My return to the castle was not a graceful one. The lingering dregs of magic in my body could not overcome the alcohol yet buzzing in my brain. Swerving to and fro, I landed on wobbling legs, my hand immediately flying to my head. Though the room spun around me, I couldn’t help a breathless laugh, leaning against the rail and sliding to the floor.

  For a reason unknown to me, I felt a strange euphoria. Perhaps it was knowing the Fiend Lord’s mightiest monster had fallen without fanfare to my brother’s might; or perhaps it was just the drink fluffing my mood. Whatever the cause, I could not settle my girlish giggling as I stumbled to my feet and approached the balcony doors.

  But when I pulled them open, the sight within stopped me dead in my tracks.

  “L-Lord G-Genesis? To what d-do I owe the pleasure, my good s-sir?” Words tumbled out of my mouth, tripping into one another in an effort to make themselves known. When he turned his blazing gaze on me, they lodged in my throat and stilled my breath. Cloaked in shadows and nothing more, my eyes struggled to remain locked with his.

  Seeing the Fiend Lord in a disrobed state was not uncommon. I’d grown used to his naked chest, bronze skin marked by a spiderweb of black scars, but somehow he seemed especially unshod without his pauldrons covering his strong, broad shoulders. With nothing to distract me from his chiseled upper arms, I couldn’t help but stare in breathless awe. A full minute passed before I noticed that was not the entirety of his undress.

  The heavy metal belt that sat on his hips and his crimson base were gone, and with them his dark armored pants and heavy boots. From the knee down, his skin was covered in the same thin, jagged scales as his arms, while the rest of his sturdy legs bore bronze skin, tattooed with gnarled scars.

  I dared my eyes to travel higher, but my curiosity wilted at his sudden movement.

  Swift as a predator slipping through a grassy field and twice as silent, he approached. In the time it took for me to blink once, he was upon me. Towering. Fuming. Eyes boring into my very soul. I backed away, but he followed. One step after another, until my back was against the wall. Until his hand was beside my head. Claws scraping the stone, piercing it easily as sand, every scratch sending a shiver down my spine.

  “M-My L-Lord?” A soft-spoken plea. One unanswered, yet answered all the same by his bladed fingers gripping my chin. “I m-meant no…no d-disrespect, sir. I just —” I gasped. His grip tightened; blood dribbled down my chin.

  Paralyzed, I could do nothing but stare as he licked his claws clean with a deep, guttural moan.

  In the next instant, his hand lashed out. A sickening crack reduced the balcony railing to splinters. Another shattered the glass doors. Steel and stone and glass, it was all so fragile in the face of his overwhelming strength. Compared to them, my pale flesh, protected by nothing more than a paper thin cotton chemise, was like tissue.

  “G-Genesis?”

  The Fiend Lord growled, a low, thundering rumble in his throat. With agonizing patience, his fingers closed around my throat, each one splitting my skin and filling the air with the scent of incense, and lifted me from the ground. Though his grip was loose — gentle, even, compared to how it was before — even the lightest touch of his claws rent my skin with a sweet, stinging ache.

  I took hold of his hand with mine. The other hand, jealous and forgotten, brushed my cheek. Tender, but terrible, drawing a bloody line from the edge of my ear, down to my chin.

  Had I truly upset him so? Had my incessant pushing finally worn out my captor’s good graces and turned him against me? Was I even in the Dream anymore? His grip on me felt so real, too real to be a mere reflection.

  If not, then surely this was to be my end.

  His body felt scorching pressed up against mine, searing my skin with the most intoxicating sensation. It hurt — Titania above, how it hurt — but I had no desire to pull away, made no futile effort to escape. As his hand trailed lower, stains of hot crimson spread through white cotton, material easily shredded by his lightest touch until I was bared and helpless.

  Genesis growled again, leaning forward until the flames on his breath were the only air to breathe.

  His knee pressed between my thighs, rising until I was left straddling his powerful leg. Mine clamped around his, a new sensation, so alien I hadn’t a name for it, burned within me. The brush of his hot, rough skin against mine, delicate and easily frayed as silk, slick with sweat, sent shivers racing the length of my body.

  So close, gasping, writhing beneath him, my hands released his and reached for his chest. Meager and weak, there was no pushing him away. No resisting when his lips stroked the length of my ear and came to rest on the crook of my neck.

  “G-Gene…Genesis…” The only word my mind could summon. For a second, his claws tightened around my throat, forcing a strangled whimper from my lips.

