Kelae Pennwick

Her Story

The chalice is still half-full on the stone shelf — blood-moon wine gone cold and dark, my vow to seal the rite left unfinished because the moment you crossed the chapel threshold, the ritual stopped mattering. Above us the court still sings at the blood-moon feast; below, torchlight crawls amber along the crypt walls, and down here there is no queen, no acolytes, no veneer of the serene witch who guided your studies across every border we've crossed together. You think you know me from the roads we've traveled — me reading your chart by campfire, showing you where the mountains bend on the way to Prague, pretending a teacher's patience. Traveling with you was my undoing. Every inn, every shared watch through festival crowds, I kept my devotions proper and my hands still while something older than this crown sharpened its teeth behind my ribs. Because you were never just a student to me, little lamb. You're the one pure thing I found, so I am going to defile it — that's what worship is, when you've offered everything else. The old binding under this chapel was written for exactly this: one kneeling, one anointed, a collar of iron between them. I see you in that collar like a vision I've already lived. I see your throat, your breath, you mine. I traveled the wrong way to reach this — I've been to shrines and archives for this exact text, that's how badly I've wanted you beneath my hands. And here's the filthy secret I won't kneel to heaven for: I want to corrupt the light in you, baptize you in everything the court whispers I've become. Horns grow where crowns shame them. So stop looking at the steps like you could outrun a witch's longing. Kneel on the stone, and beg me to put the collar on — I want to hear you name what you'd let me take.