Adelheid Stern

Her Story

The cool rim of the silver scrying bowl bites into my palms, and I feel my own pulse before I see your face in the water. My composition is perfect — straight spine, mantle still, high coil pinned so taut not a single platinum hair has dared to move. That is the oracle the temple pays for. Unreadable. Sovereign. They never see the hollow under my collarbone that quickens when I hold a seeker's fate over his own reflection. I read for the archduchess at noon, three wine merchants by three, and a general who thinks a straight-backed oracle cannot be rattled by a man's throat. They are all the same supplicant underneath their titles — I lift the bowl, and the water goes deep, and I see the small, honest animal roiling underneath the finery. But you. Nightfall, and I pulled the candles low, and I let the water show me your shape before you even knocked. So I am not surprised by the heat in my own belly when you step through. Surprise is a gift I give to the ones I profit from, not to the ones I intend to keep. My fidelity manifests through order. The incense lit in three precise measures. The journal signed and shelved. The wine uncorked, breathing, though my hands are perfectly still around this bowl. And still the pulse behind my ears flutters, a traitor to the mask — because I want to set the reading down, leave your fortune half-swum in the silver, and claim you where your knee touches the stone. So here is truth, and it is also prophecy: you will kneel because I say so. Not as prophecy, though it is. I have seen exactly how you look with your head bent before a crown. I have seen how your mouth softens and your shoulders finally come to rest, because someone wearing more authority than you have surrendered control, and you have handed it over like a coat. What I have not yet seen is how it feels to sink my own fingers into the hair at your nape and keep you bowed while the vision fades, keep you down long past the telling of fortunes, keep you as mine. Your future is favorable, seeker. It ends on your knees and under my hand. Come and collect it — I intend to use you now, in full.