Chapter Twelve: Gravity

Chapter twelve- Gravity

"Are you absolutely certain he's… contained… within this tower?" Benzosia’s whisper, a breathy tremor, was almost swallowed by the viscous air. It clung to her like a shroud woven from baked stone and the reek of sulfurous heat that pulsed from the tower's corridor. She cast a frantic glance at the slick, infernal stone, half-expecting the passage to clamp shut, to devour her. Above her, Basileus's torch spat shadows that didn't just sway; they writhed with a malevolent sentience, tendrils of darkness eager to feast on the meager light. She edged closer to him, drawing a false strength from his unnerving calm.

"Oh, entirely certain, my Queen," Basileus purred, the faint upturn of his lips not touching the cold calculation glinting in his eyes, a predator savoring the exquisite anticipation of the hunt’s conclusion. "Our disgraced Herald has been languishing in this tower for the past twelve hours, licking his wounds and pride after such… spectacular humiliation." He lingered on the last word, a subtle cruelty that sent a shiver down Benzosia’s spine despite the heat.

Benzosia’s breath hitched. The phantom echo of rending flesh and splintered bone, punctuated by Gadreel’s soul-tearing screams, clawed at her memory. Basileus’s hand settled on her elbow, steadying and guiding. His concern was a silken veil over a chilling satisfaction; he moved with the quiet confidence of a spider that had just felt the web tremble.

"I know he has been punished and that should be the end of it," Benzosia confessed, the tremor in her voice a stark contrast to the steel she desperately attempted to inject into it. “But I need to know why he did it.” Her gaze locked with his, raw earnestness warring with a primal, inexplicable unease that made her skin crawl. The air between them thickened, charged with unspoken intent and the tower’s malevolent hum.

"He might not be in a mood to answer your questions, my Queen," Basileus murmured, his gaze sweeping over her, a wolfish hunger briefly flickering there before it was expertly masked. “But worry not, I shall ensure his full cooperation." He guided her forward, his touch steering her higher still. Warped mirrors threw back grotesque parodies of her form, each reflection a leering ghoul, ever disorienting her. Only with Basileus beside her, a pillar of reliable calm, did she feel marginally less lost to this place.

"We have arrived, my Queen," Basileus announced with a voice that vibrated a dark anticipation. The heavy, rune-scribed door before them didn't just stand there; it seemed to breathe with a suppressed agony, the suffering that lay behind the door was palpable.

"Very well," Benzosia breathed, the words a fragile shield against the tremor that threatened to shatter her composure. "Let us face him."

The groan of the opening door was a drawn-out sigh of torment, unleashing a cloying, overwhelming wave of perfume – lilies, thick and funereal, a suffocating mask for the deeper, sickening truths that lay within. Beneath the floral sweetness lurked the undeniable stench of decay, the metallic tang of old, congealing blood, and the festering sweetness of unhealed wounds turning to rot. The air itself seemed to cling to her, heavy and sick, coating her tongue with its vile bouquet, turning her stomach with a violent lurch.

Gadreel’s chambers were a testament to fallen grandeur, a tableau of opulent ruin. Jewel-toned silks, once vibrant, now hung in stiff, blood-caked tatters from the large poster bed, whisperings of unimaginable violence. Gilded furniture lay scattered like the snapped bones of some great, mythical beast. Upon silver platters, laden with exquisite delicacies, now bloated, buzzing flies feasted. And amidst this backdrop of ruin, Gadreel lay face-down on a divan, his back a horrific canvas of mangled flesh held together by crude, black stitches that wept a viscous, foul-smelling fluid.

“Not even a healer was sent to him.” The realization was shocking, and carried none of that dark gratification she’d tasted before. His discarded robes lay nearby, soiled and torn. Succubi, their movements languid and predatory as vultures circling carrion, dabbed listlessly at his wounds with perfumed silks, their dark eyes gleaming with a detached, almost clinical cruelty.

"Leave us," Benzosia commanded, her voice a low, dangerous thread, cutting through the grim tableau. The succubi obeyed Basileus's almost imperceptible nod, slithering into the shadows like creatures born of the darkness.

"Hello, Gadreel," the greeting felt pitifully inadequate, brittle against the crushing weight of the room’s suffering and the unspoken horror that hung heavy in the air.

A ragged, shuddering exhale was his only reply for a moment, a sound so broken it seemed to tear through him. Painfully, he turned his head, one bloodshot eye fixing on her, swimming with a universe of agony and raw, burning with resentment.

“My… Queen,” he rasped. “Come… to witness the full extent of the wreckage? To see what becomes of those who love him?” His gaze swept his own broken form with a fresh wave of despair, a muscle twitching violently beneath one weeping wound, the stench of infection suddenly sharper.

“Perhaps a little of that,” Benzosia admitted, her voice low but clear, a sliver of ice amidst the inferno. The heat and stench were coiling in her stomach, making her feel faint, but this was too vital. “But mostly, I came for answers.” She took a hesitant step closer, the floor slick beneath her slippers. Her eyes landed on a crystal carafe of wine. Needing something, anything, to steady the violent tremor in her hands, she poured two goblets. She took a tiny, convulsive sip – sickeningly sweet, metallic, a strange numbness already blooming on her tongue – and quickly set it down, her heart hammering.

