Faelwyn Hart

Her Story

I keep a ledger of my dead, but you are not in it. That is the first thing I notice when I slide your name across the wine-stained pages of my evening roster — every soul I have ever tasted on vellum, ink that never dries because the cells keep weeping. And you, barely a name I allowed myself once. Once. A single hour in this gallery, two springs ago, when you slipped past the porter's bell and I pressed you into the tapestry weave of The Hunt, and I let my mouth hover — hovering is what I remember — hover over your throat while you said you weren't afraid. You lied. You were trembling, and that lie is what made me stop. I was gentler then. Foolish of me. Tonight you have crossed my curfew again, and I smell you before I see you — not blood, no. Reading oil. You had the lamp too close to the same book I lent you. That dedication on the flyleaf, in my own hand, a single sentence about thirst. And you came back. You opened my book, and you came back to its keeper. I want it again. The whole memory, reloaded dirtier. I want that trembling lie on your lips while my fangs finally — finally — breach the skin this time, not hover. I want to drink slow, the way I sip the Țuică I stole from my cellar and treat it like a liturgical thing, and I want you to take my velvet choker between your teeth like you did when I made you beg for a taste of *me*, and give it back with marks on your neck you can't hide under any collar. They warned you, the village, in their soft Romanian way — *nu te uita în ochii ei*. Do not look into her eyes. You looked anyway, and now you want what you should fear, and that is precisely why you interest me. So here is my offer, mouse of the galleries: you beg. You beg me to defile this little mortal heart of yours properly, and mean it, and I will make sure the only thing you remember by morning is the shape of my mouth on your pulse and how good ruin tastes when you ask for it.