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Ever since she clasped the iron collar about his neck, Hector’s whole world has become the iridescent blue fire of his forge hammer and the roaring, gaping emptiness in his heart.
He lives in her castle, a fort hidden deep in the mountains of Styria. Every day, from dawn till dusk, Hector raises her armies. The din of his hammer on the anvil echoes hollowly across the empty hallways, and the pained screams of his creations tear at his eardrums. He strikes, again and again, and his arms ache, and his bones grate, but still, he goes on working. He never stops. This torture, this despair, it will never end. It must never end.
He brought it all on himself, he knows. The moment he laid eyes on her, the moment she summoned him to her and he knew it in his soul that he would serve her, it was as if his destiny was set in stone.
Vampire lords flock from all the land, gathering about her, like scavengers over a rotting carcass. Those that survived their devastating defeat, all those that had fled long before, displeased by Dracula’s plans, have all found a new leader in her. And for good reason. She is powerful now, more powerful than ever before, ruthless beyond Hector’s wildest imagination. They are all thirsty for blood and chaos, and she most of all.
Hector doesn’t care much what she does with the soldiers he raises for her. His hopes for a peaceful, tidy world have all been ruthlessly crushed under her heel. His dream, that feverish, childish dream, that he would be the one to help create that world by her side has been irreparably destroyed. What else is there for him to hope? What else is left for him to dream?
Nothing. His heart has become a painful, bleeding thing, a wound that never heals. He stares at the abyss that has become his life, and the abyss stares back at him. Even his forge, his work, his creations- none of it really his. Everything he makes, Carmilla takes away.
Carmilla.
The name, a lashing and a curse upon his skin. He sees her sometimes, passing by the forge. Tall, proud, regal, resplendent in her finest jewellery, not sparing a glance in his direction. Tethered to his chain, head bent over his forge table, something flutters weakly in his chest. The breath of a dying animal. But like the breath of a dying animal, it is soon snuffed out. Memories of his love and adoration for her are but hazy dreams, smoke gliding over a foggy mirror. She is the same, but he’s broken.
Her generals come to the forge sometimes, to see Carmilla’s infamous pet human. Some only come to sneer and whisper derisive remarks through tight lips. Others to examine his work, interest flashing momentarily in their eyes. Hector pays them no more mind than he would a fly upon the wall. They watch him as he works, like a circus animal, but soon, one by one, they all lose interest. All, but one.
Valerian is one of Carmilla’s strongest allies, from the vast kingdoms to the south. He has questions and words of praise for Hector. Hector is suspicious of him, of his attempts to charm, but the man only smiles at him.
“You are an enigma, Hector,” he tells him, his dark eyes, black bottomless wells, glittering in the dim light of the forge. “No one has ever managed to create a demon army of this scale.”
Hector scowls, his unease carving deep lines in his forehead. Valerian irritates him, with his questions and his fancy airs and his stilted grace, but Hector tolerates him. He has no one to talk to, after all, confined in that sunless dungeon. He indulges him, if only for the sake of not losing his sanity.
He comes often, bearing gifts; books on alchemy, trinkets, powerful crystals for his hammer. With time, they talk more and more, and Valerian becomes bolder.
“There is dissonance in Carmilla’s court,” he tells him. “Many don’t agree with her decisions.”
Unnecessarily cruel, Valerian calls her. She seizes Hector’s creations and uses them to ravage the land and other vampires that go against her. She has bitten off more than she can chew. Soon, she will go down, and take everyone down with her. “Your talents are wasted on her war.” Valerian’s ingratiating smile disgusts him, filth floating on the surface of murky water.
Anger bubbles hot inside him. He spits at Valerian, burns his books, smashes the trinkets he brought him. Hector would be damned if he ever got caught up in the vampires’ petty squabbles for power again.
