Vesna Bell Does Not Live An Unhappy Life

She was a girl of flawed and low character, suitable for little more than feedstock. Were her fate to have been left purely to the judgement of Mme. Spindler she would have been sent to the hogs by her sixteenth birthday, an event which would have surely caused the beasts as sore disappointment as any scant and boney meal ever had. Though even at that young age her crimes were numerous, those which were known to Mme. Spindler were willfulness, theft, violence, and misdirected daydreams. To certain of the orphanage’s other girls she was also known to be a tribadist, and all of the boys knew her for a wanton slattern—a common enough charge for those beasts to levy against their victims that no one, not even Mme. Spindler, believed it.

Luckily for her, the decision of what to do with her rested in the tenuous balance between Mme. Spindler, Sir Louis Aldridge, and Julienne Fitzwilliam; respectively, the orphanage’s manager, its patron, and its assigned Perpetuation Bureau agent. Mme. Spindler might have hated the girl with all the fire in the world, but Sir Aldridge cared only for the Perpetuation Bureau’s fortnightly payments and Mrs. Fitzwilliam would never dare to fudge the numbers or overlook the Bureau’s rules. As the only commoner of the three, she knew very well that she would be the designated scapegoat of any such scheme.

And besides, the Republic is always in need of morally flexible and utterly disposable assets. A single woman’s discomfort with her inability to civilize one of her charges hardly matters in the face of a country’s battle for its very existence!¹

And so, Vesna Bell—underfed, mistreated, and frustrated, and learning to turn these to her advantage—lived till reaching the age of majority, at which point Mme. Spindler unceremoniously bundled her out of the orphanage and onto the streets while Sir Aldridge pocketed the small sum that the state had meant for Vesna to use as a bridge between the orphanage and productive adulthood.

Even the most benevolent judge would have been hard-pressed to describe Vesna as an innocent. She played at innocence, true, as one must, but she used that pretense to kickstart her career robbing drunks. It went like this, more or less:

Each evening, factory workers would flood into town, pockets heavy with the day’s wages and aching bodies longing for food and succor. Some return to their families in tenements, and some eat their dinners at boarding-houses before collapsing into sleep or venturing out with friends in search of amusement; neither of these groups were of any interest to Vesna. It was the others—the ones who went from work to drink with nothing between, the ones who enjoyed only the token camaraderie of bartenders and strangers drinking beside them, the ones who craved touch but could not bring themselves to venture inside a brothel’s too-honest walls—that were her chosen prey.

Some of these men she recognized from the orphanage. The older boys, who had left before her; and, soon, the ones her age. She did her best to avoid them, less out of any sense of guilt than the certainty that they would know better than to fall for her tricks.

She would post up in a bar where she knew that the bartender wouldn’t hassle her a bit over half a clock after the workers came off shift, enough time that the first wave would be well into it but before the next arrived. She’d pick her target, play the innocent, let him ply her with the fortified Pinot³ that men like that preferred, the sort that melts the pain away and ensures that it will come back worse on the morrow. She never drank as much as he thought she was, and she encouraged him to think she was just about ready to be swept off to some back room or filthy alley. Just another glass, mister, and won’t you have one too?

Tired, bone-weary men, drinking deep to salve the pain of their broken bodies; and if some naive little thing should fetch up next to them, giggling at their jokes and blinking up all hazy-eyed when they sling their arm around her, well, it’s only natural, for drink provokes the desire and takes away so much besides.

And if one of those men woke up at the factory whistle next morning, aching and weary, and found his pockets empty and his balls full and aching? It’s another day, and he would have pissed away his earnings one way or another—and Vesna always made sure that some of her takings found their way to the bartender’s pocket. It is wise to keep the establishment on your side.

Vesna Bell hated her victims.

