A Devil's Bride
Chapter 15: Heretic
Horror Sex Story: Chapter 15: Heretic - Orpheia, a rare, visually tantalizing creature, has ensnared the attention of a tyrant king whose bloodline is responsible for the slaughtering of Orpheia’s people. Forced to choose between marrying the king and losing the lives of her beloved people, Orpheia calls upon the power of Hell to gain the upper hand. Inspired by Frankenstein, Carmilla, and all things Halloween, this gothic novel is sure to satiate those who crave brutal, bloody romance.
Caution: This Horror Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa Hypnosis NonConsensual Romantic Lesbian Shemale Paranormal Ghost Magic Demons Humiliation Light Bond Size Caution Halloween Royalty
Orpheia had not been permitted inside the grand basilica of Sol, as she was still an unclean woman. To rectify this, two iron spikes had been struck into the steps that led to the front doors, where Orpheia’s wrists were stretched apart by shackles and short, iron chains. She had been stripped nude and forced to take a knee before the holy structure. It was a behemoth of a building, with sharp edges and a daunting aura. The basilica was as long as it was tall, with several extravagant levels surrounding a fattened sanctuary that was closed in on the outside by several flying buttresses, appearing as a ribcage of stone around the church’s beating, soulless heart. The teeth of the jagged limestone beneath Orpheia chewed through her skin with each strike of the priest’s flogger until her knees were raw and bloody. The tool was far less forgiving than the leather-clad version Meyrick had teased her with. The priest’s had been blessed and was embedded with shards of crystal and glass, which made quick work of peeling away Orpheia’s backside. As midnight turned to dawn, the basilica’s steps were drenched in blood. Orpheia’s screams could be heard up and down the lengths of the kingdom’s streets. Yet there were no onlookers, for Father Grimshaw had ordered the royal guards to prevent the people from accessing Sol’s grand judgment. Perhaps a prying eye or two had made it past the barricade of armored men.
A familiar prayer filled Orpheia’s ears between strikes of the flogger. Her agonized sobs barely drowning out the sound of Father Grimshaw’s enraged convictions.
“Hear me, O’ Sol, whose light pierceth the night and the evil that resides within! For we have been foolish! We have brought an unclean spirit into your holy kingdom! I pray you might purge the evil inside this demon with thy holy fire!”
Orpheia was no longer a woman infected by the trickery of an unclean spirit as she had been days before. For she herself was the spirit unclean. Father Grimshaw saw her as a beast forged from hellfire and moondust. Selina Domitus, the tamed moon child, had now become far more savage than when she was first baptized. No amount of screams or pleas for mercy could break through the priest’s cries for reparations. He wanted to see Sol’s castigation scorch her skin and chew through her bones. Orpheia would be burned at the stake as her mother was, sent to the flames upon dusk, where a moonless sky would greet her final breath. There would be no Lu’a to save her. No heavenly deity to welcome her across the metaphysical plane where she might be reunited with her mother. No, Orpheia was doomed to walk as a spectre pure; a ghost of herself with no purpose and no name, ambling through forests and oceans as a being made of starlight and misery. Father Grimshaw didn’t know that part of her sentencing. He and his holy men laughed in the faces of ghosts and ghouls. No matter how hard Orpheia pleaded with him to spare her until the waxing crescent, she was awarded with another lashing that rendered her voice silent.
Hours of this practice passed. Father Grimshaw sent his men to force feed Orpheia a vile elixir made to keep her alive and alert. The substance clung to her face in sticky patches, tearing at her hair and inviting all sorts of insects to feast upon her skin. Between hours, the holy men would splash her backside with water from her healing baths in order to close up enough of her wounds for further punishment. Thus was the curse of the spectre. Never ending torture. Orpheia only knew it was morning by the soft warmth that tickled her wounds. The steeple of the basilica was the first to bask in dawn’s golden glow. It spilled down the building’s intricately decorative facade, illuminating the sun-headed sculptures that peered around pillars and through the openings of window frames, then trickled slowly down the front doors. The silver nails decorating the gargantuan doors glinted against the light and shone back into Orpheia’s eyes until she was forced to avert her gaze. Orpheia sobbed when the light illuminated her bloodied shame. Then, and only then, did Meyrick arrive.
