CHAPTER THIRTYݍFIVE
MADNESS INCARNATE
alen ripped his wrist away, tearing his flesh from my desperate mouthV before I was ready to release him.
The loss was devastating—like having air stolen from my lungs, like being dragged from sunlight into shadow. A sound escaped me that I barely recognized as my own voice, a low whine of protest that held no trace of the dignified princess I had once been.
I lunged forward instinctively, chasing the source of that divine nectar, my bound hands reaching for his retreating arm. But he was already beyond my grasp, already pulling back to watch whatever transformation his blood would work upon my fragile mortal mind. The wounds on his wrist sealed themselves as I watched, divine flesh knitting together with inhuman speed, leaving only the faintest trace of what had transpired.
“More,” I whispered, my voice hoarse with desperate want. “Please, I
need —“ But then the heat hit me.
It began as a warmth in my chest, spreading outward like oil poured onto water, flowing through my veins with purpose and power. This wasn’t the alien heat I had felt when first tasting his blood at the feast—that had been slight, almost like a blush. This was different. This was fire.
It must be the madness. Valen had promised madness.
But this… this didn’t feel like that. It felt like sanity for the first time in my life. Like waking from a dream of being small and powerless to discover
that I had always been something more.
A sound bubbled up from my chest—not quite laughter, not quite a purr, but a sound that belonged to a creature that was wild and knowing. I felt my head tilt to one side as I studied Valen with new eyes, seeing him through the lens of whatever transformation was taking place within my cells.
He was beautiful, yes. Powerful beyond mortal comprehension. But he was also... mine. The thought settled in my mind with absolute certainty, as if it had been written in the fabric of reality itself.
Mine to challenge, mine to claim, mine to mark as I saw fit.
A smile spread across my lips—slow, dangerous, utterly confident. The expression felt foreign on my face, but also absolutely right, as if I had been wearing masks my entire life and was finally showing my true self to the world.
For just a moment, Valen’s perfect composure cracked, revealing something underneath that looked suspiciously like shock. His black eyes widened slightly, his lips parting as if to speak words that wouldn’t come. It was the first time I had ever seen him truly surprised, the first time his ancient confidence had faltered in my presence.
The sight sent a thrill of triumph through me that was even more intoxicating than his blood.
“How...” he began, then stopped, his gaze searching my face as if looking for signs of the madness he had promised. “How do you feel?”
The question was simple enough, but the way he asked it—with genuine curiosity rather than clinical observation—told me that whatever was happening to me was not what he had expected. I took my time considering my answer, savoring the way his attention focused on me with laser intensity, the way he leaned forward slightly as if my response might contain the secrets of the universe.
I looked up at him through my lashes, letting my new confidence color every movement, every breath. “I feel,” I said, my voice emerging deeper than before, rougher with want, “like I want you to touch me.”
The words danced between us, bold and shameless and absolutely true. I had spent my entire life hiding my desires, apologizing for wanting things, pretending that hunger was something that belonged to other people. No more. This new creature wearing my skin had no patience for such deceptions.
Valen’s smile returned, but it was different now—sharper, more
interested, as if my words were closer to his expectations. “Do you?” he murmured, his voice dropping to that velvet whisper that made my bones hum with resonance. “And do you believe you deserve to be touched?”
I licked my lips deliberately, tasting the lingering traces of his blood, savoring the way his eyes tracked the movement with predatory focus.
“Yes,” I said without shame. Just confident certainty, as if the question itself was absurd.
Heat flashed in Valen’s eyes as he pushed himself to his feet, towering over me once again.
“How badly do you want it?” he asked, taking a deliberate step backward, then another, putting distance between us. “Badly enough to crawl to me? To beg for what you think you deserve?”
The old Mireille would have bristled at the suggestion, would have met it with either tearful refusal or desperate compliance. But this version of myself —this creature of want and power and divine blood—felt only excitement.
The challenge in his voice wasn’t an insult, it was an invitation to play.