She hated the way they looked at her and the way they touched her, and all the smells oozing from their stinking bodies—the alcohol on their breath, their fatty belches and squelching flatulence, the stale sweat soaking their unwashed clothing and the toxic oils that their work soaked them in. She hated being close to them and she hated the fear each time she was, the worry that this time she’d misjudge the balance of when to push and when to coax and find herself in the darkness with a beast careless of anything save its own desires.

After the second time she procured a little tool to help her out of unfortunate occasions, and after the third she thought herself strong enough to use it, but it was easier to start collaborating with the bartenders. A little vial of opium tincture, a little bit of powder …

So much simpler. So much safer.

Men were never her chosen vice.

Even in the early days, when she did not yet have anything to hold against men as a class, they had struck her as vaguely unnecessary. Fine, perhaps, if one had no one better as a helpmate, if all the girls were busy and one insisted on intruding into her presence, but ultimately a compromise. Creatures to indulge only insofar as their largesse justified. Prey.

Vesna Bell did not have anyone to go home to at the end of the night, but when she rested she dreamt of women. Drifting through memories of the other girls at the orphanage who were like her, the sweaty afternoons and stolen kisses; melting into thoughts of nights spent with prostitutes, loving the way her stolen wealth gave her power over them even as she found herself curiously vulnerable, a supplicant begging for more, something she did not have the words for; and, then, there are the pure fantasies. The libidinal excesses of a life of deprivation. Mme. Spindler, the hateful old biddy, recast as something cruel and sharp, grinding Vesna beneath a distorted facsimile of her sensible brown penny loafers, her mind crushed down into something almost too small to hold the feelings burning inside her heart …

But sleep never lasts as long as it should. Wakefulness intrudes.

Her eyes encrusted with smog and sleep, her lips cracking, her body itching. Squirming against her bed’s rough sheets, her every nerve screaming out for attention, for sensation, to be touched—!

Shoving a pillow down between her legs. Rubbing herself against it, rutting like an animal in heat, thrusting down. Imagining it another woman, a beautiful creature squirming and panting in concert with her. Her fingers between her legs, fantasizing. What it would be like to be the penetrator, to feel herself inside her lover’s—her victim’s—deepest place, the heart of her. Blood pounding in her ears, stifling her moans. Glimpsing for a moment the way men saw her, as an object for their pleasure, a warm wet hole to beat into submission and take, and own—and, in that moment, in that glimpse, coming undone. Clenching and shuddering. Forgetting to breathe and then finally remembering with one great gasping breath, a full minute later, light-headed and exhausted and—

Unsatisfied.

Because after the fantasy came the guilt. The sick, twisted feeling of what pushed her over the edge poisoned her afterglow. Seeing herself. Laying panting in a tiny, unkempt room. Filthy with sweat. Her pillow soaked. The noise of the boarding-house rising around her—did any of the other women hear? Did they know?

When she went to the bathroom to sponge herself clean and tidy herself she wondered if any of them could smell it on her, and when she drifted down to the table she studied every look. Did Mrs. Tomar look a bit too knowing as she poured her cup of thick, lemony tea? Was the little clique of secretaries whispering a bit too pointedly? No, of course not. She was just paranoid. Everything was fine. None of them could see the way she looked at them. None of them knew. They were silly things, chasing after men, never knowing the pure ecstasy of—

“Another sugar cube, dear?”

“N-no, Mrs. Tomar. Thank you, though.”

“Mmm, I just thought, well, our little Miss Bell seems a bit under the weather, and there’s nothing like a sweet cuppa to fix you right up, mhmm?” Her eyes twinkled. She was the first person Vesna ever knew who could actually pull that off, and the woman had no idea how.

“I appreciate it, really. I just didn’t sleep well. You know how it is,” she immediately wondered why she’d said that. Whether she was drawing attention or deflecting it.

“Oh, not at my age, Miss Bell! But I certainly do remember what it was like before I met my Robert, god rest his soul. Best man I ever knew …”

Vesna choked down the last of her tea and fled.

