Priscilla knocked once, and then stood before Professor Viccari’s door, her hands clasped.

“Come,” he told her, and she opened the door and stepped inside. He was seated behind his desk, as before, and she bowed her head respectfully to him.

“Sit,” he told her, and she did.

(Her heart was fluttering. She had turned in a few more poems since that first one, and had worked very diligently on each. She had not yet received her grades for them. Had Professor Viccari approved? Would he praise her again?

She still lay awake some nights thinking about the smile he’d shown her.)

Viccari rose to his feet and began to pace the office. Always his eyes were fixed on her. He did not look pleased.

Priscilla tried to still her trembling, and failed. True, his face was almost always stern, but even so…

“You have been working very hard in my class, Priscilla,” he said.

She swallowed. “Thank you, sir,” she whispered. There was a thinness in his voice.

“The work you have given me is some of the very best I’ve had the pleasure of seeing in my many years teaching here,” he continued. (How many years? It could not have been that many. He was so young.)

He was circling her, following a loop around the desk and both its chairs. She did not dare to look at him. “It is plainly obvious,” he said, “that you put immense thought and effort and care into every word you write for me.”

Priscilla swallowed again. She could feel it coming.

“But what I hear from my colleagues is different.”

She sucked in a breath. Oh, how she hated to be scolded.

“They tell me that when you attend their classes, your attention is always somewhere distant. That you scarcely hear a word they say. That, sometimes, you cannot even be troubled to complete their assignments.”

“I see, sir,” she whispered, fighting back tears.

Viccari was to her left, just beside her, and now he leaned above her, resting one hand upon the desk and the other upon the back of her chair. He looked down at her intently; she could sense his eyes upon her and she felt compelled to meet his gaze.

He was so very, very tall. It was utterly unbearable, to sit here in the vision of those iron eyes.

“Why?” he asked. “You’re incredibly bright. No one could possibly deny that. And I know that you are capable of diligent work, because that is exactly what you perform for me. Why do you devote such attention to my class while neglecting all your others?”

She could, she thought, try to lie, or dissemble. Give the man some trivial answer. But she hated lying, and moreover, she felt certain that Professor Viccari would not allow her to leave until he had her truthful reply. His eyes were demanding it.

Her lower lip trembled.

Then she swallowed, and lifted her chin just slightly. “You want my answer, sir?”

There was a shift in his eyes. No longer so stern, yet they remained just as demanding, full of – something like hunger. “Yes,” he said. Raw and unadorned.

She took a deep breath.

“I don’t care about the other classes, sir,” she said. And then his eyes were too much for her, and she fled them again, returning to the safety of examining his desk. She continued, more softly:

“I only care about yours.”

“Why?” he asked again, his eyes still locked on her skull, pressing. “There is no more prestigious academy in the country. To attend here is a coveted privilege. Good marks will ensure a life of wealth and status. You know all this. Why on Earth would you not care about such a thing? What could possibly motivate you more?”

And suddenly Priscilla realized that he was no longer scolding her. He would require her answer, certainly: but that was earnest curiosity in his voice, not anger.

(The curiosity burned, though. There was something else behind it.)

She felt, all at once, that it was very safe to answer.

“They don’t understand, sir,” she said quietly. “The other professors. And I don’t understand them. I cannot communicate with them, not in the way I can with you.”

She blushed. Professor Viccari gave no reaction.

“And… The things they wish for me to learn about are dead and soulless and without purpose, and it makes me ill with sadness. They want to teach me that the world has nothing of value in it. Why would I drive myself to be persuaded of that?”

“But my class is different?”

“Yes!” she cried. “You teach me about the thoughts and feelings of people who lived long ago, and how to put my own in a form that others can understand. You allow me to be a person. But all the others…” Her hands formed fists. “They tell me I am to think for myself, but if I think things they dislike, they punish me.”

“I see,” he said. There was emotion in his voice, but Priscilla could not identify it.

