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Ianthe Tridentarius, Princess of Ida, Lyctor of the Great Resurrection and the Eight Saint to Serve the Emperor Undying, lay splayed in her bed, nightgown rucked up to her hips, with her hand between her thighs as she looked at the paintings of a long dead Lyctor and a much longer dead cavalier.
When one had everything one could ever want and everything one could dream to ask for, regardless of whether one wanted or needed it, one quickly learned to dream bigger. Ianthe certainly had. After all... what was good food and beautiful things when compared to immortality and power unrivaled in the universe with a singular exception?
Now, with all those things in her grasp, she turned her eye on things even more difficult to achieve. Some were far off yet: She had not yet found Coronabeth, but she would let something so trivial as a billion lightyears stand between them. Others, well...
Ianthe had always prided herself on being patient. It came, she suspected, from her early decision to pursue immortality. With that perspective of what consequence was time? Why do what the years would just as surely do for you? Why rush what can be done at a more opportune moment in the future?
She had decided to kill Naberius when she was six, and had to wait fifteen years before she’d finally had the intense pleasure of slipping her sword between his third and fourth rib and into his heart. Likewise, she had decided that she would marry Harrowhark Nonagesimus when she saw her fight Cytherea at Canaan, but there was little need for her to do anything at all just now beyond the preliminaries. The spider did not seek out the fly. It had no need to do so. The spider set its net wisely. Then it waited.
There was a sudden knock on the door, light but insistent, and Ianthe smiled.
She looked down the length of her body, at the gold-shod bones of her arm - she had often found herself doing so, as of late, but as far as compulsive behaviour went it was harmless enough, and it was nothing but polite to appreciate such a kingly gift. The gilded finger bones were currently placed between her thighs and as she stroked herself with a careful swipe of distal phalanges across labia majora, the gold was left gleaming gorgeously with slick.
Others were very nearly hers, and soon she could pluck them up, like a ripe berry off right off the stem. She rearranged her nightgown. Not so as to preserve her modesty, but leaving just enough of her thighs bare to be sure to draw the eye even of someone committed not to be drawn in.
“Come in,” she said and set her wards to a holding pattern.
The door opened and outside stood Harrowhark Nonagesimus. She had painted her face in that awful, tasteless mockery of a leering skull and beneath layers upon layers of black robes swathing her, Ianthe could see the tacky exo-skeleton she walked around with. Her dark eyes, still her own and quite unlike the buttery gold of the cavalier they resolutely did not speak of, narrowed with suspicion. She was staring already, bless her, and Ianthe felt a flash of heat pulse through her.
“Third,” Harrow said. She still hadn’t moved a muscle, not that she had a great abundance of them to move. “What’re you doing?”
Ianthe laughed. For how delightfully cruel and vicious Harrow could be, she was likewise woefully naive.
“One would think that much was obvious, Harry,” she said. She kept stroking herself and made sure the slow, indulgent movements of her hand were visible beneath silken cloth. “I know you were a nun, but I’d hoped you still knew about this… Though I suppose it’d explain a great deal if you didn’t.”
Subtlety had its place, but before one could apply the scalpel, one had to use the mallet.
She brushed the tip of her finger across the hood of her clitoris and had no need for artifice in the soft, throaty sound to draw the attention of the repressed little bone nun. Harrowhark’s eyes dipped from her own and for a moment, tracked the movements of her hand beneath the concealing silk.
“Are you going to come in?” Ianthe asked, smirking at Harrow in a challenge she knew her sister saint would not be able to back down from. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to close the door. Either get in first, or leave. I’d hate it if the Saint of Duty was to interrupt me by spearing you to my floor. Or God… wouldn’t that be a sight, Harry?”
The tension hung at the precipice for a moment, but the outcome was never in question. When Harrow did step inside, as Ianthe had always known she would, she did it as if she were stepping onto a battlefield. One where the battle was over, but where enemy troops may still be lurking. She wasn’t wrong to be cautious, of course. Ianthe had warded the entire room and prepared enough traps that she could rip Harrow’s skin, her skeleton and her soul in three seperate directions if she chose to do so. For now, bonds of obligation and shared ambition kept things civil. For the most part.