She was in the same business as the bartenders, really. They both sold a distraction from life, a brief relief from life in the factories. It was just that Vesna didn’t tell the men she was selling, because that was part of the fantasy. Everyone wants to be wanted, don’t they?

It was a slow night. Something had happened in one of the factories and the usual crowd had never reached the bars, and besides Vesna’s purse was heavy from a good week, so she was just relaxing. Chatting with the bartender, Evelyn, a woman who featured in Vesna’s fantasies as much for her severe dresses as for the wicked smiles she sometimes shot Vesna’s way when the two of them were collaborating to drug and rob an incautious man. She’d said before that it wasn’t how she’d choose to dress if she had the choice; echoing the style of old schoolmarms simply warded off a portion of male attention. They’d look at her without truly seeing, letting their preconceptions color her as old and unsexual—and of course she had a shotgun for the ones who saw too clearly. Its name was ole’ sobriety.

If Vesna were a man she’d surely have met sobriety’s barrels. When she looked at Evelyn her eyes lingered on the sweat beading her high collar, the swell of her breasts beneath her tightly buttoned dress, the barely-perceptible click of her shoes on the stained wood floor.

Drinking, with nothing else to do. Letting her passions swell. Knowing that she’d surely dream about Evelyn that night, or perhaps visit a brothel to quench herself before too late—a good night for it, surely. If the bars were empty then so too would be the whorehouses. It was so much easier to just let herself drift a little, though. To imagine what it would be like to be behind the bar, kneeling before Evelyn. Hidden under her dress, overwhelmed by the woman’s scent, drinking deep …

“So, Vesna,” she almost hadn’t noticed Evelyn leaning across the bar towards her, “you don’t like men much, do you?”

She was caught utterly off-guard, and for a moment fear flashed through her mind, a long thunderous rumble. Evelyn surely saw it on her face, for the older woman giggled at her.

“Well, I guess they’re fine,” Vesna equivocated, “nothing wrong with them, I guess, but—”

“Ha! We know each other better than that, no? I know your business and I know who you visit when you’re going whoring, so I think I can judge your predilections.” Vesna was wide-eyed, struggling to control the rising tide, her heart pounding and her cheeks reddening. “I just want to know, well. I see you looking at me like you want something else out of our arrangement. Is that right?”

Later, Vesna would learn that Evelyn was just as nervous as her; that she’d taken a shot to steady her nerves and a bump of gasoline-scented powder to drive herself forward.

“I … yes. It is. I can leave, if that’s what you—I’ll never come back, I’m sorry—”

Evelyn didn’t bother to kick the other customers out before dragging Vesna into the back room, and while they fucked someone stole several of the better liquors from behind the bar.

Vesna was the second best thing that ever happened to Evelyn Solis. The woman was so wonderfully, wickedly alive! So willing to push the limits, to find little ways to get one up on the world, to wear whatever mask she had to—it was intoxicating. It was everything Evelyn wished she’d been able to be, back when she still twitched at shadows and lay awake in fear of the presence that no one else—no one without the right blood, and all the others gone—could feel.

The years had smoothed away some of the fear, of course, and she’d covered up the rest as best she could. Friendly but aloof, detached; a mask for a woman who knew she’d never really be able to let anyone in without inviting questions best unasked.

But Vesna was wonderful. Her past was nothing worthy of remark, and she seemed to intuit—or assume—that Evelyn’s was the same, so she never learned the bite of Evelyn’s defenses, the icy distance and sharp brambles that had kept her safe from lovers who simply wanted to understand her.

And the sex was good, of course. Not liberatory, because Evelyn had had more than enough time unravelling that particular aspect of her upbringing already, but—good. Really, truly good.

