From Ashes to Ashes
For centuries, the Eferim known as Anastasia has known only two truths: the cold of the chain and the heat of her master’s fist. A broken angel with sorrowful violet eyes, her very soul has been twisted by a lifetime of abuse, shaping her into a creature who craves submission and whose unique power turns pain into a pleasure she has never been allowed to feel. When her cruel sire, a brutish lord from the Patriarchs of Ash, abandons her in the forgotten dungeons of his keep, she is left to a final, silent death—to unravel and "return to ash once more."
But her end is interrupted by a beginning.
Vashti, the Unbowed, one of the thirteen primordial daughters of Lilith, arrives to dispense bored justice upon the petty lord who dared poach from her lands. After effortlessly turning the male Eferim and his guards to dust, a faint whisper of suffering leads her to the darkness below the keep. There, she discovers the chained, beautiful creature, and the moment she shatters Anastasia’s bonds, their souls collide. It is a psychic resonance of perfect, ancient dominance meeting a bottomless, desperate need for submission—a lock finding its one true key.
Whisking Anastasia away from the cold stone of her prison to the dark opulence of a gothic manor, Vashti begins a dangerous re-education. She sees not a victim, but a flawless instrument waiting to be played by a master’s hand. In this gilded cage of velvet shadows and unspoken rules, Anastasia is introduced to a world of ritual, discipline, and a sacred power exchange that promises to transform her trauma into ecstasy. Under Vashti’s possessive, meticulous control, she begins to learn that her submission is not a weakness to be exploited, but a profound power to be wielded.
But Vashti’s actions have consequences. The Patriarchs of Ash do not suffer the loss of one of their own lightly and send a cruel inquisitor to challenge the Matriarch’s power, an enemy who represents the very brutality Anastasia has just escaped. As the outside world threatens to shatter their burgeoning, obsessive bond, Anastasia must choose between the cowering creature she was and the devoted, dangerous consort she is becoming. Her past has come to reclaim her, but it will first have to face the unbowed will of her new Mistress.
Combining the obsessive intimacy of *Carmilla* with the fated supernatural politics of *Twilight*, this is a steamy, sapphic gothic romance where the deepest scars hide the most profound pleasures, and the only thing more dangerous than a monster's wrath is her love.
A/N: The chapters are rather long (approx. 3,000 - 5,000+ words).
