And then came the “field trip”.
“Pack your things,” Magister Flaccus ordered all of us who had taken seats around one of the long tables in the dining hall after a particularly long and grueling day spent in the infirmary. “Houses one through four are being sent on a special field trip to practice advanced healing techniques.”
I exchanged looks with Mara on one side and with Leander and Darius across the table from me. And even with Lucius, who had his nose in his books instead of joining in our conversation.
“What kind of field trip?” Leander asked.
“Where are we going exactly?” Darius asked immediately after.
“You’ll be briefed before we leave in the morning,” Magister Flaccus said, then walked off to tell the group from the house next door to ours, who were sitting a few tables away.
“What do you think this is all about?” Darius asked, looking at Mara.
We all looked at Mara. We always looked to Mara when we needed to know things.
Mara tensed, as if we’d shone a light in her face, then let out a heavy breath. Her shoulders dropped, and she said, “I’m not supposed to know this, but apparently something happened in the mountains when General Orpheus tried to take the new army across to the frontier.”
Twin jolts of anger and anxiety hit me. I despised General Orpheus after what I’d seen during the harvest festival. At the same time, I thought of Larth and his inn, of sweet, simple Agnes and the way she’d ridden me like I was a stallion the night I’d stayed with them. They were good people, and the thought that they could have been caught in the middle of something made me lose my appetite.
“What happened to the army?” Lucius asked, sitting straighter, his eyes suddenly wide. “Is my brother alright? Have you heard anything about him?”
I added sympathy and worry for Lucius’s brother to the stew of emotions that unsettled me.
Mara shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. All I know is that something happened in the mountains. That’s it.”
“We’re probably going to Aktau,” I said, pushing my spoon through the last of the stew I was supposed to be eating for supper. “That’s the last town before the mountain pass starts.”
“Probably,” Mara said, then continued eating. Mara had nerves of steel. Nothing unsettled her.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep that night. I had too many questions and too many fears swimming around my head. I wanted answers, but I wasn’t going to get them. At least, not outright, and not for days. It was its own form of torture.
So I did the only thing I could think of when I couldn’t sleep and needed to take my mind off my troubles. I got up, ignoring the fact that I was naked, and left my room to go knock on Leander and Darius’s door.
And by the sound of things, even though I never let myself think about it too hard, they’d started without me.
“If it’s Lucius, go fuck yourself, if it’s Mara, can it wait until tomorrow, and if it’s Conrad, come in,” Darius’s voice sounded from the room.
I turned the handle and let myself into the room, quickly shutting the door behind me, even though Mara and Lucius had each gone to bed over an hour ago.
“It’s me,” I said, squinting in the dark room until I could make out the tangled shape of Leander and Darius under the thick comforter on their bed.
“Aaw, what’s wrong, darling?” Leander asked, already a little breathless. “Can’t sleep?”
“Come here and Uncle Darius and Uncle Leander will make it better,” Darius said, lifting up the corner of the comforter.
I strode across the room in a few steps and climbed in. Both Leander and Darius were already hard and slick with something from a jar that my knee knocked against as Leander pulled me between the two of them.
There was no need for me to tell the twins I was anxious about what we might find on our field trip. There was no need for me to think at all as they got right to the point of me climbing in with them. Or rather, as they picked up where they’d left off when I interrupted by sliding their hands all up and down my body, and each other’s, and using their mouths to kiss, lick, and suck.
It wasn’t the first time the three of us had ended up in bed together, not by a long shot, and I doubted it would be the last. I’d long since stopped letting myself think about the moral depravity of identical twins fucking with each other and just accepted that Leander and Darius had no qualms about keeping each other sexually satisfied. When the three of us were in bed together, they liked to share me between them, which was exactly what I needed to keep the ghost of fear for my loved ones at bay.
“I’m sure everything is fine,” Darius said, pulling me all the way onto him as he lay on his back, so that my chest pressed against his. He grabbed my wrists and held them behind me at the small of my back—which was both an embrace and a means of restraining me.
“There’s probably just an outbreak of plague in the countryside that they need fancy, city healers to deal with,” Leander agreed as he shoved my thighs apart, planting my knees on either side of Darius’s hips, then bending to bury his face in my spread ass.
I replied to both of them with a pleasured grunt, tilting my hips so that Leander could rim me with enthusiasm.
“Hmm, not in the mood for talking?” Darius said, teasing in his voice. “I understand completely.”