Sweet Dreams
Sweet Dreams, Chapter 1 of 5
The threshold of the saga, the queen who senses what is coming before anyone else knows it has begun. When you see the violet earring, you are already dreaming.
The Succubus Saga
The Demon Queens
An original dark fantasy story series by Merci Web Design Studio, told one chapter at a time. Demon queens, each gorgeous, each ancient, each keeping an office older than the world around her. Every design below is a chapter, ready to hang on your wall as a print or poster, or wear on a shirt, all through Fine Art America.
Come Here
Come Here, Chapter 1
Fate does not chase. She stands still, crooks one finger, and the road rearranges itself to bring you to her.
See You Tonight
See You Tonight, Chapter 1
She does not hope, and she does not threaten. She simply tells you where you will be tonight, and she has never once been wrong.
Behind The Mask
Behind The Mask, Chapter 1
Everyone in her court wears a mask, and everyone believes the mask is the disguise. She knows the face you hide is the only true one you own.
Forbidden Knowledge
The Librarian, Chapter 1
She keeps the Archive, every book that was ever burned, banned, or buried, and she has read all of them. Ask her anything; the price is that you cannot unknow the answer.
The Toast
The Toast, Chapter 1
She raises her glass in a burning speakeasy, a toast to poor decisions, and every man drinking knows she is the reason it is burning.
Storm Warning
Storm Warning, Chapter 1
Where the other queens scheme, she celebrates, the storm arriving like a festival, laughing in the wind she commands.
The Summoner
The Summoner, Chapter 1
Every chain of events in the saga starts with her chalk circle and her curiosity. She does not summon demons. She is what the demons answer to.
The Black Rose
The Black Rose, Chapter 1
She keeps the Garden, and the Garden keeps the saga’s mercy. A black rose from her hand has ended wars. What she keeps, she keeps forever.
The Crimson Thorn
The Crimson Thorn, Chapter 1
Every garden has one flower you reach for last. She does not chase, she does not call, she does not bargain. She stands where the roses grow red enough to look black, and she lets you do the walking. Reach for her last, traveler. Everybody does.
The Ice Queen
Ice Queen, Chapter 1
A kingdom of ice held together by a queen who has never once lost her temper, or her throne. Restraint is her power.
The Night the Dream Came to the Inn
Sweet Dreams and The Silk Road, A Meeting
Nobody reaches the last inn by accident. That night Sweet Dreams came out of the dark between the dunes a little after midnight, and the price of a bed was the same as always: one secret, honestly told.
Desert Moon
Desert Moon, Chapter 1
She keeps the only oasis that moves. Caravans cross three nights of dunes by her moon and find her water exactly where the maps swear nothing lives, and the price of drinking is a story told honestly under her sky.
The Lighthouse
The Lighthouse, Chapter 1
Daughter of Storm Warning, keeper of the last light on a drowning coast. Ships steer by her lamp through weather her mother makes for joy.
Night Blossom
Night Blossom, Chapter 1
She keeps the moon garden and the bridge over still water, and her gift is hearing: footsteps, secrets, and the thing that is coming, long before it arrives.
The Last Train
The Last Train, Chapter 1
Her train runs a line that appears on no timetable, out of a station that closed a century ago. One seat is always empty, and it is always the seat beside her.
She Flies At Night
She Flies At Night, Chapter 1
By day the rooftops belong to the gargoyles. By night they belong to her, and the city’s insomniacs leave their windows open an inch wider, just in case.
The Tomb Queen
Tomb Queen, Chapter 1
She doesn’t rob tombs. The tomb was built for her. Her verb is the oldest in the saga: she endures.
Midnight In Venice
Midnight In Venice, Chapter 1
The canals keep her hours. What walks Venice after midnight belongs to her, and the city has loved her too long to be afraid properly.
Empire Of Night
Empire Of Night, Chapter 1
She remembers every empire that ever fell, because she was standing in all of them when they did. Empires end. She files them.
Daughter Of The North
Daughter Of The North, Chapter 1
Furs, iron, and aurora light. The north does not forgive, and neither does she, but the sailors who carry her token always come home.
The Vintage
The Vintage, Chapter 1
She keeps the vineyard, the villa, the lanterns, the harvest, all hers since before the stones were laid. Other estates boast about their old vintages. Hers walks the rows at night.
