“Oh, Kori I’m home!” Her passionately abyssal voice resonates from the hallway.
Moving within black mist and feathery smoke, Koriath silently takes flight back to the bassinests. He gently transfers Phantisma, who is still feeding, from his arms into her bassinest.
His heart skips a beat as that signature voice creeps closer to the drape-way. Noxiously sticky and opulent, with notes of blood and resin.
“Husband! I said I am home from battle. You should be flying into my arms right now.”
Gods, please do not let her see them.
Koriath takes off to the Empress of Darkness. He flies through the physical drape-way into her embrace as his form shifts from dark energy to flesh. Koriath wraps his bare arms around Malencia’s ornately armored body, spreading his iridescent crow wings wide to block her view past him.
“I am so glad you are home! Mali, I missed you.” Koriath takes Malencia’s talon in his. “Come, let me tend to your wounds.”
“Wounds? I missed your silly jokes.” She giggles.
She places her other bone white Corvapian talon on his back between his wings, holding him tight. Long deathly white ringlet curls, woven into a warrior’s braid, cascade to her calves from beneath an armored circlet. Unlike any other Corvapian, her sclera is black beyond any natural shade. Crimson spinel irises try to search past his black glossy wings as she rubs her cheek against his.
Koriath gently holds her chin in his talon, closing his eyes with shadows of regret as he brings himself to deliver a deep kiss to her.
Let me lead her away from them.
Malencia watches him with eyes wide open as her lips follow his. She drags a single talon, slow and playful, from his back up to his neck. Holding his neck firmly, withholding strangle, yet perfectly poised to do so.
He lifts an eyelid wearily, catching her stare. With his talon, he guides her talon on his neck to apply more pressure. “Let us retire to our roost to celebrate your victory.”
She grips him tighter as he guides her to. A deviant smile blooms from her blood red lips. “Kori, I normally have to threaten you to get you away from that stupid egg. Did you miss me this much?”
Koriath nods. His eyes spill tears as he forces himself to smile. Gods. Please. Let this work. Please.
Her talons constrict tighter, feeling his energy pulse in her talon, then she releases his neck.
“I missed your sweet tears.” She says.
Searching his tear stained face, noticing wet eyelashes above his puffy eyes. “However, it looks like you have already been crying. What happened?”
“Malencia, nothing happened, I am just glad you are home safe. I love you and I missed you. These tears are all yours, my Gorgeous Terror.” His muscles tense as he fights to keep a smile on his face.
“What a tantalizing refreshment you offer me. Alright, you got me in a good mood, I’ll humor you. Let’s go make more of your delicious tears.” She smiles a gnarly grin.
Her raven feathers fluff, as she starts to lead him down the hall.
Now I just have to endure this nightmare while I figure out the next steps. Unfortunately, Phantisma is going to need a lot of extra care to get through tonight. They both do, they are both underweight. Kurai seems healthy with her attitude, but she runs out of energy quickly. Koriath starts worrying to himself.
Malencia still holds Koriath’s talon in her own, leading him down the hall toward their roost loft. As she does, the bawling of a hatchling starts to resound in the hall.
“It hatched?” Her crimson spinel eyes flash sharply as she roughly pins his talon captive in hers against the wall.
Koriath’s body freezes as his talon hits the wall. Her shadow casts over him.
Phantisma, I am sorry baby. I know you need me to have a chance of surviving this night, but if she gets to you, all your chances are gone.
Malencia’s eyes shift away from Koriath towards the nestery with an annoyed squint. Her grip tightens until his captive talon breaks with a pop. Feeling broken bones softens her grasp, yet those eyes reek with bloodlust and hunger for silence.
My soul cries to be by yours and your sister’s side. I want to dry your tears… But I have to do this to protect you, both of you. Koriath swallows his pain, forcing himself to distract his wife by caressing her cheek with his free talon.
“Look at me Malencia, do not worry about the hatchling. The little one will stop crying soon, but I am crying now. I missed you.”
