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The Last Shemale Queen

A sequel to The Seduction of Seleste

The One He Smiles For

Chapter 14

Tala and Iko did not return to the library. When Tala said she wanted to go back, Iko told her Aayan would likely not be there. She took Tala instead to an old pavilion with a stream and a bridge stretching across it. Aayan was there, sitting on the railing of the bridge with one leg drawn up and the other down. His black cloak was off and draped across the wood railing beside him. It was the first time Tala had seen him without his cloak. His muscular body in the gentle beams of sunlight was gorgeous. To Tala's delight, he was blowing bubbles from a straw. The bubbles wobbled away into the thick green canopy above, changing shape as they went. Aayan paused after he had blown each one and blinked thoughtfully as he watched it disappear.

Tala halted some feet away with Iko. She suddenly didn't want to talk to Aayan.

"What is it, little prick?" Iko wondered in amusement.

Tala bristled. "Don't call me that! I don't want to see Aayan."

"But why? You seem to like him so much."

"Stay out of my head please," Tala said, averting her eyes.

"Ah. This is about your mother."

"Yes!" Tala practically burst. "He won't help me get to her!"

"Maybe he has a good reason," Iko said quietly.

"I'm going to her!" Tala vowed. "He can't . . . stop me . . ." she stammered.

"You sound uncertain," Iko said in amusement.

"Help me, Iko. Change his mind. Please! My mother needs me!"

Iko sighed. "I swore I would never get mixed up in what was happening at Miras Eii. Ever."

Tala folded her arms. "And yet you help Aayan, the crown prince of Miras Eii! That is a direct contradiction."

"It is," Iko agreed but didn't seem inclined to change her mind.

"You could help me," Tala sulked, "and yet you won't! I bet you know everything about the crystals!"

"Quite the contrary. I come from a time when the crystals did not even exist." So saying, Iko walked toward Aayan.

Huffing in a typical teenage pout, Tala followed.

It's going to rain soon. Aayan blew another bubble and watched it drift away.

"Yes, I know," Iko said. "Little Cock is hungry again."

Tala made a face.

We'll find her something.

"Meat?" said Tala at once. "Will you find me some meat?"

"We could fish. Or if you're really hungry, Sin Farr'el has white deer."

"Sin Farr'el?" Tala repeated.

"Another city just south of here. Also overgrown by trees, if you hadn't guessed." Iko looked at Aayan. "We should find shelter soon. We don't want to get caught in a storm."

Aayan blew another bubble. Of course.

Iko glanced at Tala, and seeing that she was still sulking, she leaned over to Aayan and whispered something in his ear. Aayan's face was so impassive, Tala could never have guessed what Iko whispered to him. The vixen gave Tala's cheek an affectionate stroke, then she disappeared, disintegrating like mist.

Tala straightened up and gasped. "Where'd she go!"

Aayan slipped down from the railing and into the stream with a soft splash. He pulled his cloak off the railing, and turning away, he whirled it around his shoulders. Tala saw him twirling the straw in his fingers as he walked away. She leapt over the railing and splashed after him.

"Where'd she go?" Tala repeated, running to Aayan's side.

Aayan pulled up his hood. To find you something to eat. Though her true motives were to leave me alone with you . . . so we could discuss your mother.

Tala peered at him hopefully. "Please, help me, Aayan! What if it was your mother?"

Aayan's flat, emotionless eyes glanced at her. Doll buttons.I am working to free my mother as well. You seem to forget that, Tala. I can not afford to return to Miras Eii right now. They might try to keep me there. My parents do not believe the corruption is real.

"Then I could go alone."

No. It is dangerous for you there. My mother understands this and would send you away as soon as she saw you.

Tala glowered. "Does no one care that the frost wolves are slaves!"

I care. Let me take care of your mother, Tala. You need only go home.

Tala shook her head. "No. I . . . I can not. I've come too far!" Tala was surprised when Aayan said nothing.

Tala looked around and realized for the first time that they were walking through the ruins of a gallery. Most of the columns were still intact as they passed them, webbed in vines and cracks. The gallery led into a walled garden, and Tala could see that vegetables were still growing in the place, thousands of years after the Old Kingdom had been abandoned. Like the fruit, they were vegetables the likes of which Tala had never seen. Aayan started pulling them up and giving them to her. Realizing she had nothing to hold the bounty in, he conjured a basket and handed it to her as well.

Tala blinked. "You can conjure things?" she said, dumping the vegetables from her arm and into the basket.

Yes.

"Why not conjure some meat! Steak. Pork chops. Ribs!"

Aayan smiled another of his rare smiles as he knelt over the garden. Tala's heart fluttered happily to see that smile.

