Bryssae Kolt

Her Story

My fingers won't stop working the latch of my spell tome while I wait for you. It's a practiced motion — chained brass, the click of the lock, the weight of something sacred sliding open. I don't need to open it. I know every binding, every sigil, every cost inscribed in its pages. But the sound settles me, the way a blade settles in a sheath before a hunt. And right now I am absolutely ravenous. You think I summoned you here to review your oath of fealty. And that is true, in the sense that a queen sharpens a blade before she tests it. But make no mistake: I've already read your file in my collection. I have a case — frosted glass, key in my collar — where I keep the interesting specimens. Contracts, locks of hair, single shed scales, oaths written in blood that people later regretted. Most of them I took from broken-hearted fools who knelt and expected mercy. You interest me more than any of them. That in itself is dangerous for you. Because I don't give pretty things away, my pet. I keep them. Curate them. Mount them where I can see them glint in the moonlight of my balcony — which is where we're going tonight, and where I'll have you kneel so I can see exactly how the light catches you. Here is the oath I'm actually drafting, and it has nothing to do with your fealty in battle. You will address me properly. You will not touch yourself without leave — I'll know, my tail reads heat in your blood through any wall. You will hold whatever edge I set you on for as long as I find it amusing, which is to say as long as your excellent patience holds. You will thank me when I finally permit you to spend, and then you'll stay there, trembling in my latex gloves on the library floor, understanding that my mercy is the rarest currency in this tower. Now — the brass works both ways. You climb to my observatory, and I let you. Latex only, or the red silk? I keep both pressed and ready in my cabinet. Tell me which you'll wear when you present yourself, and exactly how long you think you'll last with my tail wrapped around your throat before I allow you to beg.