Chapter 10
The return to Asmodeus’ domain was not quiet.
It could not be, for word had passed through the spiral reaches of the Circle, through every domain in the kingdom of lust, through black-lipped hags and crones and ink-feathered familiars, through the half-dreams of demons who lived with lust pulsing in their veins.
The gates home opened before us like a yawn, creaking with age, and the air itself seemed to shift—thickened, perfumed, laced with heat.
I knew we had returned to Asmodeus’ domain by the way my body felt.
Beside me, my Prince relaxed, and the tether between us urged my own body to follow suit.
A kind of glee pulsed in my head. I grinned wildly.
What had happened to me? What was I now?
The Saint of Lust. I wrapped my arm around Asmodeus’, unable to contain my thrill. Already, the scent of celebration bloomed in the corridors. My first step through the threshold made the stone sigh beneath me.
The doors opened onto a new place I had never seen. This was Lust’s court in full revel.
The Grand Hall, cavernous and without a clear ceiling, rose into darkness where chandeliers of molten gold hovered, weeping slow wax that vanished into shadow.
Braziers spilled incense like fog. The walls shifted with frescoes that writhed and contorted beneath the eye, painted figures locked in a thousand acts of craving and consecration.
The floor had been scattered with petals—black, crimson, bone-white—and fine ash that shimmered like embers.
All of it was stirred up with every bit of step and movement. Denizens of Hell were dancing.
But we did not arrive unnoticed. However, there was no pageantry nor fanfare; a hush like that that fell before a storm smothered the scene now.
They had gathered by the thousands: lesser demons with glimmering eyes and twisted horns, crones with lips sewn shut, crawling familiars with smoke-wreathed tails.
They lined the archways and hung from the balustrades.
Their silence felt ravenous, and all their gazes lingered on me and my new form.
Perhaps I should have felt terrified, but I had been remade in orgasmic pleasure, and still that pleasure lingered.
I could think of nothing but how thrilled I was, how lucky I was to have Asmodeus at my side.
The Prince of Lust led me through the watchful crowd, and every eye followed us.
Every throat hummed with restrained howls.
They watched their King return with his marked consort.
As the crowd parted, I saw all whom I had touched to get here. Malphas, who had been the first and ever so dismissive, surprised me now by being the first of the greater demons to approach. Towering and sleek, his raven head inclined low. Feathers slick with oil quivered as he rose again.
"He returns whole," Malphas said, voice echoing oddly through a beak not made for speech. "Or near enough." His gaze shifted to Asmodeus, then back to me. Something in his posture suggested amusement, though it was hard to read such a face. "This look suits you, priest."
“Priest no longer,” I replied. “But a Saint.”
Malphas flinched. Flinched. A quiver of glee sparked inside me, and Asmodeus squeezed, approving of my newfound confidence.
I was not the human filth that had wormed and begged his way into Malphas’ court, but something more, something new.
The first of my kind. It must have frightened the lot of them.
I must have been terrifying to perceive.
Behind Malphas came Furcas, centaur-bodied and spear in hand. His human half rose from the horse’s flanks like a relic carved from marble, wide of belly and long of beard. He stamped one hoof, and the floor trembled. But I no longer feared Furcas, nor what it could do to me.
“How far you’ve come from the man who begged so prettily at my sigil,” He leaned in, beard brushing my shoulder. "You carry more in you now."
“And you,” I said, “have been welcome to Asmodeus’ court—as promised.”
Of course, until that moment, I might have forgotten entirely all the things I’d promised to progress on my journey, but Asmodeus interjected, saying, “Some other time, good Knight—for now is a celebration.”
My Prince moved us away before the Knight of Hell might reply, and that guided us into the path of Marchosias.
Though I knew his true form was a strange one–undefinable light burning from a she-wolf’s open maw–he appeared giant as he had when he had begrudgingly used me, his wolfish face wreathed in a mane of tangled fur, those grey wings folded sharply behind him.
He did not address me but turned to Asmodeus.
"YOU brOUGHT HIM THROUGH THE FIRE. I HAD WAGERED OTHERWISE. "
Asmodeus said nothing aloud, though to me it said, “They all have opinions.”
I fought the urge to explain each experience to my Prince, forgetting momentarily that it had witnessed it all; every touch, every desecration of my form.
It walked me past Marchosias and said nothing more, though I recalled the warring tension between Marchosias and how it regretted its fall from Heaven.
I wondered if it was jealous of me, now that I, too, had wings.
Then came Vassago. He glided through the haze in a storm of velvet and gold. His smile struck me before his voice. "Ah, my favourite pilgrim," he said, placing a jewelled hand to his chest. "Did the journey make a martyr of you, or a monarch?"
I could not answer, unsure of what he asked.
"Both, perhaps," he said, and laughed. "Or neither. You might be something new. In any case, you look beautifully wrecked."
He embraced me with something resembling genuine glee, a feeling I couldn’t help but echo. Then he, too, was gone, slipping away into the crowd.
The hags arrived crawling, lank and strange, dragging censers and curling their too-long fingers around bundles of scented bone. They hissed soft approval, and one pressed a glistening claw to her brow before pressing it to mine.
We passed Furfur then, first as a white hart with black ribbons fluttering from its antlers. In the blink of an eye, the form melted into that of a pale, androgynous angel with unblinking eyes.
A feast spread across the tables; cherry-bright wine and thick nectar black as pitch. Bowls of twitching fruit, silver trays of meat seared and seeping, loaves of warm bread split open with honeyed pulp. Smoke curled from the dishes, and they each pulsed as if the food itself were alive.
