Altar of Flesh: Prince of Lust #3 by Burr Lucien

Author:Burr, Lucien
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

Isaiah 14

“Our great Lord Satan had been made perfect,” Furcas clarified for me. “The greatest beauty, the most perfect angel, formed just so. Imagine a thousand years passing where you are one thing, only for your father to take it all away. To bestow status instead on undeserving mortal life. God’s decision enraged my Lord. It enraged a third of God’s angels. When I learned that I, too, would need to bow before humanity, who might summon me to answer their questions of rhetoric, logic, or astronomy and provide me nothing in return, is it any wonder I chose to fall and carve out a new life here?”

I did not answer. Something about considering Lucifer, who had been my greatest adversary for most of my life, frightened me. I’d been an agent of God, and thinking of Satan, let alone speaking of him so candidly, had always seemed akin to invoking him or begging him to turn his eye upon you. To think of him like this—a being scorned, a role reversed, an identity confused—made me near empathetic. I baulked at that realisation. My heart began to race. I was sure Furcas noticed, for it stopped talking and leaned forward.

I did not open my eyes. I tried to find comfort in that dark nothingness, hoping I could regain my composure even as nausea twisted in my stomach. Clawed fingers pressed into my soft palate, and only when it began to sting did I blink my eyes open.

Furcas had grown exceptionally close. Its nostrils flared, and the white whiskers of its beard tickled my cheek. It was inhaling me. My body shivered, like some essence was being willed out of my flesh through the pores. Furcas sucked its teeth.

“Frightened, are you?”

I might have laughed if my body could have moved. But I was locked in a trance before it, too nervous to shift away lest those claws slice my throat. Sweat I hadn’t noticed began to drip into my eyes, and very gently, Furcas leaned forward and licked my brow clean.

“What have my brethren done about you?” it asked me, pressing for more details. “You mentioned lesser demons and Malphas—who did not enter you?”

It turned my chin this way and that. It did not bother with pretence, not hiding its assessment of me as its eyes raked over my face and body. I opened my mouth to reply, and it squeezed my cheeks together so hard my lips pursed and my face practically distended.

“How did you enter here, little priest?” it whispered, and only when my eyes widened did it release the pressure on my face.

“W-what?” I gasped and then coughed, sliding back ever so slightly on the wooden floor to put even an inch of distance between the two of us. Furcas allowed this with only a raise of its arched brow to suggest it knew I was frightened.

“I believe you heard me clearly.”

“Yes,” I said, “Yes, I heard you.”

Frustration gleamed in the demon’s eyes. “How did you come to be in Hell as you are?”

Stop talking back.

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