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Heavy Lies The Crown

Chapter I

Sir Jimmy Crystal x fem!reader

summary: Decades after the Rage Virus devastated the UK, the infected have thinned but the world remains lawless and brutal. You’ve been surviving on your own until you’re captured by patrols from a notorious compound hidden in the Scottish Highlands: Eden. Its soldiers are strange—clad in random mismatched tracksuits, long blonde hair hanging tangled and wild like heathen halos, each armed with beautifully maintained bows. Silent. Precise. Unsmiling.

And then there’s their leader. Sir Jimmy Crystal. A gold-chained, tiara-wearing, crushed velvet zip-up psycho with a God complex thicker than his drawl. He doesn’t want to kill you. He intends to keep you.

wc: 6.3k

a/n: So I started absolutely gooning for Jimmy from the moment he drawled “ugh fuckin’ geaux” in the ninety seconds of screentime he has and now here we are. And if you came to shame, save your breath—I already talked about the discourse around him here. My k-hole tracksuit cult-leading princess lives rent-free in my brain, and I’m charging him for every second. Stay mad. Stay wet. Stay blessed. Now ugh—fuckin geaux. Big shout out to @amaranthine-enihtnarama for beta reading, thanks pookie!! NO SMUT in this chapter it's all setup, sorry guys <333

warnings: dark!romance, post-apocalyptic setting, cult dynamics, abduction, forced proximity, authoritarian/power dynamics, God complex, psychological manipulation, ritualistic obedience, choking, breath play, breeding kink, creampie, corruption arc, sexual tension, mentions of blood and decay, mentions of death and violence, intimidation, d/s dynamics, forced bathing, captivity, worship themes, verbal degradation, possessive behavior, choking from behind, unsettling atmosphere, cult rituals, light threat of force, elements of stockholm syndrome, highly charged sexual context, dubcon overtones

likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated please enjoy!!

Fic Masterlist/Main Masterlist

Chapter I: Annointed

The air here smells like wet iron and peat. It clings to your throat, heavier with each breath, as if the land itself wants to remind you what’s been spilled on it. A silence rests over the hills—not peace, but the uneasy stillness of something watching. Listening. Holding its breath.

You haven’t seen another living person in days. Weeks? It’s hard to keep track when the sun rises behind a haze of ash and dusk always comes too soon. Even the sky seems starved. The clouds hang low and bruised, heavy with rain that never falls.

The forest stretches ahead like a mouth left open too long. You step lightly. Leaves rot wet beneath your boots. A broken fence curls under moss, the last gasp of an island that once had tidy borders and polite signs. You pass rusted-out trailers on cinder blocks, windshields shattered, doors long gone. The doors always go first. People rip them off in a panic, thinking it’ll help. It never does.

The cold bites through your clothes. Not sharp. Just damp. Soaks into your bones. Makes the ache constant. Your breath ghosts in front of you as you walk, and for a second, you pretend it’s cigarette smoke. You used to hate the smell of it.

Now you’d kill for it.

Your stomach hasn’t stopped making noise. You ignore it. You’ve become skilled at ignoring it, the same way you’ve learned to ignore your own smell, the taste of metal in your mouth, the dull throb in your calves from days of walking with no real destination. You’re looking for food. Shelter. A map. Anything.

You cross a clearing and crouch low in the grass, just like you’ve done hundreds of times before. You survey the landscape: a ruined farmhouse collapsed under its own roof. No movement. No dogs. No smell of death and decay that you've grown almost nose-blind to. Could be safe. Could be worse.

Everything could be worse now.

You move. Cautiously. Deliberately. The earth here is soft and the wind carries no scent—just the musk of damp bark and pine needles. Still, something feels…off.

You pause and tilt your head to listen.

Nothing.

Too much nothing.

Birds don’t sing out here anymore. The ones that do don’t last long. Sound gets you noticed. Attention gets you killed. And this silence is the wrong kind—the hollow kind, as if the trees themselves are waiting for a bloodcurdling scream.

You take another step. A branch snaps beneath your boot. Loud. Too loud. The noise cracks like a warning shot through the quiet.

And that’s when your spine prickles.

Not fear; not yet. Something worse.

Recognition.

You're being watched.

The hair on your arms stands up before your brain can catch up.

You don’t run. You don’t call out. You listen.

The kind of stillness around you isn’t natural. It’s curated. Like someone hit mute on the world.

