Winter’s Tale
15 Eighth night, part 2 — Revelations
When everything was right in your world, no problems or concerns weighing you down, have you ever stood on a vertiginous ledge and felt the impulse to hurl yourself from it for no rational reason you could fathom? That was what it was like being spellbound by Layla. Every moment was bliss renewed, perfectly content orbiting in her presence but balanced upon a precipice of endless want to submit. Longing for a command, the more extreme the better to prove our submission, the greater the pleasure our fetish rewarded us with.
“Thank you for your vows. Consider them bound into our pact, my beautiful slaves,” decreed our Sovereign pact-sister, first of our troika.
“Yes, Master,” we concurred in union.
“Do we please you, Master? Now we are enslaved,” I asked, desperate to know her happiness was as contingent as ours upon our submission.
“Indeed, Thrall. It is what I have always wanted,” Master replied sincerely.
“Since we first met?” Slave wondered, with a touch of arrogance.
“Much longer than that,” Master replied. We laughed, assuming she jested.
“Will you use us now, Master?” Summer added, eagerly. I nodded my enthusiasm, thirsty for a taste of her.
“There is plenty of time for that later, Slave. Let my spell settle upon you. I have branded your souls. That is a significant undertaking. Your entire being is reconfiguring itself around your vow. Give it a chance to settle. For now, as we stroll, tell me of your time in this forest. You say you know it as well as anyone,” Master shifted our focus, and we were only too happy to comply.
For my part, I felt as if all that needed to be done to me had been accomplished. For as long as I could , I had always wanted a vampire to carve my submission into my soul and indoctrinate me into her service. It was all I ever cared about. But…
But ‘her’ service? Always? How could that be?
I had only realised I was attracted to women a few nights ago, which was a life-changing surprise. I had never fantasised about women before then. Searching my memories for my old fantasies, the image of Master seducing me was the only thing I could find. It was confusing, so perhaps she was correct that the process of ‘reconfiguring’ myself was far from complete. I had sworn to love, desire and obey my only Sovereign less than an hour ago, so perhaps the spell was adjusting my memories to make her the centre of everything. The realisation that I was being made a better slave was intoxicating but also a little troubling. Master was correct, of course. She was always right.
So, we shared our knowledge of the forest we had grown up in, the various nooks of the wooded valley slopes, the numerous vantage points and our favourite spots. We loved it all dearly and there was a quiet sorrow in realising that leaving home would mean saying farewell to the valley, perhaps forever. Despite her perfect domination, Master listened as she always had, interested in the trivialities we had to share, making pertinent comments and questions, just as she had on our walk home that first night.
As we sauntered under the trees along the riverbank upstream from the cabin, I shared a memory of when I twisted my ankle trying to cross the stream, eight summers ago. As I filled in the details, our Master suddenly grabbed Slave and began ionately kissing her. Naturally, my sister enthusiastically reciprocated, running their hands over each other, groping breasts and rubbing sex, decorating each other with kisses.
Not upset, only confused, I stopped talking and thought perhaps I should them, when Master glanced up from her fondling to order me to continue my story. The compulsion to talk as if nothing remarkable was happening, no matter how brazen the display beside me became, held its own erotic potency. Our Sovereign’s ability to focus her ion on Slave, while occasionally responding to my monologue in a perfectly civil fashion added a deferential delight to the helplessness that she held us under. It seemed fair. After all, I had considered fucking our lover in front of my mindless sister last night. How far my slavery had come since only yesterday.
My desire to them as my pact-sisters caressed against a tree, was effortlessly held in check by Master’s control, which brought small waves of pleasure across my entire body. My sluttish impulses wrestled helplessly under the yoke of my obedience in a swirling spiral of desire.
Following my orders, I recounted the three months it took for my ankle to fully heal. Father had made a walking stick for me, which I kept by my bed to this day. Mischievously, I mentioned Slave had suffered a much more grievous injury a few years later.
Master broke off from kissing Slave to ask her, “What injury?”
“Eh? Oh, I was impaled,” Slave stated matter-of-factly. She appeared to find it difficult to switch from the ion of their embrace to making conversation.