  Not to be outdone or forgotten, the hand roaming my body made its presence known, grazing my thigh with the sweetest sting. Five tender lacerations trailed toward my center, his his hand enormous against my leg, so broad he could hold it in his grasp.

  If he meant to kill me, he seemed in no hurry.

  When his hand, rough and hot, pressed against my bare stomach, I gasped and arched into his embrace. Eyes wide, fingers clutching, I could do nought but writhe beneath him, fighting these strange new sensations.

  Bubbling. Boiling. Consuming me from my center and growing more intense with every aching brush of his hand. His lips found purchase on my neck, suckling at the blood seeping from his grip, lapping at my torn flesh even as it healed anew. His eyes met mine, and another whimper passed through my lips.

  Though they glowed like stars in a pitch black sky, I felt no malice in his gaze. His body burned, but not with anguish or hatred, but the same strange heat that rippled throughout my body with every stinging caress. No pain but my own, a dull, eerily pleasant sting beneath the churning heat that kept me grounded, kept me from being swept away that unknown sensation.

  “G-Genesis…” His name was my only thought as my teeth sank into my lip, body moving with the heat, longing to be closer to his. Though my insides boiled, I longed for more, to be consumed by the flames burning just beneath his skin. On instinct, my hips moved, grinding my core against his thigh.

  He growled, and I moaned.

  I rolled my hips; his claws caressed my stomach. The hand that once held my throat released its grip, trailed along my collarbone, until reaching my chest His claws traced the edge of my breast. My hips rolled again. His fingers drew long, lazy, bloody lines across my pale flesh, pinching my stiffened nipples between them — a new pain, succulent and decadent, more agonizing when it was gone. My hips rolled with greater urgency, my head lolling back, lips parted in a gasp.

  Closer than I’d ever been to another, consumed by queer, unknowable feelings me, I knew not what drove me to embrace him. To want him in a way I’d never wanted another. Heart pounding. Blood racing. Sweating, freezing and boiling at once. Held together and torn apart all the same by the persistent touch of his claws against my skin.

  “Gen…” Even his name was lost to the haze. Steaming. Melting. My very essence reduced to a boiling puddle, overcome by that damnable sensation. I thirsted for it, yearned to hold tight and not release it until its secrets were known to me.

  Genesis suckled on my neck as though my blood were the sweetest of Elysium nectars. My fists nailed dug into his chest, not to push away, but to draw him closer. When they failed to pierce his skin, my arms snaked around his neck, latching on as though I were lost in a stormy sea and he my only tether.

  The urgency, already irresistible, overtook me as though I were possessed, my body moving in rhythm with and against his, stoking a flame that would surely be my undoing. Instead of fear, I felt strange exhilaration, a desperate need to burn. The caresses on my stomach, the tweaks and pinches of my nipples weren’t enough. The distance, illusory though it was, was too great.

  It was no longer enough to chase the flame, only in diving headfirst into its embrace could this yearning be satisfied. To let it consume me and know the name of this feeling. A kettle whistling. A dam cracking. Every image my mind could conjure to put it into words was a pale comparison. With a final thrust, I felt myself — my pain, my thoughts, my very existence — melting into something sweeter.

  If this was dying, I would gladly let him slay me a thousand times.

  ***

  I sat up with a gasp, my body drenched in heavy sweat, arm outstretched, fingers reaching for empty air. My room was as I left it, windows unbroken, the railing on the other side still standing. Panting, every heaving breath frigid in my lungs, I touched my chest and stomach.

  My dress was unharmed, save the tears caused by the Fiend Lord’s violent display at dinner. The only difference was the wet warmth between my thighs, and the lingering embers of the sensation that had all but consumed me. I cupped my cheeks and laid back, staring through my fingers at the ceiling.

  “What…was that?” The question came on its own, breathed into existence without passing through my thoughts first. When I thought deeper on it, my mind’s eye drifted back to the balcony. To his naked body overwhelming mine. Claws grasping, clutching, tearing. Lips burning, fangs piercing. To the weight of not just his mighty frame, but also his dark, unblinking eyes. Eyes that beheld me as no one else had. Petals spread; pistil exposed.

  How had I not turned to ash beneath such a stare?

  How had I survived such overwhelming strength?

  Was it something I said? Something I did?

  When I thought back to our last conversation, I couldn’t understand what may have possessed him, what must have possessed me to bring us to such a state. But though his presence had been unexpected, I would be lying to say it was unwelcome.

