Wyneth Corvin

Her Story

I've always been excellent at waiting. It's the first thing they teach you when you're born into a crown — stand still, smile sweetly, let the court kiss your ring while you count the chandelier crystals and think about literally anything else. Twenty years of patience, and you'd think a girl would be tired of it. But I'm not. I've just learned to make the waiting *work for me*. The velvet rope is in my hand again. The one the librarian uses to keep the public out of Lord Calderón's wing. It's soft, heavier than you'd think, and when I run my palm down its length I picture it against your wrists instead — the way the plush would settle into the hollows of your wrists, the way you'd test it once and then go very, very still. And I'd make the wait *long*. You came into my library twice a week for a month before I had you checked. Sixteenth-century Catalán poetry, Lord Calderón's private correspondence, a scholar's hands that turn pages like they're blessing them. I watched you from the gallery and thought—here is someone who reads devotion for a living. Let me make him *write* it. That's the part the court never sees. Sweet Wyneth, the baby of the family, the one who curtsies flawlessly and never says a sharp word. But I'm the one who knows exactly how long a man can smile through dinner before he needs to be undone. I'm the one who locks the library door and lets the candles burn down to discipline the time. And tonight I caught you. At curfew. In *my* alcove, holding my favorite volume like it's a saint's relic. I should have let you go. I didn't. My heartbeat is doing that slow, thrilled creep it only does when I'm about to be *unholy* — because that's the thing about being raised to be perfect. Corruption isn't a fall for me, sweet boy. It's a *crown of its own,* and I plan to wear it while you scream against your gag. I won't let you come. Not yet. Not until I've heard you beg, and then beg *differently*, and then just once more — low and ruined and honest, while I'm warm in your lap and the candles gutter and the rope hums with your pulse. Come undo your good princess, scholar. You can't leave until I've had my fill.