It’s been hours. I think. Some uncountable amount of time.
The orgy has been nonstop.
It sends a shudder through my body. I was conceived here, or some act like it. Was my mother forced? It seems entirely possible, although most of the angeling orgy surrounding me seems to be pleasure, not pain. Terah said my father, Rijel, seduced my mother… and then tarried too long in the human realm. If he wished her to bear a child, using pleasure seems a more logical and fruitful path than pain.
I’m unsure why this matters to me, but it does.
I try to block out the sounds. They muted a little after the first extended round of coupling, but then rose again, as if the angelings were getting their second wind. Or maybe they changed partners en masse. It seems like that’s constantly happening, as if every angeling wants to couple with every other. A thing that seems improbable to accomplish given the number of angelings, yet they seem to make the effort. And with angeling stamina and lack of need for sleep…
I shut out most of it and turn my focus inward, trying to hold back the relentless march of the shadow magic through my body. I only open my eyes to check my wings—still glowing white in this cavern of dark decadence—then I go back to my meditations. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. I recount the Beatitudes, a chant to help summon the Virtues. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they will see God. But I am not pure in heart, not with this darkness creeping through me. And my focus grows less with each droning hour of the pulsing pleasure around me.
I find myself watching them—not with the same interest as with Beatrice, but I cannot feign disinterest either. My eyes glaze until the forms are just a faceless motion, a joining of bodies in ecstasies I can only imagine.
Then a triad floats nearer to my cage. It’s Terah and two male angelings. One is holding her hips and thrusting into her from behind. The other floats upside down, his face between her legs, and his penis stroking into her mouth. She clutches him hard, both on his shaft and between her legs, and the moaning of all three stirs something inside me. A deep, sweet pain I recognize from my time with Beatrice. Lust.
No. I bury my head in my arms and cover it with my wings, but their moans and the wet slapping sound of their bodies drifts closer. They are right outside my cage, and their grunting pleasure sounds just seem to rise. It goes on and on, then one of the males cries out, cursing and grunting. Just as his exclamations subside, Terah’s higher-pitched cries reverberate through my cage. I think they are done, but no… a moment later, the other male lets loose a stream of words I don’t understand but can intuit their meaning. He’s reached whatever pleasure peak they seem to obtain, crossed over, and settled.
A whisper of feathers and then nothing. Sound reverts to the background level of grunting and moaning. I wait another minute, then two. When I’m sure they’re gone, I lower my wings and peek up.
Terah floats outside my cage, a lazy smile on her face, fully clothed in her black leather outfit again. “Hello, sweet thing.”
Fear races through me. I scoot back in the cage.
Her smile falls into a pout. “Aw, don’t be like that.” She looks around. There are no other angelings nearby. Elyon is a long ways off, on the distant platform with a host of angelings administering pleasure to him. Terah turns back to me but lowers her voice. “I’m not here to steal your virginity, boy of light. I’m here to help you.”
I don’t trust her. Not even a little. “Help me how?”
She scowls. “Do you want to get out of here or not?” She glances around, but everyone is preoccupied with their sex-making.
“Are you serious?”
She shrugs. “Okay, fine. Be that way.” She peers with interest at the other angelings, perhaps looking for a coupling to join.
I edge forward in the cage. “Wait.”
She turns back with an arched eyebrow.
“Why would you help me escape? You were the one who captured me.” It seems like a reasonable question in a thoroughly unreasonable place.
She stretches and flexes her wings. “I got what I wanted, boy of light. And orgasm from an angel. I realize you’re not savvy to these things, but fuck… those are amazing. The orgy afterward isn’t bad, either.” She gives me a lascivious grin, then she shrugs. “I figure I owe you something better than what Elyon has in store for you.”
I’m not sure I believe her, but I’m not seeing many other options. “Won’t he be angry with you?”
She smirks. “You think I don’t know how to slip a thing or two past the boss? Do what I say, follow my lead, and when this is all done, trust me, Elyon will blame someone else for the escape of his pet. But we need to do this now, boy of light.”
I swallow, but it’s clear the time to escape is favorable—literally everyone is distracted.
I give her a careful nod.
She raises her hand and flicks her fingers at my cage. The constant hum of the magic that binds me ceases. Before I can think what to do next, she’s sprung open the physical bars that remain and flitted inside to seize me by the shoulder.
“Don’t just travel out of here, okay?” she says in a whisper. “Not yet. Come with me.” Then she twists and drags me through interdimensional space with her.
We end up in a room with the same black crystal walls as the cavern, but they glow with a softer light. “All right,” Terah says, releasing me and stepping back to look me over. “Yeah, you’re pretty much a mess.”
I glance around, suspicious. “I thought you were helping me escape.”
“I am, little angeling of light.” She gives me an impatient scowl. “Do what I say, remember?”
“But why are we here?”
“So many fucking questions.” She sighs and steps forward, more closely examining my wounds. “You’ve got the stink of half the Regiment on you. Elyon will sense you leaving with all that shadow magic. And no matter where you go, he’ll easily track you.”
