Page 98 of Devoured
His hair was wild and black, spiking in every direction—a dark crown framing his feral face. Everything about him looked unhinged. Violent. Beautiful.
“I am not to be looked at. I’m ugly,” he said, voice rough and low, almost broken.
My heart clenched.
Centuries of hiding. Centuries of believing he wasn’t worthy of being seen.
“Ugly?” I stood on my toes and reached up to trace one of his scars. “You’re magnificent. You’re mine.”
His hands moved to my waist, and suddenly I was airborne. He lifted me like I weighed nothing, bringing me to his level. My feet dangled above the ground as one massive arm wrapped around me, holding me tight against his chest. His other hand cradled the back of my head.
For a moment, we just stayed like that—face to face. Monster to monster. Equal to equal.
His breath was warm against my lips.
Then he kissed me.
It was gentle at first. His lips were softer than they looked. But gentleness couldn’t contain what we were. His mouth opened, and I gasped. His tongue was black as midnight, longer than any human’s, sliding against mine like silk and sin.
His jagged teeth grazed my lower lip, drawing blood. He licked it away with a growl.
My hands tangled in his wild hair. It was sharp against my palms, drawing tiny cuts—but I only pulled him closer. He growled into my mouth, the sound vibrating through my body.
This was wrong by every standard of heaven and earth. A monster kissing a monster in the ruins of madness.
It was perfect.
When we finally broke apart, both of us breathing hard, he lowered me gently to the floor. The building groaned around us, walls beginning to collapse.
“Mine,” he growled, his forehead resting against mine.
“Always,” I whispered back.“In every realm. In every form.”
He pulled me against his chest, one hand cradling my head against him.“My moth,” he murmured into my hair, the words rumbling through his chest.
I pulled back just enough to look into his burning eyes.“You call me your moth, but I need to give you a name too. You’re so much more than just an executioner—my executioner.” I traced another scar on his jaw, feeling him shudder under my touch.“You’re my Flame. The fire I was always meant to fly into. The burning that doesn’t consume me but transforms me.”
His eyes widened slightly, centuries of solitude cracking at the edges.
“In all this darkness, you were the only light that called to me,” I continued, my voice dropping to a whisper.“Not to destroy me, but to remake me. My beautiful, terrible Flame.”
“Flame,” he repeated, tasting the name like something sacred. His arms tightened around me.“Yes. I’ll be your Flame. Always burning. Always there for my moth.” He pulled me against his chest, and we stood there in the dying hospital—two creatures born from violence finding something gentle in each other.
The walls could fall. The world could end.
We had already survived worse. We had found each other in hell.And that was enough.
Chapter 30
As I returned to the Realm Beneath with the Executioner by my side, I saw Varnar horrified by the surroundings he saw. His mouth hung open, spit dripping. The walls breathed around us—real breathing, wet and wrong. For the first time in his life, he was seeing where he’d sent all those women. Not some abstract place in his files. This place. With its stink of old meat and floors that squirmed under his expensive shoes. He kept shaking his head like a dog trying to clear water from its ears, but the realm wouldn’t leave. It pressed into him through every pore, showing him exactly what he’d been feeding all these years.
“Welcome to your new home,”I told Varnar, watching him scramble away from Alan’s skinned remains. His shoes slipped in the puddle of his own vomit.
The cathedral of bones stretched around us, impossibly vast. Every surface was carved from human remains, but now I could hear them. Whispers built into the foundation itself.
I walked to the nearest wall and pressed my palm flat against a skull worked into the stone. The voices crashed over me like a tide.
“Oh God,”I yanked my hand back. “I need to free them.”