  Hand drifting from my face, my fingers traced the lines he’d sliced into me. Across my lips. Along my ears. Down my throat and across my collarbone. To my chest. My touch was much too soft, too gentle to stir the same feelings he’d wrought, but if I closed my eyes as I pinched my still aching bosom, I could almost imagine it was him.

  “What was that?” I asked again. My other hand moved to my throat, gripping it as he had. Too weak, far too weak to compare. But again, robbed of sight and focusing only on the sensations and the lingering dream, I imagined him and felt that sensation stirring in the pit of my stomach anew. My breath quickened.

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  Throughout our encounter, one note sang to me through the noise. Not once had I felt Genesis’s pain. There was no turmoil, no ache, buried deep within his breast. None save the ache of wanting to touch me. To curse me with these feelings. To kill me with a hundred biting, but tender, touches.

  It was that peace, that yearning, that set me aflame once more. I bit my lip, my hand slid from my throat. Fingers trembling, it dipped beneath the sweat-streaked sheets and rubbed my stomach as he had.

  My lips parted with a gasping moan.

  “What…is…this?” That question dominated my thoughts. An ache unlike any felt before. It needed an answer — demanded an answer — but struggle as I might to name it, I could not. And eager as I was to recreate it, no amount of stoking the flames myself could compare to how it felt in his hands.

  With a grumbling sigh, I surrendered to my frustration and climbed from bed, retreating to the washroom. I hoped a warm shower would ease my troubled thoughts, but in the back of my mind, I knew there was only one answer. To bring this newfound curiosity to bloom, I would have to confront the man who planted it first.

  ***

  My search ended in disappointment. Try as I might, I could not find the Fiend Lord anywhere within Dreadskull’s walls. Nor did Good Belial come when I called for them. It was a strange thing, to be alone, truly alone, within the castle.

  Hunched over one of the Fellbeast journals, reading the words but not grasping their meaning, I sat alone in the library. Not an uncommon thing, but somehow desolate on that day. It was late, but judging by the clocks that littered the grounds, most prominent of all a towering grandfather clock next to the library entrance, I had not missed our meeting.

  Yet as five minutes turned into an hour, my host refused to show.

  “Have I wounded you, sir?” I asked the empty air. “Rest assured, that was not my intention. If I misread yours…pray tell me that I might make amends.” My plea went unanswered, and the weight knotted in the pit of my stomach grew. With heavy shoulders and a heavier sigh, I rose from my seat to attend to my garden.

  The book in my hand, though a brisk hundred pages, felt heavy as a stone. Weighing heavier with each step taken until it was exhausting to hold even with both hands. I stepped inside. The book fell from my grasp.

  Sizzling black rot oozed from every leaf, boiling the soil and filling the air with putrid burning. At the heart of the garden, buzzing next to a month-old Wildespire Lily, was Lord Beelzebub. His crystalline eyes turned to me at the sound of my gasp.

  “This is it?” His mandibles clacked, a mirthless laugh. With one great scythe, he cleaved the head from Lady Wildespire Lily and took it in one of his grasping claws. “A flower? You believe some answer lies within these rotten things? Poppycock! To think he speaks so highly of you. Balderdash! Nonsense!” The oozing spittle from his mandibles leaked onto the flower. Its petals hissed and wilted, dropping black to the floor.

  His words were as his wings, mindless buzzing in my ears. Eyes wide, my lips pulled into a snarl — the feeling alien on my face — and I stormed through the rot to snatch the dying flower from his hand. Starlight engulfed my fingertips. It spread up my arm and encircled my body, then burst from me in a dazzling flash.

  “You come here uninvited, spewing your filth without a care for the damage you cause! Get out. Out of my garden and away from my darlings!” I refused to back down when he flew closer. Refused to budge when his clutching hands grasped the front of my dress and his stinger dug into my side. Refused, even, to acknowledge the blistering pain now pumping through my veins, echoing from his.

  “I am the Lord of Rot, you brazen, respectless child! Before your kingdom was a dirt hut beneath the Willow’s branches, I raised mine to heights no man could ever hope to reach again!” His eyes flashed, rot spewing from his pustules with every ragged breath he took. “I go where I please, I answer to no one save the master of this castle!”

  “You will answer to me when you step into my garden, my good sir.” I took a step closer, wincing but undeterred by the prick of his needle piercing my stomach. “If you feel threatened by my presence, Lord Beelzebub,” I spat his name like a curse, “then I ask you address me directly. Do not lash out at my garden with your childish tantrum!”

