Page 19

“Come to me whenever the dreams become too much to bear alone.”

I jolted awake from another fitful nightmare.

Sweat slick strands of hair clung to my temples and cheeks, my breaths rattled in my chest, and my heart thrashed against my ribs.

With heaving breasts and shaking arms, I hauled myself upright.

The memories of crimson vines coiling around my limbs to trap me and their black thorns mutilating my flesh clung to my mind like a grimy film on glass.

I looked around and recognized my room in the tower. How had I gotten here?

Was that encounter with Mavros in the library another dream? Or had that been real?

My nights flit between obscure carnal dreams and vivid horrors.

Either way, I’d wake at odd hours, either too early or far too late in the day, with my body singing with restless aches or an odd throbbing satiation.

Day and night warred for a place of pride in my mind, a ceaseless struggle between dreams and nightmares.

On unsteady legs, I removed myself from the bed in a paltry effort to shed the phantom red vines lingering as manacles on my wrists.

Tears dried on my cheeks, vanishing as quickly as memories of a past life withering within my grasp.

A suffocating sickness crept over me as the walls seemed to press closer one moment to the next.

I didn’t want to be alone, to think of the ghosts of ages past. Memories were like an infection, corroding at what remained of me.

I wanted comfort, and I knew there was only one source offering it in these harrowing days.

Sinister shadows as I crossed from hall to hall should have been my first warning to turn back.

As determined as ever, I powered on, passing through the gaping maw of the entry hall.

Apparitions lurked in the vaulted ceiling, slithering through the rafters.

Wraiths whispered from behind moth-eaten tapestries.

The low firelight in the iron gargoyle-head sconces did little to chase away the spirits in the lofty darkness.

I had come to know their presence, slipping through the castle like a fallen leaf flowing downstream, out of place but carelessly at ease.

Mavros maintained a busy schedule. One inherited as the master of the castle and ruler of the realm.

Hours were spent poring over reports from distant lands and his scouts, maintaining the kingdom estates, or upholding the balance.

I’d never joined him, but recently learned he spent many nights listening to petitioners and administering justice.

From my understanding, his late father willed the title onto him, and Mavros had stepped into empty shoes as heirs had for centuries.

It seemed no matter what world they belonged to, sons were obligated to bear the mantles of their fathers.

I bore a compulsory sense of sympathy for the plight but never had parents of my own to understand the relationship dynamic.

Sylphs were born from the wind and moon dust. Ageless and fathomless creatures of magic who existed for the sole purpose of guarding the skies we were born to.

My only kin were the other sylphs I passed on occasion in the same way stars passed in the night sky.

Not that it mattered anymore. Mavros didn’t speak of his family past the tidbits that slipped out during reading lessons or our occasional shared meals.

Our conversations remained firmly in the bounds of polite decorum and rarely strayed.

I’d prefer to keep it that way despite the insensible thread in my chest incessantly tugging me into the beast’s orbit.

In hindsight, I should have grasped that thought and used it to guide me back to my room.

Paying attention to the deterrent wraiths skulking in the dark recesses of the corridors would have changed the course of my fate, but I was a stubborn thing, always.

Disregarding the frigid bite in the halls and the warning, unsteady thump of my heart, an abnormal compulsion led me through the lingering dark to where I hoped to find warmth.

Blood thundered in my ears as I neared the throne room, and my skin tightened around my bones.

The dark stone walls blurred around me, and I placed a steadying hand on the wall.

Voices reverberated through the main corridor, snapping me out of the oppressive haze in my mind.

I strained to listen, curious about what official meetings Mavros held in the hours I normally slept.

“…burned to the ground, master.”

“How many were lost?” I recognized Mavros speaking, but his voice was distant and cold as he spoke to his subjects.

“Thirty-five,” the Inferni answered. “Even the younglings, my prince. All of them.”

I peered around the corner. My breath faltered at the sight of Mavros sitting tall and as still as stone on the throne.

Leering down at his subjects with those burning fire-eyes, rigid and severe, gaze glossing over individuals as if they held no interest to him.

It was a harsh side of him I hadn’t seen for weeks. His cruelty had become a faded memory.

“And where were you?” A threatening growl pulled from him. He surged from the throne, commanding the room with his suffocating presence. Dozens of Inferni held their breath, quivering under the beast prince’s influence rolling over them like palpable waves of darkness.

“Where were you?” he repeated, taking the steps down the throne toward the Inferni bowed and quivering on the floor. “When your village needed you. When your people, who you were sworn to protect, needed you. Where were you?”

“He were with the harpies, master!” an imp shouted from the crowded mass pressing into the walls.

Mavros growled, the roar quaking the foundation of the palace gasping around us.

A spike of fear accompanied the shiver down my spine.

Then, like a cold winter blowing in during the dark of night, swift and relentless, he was calm once more.

Giving the imp a placating smile that stressed the sharp tusks jutting from his bottom lip.

“And who here hasn’t lost a night in the grip of the harpies? ”

A slow, hesitant laughter rolled through the hall.

“Who here hasn’t been buried so deep in cunt and quim that they forgot their duty and lost all sense of time?”

Jeers and chuckles rose higher as the stress tore itself from the talons of tension.

Several Inferni nudged and jostled one another.

They whispered words I didn’t recognize but understood in tone as lewd.

I remained hidden, braced against the wall as if the artificial barrier would protect me from the virulent aura skittering over my skin.

