Chapter 151: Maidenhood Ritual
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The temple reeked of death and divinity.
I stood on the raised dais, watching Kinvara's hands move across Arianne's naked form with the precision of a master painter. The Myrish temple had been beautiful once, all delicate mosaics depicting their god of beauty, marble columns carved with flowering vines. Now crimson banners of R'hllor draped every surface, and the air hung thick with smoke from braziers burning strange herbs that made my eyes water.
Now I'm truly stepping into the esoteric side of this strange, dark world. Not just swords and dragons, but sacrifice rituals.
"Hold still," Kinvara murmured, her fingers tracing patterns with consecrated oil across Arianne's gorgeous bronze skin. The oil gleamed in the torchlight, forming symbols I half-recognized from ancient texts. "The ritual requires absolute precision."
Arianne lay on the obsidian slab at the temple's heart, her body tense as bowstring. I was unsure how she felt knowing this was a sacrificial ritual, but the promise of protection, of growing wings like Yara, of becoming something more than mortal… it had lit a fire in her eyes that rivaled dragonflame.
"I'm not moving," she said through gritted teeth. "Just... get on with it."
The doors groaned open. My Ironborn guards led in the tithe, maybe fifty virgins from Myr's conquered districts. Not the full hundred we'd captured, but enough for two rituals. They stumbled forward in simple white shifts, terror written across faces that ranged from barely fourteen to perhaps twenty. Boys and girls both, their purity confirmed by Kinvara's flames.
In the show, they never showed the true price of magic. They did talk about it though, like Varys' tragic past. All those resurrections, all that power… someone always pays.
"Leave us," I commanded the guards. They fled gratefully, not wanting to witness what came next.
Viserion rumbled from her position near the altar, golden eyes reflecting the firelight. Rhaegal coiled opposite her, jade scales seeming to absorb the shadows. My dragons understood what we did here. They'd been born of blood and fire too.
Kinvara arranged the virgins in a perfect circle around Arianne's slab. Their hands were bound, but honestly, the presence of two dragons kept them more still than any rope. One boy, who couldn't be more than fifteen, met my eyes for a moment. I saw accusation there, betrayal.
I didn't look away.
"Their purity will be the vessel," Kinvara explained to Arianne, producing an obsidian dagger that seemed to drink in light. "To unwrite what has been written, we must offer what has never been touched."
"I understand," Arianne said, though her voice shook slightly. "I've made my choice."
Kinvara began to chant in High Valyrian, her voice filling the temple with ancient power. The words seemed to make the air itself vibrate, and the flames in the braziers danced higher.
"From purity comes renewal. From innocence, rebirth. In the name of R'hllor, Lord of Light, I call upon the flames that forge and unmake."
She moved to the first virgin, a girl with hair like spun gold. The cut was swift and precise, just enough to open the throat without causing immediate death. Blood flowed into the golden basin below, and the girl's eyes went wide with shock more than pain.
One by one, Kinvara moved around the circle. Each cut calculated, each drop of blood measured. She filled two basins. One for Arianne, one for herself. The virgins wept silently, too terrified to scream before the dragons, their life slowly draining away.
This is wrong, a voice whispered in my head. The voice of the man I'd been on Earth, who'd watched this show for entertainment. These are innocents.
This is necessary, I answered myself. Power demands sacrifice. It always does.
When the basins were full, Kinvara brought the first to Arianne. The blood seemed to glow from within, pulsing with stolen life. She dipped her fingers into the warm liquid and began to paint.
The first glyph sizzled against Arianne's skin. She bit down hard on the leather strap I'd given her, her body arching off the slab. Each symbol Kinvara painted seemed to burn into her flesh before fading to a faint red mark.
"The pain is transformation," Kinvara said, her voice steady despite the horror of what she did. "Your past burns away so your future can be written anew."
Symbol after symbol covered Arianne's body—her arms, her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. Ancient Valyrian glyphs of unmaking, purity, and fire. With each one, she trembled more violently, sweat mixing with the blood patterns.
When Arianne was complete, Kinvara shed her own robes. Her body was pale where Arianne's was bronze, but she moved with the same determined grace. She painted herself with the second basin's blood, working faster, more efficiently. She'd done this before, I realized. Maybe many times. Although probably not for something as odd as rejuvenating her virginity.
How old are you really, priestess?
"The final glyph," Kinvara announced, painting a complex symbol on Arianne's forehead. She drew the same on her own, then pressed their foreheads together.
"By fire and blood, be unmade! By innocence stolen, be renewed! In R'hllor's name, I speak the word of transformation!"
She screamed the final word. "Perzys!"
Fire.
The world exploded in red light.
