Chapter 80
EIGHTY
Idon't think. I act.
My hand lashes forward, catching Zepharion’s wrist as he begins to lower the blade. His skin is cold beneath mine. For a single heartbeat, nothing happens.
Then—
The light erupts.
Cassiel’s fire surges through me, called by instinct. Not flame as mortals know it, but divine radiance. Righteous destruction. It pours from my palm into Zepharion’s body, and he jolts—his spine arching, his mouth falling open.
He doesn't scream right away.
First, he glows—from within. Silver light leaks from the corners of his eyes, then his nose, his mouth. His lips peel back in a silent snarl as the fire sears through his organs, igniting him from the inside out. And then he screams.
It is not a human sound. It is raw. Bestial. Unholy.
Smoke rises from his robes. His skin begins to blister, blackening along the veins that glow beneath. He wrenches away from me, falling to the floor as the blade clatters and skitters across the marble.
The guards panic.
Everything shatters.
The throne room descends into chaos—people screaming, running, drawing weapons, casting shields.
Blood hits the floor in bright, wet splatters as the guards turn on my mates.
I see Cassiel drop one with a headbutt, Bastion tear through another with his claws.
Deimos lunges, chained still, but burning with fury.
And me?
I let it out.
I’ve been starved for too long. Muzzled. Choked on my own hunger. My succubus nature surges forth, riding the high of fury and light, and when it pours from me—it is beautiful and terrible and wrong.
A wave of pleasure detonates across the chamber.
Not gentle. Not seductive.
It rips through the air like a blast wave, a pulse bomb of raw ecstasy that shatters control.
Those closest to me collapse first, spines bowing, eyes rolling white as their bodies convulse.
Gasps twist into moans, into sobs, into screams. They claw at their own skin, tear at their finery, rending silk and lace into strips.
Nobles in gold-thread robes drop to their knees, but there’s no prayer in them—only writhing need I force upon them.
And then I take it.
Pleasure bleeds into agony as I pull it out, wrenching their life-force thread by thread.
Their veins bulge. Their throats work in strangled cries.
Flesh slackens, skin grays. They shrivel as I drink them dry, bodies trembling in their final paroxysm before they fall to the marble as discarded husks.
“She’s draining them all,” Cassiel says, voice hoarse, reverent.
“Let her,” Deimos answers, blood on his lip, worship in his tone.
But it’s not enough. Not nearly enough.
My hunger howls. The thing inside me unfurls.
I spread my arms, and power pours through my veins until they glow like molten iron, every beat of my heart a thunderclap of fury.
My vision whites out with fire. I find them through the haze—my mates.
Bruised. Bloodied. Shackled by rune and chain. But standing. Watching. Seeing me.
They see what I’ve become.
And I speak, my voice carrying across the carnage, clear and ringing, soaked in venom.
“You want a ceremony?” My lips peel back, baring teeth that might have been a smile once. “Here’s your fucking sacrifice.”
And I release it.
Cassiel’s fire answers first. Divine, silver-white, searing with judgment. It erupts through me in a torrent that sets the throne room alight. Not flame that warms. Flame that purges. It hunts like a predator, streaking across the chamber in ribbons of sanctified wrath.
The guilty cannot hide. The fire finds them.
The guards who forced Deimos to his knees burn first. Their armor melts, fusing into their flesh as they scream. Their flesh sloughs from bone in sheets, falling wet and blackened onto the marble. Their skulls collapse into ash.
The nobles who watched in silence, who whispered and smirked as I was paraded in chains—the fire turns their jeweled crowns molten, liquefying gold into rivers that sear their faces down to bone.
They shriek as their eyes boil in their sockets, as skin bubbles and bursts, until only smoldering skeletons remain slumped in velvet pews.
The stained-glass dome overhead shatters in the heat. Fragments of crimson and violet rain down like jagged jewels, slicing into the few still writhing on the floor. The throne itself cracks, obsidian splitting with a sound like the earth itself breaking.
Blood runs in rivulets down the steps, pooling into the carvings of conquest etched into the floor. The air fills with the reek of scorched flesh, molten metal, burning hair. Screams echo, overlap, then fall into silence one by one, swallowed by the storm.
When it ends, there is nothing left but ruin.
Only three remain untouched.
Deimos. Bastion. Cassiel.
They stand in the wreckage, framed by the ruined dome, the night sky bleeding through, starlight catching in the ash like constellations painted across the dead. Their eyes are locked on me—not with fear, not with horror. With recognition. With awe.
And me?
I stand at the center of the throne room, ankle-deep in ash, light blazing from my body, hunger satisfied, power unchained.
The choker has melted away, dripping down my throat in rivulets of cooling gold. The thorn crown lies shattered at my feet.
I am not a bride. I am not a victim.
I am retribution.