- Do This For Me | Missax

Elara should have run. Any sensible person would have. But she had been chosen, shaped, prepared for this moment across years of strange requests and midnight trials. Missax had not been training a servant. She had been crafting a vessel.

“Do this for me.”

No one knew Missax’s full name, or if she even had one beyond that. She was the mistress of the estate, a woman of sharp cheekbones and sharper silences. Her hair was the color of burned copper, and her eyes held the cold patience of a bird of prey. The household staff feared her. The village whispered she had buried two husbands. But to Elara, Missax was simply… inevitable. missax - do this for me

Slowly, she extended her hand.

Missax tilted her head. “Then the house will stand empty until it finds another. But you, my dear, would not survive the winter. You have already seen too much. Touched too many forbidden things. The house knows you.” Elara should have run

Missax slid the ring onto Elara’s finger. It felt warm—impossibly warm—and then it bit down, not painfully, but possessively, as if the ring had teeth and had just taken its first taste.

And as the rain turned to sleet against the glass, Elara spoke the old words, feeling the house sigh around her, feeling Missax’s cold hand grow lighter in hers, feeling something ancient and patient settle into her bones. Missax had not been training a servant

“Elara,” she said, her voice low and smooth as polished stone. “Do this for me.”