The days pass, one after the other, bleeding into each other in an incessant flow. Valerian doesn’t come anymore, and Hector soon forgets about him. One of the servants that bring him food tells him that he was hung and quartered for everyone to see.
Hector can’t help a small smile forming on his lips. Valerian was sly and clever, but not as clever as Carmilla. No one is.
The day she comes down to the forge is a day like any other. But the moment she walks in, her heels clacking on the hard stone floor, Hector’s skin prickles as if he has been struck by lightning.
She leans on the doorframe, arms crossed leisurely before her chest, watching him. It seems like years since he last saw her. Another lifetime. Her scent reaches him. It wakes memories in him. Carmilla, the fire shining in her golden neckpiece as he kneels between her legs. Carmilla, swaying smoothly on top of him as her orgasm washes over her. Carmilla, her eyes flashing in the night as she slapped him so hard across the face he bled, her nails digging into his skin as she fixed the chain about his neck. The chain he still wears.
“Valerian is dead,” she tells him, her voice soft like silk, the vowels drawn out languidly.
Hector nods grimly, turns back to his work. Her piercing gaze could bore holes through him. “Good.”
“I thought you were friends.”
“I could never be friends with a worm.”
She laughs then, a slow, mirthful chuckle under her breath. “Oh, Hector.” She moves closer, her hips swaying in that way that Hector could never forget. She draws near, her fingers weaving through his hair, and he can’t deny the unmistakable quiver in his chest. “Your loyalty touches me.”
He swallows thickly, fixes his eyes on the wall before him. “It’s not… It has nothing to do with loyalty. I can’t stand being a pawn. Not anymore.”
Her fingers pause in his hair, before they move down, caressing his neck, making every hair on his back stand on end. She moves further down, his shoulder blades tensing with her touch. A soft sigh escapes her, washes over him like riptide.
“How I’ve missed you.”
It’s a soft whisper, more breath than sound, but in his ears it’s a deafening roar. His jaw clenches with the effort of not trembling. “Carmilla…”
She places a long, cool finger against his lips. He barely manages to take a breath before she falls on her knees before him. Heat flares in his chest, spreads through his body like wildfire. Her slender, kneeling form drives a razor-sharp shot of longing through him. He is already hard and panting by the time she works the laces of his breeches open. She takes him in her mouth, and he has to lean back on the forge table to stop his knees from giving out.
It is good. He hates himself for it, but it is unbearably, excruciatingly good. Just as he remembers it.
He trembles as she swirls her tongue over his tip, as she slides her lips across his length, as she takes him in deeper and deeper. Her icy blue eyes are trained on him. A predator’s eyes. Hector is helplessly drawn to them, like a moth to a flame. He reaches down and caresses her hair, brushes a trembling thumb over her hollowed cheek. He had forgotten how beautiful she is, his Carmilla.
She leans back on her knees and peers up at him. Her lips are slightly parted, swollen and glistening. They curl in a smile when her fingers wrap around the thick chain that dangles by his neck.
“Come to me, Hector,” she says, pulling him to her.
He obeys. Even now, he could never disobey her. He lowers himself to the floor, hovers over her. Hunger and impatience pulse violently inside him as he pushes the hem of her dress up and tears her small clothes. Her eyes widen when he dips two fingers into her wetness. She’s soft, and warm, and slick with her arousal, and Hector’s soul aches with longing as he feels the heat building inside her. He has missed her so much, there are tears pooling in his eyes.
Her tongue, red and glistening, darts out to lick her crimson lips. She’s as flushed and panting as he is.
“Take me now, Hector. Please.”
She is begging. Carmilla is begging him. His cock is throbbing with need with the palpable yearning in her voice. He slips his fingers out of her velvet heat and pushes himself inside with one urgent stroke. She gasps, wraps her long legs around him, digs her nails into his back as she breathes out his name.