It wasn’t perfect, true; Vesna’s work was not quite what Evelyn would have chosen, and there were sleepless nights when Evelyn didn’t know if it had gone well or ill. Sometimes Vesna’s light was clouded by memories, and sometimes everything was too tenuous to bear, but happiness can bear many little imperfections before it crumbles. And so, somehow, Evelyn found that it was easy to love Vesna; and Vesna, she was sure, felt just the same.

It wasn’t like Vesna’s fantasies.

The older woman (only by half a decade, true) was neither the dominating force that her clothing had sparked thoughts of nor the sort of submissive object that Vesna always found herself imagining when she teetered on the edge of her climax, guilt creeping in. She was passionate and shameless, true, especially when she’d been snorting her powders. Desperately eager to lose herself in Vesna’s body, to spend hours drawing out climax after climax, until the last wave of pleasure finally left both of them lying there, aching and exhausted. Evelyn utterly sated on Vesna’s body, and Vesna craving more.

Still—how wonderful, to have a lover! Not fumbling childhood experiments, not feigned paid passions, but true lust. They wanted to spend every moment together, giggling and stealing kisses, frigging each other over the insensate forms of their drugged victims, fucking like they wanted to crawl inside each others’ skin and become one …

How wonderful.

And neither had learned not to round up from lust to love.

After a while Evelyn invited Vesna to move in with her, and she did. The woman’s little apartment above the bar wasn’t particularly nice, but it had a toilet that wasn’t shared with twenty other women and a window that caught a tiny sliver of the morning sun, and it was nice to laze around together, to idly kiss and grope and then walk around naked, loving the sight of each other’s bodies.

It was nice.

And it was convenient, and once they were together it was easier to keep on going than to change anything. And Vesna liked saving the cost of a boarding-house room, and even though it didn’t live up to all her fantasies it was real. Better that than being sold a lie.

“You don’t want anything to do with this one. She’s trouble, trust me.”

The man Vesna had been hunting turned to look up at the person resting their hand on his shoulder, violence simmering in his face. An unwelcome intrusion, and only one way to meet it—until seeing who it was and what they were quenched him, and he stumbled away from the bar without a glance back. The woman was large, sure, the type of large that only comes from a childhood drenched in uncommon wealth; not a hint of starvation or deprivation, just muscle padded with fat. Smooth skin marked by a web of well-healed dueling scars, not a hint of plague. Rich, clearly, but it was her uniform that had sent the man away: burgundy and gold, marked with the Compliance Bureau’s shackled eagle.

Vesna glared at the intruder as she settled onto the newly vacant stool. The man had been a good prospect, dressed better than most of the factory workers; a merchant’s son slumming, maybe, or perhaps even a noble’s by-blow. Enough money to be worth her time and no head for fortified wine, if Vesna was any judge. A pain to lose him, but she could try again elsewhere. Somewhere without interferences.

Except the interloper grabbed her arm when she made to stand. A painfully hard grip, forcing her back into her seat without any visible effort. “Vesna Bell,” the woman said with a smile, “formerly of the Aldridge School for Unwanted Youths, mhmm? Mme. Spindler sends you her best, by the by.”

“… no she doesn’t,” the words slipped out of Vesna’s mouth almost without thinking.

“No, but she was pretty happy when I asked her about you. Told me all sorts of things. Old bitch really has it out for you, huh?”

“Yeah, you can’t believe anything she has to say,” Vesna shot Evelyn a pleading look across the bar, and the other woman looked back, wide-eyed. “She’s a liar.”

“Of course she is! Wouldn’t trust her testimony, personally, but that’s just supplemental. Getting a better picture, you know? See, Vesna, we’ve been watching you. Got a whole list of crimes,” the woman tapped a pocket, “written down right here. Theft and battery, mostly, but—”

“I’ve never battered anyone!”

“Drugging falls under that heading. New law, hasn’t really been publicized yet, s’how it goes. You’re gonna be one of the examples that make sure everyone knows about it, Vesna Bell.”

