Chapter 2: A Kiss and a Kingdom Lost
The world narrowed to the space between their lips.
Morgana felt the spell surge through Valiant like a second heartbeat, a pulse of raw, undiluted power that radiated from his chest and into hers. It was warm—God, it was warm—a heat that spread through her veins like honey, thick and golden and impossibly sweet. She had cast this spell a hundred times before, on a hundred different men, but never like this. Never with someone strong enough to survive it.
Never with someone whose soul burned bright enough to touch her own.
The void inside her—the cold, hollow emptiness that had been her constant companion for five centuries—began to fill. Not completely. Not yet. But enough. Enough that she could feel something other than the endless hunger, the constant craving for sensation that had driven her to steal, to kill, to sell her soul to a demon in the first place.
She felt... whole.
Valiant's hands came up to cup her face, his fingers tangling in her hair, and the kiss deepened. His devotion poured into her like a river bursting its banks, overwhelming and beautiful and terrifying in its intensity. She could taste his love on his tongue—not the manufactured affection of a love spell, but something real, something that the Eternal Soulmate ritual had pulled from the deepest recesses of his being and shaped into something that belonged only to her.
He pulled back just far enough to breathe, his forehead pressed against hers, his brown eyes unfocused and hazy.
"You're everything," he whispered, and the words hit her like a physical blow. "You're everything I've ever wanted. Everything I've ever needed."
Morgana's heart stuttered.
No one had ever said that to her before.
No one had ever meant it.
She could feel the splinter now—the tiny shard of true love that had been stubbornly clinging to Valiant's soul, the last remnant of his devotion to White Owl. It was smaller than before, weakened by the power of the spell, its edges frayed and crumbling. Another few seconds. Another few heartbeats of contact, and it would dissolve entirely.
Then he would be hers. Completely. Irrevocably.
Forever.
Behind her, the trolls were moving. She could hear the crunch of their massive feet against the rubble, the guttural growls that rumbled from their throats like distant thunder. They were circling White Owl now, their lances raised, their tiny eyes gleaming with savage anticipation.
Gash lunged first, his lance slicing through the air with a whistle that would have decapitated a lesser being. White Owl ducked, her body moving with a fluid grace that belied her exhaustion, and drove her fist into his wrist. The lance went spinning into the darkness.
"Gash want lance back!" the troll bellowed, but White Owl was already moving, her white boots leaving streaks in the ash as she launched herself at Grond.
Morgana barely noticed.
She was drowning in Valiant's love, drowning in the warmth of his body pressed against hers, drowning in the impossible, intoxicating sensation of being wanted—truly wanted—for the first time in her very long life.
She pulled him closer, her fingers digging into the fabric of his red uniform, and kissed him again. Harder this time. More demanding. She wanted to consume him, to absorb every drop of his devotion, to let it fill the cracks in her soul until there was no room left for anything else.
The splinter was shrinking. She could feel it crumbling, its roots losing their grip on Valiant's heart.
Another few seconds.
Another—
A battle cry split the night.
Not a scream of pain.
Not a cry for help.
But a sound of pure, defiant fury—a roar that rose from the depths of White Owl's chest and echoed off the shattered buildings like the call of some ancient, primordial creature.
"VIRGIL!"
Morgana's eyes snapped open.
The spell flickered.
She pulled back from Valiant's kiss, her heart pounding, her lips still tingling with the taste of him. He was staring at her, his expression dazed, his chest heaving. But his head was turned—slightly, almost imperceptibly—in the direction of the sound.
In the direction of his wife.
Morgana's blood ran cold.
"No," she whispered. "No, look at me. Look at me, damn it."
She grabbed his face with both hands, forcing his gaze back to hers. His brown eyes were conflicted, torn between the adoration she had burned into his soul and something older, something deeper—an affection that had been forged over years of shared history, of quiet nights and whispered promises, of a love that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with choice.
The splinter was still there.
Barely. A tiny, fragile thing, no bigger than a grain of sand. But it was there. And it was holding on.
Morgana wanted to scream.
She had been so close. So impossibly, agonizingly close. Another heartbeat. Another breath. That was all she'd needed.