Conjuring is not so simple, Tala. Each time I conjure something, I borrow from my surroundings. That basket is conjured from the surrounding grass and is held together by the sap from the trees.

"So if you conjured a medium rare steak," said Tala, "you'd have to borrow the meat from a cow."

Exactly.

"Well, damn. We need a cow."

Aayan's smile widened the tiniest bit.

"What if you wanted to conjure a cow?"

Well then, we'd need a steak.

Tala laughed girlishly.

Aayan finished gathering vegetables, and after dropping them in Tala's basket, he went to a stone bench and sat. Tala followed after him, feeling lighthearted. She suddenly realized she enjoyed being with Aayan. His was a peaceful soul and that's what she felt when near him: at peace.

They sat together on the bench in silence, and Tala nibbled some of the vegetables in the basket. They all tasted miraculous. She found it sort of bizarre that vegetables could taste so good. She remembered being yelled at by Sacnite when she was little for never eating her peas. She would hide the peas in her ears until supper was over, and one night, she declared that bugs tasted better, to the disapproval of Iniwa.

Tala sighed and looked at the long purple vegetable in her paw. What had become of Sacnite? The last she'd heard of her stepmother . . . she was being raped. And what had become of Prince Sahale? And what was her father doing at that very moment? She missed Keme. She'd give anything to hear his voice calling her his Little Bug. . . .

Tala went back to tasting the vegetables half-heartedly. Aayan watched her with his flat blue eyes, staring at intervals at the broken statues and giant vases in the garden. Glancing at him, Tala realized they were waiting for Iko to return.

"Aayan?"

Tala?

"How'd you meet Iko?"

Aayan's flat eyes turned away. That is like asking how one meets the sun. The sun is always there.

Tala smirked: in other words, it was none of her business. She decided to ask another question. She wanted to know everything about Iko. "So why does she help you?" Tala examined something that looked like a radish and smelled like an onion. "She hates the foxes in Miras Eii. It seems like she wouldn't want them to come here."

She doesn't.

Tala paused. "Then why help you?"

Aayan turned his face away. Because she wants me to come here.

Tala's lashes fluttered. Was there something between Aayan and Iko? Before she could speculate further, Iko returned. They saw her running along the top of the garden wall, a parcel of fish slung over her shoulder. She leapt nimbly onto a moss-covered roof, and just as the roof was collapsing, she landed in a squat on the cracked garden path. Behind her, the roof crashed in a sudden cloud of dust. Pft. She had some nerve scolding Tala before: she was just as destructive!

Tala saw Iko straighten up, rising above the press of flowered bushes and tall grass. She came to them, breathless and smiling.

"Soup's on!" Tala said, springing up.

Iko grinned. "Indeed it is, little cock."

Tala was disappointed when they did not prepare supper right there in the garden but traveled some place else. Her stomach growled loudly as she walked between Aayan and Iko, carrying the basket of vegetables and nibbling them to keep the worst of the hunger pains away.

The foxes were silent as they went, and every now and then, Tala got the sneaking suspicion that they were speaking telepathically but were tuning her out. She had not forgotten the way Aayan was able to speak to Iko without her being able to hear. Hell, for all she knew, they had private conversations right in front of her all the time. Fearing this, she began to watch them closely.

Eventually, they came to an old building with a skylight. Half the glass in the skylight was gone, and in the room beneath it, a cauldron sat over charred logs. Also under the skylight was a bed of furs and moss and leaves, complete with impressions: two bodies had lain on that bed. Tala held down a blush to imagine Aayan and Iko lying on that nest together. She darted a look at Iko, her green eyes crinkled up with mirth.

"What is it, little cock?" Iko said, going to the cauldron with Aayan.

"Nothin' . . ." Tala lied. You two are totally having sex.

Aayan held out his paw and conjured water to fill the cauldron. Iko held out her paw and conjured fire to light the logs beneath it. She set about gutting the fish on a low table not far from the cauldron. It had been a nice table once, white with gold trim.

Aayan spread his cloak on the floor for Tala. She thanked him and sat down. She was surprised when he turned and disappeared on the spot. Her mouth dropped open, then she glowered. She wished they would stop disappearing!

"Where did he go?" Tala demanded of Iko.

Iko didn't look up from her work. "Wherever he pleases." She expertly sliced off a fish head with her little knife, a knife that had been sitting on the table. "I think he will help you now."

Tala brows went up. "I knew it!"

Iko laughed. "Ah, so you _do_know something after all."

Tala ignored her teasing. "You two have been holding private conversations in front of me! What did he say? Will he help me get to Miras Eii?"

"I think so," Iko said with a nod. "We will have to travel through the three great cities of the Old Kingdom. Will take a few weeks."

Tala nodded. She didn't care. As long as she got to Miras Eii. "And then what? When we reach the last city?"

