Taken by Touch and Torment

A collared succubus enters a palace that doesn't know what she is

Scarlett wakes in the palace of Durian, the fanatical leader of Valentin's born vampires, a thick collar locked around her throat.

A collared succubus enters a palace that doesn't know what she is

Scarlett wakes in the palace of Durian, the fanatical leader of Valentin's born vampires, a thick collar locked around her throat. Kidnapped by Durian's lieutenant Liza, she has been ripped from Rune, the turned vampire lord of Aristelle, who cast her aside after discovering she was a succubus — a half-vampire sex demon descended from the Dark Goddess Lillian. Durian doesn't know what she truly is. He sees only a prized human stolen from his enemy, and he forces her to crawl through marble halls while his court leers. She is beaten with a cane for any hesitation. She eats from a pet bowl. Her only advantage is the secret pulsing beneath her skin: she can read and manipulate desire. She just doesn't know how to control it yet.

Scarlett redirects Durian's groping hands with invisible magick

On the throne room dais, Durian makes Scarlett bark like a dog and subjects her to a degrading physical inspection before his court. When his fingers trail toward her breasts, Scarlett reaches into his psyche for the first time with deliberate intent. She whispers to his mind that he has more important conquests to attend to, that she is nothing compared to his grander ambitions. His hand halts. He steps back, believing the impulse was his own. Scarlett has won her first invisible battle, earning walking privileges in exchange for perfect obedience. The court sees a broken slave learning her place. They cannot see the demon studying every crack in her captor's armor, cataloguing each lord's desires for the day she will use them as weapons.

Durian's altar ritual turns worship into mutilation

On a slab of enchanted onyx, Scarlett is held immobile by magick as Durian prays to Lillian and slices a blade through her stomach. He carves his own name into her skin — a brand he will reopen nightly after each day's healing. His feeding is ritualistic, his venom flooding her bloodstream with unwanted pleasure even as she bleeds. In her euphoric haze, she accidentally moans Rune's name. Durian erupts, draining her nearly to death. She wakes to him stroking her head like a skittish animal, promising her first day at court. Her body will be healed only so it can be destroyed again — a cycle of carved flesh and counterfeit tenderness designed to make her worship her torturer. The visions begin too: nightmares of Rune torturing her in silence, indistinguishable from reality.