CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I’m not surprised to be sitting in the Headmistress’s office, but I am surprised to see Darkwood here. He’s leaning beside the window behind Isadora’s desk with a wry smile on his lips. He almost looks pleased I’m about to be reamed out.
Isadora herself doesn’t look so cordial. She appraises me for a moment before standing and pacing around her desk. “This castle has a bloody history. Some five-hundred years ago the enigmatic sorceresses Malakar Shadowthorn and her faction of would-be mutineers swept through these very halls casting down any who stood in their way. Her little reign didn’t last, of course. She was in chains by nightfall once word got out to the larger luminal factions. But what this did serve to start was a strange paradox here in the castle of those forces between light and dark, light and shadow—a contradiction that has remained.”
I look to Darkwood, but he’s giving me nothing.
The Headmistress stops in front of me. “Which I’m afraid is a long-winded way of saying while Shadowcraft is part of these walls, it is tempered by a certain restraint—restraint that you did not show when you sent dear Cassandra to the infirmary.”
“So I’m going to be expelled?”
The Headmistress laughs, looking back to the Professor. “I can see why you like her,” turning back to me, “but no.” She waves her hand around. “Professor Darkwood assures me this was a simple case of self-defense, that your darker powers are still in the taming phase.”
Taming—one way to put it. “So I’m not going to be punished?”
And fuck me, I’ve never sounded more like a child in my entire life.
I consider the relationship between the Professor and Isadora again, because they do seem oddly intertwined. I hope it’s only professional.
“Professor Darkwood has offered to further hone your talents and personally discipline Ms. Thornwood.”
I remember his threats to Cassandra. He’ll kill her for even thinking of harming me, his plaything. “That won’t be necessary,” I blurt.
The Headmistress looks to Damien, who shrugs. She claps her hands together. “Well, in any matter I’ll let you two…hash it out, so to speak.” Her lips pull into a tight seam. “For now, you’re dismissed, but please, Ms. Fairchild. No more displays. We wouldn’t want to give the student population any further cause for concern, would we?”
Darkwood pushes off the wall. “Allow me to escort her to class.”
The Headmistress seats herself at her desk, pulling across a stack of papers. “As you wish.”
“What was all that about?” I ask quietly once we’re back in the hallway.
“You should be thanking me,” he says, setting a brisk pace.
“You’re going to hurt her, are you, Cassandra?”
“I would quite like to break every bone in her body, but you seem to have developed a weakness for her.”
“A weakness?” I laugh. “No, it’s not like that, but I don’t want to be responsible for her…” I can’t force the word out, the big ‘D.’
We reach the crossroads of the hall, facing one another as a student presses past us.
“I’ll consider leniency,” the Professor says, “but your display, as the Headmistress put it, was unacceptable.”
I point back to where we’ve come from. “You were just in there defending me, weren’t you, before I arrived?”
He takes a step closer. “The Headmistress is right. What you did was reckless. Revealing your powers in the open like that,” he tuts, his tongue clicking between his lips. “Which is why I shall prepare an extra-special lesson for you tonight.”
I tense. “Another trial?”
He simply smiles and nods. “Enjoy your classes, Annabelle.”
He walks off leaving me standing there none the wiser.
*
It’s funny how your mind works against you when there’s a question of ambiguity about what will happen later.
Not that anyone’s concentration in class has been particularly good, but I find myself unable to focus on even the most minute of things as the day passes.
I also notice people steering clear of me, hushed whispers when I pass. Even Lily and Ava are keeping their distance, Leo dodging me like I’ve developed some strange venereal disease.
I’m thankful when midnight arrives.
I make my way to Damien’s unseen.
I’ve become more than familiar with this bundle of nerves waiting for him to open the door, but tonight is different.
When the door opens, those nerves become a beehive. I don’t know what he has planned, but given what he said earlier, I imagine it will test me more than ever before.
“Little lamb,” he smiles, his scar pulling with it. “Please.”
I enter, the also-familiar ashen-sweet scent of him as I pass. The passage leading downstairs to the dungeon is open, Darkwood moving before me and descending downwards.
But this time, when we arrive at the dungeon proper, the Professor ushers me past the usual implements of torture and towards a fixed black door at the back of the room. He waits at it, pushing it open as I arrive and following me through.
This room is smaller than the dungeon itself, though the roof itself is higher, and for good reason.
There is only one thing in this room.
A guillotine.
For a moment I’m choked with fear as I stare upon the giant structure. It rises from the ground like a wooden colossus, the blade at the top glinting in the candlelight.
“Isn’t she beautiful,” Darkwood muses, leading me towards the erection as my heart gallops ahead.