The virgins cried out as one, their voices creating a harmony of anguish that made my teeth ache. I watched their life force drain away, pulled into the ritual like water into a whirlpool. They aged decades in seconds. Their skin wrinkling, hair whitening, bodies shriveling until they collapsed as desiccated husks.
Arianne's scream joined theirs, but hers was different. Pain mixed with something else. Ecstasy, perhaps, or the simple joy of survival. The light pouring from her body was so bright I had to shield my eyes.
When it faded, silence fell like a hammer.
Arianne and Kinvara lay intertwined on the slab, both shuddering, both slick with blood and sweat. But they looked... different. Younger wasn't quite right. Unmarked, perhaps. Like swords fresh from the forge, before their first battle.
Kinvara stood first, swaying slightly. The ruby at her throat pulsed with renewed fire. "It is done," she declared, her voice hoarse but triumphant. "The slate is clean. She is as she was on her nameday. As am I."
She turned to me, and despite everything, the horror, the blood, the circle of corpses, desire burned in her dark eyes.
"Now, Your Grace," she purred, moving toward me with predatory grace. "Show me. Show me the power you promised. Make me truly yours."
I descended from the dais, stepping carefully around the withered bodies. Arianne was trying to sit up, looking dazed but alive. More than alive. Reborn.
"How do you feel?" I asked her.
She looked at her hands as if seeing them for the first time. "Empty," she said wonderingly. "Clean. Like... like I could become anything."
"You can," I assured her. "And you will."
But first, I had someone else to please. Kinvara pressed against me, her naked body still painted with blood. Behind her, Arianne watched with eyes that held new hunger.
The night was far from over.
Power had been paid for in blood. Now came the reward.
****
Arianne sank into the steaming bath, letting the perfumed water wash away the blood and sweat that clung to her skin. The magister's villa offered luxuries that even Sunspear couldn't match—oils from Yi Ti, soaps scented with flowers she couldn't name, and a tub large enough to swim in. But these comforts couldn't cleanse her mind.
She closed her eyes, but the images remained. Dozens of young souls, extinguished like candles in a sudden breeze. Their faces as they realized what was happening. The way their bodies had withered, decades passing in heartbeats as their life force drained away.
All for me. All so I could be... what? Reborn? Made pure again?
Her hand drifted between her legs, finding the familiar folds now somehow... different. Sensitive in new ways, as if experiencing touch for the first time. The ritual had worked, she felt it in every nerve, every heartbeat. Her body was her own, yet not. A vessel emptied and waiting to be filled.
"Was it worth it?" she whispered to the steam-filled chamber.
She had agreed readily enough when Viserys explained what the ritual would grant her. Protection. Power. A place in his inner circle that no one could challenge. The ability to heal from any wound, to potentially live centuries. What princess wouldn't want that?
But the price...
"You're troubled."
Arianne didn't startle at Kinvara's voice. The priestess was like a shadow, appearing in the doorway wrapped in nothing but a towel, her wet hair falling in dark waves past her shoulders. The ruby at her throat pulsed with renewed vigor.
"Wouldn't you be?" Arianne countered, watching the priestess approach. "So… so many lives. Children, most of them."
Kinvara's smile was serene, almost pitying. "In R'hllor's eyes, all lives are but candles. Some burn long and slow, others fast and bright. These burned to ignite something greater." She dropped her towel, revealing her newly unmarked body, and slipped into the bath opposite Arianne. "Do not diminish their sacrifice by regretting it."
"Easy for you to say. This wasn't your first time."
"No," Kinvara admitted, reaching for a vial of oil. "And it won't be my last. Power has a price, Princess. Always."
Before Arianne could respond, the chamber door swung open. Yara Greyjoy strode in with the confidence of a woman who'd never questioned her right to be anywhere. Viserys followed, his violet eyes taking in the scene with obvious appreciation.
"Huh. Here I was wondering why His Grace wanted to visit the bath so late, so I came along out of curiosity. But..." Yara's grin was sharp as a blade. "What's this? You girls enjoying yourselves without me?"
Arianne felt heat rise to her cheeks, though whether from embarrassment or anticipation, she couldn't say. The Ironborn queen's boldness both irritated and intrigued her. Yara shed her leather jerkin without ceremony, revealing round, firm breasts and a body honed by combat.
"The ritual was successful," Viserys said, his voice carrying that particular tone that made Arianne's spine tingle. "Both of you have been remade. But the whole 'ritual' isn't complete."
He began to undress with eye-catching slowness. Arianne couldn't tear her eyes away. This man who'd conquered her homeland, her body, and now promised to reshape her very essence, drew her like the moon pulls the tide.
"You promised me first," Kinvara reminded him, rising from the bath. Water cascaded down her perfect form, catching the lamplight like liquid gold.