“I didn’t want to come here,” she said, speaking softly again. “My father required it. And… And it is not a good place for me. I feel so very alone here, sir. I have my classmates, and perhaps I could be a good friend to some of them, but… I am made to sleep alone, and study alone, and when we are in class we are not permitted to speak to each other. This is… This is a place for clockwork, not people. I have so much love inside me, sir, and they tell me to keep it shut up and secret inside me. How can that be right? But when I compose my poetry…”

Her words trailed off. Professor Viccari had leaned close, and the intensity in his eyes could have put spark to tinder.

Then those eyes grew distant. “It wasn’t always this way, you know. This academy was a place for literature, once.” He sighed. “But… The crown demands that its institutions keep pace with the times. The march of progress…” His expression was almost mournful, and he shook his head.

“I see, sir,” Priscilla said quietly. She was…confused. He must have read about such things. The Dacian Society had been an academy of natural philosophy for decades, after all.

He leaned even closer, so close that Priscilla thought she ought to have been able to feel his breath, but she could not. “You write poetry,” he said.

“…Yes, sir?”

“You write more than you bring to my class. Yes? An interest like yours, I don’t see how it could be otherwise.”

Priscilla bit her lip. “…Yes, sir,” she admitted, feeling shy.

“You will bring it to me. Every poem, short or long, fine or coarse. I will be the first to read every word you write.”

She swallowed. Her heart pounded. Why would he ask such a thing?

…Did he admire her poetry so much?

“Yes, sir,” she said softly, her eyes held by his.

(It did not occur to her to refuse.)

“Good,” he said. He did not move, or blink, or smile.

She swallowed again, and collected herself. “What… What will you tell your colleagues, sir?”

“That is not your concern,” he said. “Write your poetry, Priscilla, and be sure you keep your heart in it.

“Nothing else need trouble you.”

* * *

Priscilla stepped into Professor Viccari’s office, three sheets of parchment held close to her breast. They were not assignments. Not formal ones, at least.

She was a little bit drowsy. She had been staying up very late to write her poems, of late.

Professor Viccari met her eyes, and she smiled at him. The evenings she spent here had come to be her favorite part of every day, and she had been looking forward to this moment since she had left his office the previous night. She was very pleased with these newest three works, and she was certain they’d earn his praise. He was not sparing with that, when he felt she’d earned it. It was obvious that he adored her writing. That was such an utterly new feeling to her, and Professor Viccari gave it to her in abundance.

(He criticized her work too, of course, and sometimes quite harshly, but it was never unfair, or unhelpful, and he was such a wise and skilled teacher. In the four weeks since he had told her that she would bring everything she wrote to him, she had already improved more as a poet than she had in six years of primary schooling.)

“Sit,” he told her, and gave her one of his rare, precious smiles. She had begun to keep count of them. That was the sixth.

She sat, and placed her parchments before him.

He took them, leaned back in his chair, and began to read the first, eyes sharp. Priscilla bit her lip, watching. (She never grew bored, not here. There was something about the way the candlelight played in his eyes…)

There was no sign yet on his face of what he thought. She worried, occasionally, that he might eventually come to find her poems too repetitive, because they all without exception reflected her deepest feelings, and so they circled back to the same few themes again and again. The yearning to reach out, to be held and valued, to love and be loved, to be useful… But she presented these things in different ways each time, through metaphor and narrative, and so far he had given no complaints on the matter.

She saw his eyes reach the end of the page, flick back to the top, and start again. He always read her work three times, at least, before he gave commentary. It was a sign, she thought, of how much attention he felt her work deserved. Or perhaps it was simply a matter of his virtue as a teacher. In either case, she treasured it.

When he had read the poem for the third time, he set it down on the desk, dipped his quill in his inkwell, and began to write notes. First in black, and then in red. Priscilla waited patiently, gazing at his face.

Then he spun the parchment around and pushed it over the desk to her, and she scanned the notes, her heart beating rapidly.

Her eyes widened. Across all three stanzas, he’d written just half a dozen notes, and of those, two were positive. She met Professor Viccari’s eyes.