The shadows are heavy here—almost palpable.
Inevitably, questions rise in my head. What has this bore witness to? What foul deeds have occurred here that imbue this space with such evil?
The Professor leaves me standing as he walks around the guillotine, running his hand over the wooden columns that support it.
“My darling,” he says, stroking it, “I have brought you a gift.”
He turns to me. “Did you know this very guillotine was designed by a harpsichord maker? Though I must confess, I much prefer the music this machine makes.” He points to the crossbar and angled blade that hangs from it. “As you can see, the blade design is much refined. It is placed at a perfect forty-five-degree angle so as to sever the neck cleanly,” he claps his hands together, “fully, efficiently, as is the French way.”
A knot the size of my fist has been caught in my throat. I gulp it down, my head swimming with a mix of dread and curiosity.
“Typically, the condemned would be brought to it at dawn, a crowd summoned, and the execution carried out for all to witness, but you, witchling, are no prisoner.” His eyes slide to the area between my heaving breasts, the coat having fallen apart and desire already licking between my legs. “No, for you this will be a rather more private affair. Allow me to demonstrate.”
He selects a melon from a basket beside the machine. I hadn’t even noticed it. I realize the melon is the same size as my head. He places it in the lunette and clamps it down. With a pull of the release lever the blade drops and the melon is split in two, half of it rolling away towards the shadows that swim in the corner of the room.
The Professor pulls the blade back into position, the rope straining against the weight of it. When it hits the crossbar at the top, he ties the rope back and once more the guillotine is set.
I quiver on the spot wondering how many times he’s performed this same routine.
“Sometimes,” continues the Professor, now stroking the release lever, “for those truly debased criminals, the worst of the worst, the blade would be removed altogether, allowing the weight to crush the windpipe, though it does not always do so completely. And now,” he says, “with the right incantation, you will look death in the eye. You will welcome it, and in doing so, grow yet more powerful, more present. I say to you this: after tonight, should you survive, the shadows will see you as one of their own. They will welcome you and there, in their embrace, you will find what you’ve been looking for.”
Which is? I wonder.
Shards of fear pierce my gut. Cold, brutal terror soars across my insides. So he means to kill me? Is that it? It that what this has come down to?
If there was ever a time to back out, it’s now.
But no. I’ve come too far to throw everything away.
He promised my father my protection, not my death.
“What do I do?’ I query, the nervousness in my voice obvious even if I’m doing my best to downplay it.
He instructs me to lie back on the bench, placing my neck in the lunette. I remove my coat and comply, feeling the solid weight of the bench below as I lie down, the worn ring of the lunette against the back of my throat, the scent of the melon just cut, its juices staining the wood.
The bench ends just after my buttocks. My feet are planted on the floor, knees bent.
The Professor lowers the top of the lunette. It sits against the front of my neck and now I am at the mercy of the monster, caught within its wooden grip, unable to see my body, to see only the paper-thin blade that rests above swinging ever so slightly in the dim breeze of the dungeon.
I am unsure what to do with my hands, so I grip the sides of the bench below. I grip it until my knuckles harden and my nails dig into the wood fibers.
I can hear the Professor’s boots on the cobblestone as he rounds the machine. Quietly, I detect his fingers tracing their way over my skin, running over my breasts and down to the shallow dip before my hips.
My nipples stand stiff, the air cool against my sex. It would all be very arousing were it not for the instrument of death poised above me.
I hear the Professor removing his pants, the clinking of his belt buckle unmissable in this silence. He sheds his clothes and I’m left wondering about the purpose of this guillotine. If Damien wanted sex, he could have just said so.
Something is pulled free of a sheath. I get the briefest glimpse of a dagger before Darkwood is rounding upon me.
Something cold and firm rests against my hole.
No.
I inhale sharply with realization. He has placed the tip of his dagger against my opening, resting the flat edge against the floor of my sex, pressing downwards and stretching my slit. He inches forward slightly, the tip shifting inside.
I dare not move or breathe. The smallest motion and I will be cut.
It’s cold, like being penetrated by death itself.
Does he mean to skewer me? To cut me open? Is this part of it? Is this the true Damien Darkwood, the psychopath, now revealed in full?
I’m drowning with these questions as the dagger is withdrawn, replaced by thick fingers pressing through my folds.
A spell is whispered.
“Umbra, see mors. Umbra, see Umbra.”
Shadow, see death. Shadow, see purpose.
“Repeat it,” says the Professor.
I do so as his fingers continue to move. As always, he knows exactly where to press, to stroke, to elicit pleasure.
