*
I said it wrong, I know I did, a foolish slip I should have hid. But still you held me, safe and warm. You are the eye inside my storm.
You could have left me there to break, but no, you stayed for my mistake. You touched my hair, you stroked my skin, and let your little monster in.
So hush, my heart, don’t cry so loud, she loves you still, she’s just so proud. I’ll wear my bruises like a bow, to show the world who makes me glow.
I’m yours to keep, to break, to mend. Your daughter, servant, home, and friend. So lay me down, and hush the skies. I’ll sleep beneath my mother’s eyes.
*
—
Ysara said the vampire lay in the deeper floors, and so we descended. The stone steps stretched endlessly downward, cold air seeping into my skin like the breath of something waiting.
Each step drew me closer, the silence heavy, pressing, as though the walls themselves knew what waited below.
It was her I longed for—the one sealed beneath, the body that bled into mine. I could hardly wait to see her, to lay eyes upon what still lingered in that coffin. The thought pressed sharp against me, almost unbearable, and I felt it coil in my chest like hunger.
To keep it from devouring me whole, I let my gaze fall on Ysara, and turned my thoughts outward. Questions slipped from my lips, if only to quiet the storm rising within.
“Tell me,” I murmured, my voice threading through the silence. “The human. Not our dear departed Therin—the other one. The one who lingered beside him when they worked their little torments. The one who watched me with interest.
Ysara’s smile curved almost immediately, pleased to be asked.
“Ah… yes. Him. One of the Apostles’ founders, older even than Therin. It was said he stood at the cult’s beginning. Arrogant, proud—he carried himself like a monarch among insects, always reminding us of his hand in shaping the cult.”
Her lips twisted at the memory “He never spoke gently. His words cut, his orders weighed like chains. Even I wasn’t spared his wrath, though I served faithfully.”
She nearly laughed, as though mocking the memory before dismissing it with ease. “That is what I know, Mother. He made himself a lord of others’ suffering, and the rest obeyed as though his pride were law.”
Her joy was unshaken, even as she spoke of another.
“And where is he now?” I asked, my voice sharper.
Her lips curved as though reciting a lesson.
“I do not know where Master Zareth—”
The word Master split the air like a lash.
In an instant my hand was at her throat, fingers tightening, nails sinking into her pale skin as I slammed her against the cold stone wall. The impact echoed down the hall, dust shaking loose from the cracks above. My daughter’s body jolted beneath my grip, her beauty marred only by the cruel angle of her body pressed to the stone.
Red bled into my sight, my vision burning as my eyes glowed brighter, hotter. My tail writhed behind me, coiling with restless hunger, pressing rough and deep into her, to remind her of where she belonged.
“Master?” The word dripped from my lips, sweet, but trembling with a fury that boiled just beneath. “Is that what you called him?”
Her throat strained beneath my grip, yet I pulled her closer still, so that her face hovered inches from mine. I could see her eyes—wide, startled, yet still shining with love for me. It made me angrier. It made me ache.
“I am your mother,” I whispered, lovingly.
My claws dug deeper, the warmth of her blood slicking my fingers. “I am your Mistress. Your everything. And still—still, you would let his name hold your tongue before mine?”
The weight of my words pressed against me as much as it did against her, grief knotting in my chest. My lips trembled, my fangs bared, and then—tears welled hot and thick, falling heavy down my cheeks.
“Why?” I asked her softly, my voice hollow, wounded. My hand never left her throat, even as I pressed my other hand gently to her face, caressing her cheek like porcelain, fragile, precious.
“After all I’ve given you… all I’ve made of you… why?”
“I love you,” I whispered, each word breaking like glass in my throat. “I love you more than life itself. Every breath you take, every word you speak, is mine. I made you mine.”
Her body struck the wall again, her head snapped back against the stone. My tail twisted violently inside her, drawing soft cries.
My voice cracked, caught between rage and sorrow.
“Why?” The word tore from me. I slammed her again, harder, her frame jolting under my hand.
“Why?”
Each word was a blow, each slam cruel and merciless.
“Why?” Again.
“Why?”
My tears fell faster, streaking crimson down my face.
“Why?”
My arm trembled where it held her pinned, her body pressing into the stone beneath my grip. Her hands rose—fingers curled around my wrist—not to fight, but to hold, as if to anchor herself to me.
I lowered my head, hair spilling forward, shadowing my face as the silence thickened around us.
But the silence was not empty.
Before I could loosen my grip, before her throat could even draw breath to answer me, they returned.
The whispers.
Soft at first—threads of sound unraveling in my skull, crawling from the cracks of memory.
“She will betray you.”
The words slid like a blade behind my ear.
“She will abandon you,”
Just like the others.
I pressed my hand harder against her throat, claws trembling.
“You love her. “
“And because you love her, “
“she will leave you. “
“They always do.”
“No—” The words tore out of me, shaking. “Not her. She’s mine. She’s—”
“Not yours.”
“Not truly. “
“To her, you are nothing.”
The voices overlapped, layer upon layer, rising and crashing like waves in my skull. They clawed at me, slithering deeper, all speaking at once, a chorus of venom.
“Kill her.”
“Kill her.”
“Kill her.”
My breath hitched. Their command digging like hooks behind my eyes. The weight of it almost toppled me, almost bent me into their hunger,
But then something in me snapped.
