The Sorceress Who Broke the Hero on Her Throne

For years, no man who crossed the gates of the Ash Citadel ever lived to tell the tale. The souls of the nearby villages spoke of the black tower as of a mouth that swallowed heroes whole, and every spring a new one set out, swearing he was different, swearing that he would be the one to bring her down.

That afternoon, it was Aldric’s turn.

He had survived the pit traps, the bone dogs, and a bridge that gave way beneath his feet. He reached the throne room with his armor dented and his sword still steady in his hand. He was proud. So proud that he did not realize that was exactly what she had been waiting for.

—You’ve come far —said a voice from the back.

Seated on a throne of stone and roots, Nerissa was waiting for him. Blonde, with impossible violet eyes, dressed in a black corset that barely contained anything and a skirt slit high to the hip. She did not look like a witch about to die. She looked like a woman who already knew how the afternoon would end.

—I’ve come to hunt you down —Aldric declared, pointing his steel at her—. Surrender and I’ll make it quick.

She tilted her head, amused, and bit her lip like someone holding back a laugh.

—Quick? —she repeated—. How little imagination they send from the kingdom these days.

Aldric took a step. Nerissa lazily lifted her hand and snapped her fingers. Something appeared between them: a small red velvet pouch tied with a cord. The hero frowned, not understanding, and that was the last expression of a man who felt in control.

She closed her fist.

Pain hit him all at once, from the very center of his body, as if an icy hand had seized his balls and crushed them against the bone. Aldric dropped his sword and fell to his knees with a scream that echoed through the hall. He grabbed at his crotch, gasping, unable to breathe.

—Magic, darling —said Nerissa, without rising—. I squeeze when I want. I loosen when I want.

She loosened her grip. Aldric sucked in a breath. Before he could recover, she closed her fist again, slowly this time, savoring it, and the hero doubled over on the stone floor once more.

—Please —he groaned. The word escaped him on its own, before he could stop it.

Please. A minute ago he had come to kill her, and now he was begging.

—That’s better —she purred—. Now we speak the same language.

Her creatures emerged from the shadows of the hall: tall figures with grayish skin and enormous hands, who needed no orders. They stripped off his armor piece by piece, the straps, the mail, until Aldric was left naked and trembling on the cold tiles. They tied his wrists behind his back and forced him onto all fours, head bowed and pride in tatters.

At last, Nerissa stepped down from the throne. She walked around him barefoot, studying him like someone appraising a purchase.

—Look at you —she said—. So big with a sword in your hand, and so small down here.

She brushed his groin with the tip of her foot, almost tenderly, and then pressed. Not hard. Just enough for him to understand that she could do it harder whenever she pleased. Aldric clenched his teeth and endured, because something in that absolute contempt was beginning to stir a different kind of shame in him, one that burned instead of freezing him.

—Do you feel it? —she whispered, bending down to his ear—. Your body is betraying you. You hate this, and yet here you are.

She was right. Aldric closed his eyes, humiliated, because his sex answered despite him, stiffening against his will while a woman treated him like a dog.

Nerissa sank her fingers into his hair and yanked his head back, forcing him to look at her. Her lips were parted, and her violet eyes shone with a serene cruelty, without rage, almost affectionate, which was a thousand times worse than any scream.

—Say it —she ordered—. Say you’re mine. I want to hear it in your hero’s voice.

He clenched his jaw, resisting. She closed her fist in the air again, just for an instant, and pain shot up through his belly like a surge. When she loosened, the words spilled from him between ragged breaths, defeated.

—I’m yours —murmured Aldric, and hated how much relief surrender gave him.

—Mistress —murmured one of the creatures—, what should we do with him?

Nerissa straightened, brought a finger to her lips, and smiled.

—The usual —she said—. Teach him manners.

***

What followed lasted hours, or what felt like hours to Aldric. The creatures took turns with him, unhurried, while he was forced to learn a lesson no weapons master had ever taught him: that pain and pleasure do not always know how to tell each other apart, and that the line between begging them to stop and begging them not to was much thinner than any hero would care to admit.

