I stand hidden by trees across the street, waiting for the light from a window to betray her room. How could I have not seen what she was before? Were her eyes not warning enough? I inhale again, and my prick thickens as I hold her scent against the roof of my mouth: the saltiness of human cunt and the cloying perfume of the arum. She is fey—more so than human, though she does not know it. I wipe my hand across my mouth, still slick with the blood of those useless boys at the tavern. They tried to stop me, but I have long known how to cut a path through a crowd.
Once on the street I had no trouble finding her, following the trail of scent unfurling behind her. She never saw me as I climbed up into the arms of an outstretched oak and watched over her where she lay squirreled beneath the brush.
She knows what I am. It must be she who left the spells of unbinding on my doorstep. Only chance kept her from knowing me when first she came into the shop.
I did not take her there, not in the grass, not under a tree, though it would have been easy and I ached for it. But for the violation to be complete, I will take her in her own house, the old hag’s house. She will not see me coming for I will strew the grounds with my own spells of undoing. And when she is most alone, most vulnerable, I will harvest her blood in a silver bowl and thrust myself deep inside her. Then none will stand against me. I will send word to the Dark Lord that I have found what he seeks because in truth I have, and he will reward me well. In the darkest corners of his courts I will rebuild our clans, until we are strong enough in blood and arms to claim his power for ourselves. Blood to blood, it is the ransom of nations.
I rub a hand against the ache in my groin. I will make it last, I think. Pain and pleasure. One will be hers, the other mine.