Winter’s Tale
16 Eighth night, part 3 — Homeward
“What. Just. Happened?” Summer demanded, glaring at me, but her simmering fury soon dispersed when she recognised my distress. “Have you been crying?”
My eyes still stung from sobbing when I begged to never be released from our enslavement. The chill of cooling sweat bit at my naked flesh while the weight of Master’s last command pressed against the front of my skull. This had not been how I expected the night to go at all. I struggled to collect the disparate moments of our tryst to make sense of them, but the effort was dizzying. Why was I such a mess?
“What do you recall, Summer?” I began; both of us surprised to hear that name.
“Master held me in blissful oblivion, like last night but, if anything, it was even better. Her grip was so tight, so strong, it was everywhere. In my head, my body, my quim… oh…” Summer’s animated explanation trailed off. She stumbled to the side but caught herself. Eyes glassy, she struggled valiantly then succeeded to bring them back into focus.
“Sum?” I took her arm to lend . She clutched at me with the look of one who was calculating whether she was about to throw up. In the dimness of starlight, she looked pale. Holding her so close, I could smell Master’s quim on her face and had to fight the urge to lick the drying juices from about her mouth. Get a grip, Winter.
“I need to sit down,” Summer said, weakly, so I helped lower her to the ground.
Casting her gaze over the bite marks, quartets of punctures about her nipple and scar, she smiled slightly, then said, “I am cold.”
The blazing heat of the day had left the night air mild, but not truly warm enough for nudity at this late hour. At some point amid the drama of Master’s confessional, I had become convinced that being naked before her was proper for my status, and only now our lover had left did I realise how cold we had become.
Snatching up her cloak, I wrapped it around my twin’s pallid, shivering body. Doubtlessly, she had contributed more blood than me, which must have taken a toll. Under our beloved’s fangs, the bite could seem eternal, but I watched her drink from Summer and it only lasted a moment or two each time. Nonetheless, Master had thrice drained her slave.
I gathered our discarded clothes and swiftly helped Summer get dressed before doing the same. Then held her tightly in a hug, while rubbing her limbs to restore some warmth.
“Is that better?” I asked, trying to mask the depth of my concern. I lacked mother’s skill with medicine but my instincts about my twin were second to none. She was not ill but was on the verge of it, like our infamous third time getting drunk, I recalled.
“Much, thank you. Sorry about that. I need to be stronger for Master. Must get some yarrow when we get back. Good for the blood, Ma always says. Anyway, never mind that. What happened? One moment I was in paradise and then Master was racing away in that gorgeous lioness form. Do you row? Why were you crying?” Summer asked, pushing her wooziness aside.
Clearly, she was unaware of Master’s confession. Delivering such information might prove tricky. Sometimes, Summer was unreceptive to bad news. Best to be direct.
“This is an unwelcome revelation, I fear. Master told me she has been sculpting us with her magic since we met and hiding it from us. Our fetishes for being controlled? She made those. I suspect she might have made us think we have always fantasised about vampires,” I explained, trying to clearly distil the disclosures.
“That cannot be true. Her magic has no effect on the way I feel about her at all,” Summer interrupted. Had she forgotten everything we had talked about that morning by the stream?
“That is untrue, and you know it,” I declared with a degree of conviction that surprised me. Summer looked sceptical. “Master put that idea in our minds some time ago, I know not when, but we have been clinging to it as a ‘fact’ ever since. She itted it to my face.”
While alarm at our Sovereign’s deceit was palpable, it was more than matched by the jolt of carnal joy at saying aloud that our minds had been manipulated by our Master. I desperately wanted to be fucked. Unworthy thoughts about my twin drifted about the periphery of my mind but I dismissed them contemptuously before they could fully form.
Summer felt the need too, I could tell, but more importantly I also sensed her doubts were dissolving. Our years committed to the dream of thinking and acting as one made it difficult to lie to each other, which had its downsides, but paid dividends when one of us needed to be believed.
“If it is as you say, she must have had some reason for doing so. Protecting us from ourselves, perhaps, ensuring we were not enamoured of her magic more than herself as she explained,” Summer rationalised. She was beginning to understand but not yet willing to accept.
