The Hollow Throne

“Sometimes you must lose the room to remember who built it.”

Her bedroom was too clean.

Too soft. Too pink. Too curated.

Dominique sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her open closet, still in her school uniform, hair unpinned and falling into her eyes. The silence was thick—no music, no phone, no laptop hum.

Just the sound of a girl trying not to break.

Her eyes were bloodshot.

Her limbs ached.

Her mouth was dry, and her fingers kept twitching—toward her laptop, toward her phone, toward her mask.

But she didn’t want to dominate.

Not tonight.

She wanted to understand.

So she reached under her bed and pulled out the black velvet-wrapped journal—The Mistress Bible, she once called it. Pages of rules, philosophies, scene breakdowns, subs who begged, and subs who disappointed. And scattered between them? Letters to herself. Secrets only Domica ever read.

She opened to a blank page.

Her pen hovered.

And then it poured.

I don’t know who I am tonight.

Not Domica. Not Dominique.

Just someone bleeding invisible bruises because I forgot how to breathe in lace.

I tried to punish someone last night and ended up punishing myself.

They disobeyed. And I hesitated. That hesitation is rotting me from the inside out.

Why did I kneel for a stranger? Why did I come so hard I forgot my own name?

Why do I want to scream but can't find my voice unless someone else is begging for it?

The ink blurred as her hand shook.

Tears slid down her cheeks, dripping onto the paper, smearing her words.

She wiped her face quickly, breath hitching—but not in pain.

In shame.

Her fingers flipped back through old pages until she found a section dated almost three years ago.

The header was messy, almost rushed:

“Madam A’s Lessons: Power Never Blushes”

FLASHBACK – AGE 14

Dominique sat in her grandmother’s parlor in Paris, her knees together, her silk gloves spotless despite the chocolate her nanny tried to sneak her. The wallpaper was crimson velvet. The tea set was edged in gold.

Her grandmother, Aurelia Devereux, wore a peignoir and red lipstick at noon and referred to herself only as “Madam.”

Madam had once run the most exclusive pleasure salon in Europe—discreet, decadent, and whispered about in embassies and royal families alike.

“Tell me, my little diamond,” she purred, brushing Dominique’s hair with an ivory comb. “Do you know the difference between obedience and surrender?”

“One is forced,” Dominique said. “The other is given.”

Aurelia beamed.

“Yes. And you, my darling, were born to be given everything.”

She set the brush down and turned Dominique’s chin gently to face her.

“One day, the world will ask you to shrink. It will tell you that you're too much—too sharp, too cold, too knowing.”

“Like Mother says.”

Aurelia’s smile soured.

“Your mother wears pearls like shackles. She never learned how to command.”

She pressed a kiss to Dominique’s forehead.

“But you, my heart… You’re already a throne. You only need to remember.”

Dominique had blinked at her.

“What if I forget?”

“Then I will remind you. And when I am gone, your bones will remember for me.”

That was the last time she saw her grandmother alive.

Back in the present, Dominique wiped her face with the edge of her sleeve.

She ran her fingers over the old ink.

Power never blushes.

She remembered how her grandmother would smoke in a claw-foot tub and lecture Dominique on posture, voice tone, eye contact.

“A man’s wallet follows his breath,” she said once. “If you can control how he breathes, you own his bank account and his soul.”

Dominique laughed through her tears, the sound soft and broken.

“God, Madam… I miss you.”

The ache deep in her chest twisted.

But something warm bloomed beside it.

Not rage.

Not shame.

Something like… hunger.

She set her journal aside and stood.

Walked to her vanity.

Her eyes were red. Mascara smeared. Lipstick long gone.

She didn’t fix any of it.

She just smiled at her own reflection.

A slow, terrifying smile.

Because she was coming back.

Not because a man summoned her.

Not because a room expected her.

But because her grandmother had whispered to her bones:

“A throne can’t be stolen. It must be claimed.”

She went to her closet and pulled out a different pair of heels.

Not her usual Domica boots.

These were Madam’s.

Red suede, six inches, worn only once.

She slipped them on and stood taller.

The mirror didn’t lie.

She was still Her.

Just bleeding a little more elegantly this time.

Dominique stood in Madam’s red heels, spine tall, lips parted in something closer to a smirk than a smile.

The room still smelled like vanilla and tears, but the air had shifted.

She felt it.

That click of balance reassembling inside her.

That whisper of steel threading beneath her skin.

She walked to her desk—slow, regal, deliberate—and picked up her journal again. Her fingers brushed the corner of the leather cover, tracing the gold-embossed M.

Mistress.

Madam.

Monster.

All three were true.

All three were hers.

She slipped the journal back under the bed, a secret no less powerful for being hidden.

Then her laptop chimed.

Once.

Sharp. Clean. Unmissable.

Her breath caught for the briefest second.

She turned.

The screen was still closed, but she didn’t need to see it.

She knew.

WolfEyes89.

She moved toward it.

Not quickly.

Not hungrily.

Like a queen walking toward a chessboard she no longer feared.

She opened the lid.

The message was simple.

WolfEyes89: “Do you miss it?”

That was all.

No greeting. No demands. No signature.

Just that single line.

Her cursor blinked in the reply box. Waiting.

Her fingers hovered.

Once upon a time, that question would have shredded her. Would have sent her spiraling into need, confusion, submission.

But not now.

Not tonight.

Her lips parted. Then closed again.

She moved the cursor to the corner of the message window.

And clicked mute.

No reply.

No performance.

No permission.

Not because she was angry.

Not because she wasn’t still trembling on the edge of something when she thought about him.

But because he didn’t get to write her story anymore.

Not until she let him.

Not until she chose it.

And she wasn’t there yet.

Dominique closed the laptop.

Stood taller.

The heels felt steadier now.

Like memory had become armor.

Like Aurelia—Madam—was still brushing her hair with that ivory comb in a crimson room, whispering,

“Power never blushes, darling. It bites back.”

Dominique smiled.

And for the first time in days…

She felt whole.

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