Chapter 40 An Unraveling of Divinity and Mortality #2
The copper tone of his skin deepened to crimson, like blood under a pale moon. His fingers on my jaw grew hot, almost burning against my skin.
I should have been terrified. Instead, I felt a perverse thrill at having provoked this transformation, at having stripped away his carefully maintained control.
“Is this what you wanted to see?” His voice was barely recognizable now, layered with power and rage. “The monster beneath the mask? The being that slaughtered your family, that destroyed everything you’ve ever loved?”
‘Careful, little fawn,’ Death’s voice reverberated in my head. ‘I’ve told you before, the form of the divine tends to break those lesser than them.’
Instead of heeding Death’s warning, I leaned closer, as much as my chains would allow, and whispered against the Blood God’s burning skin, “Yes. Show me the truth of what you are. No more masks. No more pretending. Just you and me.” I paused, letting my lips brush against his jaw. “I’m not afraid of you, Vharok.”
He jerked back as if burned, staring at me with those bottomless black eyes. For a moment, he seemed at a loss—caught between rage and desire, between the need to punish and the need to possess.
“You should be afraid,” he said at last, his voice a growl that seemed to emanate from the very stones around us.
I met his gaze unflinchingly, feeling a strange calm settle over me despite the danger in which I found myself. “I’m not.” I shifted in my chains, deliberately emphasizing my nakedness, my vulnerability. “What will you take from me today? My pain? My pleasure? Both?”
His massive form trembled with barely contained restraint. The crimson of his skin seemed to shimmer, the black of his eyes drowning out any trace of humanity. He was beautiful and terrible, a being of pure power and hunger.
“You want to play, Princess?” Vharok’s voice had dropped another octave, resonating with something ancient and terrible. He traced a finger down my cheek, then suddenly dug his nails into the soft flesh beneath my jaw.
The pain blossomed sharp and sweet. I gasped, not in protest but in pure pleasure. “Haven’t we been playing from the start?”
His features darkened even further as he recognized the challenge in my words. His hand moved from my face to my hair, yanking my head back to expose my throat again. The collar dug into my skin, the position precarious and vulnerable.
“You want pain?” His breath was hot against my ear. “I can give you more than you could bear.”
His other hand closed around my ribs, nails digging into the spaces between bone with calculated cruelty. In the past, such treatment would have made me begin to find that place of nothingness, to retreat within myself. To hide.
Now, I arched into his touch.
“Do you promise?” I whispered, watching the shock register in his eyes.
Then, startlingly, he began to laugh, low and slow, as if he had suddenly come to some realization.
He gripped my chin, pressing against the corner of my mouth with his thumb. The touch was almost tender, a mockery of comfort, but his black eyes burned with a feverish intensity that was anything but gentle.
“So that’s it, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice a rasp of copper and smoke. “You want to know what it’s like to be fucked by a God?”
I could barely breathe, the chains of anticipation tighter than the cuffs around my wrists.
“I think that is it,” he continued, his thumb pressing into the split of my lip. “It’s terribly mortal of you, wife. To want to be monster-fucked in your dungeon cell. To crave the thing you should most fear.”
My blood roared in response to his words, a dark fire igniting within me as I arched my back as much as the manacles would allow, my naked body pressing against the fine fabric of his clothing.
The cuffs bit deeper into my wrists, drawing thin lines of blood that trickled down my forearms. The sharp sting only heightened my awareness of every point where his body touched mine.
His hand found the bare skin of my thigh, fingers digging into the soft flesh. I gasped as his fingers traced higher, leaving trails of heat across my skin.
Valen’s breathing had grown heavier, each exhalation burning against my lips where his were inches away. Our eyes remained locked as his hand continued its upward journey, rough calluses catching on sensitive skin, until his fingers found the point between my thighs.
“So wet,” he groaned, almost to himself. “Soaked.” His thumb circled, teasing but not entering, drawing a whimper from my throat that I couldn’t have suppressed if I’d wanted to. “You know how to get what you want. Tell me.”
I strained even closer, the movement sending fresh pain lancing through my shoulders, but it was distant, secondary to the sensation of his hands on my body, his breath against my skin.
“I want to break you,” I breathed, the truth slipping from me unbidden. “The way you’ve tried to break me.”
