Letitia was sitting against the far wall of the guest room, holding her knees to her chest like a child, and for a few minutes Amara left her there to sulk as she fixed the few marks their fight had left on the room. The chair had been kicked over in Letitia’s rush to catch her; the carpet had slid out of place as she’d sprinted across the room; the portraits near the wall had been jostled when Letitia had jammed her into the wall, and oh, that was a rush just to think about. Letitia was unstoppable, inhumanly strong with all the will to use it, and even when Amara hadn’t known it, that power had made her pitifully, desperately wet as her lady had pinned her and ridden her face. Amara could still feel the consequences of that, the come slick on her chest and her face and trapped in the join of her legs, but she didn’t have the time or interest to clean it off. She’d given Letitia quite enough time to hate herself already. “Widow Carson?”

The lump stirred. “Don’t call me that.”

Amara laughed. “Widow Carson,” she said, “if you’re going to just sit here, do you want me to leave?”

“Leave?” Letitia unfurled and stared at her owlishly, face stripped bare and confused. “I haven’t wiped you, you can’t just – be quiet,” she hissed when Amara opened her mouth, “really, what kind of thrall–”

“A very irritating one, I think.” Amara wiggled her tongue. “But you already know how to shut me up–”

“Sleep,” Letitia said defensively.

Amara shuddered. Her head lolled. “Don’t–” She twitched, tried to hold herself above the surface. She was being pulled away. “Fuck. Please.” She gasped, and the pressure vanished as quickly as it came, crumpled back into the warm, heady feeling of being taken, and when she looked up properly again she saw Letitia staring at her, eyes dark and unreadable.

“Fine. What do you want?”

“Oh!” Amara smiled. “Well, I do want to cum–”

“That’s not happening.”

Hot! Amara grinned, fidgeting in place. “You’re so cruel, my lady! You didn’t even touch me, and now–”

“I didn’t..?” Letitia was a bit too undead to blush, but the embarrassed look on her face made Amara preen. “That’s… really.” She huffed. “I’m sorry. I’m still not having sex with you, not like this.”

“Why not? You can’t seem to order me around, can you?”

“Apparently not. I’m not sure why. I don’t take thralls.” Letitia stood up, detaching herself from the wall to circle Amara as she stood in the center of the room. Their eyes met, and Amara shivered as she felt her lady’s gaze sweep over her exposed skin before catching on the damp mark on the front of her leathers. Letitia frowned. “That still doesn’t make you free. Will you reveal me to the humans?”

“Of course not, my lady.” Amara smiled and rolled back her shoulders, putting herself further on display. She preened at the way Letitia’s eyes followed her hungrily. She was so close to being properly taken. The only thing stopping her was Letitia’s own faltering will, and that could be beaten, would be beaten if Amara was ever to properly serve.

She reached up to unclasp her leathers and expose her throat, but the vampire spoke first, nostrils flaring. “And if I’d let you go? When you were running?”

“Ah.” Letitia wordlessly motioned her on, and Amara dropped her hand and continued, somewhat sheepish. “Well, you never want a noble’s attention for long, you know, and vampires are – worse, they’re worse, begging your pardon my lady they take people.” Amara half smiled to ease the words, then winced involuntarily as her mind wrenched against the low pit of horror in her gut. The panic from her unthralled self was still there, held just beneath the surface, and talking like this it was harder to ignore.

Letitia watched it all with dark eyes and circled her, arms and legs impossibly rigid, shifting like a marionette. “We do. So you ran.”

“Well,” Amara said, irritated, “yes, my lady, you were going to kidnap me!” Her gut wrenched again at her own words, and she tried to turn to face Letitia again, to meet the vampire’s hypnotic gaze and crush out her panic properly.

Letitia clasped Amara’s chin from behind, grabbed her waist with her other hand and held her still. She rested her chin on Amara’s shoulder, voice low. “Keep talking.”

Amara gulped. “Right, well, I ran. Talking with vampires is dangerous, seeing them is worse, and I knew we’d met before. You were already dangerous, and when I knew you wanted me… I didn’t come all this way to be some noble’s pet, my lady.”