My smile widened, revealing teeth that felt sharper. Somewhere in the distance, I was dimly aware of the sound of chains rattling, of Death’s rage pressing against me. But it felt distant now, unimportant compared to the fire burning in Valen’s eyes.
Those eyes—black as the void between stars—seemed to shine with copper light, divine power manifesting in response to whatever he saw in my expression.
It was the most beautiful thing I had ever witnessed.
I began to crawl to him.
Not in the desperate, degrading way he had suggested, but moving forward on my knees, my hips swaying predatorily, my bound hands pushing my breasts forward. I kept my eyes locked on his, watching the way his breathing changed, the way his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides as if he was fighting the urge to reach for me.
His reaction made me smile wider.
When I reached him, my fingers resting against the leather of his boots, Valen looked down at me with something that might have been pride if it weren’t so thoroughly tainted with malice.
“Your father would be so proud,” he murmured, his voice a velvet caress wrapped around a blade. “His bastard daughter, crawling toward the very god who slaughtered her family. Tell me, do you think Aeldrin is watching, right
now, from beyond the void? Do you think he can see what his precious bloodline has become?”
The words should have cut me. Should have sent shame spiraling through my chest, should have made me recoil from what I was doing, from what I had become. Once, they might have reduced me to tears, might have sent me scrambling backward in horror at my own actions.
Instead, I felt my smile turn wicked.
The expression felt wild on my face, untamed and wholly unrepentant.
Let my father watch from whatever hell contained his soul. Let him witness his bastard daughter embracing her own darkness. Let him see that I was no longer the shadow he had kept hidden in palace corners, but something magnificent and terrible in my own right.
“I hope he is watching,” I said, my voice emerging as a purr of satisfaction. “I hope he sees exactly what his choices have wrought.”
Valen’s eyes flashed crimson, a mixture of surprise and delight, as if my shameless response wasn’t what he’d been looking to provoke, but something better. The divine blood in my veins sang its approval, heating my skin until I felt fevered with want, with power, with the intoxicating certainty that I was exactly where I belonged.
My bound hands moved upward, trailing along the fabric of his breeches with deliberate slowness. The material was soft beneath my palms, warming under my touch, and I could feel the heat of him through the barrier of clothing. My fingers found the lacings that held the garment closed, and I began to work at them with single-minded determination.
“What do you think you are doing?” Valen asked, though his tone held no real surprise. If anything, he sounded amused by my boldness, as if he was curious to see how far this new version of myself would push.
“What does it look like?” I replied without looking up from my task. The lacings were complex, designed more for security than easy removal, but I was patient. I had all the time in the world to unravel him, piece by piece.
“I’m taking what I want.”
My fingers had just begun to loosen the first tie when Valen’s hands shot downward, his grip closing around my bound wrists with bruising force. The sudden restraint sent a jolt of frustrated need through me, my body protesting the interruption with an intensity that surprised me.
“No,” he said, his voice rough with something that might have been his own barely leashed desire. “You haven’t earned the privilege to get the things
you want.”
I looked up at him, letting my disappointment show plainly on my face.
My lower lip pushed out in an exaggerated pout, and I shifted my weight, pressing my thighs together in a desperate attempt to ease the ache that was building between them. The movement was instinctive, my body seeking relief from the fire that Valen’s blood had ignited in my veins.
The sensation was unlike anything I had ever experienced—not just physical arousal, though that was certainly part of it, but something deeper.
Something that felt like hunger and power and desperate need all tangled together into one overwhelming force. It was as if every nerve ending in my body had been set alight, as if I was burning from the inside out with want.
“Please,” I whispered, the word slipping from my lips before I could stop it. Not the broken plea of a victim, but the demand of someone who knew exactly what she wanted and was growing impatient with being denied. “I need you. I need your cock on my tongue, to feel you piercings dig into my throat.” I let out a breath, rocking my body closer to his. “Please.”
