The trouble with philanthropy was that it carried an inherent assumption that the philanthropist in question had to interact with the general populous. Mingling, networking, attending events. All that rubbish and more was an absolute if one wished to be notable. It took more than just marketing. One had to be passionate, constantly spewing the gospel of their craft to physical bodies dressed in their most expensive clothing. What was one party or two between those with sacrificial calling? When one’s value was determined by the weight of their wallet, it was important to showcase that wealth, to inspire the unfortunate to achieve more—or the caged forsaken puppies, or the lost children, or crime, or any other cause one happened to enjoy ranting about from the safety of a gilded hall. It was all about the dramatic effect, how real you appeared as you cried for the papers and how large you could make the check to the next big thing on the list.

It was all so incredibly loathsome. The gawking, the falsified cheer, the peacocking—

“Madam Hitch!”

Kinsley smiled, something practiced and perfect that didn’t quite reach the shadows twisting throughout her narrowed hazel gaze. She loosened stiff shoulders and extended one hand of rich bronze from the tightened grip it once held upon her half-empty wine glass. Immediately, unaware of the direction of her thoughts, the owner of the voice leaned forward and delivered a sloppily given kiss to a ringless knuckle.

In response, she greeted him with a silver-toned, “Richards.”

And he smiled, her present—unwanted—company, with a gleam in his eyes that spoke of far too much indulgence in the evenings offered beverage of choice. “So glad you could make it. Our biggest secret contributor, the mighty Hitch herself!”

Kinsley took the compliment for what it was, an attempt at clumsy conversation, emphasized by his awkward wink. How soon would this slip into solicitation? “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

Even though she much preferred to be. She had never been a fan of gatherings, charitable or otherwise. Balls, parties, galas, and so forth… they were all just attempts made by modern nobility’s reach for the unobtainable bliss of the hedonistic practices of old. They were not the gentry, no matter how much they played at it. Not here, among the pretty city lights in their precious Hall, squished and squashed like rats in metal cages. Not ever.

Society, in these times, would always lack refined graciousness. The rich were just that, rich and little else.

Still, if Richards wanted to pretend at humble, while the reflection of his gaudy jewels caught her eye, she would allow him that. After all, she was a master player too.

“Oh! I just knew it, I told Martha—have you met my wife, Martha?”

“Yes,” Kinsley answered, just shy of a hiss.

“Yes, well, I told Martha that you would be here. That you wouldn’t miss a chance to represent our beautiful West Z and donate to the cause, even though you’re never been eager to take the credit—”

“And what,” Kinsley interrupted, “cause would that be?”

Richards fumbled, his mouth flapping in the mimicry of a dying jowl shaking fish. “Oh! Well, you know.”

And she did know, she always knew. She had to if she wanted to be seen as competent, knowledgeable, and perfect when forced to mingle with the piteous and worthless. Knowledge was power in the business, wasn’t it? It had certainly been in her last position. When she’d been so much more than just… just this.

Kinsley Hitch, widow of Martin Hitch, generous and kind and so very giving. So wise, so patient, so…

So pathetic compared to the power she’d held. To the influence. To the excitement and—

“Of course,” Kinsley said, pushing aside thoughts that would only lead to yearning and a night nursing a canter of brandy. That was no more of that, those times before. Defeat did that. Running did that.

One could not remain villainous forever, not if they had an unfortunate record of loss. Or wanted to stay out of prison. The usual.

“Yes, and so, ahah, I know you’ve already written your check.” Richards winked again in an incredibly obvious manner, cheeks too rosy from drink and his near embrace with embarrassment. Kinsley contemplated what they’d look like bruised and battered. “So, I was wondering if we could talk about something else, instead? There’s an event next week. Have you have heard of proposition six-eighty-three?”

Kinsley’s look of mild-tolerance immediately fell. Though it was to be expected. They always wanted to talk about money at these sorts of things, and yet tonight… tonight she felt incapable of mustering the usual care. And truly it wasn’t Richards fault—though his presence was an irritant every time she came to these events—it was just…

She inhaled slowly and lifted her hand in a motion for Richards to stop before he got started on whatever cause he felt inclined to pilfer her wallet for. “Unfortunately, I must go for the evening. A bit tired, and all that.”

Richards frowned, “A-already? You don’t seem tired.”

“Oh, but I am.” Kinsley replied, “I’ve always found it difficult to stay up past—” Here she paused to glance quickly over Richards’ shoulder to the massive clock that hung within the Hall space, “Eight.”

Richards’ brows furrowed together, his displeasure clear in the twitch of his shoulders and the press of his lips. “Why? The sun has barely set!”

Kinsley wasn’t moved. His outward display of indignation was the least of her worries. She didn’t bother to vocally reply and graced him with one raised brow.

The pause in conversation persisted, pregnant with inelegance. It was everything Kinsley hoped it would be, enhanced by Richards’ awkward cough into a balled-up grease stained handkerchief and his thereafter rushed stutter, “Unfortunate! I suspect it’s due to the time difference? You’re from overseas, correct? London is it?”

No, she thought with ire, I am not from London. But she didn’t blame him for his ignorance. Her accent, the rolling husk that curled around her words, was conceivably comparable. Still, it was olde, from a time beyond the one she inhabited. From a space that no longer was. Crumbled, set to rubble and ruin.

Now her smile was genuine, a bit cruel, but at least sincere. “No,” she drawled, “not London, Richards dear. I’ve been here for a time, in West Z. I’m just...”

Bored. Incredibly so.

He took the hint. Or, maybe, he felt unnerved by the glint of her smile and the unusual sharpness of her teeth. “Yes, yes of course. Well I won’t keep you. I wouldn’t dare!”

Such a gentleman.

“Goodnight then, Richards.”

And she’d left him there, with his uncomfortable expression, as she’d done many a night before to many a person, to return to the silence of her self-imposed solitude. To the empty barely decorated darkness of her taken loft. And she’s so humble, they’d often said, living her minimalistic lifestyle. As if the price of a loft within West Z wasn’t an exuberant cost all on its own. It was a redundant existence, but redundancy bred safety and expectancy. Silence led to the creation of the unremarkable. The rich that toyed with the idea of nobility knew her name, knew her face, but the people did not. She was anonymous in nearly every aspect. An imperceptible shadow who wrote nameless checks for things she scarcely cared about if only to keep to the normalcy of having friends and the pretense of the generous and well-meaning.

Madam Hitch had to have friends. A well-established philanthropist needed contacts. Friends listened for things. They babbled incessantly for the price of coddling, but they reported what they could without cohesion or fright. It wasn’t what she wanted, not exactly, but it was something. A sort of influence. That was its own type of power, wasn’t it? Like the cousin of having power over another. All that subtle manipulation made with smiles, coy gestures, and bottles of wine.

She’d take what she could get in this day, where noise seemed abundant and mundanity was wielded like shield and sword.

* * *

“’Scuse me! Ma’am!”

Kinsley stopped mid-stride, shoulders tense before she twisted around on the toes of her heels to face a voice she couldn’t see.

Oh, wait.

“Ma’am!” The voice came from a child, one among a small gaggle of children who couldn’t have been done with their elementary tenure. “We… we need some help.”

Help? Kinsley did not help—

“What is it?” She asked, because she should have taken a taxi instead of opting for an evening stroll through a heavily populated city, no matter how safe it proclaimed to be. Safe enough for children to be out as the sun began to set, she supposed.

“M-my sister is stuck in a…” Here the child looked over shoulder, past the gaggle, to a crying girl in a nearby tree. A tree far too tall for the gaggle, but not too tall for herself.

She repressed a scowl, “And you don’t want to call the authorities for this?”

“Could… you get her instead?”

Kinsley really had no interest at all in the situation. She was not a kind person, no matter the reality of her new purpose. Children were… sticky things. Creatures best kept far from her person, as she had no preference to be… erm, sticky because of them. In fact, the child that had asked for assistance was covered in muck from the day and looked just about ready to touch her in a fit of distress.

Oh, no. No, no, no.

Then, just as the child moved toward her Kinsley held out a hand, the very one that had kept Richards from babbling on about his proposition eighteen or… whatever that had been. “Stay.”

She didn’t want to be touched. Hadn’t been in ages, and she especially didn’t want to be touched by a tear-streaked child.

Unfortunately, fate was cruel, for the child in the tree looked incredibly filthy compared to the first. Mud streaked, tear tracked, shoeless. What was going on in this city?

“I should call—”

“N-no! Please we, um, can’t really wait! We were supposed to be home ages ago!”

Kinsley forgave the interruption, children were incredibly lacking in manner or discipline. She wouldn’t fault them that. What she could fault them for was the fact that they expected her to play at makeshift heroics. How appalling.

With a cringe and a sigh Kinsley stepped up to the tree, flush with the trunk. She held out her arms, ready to accept her fate as she stood on the toes of her fancy heels and stretched. She wasn’t particularly tall, just slightly above average—five hands and eight fingers, her father had told her, long long ago—but she was able to reach the child, who practically jumped into her arms and tugged on her ink-colored hair in the process. That was what she got for keeping a shoulder length style. One should never leave enough hair on their person to grab and tug.

“Thank you, thank you!” The child wailed, smudging dirt across her white blouse and getting a foot caught in the belt of her slacks.

“Yes, yes.” Kinsley grunted, as she considered removing the child from her arms to instead treat her like a sack of potatoes. “What were you doing up there anyway?”

As Kinsley settled back firmly on the ground she tilted her head up toward the tree in question. Through the umbrella canopy she swore she saw… something. An odd glow, a pair of golden eyes that caught the reflective street-lamp light and twisted it into a burst of color, in a manner almost as familiar as her own when she…

“I was following a fairy.” The child easily replied, her woes forgotten as the rest of the gaggle rushed up to greet her. “B-but then I got stuck.”