I grow wet under his touch, a whimper rising up in my throat. A gentle stroke over my clit has me flexing my thigh muscles.
Looking at the blade above has turned me giddy. I consider if, should the blade part my head from my body, I will remain conscious, spinning on the ground below.
Maybe my head will be shocked into a kind of alert indignation. ‘What has happened?’ it will say to him. ‘What have you done with my body?’
The Professor’s fingers shift in the slick arousal between my legs, running through my moistening lips.
He steps forward. Out the very corner of my eye I see his hand on the release lever. He pulls it slightly and the blade groans in the crossbar above.
Shit.
The shadows scatter inside me.
My body pulls tight, my spine pressing off the wooden bench.
Fingers curl around my wrist, lifting my hand and placing it on Darkwood’s hardening cock.
“Your choice is simple, my pet. Pull my cock, or I pull the lever.”
Not much of a choice.
I begin to pump my hand up and down his erection as much as my bondage will allow.
The bare heat of his cock is in strong juxtaposition to the taciturn air down here. My breath comes thick as I labor to jerk the Professor off, hyperaware of the blade that hovers above and the pressure of the lunette against my tender neck.
He moves his hips in rhythm with my hand, his breathing becoming more labored. I pump him harder, enjoying the mewing sound he makes, enjoying this, my feeble power over him.
I work on his bulging glans, rolling my hand over his knob and gathering the moisture there to hasten my work, but still he remains composed.
I stroke firmer down his pulsing length, running my nails down his shaft, cupping his balls.
I picked up valuable insights into male anatomy when we switched genders. I use it to full effect now.
He pulls away, his cock slipping from my grasp and his hand leaving the release.
I hear him moving to the end of the bench, my bare bottom settled on the edge. He pushes my knees apart and steps between them.
My whole body grows stiff once more, waves of arousal flowing through my system.
The head of his cock parts the moist lips of my pussy, but he does not immediately penetrate me. Instead, he reaches forward, stroking and playing with my breasts, running his fingers down the bellow-like breathing of my stomach to stroke the lingering bud hidden at the top of my sex.
My loins light up, respond to his touch.
I pant, pleading to the heavens to forgive me as my core melts and desire flows around the intruder at my lips. My body begins to writhe on the bench. I twist my neck in the lunette as my pulses races with the shocking pleasure developing in my pussy.
The shadows rejoice, churning and coiling inside me.
Cunt pulsing with need, hips lifting from the wooden bench below, the Professor shifts forward and fills me with his prick. It pushes the air from the lungs, forcing me to take another, even deeper breath.
My ravenous cunt holds him in tight possession as he grasps my hips and begins to thrust against me, each pressing my shoulders against the lunette and causing the crossbar to shake above, the blade quivering with the action.
It doesn’t look stable.
At all.
A moan escapes my mouth as I rock against him, shifting my hips as much as my bondage will allow to take in this final act of pleasure.
The shadows move inside me, their power growing more present by the minute.
As he thrusts, his practiced touch runs circles around the bud above his skewering cock. My cheeks burn as shockwaves pound through my body with his every brutal stroke, his cock running through me long and deep.
I close my eyes to blind out the blade above.
Blotches of distant color ring around the blackness as the entire contraption seems to shift on the cobblestone. The Professor bucks forward yet harder, throwing obscenities at me, spitting at my body as he grunts and bellows into my pale form. The sounds from his relentless pounding are almost as loud as my moans, his hefty balls hitting my crotch in rhythm.
The surroundings leave me. The guillotine evaporates and it is only Damien and me, what we have shared and experienced so far, this terrible gift he has given me.
As I dream, the Professor’s fingers continue to circle my clit with relentless precision. He flicks at it, triggering a thunderbolt of pleasure that tips my senses towards abandon.
He speaks as he fucks me. “Can you feel it, little lamb, me, fucking your villainous body? Are you ready to come, or should I drop the blade, see that pretty head of yours on the floor?”
He shifts position, leaning back and angling his cock upwards against the sensitive roof of my pussy.
I cannot help the feelings that rush through me. Death is all around me, yet it only brings me closer to life, to the shadows. I am energized, a creature of pure sensation as the Professor fucks me in short, sharp strokes, grunting like an animal. I envision the large muscles all over his back, twisting and flexing while he claims my body.
My pussy swells around his shaft, my legs butter as he fucks against the wet gash between my legs. He rocks forward and strokes my breasts, pinching a nipple between his fingers, lowering his head to take it between his teeth as his cock rides low in my pelvis.
Sweat trickles from my brow, gathering under the lunette. My body sags limply as I let him use me, my back wet against the rough textures below.
