Page 8 of The Vespertine Treaty
“You come to the Death Heir begging for a lifeline? Tsk. You should know by now that salvation is not a delicacy served in my domain; I deal only in endings. But if you insist on wringing a miracle from a monster, I need to know… what piece of your soul are you willing to carve out to afford it?” I asked, my voice cool, devoid of pity. I knew the answer before she spoke.
“Anything. I will give you anything you want, my lord.”
Exactly.
“The Consortium said I consume pain,” I cut her off, leaning in close enough to smell the salt of her fear. “They did not mention the cost. You Aenites are so fragile. You preach about the resilience of life, yet here you are, unravelling because your husband died and you cannot bear the weight of a little grief.”
I watched her lower herself onto the balls of her feet, her gaze fixed on the hem of my trousers with fervent, terrified devotion. She licked her lips, looking up at me through a curtain of tears,waiting for a command like a domesticated animal waiting for the whip or the treat.
“Oh, that won’t be necessary, actually,” I drawled, feigning boredom to mask the sudden, sharp spike of hunger in my own core—not for her, but for the pain she offered. “I am quite irked, so I will do it just to make it pass quicker and rid myself of this unwanted entanglement.”
I did not get a chance to direct her to her feet. She surged forward, wrapping her hands around my legs, sobbing her thanks. Waves of her desperation, now mixed with a sickeningly sweet relief, poured from her, soaking into my skin like oil.
The contact was revolting.
I grabbed her wrists, my grip tight enough to bruise, and shoved her back. “Do not ever touch me.”
She hit the stone floor. “Yes, my lord. I am so sorry. I do not know what came over me. It will never happen again.” Her head bowed low, pressing her forehead to the cold limestone in submission.
“Lay down on the stone pedestal,” I commanded, turning away to hide the tremor in my own hand. “This will be fast. And it will be extremely painful.”
She raised herself onto the limestone slab, lying flat as instructed, her hands entwined white-knuckled over her stomach. She looked like a sacrifice prepared for slaughter. In a way, she was.
I stepped forward, placing a hand hovering just above her heart. I didn't need physical contact to flay a soul.
I opened the Void.
It wasn't a door; it was a tear in the fabric of reality. I allowed the abyss inside me to yawn open, and her pain rushed in—a torrent of black, viscous sludge. It traveled from her to me in shocking, rhythmic waves that felt heavy, tasting of copper and old tears. The ache in my chest blossomed into a roaring fire. The female beneath my hand began thrashing, her back arching off the stone as if she were being burned alive.
For those few seconds, we were one entity. Everything she felt—the grief, the terror, the heartbreak—I felt. And in return, the eternal, black fire that burned inside me licked at her edges, dousing her in flames she could never understand.
I blinked.
The memory dissolved, replaced by the stark, unforgiving reality of my study.
I sat at my desk, the surface cold and firm under my palms, carved from a single slab of basalt stone so dark it seemed to consume the ambient light rather than reflect it.Fitted for a Prince of Death.
The lingering pain was a slow, deliberate drill boring behind my left eye. I tried to ignore it. It wasn't mine; it belonged to that pathetic Aenite diplomat, the female who had failed her mission and lost her husband in the same breath. I had consumed her grief, but the residue remained—the sharp tang of self-loathing and liquid terror clinging to the edges of my mind like smoke.
It wasn't just the ache; it was thesoundof it. A high, thin whine of borrowed terror that vibrated in my teeth.
This was the curse of the Pain-Eater. Every emotion I swallowed, every memory I cleansed, left a faint, toxic echo in the Void that was supposed to be my soul, pushing me closer to the silence that meant utter, final madness.
I exhaled slowly, looking around the room to ground myself.
The Alistair Estate was not dead despite being ruled by the strongest Cenite House; it was absolute. It was a castle of sprawling black granite, a monument to power and order, maintained by an unseen army of Cenite servants who moved like ghosts through the walls. Its flawless, immense corridors and chambers were a constant, humming testimony to a House that demanded nothing less than perfection. There was no warmth here, no softness. Only the cold, hard lines of duty.
Perched atop a massive obsidian archway overlooking my study, the colossal granite gargoyle stirred. Friedrik shifted his stony mass, the movement sending a faint shower of black grit raining onto the polished floor below. He cleared his throat, a sound like grinding tectonic plates that vibrated through the stone of the castle and directly into my skull.
“Honestly, the melodrama is deafening, even without the noise filters, your Dark Lordship,” Friedrik grumbled. His voice was a dry, echoing scrape that found its way into the most private recesses of my mind, a constant, unwelcome companion bonded to the estate's very foundations.
In the corner, a shadow detached itself from the gloom. Rhana, my familiar, a black panther of unsettling size, shifted impatiently. Her eyes, the colour of newly spilled ink rimmed with a thin circlet of gold, tracked a dust mote in the light.
“Flinching again”,came her thought, sharp and clear, cutting through the haze of my headache. “It smells like profound failure in here.”
“See? I wouldn't be surprised if even the beast was concerned with your lack of self-care,” Friedrik sighed, the sound impossibly loud in my mind. “Eight generations I’ve watched this precise brand of Alistair brooding... why not just take a wife the old-fashioned way, and find a distraction that doesn't involve the obliteration of your own peace?”
"Be silent, Friedrik," I returned, my internal command sharp enough to cut glass. "I am filtering. I am attempting to excise the rot that will eventually claim us all."