Against her, Letitia rumbled out a laugh. “A murderer’s pet, really.”

“Who fucking cares, you’re killing nobles.” Amara spat, putting all the venom she was capable of into the words. She blinked. “Unless you’re–”

The hand on her waist went still. “No. Just nobles.” Then it released her, and Amara spun around to find Letitia wringing her hands as she sat back in the chair, eyes still carefully averted. “You really don’t…” She tapped one thin finger on her cheek, lost in thought, then finally looked back at Amara. “What’s your name? Don’t answer that,” she said quickly, before Amara could reply. “I am going to earn it, I think.”

Amara blinked. “What?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Letitia said. It was an easy command to follow when she was looking at Amara like this; her lady’s eyes smothered her panic instantly, and Amara relaxed into a chair, finally at ease again. Letitia winced at the sight but didn’t look away. “I’m sorry. I haven’t done any of this right. I know very little of what I am.” She said it carefully, bracing herself like she was pulling out a splinter.

That sort of ignorance was certainly strange for a vampire. Mostly because, well… “You could ask your sire?”

“I don’t have one. Or I don’t know them, at least.” Her voice turned quiet. “I was… I ran away from Carson, out into the woods. That’s all I remember.”

“Hm.” Amara looked at her lady for a long moment. Letitia seemed more stable than even just a few minutes ago. Her dark eyes had sharpened again, losing the trapped-animal shivers from when she’d wrestled Amara down; now they were low and steady like a predator. Amara had surrendered too easily to the interrogation, she knew, missed her chance to be taken before her lady could center herself, and now… she was still awake, at least. She could still serve. “The royal library might have something on vampires, you know.”

“I’m well aware,” Letitia said, irritated. “That’s why I came here in the first place.”

Amara nodded eagerly. “So I could escort you?”

She’d forgotten herself, come off a bit too excited, and Letitia flinched in response. “No,” she said steadily, “I’m not using you. Not while you’re–”

Yeah, she could play this game too. “I’m curious too, I think, about what you’ve done to me,” Amara said placidly. “So I’ll head to the library now. Unless you’re going to put me to sleep?”

Letitia stared at her like she’d grown a second head. For someone so determined not to take thralls, her lady really didn’t like to be opposed, but if Letitia wasn’t going to fuck Amara or fully thrall her there wasn’t much she could do about it. From the look on Letitia’s face she’d only just realized that, and Amara preened at the heady feeling of leaving her speechless. This was really too rich. In this half-thralled state Amara was even stronger, fears and reservations scraped clean to expose the raw nerve of her own desire, and with Letitia so unprepared to take her… she could win, she thought giddily, if they fought, maybe enough to–

Letitia frowned. “Fine. Get your sword and get dressed. I’ll go with you.”

They didn’t have permission to visit the library, but it wasn’t important enough for any real security, so Amara talked her way past the lone guard in about five minutes. The royal library was a two-story layout, with curved shelves around a twenty person meeting table on the ground floor and a small balcony poking out from the bookshelf walls on the second floor, letting sunlight flow down through the open space and into the central table. It was all a bit absurd, clearly designed to frame the books as a setpiece for some proper noble dithering, and it would have incinerated Letitia in about five seconds if it hadn’t been almost sunset. Which was nice.

The books up here would be worthless for her lady, of course, but Amara had fucked around long enough to find out something much more useful. On the back wall of the first floor, the bookshelves broke into a series of small, shallow hallways barely an arm’s length apart, tight enough that there was more paper than air; down the leftmost stack was a small staircase cut into the stone floor; down the staircase was a thick wooden door etched with the crest of the king’s old philosopher. It was locked, but Amara had forged copies of all the building keys years ago, so the door yielded to the basement, a low-ceiling maze of bookshelves and corridors set beneath the library floorboards. It was a philosopher nest, rotting shelves wound tight for the twisted hands and habits of a kept scholar. If Letitia would find anything about what she was, it would be here.