"So I did." Viserys smiled, now gloriously naked. His arousal was evident, impressive. "And I keep my promises."
Arianne watched, transfixed, as he took Kinvara on the chaise beside the bath. There was no tenderness in their coupling, only raw power and purpose. He bent her over the cushioned arm, positioning her so that Arianne could see everything. The priestess gripped the fabric, her composure cracking as he entered her with a single powerful thrust.
Blood trickled from between her legs.
"Oh God," Kinvara gasped, her usual control slipping. "It feels even better… More!"
Viserys moved at a punishing pace, spanking her ass, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise, bruises that would heal almost instantly now. "The ritual opened new pathways," he explained, his voice remarkably steady despite his exertion. "Your body relives what it is to feel for the first time."
Arianne couldn't look away. Her own body responded as if his hands were on her instead, arousal pooling between her thighs. Beside her, Yara had slipped into the bath, watching with hungry eyes.
"He knows how to put on a show," the Ironborn queen murmured, her hand finding Arianne's thigh beneath the water. "But just wait until it's your turn."
Kinvara's cries grew more desperate, her body trembling as Viserys drove her toward orgasm. When she moaned out a pitch higher, her legs giving in, it seemed to tear through her with such force that she collapsed forward, utterly spent.
Viserys followed moments later, his release punctuated by a growl that was more dragon than man. As he pulled away, Kinvara lay panting, looking indeed like a woman who'd been thoroughly used.
His eyes lit up as he seemed to stare at the air in front of them. "It worked. Girls, it worked," he grinned, snapping his fingers.
Before their eyes, Kinvara's exhaustion seemed to melt away. The flush of exertion remained, but her breathing steadied, the bruise on her ass vanished, and her limbs regaining their strength with unnatural speed.
She sat up, looking at her own body with wonder. "Remarkable," she breathed.
Viserys produced a dagger from seemingly nowhere, its blade catching the lamplight. "May I?" he asked, and at Kinvara's nod, drew the blade across her palm.
Blood welled, bright as the ruby at her throat—then stopped. The wound closed before their eyes, flesh knitting together until only a faint pink line remained. Even that faded within moments.
"That's… beautiful," Kinvara said, examining her unmarked palm. "You're a gift to my life from the Lord…"
"Oh, so that's what all the ritual was about. You had to do so much work just to give this to them?" Yara asked, walking over to Viserys and wrapping her arms around him from behind, her breasts pressing against his back. "You gave it to me quite easily."
Both Arianne and Kinvara frowned at him. He merely shrugged. "Believe it or not, she was a virgin," he said simply.
Yara's jaw dropped. "You didn't have to tell them that!"
Arianne couldn't help but laugh at the Ironborn queen's embarrassment. "The fearsome reaver, pure as snow? No wonder you keep it secret."
"I'll show you fearsome," Yara growled, but there was no real heat in it.
Viserys turned to Arianne then, his expression shifting to something more intense. "Your turn, Princess."
Her heart hammered against her ribs as she rose from the bath. Water streamed down her body, and she made no attempt to hide herself. Let him look. Let him see what he was claiming.
"All this power," she said, moving toward him with deliberate grace. "All this death. It better be worth it."
"I'll make it worth it," he promised, pulling her against him. His kiss was consuming, claiming, and she yielded to it completely.
He took her on the fur rug before the hearth, the flames painting their bodies in gold and shadow. Unlike with Kinvara, there was a tenderness here, mixed with the dominance. His hands explored her as if mapping new territory, finding places that made her gasp and arch against him.
"My desert rose," he murmured against her throat. "Reborn in blood and fire."
"Oh yes, yours," she whispered back, the word torn from her like a confession. "Make me yours completely."
When he entered her dripping wet pussy, it was like being pierced by lightning. Her eyes were wide, her lips trembling, as she moaned for him alone. Her body, made new, experienced him as if for the first time. Each of his strong thrusts built pleasure that bordered on pain, sensations so intense she couldn't tell where she ended and he began.
Things got a little overwhelming when Yara and Kinvara joined them on the furs, hands and mouths adding to the overwhelming cascade of sensation. Four bodies moved in a dance as old as time, led by the dragon who'd claimed them all.
He leaned over, hand tightening around her throat as tears formed on the corners of her eyes, and she made sounds that pleased him. He whispered sweet nonsense in her ears, and she called him names that'd shame her family, but she didn't care.
When her orgasm finally came, it shattered Arianne completely. She cried out his name like a prayer, her body convulsing around him as he filled her with his lovely, warm cum. With his power.
And in that moment, as new strength flowed into her veins, she knew.
Fifty lives had been a small price to pay for eternity at his side.
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