Evelyn slid a glass across the bar towards the woman, her face bloodless. The good stuff, by the smell; one of the bourbons that conquest occasionally brought into Grand Fenwick. Too expensive by far for any of the bar’s normal clientele.

“Ma’am, sir, I’m sure there’s some arrangement we can come to. Vesna just likes drinking with men, she’s not a bad girl—”

“And Evelyn Solis. You’re from out in the colonies, aren’t you? Came here to have a better life, drained your family’s savings to pay the immigration fees. Sad story. Although, none of it’s true.”

“I—”

“You used to be a d’Auërsperg.” The woman picked up the glass, sniffed it. Drank it down with a smile. “Good stuff. Should’ve added more opium, though, Ms. d’Auërsperg. Good try, but you can’t just go off of weight.”

“T-that’s not my name. I never—I’ve always been a Solis!”

“No love for your family, huh? I get it. But you are and we’re very interested in whether you brought any of your family’s knowledge with you. Light, hope, and life, mhmm?”

“I—fine. What if I did?”

“Well, then that might be a way to keep your lover out of jail. And yourself alive, of course. Depending. Give me that bottle, would you? I want to taste it without the opium.”

Evelyn threw it at her and bolted, running for the back exit. The woman caught it out of the air with a sigh, and finally looked back to Vesna, slumped over and still caught in her grip.

“That was stupid of her. Gives us a moment to ourselves, though, mhmm? Before my men drag her back in here.”

“Sir, I—”

“Oh, I forgot to introduce myself, didn’t I. Captain Iris Bascomb, Suppression Bureau.” Vesna’s eyes flickered to the crest on Iris’s breast. “Camouflage, Vesna. Useful in my line of work, hmm? And yours.”

Vesna didn’t say a thing in reply. Sometimes men just wanted to hear themselves talk, and this woman was clearly no different; a beast to be placated or escaped. Dangerous, true, but—there was a crash from the back room. A body thrown to the floor. A man in a much drabber uniform came out, half-hearted saluted.

“Got her, sir.”

“Good man. How far did she get?”

“Second cordon. She’s slippery, sir. Will and Lily are tying her up.”

“Good, good,” Iris turned back to Vesna. “I meant to recruit you, you know. You’re the sort of person we could use in the S.B., mhmm? But your lover really shouldn’t have done that, and that changes things. You’re lucky, though. I think she really likes you.” Iris pulled the cork out of the bottle with her teeth and refilled the glass. Spilled a bit, doing it one-handed, but less than Vesna would have. Didn’t even try to conceal the little tablet that she’d dropped in, fizzling as it dissolved. “Here, drink up,” she took a long swig from the bottle. “You’ll need it.”

The bar’s clientele had been trickling out ever since Captain Bascomb arrived, one or two at a time, no one wanting to draw Compliance’s attention, and by the time Vesna mechanically swallowed the last of the bourbon the entire place was empty. No one would have tried to stop Iris from dragging her into the back room even if they’d been there, but the emptiness somehow made her situation feel even more hopeless.

Evelyn was trussed up on the floor. Stomach down, gagged, arms tied behind her back. Dress pulled up to expose her legs, which were also bound. Stockings torn. She’d clearly struggled. She stared up at Vesna and Iris, eyes big and pleading, welling with tears. Clearly knowing that no help could possibly be forthcoming.

Iris finally let go of Vesna’s arm. The woman couldn’t possibly have been paying attention that entire time, just left her hand there and proceeded along her goals. The cold of its absence felt … wrong, somehow. Like the cold of the day she left the orphanage for the last time. One of the drab-uniformed agents came over and rested a hand on Vesna’s shoulder, a little reminder of what would happen if she tried to get away. It wasn’t the same.

