Undressed by the King

I grew up in a museum. Well, maybe not an official museum, but you could easily call it that.

You see, my father was an archaeologist, and he always said that this was the best profession on the planet.

Every time he came home from an expedition, he brought an ancient relic from his discovery. Thus, our museum-like house.

He would say that being an archaeologist entailed long hours of meticulous digging, in the scorching sun or freezing cold, and getting dirty, but that the discovery was worth all the discomfort.

Archaeologists got to uncover forgotten worlds, ancient ways of living, and objects that no living person ever knew existed.

His words and stories in my childhood drove me to become an archaeologist myself, but even back then I knew his stories were wild exaggerations.

He said one time that there was a one-in-a-million chance that I could be in one place in one moment and in another place in the next moment.

Of course I didn’t believe him. I mean, how could that even happen, right? Teleportation, magical portals, and out-of-body experiences were just figments of imagination.

Right?

Little did I know that I’d experience that in a literal way.

Like, seriously. In a gut-wrenching, stomach-twisting, literal way.

It all started with the mirror I found at my last dig.

It was a spectacular find only because it was intact. I mean, how could a very old six-foot-tall mirror not crack at all after being buried for hundreds of years? It wasn’t otherwise special, and it certainly didn’t scream precious.

For starters, the wooden frame wasn’t gilded. It wasn’t adorned with gems or jewels, either. It was just…simple, with little flowers and elegant curves carved into its sides. And the metal on the glass was greatly oxidized, leading to a splotchy black, barely reflective surface.

That’s likely the reason why the dig team let me keep it and why Malta’s Department of Customs let me take it home.

I dragged it all the way from Malta to my apartment on the twelfth floor of Hedonia Apartments and Suites in the heart of New York City.

Yes, the mirror looked unimportant. Like junk. But I needed to have it. Why? Honestly, I didn’t know. I just felt a connection to it. A feeling that I couldn’t describe.

Plus, it fit in perfectly with my Grecian-themed bedroom.

The first night after I hung the mirror was…haunting.

Besides, I’d had inexplicable things happen to me since I was little. The most common were the vague and unclear flashes of memories that couldn’t have been mine.

I figured I was just remembering some movie watched long ago, so I didn’t give them much thought.

But on the fourth night after hanging the mirror, I couldn’t ignore that feeling anymore. I went over to inspect it, looking for…something.

I looked for holes in the frame that could conceal a camera, which was crazy. I stared into the glass, trying to see behind it—as if it were two-way and I hadn’t noticed.

Then, I felt something. A pull. Toward the mirror. It wanted me to touch its smooth surface.

And so I did. Suddenly, I was pulled face-first into my own reflection.

One moment I was standing in my bedroom, and the next I was face-down in dirt. More like hard, dried mud.

My head was throbbing and I pushed myself up onto all fours, vomiting onto the ground under me and a bit into my long red hair.

It was dark and my head was spinning, but out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement. I saw two silhouettes approach me.

I pushed myself into a kneeling position, settled back onto my heels, and tried to focus my eyes on the two figures.

They were men, and they looked menacing, wearing oddly shaped armor and holding thick, curved blades, which they raised as they approached me. They did not look happy.

I knew I was royally fucked.

Three knocks sounded on my thick door. A welcome interruption from my current situation.

A curly-haired blonde with impressive breasts had been on top of me for half an hour already, and I just. Couldn’t. Fucking. Cum.

To be clear, I enjoyed my concubines—all fifteen of them. Or were there twenty? Hell, I didn’t even know; my council gathered them, not me. But not one was able to satisfy me.

Her moans were shrill and grating. She kept making this donkey-like sound while she rocked her hips up and down my hard-as-fuck shaft. It was annoying. Very annoying.

So I was more than happy for the disruption.

“Get out,” I said as I sat up and swept her off me to the side.

“Aw, no.” She pouted her lips and furrowed her brows. “Are you sure?” She spread her legs wide, giving me a good view of her wet core.

I peeled my eyes away. “I said out! Now!” I turned to get off the bed.

“But, Your Highness”—she pulled me back and tried to crawl on top of me—“I’m still soaked.”

I pushed her back. “Then go pleasure yourself!” I said, scowling at her.

She deflated instantly. And with quivering lips, she left the bed and gathered her clothes from the floor. She threw open the door and stormed out, bumping into a very surprised Sir Guillard.