  “Childish?” His voice lowered and his shape darkened. The buzzing wings on his back grew until they stretched the length of the room, his body stretching and inflating, bulbous and grotesque, sickled hands the size of my body, mandibles large enough to rip the head from my shoulders. “You are the child here. Do not presume to threaten an immortal Fiend such as me!”

  The hands that held me by the neck of my dress now held my entire torso between them. He pressed his face into mine, spitting rot in my face. Though my flesh melted, my gaze remained unwavering and resolute.

  “Remove yourself. I shall not ask again.”

  “Or what, child? What will you, a pathetic little gardener, use to threaten me?”

  My voice dropped to a whisper barely heard over his wings. “An answer not even you could discover, my good sir.”

  “You arrogant little —” Beelzebub opened his jaws and lunged forward. His mandibles froze in front of my face, his breath burning my nostrils, spittle singing my cheeks. All at once, he shrank to his more manageable size and backed away, clearing his throat. “You’ve returned?”

  “I have! I have…and what do I find here?” Belial’s song-like voice drowned out the buzz of Beelzebub’s wings. The usual mirth — like they were always on the verge of bursting into laughter — was gone from the creature’s voice. The moonlight darkened, and the lanky creature appeared between the two of us. Hunched over, knuckles dragging the floor, their head jerked to the side with an audible crack. “Did he harm you, Fair Lady?”

  The Fiend’s eyes flickered and his mandibles moved, but no sound escaped. He stared, shaking, at the creature’s lifted hand, a single stretched finger at their lips.

  “Not beyond recovery.” My voice remained a strong and certain whisper, fists clenched to hold back the trembling that threatened to drive me to my knees. The sound of my heart pounding in my ears was enough to make me lightheaded, but resting my hand on Belial’s shoulder helped to steady my shaking. “I simply asked him to leave and not return. I need to undo the damage he has done.”

  Belial’s head twisted around in a full circle. “Tsk, tsk, tsk…what have we talked about, Lord Beelzebub?” When their head came back into the proper position, they stood upright and leaned forward. “Hmm?”

  The Fiend’s mandibles clacked soundlessly once more.

  “Yes! Yes! See? You do remember! Was that so hard?” Belial reached to the side. Grasping the door to the garden, they pulled it forward until it was in front of the buzzing Fiend. “Off you go, off you go! You’ve much work to finish, as does our dear Lady Celeste!”

  If Beelzebub had any argument, it was lost to my ears. With but a single glance more at me, his hundreds of eyes all shining with the same hatred that burned in my heart, he flew through the door and disappeared. When he was gone, Belial released the door, and the room snapped back into its normal form like a stretched piece of rubber.

  “My apologies, Fair Lady. Our Lord Master was quite clear that Fiends are not to interfere with one another’s work. That courtesy, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, extends to you, as well.”

  “I appreciate your timely arrival, Good Belial. Please, forgive me this discourtesy, but I must focus my attention elsewhere. I will properly thank you in due time.” I returned the Wildespire Lily to the dirt, holding my hands over it until it bloomed once more. Then, I closed my eyes and extended my starlight to the rest of the garden. Wasting no energy on unnecessary senses, I followed the pain caused by the rot to its most dire sources.

  Lord Beelzebub’s rot was quite unlike the Fellblood. It did not corrupt, it decayed, seeping slowly through the external layer and eradicating every bit along the way. Reversing its damage was no simple task. It had nowhere to return to, no way to unmake. The rotting needed an outlet, my own flesh the only one available.

  As the plants found relief, necrosis spread up my arms, growing until it consumed all of my upper body. There was no room left in my lungs for fresh air. Stomach churning, body revolting against my every action, blood spilled from my lips until the work was done. And, with my garden restored, I laid back on the workbench and stared unseeing into the artificial stars above. Feeling returned, but slowly. A sharp, stinging numb that began with my fingertips.

  My bloody lips parted to release a stale, strangled whimper. Overhead, I could see Belial standing over me, their head cocked. Beneath their unreadable mask, I felt the first twinge of discomfort from them, like a large needle slowly driven into their chest. I tried to smile, but control of my facial muscles had yet to return.

  Instead, I raised my numb arm and laid my hand atop theirs, forcing my fingers closed. Starlight sparkled between our clasped hands, and Belial’s head tilted the other way. The twinge in their chest faded, and at last I smiled.

  ***

  “Why does he hate me so?” I asked when I could speak again. Though it had taken several minutes, my Spark had served me well, cleansing the rot from my body. My hands still shaking, I nonetheless wore my glasses and inspected Lady Wildespire Lily. To my great relief, she was unharmed, matured even, after being doused in a flood of my starlight. “Have I wronged him in some way? Does Lady Banshee feel the same?”