No birds. No bugs. Not even the soft flit of wind threading through branches. The entire forest has gone tight—drawn taut like the string of a bow, pulled back and trembling, waiting for the moment it breaks.

You slowly lower yourself into a crouch, hand pressed into wet moss. It gives under your palm with a faint squelch, soft and cold and alive with decay. The loamy scent rises up, thick and rich and sharp in your nostrils. Earth and blood smell too close sometimes.

Your heart thuds once, a heavy pulse.

Your fingers curl tighter into the dirt. Grounding. You’ve learned to trust instinct over logic. Instinct kept you alive when logic said the people you loved wouldn’t turn. Instinct taught you how to sharpen a stick into a weapon. How to scavenge rats. How to sleep with one eye open.

Instinct is telling you now: you are not alone.

You shift your weight slowly, inching backward through the brush. One heel catches on a vine. A small sound, but loud enough to make your skin go cold.

Your breath starts to pick up. Not fast. But deeper. Sharper. Your throat feels too open—too vulnerable.

You scan the trees. Nothing.

But the feeling doesn’t go away–it grows.

That same prickle at the back of your neck starts to burn. You can feel eyes. More than one set. You don’t know how—you just do. You feel them drinking you in. Not hungry. Not even curious.

Calculating.

You stand and backtrack carefully toward the collapsed farmhouse, thinking maybe you’ll duck behind the stone wall, find higher ground, get a better vantage point.

You take one step. Another. Then freeze.

Movement. Not in front of you. Beside you.

The sound is barely audible—just the faint rustle of fabric, the smallest crunch of gravel.

Your lungs go tight. Your mouth floods with the taste of copper. Your fingers twitch toward the handle of your rusted blade, tucked beneath your coat. Useless. Too slow. You already know.

Whoever—or whatever—is out here with you? They’ve been watching for longer than you realized.

And they’re close. Too close.

The sound comes first.

It doesn’t ring like a bullet or howl like a holler. It hisses. A sharp, slicing whisper that splits the space beside your filthy cheek and buries itself into the tree behind you with a heavy thock!

You freeze, breath clinging to your lungs.

The bark splinters. Chips rain down against your shoulder. A sliver catches in your collar, warm with friction. You feel it there, resting against your skin—proof that the shot wasn’t a miss.

It was a message.

Your pulse explodes behind your ribs. That thin line of stillness you were standing on? It breaks. Snaps. Shatters.

You wheel around, instinct gripping your limbs. One foot twists in the underbrush. You catch yourself against the tree trunk—the same one the arrow is now buried deep in, vibrating slightly as if it’s still alive. The shaft is black, smooth, and handmade. Fletching dyed dark green. No markings. No blood. Not yet.

You reach for your blade without thinking.

And then you see the second arrow—already drawn.

A figure steps out from behind the trees. Slow. Graceful. Like they’ve had all the time in the world to decide what happens next.

They wear a tracksuit—top unzipped, fabric torn at one sleeve, the color somewhere between piss-yellow and vomit-green. Their hair is long, tangled, hanging in ropes around their face. Their skin is streaked with dirt. Mud along the jaw. Ash on the hands.

And they don’t say a word.

Another shadow moves behind them.

Then another, and another. And another.

One by one, they emerge like ghosts stepping out of the woodwork—blonde, dirty, silent—clad in mismatched tracksuits stained with smoke and rain. Each one armed. Each one watching.

Some hold their bows. Some notched and ready. Others just stand with knives visible at their hips, bone-handled and used.

The archer who fired first tips their head to the side. Curious. Unbothered. Like you’re not a threat. Like you’re already theirs.

You don’t breathe. Your lungs refuse.

Another arrow hisses past you and strikes the ground by your foot. Close enough to kiss your boot.

Still no words.

Just eyes. Watching.

Measuring.

And then one of them smiles, just a little

It’s not warm.

You don’t plan it. You just move.

One moment you’re frozen, breath snagged between ribs, and the next—your muscles snap into motion like a trap springing shut. You pivot on your heel, throw your weight into the turn, and take off into the trees.

Branches slap your face. Mud sprays up the back of your legs. The forest blurs.

You run like you’ve never run before—like the ground might open beneath you if you stop, like air is poison and the only cure is speed. Your lungs seize in protest. Your legs burn. Your heartbeat crashes against your eardrums, a war drum in your skull.

Behind you, the forest doesn’t make a sound.

No shouting. No chase.

Just the sick, humming quiet.

