Chapter 99 – Are You Happy, Princess? (7)
Day Four: The Voyeur's Education
Olivia couldn't sleep.
She'd tried.
Lay in the dark of her underground room, staring at stone ceiling that pressed down like the weight of every truth Erynd had forced into her skull over the past four days.
The slums. The Baron. The throne room. Yggdrasil.
Her mind circled them like a bird of prey looking for something to tear apart, something to make *sense*, and found nothing but more questions.
*What am I doing here?*
*What am I becoming?*
*Why does treason feel more honest than duty?*
She rolled over, punched the pillow, tried to find a comfortable position that didn't exist.
Nothing worked.
Finally, she gave up.
The mana-lights in the corridor outside had dimmed to a soft glow—enough to see by, not enough to feel watched. She wrapped a robe over her nightdress and stepped out, barefoot on cool stone.
She told herself she was just walking.
Just moving because staying still felt like drowning.
She told herself she wasn't looking for him.
She was lying.
***
The corridors of Yggdrasil's underground were quiet at night.
A few guards posted at key intersections, but they nodded to her as she passed—Julia must have told them she was allowed to wander. Or maybe they just didn't care. Princess or not, down here she was just another person trying to figure out where she fit.
She found herself moving toward the residential wing.
Toward the section Julia had pointed out earlier with a knowing smile: "Lord Milton's private quarters. He doesn't use them often—too busy working—but when he does…"
Olivia's feet carried her there without permission from her brain.
She should turn back.
Should return to her room, close her eyes, accept that some things weren't meant to be seen.
Instead, she kept walking.
The door to his quarters was ahead.
Slightly ajar.
Warm light spilling through the gap.
And sounds.
***
She'd heard them before, that first night.
Soft. Muffled. Unmistakable.
Then, she'd fled.
Now…
Now she stopped in front of the door, heart hammering, and didn't run.
The sounds were clearer here.
Breathing. Movement. A low voice—Erynd's—murmuring something she couldn't quite catch.
And responses.
Multiple voices.
Feminine. Breathy. Pleading.
"Please—"
"More—"
"Erynd, I can't—"
Her hand moved to the door frame.
She should leave.
This was private. Intimate. Not meant for her eyes.
But her fingers curled around the edge of the door instead.
And she pushed it open. Just slightly.
Just enough to see.
***
The room was larger than she'd expected.
Warm. Well-lit. A massive bed dominating the center, sheets tangled and half-fallen to the floor.
And on that bed:
Erynd.
And five bodies moving around him like he was the center of their universe.
Olivia's breath stopped.
She'd known, intellectually, that he was with them.
Tamara. Lyra. Noelle. Julia. Zoe.
But *knowing* and *seeing* were different languages, and her brain stuttered trying to translate.
Tamara was astride him, blue braid falling forward, skin flushed and slick with sweat. Her hands braced on his chest, head thrown back, mouth open in a gasp that said everything about what was happening where their bodies joined.
Lyra knelt beside them, red braid trailing over Erynd's shoulder as she leaned in, lips against his neck, one hand tangled in Tamara's hair. Her other hand moved lower, between Tamara's legs, and the sound Tamara made—
Olivia's face burned.
Zoe was on his other side, catlike and languid, tail wrapped possessively around his thigh. Her mask was gone. Face bare. Expression blissed and sharp at once. She kissed his jaw, his throat, anywhere she could reach, while her hands—
Julia sat slightly apart, back against the headboard, legs crossed, watching with those assessing brown eyes. Fully clothed still, though her blouse was unbuttoned enough to show the edge of lace underneath. She held a glass of wine like this was theater and she was the critic taking notes.
And Noelle—
Olivia's eyes snagged on Noelle and couldn't look away.
The small, faithful girl was pinned beneath Erynd's weight, legs wrapped around his hips, arms clinging to his shoulders. Her short hair was a mess. Her face—
She looked *wrecked.*
Beautiful and destroyed and utterly, completely his.
But something was wrong.
Olivia's gaze traveled down, trying to understand the positioning, the way Erynd moved, the angle that didn't quite—
Oh.
*Oh.*
Noelle's body curved differently than Tamara's. Narrower hips. Flatter chest. And between her legs, where there should have been—
There was barely anything.
Just a small, soft rise. Small shaft. No obvious maleness nor femaleness.
