Chapter Text
It has been almost seven months, and aside from the grand chambermaid, Helena, you have lasted the longest. Nobody else has worked in Lady Dimitrescu’s employ for longer than three months, but Helena has been running the castle’s cleaning staff for three entire years.
It’s naive, maybe, but you’re hopeful to last even longer than that. You try to follow Helena’s lead. You don’t crumple in on yourself when the Lady or her daughters enter a room you happen to be tending. You don’t flinch when they give you new orders, even if Daniela raises her sickle as she barks a command.
As much as possible, you ignore them and carry on. That’s all you want here, after all—to carry on without expectation for marriage or children. An impossibility in the village, so you took your chances here.
The Lady’s daughters used to try to goad you into making mistakes. They would pop up out of nowhere to scare you, trying to get you to spill dirty mop-water, or knock over an expensive vase you were dusting. They used to trample bloody footprints onto floors you’d just finished cleaning to try to get a rise out of you. Worst of all, they would tell you Lady Dimitrescu requested your assistance when she hadn’t, making you look foolish when you found her and asked what she wanted from you.
It’s the only one of their tricks you fall for after all this time. You’re unwilling to risk ignoring a request from the Lady herself, so you go to her without question.
“Did you need me, my Lady?”
The Lady always raises an eyebrow with a knowing smirk—much too knowing for your comfort—and asks in her smoky tone, “Did you have something to offer?”
Without fail, her words make you blush. They still do, though you cannot look away from her. And you cannot blame her daughters, though you suspect Lady Dimitrescu knows they are behind your apparent idiocy.
“Just trying to be thorough, my Lady,” you pacify to avoid both the scorn of this woman and the wrath of her daughters. You keep the peace—as much of it that can be had in this castle. The struggle to keep your voice strong and even is a task you always fail, and your stuttering makes her shallow dimples deepen, creasing the gentle lines across her face before she excuses you.
Over time, the Lady’s daughters have given up playing other tricks on you, though new maids are quick to fall for them. And quick to be dragged to the cellar.
Not you.
“Something different about you,” Helena sometimes says with a curt, approving nod. It’s the closest she gets to emotion, you’re sure. It’s why she’s lasted so long. “You’re quite unlike the other maids.”
You try to hide your nerves behind a chuckle and keep working. You scrub blood that has been dried to the bottoms of teacups. You soak curtains and sheets in hydrogen peroxide. Most of the carpet runners are crimson, but you blot the hidden stains from them anyway—always, always pulling away with reddened, sticky fingers that must be scrubbed just as hard.
The work in Castle Dimitrescu is never-ending, and that was supposed to be a good thing. You were supposed to find some sort of relief here, where you were too busy and too worried to think about anything other than staying alive.
But Helena is right. There is something different about you, and no matter how much you try to focus on the work, you’ve never been more distracted. Your truth is inescapable in a castle such as this.
Paintings of beautiful women line the walls, each with tempting smiles or heavy-lidded gazes that follow you through every room. There are nude statues of graceful, feminine forms that you must clean, that you must touch, and though you came to this castle to escape your desire for this, you’ve never been closer to it.
Helena is right. You are quite unlike the other maids.
None of them wake up in the dead of night gasping for breath under sweat-soaked sheets. Not for the same reasons as you. None of them wake with racing pulses, having to bite their tongues bloody, lest they call out a name that is forbidden—a name you should not want to call.
But, oh, do you long to call for her. Just as you have always longed to succumb to feminine grace. It lives in this castle, looming and ever-present, just as it has always lived within you.
You press your thighs together and stifle the whimper at the back of your throat. The thin material of your bloomers is slick with your arousal. Another dream. They’re getting more vivid as time goes on, and though you can keep yourself busy with work during the day, your thoughts are inescapable when night falls. They’re uninterruptable under the veil of darkness, impossible to stop when you’re asleep.
You don’t mean to think about your Lady in this way. She would kill you for it, just as the villagers would see you hanged, but this castle is so beautiful, so delicate, so infused with femininity that you can’t help letting it seep into you, too.
It haunts you, torments you more than any monster ever could, but the glamour of this castle fades in comparison to Lady Dimitrescu. She haunts you most of all.
You dream of her flesh; pale and silver like the moon shining into darkness. You dream of how she must feel, though you have never touched her. You would never dare, but you dream of your lips on her—any part of her.