“Must you…” Harrow searched for words, eyes locked on Ianthe’s hand where it still moved, concealed but unmistakable. The poor little virgin. How Ianthe looked forward to despoiling her utterly. “Must you persist in this?”
Ianthe watched her with a raised eyebrow. “You were the one to interrupt me, Harry, but no. I don’t have to finish… but I think I shall, regardless.”
She released a gentle flow of oxytocin that added a flush to her skin as it spread through her system and, after a few moments, had the effect she’d sought when her nipples stiffened. Harrow’s eyes took in their outline against the fabric of the lilac silk and Ianthe arched her back just a touch, to add to the effect.
“Have I told you that I find you despicable?” Harrow asked.
“Frequently, and I believe you less each and every time.”
Harrow muttered something under her breath and sat down in the chair opposite the foot of the bed. Ianthe had moved it there herself. Harrow picked up the book from the table beside the chair and opened it, as if she intended to read it while Ianthe finished. The joke was on her, though. Ianthe had just read that one herself and it was absolute filth.
For a few minutes, they remained at an impasse, and Ianthe relished the battle of wills. More and more frequently, Harrow looked up from the pages of her book, more and more frequently, her gaze was drawn from Ianthe’s thighs to the gilded bone construct of her arm. Even with her paint on, the flush on her skin was becoming more and more obvious as capillaries widened and blood rushed to the epidermis.
Ianthe watched and waited, easing off and denying herself the release building up within each time it rose close to the surface. Harrow might be pretending to read the book, but her fingers were clenched so hard on its leatherbound frame that they were turning white, and she’d crossed her legs and would clench and relax the muscles of her thighs in something of an approximation of the rhythm Ianthe herself used.
“Why are you doing this?” Harrow asked. Her voice was still cold and crisp, as if she wasn’t absolutely loving this. As if she didn’t know that Ianthe was perfectly aware of the fact, that she was helpless, trapped, and no doubt soaking her underwear even now. As if her fingers weren’t itching to press against her cunt to take some of the pressure off.
“This?” Ianthe couldn’t quite restrain a shiver as she drew the two golden fingers she’d slipped inside of herself free and held them up for Harrow to see, slick smeared from distal phalange and all up along the metacarpals. “Harry… Surely I don’t have to explain to you why girls like us might seek out a little death every once in a while. Though I suppose it would explain a lot if you didn’t.”
Harrow glared.
“I know full well about…” She cut herself off before the word ‘fingerbanging’ left her sacred, painted lips, lest she break what must be one of the many rules dictating the lives of Ninth House nuns. “What I am asking is why you find here and now the appropriate moment, you wretched-”
Ianthe idly wondered what word she’d hesitated to throw in her face. Whore? Harlot? Slut? Whatever meaningless synonym for “person I wish I had the courage to be” she’d nearly uttered, she managed to keep it to herself and the fact that she’d hesitated to use any of them clearly meant Ianthe wasn’t trying hard enough. Progress had been made, though. Harrow had put the book aside and she was looking straight at her now.
“The resurrection beast is coming. I certainly have no plans on dying, but everyone knows it’s likely. Why not enjoy what time we have left?”
Her thoughts were beginning to grow muddled under the onslaught of dopamine and epinephrine, but she had no doubt that Harrow was just as badly off. Still, she wouldn’t be able to put this off forever. It was time for the coup de grace.
Ianthe shifted to the edge of the bed and settled there, weight resting on one elbow behind her in a way she never could have done before her ascension. She parted her legs, very, very slowly, and drew golden fingers in a slow slalom up her thigh, pushing the fabric of her gown higher up her thighs with each second.
Harrow’s dark gaze tracked the movement smoothly and she leaned forward a little. Ianthe pushed the cloth above her hips and trailed her fingers along slick labia majora and across the stiff peak of her clitoris. Harrow’s tongue darted out to sweep across painted lips.
The moment had come and Ianthe seized it ruthlessly, slipping two fingers inside of herself and bothering not one bit to restrain a soft moan as it broke past her lips. She had the full attention of her audience now and made good use of it, thrusting her fingers deep within herself and letting the sound of it fill up the room otherwise occupied by nothing but the recycled air from the vents and their laboured breathing.