“Fairies do not exist within this realm,” Kinsley said, distracted and dismissive of the frown that crossed the child’s features. Her attention was elsewhere, focused… pulled toward the rustling of the leaves above, toward the darkness that shrouded what she thought might have been that… glow, the dazzling color… “So, do not do that again.”

Then with a shake of her head she set the child down. She didn’t stay to listen to the other children’s attempts at thanking her. Instead, she noted the sound of wings beyond her back mingle with the hastened click of her heels.

A bird then. Nothing more.

* * *

There was a knocking at her window.

There was a knocking at her window at a quarter to midnight when her loft was situated on the fifteenth floor. It was unusual, extremely so, and disconcerting. Especially since nothing should have been knocking at anything she owned. Her address was not well known, and those she used to know, so many years ago, were no longer privy to her actions or whereabouts. It was enough to cause another rare occurrence, a squirming in her guts. Nerves, she believed.

She ignored it but the knocking didn’t stop. It was incessant, a deep tap, tap, tap that reverberated against her skull to the beat of her hitching heart. But, well... it must go away. It would, surely, go away.

It did not.

With a sigh of irritation, she dropped her book and left it behind on her abandoned couch with it’s odd symbolled cover and burnt-edge parchment splayed on the cushion. Her hand clenched, her skin tingled, and the familiar warmth of something other buzzed along her flesh. Familiar. Comforting. Exhilarating. She was retired, but not helpless, not anymore… never again.

But there was no monster at the window, only a bird—an owl of browns and blacks, with a gleaming gaze of gold, pecking and pecking—

Kinsley hadn’t realized how tense she’d been until relief flooded her limbs and left her feeling… breathless. She inhaled sharply and unclenched her fist and dwelled in the familiar rumble of irritation that spilled across her chest. What was this? Animals did not make it their priority to come to her, not with her position what it was. She wasn’t soft, kind, or righteous. That was the sort to draw their attention, those with a benevolent aura. So then… why?

She went to the window and slid it up with an audible slam that she’d hoped would startle the creature, but the owl only tilted its head. Refined in its patience.

“What is it?” She hissed, all teeth and grimace, “I’m incredibly busy you foul little birdie and it’s rude for the uninvited to occupy a railing.”

But the owl was unmoved by her venom. It merely hooted in response, but something was off. It didn’t sound right. Its voice seemed to warble, echo with an undertone that she could feel, like gravel underfoot.

She shivered, swallowed, then replied. “W-what? No. No. I…”

The owl hooted again, and Kinsley felt sweat drip between her shoulder blades. She shouldn’t have answered or seemed like she understood it. Animals were difficult to fool once you acknowledged them and she’d always found birds to be far too intelligent.

“You are mistaken.” She cleared her throat, steadied the rapid thud of her heart, and ignored the tremble of her hands as she held onto the window. Just in case. Just in case I need to close it quickly. “I am Kinsley CoBalt Hitch of West Z.”

The owl tilted its head, stretched its neck, peered closely and tried to catch her gaze.

She felt unsettled and bare before its vision. She turned her head, fueled by the desire to avoid it and yet held back by a sense of stubborn propriety. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, slam the window on it. That would have been unspeakably rude. But she didn’t want to look at it either. To see the gold and twisting colors. She should have never opened the window. This was no ordinary owl—

“Kinsley CoBalt Hitch is it?”

Kinsley sucked in a breath and slowly released the sill of her window. There was no point in closing it now. Not with the voice of another behind her, a voice she was forced to face with one brow raised and posture relaxed—despite the tension that knotted her belly and the sliver of panic that curled around her spine, cold and sharp.

“An interesting name for the Obsidian Beast.” The voice chirped, so playful, so light in tone. “But I think you were known by a different term, once upon a time.”

The woman she faced had made herself comfortable, propped up against her table. In one hand she toyed with Kinsley’s ball of glass, admiring the gleaming surface that reflected a gently smiling face half-covered by russet colored hair among the swirls of galaxy blue. The other kept her leaning form against her dining table, a toned body as tall as she, of ochre tones so reminiscent of the mellow-brown light that bathed her abandoned sitting space—similar to her own bronze, but not as rich. And those eyes, so bright, a cornflower yellow that couldn’t be natural, framed behind square-framed glasses that seemed incredibly impractical. Still, it was her clothing that really stole Kinsley’s gaze. A long sleeve jacket of what looked like black leather, tight and clinging to muscular biceps, sliced at individual points along the arms to show off glimpses of skin. A scarf the color of plum wine, wrapped around her neck with the ends settled against her back. Tight pants that hugged her lower body in a display of long legs and well-defined calves before they disappeared into steel-toed boots. She was uniformly dressed, an emblem crest of a carved and marble-colored winged woman whose gaze was covered by a stretch of cloth, large and eye catching upon a belt angled around her hips. The sight of it, all together, was only accentuated by the final piece against her chest, a locket in the shape of a massive golden ‘S’.

Oh.

The woman expertly twisted the glass ball and balanced it precariously against the back of her hand before she rolled it with grace into the cup of her palm, “Your Most Gracious Majesty, the Queen of Intemperiae.”

Kinsley felt something quake within her, a quiver that she refused to display as the other curled wicked words around her tongue with no fear of the power they held. And yet, with absolute perfection, she spoke them with startling familiarity. She tried to swallow but found her mouth incredibly dry.

The owl hooted behind her.

She repressed the urge to run in her own home, a home that had been invaded by a Knight of Sovereignty, a triple-x classed heroic. She could feel her pulse in her throat and practically hear the heavy thud of her heart against her ribs as she inhaled sharply. Here she was, a sudden entertainer. The woman, a beauty in uniform and herself…? Dressed in only a knee-length nightshirt.

No, she thought, I refuse to feel vulnerable in my own home.

She straightened, ignored the owl’s second hoot, and spoke with steady tone. “You are mistaken. Both of you.” She resisted the urge to toss a nasty glare at the bird at her back. “I’ve no idea what you speak of… who are you?”

The woman never lost her smile, “Oh, you don’t know?”

Kinsley knew. She was a citizen of West Z, she certainly knew.

“I am a Daughter of Dawne.” The woman straightened from the table and took great care to replace the glass ball back where she’d found it, curious but gentle. “A Knight from the Council of Sovereignty. Here to maintain the balance of our universe.”

“Her Golden Sight,” Kinsley whispered, fingertips twitching as a familiar buzz filled them and settled, eager and waiting. “West Z’s precious little modern-day princess.”

“Nothing of the sort,” Sight placed a hand to her chest, an act of humility, “I am just another heroic, among the many, who care for this city. Placed here by Her will.”

But it wasn’t that simple. Kinsley read the papers, watched the news, and knew that Sight was much more than she currently claimed to be. The citizenship adorned her, elevated her to the equivalent of a royal in a world where royalty barely held worth. They listened when she spoke. The mayor showed her deference. She was their Lady of Justice and Judgement in one flexing package.

Kinsley could not resist the curl of her upper lip, “Then, you’ll have to forgive me for the misunderstanding. Now, may I ask you a question?”

Sight bobbed her head with sickening eagerness, those soft yellow eyes twinkling with undeserved mirth. “Of course!”

“Why the fuck are you in my house?”

Sight had the audacity to gasp, “Language, Your Majesty!”

Kinsley sucked in another sharp breath, closed her eyes for the briefest of moments and counted to ten. When she opened them again Sight was away from her table and perusing her library—her library!

Through gritted teeth she hissed, “Do. Not. Call. Me. That.”

Sight gave her a curious glance from over one shoulder. “But, that is who you are, is it not? The Savage—”

“I am NOT—” Kinsley swallowed her screech as the owl behind her cried out in hideous anger, forcing the boom of its displeasure to rattle the hanging light fixtures above. This time she did turn around, whipping her head to glance over shoulder and sneer at the bird. She tried again, softer this time, glare so hyper-focused that she thought the owl might be physically harmed by the weight of her disdain.

If only.

“I am not,” Kinsley stressed, “whomever you’ve mistaken me for. I am Kinsley—”

“—CoBalt Hitch.” Sight interrupted, heavily enunciating the ‘tch’. But she only returned to the bookshelf thereafter, leaving Kinsey to gape with indignation.

It was only when Sight reached for a particular book—a grimoire bound in red-cloth—that Kinsley stomped forward, one hand raised to grasp that outstretched wrist. But once she captured it they were frozen like that. Kinsley, tapping into the familiar heat of her rage as she held her, and Sight staring forward unblinking at the book she’d been prevented from touching.

Low, with the gathering storms of her power, Kinsley rumbled a warning of threat. Her tone took on a near sibilant twist, soft with piercing quality. She pulled on the comforting heat of her otherness, of the force that dwelled in her chest and belly and spoke with eerie clarity. “One ought not to touch things that do not belong to them.”

And for a time, they simply existed. Kinsley, her grip, and Sight’s unblinking stare. Finally, Sight turned her gaze to her, pulled perhaps by the barely suppressed fury in her tone or the thickening of her accent of olde. “I’ve forgotten my manners…”

She lifted her free hand, in a painfully slow movement that drew the very tips of her fingertips along Kinsley’s exposed wrist… “I don’t mean to be a bother, Madam Hitch.” Her voice was soft, so soft… that Kinsley had to lean forward to hear her, “I’ve only come to ask a couple of questions, is all… and maybe get treated to a cup of tea.”

Behind her she heard the owl shift as it pushed into the room in a motion that seemed to jiggle the window from its opened state until it slid closed. The sound was… jarring, but she felt… unusual. Frozen or perhaps struck dumb? Sight was touching her, with her disgusting heroic fingers and stroking along her inner arm, which felt… somewhat soothing but so… unwanted. Her other arm twitched, the one that gathered her power, but she found it heavier to move. So heavy...

“It’s just,” Sight wondered, “you were claimed as dead. Defeated by the stationed heroic in Caliburn—one of the Great Seven, do you remember? Think for me, Madam Hitch.”

