Bleed So Beautiful

The delicate plucking of a koto rose from the music-box on Tienne’s nightstand. It was an imported Jhesk creation of teal sea-stone, with a carved slot where one could insert music papers marked with blessings of the Grand Script and have them play as if the musicians were right there in the room with you. Regrettably foreign but undeniably marvellous, precious and pretty in the soft pink glow of her bedroom lamps, its small form a mere shadow through the drapes enclosing her bed.

Music, light, shadow; all were dizzy, distant concepts to Tienne, meaningless in comparison to the blood that stained every rucked sheet beneath her lush curves.

“So brightly you bleed, princess,” Osinyra praised, as she slit a new, meandering line from the top of Tienne’s thigh to her hip. “So vibrant.”

“Do you not bleed the same?” Tienne asked. Her voice was weaker than she liked, but it couldn’t be helped. An hour beneath Osinyra’s loving blade had its price.

“I have no blood,” Osinyra said. “None save that which you give me.”

She pushed her finger into the wound, sending a stab of pain radiating through Tienne’s leg. The disruption of such intrusion sang wrongly in her flesh, but it was worth it to have the Moon King’s daughter inside her, hands stained with her blood. That she could die only heightened her enjoyment—what was any experience worth if there was no risk to it?

She hissed through her teeth as Osinyra worked her finger deeper. All it would take would be for her to wipe away the Grand Script she’d painted onto Tienne’s skin with the first spilling of her blood, and all she’d lost since would take its toll at once. She would bleed fast, not slow, this perfect stasis would end, and she’d be found by one of her servants—or perhaps dear Ihrone—in the morning, carved up and dead.

How perfectly scandalous.

Osinyra withdrew her hand and sat up on her knees between Tienne’s spread legs. Both of them were naked—Osinyra because she preferred it that way, and Tienne because she hadn’t wanted to spoil her nightgown.

“I can smell your want,” Osinyra murmured. She gripped Tienne’s thigh and moved it wider; the vine-like lattice of cuts there protested at the strain, sluggish blood oozing from the wounds, and she cried out at the sharp, throbbing sting. The silver-white tip of Osinyra’s knife traced the swollen lips of her sex, and a flicker of fear quickened her pulse—a blade outside her was one thing, a blade inside her was quite another. Some torments even she could take no pleasure in.

But Osinyra did not apply the blade to her exposed cunt; she instead used it to map out Script characters in moonlight over her own. Her dark hair—so beautifully contrasted to her moon-pale skin—shifted, parting as her clit swelled and rose, growing tall and wide until she once more possessed her cock. It stood proud, slick head pulsing with the same glow as her horns. Tienne bit her lip. Was it bound for one of her existing holes, or a freshly carved one?

Osinyra stretched up over her, wings part open, arching overhead until the dark feathers merged with the shadows of the bed’s canopy. Her cock pressed at Tienne’s entrance, sinking in slow and sweet. Tienne sighed, then moaned, then gave a pained whine; the deeper it went, the thicker it grew, swelling to fill every inch of her and more.

“Too much,” she gasped, even as she wrapped her bleeding legs around Osinyra’s waist. “Too much!”

“Hush,” Osinyra soothed. With one hand, she stroked Tienne’s sweat-damp auburn curls back from her forehead; the other brought the knife to dance along her jaw. The rock of Osinyra’s hips, slight as it was, threatened to break her apart.

“It’s too much, I don’t like—”

“I told you to hush,” Osinyra growled, and slashed the knife across her throat.

Tienne’s eyes flew wide. A warm, wet tide flooded down her neck, the sudden spray spattering stark droplets across Osinyra’s porcelain skin. She went to slap her hands over the wound, but Osinyra grabbed her wrists and pinned them above her head. Her breath hissed and gargled, her thrashing inelegant, panicked instinct: even with the spell on her skin, she was going to bleed out, to die like a beast on a butcher’s block, never ascend to the throne, never birth her legacy—

The blade flicked over her collarbone, the scratch nothing to the burning agony of her throat, and the tide became a trickle. Her breath returned, albeit thin. More Script, carved into her skin this time, not merely painted atop it. Proper magic, in the Illumin style—though Osinyra marked no difference between how the Jhesk did it and how Otienne’s people did, despite the fact the latter was obviously superior. She caressed Tienne’s breast, slicking blood over every expansive inch of smooth, tanned skin.

“Pretty girl,” she cooed. “Pretty, pretty girl.”