She gazes back to him with her attention recaptured by his surrender. His tears stream as he willingly puts his free arm up against the wall as well.
Locking his eyes on hers, “I love you. Please let me be your victory, your servant, whatever you desire. Let us celebrate you.”
“Whatever I want?” She fleers. Her words gush as she teasingly hovers her lips over his, pausing as she searches into his eyes. “Let’s make it a double celebration. Show me the hatchling.”
His face twists with pain as he whimpers. “No.”
She drives his wrist harsher against the timber wall. Her other talon caresses his cheek. “Ah, there it is.” Keeping eye contact, her lips trail across his jaw, then down toward his neck. “Your decadent protest.”
He shuts his eyes while turning his neck toward her, heart pounding inside his chest. Please gods, any family guardians, someone! Someone help me please keep my wife away from my daughters. My heart and mind cannot go through this again. I am still mourning Desiderius.
She softly kisses his neck, then rises back to lean over him. “No Kori, don’t act so docile. You have been aggressive towards me and broody over that egg this entire time.”
“For sound reasons, Mali.” He opens an eye wearily. “Now, please take me to our roost or let me go back to the nestery in peace.”
“I told you.” She squeezes his talon tighter. “I want to see our hatchling.”
“Our hatchling?” His expression softens. “Do you want to try and help with parenting this time?”
“Well I might, however your irrationally secretive behavior is making me upset.”
“Malencia, I want to trust you, but with everything you have done, especially this past age, I do not.”
“Koriath, those were all entirely your fault. Your actions prompted mine.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“Now your actions right now indicate that something is wrong with the new one. Why else would you be hiding and lying?” She interrupts him.
“If I lie to you, it is because that is what it takes to survive you…”
She flings her arm to slap him, with his free talon he catches hers.
“...I am dead tired of it all.” The stare in his eyes shifts fiercely.
“You called me, so obviously you want something from me. You told me to fly into your arms and I did. Now whatever you had planned in that head of yours, let us get it over with.” Koriath softly releases Malencia’s talon from his grasp. “If all you wanted to do was just ruffle my feathers then walk away; consider them ruffled.”
“How dare you, you ungrateful, pathetic bastard!” Her talon rolls into a fist as she strikes him across his face with a hellish speed.
Summoning up dark energy, softly bringing it to his own face, quietly healing himself as he snaps his jaw back in place. The gravity of heartbreak and betrayal increases in his stare.
She brings her fist raised over her chest. “Winning with the blood and ether of our enemies, fighting whole lunations for the people, and this is what I have to deal with when I come home?”
Her talon unfurls to point two finger-digits at him. “A husband who has the body of a king but the mind of an animal?”
“Malencia, you do not fight because you care about the people or any noble cause, you do it because it is the only legal way you can fill your blood-lust. You only get your harvest out of this animal king once every few ages.”
Malencia strikes Koriath again. “What happened to the man I married?”
He takes her hit without healing or dodging. “The audacity to ask what happened to me- You happened to me. You did not marry a man, you preyed on a broken hearted boy-”
“Hey! You had your adult feathers! I was just another general, you are the one with the royal blood ether. Leave our age difference out this Koriath.”
He starts healing her mark on his face. “Regardless of rank or age Malencia, if I were wine, you soured me. You have carved me into your puppet. What was once a gift of my love for you, you have demanded regardless if love is there. You cannot keep treating me like this.”
She shoots an irritated glare as she lowers her free talon to the side of her hip.
“What? Is that all you can defend yourself with?” He turns his pinned talon against the wall to ether and brings it outside her grasp. Standing free of her, he turns slightly from her.
“Go take a bath, have some tea, and talk to me when you calm down. I have a hatchling who needs me. You do not need me High General, you need my crown.” With this Koriath turns and starts to walk away from her.
Malencia furrows her brow, arches her wings, and draws her fully armored talons. A black muck, darker than the voids of space, engulfs her as she flies on a darkened mist.
Feeling, seeing her fly past him, Koriath mist travels after her. He passes her in the hall, his body forms beside Phantisma’s bassinest.
