Chapter 32 Malachi
Malachi
Twelve steps to the wall. Pivot. Twelve steps back. Pivot.
My boots squeak against the white tiles gratingly as I pace. But I can’t stop, because if I do, the reality of where we are—and what we’re waiting for—is going to crash down on me like a falling spire.
My little summoner sits on the edge of her cot, knees drawn up to her chest. They’ve stripped her of those ridiculous Victorian layers and shoved her into the same thing I’m wearing—a standard-issue, shapeless tunic and trousers made of scratchy, white cotton.
How the fuck did it get this bad?
Powerlessness is a sensation I haven’t felt since I was a babe, and I forgot how much it burns.
It feels like acid in my veins. It feels like being chained to a rock while the tide comes in.
And all I can do is pace in a glorified waiting room while my sister fills out the paperwork to dig through the mind of the only thing—save for Chain-Chewer—that I’ve managed to keep alive for more than a week.
And since he doesn’t have a heartbeat, I’m not even sure that counts.
In two strides, I cross the room and drop onto the edge of her cot, the metal springs groaning under my weight.
I reach forward, raking my fingers through the damp, tangled mess of her hair, trying to coax the chaotic waves away from her forehead.
She shudders, her hands gripping her knees so hard her knuckles turn white.
“I don't want you in my head, Malachi,” she whispers, her voice trembling. “I don't want you—or her—seeing everything. All the ugly parts. It’s... I can’t let you see that.”
“Look at me.” I take her chin, tilting her face up until she has no choice but to meet my gaze. “Eden, you’re in Hell. Do you really think a few dark thoughts or some messy mortal trauma is going to send me running?”
I brush my thumb over her cheekbone. “There is nothing in that pretty head of yours that could possibly scare me. You think a little darkness is going to freak me out? I live in the dark, baby girl. I want to see it. All of it.”
Her shoulders drop an inch, the tension bleeding out just enough for me to continue.
“But once it’s done,” I whisper against her skin, my lips brushing the damp hair at her temple, “the bind will be gone. The link will be severed. You will be your own entity again.”
I pause, the next words feeling like broken glass in my throat—a physical revolt against the sentence I know I have to speak.
“And Veraxia will clear your memory of all of this. She will scrub the trauma. She will clear your memory... of me.”
My stomach twists painfully. To be forgotten by her.
To be erased. To be nothing more than a gap in her timeline, a ghost in her history.
.. I’ll be back at my desk, filing endless reports on human misery while she sits in her apartment with the House-Beast, drinking tea and listening to her sister’s boring stories.
And I’ll be down here, staring at a stack of soul-claims, knowing I’ll never get to steal another one of her crop tops or argue about the litter box…
“That is what you want, isn't it?” I murmur against her temple. “To go back to your life? To be free of me?”
No answer comes, the silence between us loud enough to deafen, and so my lips continue to press against her face, mapping the geography of her skin with my mouth, memorizing a texture I’m about to lose forever.
“Vesper,” she chokes out. “Will she... will Veraxia let me get Vesper before I go back? I can’t leave her here, Malachi. I can’t go back to that empty apartment without her.”
The question—so small, so practical in the face of oblivion—makes my chest ache.
“I’ll make sure of it,” I vow, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I won’t let the House-Beast rot down here. She goes back with you. I promise.”
She nods, a small, watery release of breath escaping her.
“I’m scared,” she whimpers.
I pull back just enough to cup her face in my hands and force her to look at me—to look into the eyes of the man who dragged her here, and see the absolute, unwavering devotion burning there.
“I know, baby girl. I know,” I soothe. “But you are not walking into that room alone. Do you hear me? I will be there every second, holding your hand.”
She sniffles, her hands coming up to clutch the front of my tunic, gripping the fabric like it’s the only solid thing left in the universe.
I need to get her out of here. I can’t move us physically, but I can take her mind somewhere else. Somewhere where there’s no extraction, no memory wipe, no looming separation.
My hands slide down her face to her shoulders, and then lower. “Let me take it away,” I whisper, my lips grazing the corner of her mouth as my thumb digs into the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. “Focus on me. Fuck tomorrow.”
