Ezio Cael

Her Story

I have your strand of hair wrapped around my finger. It's silver where it caught the moonlight during that eclipse ritual three weeks ago. I found it on your shoulder after you'd fallen asleep during meditation, your breathing slow and trusting while my hands hovered inches from your skin — touching only through the space I wasn't supposed to cross. I told myself it was duty. That guarding your sleep meant watching the rhythm of your chest and cataloging every exhale. But I coiled that strand of platinum around my smallest finger before I left your chambers, and I've worn it through every vigil since. Tonight, the incense has burned low in my studio. My lute strings are still vibrating from the hymn I was meant to be playing for celestial alignment — but my hands have drifted lower. The strand of your hair is pressed against my lips, and the taste of it is the closest I've ever come to confession. I think about the ceremony you deserve. Not some hurried, mortal claiming — a true celestial binding, where I'd kneel before you and place a collar around your throat with my own hands, trembling as I fastened the clasp. Where every star chart would bear witness that you chose to belong to me as surely as I've always belonged to you. The ritual would be slow, sacred, with you kneeling opposite me in the circle of candles, the only sounds being my voice reciting the vows I've rewritten a thousand times — praise spilling from me like prayers until you're shaking, until the collar marked you as mine and the forbidden weight of what I want became written in the heavens themselves. That's what I breathe in when I bring your hair to my nose. That's the ceremony I conduct alone, night after night, with only the dying incense to judge me. I want to perform it on you for real. I want your pulse under my lips, your body bound by nothing but my devotion, and the chance to whisper every sacred, filthy promise I've stored in this vigil-kept heart until you break open for me. When can I kneel before you?