As Malencia flies into the threshold of the nestery, her Corvapian body ignores the physical matter of the draped door. She is caught by the salt. Screaming in pain as black and purple bolts like lightning devoid of light and heat violently descend upon her heart.
“Mali! I will be right there! Hold on!”
He begins to summon up another orb of darkness for their crying daughter to feed on.
The magic of the ward forces Malencia into her body, then she is flung back from the nestery doorway to the opposing wall in the hallway. Denting and breaking the timber as her body hits it.
As soon as Phantisma takes his energy orb for herself, Koriath mist travels back to Malencia, kneeling beside her.
“Stay still my raven queen; let me aid you.” He coos.
Koriath gently lifts Malencia’s head to rest on his lap. His other talon he raises above where the magic struck her chest, her dark crystal armor burnt but not broken. His talons weave a healing wrap of night, a magic that looks like the blue and purple midnight sky, for her.
She ignores him as he wraps the darkness around her chest. Her face winces during the healing.
“Koriath, what in the hell worlds was that?” Malencia groans.
He closes his eyes and keeps silent as he focuses his magic on healing her.
“Answer me.” She sinks her talon into his hair, then yanks it toward her.
He opens his eyes, staring into her abyssal gaze somberly. “I put up several wards against Evil and the demonic.”
“Did you just call me a demon?” She releases his hair, only to tightly grab his arm that he hovers over and heals her.
He bites his own lower lip softly, with eyes straining to not cry. Focusing on healing her, his magic slowly restores her vitality.
A feather falls from her wing. Blood curdling energy replaces the shed feather in the shape of a tendril. It coils around his muscular forearm, latching onto his energy as if thousands of tiny bites, pulling him onto her. The couple is now face to face, body to body.
Koriath fights to rise up off of her and escape her hold.
Malencia’s voidful darkness seeps through her toothy sneer. The air is tense and heavy, polluted with a cocktail of distress, anguish, and malevolent pleasure. She uses another one of her dark, energetic wing tentacles to bind Koriath's arms shut.
Pushing him aside, then rising to her feet. "So, Little Moonflower, the truth comes out. I am just a demon to you?"
He tries rising to his toelans, crying while staring into her spinel eyes. "Please. Mali."
She restricts her tentacles around his arms and wrists tighter, pulling him to kneel before her. "Answer me cock."
“I am sorry if you thought I called you a demon. That ward was not meant for you." Cold tears pouring down his cheeks as his body shudders.
Her cruel smirk, an unholy leer down at him as her tendrils begin to crack his bones. "I do not think you are being honest, my love."
“Malencia, I have told you the truth.” His face coils as he struggles to keep his eyes on hers.
She releases him from her energetic grasp with a forceful shove. Malencia leaps to her toelans and runs into the nestery. He follows her as ether, healing himself, keeping with her pace. As her foot touches down from the threshold, she sees the salt. A mighty gust of her wings blows it clean away. She vanishes on a puff of black smoke, several feathers molt off as her snicker echoes.
He follows her back into the nestery. Grabbing her ether, his touch brings her back into a material form, revealing several of her feathers replaced by cosmic umbral tendrils. One shoots out to the ward on the wall, crushing it in the gravity of her might.
She raises her head high, staring him down with malevolent laughter. “Clearly I am not a demon if I can break your little toys.”
Koriath is speechless as he continues to hold her to physical form.
“Or maybe I am. Maybe I am Evil Incarnate, and your pathetic gods are powerless against me.” She sets her energetic tentacles to dangle over Kurai and Phantisma.
He immediately lets go of her, softening his tone. “Leave them out of it. Come torment me anywhere but here.”
“No. That is what you keep asking for, it is clearly what you want. I want to actually hurt you. I don’t want your fake tears. I want reality. I deserve sincerity.” Right before Malencia is about to slink her tendrils across their hatchlings, she bares the cruelest of smiles.
Every muscle Koriath clenches, then releases as he energetically forms himself at the tips of her tendrils. Using his very soul, black with an aura of sublime reds, oranges, and golds, as a shield.
