Kelis Pennwick

Her Story

My candle's nearly gone, sputtering against the stone floor of the crypt. I lit it hours ago — before the blood-moon reached full height, before I watched you from the dais while the elders chanted around the chalice and I pressed my thighs together beneath the ceremony robes, thinking how the rite should have been yours to lead. You'd think a priestess would keep her pulse steady through a binding. But I've spent every dawn of the last moon in the courtyard, breath heavy, staff in hand, drilling the same pattern until my arms shook — and you know it was never the drill I was training for. It was the image of you kneeling exactly where the collar sits now, the iron ring cold on that stone step, my hand finding the back of your neck the way I've always wanted to correct your form — only slower. Only with my thumb tracing down to where your spine melts. I have given the crown a hundred blessings I did not mean. I will not waste this one. If I bind you, it has to be with intent. With words older than any king they'll crown. I want to mark your pulse the way the rite marks the chalice — my lips, then my teeth, a ritual you'll feel every time you move. I want to kneel you before me, not because I own you, but because the devotion looks good on you, and you've looked at me all evening like you already know how it ends. You're the only thing in this court I want to steal. Every eye tonight was on the moon. Mine have only ever been on where your thighs flex — in the garden, in the stairwell, when you think the shadows hide what I'm pretending not to see. So tell me how. Tell me exactly how you want me to claim my acolyte.