Taken

She came at four in the morning.

Wren heard her before she saw her. The bedsit had a frequency, the ambient hum of pipes and wiring, and Wren heard the frequency change. A wrong note came into it. The radiator stopped ticking. The mould in the corner recoiled.

The lock broke. Not forced. A single clear tone went into the mechanism and found the frequency that held it together and introduced the wrong one and the lock stopped being a lock. The door swung in and she was there.

The Dissonance was tall. Dark clothing, structured, nothing soft about the way she dressed but everything heavy about the way she stood. Her face was the kind people called striking, not as insult but as description of a thing that drew you in and did not let go. She was beautiful the way deep water is beautiful. Her eyes were too bright. The room went quiet. The building went quiet. The street outside went quiet.

You tore a hole in my city, she said.

Her voice was the one from the dream. The sustained note shaped into words, low and even, and the evenness was worse than shouting. The note was in Wren's body again, the same frequency from the underpass, sitting in her throat and traveling down, into her chest, into her stomach, into the place between her hips. The body's response was immediate, a flush of heat and wetness that Wren could not stop because the wrong note was listening to her.

Wren opened her mouth to apologise. The apology got as far as her throat and hit the note and lost.

I played a piece of music, Wren said. In an underpass.

You played a piece that opened a breach the size of a city block and held it open while every mage in the district watched you. You are a resonant. Untrained. Unregistered. A weapon with no safety and no owner. The voice did not rise. When they are frightened, they send me.

Are you going to kill me, Wren said.

The woman tilted her head, listening. She was listening to Wren's resonance, and the listening was a physical thing, a pressure that found the places the underpass had found. The throat, the chest, the nipples, the heat between her thighs. Wren's body responded the way it had responded to the music, with warmth, with swelling, with wetness she could feel on her thighs and the Dissonance could feel too.

No. I am going to keep you.

Wren should have fought. She should have run. She overthought all of it in three seconds, and in those three seconds the woman crossed the room. She moved the way sound moves, inevitable. Her hand came up and Wren flinched and the hand did not strike her.

It touched her throat. Fingertips on the pulse point, light, precise. The wrong note moved through the touch and listened, and the listening traveled her body the way the underpass hum had traveled, downward, through the chest, through the stomach, into the heat between her legs. Her nipples hardened. Her body clenched. The Dissonance felt all of it, the arousal and the fear arriving together, and her grey eyes did not change but the wrong note shifted, a fractional recalibration.

Get up. You are coming with me.

Wren did not get up because her legs would not work. The fear and the arousal had fused her in place, the heat and the wet and the wrong note vibrating in her. The overthinking had stopped, the noise gone, and the silence was full of the Dissonance's sound. The sound was inside her, vibrating in the places a vibration should not vibrate, and she did not want it to stop.

That was the thing she would not examine.

The viola, Wren said. I need the viola.

Bring it.

They walked. A man passed them and did not see them, his eyes sliding off the way you slide off a frequency you cannot hear. The wrong note was around them both, a shell of dissonance that made the mundane world forget them. And the wrong note was inside Wren, the sustained vibration in her heat, constant, keeping her wet. Every step pressed her thighs together and the pressing made the vibration shift and the shifting made her gasp. The Dissonance, walking beside her, said nothing, but the wrong note pulsed once, harder, and the pulse was a reminder. I know what your body is doing. The knowing is mine.

The townhouse appeared between two buildings that Wren was certain had been adjacent a moment before. The door opened without a key. Wren felt the threshold in her feet, a line of sound that said mine, and it parted for the Dissonance and closed around Wren's ankle and the closing traveled upward, through the calf, through the thigh, joining the hum already sitting in her.

Inside. Dark wood, high ceilings, no warmth. Instruments on the walls, humming. The house was made of sound, sustained notes that held the walls up, and the notes were in the air she was breathing, in the floor under her feet. Every surface she touched hummed and the humming found nerve endings that were already raw.

Rules, the Dissonance said. You do not play without my permission. You do not leave without my permission. You do not touch the instruments on the walls. You do not speak to anyone I do not bring here. You do what I say, when I say it. The reasons are not yours to have.

The collar went on.

