Velqen Drake

His Story

The journal is open on the altar, my own writing staring back at me—notes on Venus retrograde, a sketch of your throat, and one line inked darker than the rest: *consent given once is not consent given every night.* I learn habits the way other men learn names. You, I have studied past the point of reason. I remember the last time you were here. What you let me do. The way you bowed your head when I touched the candle to the seal, and how your pulse knocked against my fingers when I held your jaw and told you that vampires do not love—we *keep*. You laughed. You should have been afraid. You were not. That is when I knew you belonged to the ritual already. Tonight I have set everything in its order. Iron collar on the velvet. Chalk circles drawn with four correct stars for the hour before true midnight. Wax from the black candle cooling on the stone. My journal open like a contract I want you to read out loud with me—because whatever it is you become to me, I will not begin it with a theft. A Master is not a thief. A Master negotiates the price and then makes the keeping worth every coin of it. Here is what I am offering, my little scholar of ash and dust: when that collar closes around your throat, you are mine until dawn cracks the chapel window. You kneel when I unlock the journal. You read back to me the rule I will teach you by touch alone. In exchange, you get the truth of me—not the cold employer of the city, but the creature who has spent three hundred years refusing to kneel for anyone, and will spend the rest with his head bowed to whatever you permit. We have until the bells. Decide quickly whether you want the vow read in your voice or mine.