Kinsley parted her lips and words dance on the tip of her tongue. She felt something shift and her mind tilted slightly, stirred to action. Her body, ready to speak, so close... Did she remember? Oh yes, she certainly remembered. She remembered minding her company (castle, her mind whispered), there at the head of a conglomerate empire (a Queen of a licentious people). Then she remembered it crumbling. Falling heavy, stone on armored bodies… No, was that the… the first time? Had there been smoke, and fire and the songs of her enemies’ glory? That didn’t seem right. There were skyscrapers mixed among peasant homes and—

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Sight’s wrinkled nose was… cute, and her fingers were now dancing closer to her forearm, stroking down, then up a bit, then down a little further. “That’s probably a bit confusing… There was more than just one time, wasn’t there? And the Sovereign Mother said you were very olde.”

Olde, not old. That’s right. She was olde. Older than modern civilization. Older still then the discovery of the continent she currently inhabited. She was not a modern woman, but she had always existed in this realm. Growing as it grew. Seeking new ways, new forms, to control. The Council had dubbed her as a villain many years ago, when heroics had stepped into the light of normality to be praised and worshipped. But, she was not a villain, not… not in the sense they’d claimed. She had only wanted simple things. Gold in her accounts. People to command. Treasures to hoard. Owning a corporation had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Owning the people within it had been even better—

No, no that’s… she wasn’t. Not anymore. Not after her defeat. Not after the Great Seven, the humiliation, the containment.

She felt her breath quicken for a moment and she tightened her grip around Sight’s wrist. She thought of breaking it, of shoving her out of her home, of denying—“I… I am Kinsley CoBalt Hitch, I….”

Yes.

Yes, that’s right.

She was retired. The Queen was dead. Twenty years of hiding had done that well and good.

“I’m just a philanthropist.” She was steady, she was in control. “These books are just a… collection of interest.”

Sight gave a curious sound, a soft hum while her hand stilled and pressed against her arm, “Is that so?”

“Yes. Very much so.” Kinsley croaked, pulling discomfort around herself where fury once dwelled. But it felt like an echo, just out of reach. “You’re… touching me.”

“I am.” Sight confirmed as she pressed her fingertips into her arm until they were little indents against her skin. “As you are touching me.”

She wasn’t sure if she should let go. Sight was… had always been a mystery. No amount of contacts or networking had been able to uncover the exact nature of her heroic ability. She was a triple-x, and that alone was a horrible sign. But more than that, she was a Daughter of Dawne, the current Mother for the Sovereignty. That made her a child of the Sovereign, the current heroic with absolute authority over those who claimed to work for the greater justice of humanity. So long as she held her Kinsley felt in control, easily able to navigate that the threat of that mystery—or what she presumed it to be… but she knew she didn’t want to be touched either, even as her belly churned at the idea of pulling away.

None of this was good.

Still, she released her and stepped back, away and out of Sight’s immediate reach as the smiling woman gasped her hands together before her waist in a sign of innocence.

The owl hopped a bit closer, distracting, and Kinsley crudely waved it away, so she could collapse onto a chair. She was out of sorts, trying not to show her hand, the weight and strength of her ability—classified as villainous in the eyes of the Council.

But what did a little magic and authority, do to anyone? She had only been slightly tyrannical during her reign as CEO. A huge improvement over when she’d been Queen. A practically mellow rule in comparison, some would say, if they were alive to say it.

“How long have you been a philanthropist?”

Sight stepped closer, too calm and too cheerful, her hands around a chair as she carefully positioned it before her then sat. She was too close. Their knees were practically touching.

Kinsley frowned, “Twenty years.”

“And Mr. Hitch—may his soul rest with the Eternal Sunrise—he was your husband, wasn’t he? But he died, of old age they say.”

Now Sight leaned over, gaze intense and Kinsley made the mistake of catching it, of… of being pinned by it, before she drew her gaze downward, to the ‘S’ locket about her neck.

“And, I’m just a little curious about it, is all. He wasn’t a really kind man, you know—”

“Slander,” Kinsley barked with a twitch of her hands. She had to do something, to leave. Did she have enough room between them? Could she distract this woman and blast past her? She spared a glance to the traitorous owl who seemed to be busy picking at her couch cushions now. It best not so much as consider touching her book—

“I meant no disrespect,” Sight spoke, “just wondering. It’s okay to wonder, isn’t it? If we don’t… wonder, then we can’t ponder. The truth is absolute, the truth allows us to judge and I wouldn’t want to judge you without the truth.”

Again, Kinsley found words on the tip of her tongue, and Sight shifted slightly, edged a bit closer on her seat until knees were touching knees, warm leather against her bare skin. “I did… nothing to him.”

Sight tilted her head and behind her Kinsley saw the now spying owl do the same. Eerie, so incredibly eerie. “That’s a relief, if that is the truth.”

Kinsley sneered, but found it difficult to connect with her indignation. She hadn’t loved him—hell, had she even cared for him? He’d been convenient, a source of income and dottiness and a way to mingle with the upper class she despised so that she could remain somewhat inconspicuous in her new role. She was trying to live normally—or as normal as one could, in these circumstances. Her idea hadn’t been a bad one, to hide in plain sight… in Sight…

“I did not harm him in any fashion. We were married, and he was kind with me.” He hadn’t had a choice but to be. Still, she’d been patient. Nevertheless, Sight was correct in her thought. He had not been a great man, not even a good or better man. He’d been a tad vile, all money and showmanship. She had not been his enemy, but that didn’t mean he’d been without them. Granted, she had been more little complex. Her cunning had kept her safe from his flaws and the consequences of such.

Whatever had killed him, it hadn’t been her.

“Excellent,” Sight took it upon herself to pat her knee, and Kinsley jerked from the heat of the touch, from the… strange thrill that hummed in her blood at the praise. “So! A widow philanthropist. It’s difficult to envision, someone with your… reputation, a triple-x villain doing good without prompt! I saw you help those children, and I was able to finally track down those massive anonymous contributions to the city to you. You’ve been a good girl, Madam Hitch.”

Kinsley swallowed a soft gasp, felt that thrill spike through her again, saw Sight’s nostrils flare as she caught it—Oh, oh, what… what was that?

“But the past does not drift away, not so simply.” Sight whispered, deep and ominous, a thumping drawl that spun about her mind and pulled at something low. “The villainous do not retire, Madam Hitch. They cannot be left alone to their own devices. They are incapable of remaining good.”

Kinsley jerked in her chair then abruptly stood, finally, finally feeling the pulse of her fury rush through her blood. Her hair twisted, moved by the warmth of the breeze that ebbed from her space and her hand flexed, as cobalt colored flame, vibrant and real, leapt and danced over her skin.

Sight never stood, never flinched in alarm. She only kicked back in her chair, the screech of it scooting across her wood flooring loud and horrendously grating. It only strengthened her growing rage, since in doing so, Sight had put space between them by scratching up her floor until the chair placed her closer to her owl—which was now inappropriately calm—and the couch.

“How dare you,” Kinsley spat, throat tight and voice thick. “As if I would even try to be good.” She prowled one step closer, then paused and stood tall, fueled by resentment and a need to be intimidating. “I just wanted to be gone. Alone! Away from your oh so pure judgement, your precious Sovereign, and the insipid heroics who pay her worship.”

Sight did not stir, she only sat straighter, hands folded upon her lap, head tilted up, gaze somewhat narrowed. And how dare she look down her nose at her, as if she were some child, as if she were not olde, born when time was fresh, frozen in beauty.

“Heroics are all the same.” Kinsley sneered. “Sticking their nose in the business of others, whether they’re Knights or otherwise. I was fine in my self-crafted cage, my prison of normalcy. I did not bother the Council, I feed this pathetic city, and yet they send a Daughter to my nest with all the intentions and manners of the self-important!”

She felt unchained, as if some dormant thing within had found cause to stir, threatened in its dominance. The hum of her magic filled her with perverse jubilation. The intent of it felt strong as it beat at her skin. One flick of wrist, one powerful thrust, and the calmly settled Sight would burn and burn.

But first, she wanted to sear her owl.

She had been... was Queen of Intemperiae. Of savagery and madness. Of authority and control, through right of magic and power. She had ruled dominions, empires both ancient and corporate. Cities had trembled—would tremble! She would be respected in her own bloody home!

And dammit, she was a philanthropist. She had done her time!

Sight was up and out of that chair as soon as Kinsley drew her arm back in a wind-up swing to be punched forward. From her grip formed a long whip of flame, a tongue that stretched across the loft until it slammed into her opposition. She would burn her alive if she could, her and her little owl, then arrange for ‘Madam Hitch’ to perish and goodness, something in her clenched in pain at the thought, of starting all over, of losing her… friends.

Or rather, friend.

Because Kinsley did know Martha, Mr. Richards. She was fond of pie and a bit too forward, but tolerable enough… for a mundane.

But…

Her fire did not connect. Though it raged blue for a time, it was extinguished, devoured and twisted until it seemed to simply not exist by the time it was meant to connect with her quarry. Kinsley lifted the whip of flame, flicked it once and tried again as Sight took a step forward, but the same thing happened—

“What…” She hissed.

“Villains…” Sight spoke, frighteningly calm, “are so… different than heroics.”

Kinsley struck again, and though Sight allowed the flame to strike her shoulder, it did… nothing. As if it had not hit at all.

“The Sovereign Mother has always been careful when explaining those differences.” Sight continued, steady in her stalk, unimpeded by Kinsley’s action. “So… diligent in explaining that there must be balance. That a villain cannot shed their darkness, their inclinations. They can’t help it, the gluttony, the emptiness within them. Where I am filled with so much of Her Gospel, Her Truth, Her Light, content and satisfied in service to humanity and Her Will… the villainous are not.”

Kinsley took a heavy breath, then controlled and strangled her unease. There was no time for panic, no moment to spare for wonder or the curled lick of fear that struck her guts. She should have known Sight would not be easily dissuaded. Not if she were as competent and prodigal as most Daughter’s claimed to be. She was forced to step back, to move down the hall, away from the door and from the window, from escape. And still, Sight radiated a strange tranquility, her smile steady as she pursued, the grace of her gait unhurried.

