The Demon Lord's Vessel(5)

The pulse kept flooding me. Heat poured through every vein, and my body shook hard under it. It rolled outward from the center of me with every throb, brighter each time. My wings twitched in his grip. The glow under my skin moved like liquid gold, rising and falling with my breath.

He didn’t let go. His claws slid from my hips to the glowing wing stubs, and he lifted me straight off the stone. My knees left the floor. The ground grew farther away, and the cool air of the chamber rushed across my skin like water. For a moment I forgot how to breathe.

He held me suspended by the wings and hips. I felt his strength in every line of him, in the steady lock of his arms, in the slow, heavy beat of his heart against mine. The light under my skin pulsed in time with it. Every rise of his chest pushed the glow brighter.

I locked my legs around his waist and pulled myself against him. “Harder. Up.”

His claws tightened. He carried me higher, and the dark opened around us like a held breath. Every beat of the glow lit the chamber in gold, and I saw the high, rough ceiling, the curve of the walls, the long shadows running from us as if they were afraid. The stone below looked small. Distant.

His tail wrapped around my throat. Tight. Not enough to stop my breath, only enough to hold my head still, the way you hold something precious or something dangerous. The pressure made my pulse jump under the scales. I tipped my head back into it and closed my eyes. The heat of him pressed against my chest.

His claws pressed into the glowing veins along my arms, and the light flared brighter where they touched. Heat spilled down to my fingertips. I gasped, and the sound echoed off the stone, thin and broken.

“Don’t stop,” I said.

He didn’t. He drew me closer and tighter until I couldn’t tell where his heat ended and mine began. My thighs trembled from holding on. My hands slipped over his shoulders and found his horns, and I held them like the only handholds in a falling world. The ridges were rough under my palms.

“More,” I whispered.

He gave me more. The light surged, and I felt myself rising with it, past the point where I could name what was happening, past fear, past the shape of my own thoughts. The air around us shimmered. The hum I’d heard before swelled until it filled my bones. It vibrated in my teeth.

He turned me in the air. The chamber spun, gold on black, and for one dizzy moment I saw the two of us reflected in the stone below: a pale, shining figure caught in the arms of something dark, both of us burning. I didn’t know which of us was the light. I didn’t know which of us was the fire. The reflection trembled with every movement.

I clung to him. I couldn’t have let go if I had wanted to. My fingers stayed locked on his horns. My legs stayed locked around his waist. The cold air rushed past us, but I barely felt it.

He held me higher. The glow under my skin gathered at my ribs, at my wrists, at the tips of my wings, pulling tight like a bowstring. His breath came rough against my neck. I felt him shudder, and the whole chamber seemed to shudder with him. The light below us rippled across the stone like water. Dust rose and hung in the air, caught in the glow.

“Hold on,” he said. It was the first thing he had said in a long time, and his voice was low and ragged.

I held on.

The light peaked, a bright, silent explosion that turned the whole room white. I felt it move through me from head to foot, scorching and sweet. My body shook, and my breath broke against his chest, short and uneven. For a moment I wasn’t anyone. I wasn’t an angel. I wasn’t a thing that could be named. I was only light, and the dark held me.

Then, slowly, the glow began to settle.

It dimmed in pulses at first, flickering across my skin like a candle in a draft, and then steadied, softer and softer, until it was only a faint gold shimmer under my skin. The hum faded. The air stopped shaking. The dust sank back to the floor.

He kept his claws locked on my wing stubs. He kept me held against him, suspended in the quiet. My breath slowed. My heartbeat slowed. Somewhere in the dark, a single drop of something bright fell from my fingertips and struck the stone, and the sound rang out like a bell.

The glow finally went still.