“Impaled, you say,” Master repeated with an odd note of lascivious cruelty in her tone. “Tell me more.” She cast Slave aside to grab me instead, immediately sought my lips with hers, kneaded my breasts with her supple hands, now warmed by our blood. Slave arched an eyebrow in surprise but understood her duty and obeyed while Master and I ionately entangled in front of her. It was marvellous to be her plaything.
“We were always climbing trees when we were younger, and I fell out of one. This was about five years ago. We were racing to see who could climb the highest. I won but the branch I reached could not hold my weight. It broke and l must have hit every branch on the way down,” Slave elaborated. “That really hurt but the true problem was one of those branches stabbed me in my side. I still have a scar four inches long. It’s one of the only ways you can tell us apart.”
That last comment caught Master’s attention. All too quickly, she released me from her questing hands.
“Truly? Where is the tree? I wish to see it,” Sovereign demanded.
“It is not there anymore. Father cut it down. We used it for firewood,” Slave explained sheepishly. We giggled at the memory of Da’s rather sweet, if unnecessary, act of paternal revenge.
“Indeed. No matter. I wish to see this scar. Both of you, be naked. Now,” she ordered.
The pleasurable spur of obeying could not disguise that, in all our time together, we had yet to be fully nude before our beloved. I had been looking forward to it, even dreamt about it, but was weirdly coy now it was happening. Our Sovereign had complete confidence when she had stripped in front of us, but then she had such a beautiful body. Would she like what she saw of ours?
It seemed absurd to be shy given how much sex and blood we had shared but only our parents had ever seen us unclothed before. It felt a surprisingly important step to take. Thankfully, Master’s compulsion gave me strength. Whatever my misgivings, I lived only to obey, so my concerns did not slow my haste to comply. Soon, my clothes and boots lay in a pile beside me, and we displayed ourselves, side by side in the cool night air wearing only the gold earrings on the cords she gave us on our first night together. Now the act was done, I found our deepened bond instilled me with sufficient courage to show my body proudly, my worries no longer inhibited me. Another of Master’s gifts.
Our Sovereign swung her gaze appraisingly between us but made no comment for what seemed the longest time.
“Put your hands behind your head, interlock your fingers, spread your legs apart and stay still until I tell you otherwise,” she commanded, so we obeyed. “From now on, whenever I wish to inspect you, this is the pose I expect you to adopt. You understand, yes.”
“We understand and obey,” we said automatically.
“Good,” she praised, making us shudder. “Your beauty is remarkable. Your flesh so young, and tight tells of years of activity.” She ran a hand over her property, gliding over thigh and stomach and shoulder, much more lightly than the rough, vulgar pawing of before. We shuddered agreeably under it.
“Thank you, Master,” we responded, flushed by her iration. We had never given it much thought, but it was true, we spent a lot of time trekking, hunting and working. We did not toil like the farmers in the plain beyond the valley or the miners in the mountains, but we were always on the move. I was grateful if our physiques pleased the Sovereign.
The unspoken eroticism of our nudity quickened breath, enlivened our loins and filled the Sovereign’s eyes with hunger as she inspected Slave’s scar, walking her fingers over its jagged length, just below the ribs.
“Tell me more,” she commanded.
Slave took up the tale, “I wanted to win so I took a risk. Thrall was upset, partly that I had won and partly that she was too scared to climb any higher.” In hindsight that was fair.
“But I was right. It was not safe,” I interjected. “When I heard the bough crack, I tried to grab her, but she fell so fast.”
“I vividly the shock on Thrall’s face as my branch broke. I flailed about to grab anything but completely failed. Then I was falling and spinning, smashing into branch after branch, which at least slowed me down. I landed flat on my back. Knocked the wind out of me,” Slave recounted.
“I scrambled out the tree as fast as I could,” I recalled. Though the memory we were recounting was distressing, Master’s will was our only concern. “By the time I reached the ground, she had not moved. I thought she was dead. But she sat up, face all scratched and battered. Her shirt was torn but when I saw the red patch spreading across the fabric, I screamed.”
“A pity to waste such precious blood,” our Sovereign joked; a callous comment but we laughed too.
“Yes, Master. I suppose I was in shock, but it was only when Thrall screamed that I realised how much pain I was in. Standing was agony. I felt sick and almost ed out,” Slave shared. Master lowered their mouth to the old scar and ran her tongue along the length of it, making Slave gasp and blink.
