Malenthros
She was still.
Beautifully, obediently still.
I watched the candlelight flicker across her skin—each golden glow catching the curve of her hip, the soft hollow of her throat, the faint bruises blooming across her inner thighs like midnight flowers. She had not stirred since they unbound her.
But her body remembered.
They always did.
I sat across the room, in the old carved chair I favored for post-ritual meditation, and studied the girl I now owned.
Elira.
Her name tasted like ash and honey in my mouth.
She was not the prophecy—not the one we had waited for through centuries of dust and blood.
But she was something else.
Mine.
And that meant more than anyone understood.
When I took her, when I slipped inside her body with centuries of restrained hunger, I had expected the usual: a flare of power, a ripple of purity breaking across ancient need. Virgins always made us strong—for a time. A flicker of youth returned. A sharpness to the senses. A fullness in the chest.
But Elira… Elira was different.
The moment I entered her—her body trembling, her throat choking on a sob she tried to silence—I felt something inside me… awaken.
Not just arousal.
Dominance.
Not just hunger.
Sovereignty.
The power that surged through me was not borrowed from the ritual.
It came from her.
I rose from the chair, slowly, letting my bare feet press against the cold floor. The stone always grounded me—anchored the darker thoughts before they unraveled into action.
She was lying on her side now, arm tucked beneath her head, one leg pulled up slightly. Her lips parted in a half-dream. Her brow still faintly furrowed.
She looked peaceful.
But I knew better.
Even asleep, she fought me. Inside her mind. In the slow crawl of trust. She let me use her—but she had not given herself.
Not yet.
And still… she had whispered the name.
Amarisa.
That alone made her more than property.
It made her dangerous.
I touched her ankle lightly.
Not to wake her.
Just to feel the heat of her skin under my fingers.
The girl had burned beneath us. We had licked her sweat and salt and tasted the divine in her tears. She had been stretched, opened, drained—and she still breathed. Still whispered names long buried.
That made her rare.
That made her worthy.
I leaned down, brushing a lock of pale hair from her temple.
"You don't know what you've started," I whispered.
Her pulse beat gently in her throat.
I could feel it under my lips.
And for the first time in a five centuries, I did not want to silence it.
Vasilios had warned me.
He said she must not die.
I had agreed, of course.
But it wasn't because of the Council's ruling. Or even the name she carried in her blood.
It was because when I entered her, I felt something I hadn't felt in over five hundred years.
Youth.
Not the illusion of it.
The truth of it.
Strength. Fire. Rage. Lust. Purpose.
I felt alive.
And I wasn't done feeling that.
Not yet.
She would stay with me. Hidden in the high tower. Guarded by spells older than her great-grandmother's bones. Her body was mine, yes—but her mind?
That was the real prize.
Because she still held something back.
And whatever that was—whatever memory or power or echo of Amarisa still lived in her—would be mine too.
I would peel it from her like silk from skin.
Softly.
Patiently.
With care and cruelty.
And when I finally broke her—completely, fully—I would build her again.
As mine.
Outside, the storm winds howled.
Inside, the girl whimpered in her sleep.
And I smiled.
Because I knew—
the true heir had not yet arrived.
But when she did, she would come through this one.
And I would be ready.