But White Owl—that interfering, self-righteous, morally superior little—
—had ruined everything.
Again.
The trolls were still attacking, their lances carving through the air with deadly precision. White Owl was holding her own—barely. She had managed to disarm Grond, sending his lance clattering into the shadows, but Slag had circled behind her, and Gash was closing in from the front.
Two on one. Soon to be three.
And Morgana realized, with a sudden flash of cold clarity, that she could not let Valiant see this.
She could not let him watch his wife die.
Because even now, even with the spell screaming at him to protect Morgana, to stay by her side, to forget the woman who had been his partner for over a decade—even now, some part of him was still reaching for White Owl. Still desperate to save her.
If he saw her fall, if he witnessed her final moments, the splinter would grow. The true love would reassert itself, and everything Morgana had worked for would crumble to dust.
Morgana smiled wickedly as she turned to face the battle and yelled, "Trolls, the heroine is yours to play with. Do what you will with her. But be sure she never tries to come between me and my consort!"
The words left Morgana's mouth like a verdict, and the effect on Valiant was immediate.
His entire body shuddered, a seismic ripple that started at his core and radiated outward through every muscle, every tendon, every cell. His eyes, which had been torn and conflicted just moments before, now burned with singular devotion.
Captain Valiant smiled brightly as he asked, "Consort?" He pulled Morgan into his arms and purred, "I've never dreamt of being deserving of your love, let alone being your consort!" He closed the gap in a fiery kiss as Morgana, with a flick of her wrist, executed a teleportation spell that whisked her and her beloved consort far away from the battle raging in the street.
Gash laughed, "Which lady get her mate. We get pretty bird lady. We all have good fun!"
Athena's fist slammed into Gash's jaw with a wet crack that sent two of his tusks skittering across the rubble, and she leaned into his face, her ice-gray eyes narrowed to slits, and snarled, "The only thing you'll get from me is agony and the only thing that will stop the pain is telling me where that bitch took my husband!" Gash staggered back, his hand flying to his ruined mouth, and for a moment, the troll's tiny eyes went wide with something that might have been surprise—or maybe just stupidity.
"You broke Gash's teef!" he howled, spraying black blood onto the cracked cobblestones, and behind him, Grond and Slag exchanged a glance that was almost comical in its confusion. "Where. He." Athena didn't ask this time; she demanded, each word a separate, deliberate blow, and she took a step forward that made the ground tremble beneath her white boots. Slag, the dumbest of the three, opened his mouth to answer, but Gash silenced him with a snarl, and Athena realized with a cold sinking feeling that these creatures might not even know where Morgana had taken her husband.
The three trolls fanned out, Grond and Slag flanking while Gash came straight on, and Athena met them with a speed that made their lances look like bad stop-motion. She flew between them, snapped Grond's wrist, kicked Slag in the throat, and drove her knee into Gash's gut so hard he folded around it, but every wound she opened sealed shut before she could capitalize. Their healing was faster than hers—she could feel it, the way their torn flesh knitted together like wet clay, leaving her strategy of attrition useless.
She adapted, using flight and angles to keep them off balance, but three against one meant three chances for a mistake, and a wild, desperate swing from Slag caught her mid-dodge. The lance's tip clipped her shoulder and sent her rocketing sideways through the brick wall of an old gym, the crash swallowing her scream as dust and debris rained into the dark.
@Slave Collar
The world spun.
Brick and mortar exploded around her in a cloud of pulverized dust, and Athena felt herself tumbling through darkness, her body bouncing off something hard—metal, maybe, or concrete—before she finally slammed to a stop against a pile of debris. Pain lanced through her skull, sharp and white-hot, and for a long moment, she couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't remember why she was lying in the dark with the taste of blood on her tongue.
Then the memories crashed back.
Virgil. Morgana. The kiss.
The spell.
Athena tried to push herself up, but her arms wouldn't cooperate. They felt like they were made of wet sand, heavy and useless, and when she tried to focus her vision, the world kept sliding sideways. Concussion, she realized dimly. A bad one. Her healing factor was already working, knitting together the damaged blood vessels in her brain, but it would take time. Three minutes. Maybe four.