“Do you not see the contradiction in using magic to make us believe we were not being influenced by magic?” I retorted, arching an eyebrow at her. “I cannot say why she did it, but I am confident she did. Though it is possible it was all a pack of lies she told to hurt me. For there is something else: our Sovereign is burdened with a darkness, a need to inflict suffering. She cannot help herself. Until now she has been hiding it from us. She was intent on tormenting me, saying things she hoped might cause me distress, using the mark to send icy stabs into my skull. I… accepted it. I am her slave, sworn to forever prove my commitment to my enslavement. But it was torture.”
Summer’s face was a portrait of sympathetic agitation. She loved me and would never hurt me, so the thought of me in pain distressed her. I felt a twinge of guilt for sharing what Master had done, not wishing to taint the simple purity of Summer’s devotion.
“That cannot be. She loves us,” she protested.
“Yes, she does. I doubt that not at all. But I saw the glee in her eyes when she got you to twist my arm,” I divulged.
“I did what? I am so sorry, Winter,” Summer apologised, weary and distressed.
“There is no need. I hold not a shred of bitterness. You were commanded and so had to obey. Had you not been mindless you would still have done the same. Had she commanded me, I would have done likewise. Our sacred vows bind us to it,” I explained in all honesty.
I lightly stroked my fingers across Summer’s mark, marvelling at the wonders our Sovereign had worked through them. This elicited a smiling gasp and a soft tremble, not from the cold, but as if I were caressing her soul.
“I watched her implant something in your mind. It was indescribably beautiful. Pale blue flames danced between you as she worked. There is such love and beauty within our Master. I do not care about her wickedness. We could help her if she can hold it back no longer. If she needs to hurt someone, who better than lovers sworn to her service?” I said proudly, then realised what I was saying. “Of course, I might only think that because she made me this way.”
Summer softened as she absorbed the conflicting information, then asked, “So, why did she leave?”
“Well,” I had to choose my words carefully. It was hard enough to accept Master’s behaviour when I saw it. “She had a moment of realisation. Master itted she had made us her slaves and offered to let us go. I think she only said it because she knew I would find the idea perfectly hideous. She might as well have asked me to try living with my head cut off. I launched into a rant about how wretched our existence would be without her, laid it on thick, very thick, but spoke from the heart. It seemed to snap her out of her callousness,” I disclosed. “She seemed ashamed of her inability to control her urges and left, telling us to forget. Nnnaah!”
Every muscle of our bodies was suddenly yanked taut, our hug turned into a death grip. Rigid and breathless, the remnants of magic encrypted within the marks Master painted upon us reactivated. Eyes bound in frozen fixation, all I could see was the mirror of my ordeal as it also played out in my twin. There came a strange, irresistible abrasion, scraping across our minds, as if pressed to a grinding wheel. I had never experienced anything like it. I could not call it painful, but the process was harrowing, eroding our thoughts. Something vanished from my mind, I knew not what, only sensing a gap where moments ago there had been some now annihilated memory.
Our muscles released us, and we fell apart as a fetish-nourishing wave of molten desire washed over my sex in response to Master’s newest violation. Ignorant of the intricacies of magic, as my mind cleared it was perfectly plain that the mark across my brow had injected some power into us and stole our memories, but of what? Untold thousands of reminiscences jostled for position in the patchwork that makes a person who they are, so how could I tell what had gone? Whatever it was, a great fear rose within me that at any moment a second abrasion might obliterate more of us.
“Oh, Master. Fuck my mind…” Summer huskily moaned, eyes flickering, body writhing, revelling in her surrender.
I chose to resist.
“Get on your feet. Now. We must go,” I ordered, standing up.
“Why. What just happened?” Summer asked, bewildered. I feared she had just lost much more than me.
“Master’s magic. She wants us to forget what she said to me. Our marks still hold remnants of her power. I think they are making us obey her last command,” I guessed, the urgency of terror accelerated my reasoning.
“Then we must obey. We live only to obey,” Summer insisted. “You cannot disobey our Master.”