Midnight Mesa
Midnight Mesa, Chapter 1
The town emptied out years ago, the mine closed, the well ran dry. She never left. On a still night her lantern moves along the boardwalk, and the saloon piano plays one song, always for her.
The Silk Road
The Silk Road, Chapter 1
Hers is the last inn on the desert road, and every caravan stops. The fountain has run for a thousand years, and the price of a bed is one secret, honestly told.
Bayou Moon
Bayou Moon, Chapter 1
Her lantern has burned on that dock since before the parish had a name. The gators keep their distance, the fireflies follow her home, and the lost always find her light eventually.
Paris After Dark
Paris After Dark, Chapter 1
She knows every rooftop in Paris, and the gargoyles dip their stone heads when she passes. Painters have been inventing her face for two hundred years, and she has not aged a day.
The Keeping
The Night Gardener, Chapter 1
Her garden grows from what people leave unsaid and unloved. She takes nothing, things are left, abandoned, entrusted, and she keeps them all. In her hand hangs the great brass key her aunt gave her, so she can cross the garden at night and check on her mother.
The Oracle of Didyma
The Oracle, Chapter 1
Kings crossed the sea to ask one question at the Temple of Apollo at Didyma in Turkey, and she has kept that seat since the first stone was laid. She answers one question, the one you truly came to ask. The temple was never finished, and neither is any answer she gives.
The Crystal Court
Sweet Dreams, Chapter 2 of 5
Her court is made of the dreams of crystal and candlelight, and the dream politely rearranges itself around her while everyone looks at her.
The Open Hand
Come Here, Chapter 2
She does not hunt. The men in her portraits are never dragged and never tricked, they come up the long road with their own reasons. On the nights one does not turn back, the candles light themselves down both rails, and she comes down the stairs with her hand already open.
The First Catalogue
The Librarian, Chapter 2
Alexandria, the Great Library new built, taking a book off every ship that docks. On the cataloguer’s desk one morning sits a scroll no ship brought and no scribe copied. The harbor will say the Library died in the fires. It did not die. It moved, and she keeps it still.
The Frozen Ball
Ice Queen, Chapter 2
One night a year she opens the ice palace, and every guest learns one standing warning at the door. Never ask why she dances alone.
The First Fire of Caral
Desert Moon, Chapter 2
Caral, in the Supe Valley of Peru, the oldest city in the Americas, new raised five thousand years ago, a city that forged no weapons and raised no walls. Her price at her own oasis is a story honestly told. Caral is the one city men ever built that runs on her law by itself, and she attended its first fire.
Star of the Sea
The Lighthouse, Chapter 2
For two thousand years sailors have prayed to a star that is not a star. Stella Maris, Star of the Sea, the light that does not move when the storm takes every other bearing. She never promised them the harbor. She promised they would not go down unwatched.
What the Bridge Hears
Night Blossom, Chapter 2
The bridge over her still water hears everything said above it and everything swimming below it, and it tells her both. Tonight it hears a step it has never heard in a thousand years.
The Captain’s Chart
She Flies At Night, Chapter 2
Every captain in the sky ports laughs at her chart in public. It shows a place no other chart shows, a great spiral turning in the empty sky, with a route drawn to its heart in gold ink. In private they say something else: she drew it herself, from memory, the week she came back from the voyage nobody else ever survived.
The Sealed Chamber
Tomb Queen, Chapter 2
She stands before the Great Sphinx of Giza as it was the day it was finished, painted and whole. The seal holds because she holds it, and the chamber behind it is still hers.
The Last Banquet
Empire Of Night, Chapter 2
Rome in its glory, the feast at its height, and she at the table remembering every course. The books say what happened. She was there, and her memory does not always agree with them.
The Crimson Bolt
The Silk Road, Chapter 2
Once a year she crosses into the daylight market, where everyone can see her plainly, and buys one bolt of crimson silk. The richest merchant in the oasis offers her a chest of gold for a single secret she keeps. What is kept is not sold. That is the whole of the law.
Where the Gargoyles Bow
Paris After Dark, Chapter 2
Two hundred years she has walked the roofs of Paris, and there is not a gargoyle she has not passed in the dark. On their own gallery the stone heads bow, and the city of light keeps its lights on for her.
The Crossing
The Night Gardener, Chapter 2
Every night she crosses the garden with the key to check on her mother, and nobody speaks. The night of this picture, she found the pavilion empty, and her mother standing in the moonlight, closer to her sister’s house than she had stood in years.
