Her wrists ached.

As she swam back into consciousness, that was the first thing she noticed; then the burn in her forearms, and across her upper back, through the shoulder blades.

Before she was even ready to open her eyes, then, she knew she was chained up by her wrists, arms up above her head, hanging from… something.

It was safe to say her mission had failed, but she wasn’t sure of anything else, so Erustra kept her head still and her eyes closed. With an effort and a skill born of long training, she kept her breathing as steady, slow, and shallow as it had been before she started to wake up, and she listened, and she felt, and she opened up her senses.

There was a soft crackle, not much above the threshold of hearing; there was a fire wherever she was, but it wasn’t being tended and was probably not far from dying down. Her back wasn’t against a wall, so she was possibly in the middle of whatever she was being held in, but she also couldn’t feel much of a breeze, so there wasn’t a window and any door was closed.

That didn’t necessarily mean she was underground, but that was her guess all the same. Out of sight, out of mind. Given that her mission had involved a wizard, Erustra gave it even odds between being in a dungeon or in a magical laboratory.

Her bracers were missing, and she couldn’t feel the reassuring weight of her butterfly blades; not that she’d really expect anyone who took her captive to leave them on her person. All the same, though, she hoped they were nearby.

She’d listened for long enough. There was no conversation; no sounds of someone moving around; not even the slightly deeper breathing guards who’d rested on their chairs long enough tended to have.

In short, nobody else was around, so she opened her eyes, lifted her head, and looked around.

Magical lab, she decided after just a moment; the floor had sigils carved into it, one of the walls was lined with cubbyholes in which books or scroll cases resided; it wasn’t hard to identify.

Probably, then, it was the lab of Evander the Raven, who had been her target.

Erustra groaned. Embarrassing enough for an elf sent to assassinate a human to fail, but to be captured into the bargain? Reporting this was going to be humiliating.

Experimentally, she tugged at the chain on one wrist, then the other; when both proved resilient, she set herself swinging, back and forth, then, later, side to side. Her hope was that their anchoring into the ceiling might not be as secure as it seemed, that with enough effort she could break free.

No such luck, she decided when her strength began to flag. That had happened much faster than she’d expected; she wondered if that was the result of having hung there longer than she’d thought, her muscles just strained to the point that putting them to use was exhausting, or the capture - which her mind was quite foggy on, at that moment - had been more gruelling than she’d imagine, or whether dark magic was involved.

Evander the Raven was supposed to be known for a most subtle form of dark magic, she’d been told, but she hadn’t imagined it would form a threat. Far from it; those who were accustomed to wielding magic as a weapon were much more dangerous to an assassin. An assassin would usually only offer heartbeats, if that, between the target realising their presence and the success of their mission.

How had Erustra failed that essential?

*

Her head was foggy. She couldn’t even remember encountering Evander. Letting her mind drift back to when she’d first set off, she found her memories clearer again.

She was running through the woods, feet feather-light as she leapt from tree to tree, and as light and graceful as her elven heritage made her, Erustra didn’t disturb the branches as she passed by. Evander’s home wasn’t in a city; it was out of the way, buried in the woodland where human patrols wouldn’t find it.

She’d wondered - as had her colleagues - how he could sustain himself out there; he had soldiers at his command, and himself, and there was no signs of food or activity outside the tower he’d built. Which made no sense, which meant there was more to this than they knew.

Hanging as she would do in the wizard’s lab, Erustra came to the conclusion that Evander’s followers didn’t live in the tower, but rather in an underground settlement with underground farms, tucked away from prying eyes. It seemed likely that the Raven had big plans; big enough that he needed to hide his preparations.

She had passed by a loyalist human patrol without their noticing, had slipped unnoticed above the unnatural thickets of brambles that kept patrols from getting close to the tower (feeling, as she did so, if only in a sudden discomfort, the dark magic that had caused them to grow so robust and so thick).

The going got easier then; the trees were further apart, and had started to twist and gnarl in response to the magic of the area. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling just to be there, but there was nothing getting in her way; anywhere she wanted to go she could reach with ease.

The tower itself loomed ahead…

*

The door to the lab in which she was chained opened and Evander stepped in. Erustra wasn’t sure how she knew this was Evander - she’d never reached him, had she? Or had she? Her memory was frustratingly unclear on the question.

He was tall; young, for a wizard, his beard still mostly black, his hair long, two braids used to tie back the rest that hung free. The dark magic had left its mark on him; his eyes were jet black with no colour or white to them, and the veins on his neck were faintly visible as slim dark lines running up his neck.

“You’re awake,” he said shortly. “Good. The process requires a conscious subject.”

