The Necromancer’s Parlour by Olina Wayland

An apprentice falls for her mistress.

For a consort to access the magic of the Great Ring, all they must do is sleep with a Ringborn. A service with a price.

Catarina de Alioni is mundane, a consort. She’ll never be wealthy enough to afford the patronage of a Ringborn, not that she’d have the aptitude to make use of magic. She’s struggling to get even the lowest of jobs as a laborer to satisfy her family.
But by the Great Ring’s strange design, she ends up the apprentice of an enigmatic mistress in an obscure parlour.
Mistress Vincenza Nasciowa, a Ringborn with no consort, refuses any shyness in showing disdain towards her new apprentice. The gaunt woman bears secrets several times older than Catarina, not least of which being why she settled for someone so unimportant and unremarkable to replace her. Or worse, why a necromancer would think they’d ever need replacing.

Catarina can’t get her heart behind sleeping with the Ringborn she’s introduced to, and it kills her knowing that she might be disappointing Vincenza. She feels distant to all of them, truly only having any closeness to the mistress who gives her an unexpected chance of comfort after her failures.