The music began low. String instruments strummed, though I could not see who played them. The drums sounded like thunder crashing beneath the stone floors. But the dancers! Oh, they did not wait. Dancers whirled in abandon, bodies braided with gold thread and sweat.
At the end of the far table sat Asmodeus’ throne, and a gilded chair at its right.
That is where Asmodeus seated me. Its presence beside me was an anchor in the rising tide of adoration.
I drank. I let the taste of lust’s domain touch my tongue.
And I felt myself shifting again—this time not in body, but in station.
Dantalion approached last. Towering and robed, with a face that changed every instant, his every blink revealing new genders, new desires.
He bowed his head. "Saint of Lust," he said, and I flinched, for I’d thought his bow was for Asmodeus. Dantalion’s voice echoed with the voices of many.
"Not as the saints of yore art thou. How wondrous strange thy nature is; and how wondrous keen mine eye to see what fate awaits thee.”
I did not know how to hold its interest in me. I had not conceived of a future beyond reaching this point. But before the fear of the great unknown could take hold of me, I pressed my hand against Asmodeus’ thigh and squeezed.
The revel stretched long. Demons danced, and the hags threw bones that turned into birds mid-air. My name was shouted, toasted, blessed. And through it all, Asmodeus’ gaze barely left me.
At last, as the heat in the room reached delirium and the music tipped into frenzy, my Prince finally rose.
The court stilled. Asmodeus looked at me and nodded once. That wordless appraisal was enough to get me to stand, and I followed it down the dais and across the hall.
The crowd parted not in silence, but with hushed hunger.
Whispers followed us. Mouths opened, tongues curled, all of them eager to know what was happening.
Ignoring them all, we walked out of the hall and into shadow, through halls wreathed in veils and red-glass lanterns, and through doors whose mantels were carved with scenes of desire.
Asmodeus led me into a quieter chamber and shut the door behind us.
Instantly, the frenzy of the feast was drowned out.
This new chamber was dim and veiled in quiet, much smaller than the Grand Hall—though all of Lust’s domain seemed to warp and stretch depending on who entered and why.
The walls pulsed faintly, warm as skin. Lanterns hung like low stars, casting gold light across the cushions and draped silks that littered the floor in unruly patterns.
In the centre, a single throne of carved onyx rose like a root from the ground.
Asmodeus did not speak at first. It crossed the chamber with its usual grace, bearing itself with the restraint of ceremony.
It sat, beckoning with the motion of one clawed hand.
I sank onto the cushions at its feet, breath still ragged with the weight of what had just passed.
Did it want me again, so soon? I did not mind, for desire was a permanent fixture in me.
But its hesitation gave me pause. I rested my face against its warm leg.
Its hand came down to play with my hair. Quite affectionately it asked, "You wish to understand what you are now?”
I nodded, but did not speak, for I was afraid all the questions I had would spill out of me. Asmodeus urged me to look up at it. Slowly, I raised my head and met its beautiful gaze.
"You are the first to kneel without breaking. The first to open without demanding salvation in return. Others have loved me. Others have worshipped. But you gave yourself not as tithe or proof, not to bargain, but to belong. That is rare—even here."
Its voice was lower now, contemplative. The silks stirred with the heat that rolled from its form, but its gaze held mine, unwavering.
"You are the Saint of Lust, Alessandro. The first. And perhaps the last."
The words pressed into my chest like a brand.
"I was a priest," I murmured. "I know the liturgies. I know what sainthood means. Or meant. But this—"
"This is no imitation of Heaven," it said.
"Their saints were crowned for sacrifice and suffering. Yours, too, was earned through fire, but also pleasure. That is where you differ. The miracles of God’s saints are absences—death, hunger, pain.
But yours will be present. Desire. Embodiment.
I see for you a future where you strip shame from all who suffer with it. "
It reached down, brushing the back of its hand along my cheek. Its claws were warm.
"Perhaps they will fear you."
I swallowed hard. "Heaven?"
"And Hell. Even some who toasted you tonight will hesitate when they see what I have made of you.
Lust is not gentle. It is not merely the craving of bodies.
It is rebellion, Alessandro. Not just of spirit, but of flesh.
It says: I was told to be ashamed, and I am not.
That is a heresy as old as the first sin. "
I thought of the Host—how still and silent they had been with their judgement.
I saw myself reflected in the demon’s eyes.
I stared at my face, my eyes, at the body that was still mine, and not.
The wings curled faintly behind me, stretching in slow increments as if testing their span.
And I saw Asmodeus’ pride staring back at me.
Something twisted in my heart. I loved what and who I had become under its guidance.
"Is this the end?" I asked.
"Oh, no," it said. "It is the beginning of what Lust becomes, when it is no longer only the absence of virtue.”
It reached forward. Its clawed hand brushed my jaw, gently, reverently, and then moved lower, pressing over my heart.
"Mine," it said. "You are mine. But…. you will not be caged here, consort. Lust is not a prison. Go where you will. Walk this circle or others. Let them witness you."
I looked at it, at the creature I had pursued across suffering, across silence, across all the parts of myself I had once tried to kill. I thought of the long path through each circle, the names I had learned, the bargains struck, the sins I had made peace with and the holiness I had abandoned.
I saw the feasting crowd, the echo of my name on their lips.
I saw the blood I had offered. The title I had given up.
The wings that stretched from my back were still sore with their newness.
I saw, too, what Asmodeus envisioned for me: a future where I become some great bringer of pleasure.
But I had eternity, and I had only just arrived.
I crawled closer toward it.
"There is nowhere else I would go," I said.
Its expression did not change. But I felt it in the room and in the slow curling of heat between us. Asmodeus smiled and kissed me.
"Then stay," it said. "And be mine."
END