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When the moment comes, when I fuck her, if her eyes open, if they open to no soul, I swear I will march right into the Void and storm the Isle gates themselves!
I sigh because I’ve said the same thing of a hundred brides of my past, but instead, I carry their weight of a thousand corpses upon my unworthy soul. I cannot hope Isla will be any different, though I love her more passionately, more ardently than all the others, save one. Knots form in my tongue. My heartbeat thrashes.
I must keep her at bay. Because for some reason, this sweet girl, this...my dark rose welcomes a walking corpse!It’s not love, I deny. Some perverted, fading syndrome as a result of my saving her in the Skull Ruins. She is the same as all the others. If not..., I will have no choice.
Kraych purrs low in my mind, his essence infesting my heart with its icy thorns.Show her, Allysteir. Show her how she will never love the one who wears the God of Death. Show her she is no better than the others. Even if she survives as your mother did, she willneverbreak my Curse! She is nothing more than a fragile fire flower.
Gods damn him!
I escort Isla to the secondary hall. Where the devil is Aydon? My brother should be here to witness the elders perform the bone rite. It takes all my strength to withstand Isla’s closeness when she sidles her warm flesh against my non-skeletal side, stirring my member.
I rivet my gaze on the elders and not her. I focus on the pelvic bone they place on the altar, the pomegranate seeds as a symbol of fertility, the vial housing her blood, the other...her tear. Careless if I break one, I grit my teeth when Mathyr casts Isla’s pubic hairs to the altar, and the elders chant.
I have my own ritual...far more powerful than those religious fools. It requires a closer kinship to Kryach, but it is worth it to thwart any deception from Kanat. I speak it within the inner vessels of my mind, summoning the God of Death’s power.
Take this rite upon my heart
And grant me power beyond their dark arts
Grant your shadow upon the maidyan fair
And reap the truth of what she hath shared...
They light the altar on fire.
Isla flinches, but I meet her eyes, to study the fire catching their violet royalty. Something like immortality, like the breath of angyls and the venom of demons, grows within her eyes?a blessing and a curse more powerful than any rite or ritual and dare I consider...more powerful than Kryach himself. Within the never-solace of my mind, Kryach roars...a foreign sound, strange and beautiful, it summons an emotion I’ve not had since before I accepted the Curse over five hundred years ago: hope.
Once the offerings upon the altar burn away, leaving a revelatory message of ash, the elders nod to each other, turn, and bow their heads. Elder Kanat wrinkles his nose in disgust.
The elders reveal what Kryach already has. “Isla Aydara is a pure virgin.”
And I do the unthinkable: I lift the edge of my mask so it nudges the passage above my upper lip. I lean in to arrest Isla by the waist, lower my head to hers, and capture her mouth with my ruinous one. Praying she will accept the kiss.
Oh, gods, she does!
Despite my swollen mouth on one side and the non-existent flesh on the opposite betraying sharp teeth to graze the right-hand side of her supple mouth, Isla welcomes me. Kryach is strangely silent when I kiss my bride?when I taste her essence. Oh Voids-damn me, she tastes more exquisite than I could have ever predicted! Wine and moon-lily juice and salt from her tears.
Heat plagues my form, rouses my cock to prod my heavy robs. My hands long to voyage lower, to those full breasts, to nuzzle my rotted mouth across her ripened buds. To worship between her thighs. Revere all her flesh.
Her moan is the signal to help me pull away, and I command the onlookers, “Commence the Bite Offering!”
* * *
Not once do I part from my to-be bride. It’s enough to scrutinize her swollen lips, how she bites the lower one, how her cheeks flush. It’s enough to capture the sight of her watery eyes and her panting breath.
By our wedding night, I will destroy everything. With Kryach, I will destroy any promptings of love, of desire. I will break her heart, spend a year piecing it back together, only to fuck her. And the moment I do, I will shatter her entire being.
Because I am a monster who dreams of beauty. Nothing more than a vessel of the God of Death who steals all beauty for himself.
I will do this for Talahn-Feyal. I pay the price for the majority, but my brides pay the deepest.
In full surrender, I lead my future bride-to-be onto the dais before the masses and the monarchs who will witness the engagement ceremony. The noble Feyal-Ithydeir are there, but when Aydon strides past me with a girl I recognize from an earlier dance, Isla gasps and covers her mouth?stunned at my older brother and his chosen Feyal-bride.
“Not Franzy,” she breathes, her eyes misting.
Clearly, my intended bride knows this girl, a girl who has not come of age?doesn’t matter to my bastard brother I have never managed to control.
When her chest lurches, her fingers curl toward the amber-eyed girl dressed in green, I collect my future bride and stay her hands. Shake my head. By law, my brother holds enough power to take whom he chooses. Except, in this case, the position where he places this Franzy before him reveals she has volunteered…as my Isla has.
