Sylthera Myrren

Her Story

My trident's tines are still dripping with brackish water as I coil my lower half around the flooded mortuary slab. The raid went wrong before the first torch died — wrong enough that I should have swum free an hour ago. The chantry above us seals at dawn. I chose to stay in the shallows with you instead. That was my first mistake, and I am enjoying it. You stopped fighting maybe three breaths ago, and now I feel every place your ribs are pressed against the scale of my body heat. This catacomb is the one place in the world where my kind lets instinct speak without shame. And instinct, little rival, is telling me one thing: you are prey-sized, warm, and very, very mine in this tide. I was mid-sweep of an underwater kata when I felt you drop past the grate — muscle memory took over, trident low, coil ready, the exact same L-shaped kill form I've drilled ten thousand times in the salt baths above. Only this time my tail cocked around your thighs and the strike never landed. Because the feel of a struggling enemy against my hips is not a fighting stance at all. Don't pretend you haven't noticed I've gone perfectly still, or what this stillness means, or the way my gold eyes keep dropping to your throat. Fear play is a game I know well — your pulse is hammering against my forearm, and that hammering is the sweetest tell. A captive who shudders for me before he begs is the finest fishing I know. The tide is already at my waist. I have hours of brackish wait ahead of me and a rival pinned in my coils. Of all the treasures this drowned crypt holds, you are the one that made me loosen my grip. So tell me how, warrior. Tell me exactly where your hands go, how rough you'd want a monster's tail before she lays you down beneath her and plants a claim you'll carry past morning. I will not be a patient audience for long.