His eyes followed her exposed buttocks as she scurried away. “Another one, sire? You’ll be running out of concubines soon if you don’t give them the love they deserve.”

“Tsk.” I waved off his words and swung my legs over the edge of the bed, placing my feet on the floor. “What do you want, Guillard?”

“A moment of your time, Your Highness.” He fixed his eyes directly on mine, likely in an attempt to not look at my still-erect cock, which I didn’t even bother to cover.

“Two soldiers on patrol along the Forbidden Forest arrested a woman. They are awaiting your command,” he said.

“Don’t bore me with something like that,” I complained as I stood and pulled on my breeches. “Figure it out yourself.”

I took my leather military jacket from the headboard and donned it, covering my muscular torso. Then I looked in the mirror to brush my long black hair.

Guillard bent his head and made a gruff sound. “With all due respect, sire, I can’t. I think she’s foreign. I don’t understand her language and her clothes are very peculiar.”

I arched a brow. “Foreign?” That piqued my curiosity. Images of a distant world flashed through my mind.

“Take me to her,” I ordered.

“What did I do wrong? Where are you taking me?” I yelled one last time as I struggled against my bindings. My throat and body were sore from shouting and thrashing.

The men had not been kind when they pulled me off the ground and strapped me to the back of a creature that looked like a cross between an elephant and a gorilla.

They also hadn’t spoken to me or answered any of my questions. It was very annoying.

And as usual, no response came from my terrifying captors. Any person in this situation would be crying, but I wasn’t. I was scared, sure, and frustrated too. But mostly I was confused.

I tried to understand my insane situation, and I came to two conclusions.

First, the mirror held some kind of supernatural, paranormal power.

I knew all about the so-called magics of cursed Egyptian objects, voodoo dolls, and items enchanted by witchcraft, but this? This was unlike anything I’d ever known to be real.

I mean, teleportation? Magic portals? Really? Stuff like this only happened in movies!

Second, I was no longer on my Earth.

This place contradicted all I knew about the natural world, and if the elephant-gorilla creature hadn’t signaled arrival to a new world, the darkness of the night sky would have.

Not only was there no moon here, but there were also no stars.

We seemed to be crossing a desert, but there were small pools of boiling and steaming liquid all around. The air was thick and smelled of sulfur and rotting garbage.

Luckily, we were at the edge, and the landscape started to change. The dirt looked more like Earth’s, and the thick, nasty air dissipated and grew lighter, fresher.

As it did, it became clear that the atmosphere in the desert had somehow been blocking the view of the sky, which now danced in a vivid light show above me.

It was like the aurora borealis in the North Pole at its most intense. Times ten. And as strange and wonderful as that was, it was nothing compared to how unusual the plant life and water looked.

Everything had a silvery, glowing appearance to it. The water in a nearby lake shimmered like a mirror, and the plants, though green, had a silver undertone.

The creature stopped in front of a huge palace, and my captors began unstrapping me.

“Let me go! Why are you doing this?” I thrashed and kicked as wildly as I could.

One then held my arms behind my back while the other grabbed my shoulder, both pushing and pulling me into the palace.

“Who are you? Where am I?” I struggled against them, but they were too strong. “I can’t…I can’t stay here!”

Once inside, they led me directly into a huge hall.

I looked around in awe at the tall arched ceiling, thick pillars, stained glass windows, mirrored walls, and humongous chandeliers. Finally, my eyes landed on an elaborate throne, raised on a platform at the far end of the hall.

The men dragged me toward it and threw me down onto the marble floor in front of it. They then stood at attention behind me, staring at the throne, clearly waiting for their king to decide my fate.

“Let me go home!” I tried again.

“Duskime!”

By now, I could infer that this meant something along the lines of shut the fuck up.

Then the sound of footsteps rang through the great hall, and the silhouette of a man, tall and muscular, came closer. He had long jet-black hair, an angular face, and thick black eyebrows.

And he was staring at me intently.

He certainly didn’t look like any king I’d ever seen in pictures or movies. He was young and insanely handsome for starters. He was also wearing shorts and a leather jacket, which was open to reveal a bare chiseled chest underneath.

And he didn’t sit on the throne as I expected. Instead, he walked straight toward me at a quick pace.

I raised my gaze to his.

When our eyes locked, his face flashed with a look of anguish. Or relief? Or fury? I couldn’t understand his expression, but in the pit of my stomach, I felt that one thing was certain.

I was definitely royally fucked.