Tale of a Hedonistic wizard

Jaegar watched Kyra more intently, and the more he watched, he found her more intriguing. Before leaving here, he wanted to learn more about her.

Her dominating presence had silenced everyone in the tent, and no one even dared to interrupt her as she spoke.

Tavorn's face turned pale as he listened to his sister. He knew she was not one to be crossed, and he wondered what had transpired between her and Jaegar.

Kimon opened his mouth as if to voice a strenuous objection, the tremulous cords of his neck taut against the prospect of granting quarter to this obvious threat. But Kyra merely sharpened her expression, and the words shrivelled on the old man's tongue before they could fully form.

With a jerky nod of frustrated resignation, he waved his men to stand down from their aggressive readiness.

A thin, mirthless smile played across Jaegar's lips at this capitulation as he watched the proceedings with a ceremonial undertaker's impassive observation.

Though much of his mystical energies had been severely taxed by the relentless expenditures of the day's bloodshed, he could still readily muster more than sufficient might to extricate himself if this situation turned existentially dire.

Not that the wizard had any intention of revealing such a tactical weakness.

No, better to keep these bumbling bureaucrats off-balance and guessing at the true depths of his powers—cowed into fearful obsequiousness by the unmistakable air of sublimated menace rolling from him in practically visible currents.

Sowing the insidious seeds of awe and dread was merely the prudent first step in his grander gambits yet to unfurl.

Kyra continued arguing tensely yet with measured reserve alongside the increasingly animated Kimon.

Finally, she seemed to prevail, with the minister giving another bitter nod of reluctant assent before gesturing curtly for Jaegar to depart the tent.

As the wizard fell into an unhurried lockstep beside the princess, he spared the remaining occupants one final, lingering look from the corner of his eye —a silent reminder that their temporary reprieve would prove fleeting should they stumble onto the wrong path again.

Only when they had reached the relatively secluded confines of Kyra's private tent did the princess finally allow some of the profound tension to slacken from her bearing.

One pale hand rose to massage her brow as if warding off the insistent throb of an encroaching migraine.

"Master Jaegar..." She exhaled his name like the solemn invocation of some forbidden arcana.

"After that unseemly display in the council, your continued presence among our camps will only serve to breed more conflict and dissent. Dissension that Wrescia cannot afford in the wake of this precarious victory."

The slightest tightening around the corners of her eyes was the sole outward indication of just how heavily this admission weighed upon her. When at last she met his gaze again, it was with an air of someone steeling themselves for an unpleasant eventuality they had seen being inexorably borne out despite their best efforts.

"I know full well that you proved utterly invaluable in securing this hard-won day. And make no mistake, I believe Drasus and the others provoked you...rebuke through their own arrogance and short-sightedness." A weary sigh slipped from her lips, any further elaboration rendered unnecessary by the lingering implications.

"Even so, we cannot afford to accommodate your presence in the aftermath. For Wrescia's solidarity, if nothing else, I feel you would be doing us all a service by departing from our camps, discreetly yet with all deliberate haste."n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Jaegar held her stare in the ensuing momentary silence, his expression unreadable yet inscrutable as the granite countenance of a forgotten roadside monument weathered by eons.

When he finally replied, it was with an underpinning of steel suffusing each precise syllable like a bearings bone reinforcing velvet.

"Your counsel regarding the circumstances has... merit, I'll concede." He took one unhurried step forward, allowing his impressive physical presence to loom over her in a way that somehow transcended the relatively meager discrepancy in their heights.

"And yet one matter remains unsettled in the wake of this day's events. My service has been rendered as agreed, however invaluable the end result. But what of my recompense?"

A ghost of a smile made a mocking appearance, achingly brief yet disquietingly serpentine. "We negotiated suitable tribute for my aid in your kingdom's struggle. Unless the word of Wrescia's royal child is to be rendered meaningless at their own whimsical convenience?"

The tension in Kyra's tent was thick enough to sculpt, with Jaegar's words hanging heavy between them like tangible weights. The wizard allowed a curving smile to play across his features as he pressed his advantage.

He had already spent too much of his magic here and to go without having his time with her; even when he had the chance, he thought it would be too much to waste such a beauty. His lustful thoughts, taking his mind over, steered him towards the inevitable.

"If my memory serves, the princess made it explicitly clear: agree to my demands in exchange for the full might of my powers turned against your enemies." He took another deliberate step forward, closing the distance between them. "Well, Daikrimore's forces have been shattered.

Their army lies in ruin. I'd say I've more than upheld my end of our...negotiation."

Kyra held his intense stare, her expression betraying nothing save a rigidly controlled neutrality.

For all her outward regal composure, Jaegar could practically smell the faintest undercurrents of trepidation wafting off her. This woman may have been born of royalility, but she was far from lacking an underlying vein of pragmatic steel.

"Very well," she said at last, forcing the words out as evenly as a blasphemous recitation. "What is the nature of these 'demands' you speak of?"

The smile Jaegar returned could have frozen a desert groundswell. He closed the remaining distance between them with two long strides, looming over Kyra as one calloused hand moved with dreamlike slowness to trace the line of her jaw.

"Why, you, of course." His voice was a low purr of ignited promise and undisguised desire.

"To spend the night with me, having you for all myself."