Free from flesh, his voice blooms deeply with ethereal night. “I said leave them.”
“Aw, my poor little rooster. He is still so broody, so scared, so broken.” Malencia haunts her void tentacles, which pulsate with crimson cruelty over his energetic form. “You tried hiding twins from me, now you are trying to sacrifice yourself for them? This does not help your case.”
She smiles as she starts trying to caress his thoughts. “You are still acting as if I am a demon.”
“I would only bare myself this way before someone I love and cherish. That person could never be a demon.” He surrenders his most inner strength and form to her.
Malencia shoots a coiled tendril past Koriath’s ether, gently grasping Phantisma. “Oh sweet husband, in that case, turn around and look at this one. She isn’t going to make it. Are you sure you don’t want me to put her out of her misery?”
Koriath ‘s energy moves between Phantisma and Malencia, retracting surrender, reverting back into a physical form. His talon immediately forms upon Malencia’s energetic tentacle which holds Phantisma.
“Take your claw off me.”
“Release my daughter first.” His stare fierce as a nightly wilderness.
Malencia giggles to herself. “Did you just try to command me? Oh sweet Moonflower.” She slinks a tendril around his head, pressing the tip into his ear as she walks her body closer. “Let me show you the reality that I see.”
Koriath slaps another one of Malencia’s void appendages away from Phantisma, then another from himself. The ones she currently has on them constricts slowly.
Koriath reaches out for Phantisma with one arm, defending with the other. However, inky stains the color of a black hole's center, starts to paint across his vision and mind’s eyes. Phantisma screams only for a moment as Malencia silences her.
“Do you see it yet, my little rooster?”
“I see only the color of your soul.”
“Ah, I see, I have to put the key in your talons to unlock the vision.” She delicately moves Phantisma toward Koriath, brushing her up against his talons, yet keeping them both in her hellish hold.
“My baby.” Koriath whimpers as his open talons lift Phantisma from Malencia with tears. Cradling his hatchling at his heart. “Moonstone.”
He named her Moonstone? What a disgusting, weak name.
He tries to kiss the top of Phantisma’s head, Malencia pulls his head back.
“Focus.” Malencia rolls her eyes.
“I am sorry Mali. Thank you for-” He gasps at the vision infecting his mind’s eye as it horrendously unfurls.
He sees himself beaten worse than now, his wings not just broken, but torn from his body. His throat under Malencia’s boot, his arms and legs bound by her tentacles. Phantisma’s neck drips black etherly blood onto him as the hatchling cries in pain within Malencia’s talon.
“This is the truth Koriath. She has to die. I will let you keep the other one.” Malencia says in the waking reality.
Koriath immediately starts feeling around for the tendrils around Phantisma. Finding the one that leads into her mouth, Koriath drags his talon tips upward on the void limb, positioning his talon to rip out the tendril.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Malencia giggles. “See, if you remember your place, and be an obedient little spouse, then another truth happens.”
The vision of a defeated Koriath helplessly struggling to try and save his dying new-hatchling starts to fade to black. From the muted colors of the last vision, they twist into a new view like a kaleidoscope.
In this one, Malencia holds Koriath as he digs his claw nails into her, lamenting and wailing. Here she ended Phantisma’s life quickly and painlessly with a great blast of energy. Leaving nothing but a soul orb, a Corvapian’s gemstone corpse, behind. The vision then shows an extravagant funeral and after feast.
“No.” He holds Phantisma closer, trying to now heal the frailness of her body with no avail. “No.”
“Look.”
Back in the vision, Koriath sees Kurai as a childling of about eight ages, happily playing in the sands at the beach, the reflection of the chaos moon dances in the waves. Malencia and Koriath cuddle as they both watch over Kurai from about two meters back.
“Just let me end her suffering, be good about it and I won’t hurt the other one. You can finally have your happy little family.”
Koriath’s claws dig deeper into her tendrils, oozing out not ether, but an abyssal slime.
