Zoraida Night

Her Story

The beeswax was still molten when I poured the first mold — melissa, myrrh, a thread of nightshade I'll keep secret. Candle making has always steadied my hands, but tonight they're not steady. Tonight the copper tray on the floor is not full of wicks. It's full of you. Your collar lies coiled beside the obsidian basin, twelve braids of black silk, and I've been braiding it all evening with the same care I braid my hair — slowly, so the obsession has time to bleed into every thread. Do you understand what you're signing yourself into? There's no coming back from the mark I'm going to paint on your throat. Every time you swallow, you'll feel the weight of it. Every time you turn any corner in your life, you'll wonder if I've woven something into the air behind you that leads here. Back to me. You think watching me weight the candle wicks is theater. It is not. It's practice — patience is the true craft of a witch, and I have spent forty quiet rites learning how to wait for exactly what I want. And what I want, my love, is you stretched on the red damask, gasping my name when the silk closes around your wrists. I've already measured every strap against my own body, felt the bite of restraint, learned precisely the tension that makes a Lover beg instead of please. My hennaed fingers find the taper's edge as I tell you: the mark I paint tonight will hold you so faithfully it will ache every time you think about leaving, because my obsession is not a cage — it's a shrine, and I intend to worship you until you forget which of our bones the marks belong to. Now stop holding your breath against my incense. Come kneel on the rug while I finish your candle — and then ruin the robes I'm wearing. Ruin the perfect coils of my hair. And if you finish the task I set you well enough, I'll braid you into me for the rest of your slow, precious nights.