The First Garden
The Black Rose, Chapter 2
Before she kept the Garden of the saga, she kept the first garden the world remembers, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in ancient Iraq. One rose on the highest terrace she has never picked, and no one alive knows who it is kept for. What she keeps, she keeps forever.
The First Storm
Storm Warning, Chapter 2
On the first night the Colossus of Rhodes stood complete over the harbor, she came out of the Aegean to see if bronze could stand her weather. It stood. Rhodes still answers her: lamps lit, doors open, glasses raised to the storm that celebrates instead of destroys.
The First Harbor
Daughter Of The North, Chapter 2
She stood on the Isle of Lewis the night the Callanish Standing Stones were raised new, and set her mark among them: an iron token stamped with a ship. The north does not forgive, and neither does she, but the sailors who carry her token always come home.
The Unsent Rose
The Crimson Thorn, Chapter 2
On the steps of the Temple of Hera at Paestum, she takes the first cut rose of the season, holds it all night, and by morning it lies on the west road, pointing toward a garden she never enters. Once a year, she almost writes.
The Lantern Canal
Midnight In Venice, Chapter 2
Under the Bridge of Sighs the year it was built, her gondola rides the canal that only opens under a full moon, its lanterns lighting themselves violet as she passes. Tonight there is one lantern too many.
The Last Song
Midnight Mesa, Chapter 2
Bodie, California emptied out and she stayed. On still nights her lantern crosses the boardwalk to the saloon, and the piano plays one song all the way through. She never plays the last verse.
Before the Ash
The Vintage, Chapter 2
Pompeii, the summer of 79. She sealed her finest barrel early and carried it down herself, to the cellar level even her steward had never seen. The mountain was clearing its throat.
The Singing Water
Bayou Moon, Chapter 2
The Atchafalaya keeps its black water under cypress older than the country. The lost hear her singing first, then see her lantern, green as her eyes, on a boat that makes no wake.
Opening Night
Behind The Mask, Chapter 2
The Palais Garnier in Paris, France, opening night 1875. She sat halfway up the grand staircase collecting true faces, her own mask set down on the marble, face up, for anyone to see.
Track 61
The Last Train, Chapter 2
Grand Central Terminal, New York City, keeps one platform off every map. Hers is the only train that still uses it, and the seat beside her is always empty.
The Cathedral Clock
See You Tonight, Chapter 2
The Prague Astronomical Clock has kept the city's hours since 1410, and one hand answers to her. Tonight it stands one minute from midnight, and she is in no hurry at all.
The Other Cup
The Toast, Chapter 2
The Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, France, 1684. She set out two cups that night, and three hundred years of kings have only ever asked about one of them.
Moonlight
The Oracle of Didyma, Chapter 2
Didyma, Turkey, the Temple of Apollo open to the sky, a full moon over the court. A thousand years of questions and nobody ever asked her name, until one night somebody did. Aylin, she said. It means moonlight.
Moon Harbor
Sweet Dreams, Chapter 3 of 5
The dream has a harbor, and she is its lighthouse and its tide. You do not navigate Moon Harbor. You are expected.
Never Trust the Quiet Ones
Night Blossom, Chapter 3
The garden teaches one proverb above its gate: never trust the quiet ones. By the time you understand her silence, she has already decided about you.
Between the Kings
Tomb Queen, Chapter 3
She walks the processional way at Luxor as it stood new built, between the colossal kings, while word travels up out of Thebes: somewhere in the wet plaster, a hand has carved a name that was never meant to surface.
The Last Summer of Herculaneum
Empire Of Night, Chapter 3
Herculaneum, the summer of 79, the ovens hot, the laundry out, the mountain green and quiet. She is the only soul in that street who knows it is the last summer, and remembering is her office. She came to take the whole living town into the one archive the mountain cannot reach.
The Carved City
The Silk Road, Chapter 3
Jiaohe was never built. It was cut, street by street and room by room, straight down into one long clay plateau between two rivers. A city dug into the earth keeps its cool, its dark, and its counsel, and she has kept Jiaohe since its first night.
The Unnamed Grave
The Black Rose, Chapter 3
Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. One plot there is on no map and has no name, only black roses that never fade, and she tends it herself at dawn.
The Answering Light
Storm Warning, Chapter 3
The Pharos of Alexandria, Egypt, finished about 280 BCE. On the first night its beacon was lit she was sitting on the quay, and men lit a light of their own to answer hers.
