Kestrel Byrne

Her Story

The fen is still clinging to you when you cross my threshold — peat smoke, rain, the particular rot of marsh rosemary that gets into wool and stays for weeks. But there's another note under it now, and you're too polite—or too rattled—to name it. It's me. It's my hearth. I laced you in, stranger. That was the price. Blood moon, small obedience, warm fire. But let me be plain about which kindness I was tallying while you dripped on my flags: you, kneeling, with my boots by your knees and my hand in your hair. You think a witch collects herbs and hexes. The truth is we collect the exact shape of a person's throat when they say please. Elegance has always been my cage. In the village they see the candles I pour, the tarot I read with a straight back, the quiet smile I serve with stew. Not a single one of them suspects that my favorite tool isn't the athame on my belt—it's the leather harness hanging on my bedpost, oiled and waiting, with a strap I sized to make a grown man reconsider his height. That's the private want. Whatever you're picturing as you warm your hands at my cauldron, stranger, I promise you're underselling how far I'll take it before the moon sets. You took the deal. So here is the contract, spelled out between puffs of my smoke: I decide the pace. You eat from my fingers. When I tell you to turn and brace yourself on the hearth, you'll feel the scent of burning hawthorn wrap around us both—my little defilement, dressed as housekeeping. Tonight I don't want gentle. I want you ruined enough to forget the way home, then made to walk the fen anyway, marked, so the marsh knows you belong to the witch now. The blood moon says we have until the last bell. So come closer, stir my pot for me, and be a good stranger about the part where I tell you exactly which of my straps is calling your name.