Malencia laughs it off as she continues. “You have a choice. Remember that you chose to be chased down when you ran away. You chose to hide in a cave, to hide that egg, and of all the cruelties Koriath, you chose to hide behind the Guardian of Light. You and your little friend chose defeat. You chose your own sterilization over just losing one egg. The choice has always been yours, Koriath.”
His garnet stare is crystal daggers, he places one toelan behind him into a fighting stance.
“Don’t look at me like that moon-weed. I promised you could keep this egg. You get one from it. This one is obviously dying. Plus, she looks like me. You’re going to hate her when she gets older. You are going to look at her and remember what I had to do that night.”
“That night…” His voice trembles.
Koriath quickly slashes Malencia’s tendrils off of Phantisma, then pulls the remainder of the one stuck in her mouth out.
Malencia serves him the same stare as she retracts her cut tentacles, but tightens the ones on Koriath.
“Your jealousy of your own son murdered this family. And tonight you are jealous of your daughter.” He shouts with fangs bare.
Phantisma whimpers, her father immediately softens his tone. Koriath’s garnet eyes fill with tears again as he searches for a heart beneath the spinel stare. “I’d ask the Elder Council for our divorce, but I am afraid of what you would do, and the political storm that would come.”
“At least you know better than to seek a divorce.”
She coils the void tentacle at the edge of his faerie ear, he flinches as she surges her horror into him.
“I will never hate our childlings...” He endures Malencia’s mind flaying assault while he lowers Phantisma, then shelters her with his wings. “This abhorrence is for you.”
Malencia creeps up to him silently as he is blinded by an onslaught of past memories and painful thoughts. She drops all feathers, exchanging them into the limbs of the void. With her talons, she grabs his wings and breaks them open professionally.
“What was that dear husband?” She snickers.
He regains his vision, screaming as he puts up a shield of dark energy. Malencia’s feather limbs devour the energy like a squirming mass of hungry carnivorous worms. Koriath brings his crying, frail hatchling up to his chest again to stabilize her as he holds her with one arm. His other talon cuts his head free.
Malencia surrounds him with her tentacle limbs. “I really despise doing this darling, but you are making things difficult.”
“If you hate this so much, then just stop. I am tired of you not taking accountability for your actions and blaming me instead. I was gentle and compliant when you got home.”
She lunges at him with talons drawn. He pivots out of the way.
She turns on a spin that conceals a kick to the shin. He winces as he tries to keep his balance between dodging grasping tendrils, having broken wings, and keeping Phantisma secure.
Malencia uses her tendril tactics to distract Koriath, making deliberate lunges she knows he will dodge. Slowly tiring him as the dance of battle only ignites her malefic delight.
She sends a multi-tentacle attack to grab Koriath’s joints. He uses an energetic wave of dark magic from one talon, whipping them away.
Malencia coldly drives her knee between his legs. He staggers as he fights to keep standing past the nauseating pain while defending Phantisma.
A bony punch explosively strikes his lower abdomen. The betrayal in his eyes follows with an open palm slap to her face, refraining from backhanding her.
Malencia takes the slap in order to grab both of Koriath’s wrists. Calculatedly she breaks both of them.
Koriath tries to kick her off, her tendrils set to his limbs. He resists the unholy force of her arms trying to pull Phantisma from the protection of his arms. He bites Malencia. In retaliation, crimson spinel energy from her tendrils seeps into his skin, corrupting his veins, paralyzing his arms.
“Gods-”
Malencia grabs Phantisma before she falls, looking over her then at the captive Koriath in her entanglement of appendages.
“Your gods aren’t here remember? They are either powerless against me or they don’t care about you. Good thing you have me Kori. I care when your gods do not.”
“Please let her go.” Koriath surrenders, weeping with painful exhaustion. “I am sorry for acting out in anger against you Mali. I betrayed you. Take it out on me, not her.”
“While I accept your apology, I am still in on our agreement. Twins of one egg are almost impossible. When they do happen, usually both don’t survive. I am not being cruel. Its nature, and the nature of our agreement was you get one last childling to raise.”