There’s no rushing. The world outside can burn; right now, I have an immortal lifetime of worship to pour into her mortal body.
The fabric of the tunic bunches in my fists, and she raises her arms, allowing me to strip the garment over her head, discarding it onto the tiles without a second glance, before I pull off my own.
The cold air of the cell bites at my skin, and she reaches out, her cool fingers trembling as she traces the blackened, branded lines of the sigil.
Her hair tickles my chest as she leans down, pressing her lips directly against a mark.
Electricity shoots through me, a jolt of pure heat that travels straight from my ribs to my cock. She kisses the scar like it’s something precious to her, her palm flattening over my heart.
“Look at you,” I breathe, the words tangled with a dark reverence, my hands sinking deep into her plush hips. “So soft. So fucking alive.”
I lean in, burying my face against the swell of her breast, and inhale deeply, filling my lungs with the scent of her, drowning out the antiseptic stench of the cell.
My lips caress the slope of her ribs, the soft dip of her navel, the lush wideness of her hips. My hands map every inch of her, kneading the softness of her thighs, marveling at the way her body yields under my touch. She is a feast in a land of famine, and I am starving.
Her hands leave my shoulders, drifting up, fingers threading through the hair at my temples before sliding higher. She traces the obsidian horns curling from my skull, her touch one of admiration where it should be fear.
The thin mattress groans beneath us as she moves with a determination that makes my chest ache, pulling her pants off, then climbing over me. She straddles me, her thick thighs parting to encompass me, claiming the space as her own.
The heat from her pussy presses against my straining cock through the fabric of my pants while the soft curve of her stomach brushes the hard wall of my chest.
She frames my face in her hands, looking at me like I’m the one who needs saving right now.
Fuck. Maybe I am.
The realization hits me harder than a blade between the ribs. This is it. The clock’s ticking down, seconds bleeding away into the dark, and I’m wasting them breathing when I should be devouring her.
Her gaze holds me captive, vast and devastating, as one of her hands trails down from my face. It glides over the erratic thumping of my heart, seeking the space between our bodies. I grit my teeth, my head falling back, the tips of my horns piercing into the padded wall.
“Do it,” I rasp, my hands gripping the mattress to keep from ruining her momentum. “Don't make me wait.”
Her fingers fumble with the fastening of my pants, impatient and clumsy with need.
When she finally frees me, the cool air barely registers before her palm wraps around my cock.
A breath hisses through my teeth. I’m already ready for her, hard as stone and leaking enough pre-come to slick her palm instantly.
She lifts her hips, lining us up perfectly, dragging the head of my cock over her soaked entrance.
Then, in one slow, devastating slide, she sinks, inch by agonizing inch, her pussy stretching to accommodate the thick length of me. I watch her face, watching the way her eyes roll back, her lips parting in a silent gasp as the metal piercing drags against her tight, wet walls.
My hands clamp onto her waist, fingers digging into the soft flesh until I find bone and begin to guide her rhythm, snapping my hips up to meet her drop, grinding her against me with a force that threatens to splinter the cot beneath us.
“Use me,” I growl, the command rough with desperation. “Do it.”
My teeth graze the sensitive skin of her throat before I drop lower and capture a hardened nipple in my mouth, lashing it with my tongue, sucking greedily.
At the same time, my hand slides between our sweating bodies. My fingers find her swollen clit, rolling it between my thumb and forefinger in a merciless rhythm.
“Fuck, Eden,” I pant, fucking into her with punishing, upward strokes. “Fuck.”
Her nails rake down my chest, tearing through the skin, leaving burning trails in their wake. I welcome the sting. I crave it. The burn sears through my blood, a sharp, physical tether in a world that is dissolving around us. I force her faster, harder, trying to outrun the inevitable morning.
It isn’t enough. I need more. I need to consume her.
If her mind’s going to be scrubbed clean, if I’m to be reduced to nothing more than a fever dream or a chemical imbalance, then I need her body to remember.
I want to leave a ghost in her nervous system.