“We were so frightened,” I explained as I watched Master’s tongue intently. “We cried all the way home. I helped her walk but had to carry her part of the distance. Father had taught us to keep pressure on the wound but there was so much blood. Mother has a healer’s touch and saved her life. I would not leave Slave’s side while she was bed-ridden for a few weeks.” There was something about that time that eluded my recall. Perhaps it was unimportant.
“Poor dears,” Master murmured as she kissed the old wound.
At the time, I recall taking pleasure in Slave getting such intimate attention. Was that because of our Sovereign’s control or because I loved my twin? If it was the latter, it filled me with happiness at our sororal bond, if it was the former, I never tired of learning what a generous beast my fetish for subjugation was. Despite being so comprehensively mastered, I was able to ponder my own thoughts. I was still myself as well as her thrall, even if my slavery was paramount.
The implications of her domination set my mind ablaze, but her power had no effect on how I felt about her at all. That incessant lie repeated once again, like an annoying tune. Tired of my self-deception, I accepted the obvious truth that Master had fixed the idea into my mind and wondered when she did it. Did she erase the process from my memory or concoct it when I was mindless, so I was never aware of it in the first place? What else might she have done to me without my knowing?
Quickly running through the possibilities, I recalled Slave’s remark about how much we had changed since meeting our beloved, abandoning long-held dreams to dedicate our lives to our vampire mistress, even if that meant our likely death.
Clarity fell upon me akin to an ominous, black stone dropping into the pit of my stomach. As I stood awaiting her pleasure, I realised all that we believed we had given freely—promises of undying love, sharing vampire fantasies, confessing our fetishes—could easily have been our Sovereign’s creation. If so, it was no wonder I felt no jealousy as the woman I loved most in the world suckled upon my sister’s scar.
Emboldened by this revelation, I ruined everything when I incautiously asked, “Master, I feel not the slightest jealousy when you ravish Slave. Is that something you have done to us? Do you influence us in some supernatural way or is that love?”
As the words came from me, I recalled the way the fire danced in Master’s eyes that first evening when Slave went to fetch drinks. There had been a peculiar sense of isolation when the lovely stranger with the white hair peered into me, and I had been fascinated.
Master snapped a stony glance at me, halting her kisses, and demanded, “What do you suspect, Thrall?”
The weight of her imperious will pressed into mine, squeezing rewarding flushes from my fetish as I was forced to speak the truth, “You charmed us when we first talked. You have been plying us with magic ever since. You have made our love deeper, opened our eyes to experiences we never dreamed of, made us crave them. But whatever you have done, whatever your influence, I will bet my life that our love is real.”
“Sister!” Slave cried; eyes crowded with alarm as if I had blasphemed against a goddess.
“My, my, and here I was thinking your sister was the clever one,” Master glared up at me from Slave’s flank, her playful manner vanished. A touch of fear stroked my spine. Had I just offended our Sovereign?
Her wolfish grin looked more predator than paramour with her fangs extended. Eyes solidly fixed on mine, she drew her maw wide and sunk those splendid teeth into my sister’s midriff right on her scar. Slave gasped and wobbled in place, struggling to remain stationary as the bliss of being imbibed buckled her knees, pupils fled behind drooped eyelids, face slackened. I thought she would fall, but then her legs locked rigid, stability restored. In the span of a heartbeat, our Sovereign had robbed my sister of her mind again.
Master rose from the freshly bleeding wound, teeth smeared in scarlet, stepped to me and grasped my jaw tightly in one hand, all the while groping Slave’s unresisting breast with the other, harshly demonstrating her supremacy.
“What of it?” Master challenged. Her peerlessly beautiful eyes stabbed my mind, and the mark painted across my brow burst into life with agonising, frozen pinpricks as she took direct control of me. A pale blue light flickered from my forehead illuminating her indignation. My instinct told me to retreat from the pain, but I was locked in place.
“What if I sculpted your emotions, fashioned your desires, altered you to my pleasing. What if I made you love me. So what? Do you not dwell in a greater joy than you could ever have imagined because you are mine?” she snarled. Mortification that I had angered our beloved chilled me to the core. I wanted to make it right but was helpless to do anything but accept whatever punishment she deemed just.