He smiled a seventh smile. “You’re improving.”

Her breath caught. “Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”

She looked at the page again, and bit her lip.

Viccari took up the second sheet, and began to read.

The notes… They really were remarkably positive. She glanced at him over the page he held before his face. Her heart skipped a beat. She felt…daring. If he had now grown this approving of her work, then perhaps he would allow…

“Sir?” she asked.

He blinked, mildly, met her gaze, and raised an eyebrow at her.

She took a deep breath, and continued swiftly before she could lose her nerve. “Sir, do you write poetry yourself? I mean, you must, surely; you’re so excellent at teaching it.”

“I do,” he said.

There was no emotion in that answer, or at least, none Priscilla could hear. Suddenly she felt uncertain.

But nonetheless, she had come too far to stop.

She looked down. “May I read some of it? Sir? …If you don’t mind.”

He gave no reply at first, and she snuck a glance at his face. His mouth was tight, and worry began to play upon her nerves.

Then he sighed. “If you like,” he said, and pulled open a drawer to his right. He took a sheet of parchment from it and thrust it across the table to her – casually, almost carelessly. It slid to a stop.

“I wrote this a few months ago,” he said. Then he picked up Priscilla’s poem again, and continued as if nothing had happened.

This was very uncharacteristic behavior by the professor, but she paid it no heed: she was too eager to see his work. There was no question that it would be excellent; he was so clever and thoughtful – but what form exactly would it take? She took up the parchment and began to read.

The poem was written in trochaic tetrameter, absolutely flawless; and it told of a man lost in the wilderness, in the freezing cold, starving and searching desperately for food. She finished the second stanza, and took a deep breath. Despite her best efforts, her heart was plummeting.

She had expected it to be good. She had expected it to be better than her own work. But this was poetry so effortlessly skillful that her own might as well have been the scrawlings of a child, and Professor Viccari had given it to her as if it was not even his best!

It was so beautiful. It spoke of the man’s hunger and desperation in such gorgeous terms that Priscilla’s heart could not but flutter at reading it, for all the grimness of the topic. And the manner in which the words flowed together… She mouthed one line to herself. It could be sung, she thought. Indeed, it could almost not be spoken any other way. How could she ever hope to compare with this?

Then she looked at the page again, and her eyes widened.

She had been so intent upon the poetry itself that she had not seen it. There were marks in angry red, in Viccari’s own hand, on every stanza, every line, very nearly every word. The page may as well have been mauled by a tiger.

Childish, read one note, with no elaboration. In another place, on the final line of the first stanza, he’d written: ‘Concupiscent’? What in hell’s name possessed me to use this word? And it’s early, as well. The reader will be expecting better… If I cannot find a superior replacement, the entire poem will be worthless.

Another note, on the fourth stanza: The man eats branches in an attempt to satisfy his hunger? It makes no sense. He would eat the leaves first. Stupid. It’s a metaphor, but a metaphor’s literal component must be sensical or it’s useless incompetence. Of course if I’d written leaves, I couldn’t get the rhyme scheme to work properly… A good poet would have found a phrasing that both made sense and rhymed.

A shadow darkened the page. Priscilla gasped, and looked up.

He was there. Standing over her, looking down on her, his eyes sharp and cold.

He said nothing.

“…Sir?” she asked.

Viccari tilted his head.

“Sir, why are all these marks here?”

“To note the problems that must be fixed, of course.” His voice was flat.

“But…” She glanced back at the page and bit her lip. “But this is so good, sir. I mean, it is far better than anything I’ve written.”

“Yes, well. I’ve had more practice than you.”

(How much more practice, really? He was so very young, for a professor. And Priscilla had been writing poetry since she was eight years old…)

She swallowed. “But you aren’t nearly so harsh with my work.”

There was a pause. She dared to look back at him, and saw that the muscles of his jaw were tight. Then he looked away, eyes wandering the room.