Harrow was rocking a little faster in place, now. Every so often, she would catch herself and stop, and not long after that, she’d start up again. Poor repressed little nun. Ianthe would show her a world of delights just as soon as she’d let her. She drew her fingers back, burnished gold gleaming wetly in the dim fluorescent lights above, and began to draw them in quick, precise circles around her clit.
Another moan slipped past her lips and Harrow shivered.
“Will you be finished soon?” She asked. Oh, she tried to sound cool and detached, but despite her best efforts her voice came out low, breathless, and hopelessly eager. The answer to the question was: sooner than Ianthe would have preferred.
Still… it would not do to stumble quite so close to the goal, as she had so very nearly done back at Canaan house. Ianthe did not slow down. She sped up, but made sure to dull her nerves enough that she wouldn’t embarrass herself.
“You don’t have to stay all the way over there, you know,” Ianthe said.
“I’m well aware I needn’t go anywhere, seeing as you could not possibly make me,” Harrow said. “I choose to stay here.”
“Are you perhaps shy, Harry?” Ianthe said, letting just a touch of mockery tint her words.
“Hardly,” Harrow said. “It’s nothing I have not seen before and it is neither as shocking, nor as enticing as you fool yourself into believing.”
Ianthe laughed and trembled as pleasure bubbled beneath the surface despite her necromantic efforts. “Then you might as well come over here and make yourself comfortable.”
“You are reprehensible.”
“How I love it when you talk dirty to me, Harry.”
“Fine,” Harrow said and crossed the space between chair and bed in a couple of swift, aggravated strides, settling near Ianthe’s spread legs. “Happy?”
“Ecstatic,” Ianthe said, and another moan bled into the word. “Feel free to join me, if you’d like.”
“Never, no matter how many myriads our lives may stretch across.”
“Liar.”
“Finish it, Third,” Harrow said, eyes flicking from Ianthe’s face, to her cunt, and back again. “Do it.”
There was something very much like surrender to the last two words. No longer did the Reverend Daughter sound annoyed, or grudging, or disgusted. She sounded eager. Hungry. Desperate for what only Ianthe would be able to give her. Ianthe let go of the magic dulling her nerves and that was all it took. The dam broke and the climax swept over her and Ianthe groaned, arching her back and rocking against her own fingers, using every trick she knew to draw it all out just one moment longer.
When she finally came down from the high, Harrow was still staring at her. She hesitated a moment, then lay down next to Ianthe on the bed, rather closer than she otherwise might. Then, almost as if it were an afterthought, she fetched that horrible, bone-encrusted two-handed sword and lay it on the bed between them.
“You will come to see things my way, one of these days,” Ianthe said, yawning and curling up on herself. “We will rip apart the Resurrection beast, you and I, and then the rest. Within a hundred years, they will barely dare to speak our names back home, and when they do, they’ll say them together. Harrowhark and Ianthe the First.”
“Or we both die horrible.”
“Or that,” Ianthe admitted, shrugging. “You’re such a pessimist.”
“I prefer to think of myself as a realist.”
“Oh, I know you do.” Ianthe reached behind herself and found a blanket. She threw it to Harrow. “Sleep. If you don’t, Teacher is going to give me that look where he isn’t angry, just disappointed, and I cannot stomach it.”
“Then perhaps you should strive towards not being a disappointment.”
Ianthe laughed. “I knew you had a sense of humour.”
They lay down. Ianthe closed her eyes, but she did not let herself fall asleep.
It took nearly an hour of closed eyes, steady breathing and stillness before Harrow felt safe. Then, she rolled over to her front and slipped a hand between her legs. She pressed herself against it, grinding against her palm, and got herself off roughly and quickly. As she finished, she whimpered a name she didn’t know the meaning of any longer, and fell asleep crying softly without seeming to understand why.
Ianthe could have chosen that moment to ‘wake up’ and she didn’t think Harrow would’ve rejected her, then. But she didn’t. Harrow would come to her, happily, and it was only a matter of time. There was no need to push.
Only to wait.
And Ianthe knew very well the value of being patient.