“Yes, my Sovereign,” we replied in unison, our breath rapid. My sister’s mindlessness interfered not at all with the harmony of our answer. Guilt told me I deserved this pain but at the same time my fetish relentlessly provided shameful pleasure.
“Is your ion not deeper than you ever dreamt?” Master spat. Irritation rimed her voice.
“Yes, my Sovereign,” we said. That was certainly true. My forehead furrowed in roiling, helpless pleasure at our Sovereign’s irresistible command, even as the freezing pinpricks escalated. So what if it hurt? Anything was worth this ion.
“Does the thrill of my control sur any experience of your parochial, little lives?” she scoffed, taking amusement from the cruelty of her words. Her words were not merely spoken but being jabbed into my head via the dark magic my mark contained. It was awful and exquisite at once.
“Yes, my Sovereign,” we said, a desperation in my voice, an eerie calm in Slave’s. Master was eroding my faculties, grinding them beneath some icy millstone in my mind. I tried to prise my tongue from her mastery to apologise but had surrendered all such control, begged her to take it.
“Do you not revel in the purpose that obedience to my will provides you?” she demanded, mounting arousal in her voice. I detected the same urgent need in her manner that my fetish imposed on me. She was getting off on her outrage.
“Yes, my Sovereign,” we called in absolutely certainty. She spoke true. Desperately, dizzyingly, delightfully true. As her declarations pounded into my anguished mind, the primal exhilaration of having her power exerted over me drove me towards frenzy. The division between pleasure and pain dissolving.
“Does it not delight you to know your prized fetishes, your need to be controlled, which bind you so tightly to my will, were placed within you by your lover?” she revealed. Oh, by all the gods, I was right. She had made us adore our own subjugation.
“Yes, my Sovereign,” I cried. Fabricated or not, my need to be controlled was the most essential component of my being and it was being excruciatingly gratified right now, as her grip turned my face this way and that, just to show she could. The air reeked of arousal, hers and ours, mingling in the air. I could taste it.
“Does your quim not slather with each suspicion I confirm?” she asked as she released my sister’s breast to use her hand to stroke herself. I could not tear my eyes from her cunt as she probed her folds.
“Oh, please, my Sovereign,” I begged. My need was now intolerable. I struggled to cling to the fact that Master had just confessed to manipulating our hearts and minds since the first time we met. Was it true? What did it mean? I should be appalled, afraid, horrified but nothing quelled my craving for release. Even if it was all a lie, I still found incomparable arousal in her control, in all honesty her onslaught amplified it. The fetish that Master had burned into my being was a rapacious beast, hungry for my next orgasm.
“You may touch yourselves,” Master mercifully permitted as she rubbed herself harder.
“Thank you, Master,” I cried as I eagerly shoved my hand to my cunt and began writhing, pressing, thrusting, desperate to get myself off in fear we may be commanded to stop before I found release. Slave said nothing. Her movements languid, like she was touching herself in her sleep.
“The priorities of your hearts are my confection, do you understand?” our Sovereign explained, her eyes betraying a glimpse of madness.
“Yes, my Sovereign,” I confirmed automatically. Surprised I did not rapture instantly, my pleasure continued building, eroding me, reducing me to a primal need. I tried to hold on to enough rationality to understand how much of our love Master had made through magic alone. Was any of this real? The horror of the implications accumulated. I did love her, I was convinced. I felt it with every fibre of my being, but her words had clawed at that certainty. Was she testing me? Teasing me? As much as I wanted it, I had to get her to stop, I had to resist. But how?
“I am the author of everything you feel about me,” Master announced. The thought was so seductive, it blanketed my mind in sweet belief.
“Yes, my Sovereign,” I was helplessly made to say. Whatever torment she was visiting upon me, as much as it thrilled me, I could never accept that Master did not truly love us.
“Not to say you were unimportant in your downfall, you were both so wonderfully complicit,” she complimented, discarding her spiteful anger for a disturbing delight. She suddenly sounded so joyful, and it pleased me to please her, but in my growing delirium any perspective was deeply suspect. Was this really happening or was she creating it inside my mind as foreplay before fucking me? How could it be working so damned well?
