Chapter 10: The Price of Persephone’s Descent

Libby had thought she’d known true fear, but that had been nothing compared to the churning trepidation that now saturated her veins.

Pride angled his head from Libby to glance at the surrounding champions. Without a word of instruction from their lord, they immediately took several steps back, faced outwards, and formed a tight circle around her and their sovereign. The noise of the audience diminished instantly, the sudden hush leaving a dull ringing in her ears.

An elbow was suddenly braced next to her head, and Pride lowered himself until he was stretched out on his side beside her.

“Hello, little one.”

His hand came up, and she would’ve recoiled if she’d had the energy left to do so. He slowly reached forward until he cradled her face with his palm. His hand was so large that it simultaneously cupped her chin and curled over the top of her head. Libby jolted at the contact, the startlingly gentle touch more shocking than an open-palmed slap.

“I know you can’t speak to me, but your eyes are telling me everything I need to know,” he said in a voice so low she didn’t think the assembled champions could hear him. “Your defiance is your armor. Though they mock you, torment you, you shame every creature in this arena with your silence. Truly, you are extraordinary.”

Pride’s thumb lightly brushed across the delicate skin under her widening eye. “I have no desire to harm the only thing of value in this rotting cesspit,” he remarked, the fingers of his enormous hand lightly sinking into her hair. “Pay her no mind for now. My sister won’t play her only card too early. She’s not ready for this to be over yet.”

She could only stare at him in shock and unwilling awe. She averted her eyes, unable to tolerate being the direct subject of his abyssal stare for long.

The noise in the arena had started to swell again, the spell finally broken now that the spectators had started to realize they wouldn’t have a direct view of the platform’s center.

“How precious,” Libby heard Narcissa say. “By all means, brother, have your little moment. But don’t take too long. Even my generosity has its limits.”

She saw what she thought might be weariness creep into the outline of his eyes. “But,” he said, and the word filled her with a cold, empty dread. “If I don’t do this, she will force me to become ... something far worse. Something devoid of thought and conscience that can’t be reasoned with or stopped. When I am in that form, I’m nothing more than her weapon. I won’t let her do that. Not to you.”

She fought to swallow. Even if she hadn’t been clinging to her vow of silence, she was certain she would’ve been lost for words, anyway. It was clear that whatever they needed her for in the end did not, in fact, require her to be as whole as she’d originally hoped.

“And as you may have seen ... my cock was not designed for pleasure.”

She had seen it, could see it. Could see them. Like his champions, two night-black staves were stacked on top of each other. But that is where all similarities ended. He dwarfed them in size, and four cockheads nested inside each other at the top of both lengths like stacked cups. Independent of his gratuitous testes, two engorged bulbs bulged and pulsed at the base of his shafts, each veined sphere larger than both of her fists combined.

One of his cocks alone was already intimidating and grotesquely proportioned. Together, they looked more like instruments of torture than organs of reproduction, the anatomy both alien and terrifying. His two members combined were, to her mounting horror, even larger than the dark red behemoth that jutted from between Wrath’s legs.

“But I will take my time and spare you as much pain as I can.”

She had no reason to believe him, even though this entity had shown her nothing but this gentle, unnerving kindness. How long had it been since someone had spoken to her like she was a person of value? Someone who believed she had more to offer than a warm orifice for their own selfish release?

Does it really matter? He’s one of them, the battered, rational part of her mind cried out.

Even so, her heart ached, and she was just as terrified as she was desperate to put her trust in another after so many dark, empty months of loneliness.

“Come here,” he said, rolling onto his back and bending a knee. “You’ll have more control like this, and you can set the pace.” He gestured for her to take her place above him with a slow curl of his clawed hand.

She had gnawed the inside of her cheek raw. What if he was playing her and using his convincingly false kindness to lower her guard? What if he was in on some sick joke with the others that she didn’t know about? If she let herself trust him and he broke that trust ... she didn’t know if she would ever fit the pieces of herself back together again, no matter what a shaman had managed to do the first time.

She searched his otherworldly face, looking for deception but finding only sincerity.

No, she didn’t think he was lying. Not after everything she’d witnessed today.

An absurdly inappropriate blush crept up her neck and turned her cheeks pink the longer she stared at him. He was handsome. Devastatingly so. Her brain truly must have been fractured for her to hone in on such an inane detail, but it was beyond ignoring. His face looked almost ... crafted rather than born, as if a master sculptor had painstakingly chiseled his sharp cheekbones, aquiline nose, and the severe brows that angled above his statue-smooth eyes. His body was no different. It was as if every muscle had been hewn into his umbral-colored physique, his massive frame as beautiful as it was deadly.

“I promise to be careful.” A sad, serene smile curved his dark lips. “I know you have no reason to believe me, but you have my word. I refuse to be another monster in your nightmare. Come here, let me take care of you.”

Libby’s fists tightened in their bindings as she released a slow, shuddering breath. Before the damaged, wary part of her could protest, she shifted to get an arm underneath her, only for it to shake so hard from fatigue that she immediately fell back to the platform with a heavy thud. She bit back a grunt and tried again, but collapsed just as quickly. Tears of frustration threatened to escape, and she hated how weak and utterly depleted she was.

A single line appeared between Pride’s brows, and he briefly canted his head away from her. He scanned the sky and the uppermost stands above, his eyes narrowing at the two levels that could still see them over the heads of the motionless champions. His jaw flexed, and his nostrils flared with contempt. When his attention returned to her, his expression had already softened.

“You’re exhausted,” he said quietly, his tone without judgment. “Would it be easier if I came to you instead?” There was something almost tender in his demeanor. “I’ll cover you with my body, keep their eyes off you while we...” He hesitated. “I can make it so there’s nothing you can see but me. If you’ll allow it.”

Her chest felt too tight, the very idea of another body crushing her under them making her teeth chatter and her heart kick into an irregular beat. She searched his face again, only finding that same, unwavering calm. Gritting her teeth until they ached, she gave a small nod before she lost what little was left of her resolve.

Pride uncurled from the floor and rose up onto his knees. The platform trembled slightly under his weight as he positioned one hand, then the other on either side of her head. His movements were unhurried, giving her time to adjust to each shift of his colossal frame. His shadow fell across her first, then his body followed, his wide shoulders eclipsing the harsh lights above, the floating sovereigns, the gathered champions and even the audience. When he finally settled over her, he kept his chest elevated, supporting himself so she could still move freely beneath him.

Libby was a little over average height, but underneath him she felt diminutive. The sovereign’s forearm alone was thicker than her neck and nearly as long as her torso. There was absolutely nothing stopping this demon from brutalizing her however he pleased, and that made her feel small and breakable in a way nothing had before.