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

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"Sable!"

It must have been Mammon who shouted, because Lust could no longer speak, reduced to a horrifyingly beautiful crystal pillar. But before I could answer, the world somersaulted, sending me tumbling through air over and over, caught in a barrel careening downhill. I crashed into what might have been the ceiling, then a wall, before finally landing somewhere far more forgiving than the craggy, glass-shattered and splintered surfaces of the tunnel.

Arms, a chest—bleary-eyed and stunned from my body slamming every which way, it took me a blurry second in the chaos to realize who had caught me. Mammon! Bleeding and battered, he somehow had the strength remaining to snatch me to safety, but not without cost. Strong pulses of ethereal energy washed over him like blasts of wind, sending his dark, shaggy hair blowing back—and charring his flesh even more. Blackened patches spread over his chest until not an inch of unmarred skin remained, utterly dead and destroyed. As the world flipped and tumbled again, time slowing, sounds fading, my senses righted and centered like a lone ship floating peacefully in the eye of a storm.

The energy was coming from me. The force harming Mammon, though he endured it with bared teeth and a snarling scream that failed to break through the unnatural, deaf calm that deadened my hearing, was coming from me. Magic. Unknowable, terrifying, impossible magic, that I had no idea how to stop much less control. I forced my head to turn, fighting the thick, molasses pressure that tried to paralyze me, and locked my gaze on the serpent monster.

Still there! Still there, but buffeted by the power pulsing out of me, giant white scales ripping off with every wave and spiraling down the length of the tunnel into the void. Its enormous body clung to the walls, coiling around whatever it could anchor itself to, the stalagmites and stalactites that stuck out like crystal sunbursts all around us.

And there was Lust, too, closer to me, caught in one of those very stalagmite nests. His frozen form teetered on the brink of slipping free. Another moment and he would fall away, too. My stomach flipped, dread plummeting like a stone from my throat to my gut.

Finish it, came the thought. Not in words, but with a rush of need, like the growing desperation after holding a breath to let it go. Finish it. Finish. Now.

But it was like hurtling into the sky with no guidance, no parachute, no knowledge of anything except that I must make it back down. I could only go on hope—the hope that whatever I did, I wouldn't regret.

"Hold on!" I think I shouted, but I could no longer hear even my own voice. Instead, I clutched Mammon's arm and held on tight, shoving away the sickening thought of how agonizing it must be. It was this, or let him go, and for all my wariness of him, my conscience would never be clean if I abandoned him. Just like how I knew I couldn't abandon Lust, either, with or without the contract that bound me to him, despite every reason I had to hate every ounce of his being.

My hatred had an answer somewhere, but this wasn't it. Not like this. And not here.

Not here!

I turned once more, twisting against the coiling, stormy force that braced to hurl me away again. Not this time! I squeezed Mammon's arm with a vengeance before locking my gaze on the writhing serpent crawling its way back to us on the walls. Its thick coils, now stripped of scales in large, raw patches bunched and thrashed as the waves of power still pulsing out of me attacked them again and again. Not enough! Not nearly enough! I lifted my other hand and held it steady in front of my face, moving mindlessly, until I could only see the creature from between my spread fingers. Shaking, reddened, covered in blood—where did that come from!—I barely recognized my hand as my own, but mine or not, it was all I had, and all I needed. My teeth clenched in a harsh grimace, jaw grinding with the force of it. I strained, strained—and pure power swelled inside me like a sun being born, the intensity so searing and brilliant that terror struck me like a lightning bolt. But it was too late to stop it. With a single thought, aimed spear-true, the seed had become a fire, and in the next instant, it became a raging inferno that scorched my every cell and surged into my very mind, filling everything behind my eyes with a sea of white and gold. Shapes disappeared, the jagged lines of the crystalline cave and the still-thrashing serpent vanishing from sight as light flooded my vision. The last thing I saw was the disappearing form of Lust's frozen body, slipping out from the cradle of its precarious perch. No! Faster, more, reach—! But my body refused to move, locked in place by the cascade of energy screaming out of me in every direction. It pinned me down, compressing and ripping out of me at the same time, a killing paradox tearing me to shreds. If I looked down at myself, I just knew I would find my body in ragged strips, carved and eaten away in great, gouged tatters. I didn't dare to check. I would crumble to dust if I did. I had to make it, had to last only a little longer—! But I was burning away and in seconds, there would be nothing left of me to fuel the raging sea of power shattering my body and soul.