“Yes, my Sovereign, we comply,” my tongue spoke words of her creation as I feverishly worked myself closer to the edge. I was trying to make my mouth beg her to stop but in truth all I wanted was to beg her to keep going. As pained and wretched as I was, my fetish burned brighter than any other consideration.
“I have been enamoured by your receptivity; the little details you have added of your own accord in response to my growing domination of your hearts and minds. You have quite won me, my dears, so trust that I meant what I said on our first night: I shall keep you,” Master spoke with carefree captivation as she pawed her quim while sliding her other hand from my chin down to my neck.
A sudden white-hot explosion almost knocked me down and, dizzied moments later, I realised she was thumbing my bite.
Groans clawed their way from my mouth as I teetered on the limits of pain and pleasure. It was so unrelentingly good to please her and so painful to defy her that my futile notions of resistance were slipping away.
“Thank you, my Sovereign,” I panted on the cusp of consciousness. Whatever the truth of whether my feelings were her creation, the fact was I needed Master’s control more than life itself. Defiance was never a serious possibility. It was the dream of the girl I once was. The woman I had become needed her to command me. Every time she did my need grew. I could never be free of this nor would I ever want to.
“Oh, you cannot imagine the frustrations of my obfuscations, how I have longed to be completely open with you. You could not yet understand the pleasures of playing with one’s prey, but you two are an exceptional delicacy,” our Sovereign confessed as she released my throat to begin peeling off her clothes. “I confess I had considered leaving your corpses for your mother to find. But then I found myself growing so fond of you instead I decided to bind you to me as my guardian-concubines, protecting me when I rest. But you are too perfect, too susceptible to my powers. That demands something more… irrevocable.”
As the icy blaze of my mark drilled into my head, thinking became a trial.
Dress discarded, Sovereign displayed herself before us, stretching her arms above her head, naked but for her fine black leather boots, rising above to her thigh. This ordeal made me want not a fraction less. She was the most beautiful being I had ever seen. She was enjoying making me suffer; me specifically, since if Slave was in pain her becalmed features expressed none of it.
“Under the circumstance, perhaps I should have foreseen it, but our mutual ion has surprised even me,” Master continued, her rage now a thing of the past, an unsettling, capricious playfulness suffused her demeanour. “You were truly made for me, and I truly do love you. So, I have no choice but to embrace you, sacrifice your souls to make you as I am, a blood drinker, an undying leanan sidhe, so we may feast upon this world together. Forever.”
“Yes, my Sovereign, yes, yes! Whatever you command, we shall obey,” with an immense burst of wanton joy I realised I was speaking my own words, not Master’s. The leash of my fetish throttled whatever dissent remained within me. I subjugated my own resistance with every stoke of my quim. Pain was obedience. Obedience was pleasure. Pleasure was obedience. All of me, every shred of my flesh, every drop of my blood, every fragment of my mind; all must obey the Master’s will.
She grinned like she could read my internal capitulation, pleased my submission was triumphant.
“Good Thrall. Do you know why I am doing this to you?” she asked, high pitched, condescending. I nodded.
“Master’s will. Master’s will. Master’s will,” I repeated, dimly seeing the truth of it through my lust. There was more to it, much more, a lesson I was on the verge of learning. This was proving my dedication to our Sovereign, to our vow.
“So, slaves. Look at the pair of you. In all my time, have any mortals ever been so receptive to my gifts as you? Even she who I lost? Your incredible symmetry, your inestimable beauty, your infinite capacity for corruption. You shall make perfect ornaments. Your minds, your hearts, your souls are such fine clay for shaping,” Layla lavished praise upon us. She reached up to her forehead with both hands and drew them aside leaving the mark of Dahlk in their wake, as her tightly coiled hair unfurled in all directions, exploding in a ghostly corona. By the goddess, she was gorgeous.
“Yes, my Sovereign, shape us,” I screamed into the night, furiously grinding myself. I had been on the edge for so long, why had I not raptured yet? I looked to Summer, blind and oblivious to our Sovereign’s words but her breathing was laboured with lust, locked in her private ecstasy.
“But I must not get ahead of myself. The cost of your transformation is grave. While I am more than fully satisfied with your servitude, you are not quite ready to pay the price of ing our blood. Rushing such preparations has cost me lovers in the past and I refuse to make such errors this time,” Master explained.