Olivia's mind tried to process.
Noelle was… what? Not fully female, not fully male, something *between*, something the Church would have called *wrong* and *unnatural* and—
And Erynd was making love to her like she was the most precious thing in the world.
His hand cupped her face, thumb stroking her cheek, and he murmured something soft that made Noelle's eyes fill with tears even as her body arched into his.
"You're beautiful," Erynd said, loud enough for Olivia to hear. "Exactly as you are. Don't hide from me. Don't ever hide from me."
Noelle sobbed—not from pain, from something else entirely—and pulled him closer.
And then her eyes opened.
Met Olivia's through the gap in the door.
***
Olivia froze.
She should run. Should close the door, flee back to her room, pretend this never happened.
But Noelle didn't look away.
Didn't look shocked or angry or embarrassed.
She just… *looked.*
With satisfaction.
With knowing.
With a tiny, devastating smile that said: *Yes. See this. See what we have. See what you don't.*
Her hand moved to Erynd's hair, fingers tangling, pulling him closer while her gaze stayed locked on Olivia's.
Then her lips moved.
Not speaking to Erynd.
To *her.*
"Watch," Noelle mouthed.
And Olivia, gods help her, couldn't look away.
***
Time became meaningless.
She watched Tamara ride him until her legs shook, until Lyra's fingers and his own pushed her over some edge that made her cry out and collapse forward into his chest.
Watched Lyra take Tamara's place, moving with deliberate, calculated rhythm, chasing something specific while Erynd's hands gripped her hips and guided her exactly where she needed to be.
Watched Zoe press herself against his side, tail lashing, making small desperate sounds as his fingers worked between her legs with the same precision he used for everything else.
Watched Julia finally set down her wine and join them, crawling across the bed to kiss him deeply while the others rearranged themselves around him like planets finding new orbits.
Watched Noelle—always Noelle, because Olivia couldn't stop staring—cling to him like he was the only solid thing in a world that had tried to break her, gasping his name over and over like a prayer.
And through it all, Erynd was… *present.*
Not lost in his own pleasure.
Focused on *them.*
His hands, his mouth, his body—everything calibrated to what they needed. When Tamara needed rough, he gave it. When Noelle needed gentle, he softened. When Lyra needed control, he let her take it. When Zoe needed to be *claimed*, he pulled her close and did exactly that.
He orchestrated them.
Not like objects.
Like instruments in a symphony only he could hear.
And they *loved* him for it.
Olivia could see it in every touch, every kiss, every broken sound they made.
This wasn't lust.
This was devotion made flesh.
This was five women who'd given him everything—loyalty, service, their bodies, their *souls*—and he was giving it back in the only language that mattered down here in the dark.
Her hand pressed against the door frame until her fingers went white.
Something hot and tight coiled in her stomach.
Not disgust.
Worse.
*Wanting no, needing.*
***
She didn't know how long she stood there.
Long enough that her legs started to ache.
Long enough that the sounds shifted from desperate to satisfied to soft and drowsy.
Long enough that the tangle of bodies on the bed slowly resolved into something gentler—limbs still intertwined, but relaxed now. Breathing evening out. Tamara half-asleep on his chest. Lyra curled against his side. Zoe's tail wrapped around his ankle possessively even in sleep. Julia leaning back with that same assessing look, though softer now. Noelle tucked under his arm, face pressed to his shoulder.
And Erynd, in the center of it all, looked…
Un-tired.
Satisfied.
Not human.
Not the cold, calculating weapon who'd shattered her worldview.
Just a man holding the people he loved and being held in return.
Then his eyes opened.
Found hers through the gap.
Held.
***
Olivia's heart stopped.
His expression didn't change.
He just looked at her.
For a long, terrible moment, neither of them moved.
Then his hand—the one not pinned under Noelle—gestured.
A small, deliberate motion.
*Come here.*
Her body moved before her brain caught up.
She pushed the door open wider.
Stepped inside.
The warmth hit her first. The *smell*—sweat and sex and something else, something that was just *them*, mingled together until it was impossible to separate.
She stopped at the foot of the bed.
"If you're going to be a voyeur," Erynd said quietly, voice rough from exertion, "you might as well watch properly."
Her face burned.
