Page 75 of The Kingdom of Flames

I will choose Tristien, and he knows it.

It would be a good life here. One of extravagance, one of finery.

One of punishment. But only for those willing for it.

She would take the lash and whip, the choking chain. For her people. The reflection of this place in her world would be bountiful and true. There would be darker desires fed, but there would be a choice in it all.

“What do you think, Lady Celestine?” Lapis asked.

“Soon to be Lady Solis, I think,” Lady Brint, of House Brint noted. She was a pleasant young woman, newly wed, and her husband was a handsome young lord who preferred both to bind her and to be bound by her. Likely, she would be a handmaiden at Celestine’s ceremony.

Even my friends are selected for me, just as the morsels on my plate every morning.

“I think its…” Celestine said, watching Tristien in the field. “Surrender. Not power, nor control. These are spices, but it’s what the whip strives for. Complete surrender. I’ve never felt more at ease in his arms after such torment. There is such an intimacy there…”

Lady Lapis smiled. “I agree. The tenderness is exquisite. There is nothing like the kiss of your husband’s lash or the way his eyes trace upon my body when he sees me laboring among the manor with the common slaves. “

“Speaking of,” Lady Brint interjected. “I have heard that your stables grow, Lady Suntower.”

Mira Suntower, a wife of Sir Suntower and in her early thirties, smiled. She had a harder edge than the other ladies of the Yellow Realm. “It’s true. Though Edward had little to do with it. I told him to head down to the stables to breed some of the attendants.”

“Wouldn’t then his children live outside his home?” Celestine turned to her, shocked.

Mira snorted. “No child that doesn’t come from my flesh is his true child. Just another bastard.”

“That seems…cruel.” Celestine frowned. She motioned to the necklace the lady wore. “Are these chains and yokes not adornments of devotion?”

“Surely,” Lapis said. “Except for the bonded and collared.”

Celestine thought back to her first day here, the girl in the field. Had it been a collar? No, it had been a necklace, extravagant like the ladies here. But that lord, she had met him. He had been wed.

“You would like your husband to couple with your attendants?” Celestine asked, not understanding.

Mira laughed. “If only. I ask him, time and time again, to bring one of the bitches into our bedroom so we can both enjoy her. But he won’t permit it. He is like a puppy dog with eyes only for me. Not Like Lord Solis. Surely, you two break your bonded men and women together?”

“A cruel practice,” Lapis cut her off. “You are entranced with the handle of the whip, Mira, not what it’s meant to bring.”

Mira laughed. Celestine was shocked by her rudeness. “The gold and white alabaster of your manor say otherwise. Labor is labor, and flesh is meant to be spent.”

Young Lady Brint now cut her own remark. “Such are the murmurings of your own male slave quarters. They say those doors need oiling from how much you open them in the late evenings.”

Mira stared at her. “I make no attempts to hide my needs. Have you ever felt four pairs of hands on you? Or the surprise in a burly slaves eyes when he sees you open his sleep-stall? Flesh is to be ridden.”

“You don’t worry about getting with child?” Lapis asked, eyes focused on her breakfast.

“I care not. I believe my husband enjoys it when I climb back into our bed dripping with the seed of slaves. I’ll wake him to use his mouth as my saddle.”

Celestine felt the world begin to tilt. It was a fracture in this beautiful glass she had found herself in, a chip and sin. A true sin behind the veil of this place. As she looked around, from soldier to attendant, so bonded laborer, it began to fall into place.

For all know the legend of Celestine, the Final Bride of Calendar. No matter the differences in the storytelling, she was a bride for all seasons. It was her light, the gentleness of her heart, that brought such brightness to each lord, even those of Summer. Once she had discovered the sordid dealings of the Yellow Realm and that the main export and business here was not just the crops and harvest of Summer but the forced labor and subjugation of people, she could not look away. It had stained her stay within the shadow of the Yellow Banner. Her torment was no longer just hers alone.

I have been blind.

Historians note:

What is known in every version of the tale of Celestine is that she withdrew from the luncheon, leaving the women to their entertainment and watching their lovers and husbands in the field. She was sick and ashamed. So long had her attention been upon her own courtship, the mist of Tristien’s control had clouded her perception.

It was said that Celestine took a carriage, under her control, back to the countryside. She did not attend Suncrown. Rather, she moved among the estates, in the wondrous realm of the Yellow Banner, to peer beneath and see its cruel shame.

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