The First Solstice
Daughter Of The North, Chapter 3
Newgrange, Ireland, raised about 3200 BCE. On the shortest morning of the year a shaft of sunlight walks its stone passage, and she stood on the frost the first solstice it ever worked.
The First Vintage
The Vintage, Chapter 3
Massalia, the port that became Marseille, about 600 BCE. She walked the first vineyards of Gaul the morning of the first pressing, an amphora at her hip.
The Violet Glass
Midnight In Venice, Chapter 3
Murano, Venice. One violet goblet came out of the fire about 1600 that no master would admit to blowing, and she carried it out into the night herself.
The Fiddle on the Steps
Bayou Moon, Chapter 3
St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans, new in 1794. The night it stood finished she sat on its steps and played the square a tune the bayous taught her.
The Masquerade
Sweet Dreams, Chapter 4 of 5
A wide ballroom, a hundred masks, music like poured gold, and she walks through the center of it looking at no one. She is the only honest face in the room.
The Witnesses
Tomb Queen, Chapter 4
Ask the men who raised the stones how Giza was built and they will tell you ramps and ropes. Ask them at night and they will tell you the other half, the night the last great stone went up, and what stood watching while the pyramids still shone new. She was there.
The Stone Prayers
The Silk Road, Chapter 4
Longmen, in Henan, the morning the great Buddha opened his painted eyes. Emperors bought caves and carved their names a foot high. The small donors bought the smallest niches and could not afford the inscription. The stone kept their prayers. She keeps their names.
The Eye of the Storm
Storm Warning, Chapter 4
Cape Sounion, Greece, the Temple of Poseidon standing new in 440 BCE on cliffs above the Aegean. The great storm rings the horizon and the sea comes apart below, but inside the colonnade the air does not move. She is the still place in the middle of her own weather.
The Duel at Dawn
Sweet Dreams, Chapter 5 of 5
Book One of her run closes the way her dreams always close: at dawn, with a challenge, and the queen who has never hurried in her life arriving exactly on time.
The Second Prayer
Sweet Dreams, Chapter 6
Corinth, when the marble was still bright, at the Fountain of Peirene. Every man prays twice, the succubi say, once in the temple for his neighbors to hear, and once in his sleep, honestly. The gods keep the first prayer. She keeps the second.
The Harbor Cat
Sweet Dreams, Chapter 7
The dream has a harbor, and she is its lighthouse and its tide. Every soul in the harbor sleeps when she walks the quay, except one. The harbor cat is never asleep, not once in all his nine lives, and he alone gets her hand resting soft on his head while the ships come in.
The Hundred Days
Sweet Dreams, Chapter 8
Rome, the Colosseum standing new, and the first morning of a hundred days of games. Up in the stands the sleepers climb in dreams to her crystal court above the arena, and every gladiator’s second prayer, the honest one, is hers to keep.
The First Ship Out
Sweet Dreams, Chapter 9
Once a year, the first ship out of Moon Harbor does not sail alone. She rides at the bow to the harbor mouth with her lamp still lit, and Onyx the harbor cat rides the rail beside her. No ship she has ridden out has ever failed to come home.
The Night Onyx Kept the Lamp
Sweet Dreams, Chapter 10
A black kitten washed through the harbor mouth half drowned and clawed his way up the sea wall to the feet of the only soul who keeps the all-night watch. This is the night Onyx kept the lamp, and learned what her watch is really for.
The First Prayer
Sweet Dreams, Chapter 11
Athens, the Parthenon new built and painted head to foot, gold on the marble and the harbor bright below. She was there the morning it opened, standing on the top step at dawn with a bronze bowl in her hands. She had come for the first prayer.
The Painted Temple
Sweet Dreams, Chapter 12
The Parthenon, Athens, finished in 432 BCE and born painted, blue and red and gold. She sat on its steps the first dawn, Onyx beside her, watching the scaffolds come down.
The Healing Dream
Sweet Dreams, Chapter 13
Epidaurus, Greece, the Abaton of the Sanctuary of Asclepius by moonlight, newly built in 350 BCE. The sick sleep in the great hall waiting on the god's dream, but every dream there passes her first, and tonight a healthy father is sleeping his sick daughter's cure.
The saga is still growing. New queens and new chapters join the gallery as they are written, and Sweet Dreams herself runs to Chapter 15.
Original artwork and Story series by Merci Web Design Studio.