Chapter 1

“BDSM: A sacred discipline of witchcraft, where power, restraint, and sensation are shaped into ritual and mastery. Conceived by witches; later stolen and crudely imitated by humans.”

Lexicon of Magical Arts, Vol. I

April 14, 2025 - Kael Family Manor (Irish countryside) - 4:30 p.m.

Selene Kael was sprawled across the vast sofa in the manor’s main salon - her manor - enjoying a moment of calm while leafing through the latest issue of the Hexa Dublin Times.

Calm at last ... or so it might have been, if not for Lady Isobel Fairmont, determined as ever to disrupt the quiet afternoon of reading Selene had allowed herself.

The young woman - thirty years old, objectively very beautiful (and very much to Selene’s taste) with her long auburn hair, nearly always perfectly styled, and her lovely hazel eyes - was, as usual, intent on protesting as much as possible against the “ill-treatment” to which she claimed to be subjected.

Fortunately, Selene’s vigilance ensured those protests were thoroughly muffled by the red leather harness panel gag - specially commissioned for her, and matching her auburn hair so perfectly - crafted at the order of the Kael matriarch herself.

Of course - something Selene knew better than anyone - even the finest gag was meaningless unless paired with an effective restraint to prevent the wearer, in this case the ravishing Lady Fairmont, from removing it at will. And in this particular instance, one could say the restraint was ... very effective indeed.

At the foot of the sofa, Lady Isobel Fairmont knelt upon the thick carpet, held fast in an elaborate web of crimson cords. Her arms were drawn tightly behind her back, her torso cinched in a decorative harness that framed her curves with cruel precision, her legs neatly folded and secured beneath her. From the center of the binding, a single line climbed to the carved foot of the sofa itself, tethering her so firmly that there could be no doubt: the restraint was, indeed, very effective.

Oh, of course, the lovely aristocrat had struggled against her bonds with all her strength during the first hour of her daily bondage session. She had wriggled, pulled at the ropes, sought out the knots, and, as always, thrown Selene her trademark outraged glares. But the matriarch knew her craft. After three hours of writhing, gagged protests, and theatrical groans, the young lady was still exactly where Selene had left her - and would remain so until the mistress of the house decided otherwise.

Not that Lady Isobel was a poor escape artist. She considered her talents in that regard to be “average” - that is to say, those of a woman quite unable to pick handcuffs, but more than capable of writhing energetically and theatrically in an attempt to loosen ropes (with the theatrical part being her true specialty).

No, it was not that Lady Isobel was catastrophically inept at games involving escape from her restraints. It was simply that Selene herself was a mistress of the art, able to make so-called “Shibari masters” look like mere apprentices.

And yet, no one - and I do mean no one - would ever have suspected that Selene possessed such talents merely by looking at her.

After all, how could a woman so breathtaking - with her long blond hair, shimmering almost silver, her mischievous smile, and her extraordinary eyes, one a piercing blue and the other a radiant pink - possibly turn out to be, not just a professional, but a Mistress with a capital M, capable of trussing up a lady in under two minutes?

It seemed surreal, unthinkable. And yet, not quite. For Selene Kael, despite her appearance as a lively, playful, and faintly innocent woman in her thirties, was in truth a powerful witch of ninety years.

And not just any witch.

Beyond belonging to the Kael family - which Isobel had learned to be “one of the wealthiest and most prestigious dynasties in the magical world” (a relative shock, considering she had only minutes earlier discovered that her “playful neighbor” was in fact older than her own grandmother) - the beautiful Selene Kael was, in truth, a Magical Dominatrix.

And the nuance lay entirely in that single word: Magical. By now, Isobel knew that a Magical Dominatrix had little in common either with an ordinary human dominatrix or with a simple mistress dabbling in spells.

For a human like Isobel, a Magical Dominatrix was nothing less than a goddess - one who had taken an inexplicable interest in BDSM and pursued it with such devotion that she had polished it into its purest, most perfect form. They played at a level so far above human dominants - or even ordinary witches - that one could almost pity those who thought themselves skilled. Almost.

In truth - and this Isobel had quickly discovered - humans practiced a low-cost version of what they had only dimly understood of BDSM, a pale imitation of the art as it had been invented and perfected by witches. And even that “higher-end” witchcraft version was nothing compared to what a Magical Dominatrix could achieve.

Isobel was therefore hopelessly out of her depth, in the delicious hands of a woman who knew perfectly well how to keep her in line. Of course, that did not stop the lovely Isobel from expressing her opinion on her so-called “desperate situation.”