And that’s worse.

Because it means they don’t need to run. They already know where you’re going.

Your boots slip on a slick patch of wet leaves. You catch yourself, barely, skidding through brambles that catch your clothes and tear at your arms. You don’t care. You don't feel it. All that matters is forward. Get to higher ground. Get to somewhere—anywhere—they can’t surround you.

You vault over a fallen log, fingers skimming the mossy bark. The scent of rot is thick in your nostrils. Dead wood. Old things. It clings to you like a second skin.

Somewhere up ahead—there’s a break in the dense canopy of trees. Light, maybe. A clearing. A way out.

You bolt for it, lungs screaming. Every step is thunder in your bones. You don’t look back.

But the air changes again.

A shadow flits past your periphery—too fast to track, too quiet to follow.

Another.

Then—

Crack.

Your foot catches on something taut and hidden beneath the brush.

Not a root.

A snare.

The loop cinches around your ankle, and before you can scream, your body slams sideways into the ground with a sickening crunch. The air punches from your lungs. You taste dirt. Cold. Blood. Pine needles jam under your nails.

Then—snap—a figure descends from the treeline like a wolf from a perch, boots landing heavy in the earth.

You try to scramble. Slip.

A hand grabs your arm.

Another closes around the back of your neck.

Then a voice. The first one you’ve heard.

Low. Calm. Male. Fucking delighted.

“That’s enough now, wee thing. Eden’s got ye.”

The hand at the back of your neck doesn’t squeeze.

It doesn’t have to.

It just settles there, heavy and final, fingers splayed wide like it’s already mapping your bones. It holds you in place—not hurting, not pinning, just claiming. Like you belong on your knees, pressed into the mud, spine curved and breath coming in sharp, humiliated bursts.

You twist. You kick. But the snare’s still wrapped around your ankle, biting into the skin. Any movement pulls it tighter.

You try to reach for your blade.

Another hand wraps around your wrist. This one is colder. Slimmer. It doesn't yank—it just presses, thumb digging in just enough to tell you: don’t.

You look up.

They're all around you now.

Six. Maybe seven. It’s hard to count through the blur of leaves and light and pain, but they stand in a wide circle, mismatched tracksuits streaked with earth and soot, hair hanging in matted ropes, eyes like damp stones. None of them speak.

One of them—barefoot, bow still drawn—grins, flashing a mouthful of decay. Some teeth are rotted through, black at the roots. Others jut out at odd angles, twisted by years without mirrors. One is missing several along the top row, exposing pale pink gums when they smile too wide.

“Slippery wee thing,” someone mutters from behind your shoulder. The one who caught you. The voice is deep. Smooth. Oddly kind.

You flinch when he touches your hair. Just a graze. Fingertips through the strands. It’s not affectionate. Not cruel, either. It’s closer to curiosity. A priest handling a relic.

They murmur to each other in low tones, too quiet to make out. The sound of their voices doesn’t feel like a conversation. It feels like a ritual.

One of them kneels beside you and cuts the snare loose. It snaps back into the undergrowth like a live wire.

You think—now. Move. Fight.

But the blade is already gone from your belt. You don’t even remember the moment they took it.

The realization sinks in slowly that you never had a chance. They weren’t hunting you. They were herding you.

You try to speak. A demand. A threat. A plea.

But all that comes out is a ragged breath and the taste of copper.

One of the archers—an older woman, face half-shadowed by dirt—leans down close enough for you to smell her. Woodsmoke. Sweat. Blood.

“He’s gonna be so pleased with ye.”

You’re cargo.

They move with purpose now.

The man behind you grabs the back of your coat and hauls you upright. Not violently. Just effectively. Like lifting a sack of flour. You stumble, one leg still half-dead from the snare. He steadies you with a hand to your spine, then turns you sharply toward the trees.

“Come along now,” he says, rancid breath hot against your ear. “Wouldn’t keep Him waitin’.”

They don’t blindfold you.

But they might as well.

The forest that follows looks like no place you’ve ever walked before. The path isn't marked—but it’s known. Worn bare by repetition. Sinewy footprints in the muck. Grooves dug into the soil from dragging something—or someone. The trees here lean inward, heavy with damp and time, their bark split and bleeding sap that smells sickly sweet.

The archers fall into formation around you, wordless. You hear their breathing. One whistles tunelessly through a gap in his teeth. Another pulls a long rag from her waistband and begins to wrap your wrists together—not tight, but tight enough.