Valen’s grip on my wrists tightened, and when I looked up at his face, I saw that his pupils had dilated until only thin rings of black iris remained visible around their edges. His breathing had grown shallow, controlled, as if he was fighting his own battle against whatever forces were at work between us.
“Why,” he asked, his voice dropping to that dangerous whisper that seemed to resonate in my very bones, “would I give you that satisfaction?
You are exquisite in your desperation, my queen. Absolutely magnificent.”
The praise sent fresh heat spiraling through me, and I found myself leaning further into his grip. My body seemed to have developed a will of its own, responding to his words, his touch, his presence with eagerness.
“I’ll do anything,” I breathed, the words emerging as both promise and threat. “Anything you want. Just please —“ I broke off, unable to articulate exactly what I was begging for. Touch?
Release? More of his divine blood? All of it seemed equally necessary, equally urgent. The fire in my veins was growing stronger with each passing moment, demanding satisfaction in whatever form he was willing to provide.
Valen’s head tilted to one side, studying me with the focused attention of a scholar examining a particularly fascinating specimen, before moving to cup my cheek, the touch electric against my sensitized skin. “Look at you,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Look what you’ve become.”
I turned my face into his palm, lips brushing against his skin without my conscious intent. He tasted of salt and winter and something metallic that reignited the fire in my veins. A moan escaped me, the sound unrecognizable as my own.
“Insatiable,” Valen observed, his thumb tracing my lower lip. “Ruined.”
His voice dropped lower, rougher. “How pretty you look on your knees for me. Beautiful, with my blood on your lips.”
He leaned in, his eyes never leaving mine as his tongue traced a slow, deliberate path across my bloodstained mouth. The contact was electric, sending shockwaves of pleasure radiating through my body. I couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped me, my bound hands clutching desperately at the air between us as my body arched toward him of its own accord.
The taste of him lingered—copper and divinity and something darker that spoke of ancient power. My lips parted further, seeking more, hungry for whatever he would give me. But Valen held my face still, his smile widening at my frustration.
“Such a greedy thing,” he murmured against my mouth, his breath mingling with mine. “Desperate for even the smallest taste.”
His words should have been the final humiliation, but they sent another wave of molten desire through me. I rubbed my thighs together desperately, seeking relief from the building pressure.
“You would let me take you here?” Valen continued, his voice growing rougher with each word. “In this filthy dungeon, on these cold stones, anywhere I wanted?”
As he spoke, something changed in his eyes. They began to shift, colors bleeding through like oil through water. Black seeped in from the white edges, red, deep and rich as arterial blood, filling his irises. This was Vharok looking at me—not the mortal king he pretended to be, but the god of blood and domination in all his terrible glory.
It sent a thrill of pure want through me so intense that I gasped audibly.
“Yes,” I whispered, my voice emerging as barely more than breath.
“Anywhere. However you want me.”
Chains rattled through the back of my mind, distant but furious. Death’s voice rose like a wind through my bones, a silent thunder of protest that tore through the divine haze for a heartbeat… and then faded, swallowed by the hunger inside me.
Valen’s grip tightened painfully, fingers digging into my jaw with
bruising force, forcing all my attention back to him. “I could take you right now,” he said, voice dropping to a rough whisper. “And you would thank me for it.”
I nodded frantically, desperate to make him understand the depths of my need. I needed him. I needed release. My bound hands lifted, seeking contact with any part of him I could reach.
His thumb pressed against my lips, and without conscious thought, I parted them, taking his thumb into my mouth.
The taste of him exploded across my tongue—salt and power and something indefinably divine that made my entire body hum with recognition. I sucked gently at first, then, with a smirk, I flattened my tongue and slowly licked from the base of his thumb to the tip, flicking the pad of his finger the same way I had his piercing on our wedding night.
A shudder ran through his entire frame, his careful control cracking just enough to let me see the desire beneath. His breathing hitched, his free hand clenching into a fist at his side, and for just a moment his godly composure slipped entirely.