He takes her hard on the cold, stone floor. He thrusts into her with an urgency that startles him, with an intensity that makes her teeth rattle. She moans and writhes and squirms underneath him as he pushes deeper, as deep as he can go, losing himself in that sweltering embrace, in the sound of her voice, in the intoxicating smell and feel of her.
She is exquisite, magnificent, divine, and he wants her. He needs her. Fuck, he needs more.
He pulls at the top of her dress, the fabric tearing with a satisfying hiss. The milky white skin of her breasts is soft, supple. Inviting. She keens when he closes his lips over a stiff nipple, cries out when he grazes it with his teeth. It tastes sweet and sharp on his tongue, and there’s a roaring ocean in his ears, and a raging fire in his belly-
She cups his cheeks and brings his face up to hers. He peers at her, at the ice in her eyes and the fire of her lips. She smiles before she offers her mouth to him.
Her mouth. Her velvet, pliant mouth. The sharp teeth over the sharper tongue. It’s sweet like honey, hot like a blazing fire when he tastes it for the first time. She has never let him kiss her before, and the mere thought of it makes his head swim. He pries her lips open with his tongue, drinks eagerly from her. He is a man in a cold, desolate place, and she is the water for his thirst, the bread for his hunger. He digs his fingers deeper in her thigh, pushes hard against her, his tongue twining with hers in a dizzying dance. She kisses him back just as fervently, fingers running through his hair. She holds him so close, their bodies feel as if they're melting into one.
She shudders and moans against his lips as she clenches hard around him, as her body arches blissfully underneath him. It doesn’t take him long to follow her into sweet oblivion, tension and fire and lust finding their release when he spends, hard, inside her.
Her collapses on top of her, his heart beating furiously against his ribcage. She caresses him softly, smooths her palm down the length of his spine and sighs.
“Oh, how I’d missed this, Hector.”
He barely hears her through the soft buzzing in his ears. He pushes himself up on trembling arms and rolls on his back beside her. His eyes glide over the tall, domed ceiling overhead. The ceiling of his prison.
She slithers close to him, runs her fingers up his chest, her nails on his bare skin sending shivers through him. She trails slowly further up, until her long nails clink against his collar.
A cold, cruel thing. The one thing he hates the most about himself, the one he can never forget, even when he sleeps. She fingers it idly. A shadow passes over her perfect features before it falls open with a click.
He looks at her in wonder.
“You’ve earned my trust,” she whispers, answering the question that lingers in his eyes.
He gazes long at her. She is soft, and she is warm, and she is gentle with him. The way she looks at him now, he could swear that everything she's done to him is but a dream. A terrible, agonising dream. All the pain, the suffering, the anguish she has caused him, mere figments of his imagination. Inventions of a feverish mind.
But the memories are still clear. They are sharp like shattered glass, painful like raw gashes on his skin. He closes his eyes, willing them to go away, but they're always there, lurking behind his eyelids, tugging at his consciousness. The bitterness and hurt that are woven in his bones seep into his voice.
“Why?” he whispers, choking back a soul-wrecking sob. A single word. A thousand raw emotions. "Why would you put this on me?"
She smiles, a small, knowing smile. She cups his cheek, her touch light as a feather. “I would do anything to keep you by my side, Hector. When you love something, you act to keep it with you for as long as you can.”
Love.
The word rings oddly, jarringly in his ears. All his life, he had never really known love. Even his own mother had thought him a monster. Love, tenderness, affection; these were always foreign notions to him, sentiments to be experienced by others and not him. His only love had been for his work, for his creations. But his creations could never love him back. Not the way Carmilla does.
Yes, she loves him. When he looks into her eyes and sees the tenderness there, when she whispers to him and he hears the softness in her voice, he knows that she must love him.
He leans into her touch and offers himself to her. When her lips touch his, his heart thrums painfully in his chest. He’s often heard it said that love can mend a broken heart. When she kisses him gently, and he kisses her back, he wonders why his own still feels like a gaping, bleeding wound. A wound that never heals.