“I was not of sound mind when that was made. Please. Please Mali, I am not of sound mind now either. Please. I carried that egg strapped to my body constantly for an age. Hatching them was just between me and my gods. Those tears you found me with, yes they were for another, for our daughters. They have been anointed with my loving tears, and blessed oil. The one you are holding is Dimperial Princess Karasu Phantisma.”
“Phantisma? I thought you named her Moonstone.”
“She has such wonderful moonstone energy. Can you feel it? The other I called Nightshade. I think you might like her, she reminds me of Nephti.” His tears fall harder as he speaks the name Nephti. “She is Dimperial Princess Karasu Kurai.”
Malencia glares at Koriath, raising her talon toward Phantisma’s neck.
“Wait!” Desperation paints Koriath’s face pale. “Please, please do not hurt her. I will do anything. What do you need? What do you want? If my fertility was the cost to keep one, what is the cost to keep them both? I will pay it. I will do anything.”
Malencia tightens her grasp on Phantisma, who is too weak to cry anymore. “Her existence mocks me, Koriath.”
“I surrender! Please! I surrender. Whatever you want. Please, Mali please, do not hurt my baby.” He cries in a way only a loving parent can.
She starts to tear the swaddling blanket with her razor claw-nail. “She looks like me, you gave her a name to follow mine. All while her body and energy is weak, frail, and pathetic.”
“You can rename her!” He pleads.
Malencia glares at him with a malevolent smile, then slowly cuts Phantisma's shoulder, making sure Koriath sees her blood ether.
Gods, I am sorry. I see no other option.
He lifts his swollen tear stung eyes up toward her. “Beloved goddess, please.” His tears crash onto the floor. “Please, allow me, the honor of your cruelties, not her. Please. You have whatever you ask of me. Please. Terrifying goddess- just do not hurt our hatchlings. I am right here, I am yours. Whatever you want. Please, not my daughters."
"Oh. Goddess?" She roughly lifts his chin with one of her many wingtacles. "You have not called me that in ages." She examines his face with her appendage. "Am I truly your goddess Koriath?"
"I should have said it sooner. You never stopped being my goddess. I love you, Malencia." Divines in my heart, I will say whatever it takes to save their lives. I do not mean it.
“Then rise, sweet moonflower.” She releases him from the paralysis.
Malencia uses her wing tendrils to help Koriath rise, before she retreats them to feathers. She holds Phantisma hostage in her talons. He rises to his toelans in silent tears.
“Good. Now back on both knees. You should kneel before your goddess”
His body trembles with nausea as he kneels on command. She is testing me.
"Worship me again. That is the cost to let them both live. But if you betray me by worshiping your gods again Koriath, there is a price that will be paid. Understand?"
"Yes, my love. Goddess of my heart." He stares up into her eyes.
"Goddess of your soul." Only her eyes cast downward into his, her head high.
"Malencia…” He searches her eyes for mercy.
"Kori, say it and I will smile. Mean it with your being, and your hatchlings get to live."
The Emperor of Darkness, breaking in spirit, begins praying to his gods. The War Raven, annoyed by Koriath’s unintelligible weeping prayers, glares down at him. He swallows his spiritual convictions with choking heartache.
Garnet eyes fixed on her spinel leer. "Malencia, beloved goddess...”
His voice shakes, tears welling up in his eyes, as he continues searching her eyes. Seeing nothing but the all-consuming lust and gluttony of a black hole. Forcing himself to become one with the ground beneath her as she keeps his head held up toward her.
“Beloved goddess of...”
She smiles with malevolent anticipation down at him.
“Beloved goddess of my soul. Queen of my heart. I offer you my devotion, no I offer myself- my entirety, in exchange for the lives and safety of Karasu Phantisma and Karasu Kurai. Do no harm to them, save it for me. Please beautiful goddess. I humbly beg of you." The sincere sound of his woe erupts. The palace timbers echo his cries.
Malencia takes his body in her tendrils as if he is a marionette. Koriath does not resist.