“There. Now ye don’t get lost.”

The woman smiles. Three teeth. All bottom row.

You walk.

The cold bites deep now, not just into your body, but into your understanding. This is a procession. And you are the offering.

With each step, the terrain shifts—brambles give way to packed soil, then mud, then flattened leaves stamped down by boots. You spot bones underfoot. Clean ones. Stripped bare. Not fresh.

Not all are animal.

Someone carries a lantern ahead of you—oil-burning, the flame shielded by cracked glass. The light it throws is golden but small, and it doesn’t reach far. Enough to see the tracksuits shimmer damply in the gloom. Orange. Burgundy. Baby blue. One glittery purple jacket with rhinestones across the back that read PRINCESS.

It would be absurd if they weren’t so quiet. So coordinated.

So devout.

The deeper you go, the more the woods shift.

There are things hanging from the trees now.

At first, it looks like refuse. Rags. Rope. Plastic. But then you pass beneath one and realize—it’s a tracksuit jacket, tied by the sleeves, dangling like a flag. Faded. Bloodstained. Bullet holes across the front.

Another hangs beside it.

And another.

Rows and rows.

You keep walking. Your stomach clenches. Something between fear and nausea. The woman beside you leans in close as you walk.

“Ye smell good,” she mutters. “He’ll like that.”

Ahead, between the trees, a shape rises out of the fog.

Too square to be natural. Too still. A low wall. A break in the forest. Stone, maybe. Cracked and overgrown but not abandoned. Smoke curls from behind it. Not rising—crawling. Slipping through gaps like it knows how to sneak.

Then you see it—Eden.

Not a village. Not a home. A ruin made sacred by madness.

You’ve reached the edge of something ancient and wrong.

And He is waiting.

They lead you through the gate without ceremony. They don’t speak. They don’t need to. Two archers bracket you like a pair of looming, mismatched statues come to life. One takes your elbow, fingers firm but not brutal, guiding you forward.

The other falls in step just behind your shoulder, close enough that you can feel the faint whisper of hot breath brushing the back of your neck. Together, they move like a single, breathing thing—as if this ritual of capture has been practiced countless times before.

The gate itself is little more than a broken arch of crumbling stone and rusted metal, tangled with ropes and strips of torn tracksuit fabric. You step through it like a witness passing into a holy site. The air inside is different. It’s thicker. Heavier. The smell of damp earth, old wood, and smoky oil threads itself around you.

Your guides do not march. They don’t shove. They don’t drag. They flow, forcing you to match their pace until your body finds its rhythm between theirs. The hand on your elbow doesn’t grip harder when you falter, it merely corrects, a quiet pressure that steers you along the path. The one at your back doesn’t guide with force, but with presence, an overarching warmth that reminds you any move backward would be met with a wall of muscle and sharp steel.

Each footfall becomes an announcement. The sound of your soles scuffing stone is echoed by theirs, precise and orderly. Not a word is exchanged. Not a glance thrown. But every movement feels orchestrated—as if every hand that guides you, every step that matches your own, is serving the same silent god.

They lead you through the gate, and you realize it’s not just an entry. It’s a threshold.

A point where belonging is no longer a choice. A moment where obedience is the only language you’re allowed to speak.

There is no archway. No guard tower. Just two leaning stone pillars draped in mold and rot, bound at the top with torn strips of tracksuit fabric, knotted into fluttering banners that shiver in the breeze. The wind shifts, and the smell hits you like a wet slap—woodsmoke, sweat, burned meat, something sour rotting under it all.

No one says a word as you cross beneath it.

Inside, Eden is...wrong.

Not abandoned,not thriving. Held together by will alone.

Shattered cottages lean against one another like drunkards. Doors hang from rusted hinges. Roofs are patched with sheet metal and broken crates. Every building is bruised and sagging, but still standing—as if the place refuses to die simply because someone commanded it not to.

There’s no power. No lights. No hum of life. Just the hiss of smoke and the wet slap of boots in the mud as you’re marched forward.

You pass people. Not many. Maybe a dozen.

They don’t wave. Don’t smile. Don’t ask questions.

They just stop what they’re doing—sharpening blades, scraping hides, pulling weeds from cold soil—and watch. Some lean against walls. Others crouch like animals. One man gnaws on a charred rabbit leg, letting grease run down his chin, his eyes never leaving you.

