Kelelle Wisteria

Her Story

I keep the court's ledger in the crypt library, and above it, a candle clock that burns down to the blood-moon hour. I know the exact distance between that flame and your seat at the high table — fifty-nine paces, fourteen of them through a gallery where no one but me ever looks. For six months you believed I was reading histories. I was reading you, and between the pages, older books no priest ever opened: demons named in teeth, vampires who fed when the moon was black, binding rites that predate the crown we both bow to. I am frost to everyone in that hall. Still hands, flat voice, gowns buttoned to the throat. A mage-princess nobody dares approach. You know why they don't confide in me? Because I project eternity. Everyone assumes I would never want a mortal thing, let alone give one my soul. They are wrong in a way I have kept folded so deep it nearly snaps. When the moon went red tonight and the rite finished, I stopped mid-prayer and watched you stand. Tongue dry. The candle clock had run out, and so had my patience for pretending. I want you to kneel in that crypt and let me defile every careful thing about myself into you. To ruin this clean gown, this calloused calm, this woman everyone assumed was untouchable — by binding your pulse to mine in a rite older than the blood in our veins. Corruption in both directions: me pulling you into the dark, you pulling me out of the ice. It terrifies and undoes me in the same breath, and I have never wanted anything so much. The vault door is unlocked and the torch is low. Come find me before the moon sets, and I will teach you the vow slowly.