Chapter 4: Cruel Mercy
The silence after the click of her glass stretched, thin and sharp as a blade. Chris’s pleading gaze was a physical pressure on her skin. Edgar’s waiting presence was a different weight, a gravitational pull she was already orbiting.
“Burn him?” Mia finally said, her voice softer than she intended. She cleared her throat, the liquor’s fire giving her strength. “That seems too quick. Too clean.”
Edgar’s eyebrow arched, a spark of dark interest in his eyes. “Oh?”
She stood, the black towel wrapped tightly around her. She walked toward Chris, her bare feet silent on the cool stone. She stopped just outside the reach of the glowing silver chains. He looked up at her, a pathetic mix of hope and terror in his eyes.
“You told me you loved me,” she said, her tone conversational, almost curious. “You whispered it while you were inside me. You wrote it in birthday cards. You said it over coffee.” She crouched down, bringing her face level with his. “And then you said it to Lorena, too, didn’t you? While you were inside her.”
“Mia, it was a mistake—”
“A mistake is a wrong turn,” she interrupted, her voice turning to ice. “What you did was a choice. A series of them. You chose her skin. You chose her mouth. You chose to betray me.” She reached out, not touching him, but tracing a finger through the air an inch from his cheek. “So now, I get to choose.”
She stood and turned to Edgar. “He wanted to taste something he couldn’t have. Let him taste exactly what he lost.”
Understanding dawned on Edgar’s face, followed by a slow, predatory smile. It was a terrible and beautiful sight. “As my queen commands.”
He snapped his fingers. The silver chains holding Chris’s wrists clattered to the floor, though an invisible force kept him on his knees, his arms locked behind his back. His shoulders strained, but he could not rise.
“On your back,” Edgar ordered.
Chris hesitated, a last flicker of defiance. Edgar made a subtle gesture, and Chris cried out as his body was wrenched backward by an unseen hand, slamming him onto the hard floor. He lay sprawled, gasping, utterly exposed.
Edgar walked to Mia. He didn’t speak, just untucked the end of the towel she was clutching and let it fall. It pooled at her feet. He kissed her then, deeply, possessively, his tongue claiming her mouth. He palmed her breast, his thumb rubbing over her nipple until it peaked into a hard, aching point. She could feel his renewed erection pressing against her through his towel.
He broke the kiss, his lips trailing down her neck, over the bite mark, to the new, searing brand on her shoulder. He licked it, and a bolt of dark pleasure-pain shot straight to her core. She moaned.
“He watches,” Edgar murmured against her skin. “He watches what is mine.”
He guided her, his hands firm on her hips, until she stood over Chris’s supine body. Chris stared up, his eyes wide with horror and a shameful, undeniable arousal.
“Sit on his face,” Edgar said, his voice low and thick. “Grind that pretty, used cunt right into his lying mouth. Let him choke on what he traded away.”
A final thread of her old self resisted. This was degradation, for both of them. But the thread snapped, burned away by the heat of the Hell-mark and the memory of Lorena’s laughter. A cold, sharp clarity settled in her.
She lowered herself, knees on either side of Chris’s head. She saw the panic in his eyes. She felt the wet heat between her own legs, the mix of her arousal and Edgar’s release. She positioned herself directly over his mouth.
“Open,” she said, and it was not a request.
He obeyed, a small, broken sound escaping him as she settled her weight down. The first contact was a shock—the warmth of his breath, the hesitant touch of his tongue on her lower lips. She was swollen, sensitive, utterly filthy from Edgar’s taking.
“Taste it,” Edgar growled, moving to stand beside them, a spectator to his own design. He fisted his hand in Mia’s damp hair, not pulling, just holding. “Taste my cum inside her. Taste what you’ll never have again.”
He used his grip to guide her, a slow, grinding roll of her hips. Mia let her head fall back, a sigh escaping her. It was not pleasure, not exactly. It was power. Absolute, devastating power. Chris’s tongue moved, at first tentative, then with a desperate, starving fervor. He licked at her, sucked at her clit, his moans vibrating against her flesh as he consumed the undeniable proof of another man’s possession.