His eyes widened fractionally, then narrowed to dangerous slits. Without warning, he pressed closer, his body pinning mine against him, his hand moving from my chin to clasp my throat. His fingers worked between my thighs, no longer teasing but possessive, demanding.
“I am unable to break,” he snarled, but his voice cracked on the final word, betraying him.
I laughed softly, the sound cut short when his fingers found my clit, pinching with deliberate cruelty. Pleasure spiked through me, sharp enough to steal my breath. My back arched involuntarily, wrists straining against the manacles until blood flowed more freely down my arms.
The scent of my blood seemed to amplify his transformation. His nostrils flared, and the copper tint that had been creeping across his skin suddenly intensified. His eyes, already dark, bled to solid black.
His movements grew rougher, the hand at my neck tightening until spots danced at the edges of my vision, while his other hand continued its relentless assault.
I should have been terrified—I was terrified, somewhere deep beneath the hunger that had consumed me.
But terror, too, had its own sharp pleasure, its own dark thrill.
I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood as the spots turned darker. The metallic tang filled my mouth, and Valen’s eyes fixed on the crimson stain spreading across my lower lip. Something shifted in his expression—hunger becoming something deeper, more primal.
I wanted to ask him to relax his grip, allow some air to reach my lungs. Instead, I leaned forward as much as my restraints would allow and pressed my bloodied lips to his.
My blood mingled between us, copper and salt.
For a heartbeat, he froze, loosening his grip, shocked by my audacity.
Then he responded with violence, crushing his mouth to mine, teeth clashing, tongues battling for dominance.
The kiss was war—a continuation of the battle we’d been fighting since the moment he claimed my kingdom.
The taste of my blood seemed to ignite something in him. His skin burned even hotter against mine, his form growing larger, becoming something even less human than before.
A tremor ran through his body, the hand at my neck tightening to the point of pain, the other sliding up to grip my ribs, drawing a whimper of displeasure from my throat. I could feel heat emanating from his palms, unnatural and increasing by the second.
“Look at what you’ve become,” he growled against my lips. “My perfect little ruin.”
The heat from his hands suddenly became searing. My body jerked as his fingers burned into my flesh. Something was wrong—something beyond the usual cruelty, beyond the careful calculation of his torture. This was uncontrolled, unexpected.
“Valen—“ I began, alarm threading through my voice.
He didn’t seem to hear me. His eyes had taken on a strange glow, his features contorting as the god within him surged.
The copper sheen of his skin gleamed metallic in the torchlight, his body vibrating with barely contained power.
Where his hands touched me, I felt something foreign enter my bloodstream—hot and caustic, like liquid fire.
A power I recognized, but never felt like this.
His power. Blood power.
The pain transcended anything I had experienced from him before. This was elemental, primal. The raw power of a god flowing unchecked into mortal flesh. I screamed then, all pretense of pleasure forgotten as agony consumed me. My vision blurred, darkness encroaching at the edges.
Blood—my blood—flowed freely, not just from my chafed wrists but from beneath his fingers, from where his magic carved unseen wounds into my flesh. The crimson streams painted patterns down my naked body, dripping to my feet on the stone floor.
Through the haze of pain, I saw his expression change, the hunger in his eyes shifting to something else—confusion, then dawning horror.
He looked down at his hands, at the blood coating them, as if seeing them for the first time.
The glow in his eyes flickered, humanity reasserting itself momentarily over divinity.
“What—“ he started, his voice cracking.
My mouth filled with copper, warm and thick, choking any words I might have formed.
It spilled over my lips with a cough instead, running down my chin to join the blood streaming from the wounds in my sides.
Wounds he had made without meaning to—without consciously deciding to destroy the toy he’d been playing with.
Somewhere, distant but insistent, I heard another voice—Death, calling my name with growing urgency.
But I couldn’t answer him either. All I could focus on was the pain.
Valen’s hands still gripped my waist, holding me up, but they no longer burned with magic.
Now they trembled, the fingers that had torn through flesh and vein suddenly uncertain.
I watched with detached fascination as he carefully held me, taking my weight so that the manacles no longer bit into my wrists.
“Hold on,” he murmured, though to me or to himself, I couldn’t tell. “Just hold on.”