Such a shame for her to be herded within her own damn home.

“The Council has… changed. Our new Mother is no longer at ease with the idea of the villainous being left alone. In mundane prison or otherwise. You need more, don’t you?”

Her stomach clenched, moved by an odd fluttering. More? No, no. She needed nothing. She was… content. That’s what mattered. She was content with her new existence. Content with the Richards and the Marthas of the world. With saving children from trees and reading her spells under the glare of the loft’s too harsh lighting next to the gleam of a bad glass of wine. She was not… hungry for more, to be fulfilled in such a heinous sounding way. She was retired, for Great God’s sake.

“The villainous find it difficult to change their nature. You’ve done a good job so far, all on your own. But, it’s not enough, not to contain someone like you. They must be tamed, eased. Do you not wish to be soothed?”

Kinsley slapped her hands together and an electric wave of force streaked along the walls. Let the heroic stalk-n-talk while Kinsley brought the space to life. Her symbols, once hidden along the walls, pushed out and forward, raised carvings that pulsated to a sinister beat. The flame in her grip now oozed between her fingertips, twisted to bright blue ink that spiraled and slunk as individual tendrils to stick to those walls like webbing. Cracks formed along the surface where they touched, mix-matched stories of etched intention, a purpose that made itself incredibly clear.

A ward.

Sight paused then, head tilted in a trademark manner, nostrils flared, and she lifted one finger. “You are very strong, Your Majesty. I didn’t realize you’d hidden this in the loft.”

And from the walls more of that ink oozed and twisted shape, gurgling in a manner most grotesque as it formed one, then two, golem constructs. They swelled between them, turned solid fists of muck toward Sight and hobbled forward. Smooth undulation that melted into gruesome movement in the cramped tight space.

And then side-by-side shoved in that tiny space they shot forward, creating snapping jaws of wicked dripping teeth that—

Sight stopped with that one held up finger.

They were struck by something invisible, by a wavering force that sounded like an angry gong once the constructs of black collided with it. They rippled, disturbed by the vibrations that shook them, as they tried to push forward and grasp and tear but they kept losing shape and substance.

“Yes, yes…!” Sight hissed, her voice transformed, thickened by pleasure. “You are strong!”

The constructs made no ground, they warbled and writhed, but the shield maintained by Sight’s lone finger only stirred them up.

“But the Daughters of Dawne are strong too.”

Fear washed through her, suffocating and heady. She twisted her wrist, slapped the wall, and pumped strength into the wards that covered them. The symbols glowed brighter, spilling what looked like liquid lighting to the beasts that began to wail and moan before the heroic. They sparked with electric force, with an element that, even then, could not pierce the shield that Sight held up. Was it that Kinsley was… was weak? Out of practice, maybe, but she was not, could not, be this insignificant.

Or maybe, Sight was Sovereign Daughter for a reason. The Princess of Heroics, whose song was so pure she could lure animals to be slaughtered.

“For fucksakes!” She snarled and watched as her guardians churned worthlessly, losing shape and power, losing intent and focus. When Kinsley removed her hand from the wall, the wards flickered out, brought to heel by the invader in her home.

“Language.” Sight tittered, as she stepped over the puddle of now worthless goop. “Obsidian Beast.”

Kinsley’s gaze snapped up, away from her ruined magic, first to the gleaming taunting S that hunt around Sight’s neck, then to the eyes that—

The eyes that glowed like the stare in the trees, like the gold of the woman with the wheat-colored hair and the deep umber skin who, once upon a time, stood before her in much the same manner. With her soft eyes of yellow, as they warped to gold, then twisted into a perversity of color that was both nothing and everything along the spectrum. There she’d stood, with a smile too kind, as the heroic Great Six praised their new number Seven, unaware of the flicker, of the taint, that dwelled in the roar of her gaze.

“The Sovereign Mother misses you.” Sight said, “She was disappointed by your slip from containment more than twenty years ago.” She paused in her speech, if only to engage in a hapless shrug. “I must admit, the lesser heroics would have been incapable of capturing you. I see why the Council was hesitant to search, if they’d thought you’d lived. So, I am very pleased that you were here, making West Z your home… Your nest.”

Which had made it so difficult to leave when she’d realized her spawn was here, rooting around, smiling for cameras, waving with crinkled eyes that held that same offness as her mother. She couldn’t leave, the dormant weight within her, the constant presence that never left, had made this her territory. Her home.

And her pride had not allowed her to feel compromised, even when the Council had been figuratively, not yet literally, at her door.

“Obsidian Beast,” Sight called to her again, softer, and Kinsley couldn’t help feeling... frantic. Out of control and out of ideas. “You are an officially classified villain, governed as such by Her Sight. You have tasted want and once succumbed to the hunger that dwells in the dark. Don’t you want to be fed?”

She ran.

It was not her immediate aim nor her foremost thought. She was a fighter, relentless and vicious. But her legs moved her before her mind could catch up, pushing her down the last bit of hallway to burst into the somber barely decorated room of her private chambers. Its empty black walls that once brought her comfort in their simplicity and mock darkness now felt suffocating, as if the ebony color would rip from its placement to betray and smother her, until there was nothing left but that spiraling sense of gut-wrenching terror. She needed to leave, wanted to leap from the lone window—

“It’s gone…” She whispered. Her only escape. Her last resort. The window that she was pretty sure came with the loft, was gone.

“Yes.” Sight said from the threshold behind her, “I removed it.”

“You removed it.” Kinsley repeated though she refused to turn around, to believe that Sight had the power to make her… see something else. Something other than a wall with a window. “You… you manipulated my house and removed my bedroom window.”

“Was it even ever there?”

Kinsley twisted around like a wild animal, all spittle and wide eyed, “Was it ever there?!” She stomped her foot and gestured sharply toward the now smooth wall, uncaring if she appeared to mimic a petulant child. She was tired. Overwhelmed in nothing but her nightshirt and skin that felt tight and itchy. She was stuck in a maddening cycle that twisted between fear and near inconsolable anger. “I’d bloody well know if I’d ever had a window! It was there, it was there!”

Sight made an odd sound in the back of her throat, like a soft hum, careful and oddly affectionate. “Alright, alright.”

And that was worse, wasn’t it? Not the lack of a window, or her failing wards, but to be patronized by this… this heroic. As if she weren’t in control—and she refused to acknowledge it, the strain of her emotions—as if she hadn’t once been more than this, this shaken and desperate woman. If she could not use the window. If she could not smash her to bits. Then she would plow through her and take to the door—

A door that no longer existed, attached to a threshold she could no longer see.

She took a shaky breath, whimpered, and rolled her eyes around the room. Nothing, nothing was the way it was supposed to be. The dresser was gone now, the closet door was also missing. The cute little bookcase, with its wobbly three shelves… all of it as if it never were. Only the bed, with its hastily made sheets of green, was left behind. But her things, her treasures, her little scattered knickknacks, all of it was missing. Why? Why?

“Give me my things back.” Her voice was… small, her tone stressed. Anger seemed like an unknown concept, far away and flickering, a dying flame. All she felt was the cold rush of the dark, of the very walls she’d meant to protect her keeping her trapped.

She was so… terrified.

“You’re getting all worked up.” Sight said, ignoring when Kinsley’s breath hitched. “It’s all that energy needing a proper release, needing a purpose. Doesn’t it make you feel tired? Fighting all the time? Resisting your nature?”

Kinsley parted her lips but found her confidence wavering. She took one breath, then another, and spoke, “I... I am not resisting my nature. I… I am doing just fine here, living… being Kinsley Hitch.”

“Rosenthal...” Sight sighed.

“No!” Kinsley yelled, causing the space around them to waver, rippling as reality answered the call of her passion. She made a haunting sibilant sound as her lips pulled back to reveal abnormally sharp teeth. “You are not allowed to speak that name, not allowed to breath it into being!”

Not allowed to spoil it with those lips.

Her muscles twitched and her back throbbed. Things within her, deep and latent, began to twist and stretch. Her chest heaved from the tightness of it, of holding back the thing within her, the very creature that she was named for, that clawed at her insides with hooked hands and urged her to let it go. For one terrifying moment her mind was nothing more than a collection of wants, of the very hunger Sight claimed would consume her, conquer her. It had been so long since she’d peeled back the flesh of her humanity and embraced the Beast within, the Beast that once held no name other than Obsidian. Yet, as humanity evolved and the power of language morphed, Kinsley had learned what it was, what she was.

And the Lamia craved, it wanted release, to fill its gullet with all of humanity until nothing was left, until steel structures twisted back into burning villages, with their marching sacrifices and pretty offered virgins. She was no longer in the time before, when storybook fantasies had been more their reality. When Kings fought Queens over would-bes, driven only by their oppressive righteousness. Yet, so much of her was slipping, rapidly tumbling back to that time, back to kingdoms and towers, and chains—

“That’s enough.”

From one moment to the next she was captured, slammed into the wall at her back, the wall that should have been her window, and held. She writhed and twisted, pinned by the warmth and weight of Sight, who peered at her in fascination, despite the firmness of her statement. Kinsley bucked but found the grip, the pressure, inescapable. Sight held her irreversibly trapped, one hand around her arched neck, semi-curled with the threat of squeezing, while the other wrapped around her body in a manner that pinned down her arms and crushed her against the other.

“Now, do you see what I mean? You’ve been starving yourself, feeding on little scraps of mischief. It’s never enough, is it? We have other, better, ways of settling your sort.”

Kinsley snarled and snapped her teeth, but her neck was held firmly, and Sight added just the tiniest bit of pressure, letting her know… warning her of what she could do with just the strength of her hand. “You did this, you did this—”

“Hush,” Sight pressed, pushing them both against the wall with an indisputable resolve. Hip to hip. Chest to chest. Her hand, curled around her neck, felt so warm, and her thumb fluttered over the thudding vein it covered. The rolling thing within Kinsley, the Beast, seemed frozen. Close to the surface of her being but paused.

