Chapter Text
I
‘Fear not desolation- that final blade shall be yours. Find not within it, your penance. It will be a mercy instead. The greatest and most beautiful absolution.’
-Order Litanies, XX-VI
Harrowhark Nonagesimus had gone to excruciating lengths to avoid ever being in a vampire’s debt. ‘They’re thanergy… holes- Nav! A complete blindspot. It’s utterly intolerable,” she’d blurted out once, only for Gideon to laugh in her face and repeat thanergy holes with increasing glee. It was to her enormous fucking shame then, that she’d ended up owing a solid to the worst of them all. One so lamentable, that the prospect of repaying her made Harrow crave the divine punishment she’d so routinely been promised.
The Tridentarius familial home was a predictable affair as ever. Harrow’s eyes strained against the gold fittings that occasionally toed the line between utterly tasteless and questionably inspired, but usually resided somewhere deep within the domain of: oh, god no.
Still, the garish surrounds helped to distract her from the inevitable, as she approached the gilded bedroom door of her benefactor. She was a little disappointed by the lack of ceremony. No ill-portents or omens to quiet her beating heart. Not even a few lashes of lighting, or the death wail of a distant servant. It really should be an occasion, to debase oneself so thoroughly, but she settled with quietly slipping into the room. Bone charms rattling slightly as she went.
“Well, isn’t this charming Harry? Are you here to claim my nascent heart? To bring a maidenly flush to my cold cheeks,” drawled the lesser Tridentarius, neglecting to look up from the aged diary she was aimlessly flipping through. She was draped over her bed like a piece of iridescent roadkill, one that Harrow refused to dignify with a response. She’d been languishing in Ianthe’s debt for the better part of six months, and not once had the pallid twin made any suggestion towards what repayment would entail- or if she even intended to collect. It had been excruciating .
“I owe you a great debt Tridentarius. One I intend to honour,” Harrow stated flatly. This finally earned her a pensive glance from Ianthe. “Ah, I’ve so missed these conversations of ours. I’m fine, thank you. A bit peaky, but when aren’t I? You look good by the way. I like the bundle of drowned rats look. It’s very seasonal.” Harrow lacked the faculties to properly reply to this but tried nonetheless. “My point stands. Name your price, so we can put an end to this.”
Ianthe considered Harrow’s point and then sent it to die. “Oh, that. I’d forgotten all about that silly business. Have you really been thinking about it all this time?” Harrow contemplated raising a construct up to throttle her then, but it seemed a waste of good bone. “I made a vow on the Tomb to repay you, one that-”
“Yes, yes. Spare me the foreplay. I know all about your solemn vows and continue to be impressed by your capacity to bore me with them,” a stray sliver of light ventured from Ianthe’s gaudy dresser; illuminating her fangs as she scalded her dispassionately. “I fear there is very little you can offer me, Harry. You just aren’t very useful. No offence.”
Harrow took an appropriate amount of offence. Mostly to her repeated use of that repellant pet name, but was interrupted before she could retort. “You necromancers are a dying breed. All the families are just waiting for you to shuffle into oblivion, so the rest of us can get on with it,” she began, more earnest now. “Not me though, I harbor a curious affliction. I like pitiable things. They amuse me deeply.”
Harrow began to ponder the awful trajectory their conversation might be taking.
“I saved the life of your dearest companion because you are a simpleminded bone witch, to whom the ways of the flesh remain a mystery. Fixing her should have been trivial, but you were a wreck.”
She was being a tremendous bitch, but not exactly exaggerating. Harrow tried to suppress the image of Gideon writhing beneath her. Her insides were still warm- coiled in Harrow's shaking hands. “Don’t cry, Nonagesimus. It makes your face look all weird.” It’d been a routine assignment, tedious even by the Order’s standards. She was, sure enough, that she’d warded all the entrances. But there was a great chasm between ‘sure enough’ and her usual pathologically obsessive blood ministrations. Maybe she had, and the thing they were hunting had been dormant, beyond her perception somehow. Or maybe she was just a big fuck-up, from a long line of perenially decrepit fuck-ups.
