Heir of Beasts

Ch. 3.6- A Willing Sacrifice

This chapter is definitively explicit. Do with that information what you will. 

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As he says that, a blaze of light cuts through the sheltering darkness of the dense trees, so bright that I have to look away as my eyes begin to water. I know it's a fire by the way it moves, but the flames are an impossible red. A rich burgundy, like red wine or dried blood, the effect strangely eerie against the backdrop of still night. I lick my lips like I expect to taste black magic, because I doubt something like the glimmering made the fire turn the last purple-red before black.

Then I feel like a superstitious fool, reminding myself of the green and pink flames I saw burning the night of the Feast of Liars. Irei said they added certain chemicals to the lanterns, which seems far more likely than my vague suggestion of dark rituals or incantations.

"It's that color only once a year, for the Blood Tithe," Irei explains, "keep watching."

As I do, a low humming begins. I dismiss it at first, thinking it the work of night insects or frogs from the sacred lake, but then it grows louder, and I know it's something else entirely. The whole clan clings to one note, swelling it with their voices until it's beating against my ears like crashing water, increasing in volume and rising in pitch until the tension bursts and it becomes a rough, wild howl. Desert foxes produce an eerie, ululating wail, and this reminds me of it, otherworldly and yet strangely familiar. It could be Kamai, or an older language, or no language at all. It vibrates beneath my skin, changing the rhythm of my heartbeat in sympathy.

And then I gasp, because the dark, bloody flames are changing. Fading, from black-red to the dusky purple of a fading bruise, to a washed out-pink, to pure white. The starlight looks oddly yellow by comparison. And then the white flame multiplies, and I realize torches are being lit from the central fire and passed around. People begin clapping and stomping, a rhythmic backdrop to their almost desperate keening. Loud whoops burst into the night air, percussive, as the fragments of white fire grow exponentially. Torches lighting other torches, until the entire woods looks like a snowscape.

The purity and violence of the moment twine together until I'm no longer sure which is which. Is the brilliant, relentless light or the blanket of warm night home? And then I forget to wonder, because there's a short, shrill shout from some kind of horn before the shards of light begin to spread out from the central fire like a wave. People are moving through the woods, white fire held high, and I'm brought crashing back to my body as I remember the position I'm in. On my knees in front of the Head Ambassador, hands still wrapped around his spit-slicked cock.

"Someone will see," Irei repeats, already tucking himself back into his breeches and hauling me up beside him. I lean against him, my knees weak. He laughs, arms wrapping around me, caging me between his big body and the tree. Covering me, I realize, as several more shapes flash by, dark as shadow.

"Don't worry, love," he chuckles into my ear, "those were just some really small deer."

I shove him playfully as he laughs into my ear, telling him "and you're just a really big ass."

"At least I told you they were coming before I did," he murmurs into my hair. "What would you have done if they had seen you on your knees for me, little one, hair disheveled, lips glistening, lost in the taste of my skin?"

"I- I think I would've kept going," I admit, flushing.

Irei's teasing smile becomes something hungry and he groans against me, muttering about pretty boys with silver tongues and warm, teasing throats. "If that's true, then Kemvir was right," he tells me, "and you belong at the fioníxia."