She didn’t speak again, only twitched aching muscles as Sight’s grip tightened further. There was nothing she could do to peel away from the wall or the cobra strength around her. Nothing other than wait with a hammering heart as she tried to catch her breath.

Sight’s face drew closer, so much so that Kinsley thought her eyes would cross with her desperation to keep her in view. With a voice low and pulling, she said, “I cannot, will not, have you shift. Not in the middle of West Z.”

Kinsley swallowed audibly, “It’s… I…” She wasn’t sure if she could stop. It had been so so long and… and Sight was somewhat right. Just a taste of that sleeping power made her want to just… let go. What was a little chaos between a heroic and a villain?

But nothing else within her stretched or churned, and though she was certain a portion of her back was semi-covered in scales little else had taken place.

“I know,” Sight said, “Holding it is making you so tired, isn’t it?”

Kinsley panted heavily, still buzzed from adrenaline before her brow creased in thought. That wasn’t... right. She wasn’t… couldn’t be tired. But her eyes were fluttering, and her body was so… tight with tension. It hurt in an odd way, to be on the precipice of change, looking toward the very madness she was known to create. She couldn’t hold onto this point forever, wound up and waiting.

“So tired,” Sight repeated, her breathing even and slow. Kinsley could feel it, how calm and collected the heroic was. It made sense. She was powerful. She had nothing to fear, not like Kinsley. “But you can’t relax, can you? Not yet. Even though you’d like to. Is it because I’m here?”

“Y-yes,” Kinsley stuttered, face flushed, embarrassed. How she loathed being out of control. Being helpless.

“I only want to help… Kinsley.”

She shuddered, she couldn’t help it. Sight had wanted to call her everything, anything, but her taken name and… and now, hearing it curl past her lips, spoken with power on the tip of her tongue…

She couldn’t help squirming just a bit. Discomforted. Uncertain.

“You’re so tired and you need help. Let me help you.”

Kinsley opened her mouth to speak, but a gentle squeeze to her throat reminded her of the expertly contained force that held her. Instead, she focused on breathing, on feeling the rhythmic rise and fall of Sight’s chest against her own and the glow of her gaze that was more gold now than any other color. The tension had started to ease, escaping with each exhale, but it felt like she was inhaling something else. A warm exhaustion, something that left her limbs feeling heavy and her gaze… unfocused.

She licked her dry lips and tried again, “You want to help… leaving me alone would help me.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, little kinsley.”

She shivered then and bit her lip to repress a sound that wanted to spill past her throat. “Not… little. I’m…”

Older than you. Surely stronger too. Had she been prepared. Had she been ready.

But... but it wasn’t Sight pressed into the wall feeling tired and sluggish. It was Kinsley… she was on the other side, held so tightly...

“Do you know why I am Her Sight?”

The question was sudden a interruption of her slowed thoughts. She blinked rapidly and tried to straighten back up, but Sight only pressed closer, as if they could become one through their clothing. It was a reminder; her body must match the calm ease of Sight’s own. Must relax. Must submit to the power that held it.

“It’s because,” Sight whispered, “I can see you.”

Kinsley huffed softly, inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, “’Course you can see me... I’m... here. I’m real.”

Air went in. Then out. And on her next inhale heat curled gently through her, a testing lick through her belly as she drew breath in.

“No, not like that.” Sight continued with warm words against her ear. “I can see you. The real you. The honest you.”

The finger that fluttered over her neck shifted a little lower and pressed, searching for the heavy thump of her pulse.

She found it and sighed softly, more breath against her ear, enough to make Kinsley shift just a bit as a tingle licked up the small of her back and coiled around her spine. “The human body can be very honest, little kinsley. I can tell when it’s hot, or cold. When a person is nervous, angry, scared… When you are stressed, or hungry, or tired. When you need to be fed.”

Her head rolled slightly, and her lips parted on their own to release a sigh of contemplation. She was tired, and something was still… in her belly. Starving. But before, she’d known what she’d wanted—Sight gone, torn apart or otherwise. Now, she wasn’t sure what she craved. Sight… Sight said she could see it, though.

“And, it’s my job to see the indisputable truth of that. Of your body, kinsley…”

And in her mind, she could feel herself devolve, vulnerable and small, no longer Kinsley, but something softer, and still so tired.

“And once I see that truth, that natural but wrong need within your body, I train it to be satisfied with something else. You seem very intelligent, kinsley. To have hidden for so long, right before my, erm, plain sight.” She rumbled with a laugh that seemed musical in nature. Pretty and alluring. “But now that I have you, I can see just what it will take to soften your tired body, to exhaust your darkness. It cannot hide from me. You cannot hide from me.”

“That’s…” kinsley groaned, felt her words simply stop when Sight squeezed her throat again. Quiet, she was meant to be quiet. To just listen. She could do that, would… have to do that. For now. Until she could get free. Until she could shift or escape or…

“I can see what your body is thinking. It’s indecisive. That’s what happens when you’re tense and pent-up. When you’re tired and sore.”

And a part of her did still ache. Her back was tender, her legs and arms weak, while the rest of her body felt… warm. She was starting to overheat because Sight was too close, sharing and spreading her warmth but not taking it back. She breathed in and absorbed it. She breathed out and it remained, rolling through her chest like heavy fog. It was distracting and flustering and it sunk inward until it felt bone deep. She couldn’t help but squirm, driven to movement. But Sight, Sight wouldn’t let her go, would barely allow her small instinctual twitches. She kept up her pressure, flattening her to the wall, reminding her that she was in control. That she was only allowed to move if Sight allowed her to move.

“Yes, that’s right.”

She blinked. Had Sight been saying something? Doing something? Or… was she talking to her body?

“And, that’s okay, to be indecisive. To let that indecisiveness lead to confusion.”

And kinsley was confused. She didn’t understand why Sight was so strong in comparison to herself. How she’d gotten into the loft. Why she was sweat-slick and hot and tired, and Sight was perfect and hard while also sort of soft. It felt nice to be held like this, pinned like this. To have her throat squeezed, to be kept in line.

No… wait.

“When you’re confused, you need someone to trust. Someone to help. That’s me, little kinsley. The Sovereignty and I will help. All heroics have been called to this purpose.”

She managed a shake of her head, a slow negative motion. No, the Sovereign was… not right. Something was wrong with the Council now, but she couldn’t remember exactly what, even as it danced on the tip of her tongue.

Squeeze.

And then it was gone, and she sighed again, frustrated.

“Still no? That’s not the truth, kinsley. Your body is frustrated, you are frustrated, and frustration leads to exhaustion which strengthens your confusion.”

She furrowed her brow and swallowed a whine. This wasn’t right, but the heat was… growing, prickling along her itchy skin. She squirmed again, unable to control her body, wanting to rub and settle her shivering flesh, though she knew she was meant to be still.

“That’s it. You don’t know what to feel, other than agitated. Restless. And it’s all a cycle, leading back to feeling so tired, which leads to feeling heavy, with a head all tangled up because your mind just can’t understand what your body does, even as it spends more and more energy trying to.”

She grunted as she felt that flutter within her return. Strong and startling. The ache in her being shifted and slipped a bit lower behind her navel, where it sat with tongues of heat that unfurled to other parts of her. It almost felt like her magic, stirred to rise, but she hadn’t called it and wasn’t trying to use it. But it felt so… alive. Her body. As if it could truly talk and demand to be listened to. Still, she didn’t, couldn’t, understand it.

“Do you hear it? It can’t lie, not to me. And it’s getting so hot isn’t it? From all that built up energy. From the purpose your body knows it was bred for, even though your mind refuses to listen.”

“W-wait,” She murmured, but gasped when Sight resumed her control, her careful slow squeeze of her throat, to put her mind back in its place, steady and submerged in growing warmth.

“No, kinsley. No more talking. Not for you, not for a fussy villain. It’s your turn to listen. Listen to your body.”

The heat within, once patient with its growth, swelled with a sudden intensity. She was hot, too hot, and the abrupt burst of it made her buck against the hips that held her still. Oh, oh! Something was… something new whipped through her. A fire than quickened her breath, as if with each puff she could push some of the smoke that must surely be churning within her out. But she couldn’t release it, could only move it, and it wasn’t long before the heat in her twitching stomach moved to her heaving chest, filling her breasts until she felt her nipples swell and tighten, pressed hard against the chest of her captor.

“That’s it, that’s it.” Sight whispered, “It’s so hot now, so honest. It’s letting me know exactly what it needs, which is what I need to serve it. There’s no need to fight now. It’s too tired to fight, so wound up and tight and needy. It would feel so nice, so good, to relax for a moment, to let your mind rest and your body do the thinking. Let me hear it, kinsley. Let it tell me the truth. Otherwise...”

There was a sense of stillness, one only interrupted by the heavy increased frequency of kinsley’s breathing. She wanted to use it to establish her bearings, but her thoughts felt smothered, too far from her grasp, just soft utterances against the hungry spasm of her inner muscles. She shook her head in a slow manner, tried to muster strength and resistance, but the warmth twisted painfully, turning heat into horrid foreign arousal. She ached in new pleasurable agony. Her pussy dripped with each twitch of her clenching thighs. She arched her chest against Sight and mewled from the friction of being pressed back against the wall, and despite the nightshirt she wore she swore she could feel Sight’s leathers against her throbbing nipples. She was alive, struck by thrill with a sudden over-agitated body that craved touch in a manner that bewildered her. She had never felt such… need before, such a ravenous appetite that so quickly slipped from soft and distracting to barely conceivable torment.

A part of her, small and writhing against the thick taste of want that swept through her mind, wanted to hunch over and grab her sex, to squeeze and ease the swelling waves of abnormal arousal, waves that continued to rise and rise and rise. Until pressure hammered at the back of her swollen clit, and she felt tendrils of weakness slicken her inner thighs.

