The Demon Lord's Vessel(2)

Damien didn’t move away from me. For a long moment he held me close, and the only sound in the dark was our breathing, ragged and uneven. My wings twitched against the stone. The weight of him settled around me, heavy and certain, and I didn’t want it to end.

“More,” I said. “Don’t pull away yet.”

He didn’t. A shudder ran through him, and then through me, and the heat in the room seemed to double. I tightened my arms around him on purpose. I wanted every second of it. I wanted to remember it.

His tail curled slowly around my waist, warm and rough with scales, and I leaned into it before he had to ask. His claws settled at the sides of my head, and I turned my face into his hand. My eyes watered. I breathed through the ache, through the trembling, through the strange fullness of everything I was feeling. I didn’t stop.

At some point the room tilted, and I was on my back, the stone cold against my shoulder blades and his shadow broad above me. I pulled him down to me and held on. The scrape of claws against rock, the harsh rhythm of his breath, the faint hiss of my blood where his heat touched it: all of it blurred together into one low, burning hum.

“Closer,” I said.

He gave me what I asked. I locked my arms around him and pulled him in until there was nothing left between us. My nails dug into his shoulders. My wings scraped the stone, and the stubs pulsed with light.

I had stopped counting time. I had stopped counting anything. There was only the glow of my own wings flickering across the walls, and his eyes fixed on mine, dark and unreadable, and the sound of my own voice saying his name as if it were the only word I had left.

“Harder,” I said.

He gave it to me. My whole body shook. The cold of the stone and the fire of his skin collided until I couldn’t tell which was which. I held on to him the way you hold on to a ledge, with everything I had, with nothing left to spare.

The walls seemed to breathe around us. Every sound came back doubled: the hiss of heat on stone, the scrape of claws against rock, my own heartbeat thundering in my ears. I closed my eyes and let it carry me. I let it carry me further than I had ever allowed myself to go.

Somewhere in the dark, a thought surfaced, small and clear. I had never been this far from myself. I had never been so close to something I didn’t have a name for. I waited for fear to follow it. It didn’t come.

My vision blurred at the edges. The glow under my skin grew brighter, and I felt it before I saw it, a pulse beneath my ribs that kept time with my heartbeat. I thought it was only the heat. I thought it was only the night.

The air changed. I felt it on my skin first, a prickling, electric hush, like the silence before a storm breaks over open ground. Damien felt it too. His breathing caught, and his hold on me tightened.

Something shifted inside me.

A sharp, bright warmth surged low in my body, different from the burn of his scales, different from anything I had felt before. My angel blood reacted. The glow under my skin blazed hard enough that Damien froze, still holding me. Light spilled between us, gold and white, turning the dark to day.

His claws tightened on my hips.

I looked up at him. His eyes had gone wide, and the gold of my light burned in them like fire.

The light grew until I couldn’t see the walls, until the stone itself seemed to glow beneath us. Heat poured through me before I understood what it meant.