Page 65 of The Salvation

“I directed the serpents on him. I carved open his fucking chest. Ripped his heart from its cavity. And watched his utter astonishment as I devoured his goddamned heart before his fading eyes. I ripped those orbs from his skull before the soul inside them could escape. And I fucked Kyan in the pool of Malachor’s blood...and mine.”

He rams me hard again. The orgasm crashes into me, and through the blinding ecstasy ripping hot tremors through me, I register he’s rising, taking me higher and out of the depths.

Another wave of bliss follows the last. “Merikh!” I scream and claw at him as I convulse, feeling his cock spill hot seed into me as it thickens to stretch my walls.

“Blood is essence,” he purrs low in my ear, chuckles darkly, and lowers his fingers to swipe at my wet clit. I gasp and curse when he drives another climax into me while continuing, “Blood holds the key to the soul. The heart is the doorway. The eyes are the windows. I held all fucking three. So, I trapped each one in three different objects. The eyes in the bloodstone jewel of his crown. A crown of bone and fangs and obsidian. The blood in his dagger. And the heartstrings in the chalice. And I surrendered them all to Necrosyne, Queen of the Hollows.”

Something about the name is so bone-chilling but also spine-tingling. I shiver. I shudder. And scream, throwing my head back and clamping down when he hurls me over the edge again.

“Savage Merikh!” I wail from the rapture roaring into me, my pulse spiraling, my soul soaring straight for the surface.

“On my first night as Lord of the Court of Blood, I laid myself over the coffin, presented myself to Shadow. I gripped the sides and held on through every strike from his whip. A whip I’d formed from Malachor’s very skin.”

He laughs darkly, deeply, and I clench my eyes, shedding streams of hot tears as another orgasm detonates inside me. His hands are everywhere, exploring my skin, touching my scars, tracing my ink. His heart and blood are inside me, launching me into delirious oblivion.

“And as I sat upon my new throne, Kyan pierced my cock, sucked me off, then I fucked him.”

“The...” I gasp, screeching from another climax and bouncing and riding his cock as he pushes us higher, driving my blood to a maddening fever. “The demon fell in love with an angel.”

“And gave birth to a demon,” he reminds me.

“You...oh, gods!” I scream, exploding into waves of lightning and water. And slam my hands down on his head, gripping his hair while his growl reverberates into my chest and hammers my heart. “You became one!”

“Fucking hell, little dove!” he snarls and snaps, jerking inside me, spewing ropes and ropes of himself inside me until we break the surface.

I love all my monstrous boys, and their cocks, in different ways. Drago for his two dicks and throbbing hotness while he treats me like his prized pet—a dragon hoarding treasure. Kyan and Shadow for how they worship me while I ride their dark storm like a little spirit moth carried upon their wind. Mayce for his masterwork, how he roots me inside him because I am his rose who may kneel before him, knowing he will rule me while I grow in him.

And Merikh, this dark and carnal, beautiful tortured man who became a god, who takes me to the darkest depths of his psyche, giving me his pain, his blood, his heart.

Tonight, I’ve become him.

I fall—utterly limp against him. All of me has unraveled, my skin like hot smithereens of tingly feathers. My inner muscles have been pounded and battered to swollen and bloated goo. And as soon as he pulls out, the Sea of the bones of his victims...heals me.

Merikh takes me slower on the shore. Kissing me and exploring me, bordering on worshiping me like Kyan. I sift my hands into his hair as he fondles my breasts, licks my nipples, suckling them slow, as if he’s taking idle drinks. His fingers pump me until he descends to tongue my folds and carries me to a sweet current of deep, long, and blissful orgasms.

“You’ll like Necrosyne,” he finally says while embracing me. “And if the nonsensical Weaver has any sense, she will love you.”

“What can I expect, Merikh? What in the world is this Hollows like?”

“Unlike anything in this world or any other.”

23

Through death, through the God of Souls, I live.

QORA

Death and despairecho through the castle with every step I take.

From mournful murals depicting tragedies carved into the floor and walls, to the ghostly apparitions I pass, Shade’s deathly essence is everywhere. The phantoms acknowledge me, bowing their heads in respect as my mortal glow dances across them. I smile a little because this is the last place Kronos would consider looking for me.

I consider asking one of them where Shade is, but I don’t need to. Not only can I smell his alluring aroma, but I am bound to him. His soul signature whispers to me, drifts across me like mist and nightmares as I follow that gray amber, incense, and sweet wormwood.

When I round the corner to the next corridor, darkness eclipses everything. But one step forward triggers torches to flicker to life and cast eerie shadows along the walls. No ghosts keep me company here. But Shade’s scent grows stronger.

At the end of the corridor, I enter a thin veil of mist. It tickles my cheeks and wets my eyelashes. My bare feet turn damp as well as my sheer slip.

From beyond the mist, the sound of moans haunts my ears. Melancholic but beautiful, the moans remind me of sacred chants. They do not fill me with panic and urge me to turn back. Because I know those moans. So familiar, though I only ever moaned like that in the privacy of my mind where Kronos could not hear. My own moans of longing and reverence...when I would imagine someone who would be worthy of them.

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