Mavros seemed to come alive under the laughter and steady gaze. There was a glimmer in his eyes, like the spark of flint on steel. He prowled down the stairs, long tail swishing lazily behind him. Yet the flick at the fluffy end reminded me of a cracking whip.

There was a sort of dark promise in the way he carried himself.

A shudder went through my stomach as I watched him move with the effortless grace of a wolf stalking a rabbit.

He was every bit the monster, from the horns adorning his head like a crown to the curved sharp claws tipping his fingers like meat-hooks begging for flesh to render.

Broad in the shoulders, wide in the chest, built as imposing and steadfast as a lone mountain overlooking a barren empire.

Mavros caressed his claws along the kneeling demon’s cheek. A creature with crimson dark fur, a feline-shaped face, and goat horns. Its stubby tail briefly wagged at the contact from their prince. Pleasure from the prince’s passing adoration and understanding trembling through their body.

A pang clenched my stomach, and my heart thumped under my heaving chest. Images of Mavros touching me, praising me, passed behind my eyes.

Several times in the library, he had breached the invisible barricade between us; casually sweeping my hair out of my face as I stuttered through a sentence, fingers lingering as he passed a book into my hands, a steady and drawn-out touch to the lower back or shoulder.

His claws curled around the Inferni’s face.

A flicker of fear passed over the demon’s expression and his body shook under his master’s threatening attention.

My stomach dropped to the floor, tearing itself from my body and the war between my heart and mind.

The demon was breathing hard, and I noticed my own was rapid and shallow.

How would it feel to kneel before Mavros and hold his undivided attention?

Would he hold my face with the same unwavering, delicate threat of promised brutality?

If I pleased him, would he praise me, worship me?

To feel those claws gingerly trace over sensitive flesh, carrying all the intent to rip and shred, but bringing only a vestige of shivering delight.

What were these thoughts, and why did I feel powerless against them?

I quickly swatted those ideas away as his voice reverberated through the hall, making himself known as the present threat. The fragile lull in the oppressive sense of danger curled up and died, shriveling under the weight of his dominating aura.

“The obscenity of your failure sickens me.” His words cracked over the audience.

No, not his words. That was the sound of fracturing bone.

Mavros tightened his grip on the demon’s face and an ear-splitting scream bounced off the walls and into the hollow pit of my core.

“You have done something utterly unforgivable, you insolent imp. There’s a threat in our realm, and you shirked your responsibility for a night of indulgence. ”

“Please, master, no! I didn’t know they would come.” The demon clawed at Mavros’ wrists, trying to thrash and free itself. “Please, have mercy. Mercy!”

Mavros cradled the imp’s head with his other hand. Unmoving, unflinching, while the Inferni begged and scrambled for release. The prince’s eyes softened for a fleeting second and he held the imp as gingerly as a mother holding her babe.

Talons of anxiety, dread, and a foreboding desire wrapped around my throat. I should have turned long ago, but something akin to a sick fascination or a wicked inclination held me frozen. A statue longing for fresh air and freedom but trapped in a cage of stone.

“Ask the gods for mercy when they greet you.” A brutal gush and wet gurgle preceded the tragic thump of a limp, lifeless body bouncing off stone.

Ruby droplets glistened like gems in the firelight as they splattered across the floor.

A garnet smear of ichor stained the bones of the throne hall as liquid life pooled from the demon’s slit throat.

Destined for my own annihilation, a distressed gasp escaped my lips.

I slapped a hand over my mouth, but not before the charge of my demise whipped his head in my direction and noticed me lurking at the edges.

A monster, licking the blood from his fingertips, reveling in it as one might relish in the blood of their savior.

His mouth was stained red, and my heart twisted when he held my gaze and licked his lips.

The demons ceased to exist, and for one liminal moment, Mavros and I were the only two creatures in all of existence.

A million unspoken words passed between us, and a primordial understanding gripped us tight and raised us from the haunting dark into a sacred light from which there would be no return.

A soft whimper lodged in my throat as if I might beg fate to turn back time and stop the inevitable from charging toward me. It was caught on the precipice of a needy whine that begged for more.

Mavros stepped through the crowd of demons.

None of them paid him any notice as they lunged for the corpse of their fallen comrade.

Wet squelching, slashing claws, slavering maws gnashing on sinew and viscera warmed from fading life.

He slipped through the cannibalistic feeding frenzy, equally driven by bloodlust and feral hunger.

I should have been horrified and afraid.

I suppose some remaining rational part of me was.

But the vibrating pulse within me sang a different tune.

One of a delicious darkness that would devour me in the sweetest way.

An aria of savage passion and animal lust sung by a monster and drawing me into the welcoming arms of depravity.

“Astoria.” His voice was iron and flame, saying the name he rechristened me with like a cherished prayer.

Despite the curse of my rebirth, the tragic death of my identity, there hung the promise of new life.

A renaissance painted with claws and fangs on a canvas of pale flesh.

A resurrection ignited in my heart by the fire in his eyes, and burning through me like a hungry inferno with each step that bridged the gap between us.

I stepped forward into that dark embrace with all the obedience of a lamb being led to slaughter. Mavros was the gallows, and I was walking, walking—

A gasp cut through me.

Bloodlust and an intoxicated fervor radiated off him with the strength of heat pouring from a fire.

He was a dark, fathomless sun drawing in smaller celestial bodies and devouring them into nonexistence.

And I was a star dragged by an intangible force into his awaiting maw.

Instinct begged me to turn and flee, and the predatory promise in the beast’s eyes said the same.

Running.

I turned on my heel and bolted into the shadows.

I was running.