“What is the meaning of this?” The king asked rather calmly. He approached on foot, having taken what appeared to be a languid walk from the comfort of the palace. He had been groomed, dressed, and fed. Orpheia wondered if he even knew she was being tortured. Or if, perhaps, he was finding enjoyment in it.
“She lies with Reith, Your Majesty,” Father Grimshaw answered promptly. He struck the flogger on the church steps loud enough that Orpheia wailed in terror.
Meyrick frowned. “You witnessed this?”
“I heard it. She cried out to the beast to make an unclean woman of her. It is just as I suspected from the very beginning! She is unfit to marry and unfit to rule!”
Meyrick paused, mulling over the evidence that he already knew. The missing maids, the runaway priests, the murdered guards, General Bronte, and now the slave owner’s boy.
“What of our guest’s son?” The king asked. “Have we found him?”
“I have searched her quarters for evidence of a demonic sacrifice,” Father Grimshaw answered proudly. “I have the very same conviction as you, Your Majesty. This Hellspawn has been slaughtering us for her own wicked desires.”
“She can’t perform magic without ingredients. Such power does not arise from her as naturally as it would an imp or demon.”
“That is why she needs Reith to do it for her. We have seen this evil before. It must be cleaned. Eradicated!”
The priest punctuated his point with another gruesome lashing. Orpheia’s head kicked back as she roared, helpless to stop the glass teeth of the flogger’s many tails from burying deep into her skin. She was left paralyzed as they ripped out chunks of her flesh upon release. Carnage unimaginable covered the ground beneath her.
“He lies!” Orpheia screamed through crashing waves of tears. She had no defense to offer; nothing but the hope that the king might take pity on her enough to brush aside the priest’s accusations. There was little chance of this happening, for Orpheia knew that she had pushed the king far enough.
Meyrick extended his hand to Father Grimshaw, stopping another blow from forcing Orpheia back into silence. He climbed the steps of the church slowly, letting the tail of his cape soak up the puddles of Orpheia’s blood. It painted the stone in red, like an artist prepping his canvas for a morbid masterpiece. Meyrick stopped between the basilica doors and Orpheia’s sullen, weary head. To give her the strength to look the king in his eyes, an altar boy grabbed hold of the roots of Orpheia’s hair and forced the spout of a canteen to her lips. The rancid taste of boiled devil-cap mushrooms and mudroot stained her tongue until she gagged. The flavors sent a kick into her chest that awoke her with a gasp. The world spun until Orpheia’s gaze finally settled on Meyrick before her. He had taken a knee and propped up her chin with his knuckle. He studied her shame with an intense glare. His jaw was locked and his eyes narrowed, taking little joy in her suffering. This wasn’t a game to him anymore.
“Please...” Orpheia whispered. The vile elixir sputtered off of her lips as they trembled. “I am innocent. I know not of Reith. I worship Lu’a.”
That much was true. For Reith had abandoned her. Left her for capture. Orpheia looked to the final shadows of the night disappear beneath her bloodied knees.
Meyrick’s eye twitched. He let out a gruff breath and swallowed an insult that had been brewing in his head for quite some time. Orpheia had never seen him so severe before. Was this what he looked like beneath his armor before he slaughtered her people? Resolute and furious with the righteous anger of a misguided man.
“I wish I could believe you,” Meyrick said quietly. Orpheia’s breath began to crack and splinter, erupting her chest in blinding pain. She sobbed for herself and for her people, pulling her head out of the king’s hold. Slurred apologies fell from her lips, for it was all she had left to protect herself. Meyrick watched, still crouched before her.
“You have brought this on yourself, foul woman,” Father Grimshaw said with a scoff. “We never should have allowed her into this kingdom alive.”
Disappointment colored Meyrick’s face. He frowned, then sighed deeply. “I suppose it was foolish of me, after all. None of this would have happened if I had married her the night she arrived.”