Gideon had died twice before she arrived at the Tridentarius estate. The rest remained a blur. She’d sat, bent double in the nook of a low alcove, unable to look away as Ianthe worked. Corona had tried to console her, towelling away thick gobbets of viscera and promising ‘Everything will be okay, sweet. She’s okay, she’s breathing. Can you stay with me? That’s it. Ianthe is a marvel, isn’t she? She just can’t resist showing off at times like these.’
It should have been her.
“If I need a reminder of my failings, Tridentarius, then I will ask.”
“That’d be a long conversation. I’d be fine, but you might crumble to nun dust and get in the carpet. Babs would hate that.”
“Then I’ll take my leave.”
Harrow made an earnest effort to do so, but Ianthe was between her and the door in an instant. Purple eyes smouldering in the awful dim. “Don’t be a tease. It just so happens that I’ve thought of a way you can repay me in full.”
“Yes?” Harrow ventured.
Those bruised lips drew back into a vicious smirk, and for the first time, Harrow felt off-balance. Some dormant animal instinct struggled to not flinch away as Ianthe closed the distance between them. “I want to taste you,” she whispered breathily, eying the exposed sliver of her throat with embarrassing want. “Not fucking likely,” Harrow replied.
Ianthe chortled and drew back slightly, affecting an expression of girlish dismay that did not play nicely with the confines of her face. “Nobody likes a prude, Harry.”
“But why?” Harrow exclaimed. “I’m the greatest necromancer of my generation, not some blushing plaything to inflate your ego. Let me work marvels, Tridentarius. Let me do anything that isn’t- that. ”
“Firstly, you are the only necromancer of your generation. A fact that brings me great comfort. Secondly, feeding doesn’t have to be inherently sexual, you little deviant. Or are you driven to rapturous heights every time you eat a bit of moss- or whatever else sustains you?”
“I don’t eat moss,” Harrow replied, a little unsteadily.
“Nor should you. Aren’t you just a little curious though…? Wouldn’t you like to know why that blade of yours has been offering her neck up to poor old ‘Dulcie’ whenever she so much as glances in her direction?”
“That’s because she is a nasty pervert and beyond my reckoning,” she snapped, quicker than intended. Harrow tried to steady herself but could feel her body growing unresponsive. Grasped by some blind idiot panic. It would be painfully transparent if she tried to slow down her heart and flush the cortisol. She tried instead to focus on recounting liminal theorems in her head. Anything to block out the predatory gaze of the wax sculpture posturing obscenely before her.
“Don’t be tedious. I’ve stated my price, and considering the debt you owe me, have been extraordinarily fucking generous.”
“Then I’ll extract-”
She almost gasped as Ianthe pressed a cool finger to her lips. “You’ll do no such thing,” she hissed. “Now go sit on the bed, and take some of this nonsense off. I don’t want you passing out.”
Perhaps she used some form of suggestion then. Had her eyes lit up slightly? No- she’d warded against that. Dried blood beneath her formless attire. Routine work when bargaining with the Tridentarii. A trick of the light then, it had to be.
She was sitting on the bed.
Why was she sitting on the bed?
“Good, it seems the Order has taught their pet necromancer obedience at least.”
She could only watch in horror as Ianthe lazily slinked over to join her. Before sitting, the corpse looked her over, and seemed to find something incredibly amusing there.
“God, you’re a state. I haven’t even touched you yet.”
A heat was building in her core now, coiling up and making her breathless. “Don’t be vile,” she snapped weakly, but there was no bite anymore. Ianthe seemed to recognize this immediately. "Nonagesimus dirty talk? Be still my long-dead heart."
Harrow contemplated the ways she could destroy that blackened mass of necrotic flesh, but the waft of Ianthe's perfume as she drew closer made it difficult. A sickly blend of musk, rose, and vetiver. It clogged her senses and made everything that much more distant. She was a passenger to her own unmaking, and it smelt of skank.
“Don’t you ever want to let go? To stop being Harrowhark Nonagesimus for the briefest of moments, and to relinquish control,” Ianthe cooed, ghosting her fingers over the line of her jaw. Harrow didn’t flinch away anymore. “It must be so exhausting. You look tired. God, you always look so tired Harry. I want to help you- I really do. Will you let me? Will you be mine tonight ? I promise it’ll feel good. The pressure, the guilt. All gone, just like that. ”
It was to her absolute terror that Harrow almost said yes. Regardless, her eyes seemed to betray something, because Ianthe did not move away. They were so close now, the girl’s aseptic lashes fluttering with every shallow breath. “I know you’re already wet,” she whispered.
