Page 143 of Every Shade of Shadow

I feel the fall, the endless drop. It seems eternal, otherworldly. The rush of another orgasm approaches, an oblivion so deep and long I fear it may be my body, not the blade, that sends me to the next world.

Just as I’m about to come, he pulls out, my ass and pussy gaping. He lifts my body under the torso and turns me, screwing me around in the lunette until I choke and blubber, turning me until I’m once again on my back, shoulders bent and broken from the unnatural movement.

Lying down once more, eyes on the blade above, he thrusts into my sopping cunt, plunging to the very extremities of my body.

He cries out, close to his own death, still grasping the lever and sending the blade rocking and whining above me.

I grip the bench again and come, lost in a blinding wash, my body squeezing around him in violent contractions, tightening and constricting around his poisonous cock.

As I’m screaming, caught in ecstasy, the Professor pulls the release lever at the same time as his seed spills deep into my womb.

The blade falls with a whoosh.

No.

My body tenses. My eyes close, but when they open, I do not see the cobblestones as my head rolls upon them. Rather, the blade has fallen short, caught halfway down the guillotine.

Damien holds the release rope in his hands, tying it back with effort to hold it in place halfway down the structure. He does so as he continues to pump seed into my body.

The blade secured, he pulls out of the slop between my legs and rounds the front of the machine, twisting my head to the side and planting his warm member between my lips.

I suck, cleaning the sweetened mix of cum and my desire from his cock, swallowing our ministrations until he is satisfied. He lifts the lunette and allows me to sit upright. I reach up to my throat, as if I can’t believe it’s still attached to my body.

He wasn’t wrong. I do feel the lift in power now, that simmering energy the shadows provide has grown again.

When he speaks, it is with an even and measured tone. It is with reverence. “Ava, Umbra. Ava, Regina.”

Hail, Shadow.

Hail, your Queen.

CHAPTER THIRTY

I’ve felt my power increasing with each session I’ve spent with Damien, but this time it’s more than an abstract, distant sensation I have to search for. This time it’s like I can run my hand over my skin and physically feel the shadows prickling for attention, begging to be unleashed.

All that agony I have endured, the frustration and pain, and yes, pleasure… They’re helping me put aside the weak witchling who stepped off that plane what feels like a lifetime ago.

My relationship with Damien has also deepened. He’s exposed parts of himself to me I’m sure have never seen the light of day. Our connection, fraught as it may be, has shifted into something new and profound.

Still, there’s a killer at large within the castle walls, one that almost took out Ava. Now I have the power to stop them. Of that, I am sure. But as for who Mortis is? That’s still a mystery and precisely why Ava has called this impromptu meeting tonight.

We promised to stick together, so there’s a certain sense of guilt about crisscrossing the halls of the Academy alone, but I’m no longer nervous, because the power within me now? It’s fucking ridiculous.

He wants me tonight, and what then? What could possibly top our last session?

I haven’t even reached Ava’s room before I hear the arguing.

I push the door open and enter, closing it behind me. “Dare I ask?”

They’re both standing in the middle of the room facing each other with their arms crossed.

Lily nods towards Ava. “I just don’t like the idea of anyone creeping around in my head.”

Ava rolls her eyes. “I’d be in and out. I don’t want to sit there dwelling on your many fucked-up sexual fantasies,” she looks towards me, “or hers.”

I’m not sure if either of them have forgiven me for the whole Cassandra bathroom thing, but we seem to have reached a kind of numb equilibrium on the matter.

I raise my hands, stepping closer. “Hey, hey, what’s going on here?”

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