Well, that didn’t sound good. “P-Process?”

“Mmm.” He closed the door behind him and walked closer into the room. “I’d like to ask a few questions first. And I think you’d agree that I’m in a much better position to get my questions answered than you are, no?”

She flexed her arms one more time, hoping that perhaps she’d weakened the chains and just not noticed until that moment. No such luck. “I’ll never talk.”

“I wasn’t aware I was going to give you a choice,” he said, standing just outside the range she could reach with a kick as she hung from the chains. It just made him laugh.

“Now, you are perhaps expecting me to hurl magic at you to extract my answers. But honestly, I prefer to solve problems in advance, and I’ll need my magic for the process in any case.

“I’ve already solved the problem of you not answering. Your manacles there are enchanted; if you don’t speak when spoken to, your weight will increase, and the strain on your arms and shoulders will grow with it.” He smiled thinly, the tip of his tongue darting out to lick his lips.

Erustra realised suddenly he would genuinely enjoy it if she did that to herself, and the idea shocked her into silence - which immediately turned out to be a problem, as she felt a strange thrumming of power at each wrist and then seemed to sink slightly. Her shoulders went from a dull ache to a sudden pain and she cried out, tensing her own muscles to ease it.

Yes. From his smirk he’d definitely enjoyed watching that.

“So,” he said. “Thank you for the demonstration. I’ll undo this after I have my answers; it would be a shame to ruin you before I can put you to use.”

He was so sure of himself it was unsettling, and yet Erustra couldn’t entirely blame him. She hadn’t exactly showed herself as capable so far.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Aviraz,” she blurted out, wondering a moment later where she’d got that from; then she placed the name, another elf who’d bullied her when the two were little children. It had been more important to her not to give this human useful information than to wonder if she was slandering anyone else first.

…If she was completely honest, it still was.

“Why did you come after me?”

“To steal from you.”

“Why?”

“You’re a threat.” No point lying on that one; she couldn’t imagine he’d accept many other answers.

“To you?”

“To elves.”

“What makes me a threat to elves?” He sounded amused.

“Humans with dark magic always go wrong.”

He stopped there, looking at her curiously, his thoughts hard to read in those pitch-black eyes. After a moment he shrugged. “Who knows you’re here?”

“My troop.” Which wasn’t entirely true, although the assassination had been a mission and it was likely her commander would be telling them soon.

“Hm.” He shrugged. “I probably have a while, then. Good. The process takes time.”

“What even is the process?” She was starting to realise that she didn’t want to find out, but nor did she want to find herself growing even heavier.

“At its most basic?” He had walked away from her, was well outside the range of her kicks, was fiddling with some items on a table, placed just far enough away that it what they were wasn’t clear. “I’m going to give you a tattoo.”

From a dark magician, there was no way that was all there was to it. “I need a little more than that.”

“Oh, soon enough, what you need isn’t going to be your decision.” And having said that he chuckled lightly.

Erustra was getting increasingly uncomfortable with the way this wizard acted; all human users of dark magic were insane, it was well known. But the insanity was usually larger than life, emotional, and focused in ways that could be exploited to make them make mistakes.

Evander’s own madness, if she could identify it, was probably exploitable; but he went about what he did in such controlled ways that working out what it was would be a challenge. And if you couldn’t work out what it was, how could you exploit it?

He picked up a tray with several pots of coloured ink and a number of wickedly sharp needles and started walking back toward her. She grabbed the chains that led to her manacles with her hands, lifting herself for extra leverage, and swung forward, kicking out at him with flailing legs, her long elven body giving her a longer reach than he’d realised.

“Shit!” He scrambled away, suddenly on edge again, but not for long; balancing the tray on one hand, he shaped a sigil in the air with the other, gripping at empty space as if he were drawing in the magic. Then, finally, he thrust out that arm while opening his hand wide as if he were flinging the dark magic at her.

Erustra felt it like a physical impact, flinching away. It was like some kind of half-liquid goop, hitting her in the cheek and spattering, except invisible and incorporeal, and once it was on her it started to writhe, flowing across her body and entering her head by the mouth, the nose, the ears…

…and once it had entered her head it started to penetrate her very self, coating her thoughts with a viscous, drippy texture, chilling her mind like she’d just swallowed a block of ice.

Erustra’s struggles subsided and a low groan escaped her lips, which became a moan when the magic found access to her elsewhere, swamping hips and thighs and plunging in through her groin. Suddenly her pleasure centres were all afire. Even the ache of her weight against her restraints was now purest bliss.

The chains rattled with the slow, shuddering waves of pleasure coruscating up and down her body.