“Well,” he said. “I mustn’t scare my students off.”

“Oh,” Priscilla said softly. Did that mean that if he were being fully honest, his critiques of her work would be just as cruel? That he was concealing the truth? She hoped not. When he praised her, she felt so…so happy.

“You said I was a rare talent, sir,” she whispered. “That… That my poetry was beautiful. Was that a lie?”

Professor Viccari blinked, and his eyes returned instantly to her from where they had been wandering. He looked…startled. It was the first time Priscilla had ever seen surprise upon his face.

“What?” he said. “No. I do not lie to my students, Priscilla. I meant every word.”

She was glad of that, but… She was so confused. She turned back to his poem, and stared at it. At that word choice he’d criticized. “Then how,” she asked, quietly, “can you call this whole poem worthless because of one insignificant mistake?”

He did not answer, but neither had his shadow moved.

“This… This is beautiful, sir, and I adore it.” A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and marred the page. She had not realized she was crying. “I, I don’t understand how you can think so poorly of it.”

Then there was a hand in her hair, squeezing painfully tight.

Her breath caught. She turned to look up at him, and he was very close, leaning down toward her, his face just a hand’s-breadth away –

He pressed his lips to hers.

Her heart almost stopped. She made a soft sound against his mouth, and meanwhile his arm slid down and encircled her waist, pulling her to her feet as he kissed her. He held her close, his arms so very strong, kissing her deep and hard and greedily, and slowly, ever so slowly, Priscilla relaxed.

Her body shivered, she leaned against him, and her arms went around his chest.

Then their lips finally parted, and he stared at her, while she gazed back, her heart beating swiftly in her breast. He had not let go of her: only pulled his lips away. She was still held within the cage of his powerful arms.

He withdrew one arm, though the other was still more than enough to secure her; and he lifted his hand and caressed her cheek. His touch was very soft and gentle, and Priscilla’s heart fluttered. He had seized her and kissed her so roughly, but now he touched her as if she were made of glass. And the look in his eyes, which held hers in place as if pinned: there was ice and fire and hunger. He wanted her.

She had never once felt this way before.

“Come with me,” he said, and his voice was low and greedy.

* * *

He led her by one hand out into the courtyard, striding with purpose. He was tall and his legs were long, and to keep up with him required considerable effort. Priscilla’s breath came in gasps.

Absently, staring at the professor’s back, she worried at her lower lip. Did he intend to make love to her? She must admit, at least to herself, that she had fantasized about such a thing more than once; but she would never have expected it to actually happen.

But whatever it was that Professor Viccari wanted from her, the way his strong fingers gripped her wrist made it absolutely clear that he was going to get it.

(She very nearly swooned at that thought.)

Now he was leading her along one of those winding paths that spiraled through the courtyard garden. The sun had long ago set, and the stars were bright and clear above, pin-pricks of white and violet glinting between the boughs of trees; but despite the darkness Viccari seemed to know his way perfectly. He took her to a tiny alcove that huddled against the stone brick wall of one of the academy buildings, tucked away, surrounded on all other sides by high hedges, overhung by a great maple, with thick green moss covering the ground. Now they were well and truly alone, concealed from all directions but straight above. No one could see them.

Priscilla was entirely at Professor Viccari’s mercy.

He released her wrist and turned to her. She gazed at him, hands clasped, heart in her throat, and it occurred to her that with the way he had led her into the alcove, he now stood between her and the exit. She was no freer for having been released from his grip. She would not escape until he was finished with her.

And besides all that, those iron eyes of hers had her pinned against the hard stone wall.

“Take off your clothes,” he said.

She trembled and came even nearer to swooning this time; and before she could think her hands were obeying. Unbuttoning her blouse, unfastening her skirt. Disassembling, piece by piece, the carefully-tended uniform that kept her modest and decorous.

