[cw: Blood, blood drinking, public humiliation, spanking, pain, submission]

You were a master of the duel. Even the elders feared your blade. There was no opponent you couldn’t defeat, and you knew it. You had grown cocky. So when that Venetian cunt started insulting you, you demanded satisfaction.

That was how zer blade found its way into your cold, dead heart. You hadn’t felt fear in half a century but here you were. You fell to your knees when that sharpened ivory rapier was pulled away, and you felt the red tinged tip of it touch your chin. You wouldn’t be killed, would you? This was only a duel. But the thought of being at the mercy of another duelist was…

You swallowed, a reflex you didn’t think you still had. You were feeling a lot of things you didn’t think you were capable of. Your face is lifted up at the tip of a bone sword and you look the one who bested you in the eyes.

During the duel, they were a sickly yellow, with oddly shaped pupils. But now they were beautiful violet, and sparkled in the torchlight. Zer whole face was no longer the demon from the lightless abyssal depths of the ocean. It was angelic. No, it was more. It was a face that would lead Angels to fall. It made emotion stir.

Zey spoke, but you couldn’t make out the words, you were lost in the kind of eyes poets would write about. You weren’t a poet, so all you could do down on your knees was think of phrases like ‘limpid pools’.

Zey slashed across your cheek and you let out a gasp. The duel was over! You had lost. Hadn’t you?

“I forfeit…” you murmured, hoping your tone begged the forgiveness you didn’t deserve.

The seraph that had plunged zer blade in your heart laughed, the sound mirthful and clear. It was demeaning. The laugh a kitten deserves for challenging a lion.

“Blush for me,” the Venetian repeated. “Your life is mine, Tesora.”

“B-blush?” you stammer, not following at first.

The tip of their blade—which they had pulled out of their own knee, growing it from the bone—gently slapped at your face. “I left you with some vitae, corretta?”

You look at the crimson splashes around the marble floor, and on the four brazier tipped pillars. You can feel how empty you are. The pangs of wassail make themselves known when you realize it.

You shake your head, feeling like a neonate for the first time in sixty years. When you speak up, your voice is hoarse. “No…” you struggle for what to say. You settle for deference, and add “Ma’am.”

The divinity of the duel drives that ivory sword an inch into the marble, in one of the bloody pools. Zey laugh at you once more and with a sharp talon they open a vein and offer it to you.

You know that this will lead nowhere good. You know that you will blood bond yourself if you take this offering. But the thought of putting your lips on this angel’s wrist, of taking zer vitae into yourself, is too much. Your fangs are bared. You take the wrist the way a mortal lost in the desert might take a waterskin. You drink deep, and when your belly is full enough to heal your wounds and satisfy your Beast, you finally do as you’re told and take on the Blush of Life.

Blood begins to pump and lungs begin to inflate. You’re hit with a sensation that has been buried. A feeling that makes you moan into that delicate wrist that held a sword with such poise. The feeling of arousal.

On some level it must be the blood bond, but it can’t be all of it. This is that sensation you felt when you were held at sword point on your knees. You want to be on your knees for the Venetian.

“I’m sorry,” you murmur, quiet enough so that only zey can hear you. So that only zer wrist can hear you, even. The vein closes and the soft fingers of that hand stroke your cheek. A finger, sharp talon still extended, lifts your cheek up and once more you’re staring into hypnotic eyes. You’ve felt Majesty, and this isn’t it. No supernatural compulsion has your loins wet and warm, begging forgiveness from your better.

This is simply zer charisma. And your lust.