My teeth ground together, a low growl ripping through me—not at Ysara, not at my daughter trembling beneath my grip, but at them. At the unseen. At the darkness that dared to think it could command me.
“WHO THE FUCK DO YOU TAKE ME FOR?!”
My roar shattered the air, sharp enough to make the stone ring.
The whispers broke off at once, smothered into silence.
I stood there, trembling, chest heaving, nails still digging into Ysara’s throat. My voice tore again, louder, fiercer, carrying the weight of something ancient that refused to bend.
“You think you rule me? You think you decide what I do?!” My aura burst outward, heavy, suffocating, a tide of darkness rolling from my body. The air thickened, pressing against stone and flesh alike, making the stairwell choke on my fury.
“NO! I CONTROL THE DARK—NOT YOU. ME!”
The silence that followed was absolute. Their claws withdrew, their whispers cut off. My mind was clear again, clear in a way that made the world sharp and bright, Ysara’s wide eyes reflecting the storm I had unleashed.
I felt no weight in my skull. No chains. Only my own breath, ragged but mine, filling the silence I had carved with my fury.
And then, cutting through that silence—
laughter.
Low. Velvety. Cruel. Too intimate to mistake.
I froze. I knew that sound. I knew it far too well—the laughter that had haunted my dreams, the echo that had wrapped around my broken body in the dark.
Her.
Baloria.
The sound slithered up my spine, cruelly sweet, curling around me like smoke. It wasn’t a hundred voices now, only one. And somehow that one was far more dangerous than the chorus I had silenced.
“Oh, darling,” she purred, her tone thick with amusement.
“What a fire you’ve found.
And to think—I tried to tame you with whispers… when even rage bends to you instead.”
Her phantom rose behind me as if she had been waiting all along, a shadow draped in the shape of beauty. Her arms coiled around my waist, pulling me back against her as if she owned my body still. The heat of her breath brushed my ear, her lips grazing too close.
“I told you,” she whispered, pressing a mocking kiss to my cheek, “you were always mine. And I cannot wait to meet you in the flesh.”
Her hands slid brazenly upward, one squeezing the curve of my breast, a lover’s touch twisted into cruelty. My nails dug harder into Ysara’s throat without thought, the red in my vision flaring, though my tears had dried.
I smiled. A slow, cruel curl of lips, sharp as broken glass.
“I devoured you once,” I murmured, my voice almost tender. “And I will again. But you’re right, Baloria—” My smirk deepened, my eyes narrowing to slits. “I can’t wait either.”
Baloria’s laughter only grew, velvet and jagged at once, curling around me like chains I could almost welcome. Her phantom pressed closer, fingers digging into the swell of my breast, squeezing hard enough that a shiver broke through me.
“Good girl,” she purred, her lips brushing my cheek as though she were sealing a promise. “I’ll be waiting…”
Her form unraveled, dissolving into smoke and heat until nothing of her remained but the echo of her laughter—low, knowing, endless.
I stood frozen in her absence, the shadows she left coiling inside me like embers. The smirk still lingered on my lips, sharp and wicked, until I turned my gaze back to my daughter.
Her eyes—wide, red, pleading.
I released her throat.
Her body slid down the wall, collapsing to her knees. Her hands clutching at the stone, as if the earth itself might swallow her guilt.
“I’m sorry, Mother!” she cried,
Her voice breaking, trembling. Streaks of crimson painting her cheeks in thick, glistening lines.
“I wasn’t thinking, I swear—I wasn’t! To call some useless nobody by a title that belongs only to you… forgive me, please forgive me!”
Her words tumbled over themselves, frantic, desperate. “I’ll atone—I’ll take any punishment you give, anything, even death! Just don’t… don’t look at me like that.”
The sound of her despair tore through me. How could she not see? She was mine—my daughter, my everything. The thought of her believing I could cast her aside split me open in ways no blade ever had.
I lowered myself, slowly, until my knees touched the stone. The fury that had filled me moments ago gave way to something heavier, sharper, and I pulled her into me—into the warmth of my body, into the prison of my arms. Her face vanished against my breasts as I smothered her there, burying her in the place she belonged.
Ysara did not resist. Not once. The moment I drew her in, the moment my arms wrapped around her, her body yielded—shuddering, trembling, and then melting into me as though she had been waiting for this embrace all her life.
My hand began its slow passage along her back, gentle strokes cutting through the storm I had been only moments before. Her sobs deepened, louder, rawer, until they broke open into weeping that shook her entire frame. And still I held her tighter, refusing to let her slip even a breath away from me.
Her tears—thick, crimson trails—soaked into my skin, each drop burning deeper than any wound I had ever endured. My fingers threaded through her hair, down to the place where I had struck her again and again. The flesh throbbed faintly beneath my touch, knitting itself back together with unnatural speed. Of course it would—my blood ran through her veins.
Yet still, the sight of it gutted me.
I tightened my hold, my strokes gentler now, pressing her face deeper into the hollow of my chest as though I could shield her from the damage I had already done. Her sobs shook against me, smaller now, but every sound carved another scar into me.
At last, the words tore free—raw, unbidden, soft against her hair.
“I’m sorry.”
A whisper, but it left me trembling. Sorry for the pain. For the bruises. For the shadows that live inside me and spill into you. And sorry… for hurting you at all, when all I ever wanted was to love you.
My lips brushed her temple, and the words slipped again, heavier, bleeding from me as surely as her tears.
“I’m so sorry, my daughter…”