Harrow so desperately wanted to stand, to storm out and never return. To burn away the shame and repent for the sheer stupidity of it all. She’d lash herself like a freshly blooded initiate and repeat the litanies- again, and again. She’d beg for a forgiveness she did not deserve. But that moment of resolve never came.
Instead, all she did was nod. And that was the end of it.
Ianthe began by removing her bone charms with surprising care, arraying them neatly on the bedside table. The room spun nauseatingly and Harrow barely registered her coat being slipped off, and then the simple long sleeve under it. It was only when Ianthe began working away at her tattered jeans that she was wrenched back to reality. Her breath hitched and she almost yelped- but Ianthe seemed more preoccupied with the blood wards streaked across her abdomen, than her vanishing dignity.
“Really? Seems a bit excessive,” she muttered to herself absently.
It was only when Ianthe reached for the Order’s pendant strung across her chest, that she found some resolve. “Don’t!” she snapped, to the vampire’s clear amusement.
“You know these things don’t actually work?”
“It’s not that. I just, it’s-”
She stumbled for a reason and found nothing good enough. Why did the idea of parting with it hurt her so? Was it an admission, a severing of that final link to herself? Sheer blind obstinance perhaps; the hope that it might be causing Ianthe some tiny fraction of discomfort.
“Very well. Let's not have a domestic. Not when you’re looking so lovely.”
She did not feel lovely. Lovely was still a mystery to her. She felt a cosmic fucking embarrassment, a walking heresy- shivering in her underthings. Having Ianthe fully dressed in her usual princely attire for contrast, made things that much worse. Like she’d lost a very unkind bet.
“Aren’t you going to…?” Harrow started hesitantly, immediately regretting herself.
“Undress? That would be fun. But seeing the Reverend Daughter’s choice of panties, and goodness they are a choice, is reward enough.”
Harrow shifted, trying to hide her immodesty and frustratingly blatant pool of arousal. She hadn’t been called that in years, and did not welcome the reminder.
“I will lobotomize you, Trientarius.”
A sudden jolt of pain rocketed through her as Ianthe snapped her head back- leveraging it by a thick tangle of hair. The vampire’s breath lingered on her throat, and she moaned desperately in spite of herself. “You still don’t seem to understand your place, babe,” Ianthe whispered into her ear, sharpened nails now tracing a path up Harrow’s thighs.
The necromancer could only buckle against her feebly as she began languidly teasing her clit for a few precious moments, before drawing away.
“You don’t get to make demands or threaten me. Those are Harrowhark behaviours, ones I tolerate and in my darkest moments even enjoy. You, my dear, are not Harrowhark. Not right now. You’re barely even a person. What you are, is my fucking dinner.”
She trailed her tongue across Harrow’s throat with a low growl. “Do you understand?”
A painful, whimpering moment passed. “Yes,” Harrow whispered, as if afraid to be heard. That her shame might be known. “Just… do it.”
Ianthe smiled, fangs long and sharp.
“Good girl. Before we start, you should know that I’m a messy eater. You’ll bleed a lot, and I’d rather you didn’t try to stop that. Also- feel free to scream. It helps my appetite.”
A thousand questions died on Harrow’s lips, as her fangs sunk in. She might have screamed, might have begged her to stop as the coldness began to spread, from her throat down to her arms. But her body was so distant now, the only thing tethering her was the unbearable ache rising up from her cunt. The need to be filled, to be fucked. To be made whole again.
Ianthe gasped greedily, drawing back suddenly with a low groan just as Harrow’s vision began to fade. Blood trailed from her lips and down her neck, thick droplets of it staining the flimsy lace of her top. In this absence, Harrow ground against her leg with what little strength she had remaining. Seeing this frankly humiliating display, Ianthe finally took pity.
It was with little ceremony or care that she plunged two fingers into Harrow’s pussy- stretching her out and making her entire body spasm. She grinned, teasing her clit with rapid strokes as the necromancer began to ride her with ragged, gasping motions. She was slick with sweat now, the blood wards smearing as her hips bucked with each thrust. “Aren’t you a sight?” she drawled, and before Harrow could choke out some half-formed curse, Ianthe pulled those fingers out and shoved them down her throat.