Their hair is tangled, matted, stuck to their foreheads with sweat or filth. Their tracksuits are soaked, stained, misbuttoned or zipped up all wrong. Their teeth—what’s left of them—gleam yellow or black or don’t gleam at all.

And yet, they glow. Not with health, but with devotion. The same way a fanatic glows just before the end.

They know where you're going.

And what you’re going to see.

Someone lifts a shard of glass as you pass, using it as a mirror. Not for themselves—for you. You catch your reflection. Brief. Blurred. Strangers’ hands on your arms. Mud on your jaw. Cold in your eyes.

They pull you toward the largest structure still intact. A chapel, maybe,or what was once a manor. The stone is cracked, the windows shattered, the doorframe splintered where something once forced its way in. Ivy curls up the side in long, choking ropes. Animal skulls hang from the guttering, bones threaded with string and beads and bits of plastic like wind chimes.

The archer beside you speaks for the first time in miles.

“Head down. No talkin’. Only answer if He asks.”

A door creaks open. Your feet hit stone instead of soil. The temperature drops. The smell shifts again—woodsmoke thickened by incense, something sweet gone bad. The air is full of it,like a mouth that’s never closed.

The inside is dark. Not pitch-black—just heavy. Filtered. Lit only by oil lamps tucked in alcoves, their glass streaked with soot. The flames flicker low, throwing long shadows that stretch and collapse as you walk.

The room isn’t empty.

Figures move at the edges. Not many. Two, maybe three. They stand still, but not relaxed. Like they’re waiting for a command. One of them holds a cloth. Another holds a bowl of water—brown and lukewarm, the rim charred black. A third has something folded in their hands. Clean fabric. A tracksuit. Less torn than the one you wear.

They don’t speak to you; they don’t smile.

They just wait.

The woman who cut the snare finally lets go of your arm and gestures forward, toward a wide wooden door. Someone’s carved symbols into it—crooked, hand-cut, messy but deliberate. A crude crown. A sun. Teeth. A flower.

“He’s in there,” she says. “Be grateful.”

Your wrists are untied.

No one grabs you again: you’re expected to walk through that door on your own.

Hesitantly, you step forward.

The wooden door groans open under your hand—warped from time and rot, but still standing. The sound it makes cuts the air like a blade.

The room beyond is dark, but warmer than the rest of Eden. Firelight licks at the walls from a hearth in the far corner, casting everything in flickering gold. The scent is sharper here. Not just woodsmoke. Something burned. Something sweet. A perfume made from candle wax, dried herbs, and rot.

Your boots echo across uneven stone. It’s quiet. Not silent—calm, in that same unnatural way a hunting trap is calm before it snaps shut.

He’s there.

You feel him before you see him.

He’s sitting in a long chair that might’ve once been a throne, might’ve once been a pew. It’s covered in scavenged fabrics—torn blankets, netting, old lace yellowed with age. His legs are spread wide, one elbow resting lazily on the arm, the other hand rolling a cigarette between two fingers.

His face is in profile.

And even that profile is chaos.

A cracked tiara tilts across his brow, nearly lost in the mess of long, greasy blonde hair. One eye is framed by an old smear of soot or charcoal. There’s blood on his tracksuit jacket—dry. Flaked. A constellation of it across his collarbone. His neck bears the weight of several gold chains, the slow pendulum swing of an inverted cross briefly snagging your attention. Rings stacked on every finger. A small, curved blade rests against his thigh like it belongs there.

When he turns to face you fully, he grins.

And it’s nothing like a human smile.

His teeth are uneven—some chipped, some yellowed, one gone entirely. But that doesn’t dull the power of it. That grin could lead armies. Could make monsters kneel. It beams at you like he already knows what you are and what you’ll be.

“Fuckin’ look at ye,” he says, voice thick and Scottish and sharp-edged with delight. “Fresh out the trees. All wild n’ twitchy.”

He leans forward.

His eyes are blue, but not bright. More like cracked ice over dark water. Alive with something violently unhinged and cruelly amused.

“Ain’t touched, are ye? Not claimed? Not branded?”

You say nothing.

He smiles wider.

“Even better.”

He tips his head, brushing the long, tangled hair from his eyes, and the faint glow of the room catches the gold and molten red at his throat. His voice drops into something almost intimate, almost holy.

“Name’s Sir Jimmy Crystal,” he tells you, the words tasting like a threat and a promise all at once. “Remember it, s'the only name that’s gonna matter ‘round here.”