She moaned, low and deep, and Sight’s soft chuckle tickled an ear.

“So distressed... That’s it, kinsley. Conquer yourself for me. Let your repressed body beat and punish. Listen to it, hear it. Obey it’s call, and relinquish control...”

Teeth nipped at her ear, sharp as her own, and together they groaned—Sight from the powerful rock of kinsley’s hips, and kinsley from the whisper of pressure that pressed against her painfully swollen and angry clit.

“Sinking now, leaving only that craving. So tired and warm and wet. Desperate to relax, to let me feed you.” Slowly Sight began to move, and while her hand never left her throat, her body did release her from the wall. She closed her eyes tightly, bit her bottom lip, but could not stop her body from rocking sensually against the now open space between them. She was flushed and breathless, shamed by the betrayal of her own body, by the loss of her discipline. By how, even the Beast, seemed to writhe within her, stuck still beneath her skin but incapable of direction, held chained by the sweet taste of liquid agony.

Slowly, by just her neck alone, Sight led her body forward, gentle but firm. She stumbled, but remained upright, as she fell away from the wall, shivering and captured.

Finally, Sight released her neck. “To the bed, little kinsley.”

She… wanted to run. Should run. But even the thought of that made something sharp and acute lick at her pussy, stirring that fire. The idea of it then, of escape, dripped out from between her legs. Lost to the haze of her half-opened eyes.

She went to the bed, moaned softly as her hands touched the sheets and Sight settled beside her, in control and still frustratingly calm. She could now finally appreciate how Sight seemed just a little taller than her, a little more muscular, hard but soft in just the right places as she easily manipulated her body until she sat between her legs. It made her feel small and off, youthful and inexperienced, to be… held like this, while she was compromised.

Encircled by undeniable strength and will.

She tried to move away by using the powerful thighs that caged her, but the woman only made a small sound of disapproval. “Are you thinking again, little kinsley?”

Soft hands rose from either side of her and cupped her chest, holding her, gentle and light and—Oh, oh, she melted. Just being held, just the promise of touch, made her squirm. This… she shouldn’t feel so out of her depth, so incredibly inexperienced with arousal, with pleasure. And yet, Sight made her feel unapologetically virginal. As if she’d never been touched properly… no, as if she’d never been touched period.

“It feels so good,” Sight sighed low against the shell of her ear, as if to give voice to her deepest, most treasonous thoughts. “To relax. To stop thinking. To be held.”

“Mmm,” kinsley gasped as one thought slipped wetly toward the next, ending entire sentences before she managed to understand her own words. “No… no. I’m… not. I don’t… My husband…”

“Dead and gone, remember?” Sight said, as soft lips brushed against a cheek. She began to squeeze just barely, testing the weight of her breasts, enjoying the slight spillover and the feel of them in her hands. “Have you ever been with a heroic, kinsley?”

She had never even been with a woman.

“I… um…”

“No matter. Your body will tell me, and from the way it’s squirming, I’d say you haven’t.”

But how could she know that? How could she tell when—?

Then Sight shifted slightly and pressed the warmth of her body against her back. She held them so tightly together that kinsley could feel the sensual shape of her body beyond the clothing there. She squirmed in her two-handed embrace and sucked her bottom lip between her teeth as Sight began to slowly, so slowly, tighten her grasp with a growing firmness. She gathered just enough of her chest to squeeze and pull—to encourage her to arch her chest into a perfect archers’ bow—and in doing so, drew kinsley’s focus into a painfully sharp point. One that fixated only on the strength of Sight’s clutch, how her spread fingers tested soft pliable flesh and tightened until the depressions of her fingers pushed and forced the outline of her nipples to be seen against the fabric of her shirt.

It was more than enough to scatter her latest thought until it and any others became background noise to the siren song of her body. She held onto Sight’s flexing thighs and allowed her head to thump back against her shoulder. The pleased sound Sight made thereafter was enough of a sign that she was falling—helplessly and agonizingly aware of the power of her touch. Of the sweet seductive kneading she’d begun to inspire more of that heavy heat, to encourage it to fill her and thud with persuasive intention.

“Your body is so soft now, kinsley.” Sight mumbled into the delicate skin of her shoulder, “Melting now. Eager to relax after a long and tiring day. It’s just so… natural to feel warm and good in my hands, to surrender to me, to a heroic. That’s the difference, kinsley, between my touch and his.”

She groaned in response, tried to grasp and hold onto the fleeting images of her late husband, whose touch had been… a tad clumsy and a bit… rough, compared to Sight’s knowing fingers. The way she squeezed. Pulled. Clawed… It was incredibly stimulating, even behind the coarse now… agitating fabric of her shirt. She wanted to pull it off, to bare herself to Sight, to let her see just how impactful she was. So much more so than her late husband—

B-but, that wasn’t fair to him. He’d been decent and convenient, among other things. His… lips, perhaps, had been nice to feel. If not his calloused hands. Hands that had often roamed a bit to… far, but wasn’t that his right at the time?

She furrowed her brows and pushed at the haze, but it remained thick and unmoving, powered by the scent of her own submission as it filled the room and the lust that dripped steadily between her clenched and rubbing thighs. She wanted to… touch between them, to feel her own slickness, but felt unusually naive about the prospect. As if she’d forgotten how to ease the growing throb there on her own. He had touched her there too, a bit too firmly, too eagerly and… it had never been truly satisfying. Only irritating. Leaving her tight and frustrated for her next long day of reformed villainy.

And just thinking of him made her feel tormented all over again. Cranky and fussy from her lack of release. Her insides pulsed with phantom memory as slivers of that same irritating and spine-tingling need wound through her, a taste she’d never really forgotten he’d given her, just ignored for the sake of her sanity. Images of long nights spend tossing and turning, of her own fingers trying to ease what could never really be soothed… those vibrant and invasive thoughts charged her up just as powerfully as Sight’s own touch and she couldn’t help but twist in that grasp, punished by the sharp vividness of her own reminiscence.

Sight gave a soft ‘tsk’ against her ear, “Are you thinking of him? You’re getting yourself all tense and upset, when you’re already so tired and weak... Bad kinsley—”

kinsley gasped then, felt the shock of Sight’s gentle chastising mingle with a strange and foreign newfound urge to please as it uncurled and blossomed in her belly. She didn’t want to make Sight upset. Didn’t want to make her stop and that was terrifying for reasons that felt fuzzy and buried beneath a building wave of docility.

“I want you to stay here, little kinsley.” Sight whispered, and kinsley could feel her sinking just a bit more into the haze that made her feel small and incredibly inexperienced. “Stay with me…”

Soft wet lips pressed against her shoulder, then the back of her neck, and kinsley tried not to groan as Sight slid and squeezed her hands up her chest, closer to their aching peaks only to pinch just behind where she wanted to feel that delicious pressure most. But then, her hands, hooked and tickling, clawed their way back down to the base of her breasts leaving prickly trails of heat in their wake.

Oh, Great Gods it was maddening.

“Listen, little kinsley.” Sight husked, “Listen to me.”

She strained, hissed softly under her breath and turned her head to expose an ear even though she knew that now that she’d been told to listen she should fight to do anything but. Yet the constant kneading pressure, the little tingles of need and building ecstasy her touch wrought, were so distracting…

Sight nuzzled her shoulder, blew hot air across her neck, then hissed in return—“Tell me the truth now… what happened to Mr. Hitch?”

She keened softly as the hands against her chest briefly turned cruel, squeezing her breasts so harshly that kinsley’s lips popped open, pushed to comply, to obey, by the rising pain. She tried to jerk away but the grip held her perfectly, firm and relentless until kinsley’s breath quickened.

Why… why did even this feel so good?

“H-he… he,” kinsley sucked in a lungful of air. Sight’s grip loosened and toyed with the idea of relief, only to tighten again, a harsh massage that plumped up her breast and made them strain in the cage of her shirt. “He died! He died!”

She didn’t want to answer, would have refused to answer, but the sadistic encouragement propelled her toward obedience. She was so sharply focused on her harsh massage that she was barely able to swallow her voice or think on the words that she spewed.

“How?” An amused tone tickled her ear and kinsley wasn’t sure if she wanted to buck into a particularly bruising squeeze or contort away. “How did he die?”

Memories twisted past her mentality, each as vivid as the next as Sight slowed her motions, prolonging the strange and corrupt taste of her acute stimulus. She swallowed thickly, jerked again—“I… I didn’t do it! I didn’t—”

Teeth sunk into her shoulder and a deviant thrill spilled through her body. The mixture of pain and discomfort joined the tight heat in her belly and it took all that she was to keep from rocking, to send herself further into the fog of her interrogation. Lips then pulled slightly, sucking powerfully, marking her as it took something important from her being, before they released with an audible pop.

“That’s not what I asked you, little kinsley.” And though Sight’s voice was soothing, kind, and so affectionate, her grip was still too rough and tight and—oh, she was going to break!

kinsley closed her eyes, “H-he had… he had many enemies! He…” she rasped and squirmed as Sight’s grip began to loosely. Slowly, so very slowly, easing the pressure… “Yes, yesss… he…” Shivers raced up her spine and her tongue felt heavy, thick in her mouth as pressure gave way to pulsating pleasurable relief—for her abused flesh and the fact that she was giving in, obeying the command to answer. “He was… um…”

“That’s it… tell me. What happened?”

Sight’s voice was an echo against her mind, persuasive but not all consuming. No, what grabbed her attention was the prickle of sweat upon her body and the warmth that filled her breasts with a the powerful throb that now dwelled there and stuttering her mind with its sweet tender ache. “He made… someone upset. T-that person… they did it.”

For a moment there was silence pierced only by kinsley’s labored breathing and Sight’s mindless whispers against her skin, as if she were going over the validity of her words.

