“Good girl,” Missax breathed. “Now. Repeat after me.”
Missax tilted her head. “Then the house will stand empty until it finds another. But you, my dear, would not survive the winter. You have already seen too much. Touched too many forbidden things. The house knows you.” missax - do this for me
Elara’s heart stumbled. “What do you need?” “Good girl,” Missax breathed
Elara should have run. Any sensible person would have. But she had been chosen, shaped, prepared for this moment across years of strange requests and midnight trials. Missax had not been training a servant. She had been crafting a vessel. “Then the house will stand empty until it finds another
Missax slid the ring onto Elara’s finger. It felt warm—impossibly warm—and then it bit down, not painfully, but possessively, as if the ring had teeth and had just taken its first taste.
When she opened her eyes again, she was alone in the library. The leather box was gone. The ring gleamed on her finger like a closed eye.