“I am not. I could not. I live only to obey our Sovereign. We both do and we shall, but we must not lose this revelation. It is important. Master would hide this from us because she feels shame for this wicked part of her. We would be poor servants if we did not help her see that there is no flaw in her perfection. We are sworn to love and serve every part of her. You understand?” I hurriedly explained.
“I understand and obey,” Summer said reflexively, distance in her eyes. Woozy from blood loss and recent mindlessness, she was not herself, still half-submerged in submission. Good, I thought. I could use that.
“Excellent. Then let us get home as quickly as we may. Can you run?” I asked
“I doubt it, but I can try,” Summer replied as she took my hand, testing her grip.
“We must get home and write this all down, make a record of it before we lose any more memories. We can sort this all out tomorrow. Hurry,” I urged, pulling Summer to her feet.
My imioned declarations were not the full story. What I chose not to share was how much I was driven by my implacable need to know I was being used. Whatever the origins of my fetish, it was now the most potent part of me. If I forgot this evening it would be denied and I could not abide that, even in the face of my sworn duty to obey. Time for my fetish to work for me, I thought. Let it spur me on. Become its creature.
Setting off, hand-in-hand, at a brisk pace to test Summer’s energy, it was clear that was a fast as she could manage. While we walked through the woods, I inwardly started checking off the night’s events in the hope I might maintain a grip upon them.
“What else did I miss?” Summer asked, interrupting my cataloguing before I had begun.
“You our vows, yes?” I replied.
“Of course. Master carved them into our souls. It hurt to high heaven, but I loved it. I still feel it. I could never forget what she did for us,” she responded dreamily, sliding into sensuality again.
“You might be surprised,” I muttered. “Anyway, Master was intrigued by your scar.” No need to explain which one. She knew.
“I ,” Summer interjected, pleased with herself. Her carefree attitude irritated me. Was she really that oblivious to our situation or had she forgotten?
“I asked our Sovereign if she was responsible for our lack of jealousy. A grievous mistake on my part. It sent her into a raging spiral. She bit you, emptied your mind, then itted all these horrible things to me; saying she had sculpted us, created our fetishes, used them to bind us to her, lying about it all. I do not know if any of it was true, or it was purely her need to inflict suffering,” I rattled off all I could recall and clenched to prepare for another memory erasure, but it did not happen.
Summer nodded vaguely, as if my words were faintly familiar.
“We must not lose these things. Say them with me to ward against them slipping from our minds: Master used magic to make us this way. Our fetishes chain us to her will. We did not feel this way before we met her. She made us into creatures willing to die for her. She needs to inflict pain and is ashamed of it. She has been lying to us,” I recited, trying to keep my tone brighter than I felt.
“Is this not what we suspected? Had we not agreed that if our suspicions she had manipulated us with magic were true, we would cherish it, find it arousing? Our fetishes make it so. If she made them, then that is another gift to be grateful for. We always wanted a vampire to do precsiely this to us,” Summer retorted, a little out of breath, but unavoidably aroused by the ideas she expressed. She was right, of course. My loins churned too.
Master had made such an elegant trap for us. We would always have been vulnerable to a vampire exploiting our fantasies and were blessed to have found one as loving as she was. My head spun at it all, teetering on the precipice of hysteria.
What if Master had invented our vampire fantasies? Inserted them into our memories and made us believe we had always found them incomparably erotic? A dark, dreadful conflict warred within me. If that was true, then our entire relationship was based on lies. Could that be the knowledge we had just lost? She had tainted our perspective, made us crave that which we should fear. On the other hand, this was happening because of Sovereign’s will and that was ineffably arousing. Trying to reconcile those two forces was diminishing my grip on sanity; my thoughts seemed to lurch into my awareness, only to be superseded by some new base impulse that left me struggling to keep my hands off myself. Was I losing my mind or was it all part of the reconfiguration around my vow, Master had mentioned? Part of me hungered for the next exertion of her power, welcomed being forced to forget.
The moment I acknowledged that, it hit me again. Stunning cold, harsher than ice, blasted inward from my mark. The world spun. Summer slipped from my grasp as I stumbled to my knees. That weird abrasion scraped across my mind, disrupting my coordination, leaving me grunting at the force of it.
