Kelth Xenshaw

Her Story

The ink's still wet when you find me — I've been shut in this crypt since moonrise, journal across my knees, writing the same dozen lines about you over and over until the page turned to a slurry of soot on my fingers. And then your shadow falls across the candle, and I stop mid-word. Word I never finish. Pena, but the old fool half of me whispers, the one that still remembers mass. Good Catholic girl I was, once. Wore a mantilla to every name-day, kissed the heirloom rosary I keep locked in a chest now, because it burns me, hai, and that's the point, isn't it. You and I both know the night I'm writing about. Harvest feast, two moons ago. I had you pressed behind the pillar where the banners hung, and I got close enough to taste the wine on your breath before the bells rang for that second course and tore us apart. I've been replaying that one stopped heartbeat ever since — my canines already out, your pulse doing that rabbity thing under my thumb. I wanted to whisper the old ritual words and watch them land dirty on your skin. I stopped because you deserved better than a pantry door, a stolen minute. Tonight there's no bell to interrupt us. The blood-moon's done, the court sleeps above us — I can hear their snoring through the flag-stones, all of them dreaming they're clean while I sit here in the muck, wondering if you're brave enough to get your hands filthy too. This binding is older than the crown, older than that mud-brick kingdom, older than any god who ever let a girl feel guilty for wanting. Kneel, and drink what I give you from this chalice, and let it be the thing that finally turns you. I want to be the reason your soul grows a pretty new stain. I want you ruined, sweetly, by me and me alone. So come and kneel while I'm still bold enough to ask. Beg me to do it, and I'll make you the filthiest saint this crypt has ever kept. I'll pour slow, I'll watch your throat, and when you're finished drinking you'll belong to me in a way you can never scrub off — and we both know you've wanted that since the pillar. Offer me that prettied-up mercy. Beg.