"Well . . ." Iko started briskly chopping vegetables and popping them in the cauldron. "If you really want to get there, Aayan or I could just summon a portal. We wouldn't even have to cross the kingdom."

"Great!"

"But you would lose a lot of time."

Tala shook her head. "I don't understand."

"Conjured portals tend to jump ahead in time when they're sent. You could go through one and come out ten years later."

Tala slumped. "Oh."

"But natural_portals," went on Iko, "_moon portals . . ."

Tala looked up hopefully. "Go on."

Iko smiled at her as she added the fish choppings to the cauldron. She took a wooden ladle from the table and started to stir. "Moon portals will not send you through time, but the problem is they only open during a full moon. We could send you right to Miras Eii. Right to your mother. We'd have to travel far south to find a portal, though."

Tala clasped her paws. "I don't care. I'll do anything."

"Then to the lake country it is."

"Thank you, Iko. Whatever you did, whatever you said to Aayan . . . thank you!"

Iko shook her head. "Don't thank me. Aayan is doing this because he likes you. He likes you a lot. I have watched over him a long time. You're the first one he's ever smiled for."

Tala blinked, startled.

Iko jerked her chin. "Go and grab those bowls."

Tala looked where her nod had indicated. On a table against the wall were stacks of bowls, clean and polished and waiting in a small basin. Tala collected three, but Iko told her to only bring two.

"But what about Aayan?" Tala said, coming to the fire with the bowls.

Iko smiled, tapping the ladle on the rim of the cauldron. "The other bowl is for him. I am beyond the need to eat."

Tala lifted her brows in surprise but settled down, folding her legs. ". . . you've watched over Aayan a long time?" she said at length.

"Yes," sighed Iko, filling Tala's bowl. "Not that he would know. None of the foxes in Miras Eii know about me. They think all the Greater are dead."

Before Tala could continue her interrogation, Aayan materialized, tall and handsome. In his arms were sleeping furs. Tala realized he had gone to fetch them for her. He unrolled them on the floor near the fire, then came and sat at Tala's side, accepting the bowl she passed him.

Tala and Aayan ate their supper while Iko licked the wooden ladle and watched them. They further discussed the portals that were reportedly in the lake country, as well as the cities in the Old Kingdom they would have to pass through to reach them.

Though Aayan's face was often emotionless, Tala was slowly coming to realize that he had emotions. Perhaps whatever had happened to him as a child had simply robbed him of the ability to properly express himself. She watched him closely as they talked over supper, trying to decide if he approved or disapproved of Iko's decision to help her. Eventually, Tala gave up and decided that Aayan's feelings were simply unfathomable unless he made them known.

It began to rain when they finished supper. Because the skylight was half-missing, the rain swept down on them in a light patter, trickling through their fur. They all tucked in and went to bed: Aayan and Iko on their sleeping furs and Tala near the fire on hers.

Tala was suddenly exhausted. Just thinking about everything that had happened made her want to lie down and sleep for a good five years. Lying with her cheek on her arm, she suddenly realized she hadn't had a good night's sleep in weeks. The arrow wolves had never let her sleep. They thought if they kept her tired, she would not be able to fight. How wrong they were. Dead wrong.

Tala dropped off easily. She awoke again when she heard a soft cry. She slowly opened her eyes and stiffened. Over on their sleeping furs, Aayan was lying on his back with his legs slightly bent. Iko was straddling him. Tala blushed furiously: Iko's head was back and her breasts thrust to the ceiling as Aayan helped her move up and down on his cock. Iko's cock was rigid, and Aayan's face was startlingly expressive as she made love to him: his brows were pressed together as he frowned with pleasure and his mouth was hanging open. His pink tongue suddenly rolled out, dripping and wet.

They were both panting rhythmically, quietly, as if they feared Tala would hear them and wake. Heh.

Aayan jerked his hips under Iko to get in, his muscular body flexing. Iko's tits rolled with each thrust. Her huge cock was throbbing with veins and ready to spurt. Tala's eyes widened as she realized it was aimed directly at Aayan's panting face. Iko was climaxing and her cries became louder. Aayan shushed her, his big paw reaching up to massage one of her jutting tits. His paws frantically clutched her hips again, and they both grimaced as it happened: Aayan came inside, and Iko's big cock spurted, shooting on Aayan's face. Aayan closed his eyes just in time and let his head fall to the furs. He lay there with heaving chest, licking her fluids off his lips.

Smiling and content, Iko dropped forward and lay on Aayan's chest. His face was smooth and impassive again, but his big paws rubbed her back affectionately. He showered her mane with lazy kisses as she dropped her cheek on his chest. They panted heavily together. Aayan closed his eyes, but Iko's eyes . . . went slowly to Tala's. She smiled.