Chapter 35 Alexios
ALEXIOS
A THOUSAND CLAIMED voices crash through me, screaming their feelings all at once.
Love. Hate. Need. Their whining never stops. Every breath I take pulls more of their chaos into my lungs. I breathe in, and they’re there. Breathe out, and they’re still there.
It’s unbearable.
Meanwhile, I’ve been fucking courtiers for thirty-five hours straight while Aethertide burns in my blood. I’d rather swallow broken glass than father a child with any of them, but my wants don’t matter.
Because the realm is screaming at me.
Three centuries since the first rut hit after the Devouring, and it’s only gotten worse. Back then, Scillari whispered and gave a gentle nudge. Now? It howls and forces gods together like rabid animals every hundred years.
But it won’t stay that way, not with so few demis powerful enough to ascend and replace the Eternals we lost in the war. The magical deficit leaves the realm vulnerable and unstable. If we don’t have more potential Eternals soon, Aethertide will be every damn year.
I shift uncomfortably on my throne. My cock is hard, and all I want to do is bite and tear and fuck until there’s nothing left of me.
Maybe I should just walk to Asteria’s deepest ravine.
See if even this immortal body can survive that fall.
Because between the rut, holding the Shroud, and the voices…
I’m not going to last.
“Your Majesty?”
I look down at where a courtier kneels at the foot of the dais, another face I won’t remember tomorrow. I’ve seen a hundred just like her.
They blur together after a while. Pretty dolls with breakable bones, something to use up and throw away. Just vessels to pour my madness into.
“Strip,” I rasp. “Wait for me. Five minutes.”
I need her right now. Need to slam into her and make her cry, to bleed her until the hunger stops. But I need her to wait more. Need to know I can still tell myself no. That I haven’t completely lost my shit.
Five minutes. Three hundred seconds until I can forget, for a few moments, all the lives bound to mine. The needs that aren’t my own. I’ll drown them out, bury myself in sex until I can’t think or feel anything else but animal need.
I hear her undressing—the soft rustle of fabric, the tiny nervous breaths she tries to hide.
Wait. Sixty seconds.
Wait. One hundred seconds.
Wait—
The chamber doors burst open. Bastien stalks in, shadow wings flaring, face remote and unreadable.
“Blade,” I say, sitting up straighter. “You have news?”
He inclines his head, a tightness to the set of his shoulders I don’t like. “The princess’ corpse is still unaccounted for. I don’t sense it anywhere in Vartena.”
For a disorienting second, the snarled threads of the Shroud constrict around my chest, compressing and compressing until I’m certain my ribs will buckle inward.
Hellevig’s deficit left a gap in the veil’s magic I’m still burning myself alive to hold together—all caused by that damn princess’ flock.
“How difficult can it be,” I grind out, “to locate one dead human? I marked her. Felt the connection snap when she died. My power leaves traces, Bastien. You should be able to track it blindfolded.” I lift a hand to my temple, trying to massage away the ache.
“Was there anything else? Or did you just come to tell me you can’t do your job? ”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, his attention slides to the far wall where the naked courtier waits, her skin flushed, hair tumbling over her shoulders. His nostrils flare. Shadows curl around his boots.
I almost smile. We might be Eternals, but we’re not above the failings of biology.
“Let me off the leash,” he says, cold and flat, still staring at the demigoddess.
I study his face. Those black eyes that hold galaxies. Those shadow wings that never quite settle. Bastien without constraints isn’t a weapon you wield; he’s a natural disaster you point in a direction and hope to survive.
“Find another way to deal with rut.” I give him a thin smile. “Do it the old-fashioned way and fuck it out like the rest of us. Or use your hand if you’re still too disgusted by the idea of letting anyone touch you.”
Low blow. I see the hit land.
A muscle in his jaw tics. “Not an option. Seventeen hours.”
I rise to my feet, lightning dancing across my fingertips. “Seventeen hours,” I repeat softly. “Like the twelve you took last centennial that left the western coast of Vartena a smoking crater?” I close the distance between us. “How do I know you won’t slip up again and turn on my Claimed?”
“I’ve done the math.”
“Fuck your math. When the rut-fever takes over and the bloodlust hits, your calculations won’t mean shit. Try again.”
“I can track the girl’s corpse at full power.”
My anger pauses. Now that is interesting.
Bryony Devaliant’s missing corpse is becoming a problem. And problems make my head ache worse than it already does. I need Hellevig compliant, but I can’t have that if they keep wailing for her remains.