“The moment she bled with impure femininity should have been the last moment she breathed. It was sabotage!”
“You know not what you say!” Orpheia screeched. Her voice was raw from her screaming and left her red in the face just to speak. “I have done nothing wrong but prove to you that my womb is healthy and fertile! It is not the fault of myself that you have such outdated knowledge of my body!”
A lie intertwined with a truth. The braid was flimsy and surely enraged the men that surrounded her. But if she was to die anyway, the least she could do was to die with her dignity.
Meyrick punished her insubordination with a heavy strike to her cheek. Orpheia’s body flung to the side, tugging hard against the chains that pinned her down. Her tears fell silently, as the pain was growing too much to handle. She was wrapped in it, mummified, as if it were a heavy coat. She could no longer remember what life was like without agony.
“This is healthy? This? This is disgusting!” Meyrick roared. He thrust his fingers between Orpheia’s legs and grabbed a tight enough hold of her petals to make her groan. Meyrick pulled her sex apart with his fingers, forcing those around to bear witness of Orpheia’s shame. But instead of crying out in sanctified horror, the men all furrowed their brows in confusion. Even Father Grimshaw took pause. His mouth drooped open in shock.
“She has dried,” the priest announced. “The woman bleeds no longer.”
Meyrick froze for a moment to soak in the news. He ran his fingers between Orpheia’s sensitive lips, then examined his hand to find that they were perfectly clean.
“She bleeds no longer,” he muttered quietly under his breath, repeating Grimshaw’s declaration. He turned his head up to the cloudless sky and let out a roar of laughter. “Sol has cleansed her! He hath taken mercy upon this woman, Father! He’s blessed our matrimony. The wedding will commence this very night!”
Uncertainty crept through the air like a heavy fog. Mumbles and whispers flooded out from the mouths of priests, altar boys, and soldiers. The gossip spread down the street, falling upon the ears of the loudest of the town criers. Before Father Grimshaw, whose face was once the color of a clean gravestone, could fully turn as red as a bleeding rose, the city awoke with the glorious announcement.
Sol has purified a devil woman. A spectre of Umbran birth. She is to be the kingdom’s new queen beside King Meyrick; a shining symbol of sanctification.
“Your Highness, please!” Father Grimshaw cried. He raised his flogger to the air, attempted to remind the king of all the damning evidence that stood against his bride. “Do not fall for this witch’s spell once more! Look at what she has done to us! This could ruin everything!”
Nothing the priest blurted out could stop Meyrick from releasing Orpheia of her shackles. His ire had almost completely disappeared as he untied his blood-soaked cape and wrapped it around Orpheia’s frail body. She did not put up a fight. Instead, she leaned into his touch, whispering her gratitude as Meyrick hoisted her into his arms. She would have to sing his praises if she wished to be kept alive.
“Prepare the basilica,” Meyrick ordered the priest. “There is much to be done before nightfall. I am to wed this woman beneath Sol’s last breath of day and bed her before his return on the morrow. She will bear my seed come dawn. Should these wild disappearances cease, we will know for certain that Sol has cleansed her.”
“And should they continue?” Father Grimshaw snapped back.
“She will remain under close inspection until a healthy heir has been born. Afterward, you may do with her flesh as you please. Until then, Father, this woman belongs to me.”
Father Grimshaw’s jaw locked so tight that it nearly shattered his teeth. He swallowed his pride, letting it fall slowly and painfully down his throat, before he bowed his head in subservience. “As you wish.”
“Prepare the people for what is to commence. Tonight will be one for the history books. This is a day of celebration, Father. For our many years of patience and planning have finally come to reward us. This kingdom will be ours to rule together.”
Curiosity gripped Orpheia’s eavesdropping ears, but she was far too weak to open her mouth to ask for answers. Her eyelids grew heavy when Meyrick began his trek back to the palace. He gripped her tight, pinning her body so close to his own that her joints began to pop. Meyrick spoke without looking at her, for his gaze was settled on the future before him. A bright future indeed.
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