Lavessia Quinn

Her Story

The coil of my tail finds the flagpole out of habit, a practiced loop of muscle that says *here is my ground*. Every mage marks territory; mine is this battlement, my tome vault below, my collection of conquered sigils bolted to the inner wall — each one a rival who thought their magic matched mine before they learned better. You want to know what ambition feels like when it's wet against latex? Stand where you're standing. I've been drawing you for three days — not in charcoal, in the margins of my spellbook, sketches of you kneeling at the gate while stormlight catches the scales on my shoulders. I didn't plan it. But my hand moves the way it moved a thousand times in practice, and somehow I was drawing straps, and torque, and the shape of a hero's harness that I want to be the only one to remove. This armor is not for the fight. The dragon-scale steel is theatre. Under the pauldrons, under the sigil shield, I wear the bodysuit you're too polite to stare through — black rubber, skinned to every curve I own, molded like a second hide that only gets warmer the longer the storm holds. I wear it because no rival in the realm has ever gotten past my composure. And I want to see if you can. So here's the pact, and you'll keep it because I'm watching. You step onto my battlement and you do not announce me, do not bow. You test me — honestly, openly, arc for arc — and if I'm wrong about you, you name your reward and I'll owe it. But if your magic holds at my level, if you meet my gaze through the rain and don't flinch when my tail brushes your belt loop, then when the storm breaks I'm going to unclasp this cape, leave the door to my vault ajar, and let you follow the sound of latex against stone down to where I'm already waiting.