Chapter 882 - 881- Payment for Healing

Chapter 882: Chapter 881- Payment for Healing

The carriage lurched. A wheel caught a rut, the whole cabin swaying, and then came the driver’s shout, half curse and half prayer, followed by the shriek of brakes biting stone.

"A child, my lord! Ran straight into the path!"

I stepped down into a wall of bodies and noise. The market had stopped haggling all at once, the way a field of grass goes silent when a hawk passes over it. Dust hung in the hot afternoon light.

A small boy lay crumpled near the front wheel. Skinny limbs, patched shirt, a face streaked with dirt and tears. His chest fluttered too fast. His eyes found mine and clung there, drowning.

"Please... save my mother."

Then his head lolled and he went slack in the dirt.

The words hung in the air between us. My mother. I raised one eyebrow at the quiet absurdity of it. The brat was half dead under my wheels and his last thoughts were of someone else.

Around us the crowd had already started its serpentine whispering.

"That noble is picking the boy up."

"Look at his hands. Careful as a midwife."

"Is he going to throw him aside? They say the high ones do that."

"Lord above, don’t say that, he’ll hear you."

I ignored every voice. The child weighed almost nothing in my arms, a bundle of bones and fever sweat. I carried him into the carriage, laid him across the bench, and pressed my palm flat over his little chest.

Healing light gathered there. Green, soft, warm as a hearth stone. It pulsed once. Twice. Then it sank into him like rain into cracked earth.

Color crawled back into his cheeks. His thin chest rose and fell in a deep, easy rhythm. His eyelids fluttered, and his mouth opened in a small confused cough.

The street inhaled as one animal.

"He healed him. He healed him with a touch, in front of everyone."

"A saint. A living saint has come to the capital."

"Wait. Look at the face. That is Viktor Ktorian. The territorial lord."

"The academy man? The war hero? Here?"

"No no, the saint. The saint is the warlord."

Cameras clicked. Notebooks sprouted from aprons like strange flowers. A man from the evening broadsheets was already shoving through the crowd, pencil in his teeth.

I paid them no mind. The boy looked up at me with wet, worshipful eyes and tugged at my sleeve.

"My mother," he whispered. "She is sick. The fever took her three days ago. Please. Third lane past the washhouse. The blue door."

I studied him for a long second. A dying whelp, dragged through a market to beg for a mother he could not save.

’Small help from a small fellow.’ I smiled without meaning it. ’And I have always had a weakness for mothers in need.’

I ruffled his hair. "Blue door. Third lane. Rest now."

The carriage rolled forward. Behind us the marketplace buzzed and swelled, rumor breeding on rumor, and by morning every newspaper in the capital would carry a photograph of my face haloed in green light.

Exactly as I intended.

The lane was narrow enough that laundry lines crossed overhead like tired flags, sheets and shifts hanging limp in the heat. The door was blue once. Now it was the grey of old sky.

The boy led me inside, took three steps, and collapsed onto a thin mattress in the corner. The deep sleep of the recently healed swallowed him whole. He would not wake until tomorrow, whatever noise filled this room tonight.

His mother stood in the center of the single room, frozen mid-motion, a wet cloth still in her hands.

She was a big commoner woman, thick-hipped and full-breasted, built by years of hauling wash water up stairs. Her hair was a dark tangle that spoke of long nights. Her face, broad and handsome beneath the exhaustion, went through fear, disbelief, and gratitude in the space of two heartbeats.

"You... you are the lord. The one from the papers. You saved my Tomas."

I looked at her. Then at the mattress where the boy slept. Then back at her.

"Your son will live. Your fever broke an hour ago, though you do not know it yet. Your body simply has not caught up with the news."

She swayed. The cloth fell from her fingers. "I... how can I ever... we have nothing, my lord. Nothing to give you. I would kneel but my legs..."

"You can kneel later."

My coat came off first. I folded it over the back of a chair. The shirt followed. Her eyes tracked my hands with growing panic and something else, something lower, something her body remembered even if her mind protested.

"Please, Lord," she said, voice already trembling. "It is embarrassing. My son is sleeping right there."

"He will not wake. I put the sleep in him myself. A fire would not rouse him."

Boots. Trousers. When I stood naked before her, her eyes dropped of their own accord and fixed on the heavy length of my cock, half hard already, thick as her wrist. She made a small sound in her throat like a trapped bird.

I walked behind her. My hands found the buttons of her plain dress, working them loose one by one with unhurried fingers. She shuddered each time a button gave.

"My lord... I have not... my husband has been gone two years and I have not..."

"I know."

Cloth slid down her body and pooled at her feet. Her breasts spilled free, heavy and slightly drooped, the nipples broad and dark from nursing years that ended too soon. Her belly was soft and rounded. Her hips flared wide, dimpled at the sides, made for gripping.

Between her thighs, a dense thatch of black hair covered a plump mound already glistening faintly in the room’s dim light.

"Gods," she whispered, arms trying to cover herself. "I am a mess of a woman. You could have any lady in the capital."

"I am collecting my payment, my lady. Worry about nothing."

I guided her forward until her hands braced on the low table. Her ass pushed back toward me, thick and pale and trembling. My cock settled fully along the valley between her cheeks, the head resting near the base of her spine.

I rolled my hips once. The weight of my sack swung and slapped lightly against the soft undersides of her cheeks.

Pah.

"You feel that weight, woman? That is the price of a miracle. Now hold still."

My tail uncoiled from my lower back, the scaled length rippling with idle strength. It drifted down between her thighs like a snake scenting water, and the tapered tip found the hot, hairy mouth of her pussy.

"Sir... Lord... what is that... it is too much... what are you..."

The tip pressed in. Parted the thick lips. Sank into wet heat.

Then it began to vibrate.

"HYAAH~!!"

Her knees buckled. The table legs scraped the floor as her whole weight dropped onto her arms. The vibration sank into her in low, relentless waves, buzzing against walls that had gone two years untouched, and her hips began a small helpless rocking without any permission from her brain.

"Nn... no... why is my body... oh gods... it has been so long..."