She turned back and found her lady hovering uncomfortably in the doorway. Letitia was taller, so she was cramped a bit more by the low ceiling, and her deep green dress had already been streaked with the layer of dust and shed books that covered everything around here. She was so obviously a creature of large, hollow spaces, courtyards and courts and audience chambers, and she wiggled into the basement like a lion into a bathtub, calm and desperately graceful as if she could will herself to like it. She was trying and failing to navigate around the thick dust on all the books, and every time she brushed one and smeared her dress she made prissy little noises that seemed to come involuntarily as she slowly worked herself deeper into the dead book shithole. She looked like she was about to kill someone, which admittedly was a very normal face for her, and was now (Amara remembered) a very real threat given her whole tear-out-his-throat-with-one-hand maneuver. “Stop laughing,” she growled, and Amara grinned back – she hadn’t said anything, really – and her lady let out another frustrated noise and pushed forwards with all that inhuman strength, tumbling into Amara in the thin hallway and grabbing at her and the bookshelves all at once as she lost control.

They half-crawled half-fell into the work desk at the center of the maze, and Amara flopped down on it all tangled with her lady above, grinning up at her in the thin light of their lantern. “Well, my lady! Here we are!”

Above her, Letitia scowled and slipped off her and onto the floor of the cramped basement room, barely touching Amara at all except for an accidental brush of her hand against her collarbone. Amara let out an exaggerated moan in response, a rough recreation of her own choking on pussy twenty minutes ago, and she laughed condescending and victorious at the way Letitia shivered from head to toe at the sound. Her gaze tightened; she was so obviously fighting the urge to trance Amara and shut her up, but just like last time she wrestled it down, glaring at her deadly and impotent. So angry, so stressed, and so, so insufferably moral about all of it. Amara could feel it in every word she spoke. “Focus, please. Is there a section for monsters?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know, I haven’t read anything around here,” Amara said breezily. “Mostly it’s just a good place to fuck.”

Letitia sighed. “Of course it is.” The desk was at the center of a dense web of hallways stacked with books, and she ambled over to the closest one, leafing through a couple of pages before moving on. “That’s astronomy,” she murmured, “and this is… an absurd way to organize books.” She crossed back to the first bookshelf again, lost in thought, and when Amara opened her mouth to tease her again, Letitia twitched. “No. Stay.”

She said it instinctively, with the same total focus as when she’d been reading, and Amara’s eyes fluttered half shut as she leaned back against the table. Letitia barely seemed to notice but breathed out, satisfied, and as she rummaged through the library she glanced compulsively back to Amara over and over again, like she was afraid Amara would vanish if she looked away. Sometime in the last minute she’d forgotten herself in the dead focus of her own research, and she’d shucked off her humanity like a heavy coat. In its place, Letitia’s unlife folded out and pulled along the tendons of her arms and the knobs of her spine, twisting beneath her sea-green dress and moving her more efficiently than shallow human muscles could allow, relentless and utterly inhuman. She glanced at Amara in bits and pieces as she circled the library, and Amara felt herself slipping away despite her own best efforts, still bound by the order to stay.

Then, finally, Amara felt a weight on the table and turned to her lady sitting on the desk next to her, a pile of used books at their feet. She was in too deep to move or think, and against her Letitia looked almost impossibly real, carved into the world with wide dead eyes to rule. “Come up a bit. That was an accident, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to take you, so I couldn’t control myself. But now…” Her face firmed. “Free yourself. Wake up,” she said, voice firm like she was ordering an execution, and Amara froze as every bit of buried panic from the last five hours hit her all at once.

She remembered everything, a thousand thoughts cut by thralldom and discarded across the floor of her mind, now stitched together and strung up by a careful hand to give her the illusion of free memory. The thrall-memories were all split down the middle, half choked horror, half the delicious feeling of being taken, of belonging to her lady body and soul. It felt sick to even think about, and to have the memories squatting in her mind while she was free– the vampire had made them fit, had made that surrendered thing part of Amara forever.

It was breaking her; it was staring at her from the other side of the table, dead still as it took in the small, anxious movements of Amara’s fingers. Waiting for her to speak, Amara thought, which wasn’t going to happen. It hadn’t even taken her sword. It didn’t need to – there was no room to maneuver in this cramped basement, so the vampire’s strength would overpower anything Amara could throw at her. And sure, that still sent an pleasant shiver down her spine, but now Amara wasn’t nearly thralled enough to like it. The whole thing was rotten anyways.