“Yes, my Sovereign. We will pay any price,” I cried. I did not understand what it meant, nor I did care. Our destiny was to be with our beloved Master, to be as she was: undying blood-drinkers. I understood that with perfect clarity. We would do anything to fulfil our destiny to become leanan sidhe, whatever that meant. I was so close now.
“So, it is time for you to forget just for a little while longer,” our beloved vampire announced.
Her pronouncement hit me like a runaway horse. She was going to erase her cruel words and the troublesome knowledge they brought from my mind. Part of me knew it was crucial to hold on to it but the allure of her meddling with my mind, removing my memories, was too intoxicating. I saw our fate beyond us. She was going to do this to us forever, over and over. Romancing, deceiving, submitting, confessing, forgetting. Perhaps she already had rewritten our memories. She must have done, I reasoned, I hoped, I prayed. All that mattered was she was going to control us forever. I came hard.
“Yes… my… Sovereign,” I spat through gritted teeth as I pushed myself over the edge and screamed my submission into the darkness. I sank to the ground, falling forwards but catching myself on one outstretched hand while the other laboured to force further pleasures from my cunt. I could not stop myself.
Glancing up, I watched our beloved Sovereign bite Slave’s breast and suckle. My sister’s eyes rolled about, awareness suddenly flooding them as she cried her release. She fell like a rag doll into Master’s arms, only to be lowered to her knees beside me. Her head clasped in one pale and slender hand to jam her mouth into Master’s cunt. Slave knew her duties well, lapping at once, head tilted back to look directly into our owner’s eyes. Baleful witch fire erupted across their brows, ephemeral blue flames danced in unison as Master invaded her mind, pulsing with every secret she buried within, while I watched. It was so fucking hot.
Slave pulled back from our beloved’s quim just long enough to gasp, “I understand and obey,” as if she was replying to some unspoken imperative our Sovereign had implanted, before she shoved her face back in to continue tonguing. Muffled words from Slave seemed further repetitions of the same phrase over and over as moments ed, their gaze never parting.
Mesmerised by the beauty of their intimate exchange I could only work myself over and over, gawping at them as time slipped beyond my ability to track.
Finally, the witch fire guttered and awareness drained from Slave’s eyes once more. Her features, so recently contorted in ecstatic focus, smoothed into a blank expressionless stare, as she was made mindless. Every trace of my sister’s individuality snuffed out like a candle by our Sovereign. The wonder of it was enough to send me over the edge again.
“Your sister enjoys having her mind emptied, but you prefer to know what I am doing to you, yes,” Master remarked as her stare swept to me while she ground against my sister’s face.
“Yes, my Sovereign,” I confirmed. It would be absurd to deny, helpless on my knees beside them, grinding myself.
“Slave, attend,” she ordered my sister. Slave pulled free, eyes vacant, face glistening with Master’s moisture. She rose, turned to me, grasped my plait and painfully pulled me to an upright kneeling position. I did nothing to resist. I could not even take my hand from my quim, my need was everything, as necessary as my subjugation.
“So, curious sister,” Sovereign began, unhurriedly tracing her fingers over my chest, circling my nipples.
In truth, I was unsure if I was especially curious but if my Sovereign declared it, my slave-logic compelled me to believe, so confirmed, “Yes, my Sovereign.”
“You know something your sister does not, for I just removed it from her mind. It warms my undying heart to confess that I created this need in you,” she confirmed as she leaned down to deftly extract my hand from my quim. She ran her tongue over my fingers, nodding her approval, then ed my hand to my sister who grabbed and twisted my wrist, to hold it uncomfortably behind me. Every move was a calculated part of a greater symphony of supremacy that made me squirm in submission.
“Yes, my Sovereign,” I breathed, voice husky. Such was the cage in which my thoughts dwelt, amid my spiralling lust, I felt pangs of sadness for how difficult it must have been for our Master to keep secrets from us.
“You serve me because I have altered you to do so,” she moaned in delight. Having already made that perfectly clear, I could tell she was finding new ways to say the same thing to feed the unmistakable carnality the confession brought her. The words lapped at her sex as effectively as any tongue. Whether her tirade was heartless or honest, I could not be sure, but the way her words affected me, in turn just as profoundly affected her.
