The Royal Garden Ep. 01

Author's note: I'm eager for feedback, so please leave a comment!

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It was supposed to be the best day of her life. The fulfillment of her childhood dreams. The culmination of years of study, practice, and toil. She was overflowing with exuberance and hope when she boarded the ship, eager to put the tiresome capital city behind her and dedicate her life to becoming the greatest magus the world had ever known.

But those dreams were lost at sea. She felt a feather brush across her mind and was swallowed by darkness, and when she woke up she was lying flat on her back. The cold air was utterly still on her naked skin, and her arms and legs were spread wide and strapped down to a splintery wooden plank. Her eyes cracked open reluctantly and saw nothing but black. Every finger was individually spread and restrained - whoever had taken her knew how to hold a magus, not that she was much of one yet. Her head was likewise immobilized, and when she screamed in terror she made barely more than a whimper. Her jaw was clamped shut, and she could hardly groan in pain. Her left cheek burned. She felt vulnerable and scared, but when her heart stopped racing she was glad to be alone until she could manage an escape.

Being admitted to the Labyrinth of the Lidless Eye was a huge honor. Someone would miss her when the ship arrived without her... in a month. She groaned again and struggled against the bondage. The straps didn't give an inch. Where was she? Except for her grunts it was completely silent, like a grave. Suddenly the chill penetrated her bones and brought tears to her eyes. Was she dead?

Long before she heard footsteps she sensed the girl approaching from high above, circling down a spiral staircase. The girl was young, maybe her age, and her mind radiated the teal and chartreuse of curiosity. When the heavy door creaked open the light was almost blinding and she was shocked to see not only the girl she had sensed descending, but also a man with her. Why hadn't she noticed his approach?

She tried to make words, but nothing came out. The man hung a lantern from a hook on the ceiling and then studied her naked body very carefully before nodding to himself. She couldn't feel his mind at all. He was short, fat, bald, and clean-shaven, and he wore a long, dark coat over fine clothes. She squirmed reflexively, trying to hide her nakedness, but it was.

Perhaps having had his fill of leering at her naked body he loosened the strap holding her mouth shut and said, "Hello, Orchid."

"What? Who's Orchid?" she sputtered. She had been planning to threaten her captor with magic, or even plead for her life, but now she felt a slight sense of relief. "You've got the wrong person! I'm not Orchid. My name is -"

The man put a rough hand over her mouth and looked back towards the girl standing by the door. Her left cheek stung fiercely when his callused hand grasped her, and she squealed. "I know who you are, girl, but no one else can. Your life is not in any immediate danger, but you need to listen to me. You are Orchid."

He must be confused. "I'm not Orchid," she began, but her explanation broke into a scream as the man's hand slapped between her legs, smacking hard against the delicate skin of her pussy. She must have been shaven while she was unconscious, because she felt every ridge of his callused fingers on her pussy lips. "Listen to me!" she began, but wailed when he spanked her pussy three more times in quick succession. Her thighs strained to clamp shut to protect her most intimate areas, but the rough leather held them open, completely exposing her.

Her tears blurred his face as he bent down. When he spoke his breath had a bitter smell, like arsenic: "What's your name, girl?"

His rough hand held still on the outside of her pussy. More than another smack, she dreaded the thought of his fingers sliding between her lips. She wiggled unconsciously as if she could squirm away from his touch, but she had nowhere to go. How could she get free? "My name is Orchid," she forced out.

"Good girl," he said, straightening over her. He removed his hand from her pussy and gestured for the girl to approach. She disappeared from view as she knelt between Orchid's legs. "You can have my hand or her mouth, it's up to you."

Orchid moaned as a soft, warm wetness slid over her pussy lips - the girl's tongue. The girl's face was hot against Orchid's thighs, and her mouth didn't hesitate in its exploration. What was happening here? She wasn't "Orchid", and she didn't want some strange girl to lick her pussy, no matter how good it felt. Stretching her arcane senses downward, Orchid moaned as she read the girl's surface thoughts: "this isn't going to work... she tastes good... she'll try to escape..."

The man grabbed Orchid's face again. "Hand or mouth?" he asked, squeezing her cheeks.

"Mouth," she said, and tried to clear her thoughts. "What do you want with me? Who are you? Where am I? If you know who I am, then you know I'm a magus. I'll be missed soon, and powerful people will come looking for me. You can't hope to sell me into slavery."

"Oh ho, so you're valuable, eh?" the man laughed and pinched at her skin. "Maybe I could get a pretty ransom for you if I start sending bits of you back to your parents."

Orchid's body tensed and the girl between her legs spoke up for the first time. "Master, you're scaring her."

The man laughed again and whipped his palm down onto Orchid's pussy with a loud crack that made her wail. "Well, she should be scared." He spanked her pussy several more times while Orchid writhed on the table, but when he stopped the girl resumed licking. The stinging pain on her pussy only intensified the pleasure from the girl's soft tongue.