Evander moved through the area she threatened peacefully now, setting the tray down and moving back toward her. “Enjoy this,” he told her. “It won’t last.”

The idea of losing this pulsing, vibrant, overwhelming pleasure was too much for Erustra’s numb brain. The sound that escaped her was too loud to be called a whimper but should have been just as embarrassing.

Evander chuckled. Standing just behind her and to one side, he ran a hand over the thin cloth of her tunic, then up along a collarbone that seemed to sing with bliss at the touch of another, and then from the hollow in her throat he caressed her jawline.

Her mouth opened eagerly and without her conscious thought, making her expression a willing invitation. Reaching up, he thrust index and middle finger into the waiting O of her mouth, and without hesitation Erustra’s lips closed around him, her tongue caressing, her head bobbing up and down as if she expected him to full her mouth with his bounty at any moment.

Her moans grew louder and louder, and the minuscule part of her consciousness that watched her behaviour rather than embracing the pleasure of the spell thought: I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life, and it’s going to be the worst.

Something prickled against the back of her neck, a pinpoint sense of something touching her. Evander drew whatever it was downward while she still sucked desperately at his fingers, craving any kind of release, and she felt it reach the collar of her tunic. Then down, then further down, passing over her tunic but still brushing against her skin with a sting the enchantment told her to embrace, until it had travelled down the length of her tunic and passed off the back.

He pulled his fingers from her mouth with an audible pop and a squeak of disappointment from her, and Erustra opened her eyes to see him sheathing his knife, realising only then what had run down her spine.

Standing in front of her, he took hold of her tunic at the collar with both hands, one resting against either collarbone, and, with gusto, swept both arms down and away from her.

She moved on the chains despite herself but the damage done to her tunic told and it separated with a series of loud ripping sounds, coming away from her body in one piece cut along the back - and torn awkwardly free from collar to shoulder around the arms.

Erustra gasped, the chilly slowness in her mind lifting with this sudden proof of vulnerability - although her limbs still weren’t responding, her body hanging languidly in its chains, basking in an afterglow.

“Bastard,” she managed. The dark magician, ignoring her with a carelessness that suggested she wasn’t the only one to know how helpless she was, tossed her tunic into the room’s fireplace, where it slowly caught light. He clearly didn’t see why she should still have it.

He crossed back to her with a broad smile. “You only think that because I’m not finished with you.”

He stopped just in front of her, leaning his head forward, and he flicked his tongue out across each bare nipple in turn. Both times her distaste was momentarily overwhelmed by a firecracker flash of unseeing, unthinking heat, whatever spell he was using as a restraint doing much more than just holding her in place.

Then he stepped on past her, moving to the table where his tattoo paraphernalia awaited.

“What did you do to me?” she asked, but he didn’t answer. She tried to make her arms move, but they were still firmly under whatever spell he’d cast.

“Now, then,” he said, but it was so soft she had to imagine he was talking to himself more than to her. “Let’s do this right…”

She wanted to watch, to at least see what was going to happen to her, but even if she could have coaxed her arms to move, the chains didn’t give enough freedom of movement for her to turn.

After perhaps a minute she felt the enchantment he’d thrown at her finally pass. The pleasure was gone, her mind was clear, her body utterly exhausted. She still couldn’t move, but now it was just because she was too drained for her body to respond.

Her body wasn’t so heavy anymore, either. Evander was lifting the enchantments he’d laid on her. Providing him with a clean slate for whatever he was about to do.

Her memory cleared.

*

Erustra’s progress through the woods slowed as she approached the tower. She was looking out for anything that might be a sign of someone watching, but unless the very birds of the sky were Evander’s eyes she couldn’t see any kind of lookout.

She breezed past the first of his own guards without being seen and summoned up her own mystic training for the final approach, across a blasted open space made barren by the pooling dark magic - but with her mystic skills, she could pass unseen even there.

The door presented more of an issue, but Erustra was strong, nimble, and well trained. Fingertips and the points of her boots found holds on the tower’s stonework and she scaled up to the point she found an open window with nobody in the room, at which point she clambered inside.

The room had only one seat, a tall, thronelike wooden chair, but otherwise was large enough to make a meeting room for a dozen or more people, and the huge table in the centre of the room suggested that’s exactly what it was. Spread out across the table was a giant map, and atop that were several immaculately carved game pieces that Erustra knew would represent armies.

Taking a look at the map, she was disturbed by how accurate the placement of some elven troops actually was. Then she noticed that one of the pieces was actually moving, very slowly. She stared at the map, estimated its scale from the distance between two cities, tried to guess how fast a large human regiment might be moving…

The map was enchanted to update itself. Not dark magic; Evander had more to him than many dark magicians.