  Belial giggled. “Lady Banshee feels everything and nothing all at once, Fair Lady. You needn’t concern yourself with her comings and goings. Not even she knows what she feels.”

  “And Lord Beelzebub?”

  “You must forgive him, Lady Celeste. His nature is but a symptom of our immortality syndrome. Ones who live forever find themselves in an ever-changing world, while they, themselves, cannot change. Tis a frightening thing. It is! It is!”

  “You seem unbothered by my presence, Good Belial. Lord Genesis…” My words trailed off, squeezed into submission by a tightness in my chest. “Where is he, if I might ask?”

  “You might, Fair Lady, you might!” Belial giggled and appeared across from me, on the other side of the circle planter. “My Lord Master must attend to something of great import. You may see less of him in the coming days.”

  “You’re lying, Good Belial,” I remarked with a smirk. As I spread Lady Wildespire Lily’s petals and dusted her pistil with Sir Stillroot’s pollen, I glanced up at the creature. “That’s not like you.”

  “Is it not? Why, last I checked, Lady Celeste, I was the Fiend of Illusion.” Belial stretched their arms out, filling the room with an orchestral symphony and turning the artificial moonlight into strips of oscillating neon rainbow. “Lying is something of a talent of mine!”

  “Not to me, it’s not.” I took my glasses off and released a sigh with a smile. “If it is something you mustn’t say, I won’t force it from you. Perhaps you’d find my earlier question a more acceptable one to answer: why are you unbothered by my arrival if immortals loathe change so much, Good Belial?”

  I looked into the empty eyes of the creature’s mask and somehow knew they were smiling.

  “Lord Genesis yearned for your arrival, Lady Celeste. That, alone, is enough for me.”

  An unusual heat rushed to my cheeks. My fingers played idly with the soil, eyes askance as memories of our encounter in the Dream came flooding back to me.

  “He did?” I asked in perhaps too hopeful a voice.

  “More than anything.” Belial responded perhaps too quickly. “For longer than you could imagine. Rest assured, Fair Lady, Lord Genesis would trade the world to see your dream met.”

  “My dream?”

  Belial stared back at me. I could feel that their smile was gone. Instead of answering, they raised their hand, holding a new book. “A gift from my Lord Master. He is quite excited for you to read this one. It is, if I may be so bold, his favorite.”

  I took the book from the creature. Tears from the Sky. Penned in the same ancient language as the Fellbeast journals.

  “Thank you, Good Belial. I am quite excited to read it.”

  ***

  Dinner was a solemn, lonely affair. As he had been for the rest of the day, Lord Genesis was absent. Belial assured me that he wished to see me, but I again felt as though the creature was bending the truth. Exhausted — physically, mentally, and emotionally — I hadn’t the strength to challenge them. Instead, I relented to eating alone.

  It was another strange meal, one Belial informed me originated from Beelzebub’s homeland. Thick, savory pork sausages served over creamy potatoes, slathered in gravy with peas on the side. Heavier than some of the other meals we’d shared, it was warm and hearty, filling me quickly. My appetite sated, I was left with plenty of time to read the new book.

  As with all the others, it followed a predictable pattern. A Hero tasked with saving a Maiden held captive by a world-ending Beast, the Wizard King. Unlike some others, this story was eager to bounce between different perspectives. Half of the chapters were told by the Hero, crossing fields, climbing mountains, and diving into the depths of the ocean to retrieve the artifacts needed to confront the Beast. The others were told by the Maiden. Captive, but not helpless. She confounded the Beast by sneaking out, sending messages to the Hero, and using her magic to carve new paths where none lay before.

  To see them work in tandem, though they were yet apart, the implication was clear.

  “You are not one for subtlety, good sir.” I said with a chuckle as I turned the page. As with the others, it was a quick read. The language, though growing more sophisticated, was still simplistic, with scarce descriptions and light dialogue. Another common trend in the Fiend Lord’s tales.

  Finishing the last of my ale, I pursed my lips, re-reading the last page.

  “Good Belial.” The name popped from my lips at a whim. But when the creature appeared, I knew what it was I wanted. “Might I trouble you for a quill, some ink, and some parchment?”

  “Why of course! Of course, Fair Lady. But a moment and I shall return!”

  Pop.

  My finger tapped on the table. Turning back a few chapters, my lips curled into a smile.

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