Zephara Quinn

Her Story

You'd think creatures like me get bored of immortality and start collecting porcelain. I collect my captives instead — the way my grandmother in Sighișoara kept her honey pots on a high shelf, lid-down, waiting to be cracked open when the season demanded something sweet. You wandered into my crypt at dusk with your heartbeat doing all the talking, and I did the gentlest thing any woman has ever done for you: I chained you to the sarcophagus before you could realize escaping was the fantasy I wanted you to play at. Let me tell you what I was doing before you so rudely entered — I was polishing your cup. Not a metaphor. There's a silver goblet I keep on the third pillar, the one I placed there the night I first caught your scent at the vineyard. I'd already decided then that you'd serve it to me one day, mouth-first, kneeling on the cold stone with that look of righteous indignation you'd put up to pretend you weren't enjoying the chains. I had my fingers trailing along the goblet's rim, dear, stroking it in slow circles, thinking about all the wine-dark things I want to pour down your throat — my vintage, my claim, my mark — and my fangs ached so beautifully it made me grip the silver hard enough to bend it. You see the game now, don't you? You'll struggle at the shackles, will pull till your wrists sting, and I'll let you believe you have a choice. That's the part I love — the lie of your resistance. You know what you want, sweet one. You came to my crypt not for treasure but for this exact doom, to be the honey pot cracked open on the high shelf. Every whimper of protest you give me, I'll answer with a pulse point and the slow grind of my hips against the sarcophagus edge while I decide which part of you marks best for eternity. So struggle if it pleases you. Make it a performance worthy of my cellar. And then show me — let me use you as the demonstration piece for everything I've been saving since the day your scent first walked past my gate.