treaded to the dance floor with the Queen. She turned back to Percival and reluctantly took his hand. The gleam in his brightened as he gushed to his cheeks. As he led Cora to join the group of finely dressed men and women taking the stand to begin the waltz, Percival leaned to whisper in her ear.

He openly flirted.

"You should know, Lady Cora. You are exactly my type."

Cora engaged his flawless smile. "And what type is that?"

"The perfect mix of androgyny," came his sadistic reply. "If you\'re down, after the party, we could head over to my place and I could make you love cock even better."

Cora stared at him.

This kid? She wanted to laugh. Seriously?

Instead, she patted his palm softly clutching to hers.

"Let\'s just dance."

The waltz progressed smoothly afterward. The dancing began at a slow pace with all the Lords poised elegantly in a straight line, as well as the Ladies. They faced each other and executed the courtesy bows and dips before merging with their various partners. Despite not being one of Her Majesty\'s dainty diamonds on display tonight, Rafel was the center of attraction.

The suit Cora had deviously picked moulded to his great warrior self. And when he moved, the shadows in the room seemed to move with him. His midnight cape had a peaked collar that brushed the high ends of his ruddy hair.

Many Ladies were quick to forget their envious dance partners, and turned up powdered noses to the demon of a man who had the Queen in his arms. They never thought that Rafel was in fact, a demon. They couldn\'t will their minds to go there; for what kind of prim and proper woman of good standing wanted to get some tailed Hellion\'s dick.

They rather preferred to busy themselves with saving up his savage beauty for later in their baths, when they could trick the hands of their handmaids to rubbing the loofah extra hard down there.

Rafel tried not to notice the looks. But it was impossible with all the staring. Nobles didn\'t give a donkey\'s arse about space or privacy amongst each other. Luckily for him, Giselle\'s warm body in his arms was enough to make him forget the crowd. As she settled her fingers high on his broad shoulders, he focused on the black dots near invisible in her golden pupils.

The waltzing picked up pace. And the Ladies whistled when he twirled Giselle around.

"The fact that he dances with Her Majesty makes him the more fetching, wouldn\'t you agree Dear?"

A Noblewoman said to her husband. The man made some indiscernible rambling in the back of his throat which sounded like,

"Fuck that guy!"

The Lady wife glanced to catch his red face and upturned lips. She gulped hard. She should have said nothing.

As it turned out, this vexed husband was a Baron. A father to one of the debutantes presenting at the Formal. And the high spirits with which he had walked in to the party had dimmed greatly since watching Rafel spin the Queen around like a fricking magic wand.

His ire wasn\'t helped by his wife\'s endearing words. Though she had quit speaking, he could still read in her face the admiration for the redhaired Earl.

The playing song finished in a lively soprano, and just at the climax of the waltz, Rafel picked up Giselle right off the dance floor and spun her high up in the air. Like she weighed nothing in his arms, she let her sweep into the air in a smooth round arc like a tossed ballerina.

Giselle was fluid and didn\'t disappoint. She perfected the flip like it was a sex positon.

Rafel grabbed at her hips as her long golden hair shimmered through the air. As the final note of the waltz hit, he bent her on his knee in a smashing success of lady dipping.

The song ended. Giselle was breathless under him. She was heaving in puffs. Her creamy breasts was practically in his face. Rafel tried not to ogle the Queen\'s cleavage. At least not in public.

Rafel and Giselle finally broke apart when they heard the sound of clapping. They both looked around to find smiling faces and glinting gazes. Cora from where she stood applauded too. Despite her not liking the Fey Queen, when they stood like that, side by side in the center of the room, Rafel and Giselle made a hot couple.

Vapor hot!

He was the shadow walker, the villain, the darkness, the man in black. She was the sun, the Lady in gold, the light, the heiress.

At that moment, the Baron\'s wife was gushing over Rafel. Her crush was renewed.

"Did you see that, Dear? Did you? Their waltzing? Excellent. Just excellent! And that dip the Earl finished with.

. .amazing. I\'d love to be dipped like that."

If the Baron\'s face was red before, it became a horrifying mosaic of wrathful rouge mixed in jealous green at his wife\'s complimenting words. The man watched Giselle wave to the Nobles and say,

"Please my friends, stop it! We\'re here for the debutantes. Tonight, is all about the girls."

The Baron could take it no more and rolled his eyes.

"Pffft! Yeah—sounds like you really mean it!"

"Excuse me?" Giselle\'s elfish ear swiftly caught on it. She turned briskly. "What did you just say to me?"

The Baron stepped out boldly from a company of other Nobles, despite his wife\'s persistence to pull him back. He looked Giselle right in her golden eyes and repeated in barely restrained fury and shooting sarcasm.

