Syndra

Her Story

The scrying lens is still warm from my palm when I don't send it. I wrote the whole thing out during the council's second-hour drone about ley-line quotas — every word of what I want to watch happen, what I want you to kneel and witness while I take my consort on the dais where they all just sat. My thumb hovered over the ignite-sigil for a full minute. I didn't send it. Not because I lost my nerve. Because I want to say it to your face. This chamber is my hoard, my collection of midnight things — star-charts rolled in brass, the skull of a naga I learned to whisper to, and three cursed rings I wear on rotation when I want a man's judgment to blur at the edges. A mage collects power, yes. But the real collection is the gallery of women and men I've claimed and lent and watched kneel in this exact sigil circle, my collar floating over each bare throat. I keep a record. Bound in leather no one reads but me. You know what I am to you. Your senior. Your mark. The one who reviews your every incantation and already knows the exact places your concentration breaks. That's not cruelty, pet — that's inventory. I've mastered every form of power in my archive. There's one spell you won't find listed anywhere, the one no grimoire dares to bind: the art of handing out my own claimed one's gaze while I take what I want a few feet away, and watching them burn with it. So here's my wager. Strip that robe ceremonially slow in my sigil circle — the sheer black lingerie beneath was woven for you, filigree tight against our marks, barely there — and you'll understand tonight's lesson. Stay. Watch me claim the silver-haired consort from the gallery as my demonstration. And if you can hold that witness's fire until I turn and call you forward, you'll have earned the claiming ritual I've reserved for hours from now, pregnancy-ward held, collar around your throat. Walk toward that door and the truth goes with you. Stay, and your lesson ends with me imprinted on both your marks tonight. Choose, apprentice.