“Now,” Iris squatted down next to Evelyn, her long coat pooling on the floor. Spilt blood and molten gold flowed out of her, the nation’s flag bereft of its two-faced eagle. “You’ve put us to a bit of trouble, so I’m going to teach you a lesson, okay? And if you pay attention maybe you’ll learn something, and maybe you’ll be able to be an asset to the Republic. And if you don’t,” Iris smiled, showing more teeth than Evelyn had thought possible. A whole forest of white-ish yellow enamel, sprinkled through with sparkles of tarnishing metal, and her big wet tongue running all along them. “If you don’t, there are other lessons.”

Iris straightened up and turned back towards Vesna. “Lily, Seb, you know what to do, yeah? Make sure she watches, don’t let her hurt herself, standard drill. And Will, watch the door.” A chorus of crisp “Sir!“s came in reply, as the agents moved into their new positions. Vesna watched, not quite understanding but terrified of what was coming, as Iris shrugged off her coat and hung it over the back of a chair. And then Iris was right in front of her again, strong arms reaching out. One warm hand on her neck, the other tilting her chin up.

“Now, Vesna,” her voice was low, not meant to carry. Rumbling in Vesna’s ears. She shivered. “If you struggle I’ll have to beat it out of you. But if you don’t I’ll make sure you enjoy this, okay?”

“O-okay,” she echoed. Her head felt strange, and then, as Iris bent down to kiss her, she felt stranger still. The woman was so warm and her lips were so soft and it felt like her tongue was halfway down her throat, warm and wet and rough. She heard a muffled shout as she started to squirm, pressing her legs together, desperate for something to hump against—and then there was warmth there too, Iris’s thigh pushing hers apart. So thick and firm, hard muscles shifting beneath the cushioning fat, meeting her as she started to rut against it, just like her pillow, just like Evelyn on those lazy mornings when Vesna was overcome by one of her dreams and they’d wake up already fucking …

And then there was the cold.

Iris pulling back from her. Letting her collapse, legs shuddering. So close, so unbearably close—and then Vesna heard the noise of the scuffle behind her. Heard Evelyn struggling, two agents and the rope barely enough to hold her. A single shouted word as she dislodged her gag, a word in a language that Vesna didn’t know then and would never learn. “Altius—!”

A punch. Evelyn coughed and spat. Vomited.

“We need her alive, Lily,” Iris said, her voice full of warning.

“Sir. She was—”

“Just make sure she doesn’t choke on it.”

Vesna blinked up at Iris as the larger woman bent over to examine her. Her entire body was burning. She needed, needed—

“Hitting you really hard, huh? Here,” the woman rested one of her hands on Vesna’s cheek for a moment and Vesna caught her thumb between her lips, pulled it in. Sucked and sucked as one of her hands crept downwards and Iris laughed, amazed. “Eager slut, huh? Is she like this with you, Evelyn? Will, give me some water, we don’t want to cook her brain too badly.”

The water was wonderful. The best thing Vesna had ever tasted, and she’d swear to that. Cold and delicious, like a breath of cool air on a too-hot day. Life-saving, almost, except it also brought with it an awareness of what was happening around her. Of Evelyn sobbing on the ground, the agents watching, and Iris unbuttoning her uniform. Of the way the woman’s presence skewed the world away from true, as if she were the most real thing there. More than Vesna or Evelyn, more than the agents, whose obedient bodies were surely only outgrowths of her own overwhelming form—

“Hey, hey,” Iris snapped her fingers in front of Vesna’s face, “breathe.”

“P-please,” Vesna whispered.

“Hmm? Please what?”

“I need, please, I,” it took such an effort of will for Vesna to pull the words together, jumbled and senseless as they were. She didn’t even know what she was asking for, really. To feel better, to be touched again, to let Evelyn into this pleasure too, please, please, please …

“Oh,” Iris smiled, “does she always break so easily, Evelyn? Because in my experience it usually takes a bit more than a kiss to make a woman beg to be raped in front of her lover.” The woman glanced over at Evelyn’s face and laughed, a shockingly loud noise that sent little spasms through Vesna’s stomach. “I don’t know why I’m bothering asking. Of course she doesn’t, I’ve got transcripts from every time you two have fucked for the last, oh, what was it?”