She was just thinking how much more dangerous that might make him when she heard footsteps in the corridor outside and realised she was about to be discovered.

In an instant she was behind the tall chair, crouched low, her orichalcum blades drawn and ready in her hands.

The door to the room she was in opened and a man’s voice was immediately heard. “…whatever else happens, I want that messenger contained.”

“Yes, my lord.” The other voice, also male, clearly knew who was in charge here.

“If he reaches his destination, it’s going to set us back far more than I’m willing to accept.”

“Of course, my lord.”

Erustra had heard enough. She knew her target; the window she could escape from was in the room; her blades were in her hand. She sprang forward, bringing her arms together in an X to form the lethal strike, landed and bounded forward, ready to -

Evander had one hand held up, palm facing her, and something was flickering in the palm; the black veins of the dark magician were dancing with sparkling, glittering energy, and her eyes locked to them, and suddenly all of the motion of her charge was gone. Her spine sagged between her shoulderblades and she found herself swaying as she leaned abruptly forwards.

Her feet were anchored to the floor, her legs locked, but her body slumped from the waist, her arms dropping to hang limply below her leaning torso. She heard one clang then another as her orichalcum blades dropped to the floor, but she hadn’t known her slack fingers had released them.

“Well, well, well,” Evander said, and chuckled.

The man with him had quarter-drawn his sword; if Erustra’s charge had been completed, she would have danced back out of range before he had finished his draw, would have been outside the building before the alarm was raised.

Instead she was entirely helpless. Whatever spell was contained in his palm had her more thoroughly than she could have imagined.

Evander clenched his hand into a fist and Erustra collapsed like a puppet with the strings cut, eyes rolling back into her head. She was unaware before she hit the floor.

*

“This…” She swallowed. “This is no dark magic I have seen before.” She wasn’t sure if she was admitting her fears or trying to negotiate.

“It’s dark magic, alright,” Evander said shortly. “But, yes, I’ll grant you I’ve adapted a few other tricks.”

“Is that what keeps you so…” She stopped herself from finishing the question, partly because she didn’t want to anger him, partly because she wasn’t sure what word should go at the end of that sentence.

“Are you asking me why my plans don’t involve eternal pain and flashy violence?”

Silence drew out for some time. “I suppose,” she admitted, eventually.

“Power comes in many forms,” he said, almost to himself rather than to her. “The trick is not how much power you muster; it’s wielding it appropriately.” There was a tightness to his voice, an excitement, something Erustra didn’t enjoy hearing when she was the only living thing around for that excitement to be focused on.

He might choose his words as if he was dispassionate, but there was too much eagerness in his tone for her to believe that. She wondered if he believed it; she couldn’t imagine that he would, but equally, dark magicians were famously deluded, and she couldn’t believe he was an exception, either.

There was a sudden sharp prick, right where her shoulders became her neck, and another, and another. Evander had begun to put his mark on her, and after the first thick cluster of pricks he moved his focus to another point on her back, about halfway down her spine.

That first cluster still stung, but now it was also tingling. She could feel the magical energy in there - in her - where it could smoulder and burn and take root.

It hung in her essence, between her mind and her heart, and the connection between emotion and thought in her soul passed through it. Erustra could feel those connections, those links, twisting and turning, like the gnarled woods outside the tower.

Dark magic was better than anything else at taking something that already existed and corrupting it, turning it.

She decided to keep a close eye on her own thoughts, wondering how best she could tell they hadn’t changed - but then Evander finished the second cluster of inks, and this one was between her heart and her crotch, and the dark magic was taking root in her arousal, in her need, in her admiration, in her lust, and in her love.

“This is wrong,” she said, but even then her words were dry on her lips, devoid of passion, the emotion that should have fuelled them strained out before heart could speak to head and head could form words.

“Is that what you think?” he asked, and he sounded delighted with himself. “Because if that’s what you think, remind me to ask you again, once my art is complete.”

“Once it’s complete? Wh- what else are you doing?” The fear in her soul never made it to her mind, or if it did, it had become something else. Certainly Erustra was finding now less a mood of fear and more a sense of excitement, almost of anticipation.

If her body wasn’t still paralysed by Evander’s magicks, she was sure she’d be shivering with every new pinprick, with every new part of the dark magician’s mark.

“You don’t need to know,” he said simply. He had moved his attentions again, was leaving a thin trail of lines that danced in a helix around her spine from one cluster to the other.

The tingling in this one was different; she thought perhaps it was a different ink, but this one didn’t need to entwine itself in the linkages of her soul. It just needed to connect those linking points.