Mercifully, the ordeal ed much swifter than previously. How many times was that now? A quick scan of what I could recall of the walk from where we parted from Master seemed to confirm it was only twice, but my memories were now unreliable. Had it been three times? More?
“What just happened?” Summer asked, her gaze a marriage of concern and suspicion as she helped me to my feet.
Oh, by the goddess, she did not . I stared at her in frustrated disbelief for a moment, weighing if it was worth explaining what was happening all over again. I chose deceit, hoping I could get one past her, and hated myself for it. I could be honest later, if I recalled any of this.
“Master sent us home. You were mindless when she left. You loved it,” I lied. The fragments of truth in my dishonesty granted me no consolation.
“Really?” she queried, distractedly. Her fingers stroked her mark, trying to work out why it was so cold to the touch.
“Master deposited unknowable quantities of magic into our marks when she bound us to our vows. The spells are still embedding into our souls,” I explained, making my quim salivate ever more as I spoke it aloud. Resist it all as I may, my fetish revelled in what was happening. I could not stop my hands driving over my breasts, down my torso, until with considerable effort, I pulled them away in clenched fists, before I could grope my sex.
“That collapse was an effect of that, I am certain,” I added, a partial truth. Lying to my sister used to make me feel nauseous. Now it just made me feel guilty. Evidently, some aspects of darkness filling my soul were useful. “We must get home. Master’s orders.”
“I understand and obey,” Summer recited so reflexively that I wondered if she was still under Master’s direct control. I studied her as we strode home and concluded that she was a more docile version of her usual self but not a puppet. That said, part of me wanted my sister to be Master’s mindless plaything, craved Master’s leash for myself. I missed my collar.
To steal my attention away from my unruly libido, I tried to focus on what had been removed from my mind with a quick ing. I still recalled Master’s command to forget what she had said, and knew she had used her magic to make us her slaves, but why was that important? We had begged her to do that. Our fetishes chained us to her will. She made us want all of this by exploiting our oldest fantasies of giving ourselves to a vampire. What else had just fallen from my mind? Something about why she left. Damnation, what was it? With effort, it emerged.
Master’s shame.
She was ashamed of needing to hurt us. Was that right? It did not seem like her at all. She only hurt us with her bite, and that was a pain we would happily die for. We enjoyed the pain that came with serving our Sovereign, did we not? Our vows, pledging ourselves to her love and service, were crystal clear. I do not think Master could erase them without annihilating us. In every way imaginable, we were our vows. Being foresworn was impossible, a truth that came with a wonderful sense of relief that the direction of our lives was absolutely settled.
There was something else. I struggled to fish it from the dark pool of my memories but managed to recall that we had to get home as soon as possible so I could write this all down before that harrowing happened again.
“I am tired. Why are you in such a hurry?” Summer asked panting, interrupting my reverie as she came to a stop.
“We are nearly home. I must write before we rest,” I explained, my deceptions unravelling. What did I need to write down? That Master had been manipulating us since the beginning. That was it. It had almost slipped away under our Sovereign’s haphazardly applied command, but I still retained it, thank the goddess. That was why I was dragging us home so fast. We were racing the erasure of my memories.
“So what? I sacrificed a lot of blood tonight,” Summer said. She ed the feeding then; hardly surprising. She pawed at her mark again, head bowed as if the black stain contained a terrible weight. Perhaps it did.
Master’s witch fire dancing in time with my twin’s spun and sparkled in my memory. There was something hidden inside my sister that neither of us knew, but only I was aware of. The idea entangled my lust with pangs of regret that my actions had curtailed our evening, and that I had not been similarly endowed by our Sovereign.
“She put something in your mind,” I said aloud before I realised that I was speaking my thoughts. Fool, I chastised myself inwardly. Confusion wrestled lazily with my purpose. It was so hard to concentrate. What was wrong with my mind?
“Yes. My vows, of course. I live only to obey my Sovereign. That is who we are now. What we are,” Summer said with cold delectation.