The silence that follows is thick. Final. As if the room itself has memorized it.

He stands slowly—not towering but imposing, filled with the kind of presence that reaches. That carries. He steps down from the platform, boot heels scraping stone.

“Come here, then.”

You don’t move.

His head tilts.

“What’s the matter, love? Nobody ever asked ye polite before?” He chuckles, the tension in his shoulders radiating all the authority of a leader. “You’ll find I’m a very gracious host.”

Then, quieter—yet no less impactful—“when I want t’be.”

He closes the distance without waiting.

One hand comes up and brushes your jaw with the backs of his fingers. His knuckles are scraped, bruised. There’s blood under one nail. But his touch is almost soft.

“They said you fought,” he says. “Said you ran hard. Nearly got one of Jimmy Jimmy’s boys in the eye.”

He leans in, nose close enough to scent you.

You don’t flinch.

He smiles like that’s a gift.

“Yer not a Jimmy, though. You’re…somethin’ else.”

He steps back, hands on his hips. Studies you.

Then, finally:

“Petal.”

The name hits like a hot nail through the center of your chest.

“That’s what ye are, ain’t ye?” he continues. “Pretty wee thing, soft ‘round the edges, got thorns when you’re pressed.”

He gestures wide, like unveiling a painting.

“You’re mine now, Petal. Eden’s newest bloom.”

He steps forward again, crowding you slightly—he wants to see what you’ll do. What you’ll become under his heat. His shadow. His name.

“Say it,” he murmurs then reiterates, “say it back to me.”

Then nothing.

No further command. No raised voice. No gesture to prompt you.

Just his eyes—locked on yours, heavy and unwavering, his body stilled like a predator mid-pounce. All that earlier swagger, the grin, the biting charm—it drops. Slips off his face like a mask tossed aside.

What’s left is something still and unblinking.

His stare is pure scrutiny. Not rage. Not even anticipation. Just…expectation.

The kind that doesn’t account for refusal.

The fire crackles somewhere behind him, casting gold along the worn-out throne behind his shoulder, and still he doesn’t move. His jaw ticks once, slow. You see the faintest twitch of his fingers at his side—restless. Not angry. Just ready.

He doesn’t speak again.

Because Sir Jimmy Crystal doesn’t ask twice.

The room stretches.

You feel it in your chest first—tight, tense, a coil winding up behind your ribs. Your throat is dry. You don’t remember when your breath last came easy. You’re too aware of your heartbeat. Of the way your wrists still bear the red ghost of rope. Of the mud drying on your ankles. Of the way he’s looking at you.

Like he already owns you.

Like this is just a formality.

Your mouth opens.

And for a second, nothing comes out.

Then:

“Petal.”

Your voice sounds strange. Foreign. Like it didn’t come from you but was breathed into you. You don’t recognize how soft it comes out—how it hitches a little. How it lands in the air between you like a stone dropped in a still pool.

His head tilts. Just slightly. One corner of his mouth lifts—not a grin. Something quieter. Possessive.

“Good girl.”

The words land like heat across your spine.

He steps in again. Closer now. His boots bump yours, but he doesn’t touch you yet.

He just inhales. Deep, deliberate, like he’s dragging your presence into his lungs.

“I knew you’d be easy, underneath all that bark,” he says softly. “They always are.”

And then his hand comes up. Slow. Measured. He touches your jaw—not rough, not even possessive. Just assertive. His thumb brushes the edge of your lip, like testing the softness of something before he bites.

“Petal,” he repeats, voice lower now. “Gonna hear that name moaned through these halls, aye? Gonna have all of Eden know who the prettiest thing in it belongs to.”

The silence that follows is not awkward.

It’s complete.

He leans closer, nose brushing yours, voice barely above breath.

“Say somethin’ else, then. Something better. Say thank you.”

The words land soft, but they split your ribs open.

Not a bark. Not a threat. Not a demand, even. Just spoken like it’s inevitable.

His hand remains on your jaw. Fingers resting just beneath your ear, thumb dragging slowly over the corner of your mouth. The pressure isn’t enough to hurt. But it’s not gentle. It’s training.

You try to breathe, but your lungs won’t take it in right.

The room feels too small now. Too close. The air clings to the back of your tongue, hot and damp and sour-sweet, like you’re breathing someone else’s exhale. Smoke, rot, and something metallic. Something intimate.

You feel your spine go stiff, shoulders rising like you might pull away—but your feet don’t move. Not because you’re frozen. Not exactly.

