I’ve murdered armies without blinking. Tortured enemies, ended bloodlines, and razed kingdoms to rubble and ash. But this? This is annihilating. This gesture of trust. Of softness.

Two things I sure as shit don’t deserve.

And this is why she can never know what’s in that room, I think as I shoulder into my bedchamber. All the dead things in there are for me, and they are the real dagger between us.

She’ll never look at what we are the same way again.

I gently lay her on my sheets. Bruises mottle her skin, vivid smudges blooming across her breasts, her belly, her legs. My marks.

Mine.

I trail my knuckles over a bite on her inner thigh. “I can heal these for you if you’d like.”

I’d rather lick them, I don’t say.

“I’ll wear them a bit longer,” Bryony decides with a secret smile, stretching languidly. “I’ve earned them.”

For a moment, I imagine keeping her like this—sprawled out in my bed. Well-fucked and satisfied, with my ownership unmistakable.

“Careful,” she murmurs, eyes fixed on my face. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Scheming.”

I settle in bed next to her and pull her on top of me, groaning as she settles right over my cock. Right where she belongs. The rut-fever stirs again, demanding more.

“Just enjoying you while I can.” I grasp her hips and guide her down, shuddering as I slide into her. “Enjoying this pussy, too.”

“I suppose you’d better make the most of it, then,” she says, riding me slowly, drawing it out. “It’s temporary.”

“Yeah, they do have that saying about mortal girls.”

“What saying?”

I curl my fingers against her skin, setting the pace, lifting her up and down my cock. “Not for a long time, just for a good time.”

The bed frame creaks as she rides me faster. “Know what humans say about gods?” She bites my earlobe, and I almost come right then. “That they’ll fuck you then forget you. But I won’t let you forget.”

“Oh really?”

“That’s right. When you take someone else into your bed in fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand years from now, all you’re going to see is me. My face, when you shut your eyes. My taste, when you’re kissing her. My voice, when you’re inside her. I’m going to wreck you for everyone else.” She rocks her hips in a slow grind that has me seeing stars. “I’m going to be your favorite memory.”

Something in my chest goes tight. I can’t look away from this fragile mortal woman who’s embedded herself beneath my skin. Because she’s right—I’m going to have to accept a world in which Bryony Devaliant no longer exists.

And I’ll be the one holding the blade that ends her. I have to be. Because anything else would be a betrayal.

I swallow hard. “You think so?”

“Yes.” She kisses me, soft and searching. “The most fun you’ll ever have.”

Maybe she’s my penance. My hamartia, as the Vartenans would say—the fatal flaw that will be my undoing. The price I pay for all my sins.

“You asked me if this was just the Aethertide,” I say, rolling us so I’m on top. Caging her beneath me, my wings flared. “A product of celestial meddling and biological imperative.”

“And?” Her fingers trace patterns on my chest, right over my thundering heart.

“I’d crave you in any lifetime. Across every eternity. Every version of me would want every version of you, whether I lived one day or ten thousand years,” I whisper against her mouth. “And damn me, you were a good time.”

I wonder if she’ll feel my touch for days. If she’ll ache with the memory of us. I wonder if the bruises I’ve put on her body will linger—a reminder of what we are. Of all the blasphemous, brutal things we’ve done.

I’m going to be your favorite memory.

No, I think as I kiss her. You’re going to be my cruelest one.

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35

ALEXIOS

A THOUSAND CLAIMED voices crash through me, screaming their feelings all at once.

Love. Hate. Need. Their whining never stops. Every breath I take pulls more of their chaos into my lungs. I breathe in, and they’re there. Breathe out, and they’re still there.

It’s unbearable.

Meanwhile, I’ve been fucking courtiers for thirty-five hours straight while Aethertide burns in my blood. I’d rather swallow broken glass than father a child with any of them, but my wants don’t matter.

Because the realm is screaming at me.

Three centuries since the first rut hit after the Devouring, and it’s only gotten worse. Back then, Scillari whispered and gave a gentle nudge. Now? It howls and forces gods together like rabid animals every hundred years.

But it won’t stay that way, not with so few demis powerful enough to ascend and replace the Eternals we lost in the war. The magical deficit leaves the realm vulnerable and unstable. If we don’t have more potential Eternals soon, Aethertide will be every damn year.

I shift uncomfortably on my throne. My cock is hard, and all I want to do is bite and tear and fuck until there’s nothing left of me. Maybe I should just walk to Asteria’s deepest ravine. See if even this immortal body can survive that fall. Because between the rut, holding the Shroud, and the voices…

I’m not going to last.

“Your Majesty?”

I look down at where a courtier kneels at the foot of the dais, another face I won’t remember tomorrow. I’ve seen a hundred just like her.

They blur together after a while. Pretty dolls with breakable bones, something to use up and throw away. Just vessels to pour my madness into.

“Strip,” I rasp. “Wait for me. Five minutes.”

I need her right now. Need to slam into her and make her cry, to bleed her until the hunger stops. But I need her to wait more. Need to know I can still tell myself no. That I haven’t completely lost my shit.

Five minutes. Three hundred seconds until I can forget, for a few moments, all the lives bound to mine. The needs that aren’t my own. I’ll drown them out, bury myself in sex until I can’t think or feel anything else but animal need.

I hear her undressing—the soft rustle of fabric, the tiny nervous breaths she tries to hide.

Wait. Sixty seconds.

Wait. One hundred seconds.

Wait—

The chamber doors burst open. Bastien stalks in, shadow wings flaring, face remote and unreadable.

“Blade,” I say, sitting up straighter. “You have news?”

He inclines his head, a tightness to the set of his shoulders I don’t like. “The princess’ corpse is still unaccounted for. I don’t sense it anywhere in Vartena.”

For a disorienting second, the snarled threads of the Shroud constrict around my chest, compressing and compressing until I’m certain my ribs will buckle inward. Hellevig’s deficit left a gap in the veil’s magic I’m still burning myself alive to hold together—all caused by that damn princess’ flock.

“How difficult can it be,” I grind out, “to locate one dead human? I marked her. Felt the connection snap when she died. My power leaves traces, Bastien. You should be able to track it blindfolded.” I lift a hand to my temple, trying to massage away the ache. “Was there anything else? Or did you just come to tell me you can’t do your job?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, his attention slides to the far wall where the naked courtier waits, her skin flushed, hair tumbling over her shoulders. His nostrils flare. Shadows curl around his boots.

I almost smile. We might be Eternals, but we’re not above the failings of biology.

“Let me off the leash,” he says, cold and flat, still staring at the demigoddess.

I study his face. Those black eyes that hold galaxies. Those shadow wings that never quite settle. Bastien without constraints isn’t a weapon you wield; he’s a natural disaster you point in a direction and hope to survive.