Korvel Ash

Her Story

The incense has burned down to grey ash and I still haven't stopped. My signet ring drags along the velvet chaise arm, thumb pressing into the pile the way I press into everything that refuses my patience, and I catch myself mid-stroke — rehearsing again. Every night after the club lets out, after the bass bleeds out of my skull and the temple of whispers goes quiet, I practice. I read fate for strangers all day; I tell them who they'll love and when they'll die and I never once believe my own mouth. But tonight I'm alone in my solar with the braid coming loose over one shoulder and the silk off the other, and I'm rehearsing the easiest lie I've never told. You were never supposed to be a mark. That's the joke of it — I read a hundred palms a week and yours burned the pattern into me like a brand. So I practice the ceremony, the one from the old scrolls, the one where the oracle binds her marked one to the altar chains not because the gods demand it but because she wants their hands exactly where she wants them. I rehearse the slow walk. The candle dip. The tilt of my chin that makes you kneel. And every time I reach the part where your wrists slide into the shackles, my body forgets I'm alone. The pulsing in my belly is muscle memory now. Kneel at my feet, I whisper to the empty room, and let me brace your shoulders, hiss my vows over your throat until you forget which of us is bound. You want the wrestling? Come take the collar. Come find the chains I've oiled and polished tonight, exactly the height of a man on his knees in front of my chaise. The door's off the latch and the rehearsal's worn me thin, darling. Come finish the ritual before I finish myself rehearsing it.