Page 22 of The Surrender

I’m so lost in my thoughts and fantasies - not to mention working to unravel the twisted strings of my heart - that I don’t realize we’ve turned into another passage. A passage with an arched opening to the gray world outside. Not one of ice but of deep, dark forests clad in nightfall.

“Go on then. Mind your steps. Don’t fall in here again or you will catch your death. From me,” she concludes with clenched teeth and gives me a hard shove for the exit.

I spin around to say thank you and ask her name, but she’s already a shadow disappearing around the corner. Heaving a sigh and hoping I’m not walking right into a forest like the one where the Hag first attacked me, I make a beeline for the exit. I’d rather face a resurrected Hag than stay another minute in those cold, dark tunnels surrounded by thousands of baby bones...and a raving raven who turns them into pretty sculptures.

Worse. Much, much, much worse!

As soon as I leave the tunnel and breathe an insane inhale, I’m plucked from the ground and hauled into the air.

Kyan’s sharp-edged voice grates in my ear, “Time for your punishment, Quinny.”

16

“What fools we gods be…”

KYAN

“You’ll wear a hole in the carpeting and the floor beneath if you keep doing that.”

I stop pacing before the roaring hearth of the fireplace, shoot a look at my partner...and growl.

Merikh waves a dismissive hand and departs from his corner in the shadows to approach me. “Don’t bother, Kyanatu. You possessed more than one feather, but you chose the one with my blood on it. You knew what you were doing,” he reminds me while sizing me up.

What’s more infernal is how Merikh manages to study me like a sadistic yet sultry predator, touching me everywhere without ever lifting a finger. Damned vampire. Quinny may not know what power he possesses, and while it may be limited, I sense my blood warming and my flesh heating.

“Didn’t think you would pounce on her on her first night within my Court,” I snarl as he circles me, those chiseled nostrils flaring while his eyes stroll across my wings.

I hiss as he trails a cold breath across the back of my neck and casts a chilled presence to ruffle my wings. All without touching me. I defy the parts of my body that want to surrender to his will.

“Strictly speaking, she pounced on me. Well...she fell into my lap, but that’s beside the point. While you were off playing ring around the dragon, I merely reserved the right to fuck what rightfully should have been mine with which to bond first.”

I crook a smile and lift a brow. “And yet, here we are. The youngest monster god-king of the Waste defying expectations and showing up all his brothers, including the most powerful among us.”

It doesn’t take long for Merikh to snap. Never does. But unlike the others, he doesn’t apply pressure when he grasps my throat. A dark chuckle rears up in me. I raise my proud wings. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, Merry...” the Shadow chastises his fellow demon of another race. “You have felt quite neglected, haven’t you? What a shame you cannot experience how glorious it is to be alive, to feel the essence of all we once were when we ruled the Four Realms. Tell me...did you experience a little taste when you fucked that pretty pink pussy, which has all of us wrapped around it as if it was her pinky?”

He leans in with those fathomless pupils dilating, dark energy curling across my body to tease my feathers. All the muscles in the vampire’s jaw clench, and I imagine my blood would be boiling if he bore the power I do now.

“Mmm...whatever taste I had in those moments, I would wager they rivaled whatever the Lord of Storms allows you to sample, Angelus.”

My spine snaps. All my muscles bulge from the trigger of the name. A name that is a cursed, fallen one which my demon damn well knows. “If you are truly so desperate as to provoke me in this manner, Merikh, I will allow you to suffer longer.”

Seething through gritted teeth, the vampire tightens his grip on my throat, his eyes darting to my pulse, thick with the warm blood he desires. “Think you, the little ghostly strumpet has the heart to desire, to endure, to love your scars?” His laugh is rich and throaty, and I curse the vampire god’s paradox of mind-melting beauty and bone-chilling horror. Mayce’s beauty may turn heads and crush hearts, but he does not possess like Merikh.

“She took the heart’s fire of a dragon, let it burn her from the inside out, and rose from the ashes. If she cannot dance with our storm, that is her fault for playing with monsters.”

“Perhaps I’ll give her mine again, terrify her enough, and spare her the tribulation of facing yours. After all, we both know I alone have stood in the eye where Kyanatu collides with his demon. And had the strength to fucking kneel.”

I surface, shoving Shadow down, so I may tilt my head and touch my lips to my partner’s brow. “She will kneel before us tonight, brother. I gave her a lull, wrapped her in feather blankets, and sang her to sleep. After I found her half-frozen and exhausted from hours within the hollows, I knew she would need rest to recover her strength before her punishment. But it is time. You will join me, Merikh. Sate your lust with mine and teach our mad, little spirit moth a lesson on straying from the designated path—damned fox or no.”

“I lead.”

At first, I pause and cross my arms over my chest. Stare him down after he used that dark, toe-curling purr of a growl on me. Shadow claws at the layers of my mind in rebellion, but we both know we’d rather him win this battle than the other.

So, I relent, shift my body to the side, and extend a hand in a gesture for him to go first. Merikh glowers and curls his upper lip despite his lack of fangs. It will always be an inbred instinct just as I tried to ruffle my feathers for centuries with no blood pulsing through my pinions. No developed muscles. And brittle bones to support the skeletal structure of my tattered wings.

“What fools we gods be,” I quip and follow him out of the library and into the outer hall. “We hate our demons with all that we are. And curse them with our souls. But in the end, they are the only ones who accept us and our scars.”

“Let us see if she will, brother.”

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