Keeper of My Peace
Copyright© 2025 by Danielle
Chapter 5: The Proving
Confidence was a garment I had worn my entire life, tailored by my name, my wealth, my will. But the confidence I felt now was of a different fabric altogether. It was deeper, colder, and absolute. It was the confidence of a god who had witnessed their creation function perfectly in the world.
The whispers in the house had solidified into a dense, respectful silence whenever Lumina and I passed. The younger sisters averted their eyes, not out of disgust, but out of a nascent understanding that they were in the presence of something they could not comprehend—a level of commitment so total it bordered on the terrifying. They saw her naked, collared form not as an object of pity, but as a symbol of my power. And power, in this house, was the only true currency.
It was time to test that power beyond our walls. The campus library, Violet’s old sanctuary, was the perfect proving ground.
“We’re going out,” I announced to her that afternoon. She was in my suite, dusting the bookshelves with a soft, white cloth. Her movements were economical, silent. She stopped immediately and turned to face me, her hands falling to her sides.
“Yes, Master Bethany.”
“To the library.”
There was not a flicker in her eyes. No recognition of the irony, no fear of returning to the scene of her old life as this new, unveiled creature. She was simply awaiting direction. The blank slate was truly blank.
“Follow me.”
We descended the main staircase this time, a deliberate choice. I wanted them to see us leave. I wanted the narrative to spread. The foyer fell silent as we passed through it, a sea of parted lips and wide eyes. I held my head high. Lumina walked beside me, her gaze forward, her posture a living testament to my will. The click of the main door closing behind us was like a starting pistol.
It was there that I saw our junior sorority sister Lena, who waxed my doll. She was loitering by the hydrangea bushes, looking small and uncertain. The sight of her, this girl who had broken her modesty in the service of polishing my asset, presented a delicious opportunity. A live test for a junior operator.
“Lena,” I called, my voice cutting through the campus hum.
She jumped, her eyes wide as she took in the full, shocking tableau of Lumina and me. “B-Bethany?”
“You will accompany us,” I stated. It was not a request. “You will observe. You will learn what true commitment to this house looks like.”
Her face paled, but she gave a jerky nod and fell into step a few paces behind us, a nervous, clothed shadow to my serene, unclad one. The contrast was perfect.
The walk to the library was a study in social dynamics. Students stopped mid-stride. Conversations died. A dropped textbook lay forgotten on the path. The world narrowed to a tunnel with Lumina and me at its center. I could feel the heat of a hundred stares on her skin, but she showed no reaction. Her breathing remained even. Her steps were measured. She was like a sleek, hairless cat moving through a pack of startled dogs, her unnatural calm making them seem foolish and agitated. I could hear Lena’s shallow, nervous breaths behind us, a soundtrack to her own deconstruction.
This is it, I thought, my heart thrumming with a dark exhilaration. This is art. Not just the breaking, but the unashamed display of the broken thing.
We reached the library’s heavy oak doors. I pulled one open and held it for her. A gentleman’s gesture for my unclad slave. The absurdity was delicious.
The hushed atmosphere of the library amplified the reaction. The quiet rustle of pages and the soft tap of keyboards ceased. Here, in this temple of knowledge and quiet conformity, her presence was a detonation. A librarian at the central desk looked up, her face a perfect mask of shock, her hand flying to her mouth.
I ignored her. I led Lumina past the rows of study carrels, toward the periodicals section. I chose a table in the open, under the bright, unforgiving fluorescent lights.
“Sit,” I commanded, pulling out a chair for her.
She sat, folding her hands in her lap, her back straight. The platinum collar gleamed against her skin. She was a statue of serene submission in the middle of the frantic, silent chaos she was causing.
I took the seat opposite her, placing a book I had brought on the table between us. I didn’t open it. I didn’t need to. The book was a prop. The performance was hers. I gestured for Lena to stand off to the side, a visible part of our entourage. She looked as if she wanted to dissolve into the bookshelves.
I watched the audience. A group of frat boys at a nearby table elbowed each other, their leers slowly fading into a confused unease under the weight of her absolute stillness. A girl who had been in one of Violet’s literature classes stared, her face pale, a silent question in her eyes: What happened to you? Lumina did not see her. She saw only me.
This was the ultimate lesson. I was not just her master in the privacy of the sorority house. I was her master here, in the heart of the world she used to inhabit. Her reality was not a location; it was my presence.
After twenty perfect, excruciating minutes, I stood. “We’re leaving.”
She rose smoothly and followed me. Our exit was even more potent than our entrance. The silence was thicker, charged with a kind of awe. They had seen something they could not process, and in that failure of understanding, my power was cemented. Lena scurried after us, her lesson in unwavering obedience seared into her.
We were halfway back to the house when a figure stepped into our path. It was him. The graduate student from the union, the one who had spoken up that first night. His face was set in a grim line of determination.
“Bethany,” he said, his voice tight. He refused to look at Lumina, keeping his eyes locked on mine. “This has to stop. This is ... this is insane. Let her go.”
I felt a flash of white-hot anger, but I kept my voice a glacial calm. “Let who go? I’m simply walking with my attendant.”
