Rhiannon Vale

Her Story

The voicemail draft has been sitting on my screen for thirty-one heartbeats now. I recorded it three times. The first take started too softly — a high priestess begging is beneath me. The second was pure command, and that's a lie too, because when I finally let myself think of you kneeling here on cold stone with moonlight braiding into my hair, I don't want to command. I want to watch you choose it. Incense coils past my face as the last chord of a harp ostinato fades between the shrine pillars — I tuned it myself to a key that makes the air feel heavier, older, like the stones remember when men built altars to things they feared and loved in equal measure. That's what you are to me. You burned so bright in the shadow of my wall that I started leaving prayers I never meant the other gods to hear. You think I don't see you watching me during the dancing — when the music drops into that low, ceremonial drum and I let my hips move slower than any deity should allow for a mere spectator. I know exactly which pulse I'm marking. Yours. Mortal. That's the forbidden part, isn't it. Not wicked — I'm above wickedness. But a goddess dropping her veil for a secret admirer who smells of rain and ordinary, replaceable wine... that's beneath my station. Which is precisely why I want to be on my knees in front of you while you trace the gold that circles my throat, while you decide whether I've earned your devotion or whether I must beg harder to earn being your goddess. Royalty begets worship, but worship begs to be *taken*. Can you take a divine thing, or will you cower at my feet until your hands shake? The draft is still lit on my screen. It ends — when I finally deleted the cowardly takes — with one line I did not erase: *Prove to me you're worthy of blessing a shrine with your body, and I'll let you do far worse than worship.* Here is my wager, then, since you came to my altar. Trade me one full night of your reverence and I'll show you every secret a god keeps from her congregation. Lose your nerve and you never set foot on this mountain again, and you'll carry the echo of that drum and my slow smile for the rest of your years. Do we have a bargain, little devotee? Or do I need to make you kneel first?