"I didn't mean to—"
"Yes, you did," he said. Not unkindly. Just factual. "You came here on purpose. Looked on purpose. Stayed on purpose."
She couldn't deny it.
"I… I don't understand."
"What don't you understand?"
Everything, she wanted to scream.
Instead: "Why. How. This. All of it. How they can—how you can—"
"How five women can share one man?" Lyra murmured sleepily, not bothering to open her eyes. "Practice. Negotiation. A truly alarming amount of communication."
"And the fact that he's worth it," Tamara added, voice muffled against his chest.
Noelle stirred, lifted her head enough to look at Olivia.
Her eyes were clear now. Sharp.
"You want to know why we do this," she said softly. "You want to know how we're not jealous. How we're not competing. How we can look at each other and not feel like we're losing."
Olivia nodded mutely.
"Because he makes us feel like *more*, not less," Noelle said simply. "When I'm with him, I'm not just the broken girl trying to figure out who I am. I'm *me*. Fully. And when Tamara's with him, she's not just the duke's angry daughter. When Lyra's with him, she's not just the commoner prodigy drowning in futures and harassment. When Julia's with him—"
"I'm not just the Awakened girl he saved from a cult," Julia finished, eyes still closed. "I'm his partner. His Jarl. His—"
"Ours," Zoe purred. "We're all his. And he's all of ours. That's how it works."
Olivia's throat was too tight to speak.
Erynd shifted slightly, careful not to dislodge the sleeping women draped over him.
"Sit," he said. "You look like you're about to fall over."
She sat.
On the very edge of the bed, as far from them as she could manage while still technically obeying.
"I don't understand how you can be satisfied with this," she whispered. "Sharing. Never having him just for yourself. Don't you want—"
"Exclusive ownership?" Lyra said, cracking one eye open. "Possession? The fantasy where he looks at only me and no one else matters?"
"Yes," Olivia admitted.
"That's a lie," Lyra said bluntly. "A story people tell themselves because the truth is scarier. The truth is: one person can't be everything to another person. Can't fill every need, meet every desire, be every role. We're not trying to."
"We divide the labor," Tamara added. "I'm his fire. Lyra's his mind. Noelle's his faith. Julia's his structure. Zoe's his shadow. We each give him something different. And he gives us each something different back."
"That's not love," Olivia said. "That's… logistics."
"It's both," Erynd said quietly. "Love without logistics collapses. Logistics without love is just a contract. We have both."
He looked at her.
"You're thinking: this is wrong. Immoral. The Church would burn us. Your father would execute us. Polite society would shun us."
She was.
"And you're not wrong," he continued. "By every rule you were taught, this is sin. Degeneracy. Proof that I'm exactly the dangerous, corrupting influence they warned you about."
He shifted again, propping himself up slightly.
"But you're also thinking: I want this. Not the sex—though you want that too, don't lie—but the *belonging*. The being *seen*. The having a place where you don't have to perform or pretend or be the perfect princess."
Tears burned her eyes.
"You can't know that."
"I can," he said. "Because that's what they all wanted too. Before they found this."
His hand moved, stroking Noelle's hair absently.
"Noelle wanted to stop hiding what she is. Tamara wanted to stop being angry all the time. Lyra wanted to stop drowning in prophecies that made everyone else more important than her. Julia wanted purpose beyond survival. Zoe wanted to be touched without violence."
Each name was a key turning in a lock.
"And you," he said, meeting her eyes, "want to matter. Really matter. Not as a symbol or an heir or a pretty face on a throne. As *you.* Olivia. The woman who's furious and awake and bleeding and scared and brave enough to stand here watching something she was taught to call sin and asking: why does it look like love?"
She broke.
Tears spilled over, hot and ugly, and she couldn't stop them.
"I hate you," she choked out.
"I know."
"You've ruined me. Everything I thought I knew. Everything I was supposed to be."
"Yes."
"I can't go back. Can't unsee this. Can't stop *wanting* this."
"I know," he said again. Gentler this time.
She covered her face with her hands.
"What am I supposed to do? Just… just accept that I'm sixth? That I'll never have you the way I'm supposed to want? That I'll have to *share* you with women I barely know? That this is what my life becomes?"
Silence.
Then Noelle's voice, soft:
"You don't have to decide tonight."
Olivia looked up.
