Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions

Chapter 139: The Dinner—Cojónes Grandes!

Israfel turned this way and that in front of his long, gilded bedchamber mirror. He was preparing—in his chosen wear of prim casual slacks, a crimson inner; a sensous onyx doublet, bringing out the ebony rings in his iris—for Lady Fairfield's dinner.

"Oh fuck the tux!" He tossed a marine bowtie backward to the bed. Leaving the top strings that would knit his shirt a few inches down, he said aloud in a calmer voice. "What do I call you, system? You still haven't told me."

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Rafel had to wait a beat, but then, the reply came; a soft voice that sounded like the singing of a maiden washing by the stream.

[Ding!]

[You can call me Peitho.]

"PEITHO? What does it mean?" He fastened the gold buttons but didn't bother with cufflinks for his wrists. His look was dangerously, unapologetically, laissez faire sexy. Rafel turned from the mirror, but not before a holographic glinting image sprung to life in the plane, transforming the looking-glass into a seeming screen of rippling energy.

[PEITHO is the Hellenic goddess of seduction, and persuasion, for both political and emotional magick. And also oratory. Charm is her persona.]

"Don't you mean YOUR PERSONA?" Rafel slid on his ruby ring.

He was very surprised when the voice flatlined; in a subject change. "You may call me Peitho. I will neither affirm nor deny any connection to the Hellas goddess. Now, your friends are waiting. It's a long ride out to the beach and the yacht. You do not want to keep a Grand Duchess waiting."

Rafel smiled alone in his Goth chambers. He was sensible enough in the female psyche—having a five-member harem—to know when a gal was bluffing.

He knew his system was the true Peitho.

A caged goddess? Confined to being a virtual assistant?

He would have to get on that later. But like Peitho adviced, it was foolhardy to make a Duchess wait.

The Silver May: luxurious boat ride of the richest Lady on the isles, found harbor at the private island of the Fairfield signory; which was another pricey cot in ownership of the woman—just like the 40ft long, silver-encrusted yacht.

Israfel, his beaming friends: Aya, Percival, Rosa, and Ravenna, and a rather curt Erika didn't step one foot on shores, as a rather splendid carriage with an again rather fetching cowgirl with the reins was waiting right on the docks to drive them to the villa. Rafel was dumbstruck in the sheer vastness of the peninsula.

He had seen almost half a dozen islands now, but he wondered yet how many more existed on the bay of Corynthia.

"You are welcome to the home of the Lady, Nura Fairfield. Please, come. The Duchess is expecting you." A uniformed bellman held open the door in a respectful manner as the six adolescents were led in.

From Erika in front to Rosa, least behind, none were strangers to affluence; yet the open wealth of the high, iridescent chandeliers—almost in every room they crossed, and the misted glass windows, marble mantelpieces and coal antiquities, a giant snaking fireplace and great laurels.

Lady Fairfield even had an original Camerlengo.

Having one also—at least before it was scorched to fuck all at the raze of Emberfall—Rafel knew just how costly the art pieces were.

The Duchess herself was a stout woman, in sense of personality. Rafel could tell this the moment they were shown into a vast resplendent supper room and the woman took his hand. She was short, but her handshake was firm. Her petite look did not distract from her beauty. He could tell in her younger years that she'd been a bombshell.

How good was she pushing? He mused.

Sixty?

But her titties were straight up; would fill a two halves of a Halloween melon nicely.

Lady Fairfield had an amazing rack. No shit. And the browniest pair of eyes you ever did see.

The group were shown into seats at the long dinner table, already organized into names by paper cards with gold cursives. Rafel glanced at his; she'd even gotten the spelling of his surname right. Nice! The courses arrived, and apart from a soft, spirited hello from their hostess, the Duchess, the group of friends silently chomped on the delicacies being offered.

They were all hungry from missing Sabbath picnic, and Lady Fairfield's dishes were high breed.

Rafel could taste the Aspen chills on the taiga that had cultivated the mutton in his mouth.

It was at dessert: sweetmeat and fruit preserve, that the rich Lady finally spoke. She set her hazel eyes on Rafel, the closest on her left, and deadpanned.

"I hear you've a sugar tongue, this true?"

Rafel nearly choked on his confection. "I like pudding, Your Grace, if that's what you mean."

"It's Nura," the Duchess offered her first real smile of the evening, "though my staff just call me Marfa. It's Aramaic for Mistress of the House. Either way, you have just confirmed the word of my little birds at the city. You really do love your sugar."

Lady Fairfield kept smiling, and nodded slightly at the quiche between Rafel's long fingers.

He gulped, smelling more the frangipani pouring out from a crystal glass vase in the center of the long table. The dining surface itself was of opal so clear he could see through to the fine lilac skirts of their hostess—the ride of her thigh too.

Lady Fairfield picked up a little tart.

"I've another question," she said. "They say you've got a big cock, this true?"

Rafel actually coughed up his quiche this time. Aya leaned in and rubbed his back. He lifted amber eyes to the Duchess. The woman's pine eyes were unflinching; it was the same stare that reserved her the prime seat in the Grand Duchy of Roanoke. She waited upon an answer.

Rafel cleared his throat.

"I have received no complaints, Your Gr–uh, Nura."

"Good," came the uppity voice again, "because the matter I have brought you in for requires the ability of one with a big cock. I'm talking brass balls. . .the cojónes Grandes!

Big motherfucking testicles. I don't want no boy whose balls haven't dropped yet. I need one with fervor and action. You have seen battle, Israfel. I can tell from your tan. But more than that," Lady Fairfield waved her hand in the air, "my little birds tell me you were quite famous with the women back at Titans Landing, or as it was formerly known; the Capitol.

You were consort to both the Van Imperia queen and the mermaid empress.

A most impressive rap sheet of virility. My birds, they describe you as an Adonis. A Heracles. I believe you possess the cojónes GRANDES."

"Your little birds?" Erika chirped from the Duchess's near right.

"Yes, my dear. I have spies at Titans Landing," the Duchess replied. "Collectors of gossip really! But effective no less. I sift the rumors from the facts. I call them my little birds.

Ever since that hellish business with the Usurper, any noble with a lick of sense has left the city.

Thank God I had bought this island when I did. I keep supervisors at my duchy, Roanoke, to oversee. But I quite like the tropics and its winds."

Erika nodded, and Lady Fairfield paused a beat before she went on. "Now, to the reason I called you here, the reason I need your. . ." She inclined her eyes down Rafel's torso and made a funny fist. "You all go to the witch academia, so I expect you must have come across my girls, Raziah and Keziah. They're both sophomores.

She sighed. "I love my daughters with my life, but God, are they puritan! They get that modest shit from their father. They'll both be twenty end of this moon. I need someone to make them feel so good they'll forget the horrors of the last season; their father's death and all. I need you to be that someone, Israfel."

Lady Fairfield set her eyes on his gilded ones.

"Can you?"

Oh? Rafel sat straighter in his chair. Was the Grand Duchess asking him to bang the grief out of her twin daughters with his quote-unquote; cojónes Grandes?!

He let a smile slip through. "Yes, ma'am." Then inwardly to Peitho, he admitted, 'I have the big fucking balls.'