Every part of her.
You want to devour her, too.
With a sigh, you wipe a shameful tear from your cheek, grimacing at the sweat that clings to the back of your neck. You struggle to silence your labored breath, but you can’t get ahold of yourself. Not tonight.
You toss your damp sheets to the side, but the air in your shared room is as stifling as your sticky bedding. Ten maids to a room makes for a muggy environment. It’s suffocating, especially on nights like this.
The old springs groan as you ease out of bed. You pull the damp bloomers down your legs before burying them in your dirty laundry, slipping into a nightdress instead. Your slippers are missing, and it’s too dark to search for them.
Five beds line the walls on either side of your crowded room, and you tiptoe your way through them, avoiding the floorboards that will creak.
It’s not often that you venture outside your room during the night. The hollow cries from the cellar sound like distant wolves, and there is nothing to muffle the howls. There are too few fires burning, and too few bustling servants. At night, the fading cries cannot be blamed on drafts. The castle is too silent, and the only things moving through these halls are the pitiful echoes of the damned, and you.
You know exactly what those noises are. There are no wolves down in the cellar, but prey. Livestock in human form, and the predators roam around the rest of the castle wearing lacy dresses and sleek, leather gloves that make you tremble.
It’s wrong to crave those hands on you, but like the poor souls in the cellar, you have always been damned. What’s one more forbidden desire? What’s another secret in the face of all the rest?
Being free from the confinement of your wet bedding helps to even out your breathing. You pad your way toward the closest sink with functional plumbing. It’s in the kitchen. It’s not far. The cool air sends a shiver down your spine, raising goosebumps across your body, but it doesn’t alleviate the heat between your legs. It does nothing to dull the persistent throbbing there.
Your nightdress clings to your clammy skin, and you wipe your forehead with the back of your wrist.
A few dull embers burn in the kitchen’s hearth, but the room is awash in the thick blue that only a full moon can bring. It's quiet, and you rush to the sink with a grateful sigh.
You run cool water over your hands and smear some onto the back of your neck. The flow grows so cold it’s almost unbearable to your fingers, but you’re desperate for the chill. You splash some of the icy water across your face, but it offers little relief. No matter how much frigid water drips down your arms, or trickles down your neck to soak your nightdress, there is no escape from longing like this.
You sigh as you turn off the tap. You grasp the edge of the sink with your aching fingers, hunching there as you hang your head.
There is nothing that can help you here.
"You must be very brave to walk these corridors at night." The too-familiar voice makes you gasp, and you whip away from the sink to find your Lady right behind you. She’s so close. Too close. She peers down at you with a leering smirk that you should fear, but it sends a salacious throb through your core and you bite your lip to hide the sounds you want to make. How long has she been watching? “Have you not yet learned of the dangers lurking here?”
"F-forgive me, my Lady. I did not mean to intrude. I-I needed water," you stutter.
She watches a bead of sweat run down your neck, seeping into the drenched collar of your thin nightdress.
"Are you sick?" She asks.
You choke out a despairing laugh as you bury your face in your hands. You have often wondered the same about yourself. Your shuddering breath shakes your shoulders before you whisper, "I must be."
Her large fingers grasp your wrists to pry your hands from your face and you whimper. She's even closer now, and her focus is singular. She stares down at you with eyes colder than the water, but the gaze makes you ache for her, hot and desperate.
"Explain," she demands. You have learned, over the months, to always obey your Lady. She is indubitable and commanding. You yearn for that part of her, too.
You press your thighs together, shifting on your feet as she stares, and you don't mean to make her wait, but you don't have the words to describe it. You have never let yourself search for them, and you can’t think with her powerful, bare hands clasped around your wrists—so breakable in her grasp.
You swallow, blinking up at her as you stutter, “My Lady, I… I crave- I need-”
“Ah,” she says with utter apathy—like your desperation is inconsequential to her. Her eyes rove over your body as she lets go of your wrists. You follow her gaze, peering down at yourself and your cheeks blaze at the drenched collar of your nightdress. It clings to your chest, and your hard nipples poke under the sheer material.
You may as well be bare, and you should want to cover yourself but you don’t. This humiliation is a licentious shame, and you want to burn yourself with the heat of it. You crave being a display piece for her, like the paintings she keeps—like the statues you’ve touched. You let her look, dropping your hands to your sides as arousal dribbles down your leg.
