Chapter 5 Svenn #2
I lie still in the predawn darkness, watching Rhianelle sleep with something that feels close to worship. Moonlight catches her silver strands, turning them to threads of starlight against the pillow. Her lips curve slightly even in dreams.
For centuries, I have known only hunger and shadow. Now in her presence I feel something I thought lost forever.
Peace.
She doesn't stir. Her skin is still flushed and her lips are slightly parted. I trace the curve of her back beneath the sheet, following the elegant line of her spine.
My fingers tremble with restraint. It's not because I want more from her.
We've had each other twice tonight and my body still hums with satisfaction.
I tremble because there is still a dark and broken part of me that doesn't know how to accept peace.
It wants to dig its claws into this moment and never let go.
I pull my hand back and curl it into a fist.
The bond stirs beneath my skin. I feel it like a second heartbeat, hungry and restless. It's been growing stronger these past weeks. The eclipse draws near and with it the inevitable breaking of every chain I've built.
Rhianelle shifts in her sleep, murmuring something I can't quite hear. Her hand reaches out across the bed for me. When her fingers brush my arm, she settles again with a soft sigh.
Such trust.
I close my eyes and let myself slip into dormancy. The transition is smooth. I've done this a thousand times before, retreating into the hollow spaces of my soul.
This is where I face the monsters that live in the dark corners of my mind.
The cottage fades along with Rhianelle's warmth. I find myself standing in the cavern of my own consciousness. It's vast and cold here. The walls are smooth black stone and the floor is littered with bones. This is my inner landscape. The kingdom of my damnation.
"Finally."
A voice echoes off the cavern walls. The bond materializes from my shadow, because that's what it is.
He is a part of me. The darkest, most possessive part. Where I've learned to wear the mask of humanity and play at being civilized, the bond has no such pretense.
It wears my face and my body. But his eyes are brighter, burning with an intensity that borders on madness.
"I felt it," the bond says. "Her warmth. Her surrender. The way she cried your name when she came apart beneath you."
He stops directly in front of me. "And yet you held back. Again."
"I didn't."
"Liar." The bond's hand shoots out, gripping my jaw with bruising force. "You gave her a fraction of what we are. A carefully measured dose of passion, just enough to satisfy but never enough to truly claim. She deserves more than your cowardice."
I jerk my face from its grasp. "What she deserves is to be safe. From me and from you."
"Safe?" The bond laughs, the sound echoing through the cavern. "Rhianelle doesn't want safe. She wants to be consumed."
I scoff, but the bond doesn't stop. It moves closer, crowding the space between us.
"She told you as much when she begged you not to stop," it says. "She wants all of you, and you're too afraid to give it to her."
"You'll kill her." I face it fully, this thing that shares my face. This hunger that knows no limits or mercy. "If I let you free, if I give in to what you want—"
"She is ours." The words are absolute, carved in stone and blood.
The bond's eyes blaze brighter and I feel the truth of it resonating through every fiber of my being.
"Every heartbeat, every breath, every thought should be ours.
We should be inside her mind, her dreams. She should never think of anything but us, never want anything but us.
We should mark her, claim her so thoroughly that every creature in this world knows she belongs to us. "
The bond drags me back into a memory. Her dream. I remember the way she trembled beneath me.
I'm there above her, hands braced on either side of her shoulders, buried deep inside her. Her hair spills over the edge of the bed, throat arched, lips parted in breathless surrender. She had looked wrecked and wanting.
The bond stands at the edge where her head hangs, cock hard and fisted in his hand. He steps closer.
In the memory I stop him. But here he rewrites it. This time no one stops him.
He pushes into her mouth slow. I watch her throat work as she tries to adjust to his length, her cheeks filling out.
"Swallow it. All the way down," he murmurs.
The two sensations collide. Her tightening around me, her swallowing him.
I close my eyes. "Stop."
"Let me out," the bond commands. "I want to crawl inside her soul and make a home there. I want to weave myself into her thoughts until she couldn't tell where she ends and we begin. I would—"
"Enough!"
The shout reverberates through the cavern. I feel the others stirring, my inner beasts waking from their slumber. The collection of horrors that Lilith sacrificed to create the Rhunhraefn. All of them bound to my soul. They're all part of this twisted whole.