“Yes, my Sovereign, I live to serve you,” I gasped. The crushing weight of my slavery squashed all concern about whether my Sovereign had manufactured my feelings or not. My emotions were absolutely real.
She reached for my waiting crotch, so I spread my legs to offer her better access, and she slid two well-manicured fingers into me. Working me for a few heavenly moments, she withdrew and examined the wetness on her fingertips.
“You rejoice in the manipulation and subjugation of your mind,” Master confirmed as she smeared my hot juices over the chill of the mark across my forehead, a delirium of her own making her eyes wide. My painful witch fire had extinguished but I had not noticed until that moment.
“Yes, my Sovereign, more than anything,” I breathed. It was as if all the previous pleasures our Sovereign had visited upon us were solely designed to make me a creature who revelled in being treated this way. She traced her finger around the edge of my face, down one cheek, over my chin, up the other cheek and back to the centre of my brow, then pushed my head back into Slave’s waiting grasp. A crooked smile spread over Master’s face.
“So, knowing this desire, that so attractively overwhelms you, is purely a bridle I constructed for you, if I gave you the choice, would you ask me to remove it?” she slyly asked.
What a question. How could I trust myself to answer? I was at a loss to tell the difference between her direct command when I was her puppet and her insidious control through whatever changes she had made in my mind that drove my cravings. Was there any difference? Was I now reduced to only ever thinking with the mind of a slave, so I was always obedient and welcomed such humiliation if it demonstrated my enslavement? Then I realised the truth was irrelevant. I knew what I needed, so I told her so.
“Never, my Sovereign,” I half-sobbed, as my mind and heart raced. “Please, I beg you to control me. I don’t care about who I was before, I don’t care about anything I wanted before you, I don’t care if you hid the truth from us about how you made us your slaves. I only want whatever you do to us, to our bodies, to our minds, and I don’t know or care how I know this, but I am certain nothing else could ever be as important as this need within us for you. I need your control. I want to know you are controlling me. And, if it pleases you, I want to know I was once different, but you changed me, and I can never change back. Never free us, please. Ahh!”
I briefly spasmed as I orgasmed at my confession, much to my Sovereign’s delight. As I saw it, this might have been my only chance to speak what was left of my mind before Master rewrote my memories, so I quickly gathered my wits to continue my declaration.
“My wants are immaterial, if you decide to wipe my mind of this evening then so be it,” I accepted. “If you lock the knowledge away or erase it completely, I do not care. All that matters is you use me, and my sister, however you wish. We are yours, forever. I know Slave would agree if she could.”
“Agree with your sister, Slave,” our Sovereign commanded in a darkly cold tone, devoid of mercy but rich in the thrill of power exerted.
Slave yanked my head back, to bring my ear to her lips. In a voice lacking any warmth, she simply stated, “I agree, Thrall. I am our Sovereign’s forever-slave. I want only this. I live only to obey.” So sure was I that being a mindlessness doll elated my sister, it made my cunt churn in lust-filled sympathy.
“Amusing,” our Sovereign said, grabbing my chin, trapping my head between her steely fingers and Slave’s clutch. “Are you sure? What if I offered you your freedom? I could remove all trace of myself from your memories and let you live for as long as you are destined.”
“No! Please, I beg you, do not do that!” I cried in panic. Tears slipped from my eyes. The thought was too distressing to maintain a properly servile demeanour. “Forgive your thrall’s impertinence, my Sovereign. If it is your will then act as you see fit and we will obey, but, please, we will never want anything as much as we want what you have done to us. If our memories were scrubbed clean of all trace of our wondrous Sovereign, we would still dream of you. Our souls would still know what we had lost. We would be haunted by the loss of this exalted enslavement. Even if we no longer knew what we had lost, we would devote our lives to searching for the thing you would deny us.”
Our Sovereign took a step back, listening intently. Weighing my words. I pressed on.
“I believe this is all a test. I believe the things you have said are meant to drive us away or mad or to serve some purpose I do not yet know. But I do know the only undying part of me is my love for you. It will endure. My love is obedience, to you alone, Master. If there is some flaw in my submission, I will correct it. If there is some impediment to whatever you need me to be, some obstacle to overcome, I will find it and destroy it so I may be closer to you. You said we are your perfect slaves. I swear you will never find sisters as devoted as the twins before you if you searched for a hundred lifetimes. We will please you, serve you, protect you, kill for you, die for you. We will be anything you command, but please, please, please, never let us go. I beg you.”
