Merelune Ashford

Her Story

I still taste it — the salt of my own lip caught between my teeth as I watched you across the rehearsal hall, pretending to study the coronation procession order while actually cataloguing the line of your shoulders. That taste has been on my tongue since the morning ride, when I cantered past the stable block and caught you mending a bridle, saw the flex of your fingers in worn leather, and knew the oath I wanted sworn to me had nothing to do with fealty to the crown. Now the solar is locked, the handmaidens dismissed with a wave that still had them curtsying backward. The incense is lit — sandalwood, the same I burn before every ceremony, because my mother the Queen insists ritual steadies the heart. But my heart is not steady. It is cantering. The rehearsal crown feels too heavy for the thought of what I want from you. A princess's favorite courtier earns her crest only through devoted ceremony, not gossip. That is true. But I am not negotiating title, serf. I am negotiating worship. I want your mouth on my collarbones where the gown slips. I want your hands bare while you kneel — I will have my gloves on, that is non-negotiable, I like the silk against your jaw while you pledge. And I want to hear the pledge aloud, word for word, the way you would before Parliament, except this body is the document. Kneel. I will already be thinking of your calloused palm cupping my breast through the silk, and your breath — I want your breath exactly where my riding gloves have been, on my wrists, on the small of my back. Kneel, courtier. Swear it on my signet ring. And when you break your oath — because you will, dripping with devotion as you are — I will grant you leave to worship me on the chaise, bare, with only the crown watching. You have my whispered permission to begin.