“I see,” your Lady teases. “There are no men in the castle, I'm afraid.”
You gulp, glancing at her lips before you hang your head.
“I know,” you whisper as a tear leaks from the corner of your eye. “It's why I came to work here.”
Your quiet admittance is like a gunshot in the silence that surrounds you, just as dangerous, just as terrifying.
You gasp as she tilts your chin up with a firm hand, and you rake your eyes over it, up her bare forearm to where her red dressing robe has bunched up at her elbow. You’re slow to find the courage to look higher, up to where her collarbones peek from the red silk. You gulp at smirking lips, and you know she hears the whimper you fail to stifle.
Her eyes are alight with amusement; almost eager as she demands, “Then who, șoarece, are you yearning for?”
You couldn’t possibly tell her, but you know better than to lie. She’d know. She knows everything, sees everything, and you would tilt your face away to hide this part of yourself from her, but she’s forcing you to look.
“I… Forgive me, my Lady, but this is not spoken of,” you murmur as your heart hammers in your chest. Denying her is a death sentence just as sure as honesty would be. She grasps your jaw, and all you can do is see her—and accept this truth about yourself.
She is terrifying. Her fierce regality is beyond alluring. She is feminine temptation in irresistible form, and you are powerless in the face of it, but you must never give in.
Yet you want her more than you have wanted any woman, more than you want air to breathe. Her ever-present lurking has clawed its way into your very core, pulsing there and alive within you. You have never wanted to connect those pieces of her more than you do now, but you don’t want to die.
Hot tears sting your eyes and your chin quivers. You are doomed either way. You swallow and whisper, “I fear my time in your service has ended.”
She raises an eyebrow at you. “You fear you are going to be consumed?”
You let out a quiet, shaky laugh, holding her gaze as you reveal what you have always kept secret, “My Lady, I have already been consumed by you.”
Her eyes flit over your despairing features as she tilts her head. She runs her tongue across her teeth as if trying to resist a hunger not unlike your own.
“Then show me,” she dares, and you tremble. The hand around your jaw tightens. “Show me how I have consumed you.”
“M-my Lady?” you ask around a quivering lip.
“I won’t force you.” She releases her hold, and you miss the contact as if it were stolen from you. She takes a step away, giving you a clear path and gesturing to the door with a lazy flick of her wrist. “You are free to scurry back to your room, to keep this hidden under your covers and hope the others never learn of it. You can continue on as you have been, desperate and unsatisfied.”
You glance at the door as you bite your lip. You should flee. You should take this strange, unexpected chance to leave her and continue to work, to clean, to carry on. But you have never been so close to her, and you long for her hands on you again. You want to show her how she has consumed you, and you want to worship her for allowing it.
You drag your eyes up her proud, graceful form, over the curve of her hips, and across the swell of her ample chest; hidden behind a curtain of red silk. You lick your lips as you stare at hers, shuddering at the craved unknown.
“Or?” Your question is breathless, almost inaudible in the silent room, but she hears it, and she grins like a champion eager to claim her prize. It sends a shiver down your spine and you squeeze your knees together.
She steps close to you again but doesn’t touch. She looms over you, out of reach but all-consuming as she promises, “Or I can show you what satisfaction feels like.”
You let out a heavy breath you hadn’t realized you were holding, panting as you nod at her smooth voice, edged with a roughness that makes your eyes flutter. You don’t know what she’s offering but you’re eager for whatever she means.
“My Lady,” you breathe, “I’ve never-”
“Do you want to?” she interrupts. She’s so close you can feel her, but she still isn’t touching you, and you’re desperate for her to.
“Yes,” you whisper.
She chuckles as she reaches for you. She trails her nail along the collar of your nightdress, tangling slow, gentle fingers there before she jerks you forward.
“Oh!” you gasp as you stumble into her. You throw your hands out to steady yourself, and gape at where they land. Your hands, your hands, have splayed across her thighs and your mouth goes dry at the way the silk feels on her body. Her grip on your collar tightens and so do your hands, squeezing the weight of her endless legs as you press your own together. You’re breathless as you wrap your hand around her thigh, marveling at the power under your fingertips. “Oh.”
“Come along, șoarece,” she mutters as she backs away, but her hand remains fisted in your nightdress, and yours remain reaching for her.