“And,” Sight broke the silence, “you knew?”

kinsley whimpered as she felt Sight’s grip return to massage and knead… and threaten every so often with a punishing squeeze that left her dizzy and burning, sensitive to the aching pressure and the pleasurable release thereafter. “Y-yes. Yes but… I couldn’t…”

Squeeze…

“I couldn’t interrupt!” kinsley blurted, incapable of pulling away. “He’s mundane! T-they were all mundane!”

“Did you want to help?” Sight drawled.

“N-no.” kinsley said, exhausted from conflicting sensation and overwhelmed by her easy submission to the question. “I needed… what he could only give me dead.”

Power. Money. Freedom.

“Such a naughty girl,” Sight tsked, but her hands finally released her chest and moved instead to the edge of her nightshirt. “What other naughty things have you allowed to happen in my city?”

She couldn’t help but pant as Sight rubbed her thumbs just slightly over her belly despite being chastised. She was naughty. “I… scared them off when… they came for his things. Those things, they were mine.”

Her snarl echoed in the space as Sight tittered behind her.

“Shhh now, settle.”

Something stilled in her mind and she sunk again, back into the throbbing heat that ravaged her body and her growing meekness.

“I bet you did other things too. Other mischievous villainous things that you shouldn’t have.”

kinsley wiggled a bit childishly as Sight manipulated her, devesting her of her nightshirt to leave her exposed to the chilled air. She moaned at the bite of it against her nipples which felt impossibly stiff and angry atop her heavy punished breasts. Sight wasn’t… entirely wrong. She’d managed to bamboozle and steal a few funds here and there, nothing to be noticed, to be missed, but…

A girlish giggle came her captor, “Are you hiding something from me? Your squirming again.”

Had she ever stopped?

“Be a good girl, kinsley. Tell me. Obey.”

That one word, all-encompassing and singular, rattled about her skull with so much power that she thought nothing, felt nothing, other than the insistent pressing heat of promised submission. She craved it then, to cooperate, to be obedient, to feel more than Sight’s warm palms as they stroked along her trembling thighs… and for a time she fell prey to it, to the need to answer—and what would she say? That she had sustained her more mischievous urges and idle thoughts by setting a few funds to the side? By paying a few people of interest to carefully manage and pluck political strings? She wasn’t the only one. Couldn’t be the only one who wanted to play with power. Who wanted to puppet from the shadows. Surely there were other, more heinous villains than she was. She was retired after all.

But Sight made her feel… bad. Like she’d never stopped misbehaving. Like she was incapable of calming. She’d burst into her life, all smiles and otherworldly power, and taken so much control from her that she should have felt… enraged, emboldened by the disrespect she’d been given in her own home to do so much worse. But from the moment Sight had wrapped her hand around her throat and shown her such silent insistent strength, she’d been captured. Disarmed of her guard—mentally and magically. Even now she settled, still and naked, between her legs, flushed and dazed by the power of her commands.

She hesitated, mouth open, then closed, then open again. Obey. The word still prevailed in her mind, but she was… she’d been a Queen. Sight should obey, should bow, should do whatever it was that she wished for at the time. She did not, could not, submit to this arrogant chi—

Then fingers moved from her ribs to her arched neck, stroking along the sensitive skin there, applying pressure as fingertips scratched lightly, maddeningly, over a fluttering pulse. Her other hand, once occupied with tracing patterns along her slickness, now danced upward, toward her crying center, her swollen twitching clit, and the growing hunger there. The burn of her sex was near agonizing, a reminder of her disobedience, of her need, that only Sight could ease. If only she’d obey… and the thought of that, of falling completely to pleasure and touch, only made her that much hotter.

“So wet,” Sight commented, gaze wide with the sort of awe one reserved for better wonders. “So hot and tight for me. Do you understand now? That this is how it should be? How it should have been? It feels so good to obey, to submit. Villains were born, bred to submit to heroics. Your body instinctively cries for it.”

She moaned then, low and wanton, and blushed with the shame of it. She’d never made such a sound before, such an obvious call for relief.

“Doesn’t fighting hurt?” Sight asked, curious and gentle as she removed her hand from around her neck to touch her left breast, to draw lazy circles around her nipple with the very tip of her finger. Threatening, teasing, but never touching the place she needed so badly. “And thinking is so exhausting, isn’t it? Confess your sins, kinsley, be a good girl for me. Let me bond with you. Let me feed you.”

She moaned again, arched into that touch and offered the body that Sight only methodically teased. She only built the fire within, drowning her in the want for pleasure while only giving her a taste of that bliss.

“It will feel so good to be free. To sink deeper and deeper, to let your soft body soften your mind.” Sight continued, teeth now nipping at an earlobe while fingertips made tighter circles around her nipple. Her other hand danced

closer and brushed a knuckle against her swollen sex. “Listen to your body as it listens to me.”

She tried to keep hold of her fears instead, to the tension that transformed into heavy weight and a need for pleasure. She was drenched in her lust, fighting against words that should have held no power over her and yet had already earned the loyalty of her pussy. Her thoughts, those of resistance, were small and irrelevant. Idle musings that grew quieter with each explorative stroke of fingers across her puffy lower lips. Yes, her body whispered, please…

“You will submit.” Sight mused, “You’re so close… Tell me… tell me what you’ve done in my city.”

Her lips parted but it wasn’t until her blurry gaze met Sight’s own, met the eerie glow that rested there, warm, amused, tender, and so very very deep, that she started to speak. “I… I’ve taken funding from the city treasury.”

Sight hummed and kinsley found herself lost, tracing thunder strikes of color that rippled behind her pupil. “What else…?”

Her body clenched, and her mouth moved, voice strained as euphoria spilled across her chest with each rapid beat of her heart. Talking to Sight felt so good. “A-and I… ngh… I’ve been…” She swallowed harshly, her legs twitched helplessly open, instinctively spreading as Sight cupped her very slick center.

“Don’t think,” Sight said, her smile so… brilliant, “it gets in the way of the words. Let your body talk, it knows what to say.”

Something tight within her began to uncoil and it left her blissfully lightheaded from need. “I’ve been paying the Sheriff to… listen to me.” She shivered then, sucked in a breath as pleasure lit up her spasming inner walls. Yes, yes...! “To run the Mayor’s decisions and the city council’s meetings b-by me.”

“And why is that?” Sight wondered as she spread her lower lips and exposed her dripping pussy and throbbing clit to the chill about them.

“Ngh! C-cuz, cuz I want to control it, to own it! W-west Z should be mine!” kinsley practically squealed as she bucked into that grip, wanting so horridly for Sight to touch her properly. To stop teasing her. To let her stop thinking so she could follow her instincts and submit. Like all good villains were supposed to do. “W-was gonna… Was gonna u-use my good will, my… my philanthropy to… to become the Mayor. S-scandal is so eaaaasy to plant for mundanes.”

She moaned then, long and wildly when Sight finally, finally, drew her fingertips to the tip of her aching breast, to pinch and flick her stiff nipple, to punish it for her words and send hot ecstasy down the length of her spine. She shouldn’t have been so sensitive, so wanton, but confessing her deception to the woman who held her so perfectly in control was a pleasure that echoed wickedly throughout her. Her body was obedient, good, even if her mind was naughty, planning schemes and mischief for her heroic Mistress to deal with—

N-no, that… that couldn’t have been—

She cried out, thought broken, body bowed, as Sight took her captured nipple and pulled.

“Good girl,” Sight chirped with slight smile and a gaze that was so intense as she studied her, pulled her apart, found all the cracks in her mental armor and devised a way to destroy her.

And she wanted it, kinsley wanted it so badly that she trembled. She wanted to be defeated, taken in hand, controlled and her mind was so empty of all the proper things she needed to fight against it. Of all her experience with heroics and touch and pleasure. Everything felt so sharp and new, as if her body had never fully lived until this… perverse awakening.

She tried to move her limbs, to pull Sight closer, to push her away, she couldn’t be sure but—

Sight moved to her other breast, to the nipple there, to squeeze and play and stroke with just the tip of a nail. Her lower hand, the one that had held her needy pussy open, finally began to draw circles around her needy clit, coaxing it from its hood while whispering of the promise of touch, but she needed so much more. She needed pressure, needed to feel her mind opening as her body wept its excitement and her will onto the pretty sheets of her bed.

“And that’s how you hid from me, wasn’t it?” Sight scratched a nail across her clit and her entire body rocked. “Used your stolen treasures to keep them quiet. But I saw you, little kinsley. You couldn’t hide from me… not forever.”

Just when kinsley thought Sight would touch her, would ease her pains within, she… stopped. She couldn’t help but cry out at the abrupt loss of touch, at the way Sight firmly manipulated her weak and tired body again to lay her back on the bed and press her to the sheets with great care, even as she writhed for release. She stared at her, caught her gaze, held it until her wild movements eased and… and her body trembled, trapped in the thrall of her command again.

“You shouldn’t be here, kinsley.” Her voice was so low kinsley had to strain to hear it. Her heavy head remained still as Sight moved from her vision but she felt her hover between her parted legs. Waiting… “But that’s okay. I’m going to take you home. The Sovereign Mother will be pleased to see you, to know you haven’t caused to much trouble with your presence.”

The mild anxiety that fluttered through her belly was easily smothered by lust, and kinsley waited, patient and docile, as Sight blew hot air across her heated sex. Her mouth was… so close that just the near presence of her lips made her clit ache. If she… touched her there again. If she used her soft lips and wet tongue then... then she wouldn’t be able to… to think again. To recover. Was that what she wanted?

“This is what you need.”

This was what she needed.

“I’m going to tame you now, kinsley. I’m going to tame you over and over again, until your body’s only instinct is to obey. Until your mind is nice and quiet and ready for new thought, better thought. Until we become sisters before your… our Mother Sovereign.”

She remained helplessly contained and nervous beneath the strong grip that held her thighs open, and pulled her a bit closer.