He wanted this. Wanted me. Despite all his games and cruelty and calculated distance, he was no more immune to whatever was building
between us than I was.
I needed release, and I needed it now.
Suddenly, a surge of divine fire raced through my veins, more intense than anything that had come before. This wasn’t the warm, spreading heat of transformation. This was consuming, overwhelming, a wildfire that threatened to burn away everything I was and leave only primal need in its wake. I recognized it immediately.
This was the madness, the price of shared blood Valen had promised.
But recognition did nothing to blunt its power, did nothing to help me resist the way it stripped away the last vestiges of control I had been clinging to.
My entire body trembled with the force of it, muscles coiling with tension that demanded release. The ache between my thighs became unbearable, a gnawing hunger that eclipsed every other sensation. My skin felt too tight, hypersensitive to every brush of air, every whisper of silk against flesh. Even the collar around my throat had become a source of maddening friction, each breath making it shift against skin that blazed with unnatural heat.
I tried to maintain some semblance of the controlled seduction I had been
weaving around him, tried to hold onto the predatory confidence that had felt so right just moments before. But the divine essence coursing through my system had other plans. It wanted movement, action, the immediate satisfaction of every dark impulse that had been building since our first encounter.
My mouth released his thumb with a wet sound, and before he could react, I launched myself forward.
The movement was pure instinct, driven by a need so fundamental it bypassed conscious thought entirely. My bound hands reached for him desperately. I needed his touch, his skin against mine, his power flowing into me until this terrible ache finally found its release.
But Valen was faster.
His hands shot out to catch my neck, holding me back with strength that reminded me exactly what he was—not the mortal king he pretended to be, but a god whose power dwarfed anything I could hope to match. The frustration of being stopped, of being denied what I needed with such desperate urgency, tore a sound from my throat that was part growl, part sob.
“You forget yourself,” Valen hissed, pulling me forward, his face inches from mine. Close enough that I could almost taste his breath. “I decide when you’re touched. I decide when you’re fucked. I decide when you’re allowed to breathe.”
“Please,” I gasped, straining against his grip. If only I could get a bit closer. “I can’t— I need —“ The words dissolved into an incoherent cry as another wave of sensation crashed over me, my knees buckling from the force of it. My vision blurred at the edges, the world narrowing until nothing existed except Valen’s face and the terrible, gnawing emptiness that his touch could fill. I was drowning in want, suffocating on my own desire, and he was the only source of air.
His grip tightened fractionally, stars dancing at the edges of my vision.
The lack of air combined with the poison within me sent waves of dizzying sensation straight to my core. Each heartbeat throbbed between my thighs, a relentless, pulsing ache that demanded satisfaction.
“Please,” I mouthed, the word soundless with my airway compressed.
Before my eyesight could go black, his grip loosened just enough to allow a shallow breath, and I dragged air into my burning lungs. But I needed him inside me more than I needed the air. Needed his lips, needed his cock, needed his blood. “I need —“
“What you need,” Valen interrupted, his grip tightening again, “is to heel like the beast you’ve become.” His other hand came up to brush a strand of hair from my face, the fleeting contact sending sparks racing across my skin.
For one breath, maybe two, I stilled. Some deeply buried instinct responded to the authority in his voice, the pressure of his hand, the implied threat. My chest heaved with rapid, shallow breaths, but I didn’t move.
Didn’t struggle. Just watched him with eyes I knew must be wild, dilated, desperate.
It was a momentary victory for him—a second of compliance that seemed to please him immensely. His grip on my throat loosened slightly, his thumb continuing its maddening caress along my jaw.
“Such a good little beast,” he murmured, and the words should have enraged me, should have recalled me to myself.
Instead, they broke whatever fragile control remained.
I lunged forward again, using the slack he’d given me, and this time my teeth found their mark—the same place on his neck where he’d bitten me, the vulnerable junction of throat and shoulder. I bit down hard, tasting salt and clean sweat and then the hot copper burst of blood as my teeth broke through skin.