I frown. “But how do I—”
“Leave that to me.” She takes my hand which has a blade strike across the back. The inky tendrils of shadow magic are half up my arm. She clamps her mouth to the wound, suddenly, and it makes me jolt. But then she breathes in, and I can feel her sucking the shadow magic straight out of my body. There’s a blissful relief that follows its retreat. When she’s finished, the wound is gone. “See? Easy.” She clasps my hand and straightens my arm, bringing her mouth to another smaller wound on my bicep. I’ve heard of angelings delivering a blessing, an infusion of life called a life kiss—that was my plan with Beatrice’s father to battle the fatigues of his illness—but what Terah’s doing amounts to the reverse. She’s drawing out the magic that’s poisoning me.
The relief of it suffuses me with bliss, like a blessing straight from Markos.
Terah pulls away from that wound and scouts for another. “Elyon will be busy fucking his angelings for a while,” she muses. “We have a little time yet before he exhausts them. When that happens, he will rest.”
“Rest?” I ask, but she’s found her next target, a slice across my shoulder. She locks her mouth onto it and draws the poison magic out.
I breathe a heavy sigh with the release.
She pulls away, wiping her mouth and grinning. “You didn’t think angels rested? Well, probably not angels of light. They never do anything so taxing as an orgy with a hundred angelings.”
“Truth,” I say, my head swimming a little.
She’s looking for the next wound to heal.
I point to a particularly deep cut in my side, lifting my arm to give her access.
She nods and angles her head down to it. She whispers against my skin. “Once he’s in his stupor, that’s when we get you out of here.” Then she locks her lips to the wound and draws in a breath.
The relief and light-headedness are even more intense. I lean into her ministrations. When she’s done, the room seems to tilt a little.
“Whoopsie,” she says with a chuckle, holding my arm to brace me. “How about you sit down for the rest of this?” She conjures a bench from the wall made of the same black crystal.
I nod, still woozy, and settle hard on the bench. My wings are still out, but they’re helping me stay upright, so I leave them.
Terah kneels in front of me and targets a slash across my knee. Her lips on my skin charge it, and watching her suck the shadow out of me flushes me even more. She moves to another cut further up my leg, brushing aside the edge of my toga to reach it. One hand braces against my knee while the other presses against my chest, holding me as she clamps her lips hard onto the wound.
A small sound escapes me, and I’m laboring to breathe. An ache low in my belly seems to throb with each sucking pull she makes on my skin. She’s humming now, and I don’t know why, but I don’t mind. I’m too focused on watching the small slide of her lips against my skin.
Then I see something move under my toga, between my legs, and with horror, I realize that my penis is rising, erect like Elyon’s and the other male angelings in their heat of Lust. I’m flushed with embarrassment, hoping it will stop, praying she won’t notice. But as soon as she finishes with the wound, she catches sight.
“I just… ignore that…” I gasp, air seeming in even shorter supply.
“No problem,” she says. But then she lifts my toga and exposes my inflated penis.
“What are you—”
She grabs hold of it and plunges her mouth down on it.
“Gah!” I cry out, the sensation like an explosion in my mind. I lean away from her, trying to shove her away, but she’s clamped hard onto it, pulling and sucking with the same fervor as on the wounds. “Ah! Terah! Stop…” She bobs her head and strokes with her hand, and my protest grows weak under a surge of Lust that eclipses all thought. My vision doubles as she attacks my shaft with her hot, wet mouth. Up and down, sucked-tight mouth and hard-wrapped hand, it feels like she’s sucking the life right out of me. I grip her head, intending to stop her, but instead, I find myself grunting and pushing her down harder, urging her to take me deeper in her throat, crying out with each stroke. “Holy… angels… of… light…” I pant. She goes faster at my urging, and everything tightens inside me. I’m convinced I’m about to explode. I cry out in fear and pleasure-pain, and then suddenly… my shaft twitches and gushes and shoots seed into her mouth. An endless stream of pleasure that gushes through my body. She keeps bobbing and sucking, pulling every last wave of this pleasure from me.
Every ounce of angel energy I possess is drained with it.
When she finally releases me, I am limp. My burgeoning shaft is deflated. My entire body is boneless. I am slumped against the dark crystal wall, as Terah rises from her knees, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and grinning at me.
“Well,” she proclaims. “That was just as much fun as I thought it would be.”
My chest squeezes. What have I done? How easily did I succumb? But it’s not until my sluggish gaze travels from her self-satisfied smile to her midnight black wings and back to my own… that my heart stutters in my chest.
My wings are black.
“Nooo!” I cry out, heart spasming with the realization.
I am shadow.
I lurch up from the bench and whip around to be sure, but yes… the full length and breadth of all my feathers are glossy, obsidian black. Just like Terah’s.
“No,” I sob, clawing at them. “No, not this. Not this.”
“Oh, yes, this.” The grin is wide on her face. “I guess there’s no point in fleeing now, is there, little angeling?”
Angeling of shadow.
I crumbled back to the bench, fists curled, body wracked. Then I scream all the Wrath that’s boiling under my skin. There’s no point in holding it back.
I am nothing but Sin now.