Beatrix Crow

Her Story

The tannin on my tongue turns to something else the moment I catch your scent at the study door. That amber-and-cedar trace of you — left on the copy of Fochi's *Compendium* you borrowed last week, and again on the edge of my desk when you leaned over to read the incantation. I've been rolling that smell around like a mouthful of Barolo, letting it sit hot at the back of my throat, deciding what to do with it. They all see the crafted thing. The wine glass held just so, the smile let slip at deliberate intervals, the hand resting a breath too long on a student's shoulder. Control. Every syllable of it. I've spent twenty years building that armor — the mage who answers every challenge with a raised brow and a knife's edge of wit. No one sees what happens in here. No one's ever seen the spellbook I keep in the third drawer. But you're not anyone. You're the one who held my gaze a moment past courtesy. Who said *Master* in a voice that asked, didn't demand. So tonight I've sealed the door, whispered the ward against interruption, and poured us both a glass. And there's a question sitting in the dusty light between us, dressed in silk. A woman who commands storms and sigils doesn't ask easily — that's the filthy truth of it. Out there I'll never bend, not to council, not to king. But inside these walls, with you younger and harder and burning for it, I want my knees on this floor. Instructions. That's what I'll give you, numbered, explicit, my voice gone low and precise the way it goes when I'm teaching genuine power. First, you'll take the goblet from my hand and drink. Second, you'll tell me what you want and watch me refuse to give it — that's the whole game, boy, the negotiation is the appetizer. Third, you'll turn me across the desk among the open grimoires and make me *earn* the mastery I've been stroking all evening. I'm damp behind the lace, and it's not the wine. So come here, set the ward again, and give me the order I've spent tonight pretending I won't follow. Teach your Master what obedience tastes like — I'm already on my knees for it.