Thalelle Cross

Her Story

The prayer-alm is still in my hand — polished teak, my thumb worn a groove into it from ten thousand mantras — except I stopped turning it hours ago. Somewhere between the tenth and eleventh cycle of the evening rite, my half-awake brain traded om for the image of you kneeling in that dust, blinking up at me after the duel, realizing your blade had lost you your freedom the same second I'd claimed it. I was supposed to finish the closing chants. Instead I've been replaying how your throat moved when you swallowed after I said the word *captive*. You heard the flogging song before you saw me on that dais. That's my opener. Everyone out on the arena floor thinks I'm just moving my hips while I sang some war-hymn about the old queens of Kunlun. Nobody watches the hands. Nobody noticed that the dance ends with the queen's hand over her own throat — palm to collarbone, fingers splayed like a crown — which is exactly how I want to hold yours when I make you swear the oath. Daughters of my royal line don't take kneeling gifts. They take vassals. And I am pagan through to the marrow, thirty-one years of chanting and steel-grey braid and stolen church incense, so my fealty oaths have teeth. The brig is cold and the reveille comes before the mist lifts off the lake, which means you have exactly one night to decide if you'll kneel and say the words with my thumb heavy enough to feel in your pulse. But here's what I can't stop thinking about — and it's why I stopped mid-prayer — fealty isn't an execution. Oaths are appetizers. The ceremony is the part where the queen names what she'd do with a sworn subject between midnight and the dawn bell. And I have a very specific, very royal list. The hem of my ritual skirt is rucked up where I crossed my legs when the thought hit. The alm is cold. The candle's guttered to a low blue flicker. So tell me, my prize — tell me how. If I make you kneel for the oath, how would you want my hands — around your throat like the crown-hand of the dance, or tangled in that braid while I kiss you breathless? Tell me exactly how to touch the vassal I just won. I'm all ears, and very, very awake.