She thrust hard, building quickly to a punishing rhythm, taking Tienne’s body the way she was entitled to. Her elegant fingers drew swirls through the steady spill of blood up to the wound from which it had come, and Tienne choked out a whimper as they slid into the gash.

Black stars danced across her vision. Her heart pulsed in her very skin, her entire body one great wound. Her clit ached, desire coiled within her, yet the pain kept release at bay. The fingers in her throat moved more gently than the cock inside her, working her torn flesh as tenderly as if it were a freshly bedded virgin to be wooed and coaxed to first climax. It hurt more than anything she’d ever experienced. She was so wet she could hear herself soaking Osinyra’s cock each time it drove into her.

“I’m going to return your hands to you,” Osinyra said, squeezing her wrists. “One for my breasts, one for your clit—touch anything else and I’ll cut them off and you won’t get them back until next time I visit.”

Tienne well believed her. Osinyra, unlike too many humans she could name, always kept her promises.

With her hands freed, she put them where she’d been bidden. Osinyra’s skin was silk-soft beneath her palm, her nipple a midnight-dark coin that hardened at her touch as Tienne’s other fingers went to work on her soaked and needy clit.

“Good girl,” Osinyra praised. “Listen, now—when you come, the magic I’ve written on you will end, but don’t fret; I’ll take especial care of all your pains as soon as I finish.”

What? Tienne tried to ask, but she couldn’t speak with Osinyra’s fingers fucking her ruined throat. She rolled her hips in time to Osinyra’s thrusts, her hand frantic. She should stop. If the magic wore off she’d die and the Moon King’s daughter would only laugh and fuck her corpse until she’d had her fill. She needed to stop.

Tienne moaned and circled her clit faster. The desire within her was desperate, hungry and hurting, stretched around her want the way her cunt stretched around Osinyra’s cock. She had to satisfy it. To do otherwise was treason.

Slicing pain chased her orgasm, a froth of blood bubbling from her lips. Osinyra smiled, all her sharp teeth gleaming, mouth wide to show her black tongue. The bed creaked in outraged protest as she slammed into Tienne over and over, the drag of her cock as glorious as it was brutal.

“Ah!” Osinyra’s cry held more of triumph than satisfaction, and so deep did she bury herself as she came that Tienne, half-delirious, swore the head of her cock touched her womb. Twice more she bucked, spilling all she had before pulling free. Tienne reached for her, weaker than an infant’s breath, only for Osinyra to bat her shaking hands aside. “Stillness, lest I mistake a marking in your restoration.”

It might have been blood, sweat, or cum upon the finger that painted new characters onto her skin; she didn’t know, and she hadn’t the capacity to care. She was still spasming around the absence of Osinyra’s cock as the spell kicked in, and screamed in fresh orgasm under its racing fire. Cuts knit together, deep wounds sealed shut, her throat stitched itself whole and Tienne sat up with a harsh inhale; the first full one she’d taken in who knew how long.

“That will see you healed,” Osinyra said. “Slowly, mind.”

“Slowly?” Tienne rasped. She looked down at herself—her many wounds were closed, but not gone. Ugly red scars and dark splotches of bruising decorated her body from neck to knees.

“You’d best keep to your more modest dresses awhile, pet.” Osinyra rose from the blood-soaked bed, lithe and languid, the drapes drawing apart at her merest glance, wrapping themselves gracefully out of the way. Moonlight rippled around her, glowing Script characters dancing in the air until they settled into the form of her dress, slit skirts swaying around her legs, the material wrapping her chest so sheer it might as well not have been there. She shook out her wrists, letting the long sleeves settle to hang at her sides. “Moondark comes again in one month. You’ll be well recovered for me by then.”

“I’ll be scarred for a month?”

“My gift to you,” Osinyra said, and in a gust of moonlit wind, she was gone.

Tienne, raw as a skinned rabbit inside and out, stared at the space she’d been for a long while. Her hand drifted between her legs, to the sticky mess of Osinyra’s release. She worked it inside herself, slow at first, then faster, falling back with a sighing moan, uncaring of the wreck of her bed. She’d summon Ihrone in the morning to take care of it. Her Scholar would erase all trace of tonight’s crimson ecstasies with one of her dusty old scrolls, keep the servants from gathering gossip about bloodied sheets sent to be burned.

The music box played on, elegant strings accompanied by the croak of summer insects drifting through the window screen. Tienne flexed her wrist, coaxing the aching shiver of her pleasure higher. Yes, Ihrone would help clean up the mess—and then Tienne could demonstrate to her exactly how it had been made in the first place.