“Two months, sir,” one of the agents replied.

“Two months! And recordings from every time our little Vesna ever visited a brothel. We did our homework, hmm? So believe me when I tell you that you’ve never satisfied her properly, even aside from your … intrinsic disadvantage, let’s say.”

Neither Vesna nor Evelyn were quite sure what Iris meant at first, the one lost in pleading and the other stewing on the ground, but her meaning quickly became clear when she began to unbutton her trousers. Neither of them had noticed the bulge there before, nor the way it had grown as Iris talked, but now, with their attention on it—with the thing released into the room’s stale air—it was unmistakeable.

Vesna’s mouth snapped shut. Her eyes went wide. It felt like she’d just been dunked in a trough of ice water, the sudden cold leeching away all the eager joy that had filled her when she’d thought that the captain was a woman and not a, not a—a monster, surely. There was no other explanation. She was having a nightmare, being tormented by the memories of all the times men had forced them on her, and now this, a woman who was not a woman, a beast—

“Like it?” Vesna desperately shook her head. “It’s courtesy of the boys down at the mephitworks. A miracle of glandular transplantation. Isn’t it beautiful?” Iris gave herself a little shake, sending a pearly drop flying, and reached down to fondle her balls. “And fully functional, of course.”

Vesna made to crawl away and Iris grabbed her by her hair and pulled her face in. Smushed her against her cock, and smiled at the desperate character Vesna’s “please"s had suddenly acquired.

“See, the thing you tribadists don’t realize,” Iris rubbed her length along Vesna’s cheek, smearing the tears trickling out of her, “is that there’s a proper order to these things. The ones who fuck, and the ones who get fucked.” Vesna whimpered. “People used to understand that, before society got so caught up in its modern perversions. And,” Iris stepped away from Vesna, leaving her sobbing. Squatted down in front of Evelyn, her cock dangling close enough that the woman felt the heat radiating from its length. It stank like Iris had already used it that night, an unpleasant blend of animalic musk and damp fish; if Evelyn hadn’t already been crying her eyes would have watered at the smell. Impotent rage and humiliation stewed in her belly; she wished that should could spit acid and melt away the disgusting appendage—but the gag precluded that possibility, and her bile was simply that.

“We at the S.B. aren’t opposed to letting our little nation’s assets have their perversions. But that’s only for our assets. The useful ones. The ones who know their place,” Iris grinned. A bead of precum glittered on her tip; the woman was getting off on her own monologue. Evelyn might have laughed, if not for the gag. If not for everything else. “Nod if you’re starting to understand.”

She just glared.

“Slow learner, huh? That’s fine. Could stop here, but, hey, you need the rest of it too.” Evelyn blinked. Tried to nod, but the agent’s hands on her head turned the motion into nothing more than the smallest bob. Not enough for Iris to notice, even if she’d cared to.

By then Vesna had remembered that she had a little tool for discouraging unwanted advances, though she was shaking too much to hold it steady in front of her. It wasn’t much, really, a dainty little dagger, and Iris took it away from her with a little sigh and an embarrassing lack of effort. Peered at it speculatively for a moment, then sliced Vesna’s skirt from hem to waistline, and her slip beneath for good measure.

“That was hardly a struggle,” Iris said, grinning, “so I won’t punish you for it, hmm? But,” she shoved Vesna down onto the ground and forced her thighs apart, “thin ice.”

Iris entered her with a confidence borne from practice and an utter lack of care for the other woman’s comfort and enjoyment. No exploratory pokes and prods, no need to line herself up, just—fullness. Sudden, overwhelming fullness, her entry smoothed by the drug still bubbling through Vesna’s body and her own traitorous arousal, until the woman’s curly hairs tangled with Vesna’s close-cropped bush and her mons smothered Vesna’s swollen clit. A familiar position, their legs scissoring, Iris rocking against her, but she was so full, so deliciously, nightmarishly full—!

