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“Welcome to my Court, little Butterfly,” the gargoyle purrs low in my ear, prickling all the hairs on the nape of my neck. And chills me to the bone. If this monster is the ruler of this realm, then I’m more doomed than I realized.
Not that him eating me makes me any less doomed.
Enormous obsidian gates mark the entrance to this Court. They could be the length of a castle, and as the gargoyle flies closer, I make out shadowy beasts the size of monuments sleeping at each end of the parapets atop the gates. Beastly silhouettes I recognize.
“Are those…dragons?” I gasp, not daring to blink for a moment.
“Shadow ones. My pets,” he rumbles. “And gatekeepers. None may fly over or through the gates and walls but me. Unless I command them to open.”
My fingers curve upon his shoulder, sensing the undercurrent of throbbing veins, the heat of his blood beneath the stone skin and muscles.
Then, my lips part in awe at the tent cities below me.
Thousands of ghosts live outside the entrance like a spectral encampment. Tears sting my eyes because I can’t look away from how they have collected in diaphanous shelters woven from shadows and memories. Flickering pinpoints like eerie lanterns reveal the threadbare hopes and dreams in the eyes of those ghosts—desires waiting to be fulfilled, emotions waiting for resolve, histories waiting to be told.
So many colors, like hundreds of rainbow clusters remind me of butterfly kaleidoscopes. Their lights seem to cry out to me, their melancholy beckoning me like nightmares reaching for a dream. They are too weak. Echos of regrets and bone-chilling lamentations, spectral rituals, and haunting communion drift into the air, curling into my empath heart.
“They are lost,” I whisper, unashamed of my falling tears, never ashamed of the depth of emotion that I’ve felt since my earliest memories.
I feel the gravity of his eyes upon me, and I press my lips into a firm seam, glaring at him. His deeply hooded eyes narrow, staring me down with the full force of the abyss.
“A good and just ruler would never let so many suffer so,” I practically spit, stabbing out my chin.
I’m not prepared for his stony hand fisting my curls and yanking my head back until my neck muscles howl in pain. But the pain fades beneath the touch of his lips along the curvature of my throat. Heat overthrows my belly.
“I’d be very careful if I were you, Butterfly. While they cannot bleed,youcan.”
I swallow hard but spit out, “What does it matter if you’re just going to devour me anyway? If no one else will speak for them and they cannot speak for themselves, why shouldn’t it be the one still living and bleeding and breathing in this dead place?”
“Quite brazen and naive to believe this place is dead. Or that I am good and just. Or that I will simply devour you, as if I’d swallow you whole, instead of all the ways I could make you live and bleed and breathe slower and longer while savoring you as a delicacy.”
Swallowing another hard knot of emotion, I wince, spilling more tears but refusing to look away, refusing to let him see me wither and retreat. “Then, why don’t you begin already?”
“As I said before, Butterfly, healthy and sweet.”
“Aradia,” I correct him. “Friends call me Aria.Youcan call me Aradia.”
“I preferButterfly.”
My breath hitches as his tongue flicks along my throat, hot and slow and seductive. Savoring as he referenced. And his purrreverberates deep into my chest until my pulse picks up, and my center grows damp with unwitting heat.
He keeps me on the precipice of lust with the tip of his tongue sweeping down until it descends past my collarbone. My body freezes, but my heart holds its beat while my blood surges as he dares to poise that tongue at the edge of my cleavage. I dare not breathe, but I dig my nails into the stone of his shoulders until multiple break—until the wounds on my hands reopen.
When he swings his head up and beats his wings harder, my heart restarts. I look up, noticing we’ve left the soul encampment behind. Now, he soars over countless spires. No sign of fatigue. Endless, unceasing power defines him.
He may be able to devour or eat me piece by piece. He may reduce me to an aching, needy mess of nerves and heated flesh. But I spent too much time living in fear as a girl, too much time hiding in the darkness because I was too small and weak.
It doesn’t matter how weak and small I am compared to him. It doesn’t matter how breakable my heart is compared to his stone one.
Because my soul is a storm he cannot harness. He can break my body, flesh, heart, and mind. But he will never take my soul. It may be but a candle flicker to his immortal blaze, but it will never stop burning. He will never snuff out its light.
I’d be very careful if I were you, Butterfly.
Yes, to him, I am a butterfly staring at a monstrous beast, pretending my spirit is equal to that of an immortal. If everything in my life has led me to this place, then I choose to believe I am worthy.
As a living, breathing, and bleeding soul, I vow to burn so brightly, he will feel my heat.
He wants to devour me, destroy me.
