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I faced the door with a frown, a weighted silence now hanging on both sides.
While I could act a blind fool for weeks on end, I hadn’t expected anything tonight to touch me. Yes, the plight of the magpies plucked at my heartstrings and stoked my rage. This errand had a deeply personal quality to it for all of us, but I didn’t think…
I hadn’t expected to feel.
Head cocked, I listened to the soft drag of claws over stone, the muted rumbles of monsters stirring on the other side of the door. Useless carved and painted sigils stared back at me, gibberish to the fallen and our ethereal ilk but damning to my beasts inside.
Ownership had been a sin before the fall.
Possession, want, jealousy—vices worthy of losing a few white feathers over.
Mine were all gone now, reborn black and damned, but I still rebelled against the want in my heart. Just leave them in there. Someone would find them eventually, right? Grimacing, I turned—but the first step away broke my heart.
Shit.
Love that was more than familial, more than brotherly, more than a bond between warriors—it was all so new to the fallen. Others had warned me about it, the battle set to erupt in my own mind, the resistance and the guilt and the shame. They beat it into you in the Silver City that love entwined with lust was a distraction, a sin against our celestial father.
It felt wrong.
But my fallen companions had said it would—and they were so bloody happy with the creatures they loved.
Why not me?
Why did I not deserve that same bond with another?
Sighing, I went for the door, even if my feet dragged the whole way back. After quickly swiping the fresh blood from my cheeks, my lips, my chin, I smoothed my fingers along the seams, then took two steps back and booted the infernal thing off its hinges. One swift kick and the door barreled into that circular stone room, buckling in the middle and crashing hard into the wall on the other side.
For a few beats, there was nothing—and then three monsters ambled into view, each ogling me like I’d sprouted six heads.
Guilt tightened in my core, made me sick and nauseous and unsteady on my own two feet.
But one deep breath and it lessened.
Because there they were, three males in golden cuffs who had made me feel.
Cato in his shadowy horned crown, the piece hovering around his head like a halo that needed correcting. Kingly, stately, he had the loveliest dark grey skin and brilliant blue eyes slashed with demonic black. All three had the muscular definition human women drooled over, yet Cato’s wasn’t braggy or showy, just raw strength and muscle made for war. Rugged facial features and a confidence in the way he held himself, in the way he felt like a lord and made me feel like his lady, his queen. We fell into each other’s eyes more than once tonight. No matter how he fucked me, ruthless or kind, his unflinching gaze said more than words ever could.
Obsidian antlers soared behind him, Aedan edging into view, assessing me with a curious grin. Unlike his brother, his strength was subtle, his body lean, his tongue barbed. The orgy mastermind, as it were, with ivory skin and silky black waves gently dusting the tops of his strong shoulders—I still longed to run my fingers through them, desire spiking the longer we all stared. This one inspired the bratty minx in me, made me playful and defiant.
No one had ever encouraged defiance before.
No one had ever tolerated my challenge without making me suffer.
And he had, in a way, made me suffer, but there was something so delicious about the freefall into sin that had me starving for more.
Geralt stood across from his fellow hellions, tallest and broadest and sweetest of the lot. Skin like the vast depths of space, black-black where not even the bravest stars glowed, he was a wash of contradictions. White hair down to his taut buttocks, thighs like tree trunks, perfectly sculpted and so powerful.
Yet in his arms, I felt safe.
Secure enough to consider for the first time in my existence… falling asleep in the arms of another.
Which was ridiculous.
Who would call a leviathan-demon hybrid safe?
But Geralt harkened my mind back to a simpler time, before I was assigned a fighting choir, before war made my heart so brutally hard. With him, I pictured myself in a field of wildflowers, running, laughing, relishing the sweet florals and dancing beneath the sun—and he’d be there with me, without judgment, without criticism.
Each male called to a want in me, a sin I had repressed until I finally threw down my sword, my shield, and rebelled.