His composure cracked. “You know what you’re doing! She’s ... she’s not well. Can’t you see that? Violet, look at me. Talk to me.”
He made the fatal mistake of trying to reach for her, to bypass me and appeal to the ghost he thought was still inside.
He never touched her.
Lumina didn’t flinch, didn’t look at him. She simply took a half-step closer to me, her shoulder brushing my arm, a silent, unequivocal statement of allegiance. It was a movement so subtle, so instinctive, that it was more powerful than any words.
I looked at the graduate student, at his horrified, defeated face. “You see?” I said, my voice dripping with condescending pity. “She doesn’t know anyone named Violet. You are addressing Lumina. And you are in our way.”
I didn’t wait for a response. I walked forward, and he was forced to step aside, his crusade collapsing into nothingness. Lumina flowed with me, a seamless extension of my will. Lena followed, her head down, but her pace was surer now. She had seen the outside world challenge us, and she had seen it fail.
The rest of the walk was completed in a silence that felt like a victory march. At the sorority house steps, I dismissed Lena with a nod. She scurried inside, forever changed. I led Lumina to my room, and for a moment, I did not close the door.
“You performed perfectly today,” I said. It was the highest praise I could offer.
She looked at me, and for the first time, I saw something new in her eyes, something beyond acceptance. It was a fierce, burning pride. She had faced the outside world and had not been found wanting. She had proven her worth to me, and in doing so, had proven the inviolability of our bond.
“Thank you, Master Bethany,” she whispered, the words filled with a fervent gratitude that was better than any drug.
I closed the door, the lock turning with a soft, final click. I leaned my forehead against the cool wood, breathing deeply. The experiment was a resounding success. The asset was not just integrated; it was loyal. It had chosen its master in the face of a would-be savior.
Violet was not just gone. She had been publicly renounced. And Lumina, my Lumina, was now truly, irrevocably, mine.
Yet, as I walked away, the godlike confidence settled around me once more, a cold and heavy mantle. I had designed the test, but she had passed it on her own terms. Her step toward me had been her own calculation, her own defense of our shared reality. The tool was not just loyal; it was now actively guarding the hand that wielded it. And I was left to wonder, with a thrill that was equal parts terror and ecstasy, who was truly proving themselves to whom.
The silence of the hallway after I closed her door was profound. The echo of her fervent “thank you” seemed to hang in the air, a scent more potent than perfume. I stood there for a long moment, my forehead against the cool wood, not in exhaustion, but in a kind of reverence. The god who had witnessed their creation function perfectly now had to reconcile with the fact that the creation had, in its perfect function, developed a will of its own—a will that was entirely dedicated to me, and was therefore all the more formidable.
I found Chloe in the main parlor, aggressively rearranging a vase of lilies. The tension in her shoulders was a familiar language. She had heard, of course. The news of our procession and the graduate student would have reached her in minutes, a wildfire of gossip.
She didn’t look at me. “So. The circus has left town. I trust the show was a success.”
Her tone was all bruised ego and blunted force. I saw the scene through her eyes: the grand, public display, the inclusion of Lena, the confrontation where Lumina’s silent allegiance was more powerful than any of Chloe’s fists could ever be. She was becoming obsolete, and she knew it.
“It was a necessary stress test,” I said, my voice neutral. I moved to the sidebar and poured a glass of mineral water, the bubbles a pale imitation of the effervescence I felt. “The asset performed beyond parameters. She was challenged directly, and her loyalty to the hierarchy was absolute.”
Finally, she turned, her eyes dark with a resentment she could no longer fully contain. “Her loyalty? Or her programming? Don’t confuse the two, Bethany. You stripped the girl and put a collar on her. You didn’t perform a miracle.”
A cold smile touched my lips. “Didn’t I? What is a miracle but a violation of natural law? I violated the law of the self. I proved that will is not sacrosanct. It can be transferred. What you call programming, I call a higher state of being. She is ... efficient. Purely, beautifully efficient.”
“And what are we?” Chloe shot back, gesturing around my room. “Your audience? Your stagehands?”
“You are the foundation upon which this new reality is built,” I replied, the lie smooth and comforting. “Your role is evolving, as all things must.”
But her words needled me. You didn’t perform a miracle. She was wrong, of course. Yet, she had stumbled upon the very doubt that had begun to coil in my gut. The miracle felt less like something I had authored and more like something I had stumbled upon and learned to direct. I was the conductor of a symphony that was beginning to compose its own crescendos.
Later, in the sanctum of my suite, the memory of the graduate student’s face—so full of futile, human concern—played behind my eyes. He had seen a victim. He had seen madness. He had seen nothing at all. The true madness was the order we had created, an order so severe it appeared as chaos to the uninitiated.
I looked at Lumina, who had resumed her place on the floor at the foot of my bed, a human-shaped pillar of peace. The library, the stares, the confrontation—it might as well have been a dream. There was no residual excitement, no trauma, not even the flicker of pride I had seen earlier. It was simply another task completed.
“Today,” I began, my voice cutting through the quiet, “when the man approached. You moved closer to me.”
She lifted her gaze. “Yes, Master Bethany.”
“Why?”
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