She felt disgusting, hand creeping between her legs, but had she not been already? Her daily uniform in the Lord's castle was her sloppy coal smeared face, charmingly ruined further with her vomit and blood on most days. She dragged her feet when she walked and her index finger twitched every ten seconds. Her hair was longer than it had ever been before, brushing across her shoulders despite her nearly biweekly hair cuts.

She was no saint, despite her newly given title; she was barely a girl.

Ianthe, if only she were unfortunate enough to bear witness to Harrow's misdeeds, would have teased her senselessly for her sacrilegious acts, her unnaturally platinum teeth peeking through her thin, dry lips— the only light in the room.

"Our Emperor Undying is just down the hallway, Crazycakes. Have you no shame?"

God was down several hallways, but the message would've been clear: Harrow was getting wild, unsavory, no, she was getting piteous.

Harrow's fingers slowed as she thought of Ianthe.

She was the easy option. The desperate one. But Ianthe was just as scrawny as her, just as annoying wretched and lame. She was not what Harrow needed to get through this tide.

Instead she imagined calloused hands, nearly a third larger than her own, with short, trimmed nails. Tanned skinned, several shades darker than her own. Thumbs squeezing the space between her legs, orange hair brushing across her chapped lips. Deep, long sighs, short, awkward puffs of laughter, and eyes whose colors she could not define.

Harrow's fingers quickened their small laps as she involuntarily let out a whine, a noise she never could have imagined leaving her mouth. She could almost feel the ghost of those hands gripping her nape, soft lips on her temple. Would those hands and lips stay there, even as she ruined herself?

Something warm crept behind her nasal bone as her fingers worked as quickly as they could. She was almost there, her nose overcome with the scent of dust, leather and vanilla as she twisted her neck erratically and pushed her cheek into her pillow. and then there was a whisper of her own name in a voice she knew all her life but had never heard before, in her ear. Real. Tangible. True.

Her mouth had opened once more, and before she had realized it, she had murmured Her name.

And then she was pushed violently underwater, just as she was about to escape the tide.

Water flooded her skull through her nose and open mouth, but not a drop was felt on her skin. Her vision went white/ Her limbs shook violently, not with post orgasmic pleasure but with pain as her head ached like a drum struck with a mallet, echoing with a millennium's worth of pain.

The seizure was over just as quickly as it started. Her heart beat haphazardly against its cage.

Slowly, Harrow retracted her hand. Without regard for hygiene, having decided a long time ago that there was no such thing in her line of work, she brushed over her cheeks, finding them wet with tears.

The sensation snapped her out of her daze. She began to weep as the warmth she felt before suddenly pulled away from her body, leaving her feeling as if she just stepped out of a bath, shivering and pathetic. She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs and started at the corner of her bed.

"God, save me," she rasped out, knowing he was listening but knowing just as well he would not answer. He never had.