Chapter 36 In Divine Intervention
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
IN DIVINE INTERVENTION
My body didn’t understand that it wouldn’t be getting what it craved, that Valen was gone, that relief would not come.
The fire he had ignited with his blood raged through me, a molten river that scorched every nerve ending, pooled in my core, and left me hollow and aching.
I staggered to the corner nearest my harbinger, legs buckling beneath me until I slid down the cold stone to land in an ungraceful heap of torn silk and trembling limbs.
I was uncomfortable. So uncomfortable.
My throat was raw from screaming Valen’s name, my wrists bruised from the binding and subsequent struggles.
I pressed my cheek against the cold stone wall, seeking relief from the heat that consumed me from within.
It didn’t help. Nothing helped. The hunger that had overtaken me when Valen’s teeth broke my skin continued, a gnawing emptiness that demanded to be filled.
I curled in on myself, knees drawn to chest, arms wrapped tightly around them as if I could physically contain the maelstrom raging inside me.
My gown clung to sweat-slicked skin, every brush of the fabric against sensitized nerves sending fresh waves of unwanted arousal through me.
I was burning up, consumed from the inside out by a need so primal it transcended thought.
“Stop,” I whispered to my own body, the word falling into the darkness like a stone. “Please, stop.”
But the madness didn’t listen. It didn’t care about my pleas, my shame, my rapidly returning awareness of what I had done—how I had behaved before Valen and the guards.
A sound emerged from my throat—not quite a scream, not quite a sob, something feral and frustrated that echoed off the stone walls of my prison. I curled forward, pressing my forehead to the cold floor, hands clawing at the stone as if I could dig my way out, dig my way to him.
The hunger would not abate. If anything, it was getting worse. Developing into a gnawing emptiness that devoured me from within, an itch beneath my skin that couldn’t be scratched. My thighs trembled with the force of it, my core aching with a need that had no outlet, no resolution.
Valen’s blood was drying on my chin, flaking away, but the taste of it lingered in my mouth, on my tongue, a persistent reminder of what had transpired between us. Of what had been awakened. Of what remained unfulfilled.
I wanted to hate him. Needed to hate him. He had reduced me to this trembling, needy creature ruled by impulses I didn’t understand. He had taken everything from me—my family, my freedom, my dignity, and now, it seemed, my very sense of self.
Yet even as these thoughts formed, I yearned for him. The memory of his teeth in my flesh, his hand at my throat, his body pressed against mine sent fresh waves of heat through me, and I couldn’t find the will to deny it.
I’d thought I’d known desire before. I’d thought I’d understood need, want, longing.
But this—this was something else entirely.
This was consumption, possession, madness.
It burned along my nerves like wildfire, pooled molten between my thighs, throbbed in my veins with every beat of my heart.
The bite on my neck felt like a brand, a connection that hadn’t been severed by Valen’s departure, a channel through which this terrible hunger continued to pour.
Was this Valen’s true revenge, then? Not the physical pain or the solitary confinement he had inflicted over the past month, but reducing me to a creature of pure need, stripping away every vestige of dignity and control, leaving me to writhe alone in the dark with a hunger that could not be satisfied?
A particularly vicious surge of desire crashed through me, drawing a broken cry from my lips as my fingers moved between my thighs.
But as soon as I reached my core, it was as if everything turned numb, not allowing me to find my own release myself while desperation still thrummed within me.
Is this what he meant? That I needed him to bring me relief?
I slammed my fist against the stone floor with a scream, welcoming the sharp pain that shot up my arm, needing any sensation that might override the maddening ache between my thighs.
It didn’t work. Nothing worked.
If the blood singing through my veins would not be denied, and if Valen would not give me what I needed, I would find another way to take my relief.
“Death.”
It was barely a whisper, broken and desperate, not even loud enough to carry beyond the confines of my own huddled form. But it was all I had left—this tenuous connection to someone, anyone, who wasn’t Valen.
I pressed my forehead against the ground, closing my eyes as another wave of heat rolled through me at the mere thought of his name.
“Harbinger,” I whispered again, louder this time, the name emerging as a plea. “Please.”
I didn’t know what I was asking for. Company in my shame? Relief from this torment? The mercy of oblivion? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the desperate need to not be alone with the fire consuming me from within.