Harrow gagged, the black pits of her eyes suddenly wide as she tried to desperately accommodate her fingers. She felt her throat tighten around them, tasted her own bitter arousal, and at that moment Ianthe bit down again.
She panicked, vision ebbing as she felt her vitality slipping away. Too late did she realise it wasn’t just blood- but her own thanergy that was being drained. The shadows of the room grew darker and she questioned whether she could even raise a construct in this state. She tried to draw away from Ianthe’s fingers but felt her free hand pushing down on the back of her head. It took the barest of effort to hold her in place, the once Reverend Daughter- reduced to a frightened little fucktoy.
Ianthe held her there long enough to make the point clear.
When she did pull those fingers back out, Harrow sobbed, trailing saliva over herself as she drew in pained staccato breaths. Her body felt so heavy now, cast to some fathomless depths. She couldn’t run, couldn’t even put up a hollow display of resistance. Her arms hung limply by her sides as Ianthe cradled her shuddering form in a mockery of affection.
“My dear, you are very nearly dead. And for posterity- taste like absolute shit.”
The blood of the wards had been washed away entirely now. If Ianthe deigned to, she could break her mind in an instant. Reduce her to a hollowed-out plaything, painted over with a smile. Maybe she already had? The thought of it made something rise up in her then, as she writhed in place. Still gripped by the latent flashes of pleasure, and the denial of release.
“Compel me,” she choked. Ianthe’s eyes widened in genuine surprise, the facade cracking for a precious moment.
“Oh, crazycakes. I’m not fool enough to tamper with your frankly incomprehensible psyche,” she said, but Harrow refused to break her gaze. “You do realise what you’re asking for, don’t you? How monumentally fucking demented it is…?”
Harrow for her part, could only nod slightly. Images of Gideon flashed behind her eyes. A grinning, stupid, bloody mound. Retching blood atop the Tridentarius’ very nice dinner table. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet that evening, not rising to meet Harrow’s usual barbs as they prepared for the assignment. Harrow found herself pushing, desperate for some resistance. But Gideon just chuckled and eventually asked, like it was the easiest thing in the world, if they could grab dinner or something.
“Something?” she had squawked peevishly.
“Yes, my cryptular mistress.” Harrow already hated this. “Come on, people do dinner! It can’t be ALL bones ALL the time. Don’t freak- we can find somewhere damp, and nasty. I’ll even let you scowl at people and do Nonagesimus things. Y’know? Bad corpse stuff. So long as you keep it away from the breadsticks.”
For all the myriad horrors she’d witnessed, Harrow had never been so mortified.
“You seem to grossly misunderstand your position, Nav. Allow me to remind you.”
And she had. What followed had been merciless, and entirely unnecessary. “You are not my friend, and certainly not my intimate. We shall not share the quiet companionship of a meal, and I resent you for even suggesting as such. You are my holy instrument. You are to enact my commands in service to the Order, and when the time comes: turn your blade on me. You will grant me the serenity of a true death, so that my corruption might not-”
“I get it,” Gideon had said, pressing a hand to her shoulder before turning to leave. “Holy sacrifice, sad times for everyone. Message received and understood. There’s no need to be a dick about it though.”
Harrow, ever the unwavering optimist, had honestly thought that would be the end of it. But she was compromised. Doubt had wormed into her grey matter, and she made mistakes- idiot mistakes. She blundered, got distracted, and Gideon paid the price doubly that night. Worst of all, she wouldn’t even hate her for it. “Do I have a pretty spleen, Nonagesimus?” she’d asked upon waking, smiling lopsidedly. Harrow had avoided her ever since, turning down any assignment that required her blade present.
“I want to forget,” she gasped raggedly, resenting how weak she sounded as Ianthe brushed aside a few lank strands of hair. “Don’t we all, babe. I suppose I did promise to help you unburden yourself, but I find this to be in very poor taste.”
Ianthe looked down at her sadly, the broken bloody mess she was. Harrow didn’t have the capacity for true shame anymore, just a nauseous pit in her stomach.