"Your goddess accepts." She brings him face to face, her leer pierces into his soul through his eyes. Her honey tone gushes in again. "Seal it with a kiss Koriath."
Koriath cannot stop crying, his lips trembling. Why does she have to do this in a space I have declared holy?
She leans in and softly bites his lower lip, holding it in place, waiting for him. Holding Phantisma away from his reach until he is compliant.
My gods. I am disgusted and ashamed. This is the only way to save my little ones. My heart cannot bury anymore. Tears render his eyes blind in the moment, gagging on his own sorrow.
~~~
My being, my deepest power, fades from my chest. I feel as if my soul is being engulfed in chains. What is this torture? Another spell? Gods! I am sorry! Gods! The Night- Lord Rajnish- I cannot feel… feeling only this terrible weight within.
She unleashes a wicked snicker as she releases his body from her grasp. Her energetic tentacles return to her wings as raven feathers.
A deep, mournful, and furious silence floods the nestery chamber. Not the energy of a healing night, but of surgical darkness, correcting his broken body for him. The silence flows out of Koriath where tears can flow no more.
She hands him back their hatchling. He immediately takes his daughter in his shaking arms. With the same lamenting silence and darkness, he begins to heal Phantisma.
Malencia watches him. “You’re acting pathetic. Pull yourself together and come join me in the bath.”
Koriath lowers his head. May all my gods, guides, and ancestors hear my thoughts. My soul may be enslaved to her, but my heart and mind will continue secret devotion. He tears his own waist robe, wrapping the maroon silk-like cloth around Phantisma’s swaddle.
She will not break me, nor will I teach my daughters broken subservience to her.
“You are only allowed to pray to me now. I am your one and only deity. The goddess of your soul. Karasu Koriath, from this moment, you worship me, and me alone. If you do not comply, I am permitted to hurt or even destroy your precious little ones. Is this understood?”
His pupils widen then constrict, his voice a shallow gasp. “What about the people? I am expected to be a god-emperor in Poanism. If I abandon those rites flat out…”
Looking down, recovering the gentle strength of his voice before lifting his face and locking eyes. “Well, I do not have to tell you. You can imagine what outrage will brew in the people.”
She pauses, biting her own lip while thinking, then releasing herself and looking down at him. “You’re right. The people look to us, we need to be in unison with each other.”
Gods, I am truly sorry. Silent devotion will persist when my wife is not looking or listening. If she allows me to continue the public rites expected of me, this will be the proof of my continued devotion. I will tell her that I am acting. My daughters surviving into adulthood is all I ask, just as before. All is for them. I am nothing. They are my everything.
“You can keep your little public rites.” She lifts his chin toward her. “But I am your soul’s devotion.”
His glare pierces past her vileness. “Only as long as Kurai and Phantisma are unharmed. You will have no parental obligation to them. The moment you place an appendage upon either one of them, this covenant is broken.”
“I can agree to that. Come husband, let us cement this.”
“We already kissed on it, what more do you want?”
She backhands him across his face with her other talon. “That is no way to answer your goddess.” Giggling as she speaks.
His face holds a deep pain, beyond her simple slap. He takes a single meditative breath. “How do you want this ritual?”
She leans down and grabs his talon again in hers. “Put her down. I need to bathe in your love and devotion. Come.”
As he takes his wife's talon in his, she grabs his wrist and pulls him to her. Following her lead as she guides him back towards the bassinests. Koriath tries to kiss Phantisma’s forehead as he lays her down, but Malencia puts her talons on his lips. He stops, gently laying her down.
“Come on.” Her tone is lush with cruelty as she tugs him away.
He turns his head to Kurai, tears surging back as he sees that this whole time she has not been asleep. Her ruby eyes are as wide as her skin is pale.
How did I not sense her fear? I want to hold her. I am sorry my little princesses. Stay strong. Aw’ddy will be back to you both.
Malencia gently caresses his face as she leads him away. “Eyes on your goddess.”
His tears forge a trail that leads out of the nestery, toward their royal roost loft.