They stretched behind me, heavy and strange. Not the delicate wings of saints and martyrs, not the feathered beauty of the angels. Nor were they weak or fragile, like translucent membranes. Instead, they were leather-thick and pure obsidian in colour, veined with the red of Asmodeus’ colour.They flexed once, and the weight of them nearly pulled me back into the stone. I could feel their reach, the space they took up.
“My Saint,” Asmodeus was cooing. “My Saint of Lust.” And I realised the demon had not come itself, until it spilled sticky and thick over my new wings.
The demon moaned and crowded closer to me, fingering its own cum into the grooves of my wings. It kissed my neck and cheek and held me again with its strange, terrifying reverence, and all the while, the court of kings said nothing.
The pain in my back dulled. My breath came in slow, stunned heaves. I remained open, spent, slick with sweat and seed and blood, trembling beneath the one who had made me. Asmodeus did not move. Its body hovered just above mine, still joined, unmoving. When I tried to turn, it let me. And when I turned my face to it, I jolted in surprise at the smile encompassing its lips.
“You have taken more than I imagined you could,” it said, softly, fingers skimming over my new wings. “And still you open.”
My limbs had no strength left. My lips parted, but I did not speak. I had no words to share, for my body was no longer only a body. It was as Asmodeus had said: I would bear its mark forever. I would be forever changed. These wings marked the covenant between us; the final, unholy evolution of Alessandro from priest to saint.
And far above us, somewhere I could not see, I felt a gaze colder than flame. A thousand eyes turned downward. Above all the circles of Hell, and above the Earth, they watched. The Host, which had turned from me in life, now stared down in silence. Heaven, with all its unyielding light, bore witness to what it had abandoned.
Heaven had looked away from me in life, but now, it could not help but see.
The flame obscuring Asmodeus’ eyes lessened, and I saw two golden spheres staring back at me. It held me possessively and happily, and for a while, there was only the two of us.
But then the shadows shifted, and Lucifer stepped forward, his mantle trailing over the cracked obsidian tiles. The court held still, the fire of their earlier attitude arrested, for they knew when to listen.
Lucifer regarded the altar without haste, eyes tracing the ruin of blood, the tremble of wings yet untested, and me, the man who had ceased to be only man. His voice followed, low and unbroken. “Let the Host weep for what it abandoned,” he said. “Let the stars see what they feared and fled.”
I shivered. This. . .approval shocked me. But I understood that what I had become must have visually confirmed to Lucifer that I was changed. Rebellion had made a home in my vessel; that must have resonated with him.
The fallen angel continued, “And so he was left to us. And now he is what they could not bear to shape. He is made by fire, not light, and claimed by desire, not grace. Now all of Heaven shall remember that when he was ready to belong, they had already closed the gates.”
He paused, gaze drifting once more to Asmodeus. “You have sealed your desire through flesh, blood, and will.”
My eyes glanced over the other Kings—Satan’s hands gripping his armrests, Mammon watching from beneath lowered brows, Belphegor unmoving—before I returned my attention to Lucifer, who had halted at the edge of the altar. There he stood, his gaze cast not quite at me, but just above; perhaps he was admiring the wings at my back.
“This is the shape you have chosen,” he said, his voice level and stripped of judgment. “Let it be known.”
He inclined his head once, a gesture neither blessing norcondemnation. Still, Asmodeus rolled its shoulder back with a happy sound.
“You may depart,” Lucifer said. His eyes lingered on me for half a second before he turned and stalked back to his throne. “Go forth with your saint.”
Asmodeus moved, at last, to gather me from the altar. The demon’s touch was possessive but careful, and the two of us stepped together into whatever eternity had just been declared.
The Court did not rise to see us leave, but I was certain every king there would remember my name.
10
The return to Asmodeus’ domain was not quiet. It could not be, for word had passed through the spiral reaches of the Circle, through every domain in the kingdom of lust, through black-lipped hags and crones and ink-feathered familiars, through the half-dreams of demons who lived with lust pulsing in their veins. The gates home opened before us like a yawn, creaking with age, and the air itself seemed to shift—thickened, perfumed, laced with heat. I knew we had returned to Asmodeus’ domain by the way my body felt. Beside me, my Prince relaxed, and the tether between us urged my own body to follow suit. A kind of glee pulsed in my head. I grinned wildly.
What had happened to me? What was I now?
The Saint of Lust.I wrapped my arm around Asmodeus’, unable to contain my thrill. Already, the scent of celebration bloomed in the corridors. My first step through the threshold made the stone sigh beneath me.
The doors opened onto a new place I had never seen. This was Lust’s court in full revel.
The Grand Hall, cavernous and without a clear ceiling,rose into darkness where chandeliers of molten gold hovered, weeping slow wax that vanished into shadow. Braziers spilled incense like fog. The walls shifted with frescoes that writhed and contorted beneath the eye, painted figures locked in a thousand acts of craving and consecration. The floor had been scattered with petals—black, crimson, bone-white—and fine ash that shimmered like embers. All of it was stirred up with every bit of step and movement. Denizens of Hell were dancing.
But we did not arrive unnoticed. However, there was no pageantry nor fanfare; a hush like that that fell before a storm smothered the scene now. They had gathered by the thousands: lesser demons with glimmering eyes and twisted horns, crones with lips sewn shut, crawling familiars with smoke-wreathed tails. They lined the archways and hung from the balustrades. Their silence felt ravenous, and all their gazes lingered on me and my new form.
Perhaps I should have felt terrified, but I had been remade in orgasmic pleasure, and still that pleasure lingered. I could think of nothing but how thrilled I was, how lucky I was to have Asmodeus at my side. The Prince of Lust led me through the watchful crowd, and every eye followed us. Every throat hummed with restrained howls. They watched their King return with his marked consort.
As the crowd parted, I saw all whom I had touched to get here. Malphas, who had been the first and ever so dismissive, surprised me now by being the first of the greater demons to approach. Towering and sleek, his raven head inclined low. Feathers slick with oil quivered as he rose again.
"He returns whole," Malphas said, voice echoing oddly through a beak not made for speech. "Or near enough." His gaze shifted to Asmodeus, then back to me. Something in his posture suggested amusement, though it was hard to read such a face. "This look suits you, priest."