“Fifteen hours.” I seize his chin between my fingers, and a stillness goes through him at my touch.
I know he hates this. “I’ll even throw in a village of oathbreakers you can tear apart.
Consider it a gift.” My grip tightens. “But don’t go near my Claimed again.
You remember where you ended up, don’t you, Blade? ”
I feel that tiny flex in his jaw. The one that tells me he’d love to have his shadows tear me apart.
“All that dirt pressing down,” I whisper, my lips close to his ear.
“The darkness so complete you forget what light looks like. Twelve years buried alive was a kind punishment for breaking the Accords. There’s a reason gods who want to die beg to be unmade and buried beneath the realm.
They want to sleep. But you didn’t sleep, did you?
Imagine a century with nothing but our dead for company. ”
His pulse quickens beneath my fingertips. The only tell.
“I’ve lived it before, you know. When I was much younger than you are now, and still a demigod.
My bones were so fragile. My father’s other punishments were too extreme for an object lesson, so when I tell you it could be worse, I mean it.
I doubt I spent much of the first thousand years of my existence not disciplined for some slight, real or fictitious.
Imagine the weight of rocks crushing your lungs, the soil filling your mouth when you finally broke enough to scream.
” I drag my thumb along his jawline. “Your fingers bloody and broken, clawing upward through rock and dirt, inch by inch. Never knowing if you’d reach air.
Never knowing if he’s buried you too deep this time.
Do you remember what it felt like to go mad down there? Because I do.”
“Yes.” The answer is flat, emotionless.
“Then we understand each other.” I release him, returning to my throne. “Enjoy your village. Try not to make too much of a mess.”
He leaves, the door booming shut behind him.
As I settle back on my throne, the whining static gnaws at the edges of my control. So many voices battering the inside of my skull. I can’t think, I can’t breathe…
From the corner of my eye, I catch a flash of purple—a fevered illusion. A glimpse of my sister’s dress from the last day I saw her alive.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Don’t,” I snarl at her. “Not now.”
You can’t keep going like this. My sister’s voice. As if she’s standing beside me and not a figment of my fracturing mind. You’re breaking yourself.
“Your Majesty?”
That gentle voice drags me back to the present.
I lift my gaze to the courtier. Her pale wings—dove gray, delicate—are tucked tight against her spine.
“Come here.” I pluck open the fastenings of my trousers and wrap my hand around my cock. “If you’ve changed your mind, now’s the time to run. I won’t punish you for refusing.”
She hesitates, breath quickening.
Honestly, she should be afraid. I am ancient and hungry and only half-sane.
“I won’t make this offer again.” My tone is sharp. I don’t have the time to soothe timid courtiers. “Decide.”
The sweet scent of her desire fills my lungs as she draws near, and beneath it all, the clarion call of her blood. “Take what you need,” she whispers, holding my gaze as she steps between my thighs. “My body is yours.”
Thank fuck.
I grasp her hips and haul her into my lap, positioning her above my straining cock.
A shift, an angling of bodies as I take care not to touch her wings—because even rut-stupid and half out of my mind, I remember the sanctity of a demi’s wings.
Then I bury myself inside her with a brutal thrust. She arches with a sharp cry.
I rock into her with ruthless, punishing strokes. Shoving deep, deeper, until my vision blurs and yes, more, harder.
Her pulse flutters against my fingertips where they cup her neck. I duck my head, lips brushing her skin.
“This is going to hurt,” I murmur against her throat. “Try to keep the screaming to a minimum.”
She swallows and nods.
And I rip into her jugular with my teeth.
Her blood floods my mouth, a rush of heat and copper tangling together on my tongue. I drink and drink, desperate and greedy. Losing myself in the wet heat of her, the drum of her heart, the sting of her nails sinking into my shoulders.
The Shroud’s threads loosen infinitesimally, the crushing pressure on my chest easing to a dull throb. Not gone, never gone—but muted. Manageable.
For a few moments, I drift. Insensate. Nothing exists beyond this—the flex of muscle under skin, the rhythmic slap of flesh, the warmth of her. Aethertide’s fever easing the more I fuck up into her.
Click-click-click.
Footsteps pierce the haze. I lift my head to see Zephyr framed in the doorway, arms crossed. Watching. Those black-and-silver mismatched eyes flick over the courtier, and something tightens in her features.
See anything of interest, Whisper? I keep moving, rolling my hips nice and slow now. Something you want? Something you like?