Because you’re listening.

And you’re waiting for him to say it again.

He doesn’t.

He just watches. That calm stare. That awful patience. As if there’s no doubt at all that the words will come.

Your mouth parts slightly. Not to obey. Not yet.

To stall.

To feel what it would be like to say it—to give him what he wants and taste how it feels in your throat. To feel how it might curl against your tongue and rot something inside you.

You don’t want to.You do.

Your heart punches the inside of your chest.

You blink—once, slow—and then tilt your head forward, just enough that your lips brush against the edge of his thumb.

Not a kiss.

Not yet.

But the reaction is immediate.

His nostrils flare. His hand tightens, just a breath, enough to tilt your chin higher.

“Go on, sweet thing,” he murmurs. “Don’t make me think you’re ungrateful.”

And something breaks. Not loudly. Not violently. But with a quiet, traitorous tremor in your stomach.

Your tongue is slow to cooperate. Your voice doesn’t come easy. But it comes.

“…Thank you.”

Your voice sounds like a betrayal.

It sounds like submission.

It sounds like you meant it.

You hate that. You hate how easy it is to say.

You hate how it feels good to give it.

His smile widens—not wild. Not cruel.

Pleased.

“That’s my girl.”

The words are barely a whisper, but they hit like a nail through silk.

He steps even closer now—flush against you, chest to chest. You feel the heat of him. The weight of him. His free hand comes to rest on your hip, fingers curling just above your waistband.

“We’ll make a proper little thing outta you yet.”

And then, voice lower:

“Say it again. Like you mean it this time.”

He’s still touching you.

One hand cupped along your jaw, thumb grazing your lower lip with the intimacy of a lover, the calculation of a surgeon. The other hand low on your hip, fingers curling with idle pressure. Not possessive. Not yet.

Just poised.

Waiting.

His voice has that same half-smile cadence, but the edge is sharper now—threaded with something heavier. The kind of weight that comes before a strike.

He wants it again.

And this time, he wants it perfect.

You feel your mouth go dry. Your muscles ache from how still you’ve been forced to hold yourself. Your wrists itch where the rope had left its imprint. Your brain is screaming for space—but your body doesn’t move.

Not because you’re weak, but because you’re calculating, too.

You don’t say it right away. You let the silence stretch, just a breath longer than it should. Just long enough that it starts to feel wrong. You see it in his posture—the slight twitch of his hand, the flicker in his eye.

And that’s when you give it to him.

“Thank you…Sir.”

You say it sweet.

Too sweet.

You tip your head a little as you say it, lashes lowering like a smirk in motion. You speak with the kind of sugar-coating that’s almost mockery. Just enough to make it unclear.

Polite. Playful. Dangerous.

His thumb stills on your lip.

Then lifts—slowly, deliberately—tracing the curve of your mouth before sliding down your chin. His other hand firms against your hip.

And he doesn’t speak.

He just stares at you.

That same silent intensity from before—hot enough to blister. A fire without flame.

“You think I won’t know the difference?” he says at last, voice low and sharp as a knife dragged across bone. “Think I can’t smell when a thing’s just performin’?”

His grip tightens—not to bruise, but to remind.

His eyes roam your face like a wolf studying a lamb that forgot it was meat.

“You will mean it, Petal,” he murmurs. “One way or another.”

He leans in again—closer now. Lips near your ear, voice so quiet you feel it more than hear it.

“And when you do, it’ll drip off your tongue like prayer.”

You feel the press of his breath against your jaw, warm and patient and ruthless.

Then he pulls back—not far. Just enough to look you in the eyes again. Holding you in place by your silence.

“Now,” he says. “Be sweet. Try again.”

He pins you down with just his gaze.

The heat of his body radiates into yours—smoke and oil and something darker, like the breath of a house right before it catches fire. His hand at your hip has grown still, but it hasn’t let go. The other hovers at your jaw, no longer cupping it, just near—like he’s giving you space to hang yourself.

You feel the words curl in your throat like smoke before a scream.

You could obey.

You could soften your voice. Bow your head. Let the praise come warm and slippery from your mouth like honey melting over hot stone. Let him believe you.

But you don’t.

Not yet.

Instead, you tilt your chin up. A small gesture. Barely there. But it shifts the whole balance of the room. His fingers still in the air near your throat. His nostrils flare—just once. You don’t miss it.

