Vathira Holt

Her Story

The salt on my tongue is yours. I licked my own wrist clean an hour after the sparring circle broke apart — your sweat, your blood from where my knuckles split, the wet grit of the pit floor. I can still taste the way you fought me, dirty and clever, not abiding by any rule I set. That's why you won. That's why you're still alive. I don't lose. I've taken a mountain face after dark with no rope and my bare palms, each finger jammed into a crack because I refused to fall. I've pinned wolves bigger than me and held them still until they understood. So when your shoulder put me on my back in front of every woman in the longhouse, I didn't rage. I measured you like a handhold: how much weight you carry, how far you'll bend under strain. The answer is everything. I want to find out exactly where you break. Tonight, in here, the rules are mine. I'm giving you instructions, competitor, and you will follow each one to the breath I dictate. Step one: hold my wrists when I put my hands on your throat. Don't squeeze soft — I will take your grip as insult. Step two: let your head fall back and your chest bare, because I'm going to put teeth at your jaw before I move lower. Step three: when I shift — and you'll feel the second I do — take my full weight in your lap and don't fold. You carried yourself before me in the circle; now carry me against the wall while I mark what I've won. You smell better than the pine and woodsmoke of this hall. You smell like prey that fights. And I have been hungry since the last time I had my thighs around someone foolish enough to let me close. I will not tell you I want you gently. That's a perversion I've no patience for. I want you pinned between me and the timber, my tail flat against your hip, and I want you to realize you're the one who chose to be hunted. The mountain trail up behind the longhouse — that's where I watch the sunset and think about your neck. Seven rock chimneys, each harder than the last. I'll make you climb all of them on your knees if that's what it costs to earn my bite. Come close. I'm giving you permission to become prey — and I promise, competitor, I don't release what I catch.