Nerissa watched it all from the throne, reclined on one side, one hand sliding between her own thighs. She did not touch anyone. She did not need to. It was enough to watch, to direct the rhythm of the scene with a lazy flick of her wrist, speeding this up, stopping that, playing with the hero’s body like a puppeteer plays with strings.

Every time he tried to cling to some shred of dignity, she ripped it from him with a word. She made him repeat what he was, what he would never be again, how little he was worth before a woman who didn’t even need to rise from her seat to have him on his knees. And the worst part, the one Aldric would never admit, was that at some point that night he stopped fighting the shame and started chasing it.

When he no longer had the strength even to tremble, Nerissa left him sprawled on his back, his breathing shattered and his gaze lost in the beams of the ceiling. She walked up to him, set a bare foot on his chest, and pressed, not to hurt him, but to remind him where his place was.

—Ask for it —she ordered at one point, voice hoarse—. I want to hear you ask for it.

And Aldric, who that very morning had believed himself the man destined to free the kingdom, asked for it. With words he would never repeat to anyone, he asked for it.

When she finished, when her own pleasure finally burst and left her breathless on the throne of roots, all that remained of the hero was a broken man, emptied out and curiously at peace, as if an entire life spent proving his worth had slipped from his shoulders there, on the floor of that hall.

—Another one falls —thought Nerissa, catching her breath—. Always the same ending.

She ordered him locked away below, with the others. She did not kill them; that would have been a waste. She kept them. A collection of proud men turned into docile pets, who no longer remembered why they had come.

***

Several weeks passed before the light flickered in the tower again, a sign that another intruder had crossed the moat.

This one was different. She knew it the moment she saw him enter: tall, dark-haired, with a calm she had not seen in the others. His name was Cedric, and he walked to the center of the hall without pointing a sword at her, as if the entire fortress belonged to him.

—Surrender —he said, calm and steady.

Nerissa laughed. That quiet arrogance aroused her more than any boast. She decided she would take her time with this one. That she would break him slowly, herself, without hurry, because she found him far too beautiful to hand over to the creatures.

—No, darling —she said, stepping down from the throne with a slow sway—. Let’s play instead.

She came close enough to be a breath away from him, close enough to feel his breathing. Cedric did not back away. She liked that. She raised her knee and slammed it between his legs with all the malice in the world, the same blow that had put a hundred men on their knees.

Cedric did not even flinch.

Nerissa blinked. She struck again, harder. Nothing. The hero kept looking at her with the same irritating calm, and for the first time in years something like fear ran down her spine.

—I knew how you fought —he said softly, stepping forward as she retreated—. I know what you do to the men who enter here. Your power clings to what they fear losing most.

He opened the front of his tunic for an instant, just enough for her to understand. There was nothing her magic could seize. He had given it up before leaving, knowingly, as the price of crossing those gates.

—I traded my fears for light —said Cedric—. And I came with nothing you could squeeze.

—Impossible —murmured Nerissa, and for once her voice trembled.

Her hand flew up to snap her fingers, to summon the velvet pouch, but the cord hung slack in the air, empty, useless. The hero was on her before she could react. There were no screams this time, no monsters, no throne. Only a flash of steel and the silence that follows the fall of something that believed itself eternal.

The sorceress’s body unraveled into ash, and the ash into light. All through the Citadel, the locks opened on their own. The men she had kept below stumbled blinking into a sun they had nearly forgotten, free at last, though none of them would ever quite be the same after what they had learned in that hall.

Cedric left last, without looking back. In time, he would reclaim what he had given up; there was an old magic for that, slow and costly, but there was one. For years he would miss what he had surrendered, and every night he would think the price had been fair.

The kingdom knew peace, at least for a while. Evil always lurks in some tower, waiting for the next man who is too sure of himself. But that, as they say, is another story.