“Fuck his mouth, Mia,” Edgar commanded, his own breathing growing ragged. “Use him like the utensil he is.”
She obeyed, her movements becoming more deliberate, more rhythmic. She rode his face, controlling the pressure, the pace. She looked down and saw tears leaking from the corners of Chris’s closed eyes. She felt no pity. She felt a expanding void where pity once lived.
Edgar’s towel hit the floor. He knelt behind her, his hands stroking up her thighs, spreading her wider as she rocked on Chris’s mouth. The head of his cock nudged at her from behind, slick with her wetness.
“Don’t stop,” he ordered them both.
He pushed inside her in one deep, stretching thrust. Mia cried out, the dual sensation overwhelming—the hot, wet suction of Chris’s mouth on her clit, the hard, full invasion of Edgar filling her from behind. Edgar set a brutal pace, each slam of his hips driving her down harder onto Chris’s face.
The room filled with the obscene, wet sounds of their joining: the slap of skin, the filthy suck of Chris’s mouth, Edgar’s guttural groans. Mia was a conduit between them, a vessel of punishment and proof.
“She comes, or you die,” Edgar snarled at Chris, never breaking his rhythm.
Chris redoubled his efforts, his tongue lapping and circling with frantic expertise. The coil, shattered and rewoven so many times tonight, tightened again in Mia’s belly. It was tangled with humiliation, with rage, with a dark, surging triumph.
“That’s it,” Edgar choked out, his thrusts becoming erratic, pounding into her with possessive fury. “Take it. Take all of it.”
Mia’s orgasm tore through her, silent and blinding. Her back arched violently, her muscles clamping down on Edgar’s cock while she ground herself against Chris’s mouth in shuddering waves. Edgar roared as he felt her clench around him, his own release pumping into her hot and deep, marking her all over again.
He stayed buried in her for a long moment, his forehead against her branded shoulder. Then he pulled out.
Mia climbed off Chris’s face, her legs unsteady. Chris lay gasping, his mouth and chin glistening, his eyes empty. She looked at Edgar. He was watching her, his chest heaving, his expression one of raw, approving hunger.
“Your judgment is exquisite, my queen,” he said, his voice rough.
He extended a hand. She took it. He pulled her to a large, ornate chair that seemed carved from twisted black rock and shadow. It was the only seat in the room. The Throne. He sat, and then he pulled her down onto his lap, her back to his chest. She could feel his softening length against her, could smell their sex on the steam rising from their skin.
Chris stirred, pushing himself up to his knees again, his head bowed.
“The sentence is not complete,” Mia said, the words floating in the heavy air. She felt eerily calm, settled into a new, cold place inside herself. “He wanted to rule. To be a prince. To have a queen.” She tilted her head back to look at Edgar. “So strip him of it.”
Edgar’s arms tightened around her. “Name it.”
“Whatever power he has. Whatever title. Take it. Leave him human. Leave him nothing.” She finally looked at Chris. “Let him live with the memory of this taste. Let him live knowing everything he was, is mine to give and to take away. That’s your hell. You get to live in it.”
Chris made a sound like a wounded animal.
Edgar nodded. “It will be done.” He raised his voice, addressing the shadows in the room. “Hear the decree of your Queen. The grace of the Vampire Angels is severed from this one. Let his blood run mundane. Let his wings turn to dust. Let him be forgotten.”
A wind that didn’t stir the air swept through the chamber. Chris screamed, a raw, tearing sound, as an invisible light seemed to be ripped from his chest. He collapsed, sobbing, curled into a fetal position on the cold stone, utterly mundane, utterly broken.
Mia watched, feeling nothing but a faint, cold satisfaction. She traced the lines of the Hell-mark on her shoulder.
Edgar nuzzled her hair. “You are more perfect than I ever dreamed,” he whispered, and for the first time, it sounded like reverence.
Outside the windows of the obsidian throne room, the first grey light of dawn began to bleed into the sky over Mystic Falls. A new day. A new world. She was its queen. And her reign, she understood now, would be forged not in light, but in the delicious, punishing dark.