Chapter 5: The Enemy's Bargain
The corridor beyond the bonding chamber was silent. Elara's bare feet pressed against the cold stone, and she felt Malakor's hand on her lower back, a constant pressure that steadied her. The bond hummed between them, warm and electric, and she found herself smiling, a foolish expression she couldn't quite suppress.
"You look pleased," Malakor said.
"I feel pleased."
"Good." His thumb traced her spine. "You should. There are few mortals who have ever walked these halls with their souls intact."
"And fewer who've made a demon prince kneel."
He snorted, but there was warmth in it. "You'll never let that go, will you?"
"Never."
The wards at the end of the corridor flickered. Just a brief stutter, a pulse of darkness that was there and then gone. Malakor stopped. His hand tightened on her back, and she felt the shift in him, the way his shadows coiled like animals sensing prey.
"What is it?"
"Stay behind me."
"Malakor—"
He moved. She saw it coming, the blur of his body as he turned, and the world exploded into chaos.
Vareth was there. Not in the corridor, not in the stone. He was a wound torn open in reality, a gash of darkness that spat him out like seed from a split fruit. He collided with Malakor before Elara could draw breath, and the two demons crashed into the corridor wall with a force that cracked the obsidian.
Elara stumbled back. Her heart hammered. The bond flared inside her, a surge of panic and rage that wasn't entirely hers.
Malakor roared. His claws raked across Vareth's chest, opening black wounds that wept shadow instead of blood. Vareth laughed, a wet, broken sound, and drove his fist into Malakor's jaw.
"Vareth!" Malakor snarled. "You dare—"
"I dare everything, prince." Vareth's eyes were yellow. Sickly. They found Elara over Malakor's shoulder, and his lips peeled back from teeth that were too long. "And I've come for your little pet."
Elara ran.
She knew the Court. She'd learned its turns and corridors during three days of servitude, and she flew now like a moth from a flame. The bond screamed in her chest. She felt Malakor's fury, his desperate hunger to reach her, and behind it, something colder.
Fear.
She rounded the corner and hit a wall of shadow.
Vareth's hand closed around her throat before she could scream. He lifted her, her feet kicking above the floor, and his grip was iron. His face swam in front of her, pale and beautiful in a wrong way, like a statue that had been carved with too much malice.
"Do you really think he loves you?" His voice was soft, almost tender. "He's a demon, little librarian. He feeds on fear. And you are the sweetest morsel he's ever tasted."
"Fuck—fuck you—"
"Charming." He shook her, just once, and her teeth clacked together. "But not convincing."
Vareth moved. The corridor dissolved around them, the shadows tearing apart like wet paper. Elara's stomach lurched as reality folded, and then she was on her back on cold, wet stone, the breath driven out of her.
The bonding chamber.
She looked up at the jagged obsidian ceiling, at the chains hanging from the darkness above. The altar was still warm from her coupling with Malakor, a fact that made Vareth's smile widen as he dragged her toward it.
"No," she gasped. "No, please—"
"Please?" He laughed, hauling her onto the altar. The stone pressed cold against her back, and her ruined blouse did nothing to soften it. "You've been so brave, little moth. Screaming his name as he fucked you. Let's see how brave you are when I use that pretty mouth of yours for something else."
"Malakor will kill you."
"Malakor is on his knees right now, clawing at the wards I've sealed around this chamber. He can hear you, though. He can feel you through that lovely bond of yours." Vareth's hands moved to her wrists, binding them with cold iron manacles that clicked shut with a sound like a gunshot. "So scream his name for me. I want him to hear exactly what's happening to his precious vessel."
Elara bit her tongue. She tasted blood.
Vareth laughed again, and his thighs pressed against hers. She felt the length of him, hard against her hip, and her stomach turned.
"You're going to regret this," she whispered.
He cut her skirt open with a flick of his claws. The fabric peeled away like skin, and the cold air hit her bare thighs, her soaked cunt.
"Regret?" He lowered himself over her. "I'm going to savor this."
Elara's fingers curled around the iron manacles. The metal was cold, rough with rust, and it bit into her wrists as she tugged, testing the give.
Vareth laughed.
"There's nowhere to run, little moth. Those cuffs were forged in the Abyss. They'll hold a dragon, let alone a—"
She pulled.
Not with her arms. Not with her body. She pulled with the bond. The thing Malakor had fused into her blood, into her bones, into her cunt. The thing that hummed in her chest like a second heartbeat.
The manacles shattered.
Iron fragments burst outward, tearing through the air. Vareth's eyes went wide, yellow and wrong, and his jaw dropped a fraction of a second before she drove her fist into his face.
The crack was satisfying.
Vareth staggered back a step, blood-black shadow welling from his split lip. He touched it, tasted it, and smiled.
"Cute trick," he said. "That was his strength you just borrowed. But he's sealed out there, clawing at my wards, and you're in here with me."
Elara rolled off the altar. She made it two steps before his magic caught her.
It wasn't shadow. It was something worse, a lattice of pale yellow light that snapped around her wrists and ankles and hauled her backward through the air. Her spine hit the obsidian slab. The light wrapped her limbs, pulled them apart, and pinned them wide. Her legs drew open, her knees forced up and out, and the cold air of the chamber licked over her exposed cunt, already slick and humiliatingly responsive from the bond.
"There she is," Vareth murmured. "Open for me."
"Go to hell."
"I'm from there, librarian." He climbed onto the altar, kneeling between her spread thighs, and she felt the heat of him through his ruined trousers. His claws traced the inside of her knee, light as a pen stroke, and she shuddered with revulsion. Or something worse. The bond couldn't tell the difference. Malakor's essence lived in her blood now, and Malakor fed on fear, and fear had always tasted like this. Like wanting.
"Stop," she said, and hated how it shook.
"No." He drew one claw down her inner thigh, stopping a breath from her folds. "You misunderstand the ritual. I'm not going to break the bond by force. Force would just scar it. No. I'm going to make your body betray you. I'm going to wring pleasure out of this traitorous little cunt while he listens. And every time you come screaming his name, the bond tears a little more, because it will know you gave your release to another demon's hands."
"That's not how it works."
"You're guessing." His grin widened. "So am I. Isn't magic fun?"
He didn't touch her. He raised one hand, and the yellow lattice shivered, and threads of it slithered up her thighs to her sex. They spread her labia apart, peeling her open to the cold air, exposing the swollen pink of her clit to whatever he intended. Elara pulled against the light until her wrists burned. It didn't give.
Vareth flexed his fingers, and one thread of magic, thin as a harp string, dragged itself across her clit.
She gasped. It was a violation and a caress at once, a vibration that buzzed through the bundle of nerves with a precision no finger could manage. Her hips strained upward into it before she could stop them.
"There it is," he breathed. "Feel that? That's not me. That's you."
"Fuck you."
"Soon. First we warm up."
The thread pulsed. Slow, rhythmic strokes, up and down, maddening. Another thread slid between her spread lips and pressed against her entrance, rubbing tight circles there, never pushing in. Her wetness betrayed her immediately, slicking the magic so it glided and hummed, and her breath came ragged now, her chest heaving against the lattice.
She could feel Malakor through the bond. Fury like a furnace. Terror like a blade. And under both, the ugly truth she felt in his reaction: her arousal, her shame, the feed of it.
"Malakor," she said. Quietly. Testing.
Vareth's laugh was delighted. "Again."