He pulls from my body and staggers to the front of the guillotine. His member stands proud, a scepter shining slick in the firelight with my arousal stained upon it.
The blade above is blackened out as he stands over my face, pressing his cock downwards against my lips.
“Open them,” he commands.
I do, letting him slide his member into my mouth. I take his thick cock willingly. I kiss the middle of his shaft, and he pushes further down, his cock gliding along my tongue and into my throat. I gag, my eyes watering for a moment, but I retain composure, letting my throat adjust to his girth.
He pulls back when I start to choke. He squats over my face, sinking his balls into my mouth so that I take each in alternate, sucking on the delicate fruit and running my tongue along the thin seam that divides his sack. But it’s not enough. He presses the tip of his cock downwards again, painting my lips with the glistening tip.
I taste him, the salt, the musk, the strange spices unlike any I’ve known or been privy to before.
I open my mouth, an invitation, and he drives into it again, presses my neck awkwardly against the bottom of the lunette with every frenzied thrust. I flick my tongue over the body of his cock, sweep it over his glans until his groans of approval are ringing in my ears.
There is power in this too, in this simple act of fellatio. A rapturous glow falls over me and I ask him, aloud, “please.”
His cock pops free again, a precarious bridge of spittle between my lips and the swollen bulb of his prick. It glimmers in the firelight like a dewy spider’s web.
Everything stills.
He stands and disappears from sight.
The guillotine lurches and I shake again, fearful at any moment the blade will plunge downwards, ending me.
My thighs are gripped as he lifts my legs over his shoulders and rocks forward, plunging so hard and deep into my waiting hole that it shocks the air from my chest in a ragged gasp. I wheeze and suck in another breath, every inch of him stretching me out.
One, two strokes and I can take no more as the pressure on my clit refuses to relent. The fire sweeps through my body swiftly, consuming my mind.
I come, surrendering fully, my body and blood humming as a finely tuned instrument. The shadows fill and gather what remains, the power that follows immense.
I’m still in a hymn of ecstasy as the lunette is lifted from my neck. Vaguely, I feel Damien lifting me, turning my body over until I’m lying belly down on the bench, the lunette falling against the back of my neck.
Not again.
The Professor steps around me, his cock and the bundled muscle of his legs coming into view.
He spits between my ass cheeks, screwing his thumb into my ass while his cock rushes inside me.
He holds the release lever, using it as leverage to ram into me harder. There’s no tenderness in his touch as he rakes my back with his free hand. He’s confident and strong, working into me with deep, long, masterful strokes.
I press back against him, hands against the lunette as I try to lift myself upwards and rock him deep into my body.
He slides his cock all the way out to the tight ring of my pussy, plunging back into the wet fire beyond. All the while, his thumb moves deeper into my ass.
I feel the fall, the endless drop. It seems eternal, otherworldly. The rush of another orgasm approaches, an oblivion so deep and long I fear it may be my body, not the blade, that sends me to the next world.
Just as I’m about to come, he pulls out, my ass and pussy gaping. He lifts my body under the torso and turns me, screwing me around in the lunette until I choke and blubber, turning me until I’m once again on my back, shoulders bent and broken from the unnatural movement.
Lying down once more, eyes on the blade above, he thrusts into my sopping cunt, plunging to the very extremities of my body.
He cries out, close to his own death, still grasping the lever and sending the blade rocking and whining above me.
I grip the bench again and come, lost in a blinding wash, my body squeezing around him in violent contractions, tightening and constricting around his poisonous cock.
As I’m screaming, caught in ecstasy, the Professor pulls the release lever at the same time as his seed spills deep into my womb.
The blade falls with a whoosh.
No.
My body tenses. My eyes close, but when they open, I do not see the cobblestones as my head rolls upon them. Rather, the blade has fallen short, caught halfway down the guillotine.
Damien holds the release rope in his hands, tying it back with effort to hold it in place halfway down the structure. He does so as he continues to pump seed into my body.
The blade secured, he pulls out of the slop between my legs and rounds the front of the machine, twisting my head to the side and planting his warm member between my lips.
I suck, cleaning the sweetened mix of cum and my desire from his cock, swallowing our ministrations until he is satisfied. He lifts the lunette and allows me to sit upright. I reach up to my throat, as if I can’t believe it’s still attached to my body.
He wasn’t wrong. I do feel the lift in power now, that simmering energy the shadows provide has grown again.
When he speaks, it is with an even and measured tone. It is with reverence. “Ava, Umbra. Ava, Regina.”
Hail, Shadow.
Hail, your Queen.