The vampire’s eyes had followed Amara’s hand to the hilt of her sword. It tapped a finger against the hilt of a blade of its own, one of Amara’s spares, the traitor. Then it sighed. “…you know you can’t fight me here. You’ve already tried, remember? Last month, in the closet?” Amara still wasn’t looking at its face, but whatever it saw from her made it slump slightly in relief, a careful mask of humanity. “Yes. You’re well aware, I think. Can we talk?”

Letitia spoke low and soothing, almost hypnotic, and Amara laughed in her face and dug her nails into her palms to keep herself awake. “You don’t want to talk. Your voice – you’re just trying to thrall me again.”

“Of course I’m not – ah, sorry, sorry!” The vampire snarled, pitching her voice high and reedy, an angry widow’s whine. “I am not trying to thrall you! I want to talk! Why else would I release you?”

Amara scoffed. “You’re feeling guilty, Widow Carson. Playing with your food. You’ll get over it soon enough.”

“Guilty?” The vampire’s voice guttered as it shivered like a caged beast – laughing, it was laughing. “Guilty! For what! You have done nothing but harass me this entire time! Isn’t this your own damn fault? Flirting around like a little prancing fool until I–” She let out a long, low growl, then cut herself off, crossing her arms and holding them tightly. “It doesn’t matter. It’s my fault too, I know this. I’ll let you go.”

“Like hell you will–”

“I will let you go,” Letitia repeated, “if you swear to keep my secrets. If you promise me that, you can leave.”

The vampire said it completely seriously, and Amara felt a laugh bubbling up her throat despite herself. Was she insane? “That’s what you want? I’ve lied to you constantly! You don’t even know my name, and you want, what, a pinkie promise?”

The vampire nodded. “A promise, yes. We can involve our pinkies, if you wish.” She looked almost hopeful, wringing her hands on the other side of the table. “Will you do it?”

“No, I–” Why was she refusing. This was absurd, Amara thought in a blur, just say the damn words and leave. “Stop,” she said weakly. “Stop fucking with me. Please.”

“I’m quite serious.” Letitia tilted her head. “…I’ve finally caught you off guard. Is it so strange,” she said carefully, “that I’d choose to trust you?”

Amara flinched. “You’re delusional,” she spat. “You’ve spent too much time around my thrall, it’s driving you insane. Fucking bootlicker–”

“Is that what she is!” The vampire smiled. “You can lie to me, too, if you want. Just tell me the words.” She looked fully at Amara, voice low and comforting and so goddamn full of herself.

She was going to get both of them killed. “Leave me alone,” Amara hissed, and when she turned and ran back into the basement passages she heard the vampire curse and pad after her, following her with a light patter of steps against the wooden floor. The vampire would be faster, but Amara was more nimble in these tight spaces, and she took a few sharp turns to throw the vampire off before sprinting towards the exit. It wouldn’t follow her to the library above, wouldn’t risk getting caught, and she was almost to the threshold–

But before she could leave, the vampire rammed into her from behind like a freight train, forcing Amara face first into a bookshelf. It snarled and jammed her further up against the wall; she could barely reach her sword, and when she tried the vampire caught her wrist and effortlessly held her in place. Its cold hand burned against her like a shackle, and it twisted to stroke a thumb over the vein on the underside of her wrist, then leaned up until its breasts brushed against the toned muscles of Amara’s back. It didn’t need to breathe, but it was letting out small, involuntary predator-growls as it looked her over, and its voice came out strained. “We’re not done talking. Yield.” Amara bucked instinctively against the vampire, terrified, and it held her down firmly until the last of her strength bled away, leaving her trembling in its grip. When she finally went limp, it hummed, satisfied, and turned her face to face.

Letitia had shed her humanity sometime during the chase, let herself go gaunt and twitchy like a puppet, and without thralldom to blunt it Amara felt a wave of instinctual terror break over her, making her calm and shivering like a rabbit in a trap. She was prey for this creature, all of them were, and trapped like this she felt a sickening urge to beg. The vampire’s nostrils flared, taking her in. Fuck. “Let me go,” Amara said.

