Chapter 9 #3
Pleasure surged through me with such violence I thought I might unravel entirely.
My back bowed, muscles tensed in some sacred seizure, and I felt myself depart from the narrow vessel of my name: for one suspended moment, I was nothing but light and noise.
What had been Alessandro, the man, became little more than breath and pulse and pleasure.
No thought remained, no prayer nor resistance, only the shuddering of a body unmade and remade upon an altar that had waited centuries for a soul willing to burn.
Somehow, I spilled again into the air, helpless.
The double orgasm shocked me, and it was as though something deep and long-starved had been fed for the first time.
The sound that left me, all raw and wordless, rang off the court’s walls; an unholy liturgy that echoed from stone hollows older than any cathedral I had knelt within.
Then came the change.
It began in my back, deep beneath the skin.
A pressure built, steady and unrelenting, until I could no longer breathe through it.
My spine stiffened, my chest strained upward, and heat rose like fever across my shoulders.
I could feel something shifting beneath the surface, a rhythm out of step with my own heartbeat.
The altar beneath me felt suddenly colder, or perhaps my body now burned too hot to measure.
There was no pain at first, only strain, a terrible awareness that my shape–this human form–was no longer enough. The pressure swelled until my mouth opened in a silent gasp, and then, with a force that ripped a cry from the hollow of my chest, the skin behind my shoulders gave way.
They did not burst from me all at once. Instead, they forced themselves free by slow degrees, thick and trembling.
I felt every new inch push clear of muscle and bone.
I panted as heat spilled down my sides, the air turning sharp and metallic with the scent of my blood.
My fingers curled against the altar as I lifted slightly, helpless in the throes of what I was becoming.
Wings.
They stretched behind me, heavy and strange.
Not the delicate wings of saints and martyrs, not the feathered beauty of the angels.
Nor were they weak or fragile, like translucent membranes.
Instead, they were leather-thick and pure obsidian in colour, veined with the red of Asmodeus’ colour.
They flexed once, and the weight of them nearly pulled me back into the stone.
I could feel their reach, the space they took up.
“My Saint,” Asmodeus was cooing. “My Saint of Lust.” And I realised the demon had not come itself, until it spilled sticky and thick over my new wings.
The demon moaned and crowded closer to me, fingering its own cum into the grooves of my wings. It kissed my neck and cheek and held me again with its strange, terrifying reverence, and all the while, the court of kings said nothing.
The pain in my back dulled. My breath came in slow, stunned heaves.
I remained open, spent, slick with sweat and seed and blood, trembling beneath the one who had made me.
Asmodeus did not move. Its body hovered just above mine, still joined, unmoving.
When I tried to turn, it let me. And when I turned my face to it, I jolted in surprise at the smile encompassing its lips.
“You have taken more than I imagined you could,” it said, softly, fingers skimming over my new wings. “And still you open.”
My limbs had no strength left. My lips parted, but I did not speak.
I had no words to share, for my body was no longer only a body.
It was as Asmodeus had said: I would bear its mark forever.
I would be forever changed. These wings marked the covenant between us; the final, unholy evolution of Alessandro from priest to saint.
And far above us, somewhere I could not see, I felt a gaze colder than flame.
A thousand eyes turned downward. Above all the circles of Hell, and above the Earth, they watched.
The Host, which had turned from me in life, now stared down in silence.
Heaven, with all its unyielding light, bore witness to what it had abandoned.
Heaven had looked away from me in life, but now, it could not help but see.
The flame obscuring Asmodeus’ eyes lessened, and I saw two golden spheres staring back at me. It held me possessively and happily, and for a while, there was only the two of us.
But then the shadows shifted, and Lucifer stepped forward, his mantle trailing over the cracked obsidian tiles. The court held still, the fire of their earlier attitude arrested, for they knew when to listen.
Lucifer regarded the altar without haste, eyes tracing the ruin of blood, the tremble of wings yet untested, and me, the man who had ceased to be only man. His voice followed, low and unbroken. “Let the Host weep for what it abandoned,” he said. “Let the stars see what they feared and fled.”
I shivered. This. . .approval shocked me. But I understood that what I had become must have visually confirmed to Lucifer that I was changed. Rebellion had made a home in my vessel; that must have resonated with him.
The fallen angel continued, “And so he was left to us. And now he is what they could not bear to shape. He is made by fire, not light, and claimed by desire, not grace. Now all of Heaven shall remember that when he was ready to belong, they had already closed the gates.”
He paused, gaze drifting once more to Asmodeus. “You have sealed your desire through flesh, blood, and will.”
My eyes glanced over the other Kings—Satan’s hands gripping his armrests, Mammon watching from beneath lowered brows, Belphegor unmoving—before I returned my attention to Lucifer, who had halted at the edge of the altar.
There he stood, his gaze cast not quite at me, but just above; perhaps he was admiring the wings at my back.
“This is the shape you have chosen,” he said, his voice level and stripped of judgment. “Let it be known.”
He inclined his head once, a gesture neither blessing nor condemnation. Still, Asmodeus rolled its shoulder back with a happy sound.
“You may depart,” Lucifer said. His eyes lingered on me for half a second before he turned and stalked back to his throne. “Go forth with your saint.”
Asmodeus moved, at last, to gather me from the altar. The demon’s touch was possessive but careful, and the two of us stepped together into whatever eternity had just been declared.
The Court did not rise to see us leave, but I was certain every king there would remember my name.