“Death,” I called one more time, voice cracking on the single syllable. “Please... help me.”
“So she calls for me at last.” Death’s voice rumbled through the darkness, restrained and frustrated and terribly intimate.
It seemed to come from everywhere at once—from the wall behind me, from the shadows of my cell, from inside my own heated mind.
“Such pretty sounds you made for him. I particularly enjoyed your begging. So raw. So desperate. Almost entertaining in its degradation.”
I bit back a moan at the intimacy in his voice, pressing my forehead harder against the stone. Gods, had he always sounded like that? His voice was so deep, so sensual, even with the anger threading through it. I had to press my fingers into my palm to stop myself from reaching between my legs.
“Now, now, little fawn. Don’t be shy. You called for me, remember? Three times. Quite insistent.” He hummed, the sound shooting directly to where I needed release. “Was there something you wanted?”
My body responded to his words, a fresh surge of heat pulsing through me, settling low in my belly. I held in a whimper, pressing my thighs together in a futile attempt to ease the ache.
“No?” Death questioned, his tone threaded with mock concern. “Pity. I was hoping to see if you would beg me for it.”
I pressed my fists against my eyes, as if I could physically block out the want that gnawed at my sanity like a starved beast. His voice—Death’s voice—sliced through my defenses, each syllable as sharp as a blade, as sweet as sin.
I wanted to strike him for his tone, for the amusement that dripped like poison from his words while I burned alive in my own skin.
But I couldn’t. Not if he might offer even the faintest chance of relief.
“Make it stop,” I whispered, the words emerging broken and raw. My pride lay in shreds around me, as tattered as the silk gown that clung to my sweat-slicked skin. “Please, my harbinger. Make it stop.”
The silence that followed my plea stretched. I could feel his attention sharpening, focusing on me through the stone that separated us. When he finally spoke, his voice had changed—still mocking, yes, but with an undercurrent of something strained, something hungrier.
“And how,” Death asked, “would you like me to make it stop, little fawn?” The question made my throat tighten in anticipation. “I am chained in this cell, as you are locked in yours. I cannot touch you.”
Another wave of heat crashed through me, more intense than the last. My spine arched involuntarily, a guttural cry escaping my lips before I could swallow it back. The sound echoed in the darkness, raw and animal and deeply, deeply shameful.
“I don’t care how,” I gasped, my nails digging crescents into my palms. “Just... anything. Talk to me. Distract me. Put me out of my misery. I don’t care.”
A low, frustrated sound rumbled through the stone. “What would you have me do?” A pause, weighted with restraint. “I warned you about the madness that befalls mortals when divinity passes their lips. And Vharok’s blood? Drank directly from the vein?” He tsked.
The mention of Valen—of Vharok—sent another pulse of desperate need through me. I bit my lip hard enough to go through skin, trying to focus on that small pain rather than the vast, consuming ache between my thighs.
“Don’t,” I hissed. “Don’t speak his name. Don’t—“ My voice broke on a wave of need so intense, my breath came in deep bursts. “If you’re truly what you claim to be, if you’re truly a god, then you can easily make this torture end. You can help me.”
“If I’m truly what I claim to be?” He repeated, his voice going dangerously soft. “You still doubt me? You question my divinity?”
Frustration surged through me, hot and sharp and sudden. I slammed my palm against the stone wall, the sting of impact doing nothing to distract from the deeper, more insistent pain.
“Prove it, then!” I snarled, beyond caring how I sounded, beyond caring about anything except the relentless, maddening need. “If you are a god, then do something godly and end this torment. Or have those chains rendered you completely useless?”
The temperature in my cell seemed to drop ten degrees in an instant.
The air thickened, pressure building against my eardrums until they ached with it.
When Death spoke again, his voice was no longer just a voice—it was the rumble of earth shifting beneath mountains, the silence between heartbeats, the void that waits at the end of all things.
“Be very careful what you ask for, Mireille.” My name in his mouth was a forbidden thing, a spell, a curse. “There are prices you are not prepared to pay.”
I shuddered, some distant, rational part of me recognizing the danger in his words. But that part was drowning in the sea of desperation that had become my entire existence.