“You know I can’t. They’ll hunt me down like a dog. Would you just – can you just promise not to tell them? Please?” Letitia was looking at her with wide cow’s eyes, dark and pleading, and it looked so out of place against the rigid strength of the rest of her body that Amara answered without thinking.

“Fine.” It made sense, Amara knew that. There was no point in making an enemy of the vampire, and if all it took was a few words to subdue her… “I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”

Letitia blinked at her, surprised, then smiled. “Oh! Good. Very good.” Amara shivered at her low tone, and the vampire pressed them both further against the wall, a cold, knobbly blanket except for her breasts resting messily against Amara’s shoulders. They were half out of place in her sea-green dress, unkempt from the vampire’s own exertions, and between Letita’s chest and gaunt face and slim hands Amara found herself loosely caged against the wall. Not forced, but still held, and she wasn’t doing a fucking thing about it. She dragged her eyes up Letitia’s neck and caught on her smile, inhuman with just a glimpse of fang as the vampire breathed in without needing to, excited. “You’ve helped me a great deal with the library, you know. I never did thank you,” she murmured. She leaned back, showing herself off against the dust and shit of the basement bookshelves, and when Amara’s eyes caught on the full length of her ivory-white teeth she purred with satisfaction. “And you want this, don’t you? To get fucked?”

The vampire’s legs were tangled into Amara’s, firm and strong without the muscle for it, and Amara ground against her once without thinking. What the hell was she doing. “I don’t–”

Letitia laughed. “Don’t lie to me. You’re desperate for it. I can smell you.” Amara let out a choked noise at that, eyes wide, and the vampire preened with victory, leaning further into her and slotting a sharp-boned leg between her thighs. Amara gasped and rutted against her again, and then a third time, and Letitia wound a hand around her waist to steady her, bringing the other one up to rub at the artery running up the side of her neck. “There you are,” she sighed, and when Amara whined the vampire’s eyes sharpened further, tight and crazed. “Good thrall.”

Oh, fuck you, Amara thought, but she didn’t say it, and the way she must have looked, caught and taken – the shame hit her in a hot, thick wave like she was coming already, and she slumped pathetically into the vampire’s grip, subdued and still except for the frantic grind of her hips. She just had to fucking come before Letitia got any more smug about this, but it wasn’t like the vampire would forget this anyways – she’d know, Amara thought headily, she’d look at Amara haughty and mean at those noble events and know exactly how easy it would be to take her again, bend her over dripping and desperate like caught prey. Letitia was too damn strong for a noble, now; she could pin Amara with nothing but her hands, and then… here and now, the vampire was undoing the tie of her pants, dipping in with the same thin fingers Amara had seen tear out her cousin’s throat, and then it became instantly, painfully obvious that Letitia had no idea how to touch her.

“Fuck,” Amara hissed, and when Letitia smiled at that she wrapped a hand about the vampire’s wrist to pull her out. “Bad fuck! You’re going to tear my cunt out with your fucking vampire nails or something, I don’t know!” She babbled, sounding panicked enough for Letitia to pull herself the rest of the way out.

“Well, I’m sorry,” she said, leaning back a bit annoyed. “It’s not like I’ve done this before–”

“I can tell,” Amara deadpanned, and the wounded look on Letitia’s face made her grin. She was pouting again! “It’s kind of cute, you know. All that talk and now you’re touching me like a virgin?”

Letitia’s eyes narrowed. “And now you’re doing this again. I won’t be made a fool of.”

“Doing what?” Letitia frowned at her again, and Amara laughed. “I can teach you, my lady, if that’s what you want–”

“No. Be quiet,” Letitia snarled, and the motion bared the full, monstrous length of her teeth. Amara froze, pulse pounding. The movement hadn’t seemed intentional, but when Letitia caught her eyes and realized where exactly she was staring, the vampire laughed throatily and stalked back towards her, smile still wide and open. “But I suppose I’ve been blessed with a way to fuck you properly, haven’t I?”

Amara gulped, and Letitia stepped back in and brought a hand to Amara’s neck, pressed two fingers against the artery as she groped the rest of her neck. Amara throbbed in time with the heavy pressure of her fingers. “Fuck,” she gasped.

