Lilith Shadowflame's Arc

Chapter 12 of 21

Damien still had his hands on Lilith's shoulders when she sat up under him. The table's straps hung loose at her hips. She pushed his chest until he stepped back. Twenty villagers were climbing the path. She heard the succubus at the door, waiting. The throne hall was bare between altar and dais. A crowned goddess needed more than a stone slab and an empty floor. She needed a room that made knees bend before mouths opened. "They will be here soon," she said. "The hall is not enough." Damien looked at the altar, then at her. "What do you want." "A bed. Where they can see what obedience looks like." She swung off the table. Her shadow dragon lifted its head on the ledge above the throne. "You will lie on it. I will show them how a follower is used." She called the succubus in with a pull on the collar's leash. The succubus came through the arch and stopped beside the altar, lace at her hips, silver at her throat, waiting for the order. Lilith drew from Damien's mark. The heat crossed the room and pooled in the floor in front of the dais. Obsidian rose out of the stone in spires. Carved panels. A tall pointed headboard. The frame settled dark and heavy. Rope coiled along the posts in purple and red. Straps hung from the headboard. A blindfold. Small toys scattered across the covers where she wanted them scattered. Damien's mark dimmed. He caught the post to steady himself. He did not complain. "On it," she said. He climbed onto the bed and lay back. She fixed a strap around one of his wrists and left the other loose so he could refuse if he chose to. He did not choose to. The succubus knelt at the foot of the bed where Lilith pointed. Boots on stone. The first villagers reached the arch and stopped. Lilith stood between the altar and the bed with her crown catching the purple light. She let them see Damien on the covers with the mark bright on his chest, the succubus on her knees, the toys within reach. She let them see her hand on Damien's jaw. "This is what it looks like to belong to me," she said. "Come closer." They came closer. All twenty. Some knelt at the altar before they were told. Others stared at the bed and did not remember to breathe. The succubus watched Lilith's face for the next order. The hall was no longer bare. The spectacle held them. Lilith felt the pull of new eyes on her skin, more than she had ever carried at once. Then she felt Damien's mark under her fingers. It was cooler than before. She had spent too much of him to build the room. He turned his head on the pillow and met her eyes. He did not look away. He looked like someone who knew he had just paid for something, and had not yet decided the price.