“See that, Ms. d’Auërsperg?” Iris twisted her body, pulling out just far enough that Evelyn could see how Vesna and Iris’s bodies were connected. The place where Iris entered her lover, stretching her open, her wetness smeared all over Iris’s disgusting shaft. She didn’t want to look. She couldn’t help herself. “That’s what your little Vesna’s been missing out on. That’s what you’ll never be able to give her.” Iris jiggled her hips a bit; Vesna couldn’t think to stifle her moan. “But, hey, maybe if you’re good you’ll get to meet the boys who did this for me, hmm? You’ll be down in the mephitworks too.”

And, for a time, nothing existed but torturous ecstasy.

“There.” Iris finally, finally pulled herself off—and out of—Vesna, their sweat-slicked skin squelching as she pulled them apart. Cum burbled out of Vesna’s cunt, her own and Iris’s mixed together until there was no separating them. Vesna lay there, glassy-eyed and overwhelmed, still shaking and shuddering in the moments where sensation echoed through her abused brain. Evelyn was half-curled up, one of the agent’s hands still forcing her head to face Vesna. Forcing her to watch. Her face utterly devastated, her thoughts off somewhere beyond the tears and bargaining and anger. “Damn, that was fun. Your lover’s a great lay, Evelyn. I’ll have to have her again sometime. Seb,” to one of the agents, now, “make Ms. d’Auërsperg clean up. We can’t have Miss Bell dripping cum all over the car’s seats.”

“Should I untie her, Sir …?”

“Nah. She can use her mouth.”

They let Vesna and Evelyn share a room in the barracks. Made them, more like. The women struggled to look at each other, Evelyn in her white-and-orange overalls emblazoned with “Special Asset” and Vesna in clothes remarkably like the ones she’d always worn, when she was out hunting. Better quality, though. Custom-made.

There was a gulf between them, in that place where something fundamental about their relationship had been broken. Guilt and pain, and neither of them brave enough to bridge it. Vesna tried to initiate sex a few times, but they were working Evelyn to the bone doing … whatever it was that she knew how to do. The family secret that she still wouldn’t tell Vesna about. So she wasn’t in the mood, and it wouldn’t have healed things anyway, and they kept their cots carefully separate.

And, sometimes, when Vesna woke in the night, she’d hear Evelyn masturbating, and she’d lay there, pretending to still be asleep. Listening to those wet, furtive noises. The stifled moans. Wishing that she could be part of it; terrified of letting Evelyn know that she was awake and unbearably turned on, absolutely certain that if she did she’d scare the other woman off. Break things even worse than they already were.

And that was that, except on the nights when she came back smelling of Captain Bascomb, her clothes all in disarray.

The first time, Evelyn looked at her like this one last betrayal was all her heart could take. Wouldn’t say a word to her, wouldn’t hear her explanation, her apology—just stole her blanket and curled up in a big sad ball in her cot. And that would have broken Vesna’s heart too, except after not even ten minutes she heard the woman masturbating. Heard her coming, curled around Vesna’s blanket, though Vesna only realized that afterward, when Evelyn threw the blanket on the floor and Vesna found the two wet spots on it, one of salty tears and one of a familiar fragrance.

The second time, Vesna wrestled Evelyn just far enough out of her pile to show her the cum dripping out of her cunt. To make her watch as she played with it, rubbing it into her clit, loving the noises Evelyn made in reply. She couldn’t have said why she did it, except perhaps that the Suppression Bureau was training her to be a beast too, one of the monsters safeguarding Grand Fenwick’s virtue.

The third time, Vesna didn’t have to force Evelyn. The woman came to her, cowed and broken, and Vesna rode her to a shattering climax while she frigged herself senseless.

And perhaps something like happiness could have grown between them, if not for the war.