Page 24 of The Salvation

The pain attacks me in waves.

I’d rather embrace death than watch the life bleed out of Kyan’s eyes.

“Merikh!” Quintessa’s ear-splitting whisper drags me back to reality, almost as much as her heavenly cunt clenching around my cock.

I sharpen my eyes upon hers, finding a silver storm staring back at me. Like she carries the Veil of Souls itself in those orbs while her hair flows around her like silver halos. My angel of scars and tattoos. And her sweet center is my touchstone—like a damned spit of a rock I grip onto in the middle of an ocean storm. She keeps me here, anchored. She holds the riptide of my demons at bay.

Fuck. “Quintessa...” I growl, my voice a deep husk.

Her smile bewilders me, robs my very breath, siphons it from my lungs. She claims it for her own in that simple smile. “Finish it, Merikh. Please.”

Not one vampire in my Court dared to move during our exchange. Their hearing tuned to her every whisper, whether she knows or not.

“Unbind me, Merikh. Let me touch you.”

They witness their Lord following the command of his Queen, their Queen. I give her back the use of one hand. One pale, dainty hand. She doesn’t rise. She doesn’t twitch. All that moves is that hand. My breath grows heavy as she places it on my chest, centering it right above my non-beating heart. It’s enough.

I take my claw to the side of her breast again. While the past and its demons rattle their teeth and blades against the doorway of my mind, her hand on my chest burns my blood. If I had a soul, it would spark and heat beneath that hand. I swear I sense its echo seeking her palm and her half-soul.

I cut her again. It’s bone-deep now, the pain. I observe the beautiful agony on her face from her tears to her sweat to her lips parted to betray her struggling breath. Anytime her pulse quickens too much, I slow it. Not once does her hand move.

I scrawl the braided, intertwining serpents to surround my alchemical symbol and its delicate filigree. With each drop of blood that falls onto the altar, the ancient vessel hums,signifying its acceptance and how it bleeds its bond and power into us.

“Does it help?” she wonders, curving her fingers onto my chest.

I tilt my head to one side, pausing before starting again, loving the sound of her whimper from my claw finding a tender spot.

Brushing my knuckles across her cheek in a motion too gentle for the God of Blood, I repeat her words from my crypt back to her. “I am taking everything, Quintessa. I take your skin. Your scars, your body, breath, and blood. I take your monsters. And...” I lower my lips to her ear, thrilling in my breath raising the hairs on her neck, “...I will play with them as I break you.”

I must break her until she shines brightest for me. My light in the darkness, splintering through my cold, dark depths to tether me and bring me to the surface. Impossible. I’m too ruined, too wrecked for her.

But I’d rather drown her and take her down with me and feel her heat and light for a few blessed moments. They will seem like paradise...once she is gone.

I kiss her as I carve her, slicing the final design into the dove-soft breast. My addiction, stirring my damned heart that can never beat. The altar beats instead. The more I cut, the more the crest takes shape, and the more the altar vibrates while the bloodstones burn brighter.

In these moments, with each line I carve and each drop of blood I spill, I swear something is awakening in my chest. Some echo of power beyond the Curse of Kronos. Some distant force I cannot reach or reclaim. Like seeing the moon from beneath dark water—its filtered light through my watery grave. But I cannot possibly hold it, cannot feel it beyond my numb state.

I close the serpents to finalize the crest.

The altar erupts. A scarlet light to rival the sun’s strikes my Court of Hollows. So blinding, every vampire must shield their eyes. Including me. It cuts through Quintessa’s chest, radiating in great, crimson beams like powerful beams of the blood moon. My blood moon.

I finish it.

Growling, I fuck her through that power, slamming into her, pounding her with that dove-light hand still touching my chest. The altar seals its force, stitching it into the fabric of her blood and the work of my claw until they unite...and transcend.

“Merikh!” she screams from the ancient force, raking her nails onto my chest. So, I fuck her harder, deeper, stronger. Beating my wings to give my cock more power until I’m striking that inner place inside her sweet cunt over and over while surging fevered blood into her mortal pussy and every last pleasure center until those screams of pain turn into screams of pure euphoria.

“Yes, Quintessa. Fuck it, little dove, my filthy, beautiful little queen. Take it all!”

With a great burst of blood light, the altar finishes sealing the crest brand into her flesh, binding her half-soul to my power, to my blood, to my dead heart. And the moment I slam into her and roar her name in my release to thunder throughout the Court of Hollows, I swear—that heart, that heart that hasn’t beat once since the day Malachor made me—I fucking swear...it wakes up.

We are still in the final throes of our climaxes, just coming down when the obsidian doors of my Court crash open.

11

"You don't speak to her. You never speak to her..."

QUINTESSA

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