I. The First Kiss: Velvet and Venom
She was known as Velaria Nocth, a name that rolled like silk and struck like a serpent. Her presence was whispered through the alleys of Sancrin, a city of daggers wrapped in roses. They said she was beautiful, but only because words failed to describe her properly. Her lips, red as freshly drawn blood, were her calling card.
And her curse.
They found Lord Henvar dead in his bedchambers the morning after he’d spent the night with her. Eyes wide, smile fixed, skin cold. No wounds. No struggle. Just the scent of lilac on his pillow and the stain of crimson on his lips.
She’d kissed him.
That was all.
But the kiss lingered. On the skin. In the soul. Beneath it.
---
II. The Game of Mouths
Velaria did not hide. She invited pursuit. Courtiers, mercenaries, priests, even poisoners—each believed themselves the one immune to her spell. Each wanted her.
Each was warned.
But Velaria was no ordinary assassin, nor witch, nor courtesan. She was something older. Something bound in perfume and silk. Her kisses were not merely fatal—they enslaved. Those she kissed did not die immediately.
First, they served.
They obeyed her with religious fever, committing atrocities in her name, whispering poetry through screams, tearing down temples just to gift her the rubble.
Then, when their use had ended—or their devotion began to bore her—she leaned close, whispered their true name, and kissed them again.
That second kiss was the end.
---
III. The Boy with Iron Will
Only one had resisted.
His name was Kael, a bounty hunter from the borderlands, born with no magic and no future. He had seen what Velaria had done to his brother—turned him into a lovesick fanatic who carved her name into his own chest with a glass shard before plunging into the river.
Kael swore revenge.
He tracked her for two years. Through cities with no names and forests where time staggered. He lost his left eye, three fingers, and nearly his sanity. But he found her. In a palace of mirrors built on an abandoned isle, where the moon never waned.
She welcomed him.
“You think you can resist?” she asked, bare feet on glass, voice like wet ink. “Even your hate feeds me.”
He said nothing.
She kissed him.
And he smiled.
Not from ecstasy. Not from surrender. But from strategy.
Because Kael had stolen something during their struggle. A sliver of her own essence, hidden in the locket she wore—her anchor, the vessel of her true name. And with it, he had carved a counter-spell into the inside of his mouth. A ward against enslavement. A lock sealed with his own pain.
Her kiss washed over him like a tidal wave against stone.
For the first time in centuries, Velaria pulled back. Breathless. Confused.
And Kael kissed her.
---
IV. The Reversal
The kiss broke something.
Not her magic—no. That was too old, too deeply woven. But it twisted the thread. Reversed it.
Now she saw him in her dreams.
Now she burned.
She tried to kill him. Once. Twice. A dozen times. Each time, her hand trembled. Each time, she pulled back before the blow.
He kissed her again. Not with tenderness. With dominion.
He became the only addiction she could not master. The one obsession that bled her dry.
---
V. Lovers of Ruin
They ruled together in silence.
Not as monarchs. As monsters. Feeding off one another in an endless cycle of power, control, seduction, and poison.
They kissed before every execution.
They kissed before every betrayal.
They kissed when the cities burned and when the ash rained down like snow.
And the people whispered of the lovers who destroyed empires with affection. The woman whose kiss could enslave a soul.
And the man who kissed her back... and cursed her forever.
---
“Some kisses taste like love.”
“Hers taste like death.”
“And his?”
“His tastes like revenge.”
Comments
Post a Comment