Kelrae Briar

Her Story

The chapel bells stopped at the seventh hour, right as I was teaching you to float — my palm flat against your spine in the cold bathing pool beneath the crypt, showing you how to trust the water. That was care. That was me being kind. My fingers pressed a little harder to keep you afloat, and I felt the whole ceremony shift in my chest like water finding a crack in stone. You know I don't do tenderness. I'm a goddess — I receive, I command, I take my due. But there you were, wet hair plastered to your throat, looking up at me without any of the reverence the other courtiers show, and something far older than the crown woke in my blood. The blood-moon is still burning out there, bleeding through the stained glass. The candles are low. My gown is already torn at the shoulder from the rite's wrestling dance. Ukraine taught me ceremony is never just ritual — it's appetite with better manners. The Easter bread I watched my grandmother knead was a binding, hands working dough until it gave. I want to bind you the same way. Slow. Ceremonious. Undeniable. So here is my wager, friend — because that's what you are to me, and it's the only title I'll let you hold besides one far older. Kneel on the iron collar beside the chalice and let me speak the binding words over you, and if you can keep your composure through three verses of the old tongue, I'll let you go unanswered. Fail, and you stay — in this crypt, in my reach, until dawn. But I've watched your pulse jump in your throat every time my hand touched your spine. You won't last one verse. And I am counting on that.