Erustra grunted. “When this is over, these markings will be all I have to remember you.”

“Hm.” He shifted from the helix he was tracing, brought his needles back up around the first cluster, the one sat at the base of her neck, and he began to trace what she could tell from the stinging pattern was an elaborate pattern just to its upper left.

It felt like a web, like a cluster of strands, and she could feel it wrapping around a portion of her brain, settling into them. There was a brief burning sensation in her brain, but the lower cluster, the one tying emotion to arousal, made that sudden burn a sweet moment of pleasure.

“Do you really believe that?” Evander asked, and she opened her mouth to say Yes, but suddenly she came alive below the waist, a tingling shiver that her paralysed body couldn’t bite down on the moan of pleasure from.

The strands of darkness woven around part of her head, burned into her very selfhood, tightened like the reins on a horse, and Erustra said “No.”

And she realised, having said it, that she did not believe it, or at least did not want to believe it. That the bridle that had been made for her mind was only part of Evander’s spell, and the remainder of it was a magical bond that spoke directly to her own ideas of pleasure.

That twisted and changed her own ideas of pleasure. Made them spurs for Evander’s words, to accompany the bridle.

He could steer her in any direction he wished, and when he had her pointed in the right direction, he could steer her on and she would take delight in doing just as he wished.

The idea was horrifying, except that horrifying was a word she had to supply for herself; so firmly bound now were her emotions to Evander that she felt no horror in the prospect at all. Rather the opposite, indeed.

"Ve-ry good,” he said, and there was an amusement in his voice that made her want to squirm in her bonds and whimper prettily enough to have him thinking thoughts other than conquest and triumph.

There was a soft metallic click as he set down his needles for a moment, and he wandered back out into her field of view.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Erustra,” she answered immediately, the bonds in her mind ensuring she couldn’t repeat her lie.

“Why did you come after me?”

“To kill you.”

“Why?”

“You’re a threat.”

“To you?”

“To elves.”

“What makes me a threat to elves?”

“I… I don’t know,” she said quietly.

Evander smirked broadly. “Who knows you’re here?”

“My commander.”

“What will he do?”

“In a day or two he’ll assume I failed, and he’ll send others.”

He had a soft smile. “You’ll have to solve that problem for me,” he said.

“I can’t do that,” Erustra told him, and she wasn’t sure how bad a sign it was that she felt sure her opinion would shortly change. “They’re not just my troop, they’re my friends. I’ve worked with them for years, we practically live together…”

Evander put a finger to her lips and she fell unwillingly silent. Then he stepped past her again and with a sinking feeling that was also the butterflies of excited anticipation she waited the prick of his needles again.

Her manacles opened suddenly and she dropped to the floor, would have fallen on landing except that he snaked an arm around her waist, pulled her to him, held her upright.

Her aching arms hung listlessly by her side, and he half-walked her, half-pushed her, to the biggest of the tables in the room, where he deposited her upper half across the table, arms sprawled lifelessly out.

Her eyes fell on a pot of iridescent red ink, some of which must now be decorating her back. Was the ink itself enchanted? She wasn’t sure.

She felt his hands at her belt, the buckle coming loose with an urgency she could feel radiating off his body as she stood behind her, and her breeches were swiftly yanked down, exposing her moon-pale elven backside except for a single scrap of fine silk, which Evander cut from her and discarded. She squirmed, suddenly as excited as he was.

He left her there for a moment, her buttocks and thighs quivering with anticipation, and when he returned he set something down on the table beside her, but in spite of her curiosity she did not turn to look at it, could not turn to look at it.

He grabbed her then, took her by the hips, and pulled her backward onto him, so that the lower part of her belly overhung the table, her nipples super-sensitive as they grazed along the wooden surface as he moved her. It was a single swift, decisive movement and his cock thrusting inside her seemed to drive out of her all the air that had been there.

She was still gasping, still trying to recover, when he started to thrust against her. At the peak of every thrust, she seemed to feel delicious, wonderful sparks from the base of her tattoo, from the part of the enchantment that was woven between her heart and her sex, the mixture of love, loyalty, lust and desire. Sparks that kindled a fire in the wet, waiting firewood of her old loyalties, of her old self.

The passion she felt for this human suddenly caught fire within her and she was caught up into it in turn. Erustra cried out in startled ecstasy and, for the first time since being released from the manacles removed her paralysis, found something worthy of rousing her aching, needy body to action for.

The elf started to hump back against her human captor, something in her heart singing, some deep conviction emerging from the leashed part of her brain that this was right, this was natural, and this was how all things were meant to be.

She told herself this was a lie, but she couldn’t believe it.