“Good fuck?” Letitia said mockingly. “Won’t this be so much better, thrall? Coming untouched on my fangs like a whore? Won’t that be a better reward?” She curled her other hand around the nape of Amara’s neck, pulling her head up and to the side to expose her further to the pads of her fingers prodding at the artery. Amara gasped and went limp again – god, this was pathetic, she was letting the vampire throw her around like a ragdoll – but with the proud, self-satisfied look on Letitia’s face, it was hard to do anything but kneel. “Good. You’re so good for me. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Amara hissed.

It came out as more of a whimper, and Letitia laughed throatily down at her. “Now you’re honest. Look at that!” She pulled the last of Amara’s curly hair to the side, exposing her neck, then bent down to mouth carefully against it, running her lips against the muscle and tonguing the skin in little flicks as she searched for a place to bite. A bit like a lizard, really, and Amara would have found that hilarious if she hadn’t been taken by just how thorough it all was. Letitia held her there for almost five minutes, searching over her as Amara’s anticipation fell into the throbbing feeling of being taken. It felt like being thralled, except now the fear was still there, rumbling up as one of Letitia’s fangs poked against the base of her artery. “There,” she breathed, and in that moment Amara realized exactly what she was getting into. These fangs had torn men apart, and here she was, letting Letitia fit her mouth cleanly around around the front of her own neck. All she would have to do was twist and Amara would be dead, neck broken like a caught rabbit’s.

Instead Amara felt the cold, sudden feeling of being pierced. At first it was like any other stabbing, and Amara had learned to hold still to keep those wounds from tearing, so she didn’t so much as flinch as Letitia pushed the first quarter-inch into her neck, just barely past breaking the skin. The vampire was waiting for something, and as Amara panted against her she realized what – there was a burning feeling pulsing out from the puncture wound, pleasantly itchy almost like a mosquito bite. Something in the saliva, probably. It was making it very hard to stay still, and Amara shuddered without thinking, then let out a small, pained gasp as Letitia growled into her neck, shifting up to pin her tighter against the wall. Her teeth were caught on the membrane muscle of Amara’s neck, just beneath the skin, holding those teeth in place until the steady pressure of the vampire’s jaws broke them through and pushed them further in. And then, finally, she drew blood.

Those thick ivory teeth were already so much punched an inch now through her neck, and now that they’d nestled in her artery Amara felt her blood spurting out with every rabbit-beat of her heart. She’d seen men die in minutes from this kind of wound; the heart pushed everything out in minutes, it killed itself effortlessly. But Letitia controlled all of her, and so Amara’s body was doing the work slower, numbed by the coagulant in the mosquito-bite saliva. It was feeding Letitia, serving her so well that the vampire didn’t even have to suck, just hold Amara still and let her bleed as her tamed body gave everything up. All she had to do was bleed and hump. The vampire had slotted one thigh back between her legs, giving her the friction to wind herself up as Letitia held her upper body still. She was making high, pathetic noises out into the quiet basement stacks, barely five minutes after the vampire had caught her. It hadn’t taken any time at all, and now – Letitia couldn’t talk while she was drinking her in, but as Amara finally tamed herself and went still, limp against the tight, itching pleasure of the vampire’s venom, she felt Letitia’s hand come up loose and possessive on the other side of her neck. And then the vampire pressed into her somehow further, hands in and leg up to press Amara up against the wall by her throat and her cunt, enveloped in the vampire’s strength, and oh, god, she was coming–

When she came back to herself Letitia was lapping at the closed bite marks on her neck, tongue dragging in small, careful patterns on her bloodstained skin. She was sitting against the basement floor, and Letitia had curled loosely in Amara’s lap, small against Amara’s bulk now that she’d folded herself up. When Amara looked blearily down at her, the vampire grumbled and pulled her tongue away to rest her cheek against Amara’s shoulder, eyes still trained on the thick red bite marks on her neck. She’d been claimed, and down a pint of blood she was still a bit too hazy to hate that, so Amara just slumped back and stared past the widow against her, looking into the dim lantern-light across the hall.