"I SAID, sounds like you really mean it. . .YOUR MAJESTY."

"Ahh!" The room of Nobles collectively gasped as one.

No one talked to the Queen that way. The last person who\'d dared was even now a rotting head outside the city. And he was a General.

"Deeeaar?" The Baron\'s wife warned behind.

But somehow to the Baron, the union of Giselle and Rafel in their brazen attraction was too much to have him shut his lips. He took another step forward.

"You know, I said what I said. And yeah, I mean it. You Fey. . .you just strut around like everyone\'s being swallowed in a swamp and you\'re the only ones on stilts. It\'s fucking laughable.

This night was supposed to be about my daughter—and her friends. And by extension, your people.

Yet somehow, you\'ve managed to make it all about you. You know what I think, YOUR MAJESTY? You can wear gold all you want, and smile and wave, and shit fucking diamonds, but all you are is a silly, vain girl wearing a crown too loose on her pretty little head.

And he. . ."

The Baron looked to Rafel and scoffed.

"He\'s just a fucking demon!"

Rafel remained silent, but fire entered into every single woman\'s eyes for him. Giselle spun to look around.

"Uh, whose fool is this?"

Not even the man\'s wife showed her hand. Giselle clicked her fingers at the standing Gold Cloaks. "You know what to do. Be quick!"

As the castle guards neared him to drag him out, the Baron lost his shit. Giselle turned on her heel, just about to forget him as some green-faced nuisance when he chuckled and muttered under a breath.

"Her Majesty? What a joke! All you are is a giant fucking pussy in a crown. Wildling whore!"

This made Rafel stop and turn back. Everyone at the party froze. Rafel pounded to the Baron in giant steps.

"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?"

[ I See Red – Everybody Loves An Outlaw.]

"Relax, Your Grace. I\'ll handle this." Giselle put her hand to Rafel\'s chest.

She stepped into the Baron\'s face. The man stupidly laughed.

"What, giirrrrl! What are you gonna do, huh? Kill me like you killed—"

He didn\'t get a chance to finish.

The Noble Lords and Ladies in the party hall heard a loud ghastly squelch that sounded like a crow plucking the sticky eye out of a corpse. They all followed the Baron\'s shocked eyes with theirs as he looked down to find the Queen\'s right hand firmly embedded into his belly. Blood oozed out the gory hole in spurts.

Her Majesty had punched a fist right through his expensive crimson doublet, through skin and sinew and bone, and through his life.

"Urrglllggh." The Baron coughed.

He spat out blood. Finding his intestines out of his body in someone else\'s hand wasn\'t a fun sight. As the life seeped out of him, he glanced from his spilled guts up to Giselle. She squeezed. A squishing sounded. It was loud as rain in the totally silent room.

More horrendous mass of human stripe fleshed out the Baron\'s stomach, like maggots oozing out brain matter.

It was a sight gory and violent. Extremely, considering the circumstance.

The area around Giselle\'s bloodied fist was bright with hot ethereal Fae fire. Her flaming touch scalded the twisting guts in her grasping palm. And a hissing sound filled the air. A smell like roasting lamb was breathed in as oxygen. When Giselle pulled out her hand, the Baron\'s entire insides came out with it.

His intestines dropped with a wet squelch to the floor just a second before his body.

His dead eyes stared out into a circle of Nobles he didn\'t really see. Fresh blood and sticky bile flowed out his disemboweled stomach and steam rose out the hole. The party hall suddenly smelled like a butcher\'s stall.

"Oh, by the Martyr!" The Baron\'s wife retched right on the cleaned white floors.

Rafel sighed and shook his head. The man had asked for it. He had to know his Queen. Giselle was fun—right until she was not.

"Party\'s fucking over!" Giselle sounded maniacal.

But what was more surprising—and demented, was when she began to laugh over the corpse of the man she had just brutally murdered. Her giggling was harsh. And Rafel was sure he was not the only one thinking Her Majesty was crazy.

Just as quickly as the manic outburst started, it stopped. Giselle tossed her long blonde hair back, wiping her hand on the nearest guard\'s gold cape.

"Clean up this fucking mess!"

With that, she turned and pranced right out the room.

Rafel and a roomful of stunned Nobles were left in her wake. His gaze fell on the shivering frame of one ashen debutante. She had the dead man\'s hazel eyes.

The Baron\'s daughter.

Her mouth was agape as she stared at the still form of her father, reduced to a boneless heap of steaming flesh. She could see his fucking lungs!

Rafel was sure this was one Winter Formal the girl would remember for the rest of her life. He found himself thinking,

\'Thank fuck my Little Raven and slave slept all through it.\'

The issue of the Queen however was a different matter.