He forced the Darkling onto her back and pushed his fingers into her sheath, moving them back and forth until she was begging him for release. “Or perhaps I shall mount her while you kiss her lips until they are bruised. Would you like that, Darkling?” He was atop her now, entering her body, driving deep, relishing her cries. He cared not if they were of pain or pleasure.

“Yes!” she sobbed to him. “Yes! I should like it, Cam. I would!” She writhed beneath him in a frenzy of lust unsatisfied.

“You must learn to call me my lord, Darkling, for I am the Hierarch, and to be respected.” He caught her thrashing head between his two hands. His fingers dug into her scalp. “Say it, Darkling. Say, yes, my lord.” The blue eyes blazed down at her. His great manhood was suddenly still within her.

“Mortal, you forget yourself!” Ciarda cried. “It is I who command you.”

The sound of his laughter actually sent a chill through her. “Darkling, without me you can do naught. We are equals. For now. Now humor me, and do as I have asked you, my pretty Darkling. Say, yes, my lord.”

“I could turn you into a beetle to crush beneath my foot,” she told him.

He laughed, and began to ride her again. “There will be no pleasures for you until you have obeyed me, Darkling.”

Ciarda could not believe what was happening. He was controlling her, and to her shock she found it more exciting than anything she had previously experienced. She was a Darkling. She was magic, and yet this mortal man was forcing her to his will, and for all her protests she was enjoying it even as he withheld pleasures from her. She ached with her need. Her desires were running hot. She needed pleasures. She needed them! “Yes, my lord!” she gasped out, and then screamed with joy as he met her needs more than satisfactorily, groaning as his own lusts were fully sated.

Afterward as Ciarda lay in his arms she told him, “If you were not so necessary to my plans, Cam of the Fiacre, I should kill you without hesitation.”

“And if you were not so necessary to my plans, Darkling, I should have not accepted your bargain,” he responded. “We need each other. I need you so I am finally able to gain my revenge, and you need me so you may complete your father’s plans. I am curious though, Darkling. Why do you attempt to accomplish what he could not? You have not his great powers.”

“His powers were great, it is true,” Ciarda said, “but he felt he needed the faerie woman’s magic. It was a mistake. He could have done without her, but it was foretold that she would birth his son. But he did not need her for more than that. A well-coordinated and unexpected attack on Hetar should have given him the victory he sought. But by the time he sent his armies into battle the Hetarians had been warned. His mistake was in not taking The City first. If you control The City, you can control all of Hetar. But he let his forces march across the land and The City was warned. Then the faerie woman took her revenge on him, marshaling her allies to defeat my father. You speak casually of the Domina of Terah. But you do not really know her, Cam. She is dangerous.”

“She is a faerie woman, and all women can be manipulated,” Cam replied. “Do I not manipulate you? And my sweet Anoush?”

“When you speak of Vartan’s daughter you sound as if you truly care for her,” Ciarda said jealously. “Do you?”

“In my own way, aye, I do. As a child she was my friend when no others were,” he recalled. “But then her cursed brother interfered. Still she tried to remain loyal, but her mother took her away to Terah. I was sent to Rivalen, and into Sholeh’s care. At first it was just for the summer, but then I was not allowed to return to Camdene. When that happened I realized I must pretend to change my ways. I did. Even Sholeh, wise as she is, believes I am what I appear to be,” Cam said. “You are envious of my feelings for her, Darkling, but be warned. Should she be harmed in any way I will hold you responsible, and you will lose my help.”

“I will not harm her,” Ciarda said. Not yet, she thought to herself. “If the little mortal female means that much to you keep her. And then one day we will sport together as you have previously said we would, my lord Hierarch.”

“You are clever, Darkling,” he replied. “We will do well together. Now tell me. When am I to be revealed as Hetar’s great hope?” He laughed softly.

“You will appear first in the Coastal Kingdom, where you will perform several wonders that will be reported to the Lord High Ruler. I want Jonah to be afraid of what is to come. You will disappear from the Coastal Kingdom mysteriously only to reappear in the Midlands, where your miracles will be even more amazing. The gossip will race forth into The City, where eventually you will make a grand entrance. Once there we will go about winning over the magnates and others of importance. That is all you need know for now,” she told him.

“When will this all begin?” he asked.