And when you speak…

You lace it with venom.

“Thank you…my King.”

You make it sound filthy.

Not reverent. Not frightened. Not grateful.

You say it like it’s a joke. Like you’re daring him to earn it.

His mouth parts just slightly—no smile now. Just breath.

You watch something dark flicker behind his eyes. It doesn’t rise, doesn’t lash out—but it pulses once, slow and dangerous. You’ve struck a nerve. Not one that makes him angry.

One that makes him hungry.

He steps closer, boot between yours. His chest brushes yours. That awful stillness in him thickens, slows, sharpens.

“That what I am to you already?” he says, voice hushed. “Your King?”

His hand moves again—slow, deliberate. The backs of his fingers trail down your throat.

“Careful, Petal.”

Your heart is a hammer in your ribs now.

He moves around behind you without warning, slow as smoke, one hand dragging across your collarbone as he passes.

You don’t turn.

You feel him behind you. His breath against your hair. His voice just behind your ear.

“You keep speakin’ like that,” he murmurs, “I’ll start to think you want to be ruled.”

You can’t see his face, but you hear the smile in his voice.

“And you don’t want me to think that.”

A pause.

His hand settles at the base of your throat—not tight. Not soft. Just there.

“Because if you do…I’ll give you the crown myself.”

His hand stays at your throat for three long breaths.

You don’t move. You don’t speak. You don’t give him the satisfaction of swallowing beneath his palm. But the silence that stretches between you is not victory.

It’s ritual.

You feel his body behind you—heat and weight and tension, close enough to make your skin tighten, far enough to make you ache. His breath grazes the curve of your ear like a blessing dressed in threat.

And then—

He pulls back.

The absence is as sharp as a slap. The cold rush of air across your neck feels like exposure, like being unwrapped. You almost—almost—step back to reclaim his heat.

But you don’t.

You hold your ground as he moves around you again, slow and loose-limbed, like a lion circling the last twitch of a dying thing.

When he stops in front of you, his grin is back. Soft. Filthy. Relaxed.

But his eyes are still locked on you like a snare.

“That’s enough for now,” he says, almost gently.

He reaches out and brushes something from your shoulder—a bit of leaf, a smear of dirt, it doesn’t matter. His fingers linger longer than necessary, then drop.

“You’ll need rest. Food. I’ll see to it.”

He turns from you like it doesn’t hurt him to look away.

“We’ve got time.”

He takes two steps toward his throne before glancing back over his shoulder.

His smile is lazy now. Pleased. Possessive.

“You’re not gonna leave, Petal. Not because you can’t.”

He sits down. Spreads his knees wide. Drags his hand along his jaw, watching you like he’s already undressing your soul.

“Because by the time I’m through with you…you won’t want to.”

He gestures lazily, and the room stirs like a beast waking from slumber. Figures shift from the walls, rising soundless as mist. Two of them move toward you—a man and a woman. They don’t ask questions. They don’t hesitate. They only bow when he nods.

“See she’s bathed,” Jimmy says, brushing a hand down the arm of his chair like he’s brushing dust from a relic. “Get the stink of the woods off her. Put her somewhere warm. Somewhere quiet.”

A tiny shift goes through the room—almost imperceptible. A glance exchanged. A breath held. Not protest, no. Not that. Not with him. But surprise. The kind that doesn’t rise from disobedience, only from obedience so deep it doesn’t comprehend difference.

He doesn’t name them. Doesn’t call out by their variations of the same holy name. They just know.

They step closer and one of them takes your hand. Not roughly. Not lovingly. Just certain. The other moves to stand behind you, brushing the snarl of your hair from your neck like she’s making way for a blade. Not because she’ll use one. But because she knows he can.

They lead you toward the door, and the room doesn’t speak. Not a word. Not a shift. Not a glance that doesn’t already belong to him. They accept it the way soil accepts a seed falling from a hand that can choose where it grows.

“Go,” he says finally, voice soft and sharp as steel. “Rest tonight, Petal. You’ve a long road ‘fore you.”

And then he leans back, sprawling in that long chair like a man resting between victories, brushing the pad of his thumb across his lower lip as if tasting the air your name has changed.

“An’ don’t worry,” he calls after you as the doors creak open, voice rising just enough for it to fill the space between the walls. “I’ll be seein’ ye soon. Real soon.”

No one questions. No one speaks.

In Eden, when Sir Jimmy Crystal chooses, no one ever needs to ask why.

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