Chapter Text
Damn.
Laura shifts back, eyes wide. The snake is wrapped around her thighs and knees, its head raised.
Carmilla and the snake stare at each other, unblinking.
Carmilla wracks her brain: a spell for this. "Fugam," she breathes. "tacebitis." Retreat and be still.
The snake blinks. Then, very slowly, it begins to move, loosening its coils on Laura's thighs. Its raised head drifts to the right, and it begins to shift, wrapping its head around one of the bars. Carmilla watches hopefully. But its tail end twists, smoothly, around Laura's wrist, and pulls her hand against the bar. It throws Carmilla what might almost pass as a defiant look, and flicks its tongue once, before twisting fluidly up the bar, dragging Laura's wrist along with it. Its stength tugs Laura to her feet, and she staggers, surprised. It winds its way all the way to the top of the bar, suspending Laura on the balls of her feet.
The snake stops at the top, and coils its body in rings around Laura's wrist and the bar, clenching her in place. It throws Carmilla another level glare, flicks its tongue, and slowly begins to change form again. The lithe body morphs into a golden chain, much thicker than before, and with a sound like the fizzing of sautered metal, it fuses with the iron roof of the cage. Laura is completely trapped in place, suspended on tip-toe up against one of the cage's thick bars.
The scent of smoking metal is thick in the air. Laura twists her wrist, staring up at it and its new chain. Then she leans her cheek against the bar in front of her and looks at Carmilla. Her lips are parted with concern. But her eyes are also glassy with arousal.
"It's alright," Carmilla says. "We're still going to get you out of here. Just... let me think for a moment."
Carmilla turns away, averting her eyes from the angel's beauty and trying to think straight. She looks out at the hall, where only hours before her mother had possessed the girl's body as a sick demonstration of her power, and pronounced her a virgin sacrifice.
That's what's at stake, here, Carmilla reminds herself grimly. They want to kill her. So don't get distracted by...by her.
Carmilla's heart is beating very quickly. She tries to think.
Perhaps a scorching spell for the snake. But how to avoid burning Laura? And once the snake was off, how to get Laura out of the hall? She could fly out through one of the narrow windows at the top of the stone walls, but in her current state? She might not even make it.
The enchantment on her would be deepening, and more-than-likely sexual pleasure was starting to seem more important than survival itself.
Carmilla hears a little gasp behind her.
She looks around, her heart in her throat. The angel is pressing herself up against the thick cage bar in front of her, her legs straddling it. The silky golden fabric of her skirt is scrunched up around the bar, and baring the tops of her thighs. Suspended on the balls of her feet by the hand chained above her head, and gripping the pole beside her with her free hand, she rubs herself clumsily against the pole, bumping it between her legs and trying to press herself against it. She manages to grind a few circles against it and gasps, tugging herself forward for more.
Her large brown eyes rise, humiliated but desperate, to Carmilla's.
She gasps something in her own language, some sort of a plea.
Carmilla's mouth has gone very dry, and her breath is thin and weak. The angel is so exquisite; Carmilla could look at her face all day, the intelligent, pretty, defiant lines. Flushed with heat, that face makes Carmilla feel so, so much more than she wants to feel right now. Then there are her bare legs, her collarbones, the tendons flexing in her neck, her nipples hardened under the silky gold fabric wrapped around her breasts. Her face...
The thought hits Carmilla from the side, and she cringes with the guilt of it. The most effective plan would be to relieve Laura of this need. Then she could concentrate on her escape...
But that would mean...Carmilla thinks of the enchanted golden powder that the queen had snugged between the girl's legs. To touch it would be...but that isn't what matters.
What matters is that it wouldn't be right. Or would it? It is impossible to know.
Carmilla takes an involuntary a step toward Laura.
To make love to her, to take her virginity...it wasn't right. The girl was helpless in the fist of a powerful enchantment. She couldn't give true consent, not like this, the way Carmilla would have wanted...if circumstances were different. It wasn't good, no, but it might be the only way that Carmilla was going to get her out of here alive...
It wasn't right, no, but was Carmilla not a dark thing of the underworld?
She takes another step forward. The two of them are looking into each others' eyes.
Carmilla reaches up, and Laura reaches out her free hand through the bars. Their fingers touch, then slide to interlock. Laura's palm is burning hot against Carmilla's cool one.
Carmilla lets out a little breath of pent-up longing as she steps in close to Laura's body, the fingers of her free hand brushing lightly over Laura's bared thigh. Laura leans around the pole, and lets her burning lips sink against Carmilla's in an open-mouthed kiss.