I fought vainly to hold back tears, thinking them unseemly, but to my astonishment our Sovereign was doing the same. My pleas had reached her. The vestiges of cruelty fled her countenance and instead looked down upon me with wonder. She reached forward to lift a single teardrop from my eyelashes and brought it to her tongue to taste, as two of her own rolled down her perfect, pale cheeks.
“Well spoken, Thrall. Well spoken,” our Sovereign gently praised, with a softness I had almost forgotten she could display. He brow furrowed in turmoil. She looked down at herself, then at me, then at Slave, specifically my arm locked behind me. Shock flashed across her face. “What am I doing? I love you, yet I torment you. I need to, I do, but you should not see me this way. It is too soon, too much. My darkness, I…”
Master was aghast at her own urges. I understood insofar as my urges now ruled me.
“Master, we accept your darkness. As our priestess of Dahlk, of course, there is darkness within you. Your slaves contain darkness too. The mark you place upon our brows is that made manifest. Whether you have drawn it from us or created it, it is ours now and lives at the very heart of us. We love you all the same. We live to serve you. Trust us and we will fulfil your needs. If you need to punish me for the words I spoke, I will receive your judgement. If you want to hurt me, I will suffer for you,” I rattled through my thoughts as they spilled from my mind, reckless over what I was offering.
“Do not tempt, me beautiful one!” Master commanded, distraught, and my tongue was stilled. “I have broken pets in the past from such rash offers. The cruelty within me, it was not for your eyes, not yet, not until you understand. Expressing it nourishes me like blood, but I need your complicity and my weakness… I… I risk everything. You should not see me this way. I need to be stronger. Slave, let Thrall go.”
My sister obeyed. As soon as my arm was free, I ignored its throbbing ache to reach for our beloved. She recoiled from my approach, shaking her head, not entirely at me I sensed, but partly at herself.
Master’s unprecedented vulnerability becalmed the storm of my fevered lust. Normally so steadfast, to witness the collapse of her carefully cultivated persona was distressing but all I wanted was to soothe her.
The ission that she needed to inflict some measure of suffering was not entirely surprising. There had been signs along the way to kindle my suspicions that she enjoyed cruelty, but I had been so clouded by love and need that I had rejected the notion. Now, I doubted if anything she had said about influencing and corrupting us had been true, it may have all been confectioned purely to cause me pain. She could not help herself. But I believed in our love and if she had a need as deep as mine, I would endure it.
“Inflicting harm is not all there is of me, Thrall. You must believe that,” Master beseeched, distraught.
I believed but not because she made me, at least, I hoped that was so. Having known her incredible kindness, her tenderness, her consideration, we had tasted the richness of her love. Darkness was part of her, but it was only a part, and I accepted it without question, even if I would have to suffer for it. I swung a quick glance to Slave for but her oblivious eyes left me alone.
“Yes, Master. We believe you were a creature of love before you were ever a creature of night and blood. We sense the beauty within you as clearly as we see the beauty without. You are our mentor, our priestess, you are our love and fantasies made flesh,” I insisted, standing up and stepping closer, holding out my hands for her to take.
She retreated again, but my words breathed across her heart. Her face radiated iration entwined with love and sadness, as if my attempts at kindness were painful medicine. For a moment, her certainty quavered. Tears glistened her cheeks with trails of stars.
“You are marvels both. I deserve neither of you, but I will never release you. Go. Forget the ill I have done you this night,” she commanded.
Kicking off her fine boots, tears flowing freely, she turned and leapt into the air, pale flesh twisting in a heartbeat, only to land yards away in the form of a mountain lion. Her transformation magic had lost none of its breathtaking awe. Without looking back, she raced into the darkness.
“No, my love! Do not make us forget,” I called after her as she sped from view.
Her command washed over us, but without the overwhelming force she could bring to bear, but it was a command nonetheless and we lived only to obey.
“Do not leave us, Master,” Slave, alert once more, howled into the gloom.
But we were alone.