Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
The moment she starts to shift, the air answers.
It thickens, crackling with a charge that makes the hairs along my arms stand to attention.
She grips her arms, panting like someone pulling herself out of a deep well, eyes flaring with a light I’ve hardly ever seen—power, impatient, raw.
It’s fighting to break out of her and she’s the only thing between it and the world.
“Come on, Lustling,” I murmur, watching every inch of her. “Stop holding back.”
Her head snaps up, lips peeling back in a snarl. There’s struggle there, the small terrified human part and the thing that wants to tear the sky down. Then the human part loses the fight.
A wave of force erupts from her, a pulse that hammers the courtyard. Dust and loose gravel tumble; banners flutter like wounded birds. She gasps, arches, and then her body re-forms.
Fuck.
My breath goes hollow and I feel the old animal in me react. Bastion gives a low appreciative growl; even Cassiel, so careful and contained, inhales a sharp, involuntary breath. She is breathtaking.
Her skin has gone molten—deep red running in liquid patterns over her limbs, darker crescents along her thighs and arms. Her hair is a living flame, longer and wilder than before.
Two monstrous, leathery wings unfurl behind her, edges honed like blades, crimson melting to black at the tips.
Curved black horns crown her head, sleek and lethal.
Her eyes glow with a molten mix of gold and violet and they lock onto me with a hunger that is almost feral.
Desire flares, immediate and hot. I want her here—under this sky, in this ruin—to mark her, to take her until every part of her knows my claim. But this is not just about sex. Not today. Not yet.
I force my breath steady, push the animal back into its cage. “Well, Lustling…” I step forward, circling her like a predator tasting the air. “Aren’t you a fucking sight.”
She tilts her head and flexes claws designed to kill, moving with a new, predatory grace. The hunger in her eyes slides from want to hunt; something feral and dangerous anchors there. It sets my teeth on edge in a way I adore.
“Time to put that new body to the test,” I tell her, stepping back and feeling the weight of my own demonic shape settle in. The courtyard seems to lean in. “Let’s see what you can do.”
She grins, fangs flashing. Then she launches.
She moves faster than I’d given her credit for, weaving and striking with a speed that makes my head spin. She catches counters I didn’t expect; she adapts, learns, a student turning teacher. For a moment she holds her own against all three of us.
Beautiful. Terrifying. Yet not quite enough.
I drive into her hard, sending her sprawling onto the cracked black stone. She catches herself on hands and forearms, shoulders hunched, and I feel the dark bloom of anger roll through her—more than frustration. Something older and worse and hungrier.
She pushes up on all fours and stares at me. Her voice, when it comes, is quiet and absolute. “Kneel.”
The word is a blade. It cuts the sound from the air.
My body betrays me. Muscles lock, knees folding beneath me like someone yanked the floor from under my spine.
I fight it, jaw clenched, because I do not kneel.
I do not submit. But an invisible pressure coils around my legs and presses me down.
Bastion curses and collapses to one knee, fists scraping stone as he claws to resist. Cassiel—always the exception—drops immediately to both knees and bows his head; the look on his face is not of defeat so much as the sudden acceptance of a fact too long avoided.
We are all on our knees beneath her.
Lillien walks among us, the authority in her stride a physical thing.
She inspects us with detached curiosity, pleased and hungry and terrible all at once.
Watching Bastion thrash against it—his golden eyes bright with furious shame—is its own dark joy.
Cassiel’s stillness is worse: his shame makes him small and exquisitely human.
She crouches before me and tilts my chin up with a single sharp claw the way I have done to her a dozen times. Up close I can see the small, savage delight tugging at her mouth.
“You love it, don’t you?” she whispers, silk and sin threaded together.
I growl. My whole body hums with the effort to reclaim sovereignty. When she releases the command the hold snaps away and I surge upright. Bastion lashes to his feet with a roar and paces, muscles quivering as he shakes off the aftertaste. Cassiel exhales and remains, stunned and chastened.
I stand ahead of them all, towering, reminding the air of who I am. Anger and something darker curl warm and bright in my gut.
She only smirks.
“My turn,” I tell her. My voice is low and a promise.
She does not flinch. She smirks back. The challenge is made and answered in a glance. I will ruin her for that. I will break and build and own every ferrule of that new hunger until the memory of making us kneel is permanent in her bones. And the prospect tastes like victory.