He watched her intently, and there was no hint in those hungry eyes of a willingness to look away and preserve Priscilla’s modesty. Of course not: he desired her. (She trembled.) But the fact that her nudity was about to be exposed to the eyes of a man, the eyes of her professor, did not begin to stop her from obeying. Nothing, she thought: nothing could stop her from obeying. It was impossible to resist him when his eyes were fixed upon her as they now were. It was the same as the way two dozen of his students would fall silent at once with a glance.

(Deep in her heart, it was no surprise to Priscilla that Professor Viccari could take her body any time he wanted it. Most likely he could have the body of any of his students, just by demanding it, and their feelings on the matter would be no impediment. She did not remember exactly when she had realized that, but she felt that she had known it for a very long time. He was the sort of man who could not be resisted.

Tonight his desire was directed at her.)

She was naked, now, standing there before Viccari in the chill night air. Her nipples were very stiff. It was not because of the cold.

He looked her over, taking his time, from her face to her breasts to her vulva to her bare feet. He did not speak, and his eyes betrayed nothing of his judgment. Priscilla desperately hoped that her body met with his approval.

Then he turned, took off his jacket and his waistcoat, and hung them from the lowest branch of the maple tree. Beneath them he wore a white silk shirt, clean and pressed.

Then he turned back to her and reached out a hand, and beckoned with his finger. “Come here.”

She obeyed, and the professor embraced her and kissed her again, first on the lips and then on the nipples. At the latter she nearly cried out, and he laid her down upon the soft mossy ground and got on top of her, his face hanging above hers.

“Have you ever lain with a man before?” he asked.

Priscilla shook her head, too shy to speak.

He kissed her on the mouth again, then reached down, unfastened his trousers, pushed her legs apart, and entered her.

Priscilla gasped breathlessly as Professor Viccari took her. Was this another dream? It felt like a dream. The cool night air upon her naked skin, the moss beneath her body, the sound of her own soft moans, and his warmth between her legs. Above his head the stars glittered, fine and bright, but his eyes glinted brighter than any of them.

She had never seen need like this, so single-minded and intense, but in dreams.

In time he finished with her, and lay still atop her, satisfied. Priscilla gazed up at him, her lips slightly parted, her heart racing. He kissed her lightly on the nose. It was a gesture more playful and affectionate than she had ever before seen from him – than she had ever dreamed he might give – and she could not help but smile.

Then he stood up, put his trousers back to rights, and donned his waistcoat and jacket. Priscilla propped herself up on one elbow and watched him curiously, the remains of his pleasure still cooling between her legs.

(She bit her lip. She supposed it was possible she might become pregnant with Professor Viccari’s child. She had not even thought of that when he had been taking her. She caressed her belly gently.

The thought should, perhaps, have frightened her. It didn’t. Still, she was not sure how he would react…)

He turned back to her once his clothes were all on, and met her eyes. His face was stern, like usual, and she almost expected him to scold her for the lewdness of being naked on academy grounds, even though that would be absurd. But he didn’t: did not even speak, only reached into the pocket of his waistcoat, took out a silver key that glimmered in the starlight, and proffered it.

Priscilla took it. It was finely-crafted and beautiful. There was a question on her lips, but Professor Viccari spoke before she could ask it.

“This is a skeleton key,” he said. “It will open every lock in the academy. My private chambers are in the professors’ wing, the eighth door along the second corridor. It is marked with my name. In future, you will bring your poetry there, at eight o’clock each night.”

The beating of her heart quickened again. This had not been a matter of one time only, then. Viccari had not wanted to feel the pleasure of her body and then be done with her. He intended for her to share his bed again. She was…

She was going to be her professor’s kept woman.

She wondered if he could see the blush on her cheeks despite the darkness.

“It is important that you not be seen,” he continued. “But curfew is at seven o’clock, so there will be little activity. In any case, do not be late, Priscilla.”

“Yes sir,” she whispered. Her heart fluttered.

How could she possibly have been so fortunate as to attract the attentions of a man like this?

“Now dress yourself properly,” Professor Viccari said. “If anyone were to catch you like this, it would be…inappropriate.”

And without another word, he departed.