Page 73 of The Flesh Remembers
The Watching Abyss
The sanctum was dying. Not in the way that mortal things died. Not with blood. Not with silence. It was dying the way bodies tremble before collapse, the way lungs burn when there’s no air left to take.
The last of the remaining cultists who had sensed Eleanor’s new power knelt before her, their breath ragged, their hands shaking. But it wasn’t fear keeping them there. It was her. They had lost their souls. Now, they wanted something in return. They wanted to be remade. And Eleanor was the only thing strong enough to do it.
Her gaze dragged over them, her ruined flock, her broken worshippers. Diana, hands gripping the fabric at her thighs, thighs pressing together. Felix, on his knees, panting. Tomas,his fingers clenching and unclenching in his lap, unable to meet her eyes. They were wrecked. But she wasn’t. Not yet.
She traced a slow, deliberate line down her throat with the tip of her finger. A taunt. A warning. A summoning.
Felix exhaled sharply, shame staining his breath. Diana’s chest rose and fell too quickly. The air throbbed, thickened, and poisoned by something worse than desire. It was bigger. It was need.
The room exhaled, and the shadows moved. James stepped into the firelight, and everything stopped. The others wanted Eleanor, but James did not want her; James owned her. He didn’t kneel before her like the others. He never had because he had taken her already; now, he would take her again.
Felix shifted, his first and last mistake. James grabbed him, his fingers around his throat like iron. Felix made a sound—a choked gasp, a shuddering exhale—not fear but something worse, something ruinous.
James tilted his head, watching Felix tremble, and his pulse pounded against his palm. The way his breath quickened like some shameful, filthy reaction he couldn’t suppress. James’ grip tightened.
“You like this,” he murmured.
Felix twitched. A whimper. A curse. A plea.
James laughed. It was not a soft thing. Nor a kind thing, but a thing that curled like a fist in Eleanor’s stomach, which told her he was already gone. That he had been gone for a long, long time.
James leaned in, voice dripping with honeyed menace, “You think you’re worthy of her eyes?”
Felix tried to breathe but failed. James’s hand around his throat was like a vice, squeezing ever tighter. James smiled. Slow, patient, deadly.
“You aren’t even worth my hands.” James then unceremoniously dropped Felix to the ground without a second thought.
Felix collapsed, shaking and gasping, but James had already forgotten him. Because Felix was nothing. Eleanor was everything.
And she was his.
James turned. His eyes were on her now. Not looking but claiming.
The room tilted. She should have stepped back. She should have run. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. James didn’t touch her. But his presence was already on her skin. Already inside her. Already pulling her apart.
His voice was low and deliberate. "Tell me no." It was a challenge. It was a command.
Eleanor parted her lips, but no sound came.
Because there was no answer.
Because they both already knew.
Within her chest, buried beneath her flesh, the silver disk hummed happily.
The others broke first.
Diana grabbed Tomas, their mouths colliding. Shaking, humiliated, and panting, Felix turned to the nearest body and clawed at it. It wasn’t passion but survival. The desperate, violent instinct of bodies that had been resurrected, that hadlost something in the abyss and now needed to take something back.
Eleanor had done this to them. And James? James had done this to her.
His grip tightened in her hair, tilting her head back. His breath was warm at her throat. His voice was ruined.
“You don’t get to run from this,” he murmured.
His fingers pressed against her pulse, feeling it race. He could feel her surrender.