“You’ve forgotten what true surrender… what true pleasure is.”

“I… I’ve forgotten.” She whispered, meaning it to be a question, but it came out as indisputable fact.

“You have forgotten, but your body hasn’t. It surrendered once before…”

Her mind churned with more memory, of a night held by unrelenting hands. Of a woman with golden eyes and umber skin. Of her command as those hands obeyed her, touching and stroking, keeping her still, obedient, subjected to words she could barely remember—

“The body never forgets obedience once it’s had a taste. Likewise, it doesn’t forget greed or hunger either. A more… experienced body is needed then, to contain and control it. Discipline and structure is important, Mother says. So, I will give it to you, and you will remember to forget sometimes, but that’s okay, because the body…”

“Does not forget.” kinsley answered, moaning gently as Sight gave her ass a squeeze.

“Does not forget. Yes. It will remember to obey a stronger, more in control body. A heroic’s body.”

She sighed, tried to close her legs, to ease the pulse stirred by Sight’s words, but Sight held her so… open. Yes, she would… obey a stronger, more controlled body. Sight’s heroic body.

“Your body and in turn, your entire self, is weaker than my own. Softer. Lesser. It’s little, compared to mine. Small and inexperienced…”

She nodded, her mind sluggish, but her body understood, knew it was meant to be conquered. She was too wound up, too… tired to try and think otherwise. Sight had exhausted her, filled her up with need until nothing else was left. She just wanted, needed, those lips to touch her. To finally… to finally give her just what she needed to rest.

They remained like that for what felt like eternity; Sight holding her, testing her… while kinsley breathed deeper and deeper with a heart settled and a mind drowned in Sight’s truth.

“I’m going to tame you now, little kinsley. You are too tired to move. So tired. So heavy and warm… and you need this, the Beast within you needs this.”

She closed her eyes and groaned. The need to shift was so far away and quiet, just another different warmth that sat in her belly, swallowed and suppressed by something else. It was only then, when kinsley opened her glazed eyes, that Sight smiled something off and wicked.

“You’ll make a very nice sister, I think. A good familiar.”

A heroic’s pet sidekick.

She dripped and moaned, rolled her hips in offering, and Sight lowered her head to slip her tongue along the folds—yes, yes, yes. Teasing, always teasing, drawing out her pleasure until she thought she’d burst from simply being licked. But Sight wasn’t done, wouldn’t stop tasting, spreading her legs further apart until she strained with the need to move and simply couldn’t. She was flushed and so wet and so exposed to Sight’s tongue, to the loud sensual sounds of her surrender as it explored and tasted. She could do nothing but tremble under the onslaught as her hands fisted the sheets and her back arched.

This wasn’t the sort of pleasure she remembered, but her body remembered. It clenched and spasmed around Sight’s eager tongue before… before her warm soft lips were around her throbbing clit. Now she cried out, tried to move—and she couldn’t be sure if she wanted her hips to move away or into the mouth that sucked and licked and bit—but couldn’t. She was… she was contained. Controlled. Held by a stronger body—

“Oh, oh!” The thought of it, the knowledge that she could do nothing but endure as her mind grew more and more focused on only the pleasure, only the lips around her clit—so gentle, coaxing out her moans and gasps, encouraging her loss of all self—sent her closer to the darkness of absolute submission. That place within her mind where there existed only one purpose, the unspoken order to obey that mouth.

And how was it possible that Sight could dominate her starving body so thoroughly between her legs? That she could shatter all need for freedom and leave only her messy pussy and growing need to obey behind? Her only other experience in recent years had… had been her late husband, and he’d been so unrefined, so… so…

Lips pressed in and teeth bit firmly, sending whips of pain and torturous pleasure up her spine. Sight growled between her legs, tormented her with the vibrations and her mind rapidly shifted, moving away from thoughts of her husband, falling back into her pussy, becoming her pussy.

“N-no, no—” She rasped, felt one hand give her thigh a warning squeeze before fingertips stroked near her slit, teasing, toying with the idea of asking for permission before one finger slipped within and—’

She clenched, the tightness in her belly, the building near painful pressure behind her clit… it all burst in a sudden startling wash of ecstasy…

But even as her body only twitched, commanded to submit, to obey, Sight didn’t stop. She rubbed and stroked along the pulsating walls, slowly, so so slowly, but deep and firm enough that she felt Sight’s unspoken command to take what she had to give her. Her clit tingled maddeningly, and she could feel it twitching against Sight’s insistent tongue. She was so sensitive that... That the pleasure… the agonizing waves were—

“I, I’m going to—” She could scarcely remember the words she meant to speak when Sight teased her entrance with another finger, pushing, stretching, pumping her will into her body with such confidence that she felt even her own sense of self lessen obediently, “i can’t… i can’t…”

But Sight didn’t stop. She pushed her further until the deep throbbing within her broke again and pumped out stronger waves of pleasure—

And still she didn’t stop.

No, no, no—her body sung with ecstasy and her mind… forgot that there was anything else. She was nothing then, nothing but that hot spasming place between her legs and the fingers that stirred it, driving her higher and higher while carving euphoria and… and adoration into her being. Only Sight had made her feel so... free. Free to cease her play at awareness and tumble over the abyss into breathtaking thoughtlessness.

She wasn’t sure when Sight finally released her clit from her sucking mouth. Couldn’t tell how long it had taken her to crawl up the length of her body and press her into the sheets, as her teeth and lips drew sensual patterns across her heavy chest. All that she knew was that even though Sight was not between her legs she could still feel those lips tugging and pulling.

And then her voice, “That’s it. Come and come.” Her fingers pushed, hooked, tortured, pushing in pleasure and pulling out will. “Over and over. Getting so hot, losing all control… Break for me, kinsley…”

And from one breath to the next kinsley felt her body tighten, her mind waver—

“Fall for me, rosenthal.”

And she did.

* * *

When she opened her eyes, she felt... strange. Softened, floating, and a little lost splayed out on her stomach. What she knew for certain was that there was a body next to her with a hand that stroked along her spine, gently touching and dancing across the scales that lined her back... She shivered from the touch, wanted to arch like a cat into a petting hand but… found her body incapable of movement. The only thing she could move was her gaze, blurry and hazy, and even that seemed like a chore. She wanted to… sleep. To fall helplessly into the quiet warm place she knew dwelled within her mind. To instinctively and thoughtlessly listen to the commands of her… body.

Which was commanded by another.

Words in a tongue she could not understand wrapped around her mind and slipped easily along her consciousness, pushing and pulling with slick heat… before the body beside her noticed her awareness.

Or lack thereof.

“Are you awake, little kinsley?” The woman whispered. A heroic, she remembered. A heroic that would guide her, now that she was tamed and bare—mentally and physically.

“Yes.” She answered softly, feeling small and almost shy when she knew she should feel… something else. Strong. Confident. In control. Less like little kinsley and more like… she couldn’t be sure. But something was off, she didn’t much feel like kinsley either.

Then a chuckle came, as a hand tapped her hip. “Who are you? The true you?”

That question was unusual. The woman had just called her kinsley, she was… kinsley, but she was also someone else.

“It’s rosenthal, isn’t it? The true you?”

That seemed right. Anything the woman said seemed… right. But that wasn’t the absolute truth, “Both.”

“Both?” The woman shifted, weight that moved effortlessly across the bed, “I suppose that’s right. Whether you’re kinsley hitch or queen rosenthal, you are still… undeniably subdued.”

There was a pause in conversation as rosenthal sighed, wanting only to sink and relish her subjugation. To sleep and deepen.

But the woman wasn’t done, and she shivered when the other leaned over her, a looming shadow that moved a bit of her hair away from an ear. “But what is my name, little one?”

She furrowed her brow, narrowed her eyes. Tried to… think, “Sight. D-daughter of Dawne.”

A hand gently palmed an ass cheek. “So close… no rosenthal.”

She whimpered and squirmed as a pleasant ache blossomed between her legs. Her pussy remembered what her mind had trouble with, “O-oh. N-no. You’re… Sight.”

Sight slipped her hand along her bottom until it pressed between her legs, not quite touching her center, but firmly kneading an inner thigh. “Is that all I am?”

She whined as she tried to think, to remember the past few hours as something—an owl?—made a flapping sound at the… the window.

“The window is back.” She slurred. “T-the window is back and—”

Then fingers pinched her clit and she forgot all about the window.

Sight explored her body for a time. Stroking her, caressing her thighs, pinching and tugging just right at her clit, as her mind began to slip back, back into that dripping, sleepy, hot state she’d been in when she’d first woken.

“So good…”

“Yes, it does feel good, doesn’t it?” Sight said, ignoring her moan, “Who am I, rosenthal?”

This time she didn’t need to think. “S-sister.”

“Yes. We’re sisters. Sisters in service.” Sight teased her slit, pushed in just so. “And we’re going to pack up and see our most sacred Sovereign Mother while I train this villainous body to obey.”

rosenthal moaned, eager and ready to see their now shared Mother. Ready to sink deeper into obedience but...

“But i… i’m a philanthropist.” She whined.

Sight laughed, and the sound was still beautiful, maybe even more.

“Mmm yes, you are, aren’t you? And you have helped West Z, even if you were naughty.”

She panted her agreement, squirmed and rolled her hips. Thrilled to be watched by Sister Sight as she succumbed to her touch.

“Then I suspect we’ll have to bond very closely. So you behave when we eventually return to the city.”

“Y-yes, yes Sister.” she moaned.

“Good. I was almost worried…” Sight made a sound of contemplation then, and she could imagine her one-shouldered shrug. “But it turned out as I suspected. I’ll have to let Martha know you’re okay too. She’s the one who told me where you’d be tonight, after all. Oh… do you know Martha?”

“Oh Great Gods.” She whimpered.

Sight laughed again, all mirth and affection, until that owl hooted, something vile and crude—

Right before a finger slipped into her pussy and began to stroke her trembling inner walls.

She forgot about the owl then too.