A sound tore from him—half growl, half groan—as his hands came up to grip my upper arms with bruising force. He wrenched me away from his neck, my teeth dragging along his skin, reluctant to release their prize. Blood stained his collar, his neck, my lips. The sight of it, the taste still coating my tongue, drove me further into madness.
In one fluid motion, Valen spun me and slammed me against the cold stone wall of the cell. My bound arms were crushed between my chest and the wall, sending splinters of pain up to my shoulders, but even that registered as pleasure in my deranged state. His body pressed against mine from behind, one hand tangled in my hair, the other gripping my hip, holding me in place.
I could feel the hard length of his arousal pressing against me through our clothing, evidence that his control wasn’t as complete as he pretended. The realization sent another wave of molten heat through me, and I pushed back against him, shameless in my need.
“You want me to take you right here?” Valen hissed in my ear, his breath hot against my skin. “Fuck you against a dungeon wall?”
“Yes,” I gasped, beyond shame, beyond anything except the desperate
need for release from the fire consuming me. “Please, Valen.”
His grip in my hair tightened, pulling my head back to expose my throat.
I felt his teeth graze the tender flesh just above the collar, not biting, just the threat of it—a promise and a warning. My body shuddered in anticipation, every nerve ending alive with desperate want.
Then, abruptly, he stepped back. The sudden absence of his body against mine felt like he was ripping my veins from my skin. I turned to face him, eyes wild, lips parted.
“Guards!” Valen’s voice cut through my desperation, sharp and commanding. “Now!”
The word, guards, penetrated the haze of madness just enough to spark a flicker of rage alongside the consuming need. He was calling for help.
Calling for others to restrain me, to keep me from what I wanted, what I needed. The betrayal of it sent fury mixing with the divine fire in my veins, creating something even more dangerous than pure lust.
And as I heard the sound of running footsteps, as I knew my window of opportunity was closing, I lurched toward Valen again, desperate to close the distance between us. He caught me easily, one hand planted firmly in the center of my chest, holding me at arm’s length. The touch was both torment and relief, his palm burning through the thin silk to brand my skin.
“Will you behave,” he asked, voice low and dangerous, “or do I need to have you restrained completely?”
Before I could answer—before I could decide which option might bring me closer to what I craved—the cell door burst open. My three guards rushed in, eyes widening at the scene before them.
Valen took a large step backward, his hands falling away from my chest as if I had burned him. The sudden loss of contact sent me lurching forward, but the guards were already there—hands catching my arms, holding me back from the object of my obsession.
“No!” The word tore from my throat as a scream of pure frustration. They couldn’t take him away from me, not now, not when I was so close to getting what I needed. I threw my weight against their grip, twisting and fighting with a desperation that surprised even me.
The oldest guard’s face was grim but not unkind as he tightened his hold on my left arm. “Easy now, Your Highness,” he murmured, the old title slipping out from habit. “Easy.”
But there was nothing easy about the fire burning through my veins,
nothing calm about the way divine madness had stripped away every civilized impulse I possessed. I needed Valen’s touch like I needed air, and they were denying me.
I threw my head backward with all the force I could muster. The impact was immediately satisfying—skull meeting cartilage with a wet crunch that sent vibrations through my entire head.
The youngest guard—my sweet, young guard, whose face I had already rearranged—let out a howl of pain. Fresh blood sprayed across the stone floor as his nose broke for the second time, his grip on my right arm loosening just enough for me to wrench myself partially free.
“Fuck!” he cursed, one hand flying to his ruined face while the other struggled to maintain its hold on me. “She broke it!”
For a moment, sweet victory. For a moment, I thought I might actually escape their grasp, might make it back to Valen before they could stop me.
But the middle guard was already moving to reinforce his injured colleague, and the oldest guard’s grip on my left arm was like iron.
They hauled me back, away from Valen, away from the relief I craved with every fiber of my being.
“Valen!” I screamed, his name both curse and prayer on my lips. I twisted in their grip, pleading with wild, desperate eyes. “Don’t leave me like this.