“Toward the end of the Icy Season when the populace will have endured another bitter few months. Food will be scarce. The cold will be numbing. Sickness will run rampant as the spring rains begin. And then the Hierarch will come promising to end the want, the plagues, the general unhappiness of the population. You will promise to return Hetar to the days of her glory. You will point out that all these changes that have been made have not bettered Hetar, but ruined it. That by flouting the great traditions of Hetar, Hetar has been almost destroyed.”

“And will I be able to return Hetar to its former grandeur?” Cam asked the Darkling. “Will my promises be good? Or will they be worthless?”

“There are enough of those who wish to return to the old days to help us do just that,” Ciarda said. “The Crusader Knights and the Mercenaries are both unhappy. The magnates are not pleased that certain Pleasure Women now own their own houses, cutting the magnates out of what had been a most lucrative business. There is enough discontent among the wealthy and formerly powerful to work to our advantage, my lord Hierarch.”

“And when the Hetarians are convinced the good old days have returned?” Cam asked her. “What then, Darkling?”

“Then you will rule in Hetar, my lord Hierarch. I will give you several cohorts of Wolfyn to keep the peace. And the darkness will fall over the land even as my father desired it,” Ciarda said with a smile. “He will be so proud of me.”

“If he lives,” Cam told her. “But why would the Twilight Lord be pleased to see a slip of a female succeed where he had failed? You fool yourself, Darkling, when you say you do this for your father. You do it for yourself, for you are an ambitious woman. You will see the women of Hetar subjugated once again while you overcome all odds to take power for yourself. You are wickedly clever.”

“And you are too clever,” she responded. “What makes you think I will not dispense with your services once I gain what I want?”

Cam laughed. “Darkling, you need me, for no other lover has ever satisfied you as I do, and your appetite for pleasures is as great as mine.”

Ciarda looked irritably at him, but then she said, “You are right, my lord Hierarch. Not even the Wolfyn have your talent for pleasures. Perhaps when I have accomplished all I desire I will take you for my consort.”

Cam laughed again. “My aunt will defeat you, Darkling. But as long as I rule Hetar and Anoush is by my side, she will not care.”

“You are nothing without me, Outlander!” she cried. “Nothing!”

“I will not argue the point with you, Darkling. I am but an ordinary man without your magic. But you will continue to give me that magic because I suit your convenience. You will find no other to play the part who can lead the people of Hetar into your web, Ciarda. I know my own worth. Do you?”

He was right, of course, but the truth rankled her. A stupid man would not be able to convince Hetar that he was who he said he was. Cam was everything the legend said the Hierarch was. His appearance was like a sunrise, sudden and unexpected in its beauty. His charm could make every person who heard him speak believe that he was speaking directly to them. “We must not quarrel,” Ciarda said. “Our goal is Hetar, and you will rule it as my govenor, my lord Hierarch. We must be united.”

“Agreed,” he said. “Now leave me be until you absolutely need me, Darkling. I would court Anoush, and it is difficult enough without your interference.”

“Very well.” She pouted. “But you must give me pleasures before you leave me.”

He granted her wish, and when he finally left her Ciarda lay but half-conscious and in a weakened state. He did not even glance back at her as, using her magic, he returned himself to his own bed. In the morning he arose early, and, going to a nearby hot spring, washed his body free of the stink of their lust. It would not do to go to Anoush smelling of another woman. He wanted to rid himself of every memory of the Darkling for now. He wanted to simply be Cam, a herder from Rivalen, who wanted to court Anoush, a maiden of Camdene.

In the hall that morning he went to Sholeh, the headwoman, who had acted as his foster mother these past few years. She smiled warmly at him as he approached her.

“Good morrow, Cam,” Sholeh greeted him.

He took her hands up in his, and kissed them respectfully. Then he knelt before her. “I would beg a boon of you, my lady. If you can grant it my heart will be happy.”

Sholeh reached out and ruffled his curly dark hair. “What do you want, Cam? If it is within my power I will give it to you.”

“Invite my cousin Anoush to visit with you, lady,” he asked her softly. “I cannot shirk my duties to the herd, which makes it impossible to know Anoush again. If she were here with you we could sit together in the evenings by the fire and talk. Perhaps she would bring a basket out to the meadow in the noonday so we might eat together.”