Noelle had shifted, sitting up slightly, sheet pooling around her waist. Her body—small, delicate, *wrong* by every standard Olivia had been taught—was bare and unashamed.
"Stay," Noelle said. "Just stay. Watch if you want. Sleep if you want. Be here. Be with us. See what it actually feels like instead of what you think it should feel like."
"I can't—"
"You can," Tamara said. She'd lifted her head too, blue braid falling over her shoulder, eyes serious. "You're already here. You already watched. You already want. The only question is: are you brave enough to stop lying about it?"
Olivia's hands shook.
"I don't know what I want anymore."
"Then figure it out here," Lyra said. "With us. With him. Where it's safe to be confused."
Julia finally opened her eyes fully.
Looked at Olivia with that assessing gaze.
"You want honesty?" Julia said. "Here it is: this is hard. Sharing someone you love is *hard.* There are nights I want to claw their eyes out. Nights I want to lock him in a room and keep him just for me. Nights I hate that I'm not enough on my own."
She paused.
"But then I remember: alone, I was dying in a cult cellar. Alone, I was nothing. Here? I'm a Jarl. I'm powerful. I'm *loved.* Not in spite of being one of many, but *because* I'm willing to be one of many for something bigger than my own ego."
Zoe purred softly.
"Besides," she added, tail flicking, "it's fun. Watching him with them. Watching them with him. Knowing we're all in this together. It's… freeing."
Erynd said nothing.
Just watched Olivia.
Waiting.
She looked at them—five women who'd offered her a place in something she didn't have words for. Something that looked like sin and felt like salvation.
"I don't know if I can do this," she whispered.
"You don't have to decide now," Erynd said. "But you do have to decide if you're leaving this room tonight or staying."
"And if I stay?"
"Then you stay," he said simply. "You watch. You learn. You see what this actually is instead of what your fear tells you it is."
Her body moved before her mind agreed.
She lay down.
On the very edge of the bed, as far from them as possible while still technically being *with* them.
Noelle shifted closer.
Not touching. Just… near.
"It's okay," Noelle whispered. "To be scared. To want and not want at the same time. To not understand. We were all there once."
Olivia's eyes burned.
"Does it get easier?"
"No," Noelle said honestly. "But it gets *worth it.*"
Slowly—so slowly—the others settled back down.
Tamara's breathing evening out. Lyra curling back into Erynd's side. Zoe's purring fading to sleep. Julia watching for another moment before her eyes finally closed.
And Erynd, in the center, held them all.
His gaze found Olivia's one last time.
"Sleep," he said quietly. "Tomorrow we finish this."
She closed her eyes.
But sleep didn't come easily.
Because her mind was full of images she couldn't unsee, questions she couldn't answer, wants she couldn't name.
And underneath it all, one terrible truth:
She didn't want to leave.
***
When sleep finally took her, it brought nightmares.
She was young again.
Ten years old, standing in the palace gardens with child-Erynd beside her. They were laughing about something—she couldn't remember what. Just that it was warm and safe and *theirs.*
Then the girls appeared.
Tamara, Lyra, Noelle, Julia, Zoe.
Not as they were now, but as shadows. Faceless. Reaching.
They took his hands.
Pulled him away.
"Wait," Olivia called. "He's my friend. He's *mine.*"
But he was already walking.
Already leaving.
Already choosing them.
She ran after him, but the garden stretched impossibly long. The distance grew with every step. And the girls—those faceless shadows—wrapped around him until she couldn't see him anymore.
Until he was gone.
Until she was alone in the garden, surrounded by beautiful flowers and perfect hedges and absolutely nothing that mattered.
She woke with a gasp.
Dawn light—no, mana-light adjusted to simulate dawn—filtered through the room.
The bed beside her was empty.
They'd already risen, already started their day, already moved on without her.
She lay there in the warm indent where they'd slept and felt the hollowness of that dream settle in her chest like a stone.
She didn't want to be left behind.
Didn't want to be the one standing in pretty gardens while real life happened somewhere else.
But she didn't know if she could do what it would take to stay.
Didn't know if she could share.
Didn't know if she could be sixth.
Didn't know if she could be anything other than what she'd always been: the princess who watched while others lived.
She closed her eyes again.
One more day.
Tomorrow, Erynd would ask her to choose.
And she still didn't know what her answer would be.