Page 101 of Devoured

I gestured, and the realm sorted them automatically. Each soul went to a cell designed specifically for their crimes. The teacher would experience every moment of fear and confusion he’d caused—not watching it, but feeling it from inside his victims’skin. The surgeon would endure every operation he’d botched, but from the patient’s perspective.

Each punishment fit perfectly. That was my rule. That was what made me different from the Judge.

“Come,” I told Flame.“Let’s check on our long-term residents.”

We walked through corridors of black glass and breathing metal. Other souls moved past us—the ones who’d learned, who’d finally broken open and felt real remorse. They cleaned. They organized. They prepared cells for new arrivals. Even here, the potential for change remained, for those who dared to embrace it.

But not everyone chose change.

Varnar’s cell hadn’t changed in eight months. Same stone room. Same scene playing on repeat. Alan’s corpse lay before him, perfectly preserved, forever just out of reach. He knelt with hands outstretched, fingers passing through her body like she was made of smoke.

“Please,” he whispered when he saw me.“Just once. Let me hold her. Let me explain—”

“Explain what?” I crouched beside him, the shadow-silk pooling around me.“Sorry you lost her? Or for the hundreds you violated in your life?”

“I loved her.”

“The same way you’loved’your patients. As things to own. The difference is, she loved you back.”

Some souls were too rotted to fix. They served as reminders.

We returned to our chambers at the tower’s top, where geometry went strange. Stairs that climbed down. Doors that opened onto themselves. Windows showing impossible views—star systems being born, voids between realities, sometimes glimpses of the world above.

The Executioner, my Flame, closed the door and finally removed his helmet. It hit the floor with a clang that echoed through dimensions. His face, with its sharp angles, old scars, and red eyes that burned only for me, was exactly as I loved it.

“Twenty-seven souls tomorrow,” I murmured, moving to the window. The dress shifted with me, sometimes heavy as velvet, sometimes light as smoke.“Marion found something big. A whole ring. Doctors, cops, social workers—moving kids like cargo.”

“I’ll expand the east wing tonight,” he said, moving behind me. His large hands settled on my shoulders, thumbs working at the knots there.

I turned in his arms, having to crane my neck to meet his eyes.“Not tonight. Tonight, I need you here, with me. Inside me.”

I took his hand and led him to our bed that he had made with his own hands, with wood found in the Realm Beneath. I didn’t want the human bones and skin bed and he fulfilled my wish.

“I need to feel something other than justice and judgment.” I moaned and pushed him onto the bed.

He let me push him down, this creature who could snap me in half without trying. Let me climb on top of him, my hands splayed across his scarred chest. The shadow-silk dress pooled around us like spilled ink.

“My Queen,” he started, but I pressed a finger to his lips.

“No titles. Not tonight.” I replaced my finger with my mouth, kissing him deep and hungry. Tasted copper and smoke and something uniquely him.“Tonight,” I whispered,“I am just Zahra. And you are mine.”

His hands stayed gentle at first, careful with his inhuman strength. Always so careful. But I didn’t want careful. I bit his lip hard enough to draw blood and he groaned, finally understanding.

“Let go,” I commanded, and felt him shudder beneath me.“Trust me. Let me see who you really are.”

His control snapped like a chain under too much weight. Those massive hands gripped my hips hard enough to leave marks—if I could still bruise. The shadow-silk dress dissolved at my thought, leaving nothing between us but heat and need.

I rode him slow at first, making him wait, making him want. Every time he tried to thrust up, to take control, I pressed down with divine strength, pinning him. His eyes went wide—he always forgot I wasn’t human anymore either.

“Mine,” I growled against his throat, nipping at the scars there.“Say it.”

“Yours,” he gasped, hands clutching at my hips like I was the only solid thing in existence.“Always yours,my moth.”

I set a slow, deliberate pace, until he was begging in that raw, inhuman voice. Until this creature of death and judgment was completely undone beneath me, calling my name like a prayer.“Please,” he groaned, and the sound went straight through me.“Zahra, please—”

“Please what?” I stopped moving entirely, just to watch him struggle for control.“Tell me what you need.”

“You. Need you. Need to—” His words devolved into primal sounds as I quickened my pace, taking what I craved.

When I came, it was with my nails dug into his chest, my back arched, divine power crackling through the room like lightning. He followed right after, my name on his lips like salvation.

After, we lay tangled together, breathing hard. The darkness around us stirred with hunger. Even in our afterglow, the work called. Tomorrow the guilty would arrive. The cycle never stopped. It couldn’t stop, here, in this hell.

But tonight was ours. Just ours.

“I love you,” I whispered against his chest, tracing patterns in the scars.

“And I love you,” he replied, pulling me closer.“My queen. My moth. My everything.”