“I trust you won’t drop this, so I’ll indulge you. I’m going to make you do something that you’ll just- hate though. Consider it a learning moment.”
Harrow tried to swallow, but her throat was so fucking dry. Was this a mistake?
“Take your pendant off.”
Before she could process what had happened, she was sat up again. Perfectly rigid. Impossibly, the pendant dangled from her fingers, catching stray glimmers of light as it turned. She hadn’t removed it in years- not even to bathe. Her final layer of defence seemed so fragile like this, nothing more than a mere trinket. Panic rose to the surface, breaking the sickly stupor she’d fallen into. She opened her mouth to put an end to it, and-
Nothing.
“Give it to me.”
The moments bled into each other, utterly nonsensical now. Ianthe turned the pendant between her ghostly fingers, her disdain readily apparent. “It’s really quite ugly, isn’t it?”
She tossed it aside, and it rolled into some unseen corner with a slight ping.
This wasn’t right. She wanted separation; some goddamn distance from herself. Now she was but a passenger in her own loathsome flesh. Don’t panic. Ianthe was a black hole, but she could still feel the latent thanergy of her charms on the dresser. If she could just reach out- why couldn’t she reach out? They were just SITTING there.
“Oh, come on. You wanted this. I haven’t even gotten to the bad part yet! I just didn’t want to look at the eyesore anymore…”
She was totally locked out. Harrow could have been swimming in osseous fragments, it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. Ianthe set her aside and began rummaging through the bedside dresser. After a few moments of frustration, she procured an unseemly purple dildo and presented it to Harrow as one might a cherished heirloom. Its glittering length made her want to puke, but it seemed even that luxury was now beyond her.
“Ah yes, the consequences of your own actions. Funny how these things work out. Can you fathom what I want you to do with this, your horrid little nun? Whilst under my control, I can read your thoughts plainly, so- try to surprise me.”
Fuck you.
She pouted playfully, and quite resembled her less ghastly sister for a moment. “Not quite, points for effort though. You’re going to ride this for me, sweet. But first: unlock your phone.”
Wait- what?
She did this, and Ianthe eagerly took it from her hands. The vampire briefly took this for a triumph but was soon unable to mask her disdain, as she scrolled through the camera roll. “I didn’t expect much Harry, dearest. But this is excruciating. Don’t you ever take salacious photos for- what’s her name…”
Ianthe pondered this for a few honest moments.
“Gonad? Gordon? Come on, help me out.”
Harrow elected not to. Her gallery was mostly theorem work, photographed in the Order’s labs for later study. There were some lurid photos from ongoing investigations, but Ianthe likely knew of or was at least partially responsible for most of the murders she’d attended.
“Nevermind. It’s beside the point really. You’re likely to forget most of this, so I want to provide you with some precious mementos of our time together! Maybe I could send a couple to that nasty redhead of yours…? It might patch things up between you two. Or maybe she’ll just see you for the revolting little nunlet that you are, and move on to brighter prospects. I hear Dulcie is a fiend in the bedroom.” Ianthe paused, seemingly amused with herself. “Now then. Kneel for me.”
Harrow adopted the familiar position, knelt readily in supplication.
Her muscle memory seemed to think she would be praying, a bleak sentiment that was pushed out of her mind as Ianthe turned the phone to her; finally opening the front camera. She was confronted by an unfamiliar sight, a trembling thing doused in her own blood and arousal. There was a remnant of Harrowhark, somewhere in the cruel angles of her face, but she was a pallid imitation. The ghostly light of the screen didn’t do much to dampen this illusion, as it was reflected in the darkened recesses of her eyes to an uncanny effect. She looked like a wounded animal, every layer of carefully constructed artifice stripped away.
Confronted by this, her mind didn’t wander to the Order, but to the death cult that raised her- that made a prison of her body. What would they think? What could they think? She was to be their salvation, their most prized vessel. She’d taken that salvation and buried it in a very shallow, and not at all impressive grave. But not before making a complete whore out of her for good measure. Maybe her betrayal had been a mercy after all? Not that it'd matter for long.
A slight chime drew her back to reality, as Ianthe pressed record.
“At this point, do I even really need to compel you?” she mused idly before her eyes lit up, and it all faded away to nothing again.