Thank the stars, I thought. I might not have to explain what I actually meant.
“Yes, sister. I live only to obey my Sovereign,” I breathily swore with delight and relief to have dodged an arrow. Saying something so essential to my being only added to my arousal but I still had enough self-control to ignore it for now. “Now, we must not tarry, you are practically frozen and need rest before tomorrow night. Master will doubtless wish to taste us again.”
My fingers floated up to my mark, ran over it. The patches of inky blackness chilled and slick, no longer felt as flesh, but smooth like chilled obsidian. Touching them sent shivers through me from a zealous thrill that they were clearly a component of how we were controlled, shaped, perfected. I fancied, if worked with care, I might be able to rapture by caressing it.
It was possible the marks’ peculiar texture was not real, like the silver slave bands I hallucinated the night before. I wondered if they would fade with the dawn as usual or would I bear them forever, branded by my Sovereign, confessing the state of my soul? I honestly wished they were permanent, proclaiming our slavery, forcing the conversation that would expose our secret and be done with it.
‘Mother, Father, we are the sworn slaves of our vampire Master. She is our Sovereign and we love her endlessly. We have embraced darkness and live only to obey her will.’ Picturing the pain such a revelation would cause our parents perversely brought me a sinful pleasure because it would prove my devotion to my vows beyond family ties. The wound on my neck, throbbed deliciously in time with my heart thumping faster at the idea.
“I live only to obey,” I repeated, absently, the latest in a long line of internal repetitions, finally emerging past my lips. While the cause of my obedience was now cast into doubt, the truth of my statement was not in question. Summer nodded and mumbled the same and we trudged homeward, slower than I wished but as fast as she was able.
It only then dawned on me how delirious I had become, a cauldron of unbridled lust and obedience, magic drenching my mind, fetish drenching my quim, thoughts tossed in a whirlwind about the core of my mind, about my vows. How could my mental degradation have escaped my notice until now? I kept losing track of where we were. Focusing was a trial. I had to get us back home before I forgot why I needed to.
An icy stab into my mind brought an awful abrasion inside my skull. I had never felt anything like it. Momentarily dazed I tried to recall how long I had been standing there.
Unsure what had just happened, my first thought was uncertainty over whether we would get home in time, but in time for what? The sky was still as black as the eyes of Dahlk, no hint of pre-dawn greying amid the myriad stars. Had I just forgotten something? My forehead felt so cold, exploring with my fingertips I discovered my mark was chilled and slick, not like flesh at all, but smooth like polished obsidian, driving a thrill at what could only have been the work of Master’s magic upon my skin.
Yes, that was right. Master had cast magic over us, binding us to our vows to serve her forever. Some part of the enchantment we were under was erasing my memories, which must have been our Sovereign’s will, so I had to obey. But there was something I did not want to forget: her confession that she had made us this way. Her spell was stalking through my mind, hunting traces of knowledge that all we had become was entirely her doing. Oh, my goddess that was so hot. My quim trembled at the notion. I wanted to plunge into myself, fall to my knees and rapture then and there but there was no time. That was why I had to get home. I had to write that down before Master’s magic made me forget her lies.
“Blessed be. She bit me on my breast,” Summer blithely crooned, as she peeked inside her dress. “What are you doing, sister?”
“There is no time. We must fly, now,” I insisted. Even in my addled state, I knew my sister. Her stance, her tone, the angle of her head, all told me she did not the things I did. Explanations invited discussions and discussions invited delay. That amnesia-inducing abrasion might recur at any moment. For all I knew it might have already happened any number of times.
“Why?” Summer asked confused.
“Trust me, sis, we run,” I doubled down, as I grabbed my twin’s hand and yanked her homeward.
Mercifully, Summer was too tired to argue as we bolted for the cabin. Of the two of us, I it she was fractionally faster but not that night. Her breath was laboured, her gait uncertain. How many times had she been fed from, I wondered? Knowing the woods as well as we did, I could tell it was not far now, but my ignorance of the mechanics of Master’s magic made our chances uncertain.
