Sinners' Kingdom #1: The Book of Lust (Complete)

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The gaping chasm in my memories stretched a thousand miles in every direction, a pit of pitch-black darkness almost as far as the eye could see. On the absolute outermost fringes, the most delicate strip of color surrounded the rim, too distant to make out beyond a ghostly train of faint green and white circling the great pit.

How had I lived this long without tipping over the edge? It was impossible. All this time, I had barely spared it more than a passing thought here and there, assuming my childhood held no secrets, because why would it? I didn't even possess the Solaria birthright, not a speck of magic in my veins to even slightly tempt the most insignificant of otherworldly forces. I was human, a mundane thing with no power, no destiny, no arcane mystery. Nothing of import could possibly have happened in that foggy gap skulking in the far edge of my memories.

But it had. Too many of them. And I had only just begun to graze the ones floating on the surface, the shallowest skim. Was that why Mom and Grandma had pried so hard, trying to unearth what lay hidden in my memories? For years, they kept up the facade of only faint interest, always hiding their — worry? fear? suspicions? — and I fell for it completely, ignorant in bliss. If only they had known the truth. If only I hadn't forgotten it all.

But what had taken my memories in the first place? Did the boy — man? — with the feathers take them? And who was he! Other than a Prince of Hell because there was no way he couldn't be with an aura like that. How did we ever coincidentally happen to cross paths, just like Lust and I did two decades later? And again, after all these years on an island in the middle of nowhere, that guy with the stupid feathers yet again! Then there was Mammon, too, a third Prince, like I was a living magnet attracting only the most hellish of Infernal energies.

Did I do something terrible? Had I committed some unspeakable crime to deserve punishment of the highest degree, if not in this life then in a past one? There was no other explanation. Even the unluckiest of wretches couldn't end up like this, not even if they tried. For fuck's sake.

There was only one thread of comfort in all of this. It was the only one I could cling to, so I grasped it with a vengeance as I set my mind on survival: I could see again. Out of only one eye, granted, and honestly I suspected even that was temporary or otherwise came with terrible strings attached, because there was no way the universe would generously give me a freebie all of a sudden after soundly buttfucking me for the last two days straight. But this beat being blinded in both eyes by a bungled spell and left to helplessly rely on others for every little thing.

Not that I was doing great for myself even now, though, as Lust raced back to the enormous animal — monster! — that I could take in properly for the first time in all its terrifying glory. Oh, God. What the — what in the ever-loving fuck was that! There was no way to define it because it looked like no living creature on earth, far closer to made-up fantasy behemoths in movies. Not only that, its body rippled, scales overtaking hard, gray flesh and transforming from head to tail, the metamorphosis traveling like a giant ocean wave across the entire breadth of its cracked skin. The four massive, trunk-like legs that supported its body finished disappearing to nothing, leaving behind a sinuous but still thick body to rest on the ground instead. Except the body kept lengthening and lengthening, the tail becoming flexible enough to thrash around and lash out at Mammon who had beaten a swift retreat. Now the creature was... a serpent? If it could be called that at all. A god of serpents, more like, towering above everything even though the bulk of its length still lay half-coiled on the ground.

But even a god of serpents couldn't look like that. Where the head should be, three deadly, beautiful prongs split apart like graceful, monstrous petals. Except the petals were macabre jaws of gleaming ivory, divided three ways like a blossom opening up to the sun. At the center, a man's naked torso emerged, surrounded by the three-split jaws that all sported terrifyingly long fangs poised to bite. The jaws opened up wider as long, beautiful white feathers sprouted all along the edges, an ethereal sight that took my breath away... and the man shifted, lifting his head and straightening as if waking from a long sleep.