Page 88 of The Salvation

I don’t know where I am. Only that I’ve made it to the cemetery’s edge…but on the other side. I wasn’t going to dare try and find my way back to Mayce’s Court from the way that Merikh brought me here. Only he could navigate the paths here.

It’s pure grit or maybe luck that I haven’t dropped the knife.

By now, my dress has soaked to my skin. I wish water wouldn’t have the audacity to splash. How rude.

My thoughts trip over one another, always returning to the fluff that keeps me going. That childlike chaos that urged me to walk right into the Veil of Souls, to adopt a rook fox, to go through the Hag’s tunnel, and practically every other moment with my monstrous boys.

There was something achingly familiar about the vampire who’d appeared out of nowhere, cornered Malachor, and told me to run. It sounded so much like Merikh’s when he told me to do the same.

Emotions riot in my chest as I wonder if there is anything left of Merikh. Or how much is left? What will it be like for him if Malachor takes me? If he…

A few weathered gravestones ahead of me divert my thoughts. How far have I gone from the crypt? How much distance is between me and…him? Where are my other monsters?

The questions seem to weigh me down more than the swampland. Unease presses in, thinning my breath.

Just when I see the end of the cemetery and a hint of the sea in the distance—the Sea of Bones?—a rush of wind disrupts the water around me. Panic closes like a fist around my thundering heart at the beat of familiar wings.

I don’t get the chance to run or so much as yelp before taloned fingers pluck me from the ground. The world blurs. Everything seems to fade to desolation, my skin nearly turning numb apart from the knife in my hands—the only barrier between me and Malachor.

Within seconds, he has me back in the crypt. A low silky growl, one I could almost mistake for Merikh’s, leaves his throat as he flares his nostrils, scenting me.

When Malachor settles my body with achingly tender hands upon the coffin, I shiver from more than the drop in temperature pulling up goosebumps onto my skin. More than my soaked dress. His great black wings cast an inky darkness all around me. Even the stone beneath me has turned into a block of ice. A whimper breaks from my throat as he tilts my jaw up to cast his chilled breath across my mouth.

“Now, now, my little dove…shh,” he coos and presses his lips to mine.

Hot tears stream down my cheeks. More burn my throat. Something about this kiss is different. All-consuming—I sense the force of his possession beneath the affection. Malachor tastes me, explores me, drinking from my mouth.

I know what it means. This is the precursor of hunger before the storm of blood-pleasure he will command me to feel tonight. After I ran, he’s done with the buildup. He’s ready to introduce me to his sick and twisted games. Even if it takes him a lifetime, he will do it. At some point, he will break me, shatter me, and devastate me until I’m nothing more than a sunken wreckage. One he may dive into and explore whenever he desires.

As his tongue works into my mouth deeper, thrusting and stabbing and invading, an invisible hand grips my lungs in a choke hold, rattling them, shaking the breath right from them. The fear and dread paralyze me. They twist my stomach like a vortex when Malachor takes my hands still clutching the knife.

Without breaking the kiss, he trains the blade upon the center of my dress and cuts. Forcing me to slice through the only soaked and threadbare barrier between us. Once he’s peeled the scraps off of me, Malachor pauses from my swollen lips.

“He fed you his blood and took yours here for the first time, didn’t he, little dove?” he muses, calmly folding his wings onto his back.

I can almost trick myself into believing it’s his voice, but the tone is different. How he wields the words is different. But I part my lips, gazing into those polished black orbs—laced with hatred, dominance, torment.

Smiling to himself, Malachor slowly leans me back against the coffin until I’m in the same position as that night. My fingers tremble upon the hilt of the knife he’s let me keep. Because it’slike letting a child have her special blanket. It makes her feel safe, but it won’t protect me from the God of Blood himself.

“I will take yours tonight. Your skin. Your scars…”

A fever engulfs me as he takes the knife, still clutched in my hands, and traces the tip along the swirling path of my tattoos. My scars that belong to Merikh as his belong to me. No matter how much I try to ignite that fever into a wrathful inferno, I can’t battle the predator above me who liquefies all my bones and toys with my nerves. When he stabs two fingers into my raw, wet heat, his smile grows.

“Oh, gods!” I moan, clenching my eyes and turning my face, but I can’t.

As if predicting it, Malachor grips my jaw with his other hand and forces my face back to his. “Yes, little dove,” he says while pumping those fingers in and out. “Your body, your breath, your blood. Your monsters. I’ll play with you. And break you, Quintessa. And remake you tonight.”

And with the knife firmly set between my breasts like an arrow draping down the center of my body, Malachor seals his mouth to mine while thrusting his fingers quicker into my heat. I lurch, which only takes me deeper into him.

Molten heat plunders every iota of my bloodstream, spreading lower, spasming my inner muscles around those fingers.

And then, the lips are devouring. The teeth are biting. The hand below is slapping while his other hand pinches my breast hard, claws scraping the flesh. In the very instant of the change, I knew who it was. A moan of true desire escapes my mouth and plunges into my monster’s. I lean into his punishing hunger. Merikh kisses me like a man starved and taking the last meal before his apocalypse.

And then, he stops.

I open my eyes to find a war within his. They blink between scarlet pupils, black lustrous depths, and moonlit silver—all fractured by his black strands of hair. Confused, I lower my brows, observing the riot in his eyes. I hardly register the feeling of the dagger in my clutches. All I know are his hands coming around mine…and slowly but surely turning that dagger until the tip is pointed directly at his chest…above his undead heart.

“Quintessa…” Merikh deadpans with me.

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