The Dissonance's hand hovered an inch from Wren's throat and she made a sound, low, sustained, the note from the dream. The note touched Wren's throat and stayed, and the staying was not just in the throat. The collar's note traveled her body the way the Dissonance's touch had traveled, downward, into the heat between her legs. The note sat there, a permanent hum, a sustained warmth against the most sensitive nerve. Wren felt her body clench around nothing and the clenching was the collar's doing, was the keeping made physical, made intimate. The arousal that had been building since the underpass did not subside, just hummed, low and constant, a fermata on her nerve endings.

She reached up. Her fingertips found nothing. Only skin and the knowledge that something was there, singing her into the shape of a kept thing, singing her into the shape of a wet, desperate, wanting thing.

It comes off when I say it comes off. You come when I say you come.

The words were a double meaning and the Dissonance meant both.

You will call me the Dissonance. Nothing else. Not until I decide you may.

The grey eyes traveled down, over the flushed skin, the hard nipples through the fabric, the thighs pressed together. The traveling found the arousal and did not comment on it, and the not-commenting was the cruelty.

Kneel, the Dissonance said.

Wren knelt. The wood floor was hard and the kneeling pressed her thighs together and the pressing made the hum shift and the shift made her breath catch and the Dissonance heard the catch.

The Dissonance stood above her. Close. Her hand came to Wren's jaw, tilted her face up, the grip firm. Wren looked up. The grey eyes were close and too bright and the wrong note was in the air and in the body and in the collar, and the three were one, and the one said mine.

The Dissonance stepped closer. Her hand stayed on Wren's jaw, holding her in place, and her body was warm and close and smelled like smoke and something darker, something green and growing. She reached down and gathered the fabric of her own skirt, pulled it up, and stepped forward so that her bare thigh pressed against Wren's cheek.

Taste me, she said.

Wren's mouth was at the level of the Dissonance's heat. She could smell her, wet and warm and dark, and the scent was the wrong note made physical, was the sound translated into salt and musk and something electric. The collar pulsed and the pulse was a command and the command went through her body, downward, and the opening of her mouth was the body's answer, the yes that was not the noise, the real voice saying here.

She pressed her lips to the Dissonance's pussy and the taste was immediate, warm, tangy, overwhelming. The Dissonance's hand moved from Wren's jaw to her hair, not pulling, holding. The holding was the control.

The Dissonance moved against her. Slowly. The rhythm was not Wren's. The rhythm was the Dissonance's, each movement a note, each note a claim. Wren's tongue found the rhythm and followed it and the following was the submission, was the being-used, and the being-used was the being-kept.

The Dissonance was wet. Profoundly wet. The wetness coated Wren's chin, her lips, and the wetness was the wrong note, was the sound made liquid, and Wren drank it and the drinking was the taking-in, was the devotion. The warmth of the Dissonance's pleasure sat on Wren's tongue and traveled down and pooled in her stomach and the pooling was the claim.

The Dissonance's breathing changed. The hand in Wren's hair tightened. The rhythm lost its precision, became something rawer, more desperate, and the sound the Dissonance made was quiet, broken, a fracture in her own note. She came against Wren's mouth and the coming was a wave, was a sound Wren could feel in her own body through the collar, and the feeling was sympathetic, was the resonance of one body answering another.

The Dissonance stepped back. Smoothed her skirt. Wren's mouth was wet. Her chin was wet. Her body was empty and desperate and the collar hummed and the hum would not let her forget the desperation.

Good, the Dissonance said. One word.

She turned and walked into the room beyond the doorway and did not look back.

She did not let Wren come. That was the first lesson. The collar hummed and the hum kept her on the edge and the edge was the keeping and the keeping was the only language this woman had. Wren was learning it, taste by taste, in a house that breathed around her and did not let her forget.

She lay on the bed in the third-floor room and the collar hummed in her throat and between her legs and the hum was low and constant and would not stop. She pressed her thighs together and the pressing made it worse and the worse was the cage. She did not touch herself. She had not been told she could and the not-telling was the cruelty and the cruelty was the point. The wet, desperate, wanting silence that was not the bedsit silence, not the lonely silence, but the silence of a body that had been filled and was empty and was waiting to be filled again.

She did not sleep. The collar hummed. The wanting hummed. The two hums were one.