She didn't have three minutes.
The gym was dark, lit only by the pale glow of emergency exit signs and the faint moonlight streaming through the hole she'd made in the wall. Equipment lay scattered everywhere—dumbbells, benches, treadmills, all of it covered in a thick layer of dust and ash from the battle outside. The air smelled like old sweat and newer destruction, and somewhere in the distance, she could hear the trolls approaching.
Their footsteps shook the floor.
Athena forced herself to her knees, then to her feet. The room tilted, and she had to grab a nearby treadmill to keep from falling. Her fingers left bloody smears on the console.
"Come on," she muttered to herself. "Come on, Athena. Move."
She stumbled toward a heavy barbell rack, her boots slipping on the debris-strewn floor. If she could just get some distance, just buy herself a few more seconds for her healing to kick in—
The wall exploded inward.
Gash came through first, his massive gray-green body tearing through brick and drywall like it was tissue paper. His tusks had already grown back, gleaming white and sharp in the darkness, and his tiny eyes were fixed on her with a hunger that made her stomach turn.
"Hungry now," he growled, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through the floor. "Bird lady make sweet meat. New teeth need to be broken in."
He took a step toward her, and Athena's hand closed around the barbell.
Grond followed his brother through the hole, his twisted face split in a grin that was somehow even more terrifying than Gash's hunger. He was holding his wrist—the one she'd snapped—but it had already healed, the bones knitting back together with that unnatural speed she'd come to hate.
"No eat bird lady!" Grond snarled, shoving Gash aside. "Witch give us bird lady. She our play meat now. She strong, she smart, she fight good. She make great troll babies for us."
Athena's blood ran cold.
"She cook," Grond continued, ticking off points on his massive fingers. "She clean. She warm our beds. We all have great fun!"
Gash reached for her.
Athena swung the barbell with everything she had left.
The metal connected with Gash's jaw with a crack that echoed through the gym like a gunshot. The troll staggered backward, roaring in pain, his hands flying to his face. Athena didn't wait to see the damage. She just ran.
Or tried to.
Her legs were still unsteady, her vision still swimming, and she only made it three steps before Grond's massive hand closed around her ankle. She went down hard, her chin cracking against the floor, and then she was being dragged backward, her fingers scrabbling uselessly against the concrete.
"Gotcha," Grond growled, and there was something almost gleeful in his voice. "Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha."
Athena twisted, kicking at his face with her free leg, but he just laughed and caught her other ankle. She was completely immobilized now, pinned to the floor like a butterfly on a board, and no matter how hard she struggled, she couldn't break free.
"Let me go!" she screamed, her voice cracking. "Let me go, you bastards! I'm a superheroine! I protect people! My husband needs me!"
Grond laughed again, and the sound was like rocks grinding together.
"Huz-band gone," he said, and the words hit Athena like a physical blow. "Huz-band belong to witch lady now. You belong to us."
Something cold and heavy clicked around her neck.
Athena froze.
The collar was brass, ornate, covered in symbols she didn't recognize. It was heavy—heavier than it should have been—and it felt wrong against her skin, like it was made of something that had never been meant to touch human flesh. Slag stood behind her, his tiny eyes gleaming with a delight that made her want to vomit.
"Pretty bird lady look pretty in collar," he said, and his voice was almost reverent. "Now she play meat. Now we all have good fun."
And then the pleasure hit.
Athena had experienced orgasms before. She'd experienced them with Virgil, in the too-few nights they managed to steal together, and she'd experienced them alone, in the quiet hours before dawn when the city was sleeping and her body demanded release. She had always enjoyed them. But what she felt now was something else entirely.
It was like lightning striking her spine.
It was like drowning in warm honey.
It was like every nerve ending in her body had been set on fire, and the fire felt so good, so impossibly, agonizingly good, that she never wanted it to stop.
"Fuck," she gasped, and the word came out as a moan. "Oh, fuck, oh God, oh—"
Grond and Gash let go of her, but she didn't notice. She couldn't notice. She was too busy drowning in the pleasure, too busy riding wave after wave of euphoria that crashed over her like a tsunami. Her body arched off the floor, her fingers clawing at the concrete, her breath coming in sharp, desperate gasps.
