Chains
Chains that bind are best made from indefinable things.
Delicate things. Ribbons that slide, water-slick and sweet, over dampened skin. Finely-wrought links of silver, no thicker than an eyelash, cool metal placed like a kiss on warm flesh. Words, honeyed and dangerous, falling like candy from poisoned lips. Melisande prefers the subtle over the immediate. Why bother with heavy, cumbersome steel when a few pretty turns of phrase, a trinket or two, will do?
When she threads Phedre's diamond, she takes a moment to appreciate the captured light shining in the cold white stone while her fingers rub against thick velvet. The diamond is meant to rest in the hollow of a throat. The lightest of touches, for the strongest of chains.
Kusheline blood is like arcane magic, and it sings through Melisande's veins like a whip slices through air. The sound of a gasp, the writhe of flesh beneath torment, all of this is a joy to her. Her mind, clever and sharp, drinks at intrigue like water sprung forth in a desert. Melisande wakes at night, awoken by ambition so terrible it burns like fire in the depth of her soul, promises of sovereignty drifting like jasmine through the chill night air.
You could be queen.
Phedre, bound to Melisande and her twisted schemes by vicious pleasure and a stone that shines like ice. Melisande, bound by whispers in the darkness of greatness untold.
We are all bound, Melisande thinks, watching the lights dance merrily in the stone. The question is, who will break free, and who will break.
Diamonds do not break. It is a lesson, Melisande gives. A promise.
A threat.