Chapter 9: A Son's Devotion
The water in the basin was lukewarm, tinged pink. Sephoryn’s hands, which had never trembled holding a sword, shook as he wrung out the cloth. Hegozia lay still, a pale expanse of ruin on the black stone. The smells of sex and sulfur were a thick paste in his throat.
He started at her shoulder, wiping away a smudge of ash. The cloth moved down her arm, over the curve of her hip. He avoided the core of her, the sticky evidence of the lesson. His jaw was clenched so tight it ached.
“You’ll have to clean it,” she said, her voice scraped raw. Her eyes were open, watching the glowing ceiling. “Or his command is disobeyed. And we both know the price for that.”
He knew. He dipped the cloth again, his stomach churning. He moved between her legs, which she parted for him without a sound. The sight made his breath catch. She was swollen, glistening, utterly used. His father’s seed, mixed with Zargoth’s, leaked from her in a slow, shameful trickle onto the obsidian. The other entrance, higher up, was red and puckered.
A hot, shameful bolt of arousal shot through him, so violent it nauseated him. He hated it. He hated her for inspiring it. He hated his father for creating it.
“Just do it, Sephoryn,” she whispered, a note of pity in her tone that stung worse than a lash.
He pressed the cloth to her, and she flinched, a sharp intake of breath. He tried to be gentle, but the act itself was a violation. He was smearing it, not cleaning it. The mingled scents—musky, bitter, uniquely them—rose up, and his cock, traitorous and hard, strained against his trousers.
Her eyes found his. She saw. Of course she saw.
A strange, tired smile touched her lips. “You look like you want to kill me. Or fuck me. It’s often the same thing here, isn’t it?”
“Be silent,” he growled, the first words he’d spoken.
“Or what?” she challenged softly, her strength returning in flashes of defiance. “You’ll tell your father? He already knows. He counted on it.”
He threw the cloth aside. It landed with a wet slap. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t just wipe it away. The order echoed in his skull. Clean her.
A darker, more primal impulse took hold. If he could not erase it, he would defile it further. Make it his own.
He lowered his head between her thighs.
Her body went rigid. “Sephoryn… don’t.”
He didn’t listen. His tongue, hot and broad, licked a stripe from her perineum up through the slick, swollen folds, collecting the bitter-salty proof of the demons’ possession. He gagged, but forced himself to swallow. It was punishment. For her. For him.
A choked gasp escaped her. Then another. Her hands fisted in his hair, not pushing him away, but holding him there. “Oh, fuck,” she breathed.
He lapped at her, cleaning her with his mouth, each stroke of his tongue making her hips twitch. The taste was complex: her own arousal, metallic and sweet, layered over the dominant, musky tang of the two older demons. He was consuming his father’s power. He was consuming Zargoth’s loyalty. He was making it part of himself. The shame burned, but beneath it, a terrifying pride ignited.
Her moans grew louder, less pained, more urgent. Her body, so recently ravaged, was responding. He focused on her clit, circling it with firm, relentless pressure. She arched off the stone, a broken cry echoing in the chamber. “Yes… right there… you greedy boy.”
The words spurred him. He fucked her with his tongue, delving deep into her stretched channel, drinking down every last drop. His hands came up to knead her breasts, full and heavy. They were softer than any demon woman’s, a human legacy. He squeezed, and to his shock, a few droplets of thin, bluish milk beaded at the tips and trickled down his fingers.
The sight undid him. It was vulnerability. It was sustenance. It was hers.
He took a nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, his tongue lapping at the faint, sweet milk. He groaned against her flesh, the sensation profoundly wrong and profoundly arousing. He was a warrior, a prince, suckling like an infant at the breast of his violated mother. The paradox shattered his last pretense of duty.
“Need to be inside you,” he muttered, his voice thick, releasing her breast with a pop. “Now.”
“Then take it,” she said, her eyes blazing with a feverish light. “It’s still wet with them. Make it yours.”
He fumbled with his trousers, freeing his aching cock. He was thick, but not like Zargoth. He positioned himself at her entrance, which glistened from his mouth. He pushed.
She was impossibly loose, slack from the double penetration, but still hot, still gripping him. The ease of entry was a humiliation in itself. He sheathed himself fully in one smooth stroke, his balls slapping against her. A guttural roar was torn from him. He was inside the space his father and his general had just occupied. He was claiming their leavings.
He set a brutal pace from the start, each thrust a punishment for her compliance, for his desire, for the whole rotten kingdom. The wet, slapping sounds filled the steam-heavy air. He leaned over her, one hand braced on the ledge, the other gripping her throat, not squeezing, just holding. Possessing.
“Is this what you wanted?” he snarled into her ear, pistoning into her. “To turn your own son into another of your demons?”
Her answer was a ragged laugh, cut short by a deep thrust. “You were always… a demon… my love. I just… ah!… finally get to see the color of your fire.”
He fucked her with a single-minded intensity, trying to outpace the ghosts in the room. Her cunt was a slick, welcoming vise, and despite her exhaustion, she met him thrust for thrust, her ass lifting to take him deeper. She reached back, clawing at his hip, pulling him into her.
“Come on,” she taunted, her voice a siren’s call in the hellish gloom. “Show me you’re their equal. Fill this well-fucked cunt with your prince’s seed. Mark it over theirs.”
Her words were the trigger. His orgasm ripped through him, a convulsive, mind-blanking surge. He slammed into her and held, grinding deep as he emptied himself in hot, pulsing jets, adding his own essence to the cocktail already stewing inside her. He collapsed on top of her, spent, his face buried in the sweat-damp hair at her neck. They lay there, a tangled mess of limbs and consequences, the only sound their ragged breathing and the eternal hiss of the geysers.
Slowly, the world came back. The heat of the water. The glow of the runes. The weight of what he had done.
He pulled out of her, the separation accompanied by a wet, vulgar sound. More fluid, now distinctly his own, leaked from her onto the stone. The final, definitive stain.
He stood, adjusting his clothes, unable to look at her. The shame was a cold tide now, washing away the fever. He felt hollowed out, conquered.
Hegozia slowly pushed herself up. She moved with a wince, but her gaze was clear, sharp. She looked at the mess on the ledge, then at him. There was no tenderness in her face. Only a grim assessment.
“Now you understand,” she said quietly, gathering a discarded robe and wrapping it around herself. “The poison is in the blood. In the seed. In the milk. There is no cleaning it out.” She walked past him, pausing at the entrance. She didn’t look back.
“The only choice is to learn to crave it. And then to become the poison yourself.”
She left him alone in the steaming chamber, surrounded by the evidence of his fall. The lesson, it seemed, was complete. And the curriculum had only just begun.