Slag laughed.
"Witch lady happy," he said, and his voice seemed to come from very far away. "Huz-band happy. Now play meat happy. We all have great fun now!"
The words sank into her.
Not just her ears—her entire being. They wrapped around her heart, buried themselves in her bones, carved themselves into the very fabric of who she was. And the collar made sure she felt every single syllable as pleasure, as joy, as the most profound happiness she had ever known.
"Yes," she heard herself say, and the word was torn from somewhere deep inside her. "Yes, I'm happy. I'm so happy."
She meant it.
That was the worst part. She actually meant it.
The collar's magic wasn't just making her feel pleasure—it was rewriting her emotions, forcing her to experience joy whether she wanted to or not. And the worst thing was, she didn't even care. In that moment, nothing mattered except the warmth spreading through her chest, the contentment settling into her bones like an old friend.
But Athena's wisdom—the heightened wisdom that had made her one of the world's greatest heroes—saw the trap closing around her.
It wouldn't take many commands before even her iron will would bend. The pleasure would wear her down, erode her resistance, reshape her into something that didn't want to escape. She could feel it happening already. Another few commands, another few minutes of this overwhelming euphoria, and she wouldn't want to leave. She would be their willing slave, their play thing, their play meat.
And she would love every second of it.
"No," she whispered, and the word was a prayer. "No, no, no, no, no—"
She shot into the air.
The flight was clumsy, desperate, nothing like her usual graceful arcs through the sky. She careened toward the hole in the wall—the one the trolls had made—her eyes fixed on the darkness beyond, on the freedom that was just a few feet away.
She almost made it.
Gash was faster than he looked.
His hand closed around her arm, yanking her out of the air with a force that nearly dislocated her shoulder. She screamed—not in pain, but in frustration, in despair, in the agonizing realization that she was caught. He pulled her close, his fetid breath washing over her face, and his tiny eyes were filled with something that might have been amusement.
"You play meat now," he growled, and his voice was low and rough and carried the weight of a command. "You no escape. Ever."
The collar hummed against her throat.
"You belong to us," Gash continued, and each word was a nail in her coffin. "We masters. Masters you obey. You serve. You loyal. You devoted."
Another wave of pleasure crashed over her, and Athena—White Owl—felt herself slipping. Felt the edges of who she was beginning to fray and dissolve like paper in water.
"You love masters!"
The words hit her like a freight train.
"You love be play meat!"
She wanted to scream. She wanted to fight. She wanted to claw the collar from her throat and fly far, far away from this nightmare. But the pleasure was too much, too overwhelming, and her body was already responding, already accepting, already beginning to believe.
"Nothing else matter," Gash snarled, and his grip on her arms tightened. "No huz-band! No he-ro-an!"
Another wave. Another crack in the foundation of her identity.
"You play meat. Play meat what you are. Play meat who you are. Play meat all you ever want to be."
The tears came then, hot and helpless and completely meaningless. Because even as she cried, even as some small part of her screamed in horror at what was happening, she could feel the truth of his words sinking into her bones.
"No more think escape," Gash said, and his voice was almost gentle now. "No more want escape. No want rescue. No need rescue."
The collar pulsed with warm, golden light.
"You proud to be play meat. You be happy. We all have great fun now!"
The final command slammed into her like a thunderclap.
Every muscle in her body seized. Every nerve lit up. Every thought in her head was consumed by a single, overwhelming, all-encompassing euphoria that left no room for anything else. She was happy. She was proud. She was play meat.
And she loved it.
Athena's knees gave out, and she slumped in Gash's grip, her body trembling with aftershocks of pleasure that seemed to go on forever. Her eyes were open, but she wasn't seeing the gym anymore. She wasn't seeing anything.
She was floating in a sea of bliss, and she never wanted to come back.
Slag clapped his hands together, his ugly face split in a grin that was almost childlike in its joy.
"Now we all have great fun!" he crowed, and his brothers laughed, and the sound echoed off the walls of the ruined gym like a death knell.
White Owl was gone.
There was only play meat now.