Images flitted through my mind as we sped past impeding trees in the dark hush of the night. The vision of sister lapping thirstily at Master’s quim prominent among them, interspersed with glimpses of the secrets our Sovereign had confessed. Were they real or tricks she had placed in my memory? I was her plaything so she could do anything she wished to me. I devoutly wished that she would.
The thought of what she had done to Summer while I observed preyed upon my nerves. Only days ago, I had promised to protect my twin while she was under Master’s control. Tonight, I had watched our Sovereign have her way with my sister’s mind, as I shamelessly made my quim sing over and over. I was not like this before she corrupted us. That’s why I had to . Master made us this way.
Please goddess, let me hold on to that until we make it home. Please, just a little further. Please.
Low branches whipped , as we ran. Summer groaned and stumbled beside me, but she preserved without complaint. She was trusting me with far more than she knew. I was doing this for both of us. My vows loomed inside my mind, huge and sacred. Sworn to obey, I promised myself I would comply, give up my mind and memories as soon as I wrote down what Master was trying to hide from us.
Some unseen, startled night bird, disturbed by our headlong flight, thrashed away from us into the dark. I envied its celerity, slowed as we were by Summer’s infirmity, fretting that all our effort was going to be wasted?
We broke through the treeline, home finally in sight, and came to halt. Whatever else was happening, the pact had to be protected. Waiting for signs of life within the cabin was now our protocol when returning from trysts. While the urgency made the pause torturous, the building remained in darkness. I keened my ears for any sound of movement that would betray the presence of a waking parent.
While I listened impatiently, I reached for the strange, almost ceramic smoothness of my mark for any indication of a coming wave of amnesia but felt only foolish. There was nothing I could do to resist it. How would I even know until it was too late? A worry that the mark might not vanish with the dawn since it had changed texture gave me the impression I had already considered that but forgotten. I clutched at the hope that lost memories might be restored with an appropriate prompt. I would have just such a prompt once I wrote it down.
Sweating profusely, Summer nodded her agreement that she could hear nothing. Her wild eyes gave silent onition that our exertions had better be worth it.
We approached as fast as practical to remain in stealth; employing lessons learned from Father on hunting trips. Scurrying up to our open window, we cooperated to help Summer climb in first. I considered going ahead to get to the paper quickly but was worried she might struggle noisily without assistance.
Once Summer was safely inside, I slipped in behind her. She lowered herself quietly onto her bed, recovering breath. With a silent shrug, she demanded answers about our haste to get home, but I held up a hand to beg her patience. I crept to the shelf to grab paper, a stylus and a tiny jar of ink. Placing the sheet upon our dresser, trembling I uncorked the jar and began to write.
“Thrall,” I heard whispered from behind me. The word insinuated every corner of my mind in a loving rush.
Oh no.
Exhausted, enchanted, enraptured, my malleable mind had no capacity to resist the call of my true name.
I stopped writing, staring at the word ‘Master’ on the page before me. Wedged between languorous fingers, the stylus rested an inch above the paper. Strangled screams inside my head, growing ever quieter, urged me to inscribe the word ‘lies’. Master lies.
My disobedient hand mocked my efforts and fantasies of free will.
The vows scorched into my soul burned brighter and brighter until its silver light was all I could comprehend. Everything else was unreal. Submission consumed me.
“Attend,” my sister whispered. The stylus dropped from my hand as I turned to see my twin staring right at me. No mindless vacancy upon her visage, a fearsome purpose ruled her eyes. I drifted like a dreaming ghost to stand before her, shifting into inspection pose as Master had taught earlier that night and was locked in place.
“Master commands. Thrall will listen, understand and obey,” Slave demanded, clearly, quietly, firmly.
“I live only to obey,” Thrall confirmed, transfixed, my voice barely a hushed breath.
I listened attentively through the miasma of a moonstruck delirium as my sister leaned close to murmur a litany of truths into my accepting ears. To this day I do not know how long she spoke, but every word sunk into the depths of the open, receptive mind that Master had prepared.
“Thrall will obey,” she uttered.
“I understand and obey,” Thrall responded.
“Forget,” Slave commanded.
Thrall obeyed.