The man traced his fingertips over Orchid's naked body. "My name is Vingoth, and I'm the King's cupbearer. What I'm going to tell you now is worth more than your life. Do you play Thief's Castle?"

Orchid sucked in her breath and tried to form coherent words through the confusing haze of pleasure and pain. "Yes. I qualified for ruby marks at school..."

The man drew down close to Orchid's face and spoke in a low voice. "Congratulations. Then you know that the thief almost always gets into the castle, and the real game is to keep her from escaping with the treasure. The King is in danger. His expansionist ambitions have made him plenty of enemies, and there's a spy in his court. I have reason to believe the spy is in the Royal Garden. You're going to join the Garden by impersonating a recently captured princess from Delance, and then you'll use your magic to help me uncover the spy."

Orchid's mind raced. "Join the King's harem to find a spy? You must be insane. I don't know anything about Delance, or the court, or anything. Why did you bring me here? Why me?"

Vingoth absentmindedly stroked Orchid's breasts while he answered. "You have the magical ability required. You look the part," he said, gently squeezing her nipple between his rough fingers, "and no one will miss you. Training accidents in the Labyrinth are sadly quite common."

The warmth and pleasure between Orchid's legs radiated up through her body and drew a deep moan from her mouth before she could help herself. "But I'm a virgin, I can't..."

Vingoth squeezed each of her breasts again, as if trying them out. "Exactly. You're perfect. You don't need to know anything about the princess's past - when a flower is planted in the Garden she receives a new name and her past is forbidden to her." He released her breast and gently stroked her burning left cheek with the back of his finger. "You belong to the King now, and you belong to me. Find the Thief and you will be richly rewarded. You want to study at the Labyrinth? Paid. The best teachers, the best connections, the best artifacts. But if the Thief escapes, or you betray me in any way..." Vingoth trailed off and he rapidly spanked Orchid's pussy several times while she screamed. "I'll find some less pleasant, permanent, use for you."

Struggling for clarity, Orchid stretched her mind towards Vingoth. She should be able to incapacitate him, then maybe compel the girl between her legs to release her... But it was as if Vingoth wasn't even there. Her mind grasped at empty space. Vingoth stood still and watched her while she struggled, gasped, and finally gave up. "Are you a magus?" she whispered.

Vingoth laughed. "No, girlie, but I've drunk many strange concoctions over the years. Your magic won't affect me, and don't use it on Genthi here, she's my apprentice. You'll have to be careful in the Palace. The King wears a ring that wards him from magic and alerts him when it's used in his presence, and the vizier, Carpathi, is a magus himself. If your power is noticed, the game will be over."

The girl, Genthi, slowly slid her tongue up and down between Orchid's pussy lips, slipping the tip into Orchid's hole as she passed. Orchid had never felt anything so incredible in her life. She bit her lip and whispered a question. "What if I just run?"

Vingoth shrugged. "I'm sure you'll try. New flowers always do." He rubbed her aching left cheek again. "Even if you manage to leave the Palace, this tattoo marks you as the King's property. You'll be brought back, and I'm told that the King enjoys disciplining his flowers."

But most "flowers" couldn't read minds. If she could bide her time she'd find a way out. Being imprisoned and enslaved was bad enough, but getting getting mixed up with intrigue in the royal court was a death sentence. Promises of riches were easy to make, but success would more likely lead to an anonymous death, just to keep her quiet. How had this happened?

Vingoth bent close to her again. "I don't need magic to read your mind, Orchid." He reached a hand between her legs and his calluses scratched her skin as he wetted his hand with her juices. He put his fingers to his mouth and savored the taste of her pussy. "I hope you try."

Vingoth smeared a wet streak across Orchid's face and gave her another hard smack on her pussy. "Genthi, get Orchid some appropriate clothes, answer her questions, and take her to the Gardener when you think she's ready." With those final instructions he disappeared up the stairs, leaving the lantern behind.

Orchid's body was a bonfire of arousal surrounding a core of icy fear. As she struggled to make sense of her situation Genthi lifted her head and spoke.

"Do you want me to take you upstairs now?" she asked. "Or... do you want me to finish?"

Orchid's body shuddered in its restraints as her barely contained emotions surged, the fear and arousal blending together in a torrent that had to burst free. Her mind whispered "let me go!", but somehow her body overruled it and said, "Please don't stop."

Genthi's mind glowed with wry amusement, yellow and teal, as the girl buried her face in Orchid's pussy again with renewed vigor. She had done this before. Maybe she was a friend. Orchid had never received an orgasm from anyone but herself, and the feeling of surrender and release was intoxicating. An insistent cry broke from her lips as her body tightened, perched on the edge of a cliff, and then suddenly Genthi's tongue shoved her off into oblivion. Orchid lost all control of herself as she tumbled through endless clouds of ecstasy, with no solid ground in sight.