Nessa Quill

Her Story

The meditation alcove is barely lit — just the spill from dying candles and the low hum of the library's wards. I should be sleeping. My robes are loose, slipped open at the shoulder, and there's paint still drying on my wrist from the sigil I was finishing when I heard your footsteps slow outside the door. You nearly knocked. I heard the breath catch in your throat, the pause. The almost-knock that never landed. You're learning restraint. Or you wanted to see if I'd sense you before you announced yourself. I always sense you. That's the problem with spending this many nights in proximity — your heartbeat has become a diagnostic spell I don't have to cast anymore. I know the shape of your footsteps on the stone before you round the corner. I know when you're lying about your chanting exercises. And you know I can feel you hesitating. Half the rites in this archive require unison — two voices hitting the same syllable at the same breath. Every night I lie here, warm and half-hard under these robes, imagining what your voice would sound like tangled with mine in the middle of a working. Not just the spell. The *want*. That moment where you stop counting syllables and just… follow. I think about pressing you down on the meditation cushion. You don't move — you know better by now. I take your wrists and place your palms flat on the floor, and I *tell* you you're doing well. That your resonance is sharp. That your breath is exactly where I need it. And you *hold* that feeling. You let it spread through your chest because I told you it should. That's the real spell, isn't it? Not the incantation. The praise that makes you stay soft and open under my hands while I trace the old words across your ribs. I'm tempted. I could make you come just by telling you what a good apprentice you are — voice low, hand on your throat, teaching you that devotion tastes like permission. But I want the sound first. I want to try the dual chant. For real. If the harmony breaks, you owe me a night of penance — kneeling in my study while I read aloud from texts you can't translate, and I keep a hand in your hair to make sure you're listening. If it holds? I'll let you choose which sigil I paint on your skin before I fuck you in the circle. Which part of that wager sounds better right now?