Coinneach rises first from the deepest shadows of the cavern. The Ysendral takes form slowly, his darkness flowing like waves.
He threatens her, Coinneach whispers, and the shadows around him writhe. The girl must be protected.
Even from us, the Noble Wolf growls, stepping out from behind a pillar of stone. He's enormous, fur as black as midnight, eyes glowing like embers.
Wendy materializes from the cold spaces between, the monster whose hunger became mine. Impossibly tall, with jutting bones and stretched skin. When he speaks, frost forms in the air.
Protect Rhianelle.
The salt circles begin to break. One by one, the fallen from Hel claw their way free from their cages. The salt hisses and steams where they cross it, ancient bindings meant to keep them controlled.
The demon from Hel's third circle emerges first. His body constantly shifts between states of decay, flesh rotting and regenerating in an endless cycle. Once he had a name, before Lilith bound him to my soul. Now he’s just another piece of the monster I've become.
We must stop him, he rasps, a voice of rot and hunger. Before he hurts her.
The demon from Abaddon follows, wreathed in black flame that gives no heat.
Then the one from Sheol and the one from Gehenna, both covered in ash.
Three creatures of the Hollow remain bound to their chains despite breaking free from the salt circles.
The fiend from Tartarus, the shifter of Pandemonium, and the being from the Void itself.
Seven demons from seven different hells, all breaking free from their salt cages to stand against the bond.
The bond snarls, whirling to face them. "You would betray yourselves? We are one. What I feel, you all feel. You want her just as much as I do."
Want, yes, the demon from Hel's third circle agrees, its form rippling with decay. But we have learned restraint. We have learned that some hungers must be leashed or they consume everything we love.
"Love?" The bond sneers. "You don't love her. You fear what she makes us feel. It's weakness and vulnerability—"
The demon from Hel moves first. Chains of bone and sinew erupt from its hands, wrapping around the bond's wrists.
The bond roars, thrashing against the restraints.
Tendrils of black flame shoot from the demon of Abaddon, binding his ankles.
Wendy lurches forward, his impossible strength forcing the bond to its knees.
Coinneach flows around them all. His shadows wrap the bond in darkness, muffling his screams.
One by one, my monsters turn against this piece of myself.
"You can't cage me forever!" The bond fights desperately. Its power surges and I feel it like lightning in my veins.
For a moment, the chains tremble.
"The eclipse comes. During the eclipse, all your careful separations crumble. We become one again, whether you want it or not."
"Then we'll hold you until the eclipse passes," I say, moving forward to help drag the bond toward its prison.
The casket sits in the center of the cavern, carved from black stone and inscribed with runes. Together, my monsters and I drag the bond toward it.
"You want it too!" He fights every step. "You want to possess her completely. Stop pretending you're better than me, Svenn. We're the same. The only difference is that I'm honest about what we are."
My hands shake as I help force the bond into the casket. Because deep down, I know he is right.
I do want to possess Rhianelle completely.
I want to crawl inside her light and live there forever, where the darkness can't touch me. I want to brand my name on her soul, to tie us together so completely that death itself couldn't separate us.
I want and want and want.
"This is a mistake," the bond says. "I will break free soon."
He's laughing even as the chains tighten around him, pulling him down into the stone casket.
I grab the heavy lid carved from the same black stone. "Then I'll cage you again."
"You can try." The bond's voice grows muffled as I prepare to seal him in. "But during the eclipse, it will be just the hunger and her. You know what will happen. You've felt it building. Every eclipse gets worse."
I hesitate. "I won't hurt her."
"No, you'll do something much worse," the bond agrees, and I can hear the smile in its voice. "You'll show her exactly what you are. Not this carefully curated version you've been feeding her."
Do not listen to him. I feel Coinneach's shadows brush against my skin.
"When she realizes that the gentle lover who held her so carefully was just a mask—"
I slam the lid shut.
The runes flare bright blue then fade to a dull glow. The casket seals but the bond is still laughing. I can hear him even through the stone.
Because he knows the truth.
We will help you protect the girl, the Noble Wolf says. His ember eyes watch me for a long moment before he lowers his massive head and retreats. Wendy nods in agreement before dissolving into the dark.