Please.”
Valen stood just beyond reach, watching the chaos with an expression caught between amusement and something darker, hungrier.
“My King,” the older guard said to Valen, “what do you want us to do with her?”
Valen didn’t answer immediately. He stood watching me struggle, his hand absently touching the bite wound on his neck, his eyes never leaving mine.
“My King?” the guard prompted again, uncertainty clear in his tone.
“Hold her,” Valen finally said, his voice strangely distant. “Just... hold her.”
I saw it then—the fraying of his control, visible in the slight tremor of his hands, the tightness around his eyes, the way he seemed to be fighting to maintain his distance from me. The slight shimmer in the hue of his skin. The god was closer to the surface now, Vharok straining against the confines of Valen’s human form.
Valen stepped closer. I strained toward him, every fiber of my being
reaching for what only he could provide.
His hand shot out, fingers tangling in my hair, yanking my head back to expose my throat above the collar. The sharp pain sent a jolt of perverse pleasure through me, drawing a moan from my lips.
“You want me, Princess?” Valen’s voice was barely more than a rasp, his breath hot against my exposed throat. “You would crawl for me, beg for me, surrender everything you are for a moment’s relief?”
“Yes,” I gasped, the admission torn from some primal place beyond shame. “Please.”
“Do you see what you are?” Valen asked, his voice a dangerous purr against my ear. “What you’ve become?” His grip in my hair tightened, sending fresh sparks of pain-pleasure racing down my spine.
I didn’t care. I didn’t care about what I looked like. I didn’t care about the guards or my dignity or anything except the burning need that consumed me.
I turned my face toward his, seeking his mouth with mine, beyond shame, beyond rationality.
Valen jerked back just before our lips could meet, his eyes flashing with something like triumph mixed with reluctance.
“Enjoy your night, my queen,” he purred, voice laced with rough laughter. “I hope I haunt your dreams as much as you will mine.”
With a final, dismissive gesture, he released my hair and stepped back.
The loss of contact was like being doused in ice water, drawing a cry of protest from my throat.
“Cut her bindings,” he instructed the older guard. “Then leave her. This will pass by morning.”
The guard hesitated. “Sire, in this state —“ “She won’t harm herself,” Valen interrupted, his gaze still fixed on me with dark intensity. “She wants only one thing right now, and she needs me to ease it.”
The cruel truth of his words sent another wave of desperate need through me. I lunged toward him again, but the guard’s grip held firm.
Valen turned to leave, his movement smooth and controlled despite the visible evidence of his arousal, the blood still staining his collar.
“Valen!” I screamed after him, my voice breaking on his name. “Don’t leave me like this! VALEN!”
He paused in the doorway, looking back over his shoulder with a smile I couldn’t read—part cruelty, part something almost like regret. “This was
your lesson in defiance versus stupidity, Princess. Next time you put your teeth to my flesh, remember the consequences.”
His laughter echoed down the corridor, a sound that would have infuriated me under normal circumstances but now only intensified the desperate need clawing at my insides.
“Coward!” I screamed after his retreating figure. When he didn’t return, I was reduced to pleading again. “No, Valen, please. Please come back my King. Please!”
But he didn’t turn back, didn’t acknowledge my words. His footsteps retreated with the same measured pace he had used when arriving, as if nothing had changed, as if he hadn’t just lit a fire in my veins that threatened to consume everything I had once been.
“Damn it, girl, be still,” the middle guard growled, struggling to maintain his grip. “He’s gone. It’s over.”
I deflated, my ragged breathing permeated the now silence. I hardly noticed as the oldest grunted a command to his younger companion, who still clutched his bleeding nose. With quick, efficient movements, the guard produced a knife and cut the rope binding my wrists, then backed toward the door, dragging his injured companion with him.
The cell door slammed shut, the lock turning with a final, damning click.
I was alone with the fire in my veins, the desperate need that had no outlet, and the lingering taste of a god’s blood on my tongue.