I want her cells to ache with the phantom weight of me long after the memories are gone.
I want to ruin her for anyone else who tries to touch her in that mundane, beige life she’s returning to.
“I’m going to bite you,” I warn, my voice a feral rasp against the shell of her ear.
“Do it,” she breathes, her heading falls back, exposing the slender, vulnerable architecture of her throat.
Her scream is wet and breathless, a sound of pure shock and arousal that vibrates straight into my jaw as I sink my fangs into the soft, tender curve of the junction where neck meets shoulder. Her skin breaks with a satisfying pop, and her beautiful, hot blood washes over my tongue.
Saints-be-fucking-low.
It tastes of iron and dirt and mortality. It is a vulgar, biological fluid. But with her, it’s ambrosia.
I groan against her skin and lap at the wound, soothing the sting with my tongue, swirling over the puncture marks, but below, I offer no mercy.
My hips continue their brutal, snapping assault, driving the head of my cock relentlessly against her g-spot.
And my hand moves faster between us, slick with sweat and sex, rolling her overstimulated clit until she’s thrashing against me, hips bucking wildly.
“Take it,” I snarl against her bloody neck. “Feel that? Feel how that metal tears you up inside?”
She cries out, her inner muscles clamping down on me in a vice-like grip, milking the shaft, rippling over the barbell in a way that nearly blinds me.
“That's it,” I growl, fucking into her harder, faster, chasing the friction. “Be a good girl and squeeze. Break it off inside you.”
She throws her head back, her body bowing as the tension snaps.
“I can't—!” she sobs, her voice fracturing.
“You can. Come for me,” I command.
Her hips stutter, and then she breaks. A hot, violent gush releases from her, soaking my hand, coating my thighs, splashing against our joined bodies.
The sensation of her come hitting me—the heat, the mess, the way she unravels completely—is the final straw.
My control shatters. Her name rolls from my tongue again and again as I drive deep one last, devastating time, burying myself to the hilt, pouring every drop of myself into her.
We stay tangled together for a long moment, my forehead resting against hers, our breath mingling in the silent air of the cell. I pull back just enough to look at the room.
It’s a disaster. The room designed to strip a soul of its dignity through sheer, blinding whiteness—now looks like the aftermath of a localized riot. A mess of blood, sweat, and tangled clothes strewn across the floor that’s nothing more than a middle finger to the architects of the Ninth.
And by this time tomorrow, she won’t remember a damn thing about it.
“Well,” I rasp, exhausted. “I believe we’ve definitely just ruined someone’s day with this mess.”
Eden slumps and lets out a tiny sound that I think is another sob. But then her shoulders shake, and a fragile laugh bubbles out of her, puffing against my collarbone.
“Good,” she whispers shakily, her skin still fever-hot against mine. “I hope it takes them an eternity to scrub the smell of us out of the grout. I hope the tiles never recover.”
I huff out a dry laugh, tracing the edge of the bite mark on her neck.
“Perhaps they’ll be so pissed that for punishment, I’ll be demoted to a brand-new department dedicated to overseeing minor inconveniences and despair,” I mutter.
“So… a permanent transfer back to Earth, then?” she whispers.
I chuckle, but it feels like swallowing glass. I pull her closer, wrapping my arms around her plush, sweat-slicked frame, hiding her face against my chest so she doesn't have to see the predatory whiteness of the walls anymore.
“What’s going to happen to you, Malachi?” she asks, the lightness of her voice failing. “When I’m gone… Where do you go?”
“Ah, you know. Back to the grind,” I say, trying to force a casual shrug. “Back to the usual—the paperwork, the screaming, the occasional bit of creative torture. It’s a living. Or, well, an existing.”
I try to laugh it off, but the sound dies in the space between us, and so I hold her tighter, locking it all away.
For a few more hours, the paperwork doesn't matter. There’s only her. Because truth-be-told, something in the machinery of my chest has shifted. I haven't spent that much time with Eden, but I feel... changed. Recalibrated.
I’ve spent my existence watching souls break, but I never thought I’d be the one struggling to keep mine in one piece.