Chapter Twenty-One
I pushed myself upright, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, my vision blurry, out of focus, and everything painfully bright. How long had I been asleep? It was hard to know. Long enough that I’d woken on my own, and not at Sitri’s insistence, or at the whims of the household’s demons.
As I glanced around, my sight cleared. I blinked. Then I frowned.
This was Sitri’s bedroom. I recognized its furnishings and the discarded tools on the desk. Harsh light bathed it, so intense that no shadows formed, but I didn’t see the source. The Prince still snored beside me. He’d wrapped himself up in the thin sheet from last night and had only started to stir. Something was missing, though, and the longer I looked around, the faster my heart beat.
The room was a near-monochrome image. The only splashes of color came from the red-pink glow beneath Sitri’s blanket and the matching sigil on my arm.
“Sitri?” I asked, prodding at his shoulder.
He let out a groan in response. “What is it, darling?”
“I think something’s wrong. Everything is black and white, and the lighting doesn’t make any sense.”
The Prince sat up and looked around.“It’s alright, nothing is wrong with the lighting. It’s just dark. That’s all. When we light the candles, the color will come back, and everything will be normal again.”
I took a deep breath and gave the room another look. When I inspected it closer, I realized he was right.The candles had burned out while we slept. Where our sigils cast their glows, I could make out faint shadows and splashes of color. As the light dimmed, they faded into uniform monochrome.
This was how demons navigated in the dark, why Zaleos hadn’t needed his lantern, why Sitri only lit his mansion after I’d arrived. They had near-perfect night-sight. And now, so did I.
I took stock of my new body, noting all its subtle changes. My senses had grown sharper, more in tune, making scents and sounds seem richer than they’d ever been before. For the first time since my death, I felt rested. My lingering aches and fatigue had dissipated, and my suffering had eased.
When I lifted my hands, I found flesh had returned to my bones. I rubbed my fingers together, half afraid that any friction would strip them bare. It didn’t. Sitri laid a hand on my back. No pain, a sign the burns he’d applied were gone. The knife wound on my chest had vanished, too, and was nothing more than a thin, pale scar. I ran my tongue over my teeth. They’d sharpened, turned into calcified daggers, and my canines had transformed into fangs.
I was no longer human. At Sitri’s hands, I had changed into something more.
Once my transformation was complete, I thought I’d be disgusted by what I had become, twisted into some cruel, nightmarish version of myself. Instead, I was fascinated. Sitri had left my mind intact and lent power to my soul. Power I found exhilarating.
“I didn’t realize it would be likethis.” I flexed my fingers, savoringthe newfound strength they held. “Is there anything else I can do now? Magic I can wield?”
Sitri lightly slapped his face to drive the sleep from his body and laughed, clearly pleased by my sudden change of tune. “You don’t have any more magic than before, but its nature has changed. I am the Prince of Lust and Lies, darling, and I have shared my power with you. If you call, it will come.”
I reached within myself, summoning Vapula’s talents. For the first time in seven years, they didn’t answer. The flexing muscle he gifted me had been severed, and something new materialized in its place.
Gossamer threads unfurled in my mind, a spiderweb with my consciousness at its center. Through them came vibrations, subtle cues I would otherwise have missed. The Prince looked me over. His attention shook the web. Then, it caught. I pulled at the magic, and a realization hit me: Sitriwantedme to like what I’d become.
I released the web, and Sitri’s gift dissipated, its threads curling inward on itself.
“Lust and lies?” I asked. “It feels… different. Less utilitarian, and more delicate, more intricate.”
“Did you expect all magic to be alike, darling? These sigils are like living things, more diverse than you can imagine. The talents of lust and lies unearth desire, expose secrets, enable seduction, and empower deception. Use them as you see fit.”
Sitri caressed my arms, trailing his fingers down my side. I shivered as the sensual touch woke my nerves. He coaxed me closer. I followed his lead, draping myself across his chest as he lay back. My hands roamed his skin, exploring the contours of his muscles and the scars of countless battles, tracing over the lines of his bindings, the faint welts beneath them.
“You’re a natural, I might add,” Sitri growled into my ear. “It isn’t every day that I get a reaction like the one I saw last night.”
“That wasn’t normal, then?” A deep heat settled into my cheeks. Iwasn’t sure how to feel about that, but Sitri remained unfazed.
“Far from abnormal, darling, but not what I’m used to when binding human souls. Have you never felt that way before?”
“No,” I admitted. “I didn’t even realize it was possible, not without drugs. Whatwasthat?”
“The reason lovers claw and bite under the cover of darkness. Pleasure and pain are two sides of the same coin; for some, all it takes is an ounce of trust to flip it.”
In life, I’d been no stranger to ass-slapping and hair-pulling, but those rough couplings never elicited a response like Sitri had gotten from me. Those one-night stands weren’t mutualistic love-making—it had been more akin to use. I’d presented, they’d gotten their pleasure, I’d satisfied my own needs, and then snuck out before dawn.
There was no trust in that kind of sex.
