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May sweet and rich your blood e’re flow.
Please moan with every bite.
May fairest flesh be all I know.
Your soul my true delight.”
When I lower my spindly bone fingers to her throat, Isla moans, thrusts out her ravenous chest, and closes her eyes. Reveling, I rove those fingers to my bite mark and eclipse the skull eyes. Death thunders chronic growls to resound in every corner of my head. I grin. His burning shifts to gnawing as if a reminder he may devour all of me. He may spit out my masticated flesh and bones until they repair themselves in the slowest form of torture-regrowth. Because Aryahn Kryach owns all of me. Except my heart.
My heart, I present to my bride. The Bride of the Corpse King.
“May pomegranates rouse your love.
I’ll tempt you, my dark rose.
May you lose all thoughts of worlds above
And sleep to my shadows...”
Upon my last deep and woeful notes, Isla’s eyes open and deadpan with mine. Sultry lashes woo me as she rises on her elbows, tilts her neck to the side, and gazes at my mask eyes to express, “I don’t want to sleep.”
Perhaps it’sthese past few months where Allysteir has treated me with the utmost respect. Perhaps it’s my appetite whetted thanks to all the Isle-fruit. Its succulent juice tarries on the tip of my tongue, and its beaded jewels shimmer all around me as if treasuring my figure. Perhaps it’s the Corpse King’s personal lullaby. Or all these combined.
But ultimately, I know the real reason I rise onto my elbows, arch my neck, and bare my eager throat with my lavish breasts straining with my gown. My erect buds crave the sweep of a hot tongue. Or cold in Allysteir’s case as I assume.
Ultimately, it’s those hungry shades and their audacity to prowl beneath my gown, the fire and smoke wreathing into my veins from the skull to quicken and heat my blood, flushing my bosom.
Aryahn Kryach has not breathed a word since the wedding night.
For thousands of moments throughout the months, I have felt him: his essence haunts my footsteps whenever Allysteir is not present. His icy presence stalks my flesh whenever I bathe, his damn shade appearing in the reflection of a mirror. But whenever I turn...he is gone.
Now, he believes he has the right to invade this moment, much less penetrate my flesh with those scavenging shades and deathly power lurking inside my blood? I internally seethe at the High God’s trespass. This place Allysteir has shared with me?a secret unbeknownst to anyone else, save for the God of Death. And his grandmother who won favor from Kryach—the first bride to ever accept the Death mark, to sample heaven’s fruits.
The Corpse King’s mask eyes never depart from mine, chin refusing to stray. Oh, he knows what I’m doing, given his chest expanding, his robes shifting, and his member betraying itself beyond his breeches when he leans against my outer thigh.
The silence between us thickens. But Allysteir lowers his bone fingers to the straps of my gown, tracing the neckline. I shiver from their touch when they caress the upper swells of my breasts.
This moment of utter beauty?it’s the same beauty in the realms of death to make the gods in the Isles envious as he’d vowed to show me. Just like the corpus horses. And Ifrynna. Like the dying souls in the Hollows. The Cryth River spirits. And his refter bride glen since I brought my beauty there. This tiny isle is made of such truth as I’ve never known.
And I want to tremble. I want to feel it all...even the fear.
So, I close my eyes, bosom heaving, ravenous as Allysteir drags at my gown sleeves, pausing when I suck a windstorm through my teeth. But not from him. Kryach nearly overthrows Allysteir’s chilled touch with his icy claws. Goose flesh hunts my skin, except for the warmth between my thighs. Warmth grows when I part my lips, eyes still closed, and touch the curve of his finger bones, urging him.
“My dark rose,” whispers the King, breath colder than the river spirits right before he tugs hard and frees my swollen breasts to his eye.
He wastes no time in cupping them. To forbid Kryach’s shades from conquering my breasts first. I gasp.
The thought of a High God and the most powerful of kings vying for me stirs my innards to burn hotter than hellfire mines where only fire gems form.
“Oh!” I moan long and deep when he kneads my breasts. My fingers disturb the meadow grass, dig into the soil, and burst pomegranate gems. The fragrant juice stains my fingertips. As the Corpse King rubs his chilled-bone fingers across my ripe nipples, my whole body galvanizes to the touch. I lift my fingers to my tongue to sample the leftover juice, careless of the grass clippings and soil.
When Aryahn Kryach weaves his shadows and smoke around my breasts to compete with Allysteir, something flees my throat, caught halfway between a whimper and a scream. But my scream truly comes when Allysteir closes his lips upon my breast and sucks my nipple into the depths of his warm wet mouth. Not cold as I’d believed. Not cold at all!
I’d clamp my nails into his robes, but Allysteir binds them at my waist and warns me in a low voice, “Keep those eyes closed, my Queen. Half my mask is off,” he hints, hovering above my mouth. I hold my breath as he continues, deepening his voice to a threat, infused with abundant Death-shadows, “If you so much as peep one eye open, I will stop everything. I will replace my mask and leave you drenched and utterly wanting. Am I clear?”
I shiver when he kisses my cheek, when his teeth scrape my rosy bud from his mutilated mouth, disfigured in the most delicate of ways. Upon leaning in, Allysteir launches shafts of Kryach’s Death power to bind my throat in a dark collar. Snug, not tight. I return to our wedding night when he held me against the wall, but this is different. I sob. I crave more. Pangs in my belly, in my breasts, in my sex of a violent vestal chamber longing for fulfillment.
“Clearer than the stars I willneversee again, my Corpus King,” I snarl, trembling from his tongue snaking across my cheek. So warm and heady.