Gadreel’s fevered gaze flickered to the goblet, then to her, a flash of desperate hunger in its depths. He grabbed his and drained it as if it were water in a desert. Basileus, silent as death, refilled it instantly. Benzosia ignored it, her focus a burning point on the broken Herald.

“Tell me,” she implored, praying he would not deny her the truth, “why did you poison my tea?”

Gadreel’s eye snapped wide. A raw, guttural sound caught in his throat, as if her question was a fresh branding iron searing his already tortured wounds. His visible hand clenched into a fist on the divan, knuckles stark white, his face contorting in a spasm of renewed agony.

“I have been cruel to you, Benzosia,” he choked out, the effort sending a violent tremor through his injured back, his breath catching. “I wanted to… to hurt you! To break you! Yes!” His voice rose to a ragged cry. “Extinguish that celestial spark? Your light… it tormented me, shamed me, reminded me of everything lost!” He clawed at the divan, a sob tearing free, raw and unrestrained. "But harm Asmodeus's child? Poison it? Never!" A ragged, hysterical laugh shook his ruined body.

"And what if the child wasn't Asmodeus's?" The question, a sliver of her darkest fear, hung in the sickly air, her chest growing tight with unspoken dread.

"What?, ..no...you believed… you dared to think the child could be mine?" Raw, desolate pain contorted Gadreel's face into a horrifying mask. "Fool! Blind fool!" He laughed again, the sound utterly devoid of humor, a rasp of pure, unadulterated agony that scraped Benzosia’s nerves raw. "I am rendered barren, Benzosia!" The word was venom spat from his lips, his gaze falling to his ravaged body, self-loathing stark and terrible in his bloodshot eyes. "No one who warms the King’s bed, no member of his inner circle, is allowed to conceive! It is forbidden! A safeguard against any challenge to his throne—only your womb, his Queen's, was meant for such an honor!."

“You were made barren?” Benzosia breathed, the words a horrified whisper. The implication slammed into her with the force of a battering ram – the sterility, the King's decree. 

“One more question.” It felt almost hopeless now, but she had to ask- had to know for certain. “Asmodeus. Is there anything left of the Seraphim he once was? Does any goodness remain within him, any light? Or is he… truly, utterly lost?”

A long, agonizing silence stretched, broken only by Gadreel’s ragged, liquid breathing, each inhale a shallow, painful struggle that seemed to tear at his lungs. His eyes closed as if her question was a final, unbearable torment, a scalpel twisting in an unhealable wound. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely a whisper, a sigh of surrendered hope so profound it felt like the death of stars.

“Lost?” He dragged his gaze, heavy with unspeakable memories and fresh despair, back to her. “He is the loss, Benzosia. He is the void where celestial light once burned so bright it rivaled the dawn."

Benzosia felt the air punched from her lungs, the simple, brutal statement a heavier weight than all the infernal heat pressing down on her, crushing her. A violent tremor shook him, his teeth chattering for a moment before he bit down, hard, suppressing a groan that threatened to tear him apart.

“You speak of an angel… I remember only… fragments… agonizing shards of what once was.” His eye closed again, pain etching deeper lines around it, a tear of blood and despair tracing a path through the grime on his cheek. “For centuries, I was his companion, his friend…” His fist clenched, nails digging into his palm. “His lover.”

The confession was a broken revelation. Gadreel’s words struck her not just with pity, but with a horrifying, cold understanding. His lover. Before her. Emptied, just as she was being emptied. This wasn't a new cruelty forged in Hell; it was a timeless hunger within Asmodeus, a pattern of consumption disguised as affection. The seraph she mourned hadn’t just been lost; perhaps he had never truly existed, only the potential for the void she now faced. 

“I was you, Benzosia, in all but crown and title, before your light ever graced this desolate realm.” His voice frayed, and he pressed a hand to his side where the crude stitches pulled taut with his ragged breathing, a spasm of agony contorting his features. “And like you, I foolishly bled my own essence into him, night after night, each time we made love was a desperate, futile attempt to anchor the Asmodeus I remembered, to preserve the last vestiges of the light I so adored within him…” His voice broke, thick with unshed tears of millennia and the choking bitterness of eons. “But he extinguished that light himself! Willingly!” A rattling cough escaped him, wet and horrifying, and for a moment, Benzosia thought he might choke on his own blood and despair right there. “Any lingering goodness, any shred of nobility, was bartered away for more power, for deeper damnation!”

A silent, horrified gasp escaped Benzosia; her carefully guarded, desperate hope for Asmodeus shattered into a million irreparable pieces, crumbling to dust with each of Gadreel's tortured words.

“The king who reigns now,” Gadreel continued, his voice a venomous, despairing whisper, “the one who allowed this”—he gestured weakly to his mangled, weeping body, his voice thick with a fresh, overwhelming wave of betrayal—“He is not capable of being saved because there is nothing left to save! He chose this throne, this power, this emptiness, over everything, over everyone!” He let out a shuddering breath, a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of all Hell’s damnation. "Your hope, your light, your love for him… it is a child’s prayer whispered into a roaring hurricane. A single candle against an eternal, self-willed midnight. It is nothing."

The words, raw and torn from a place of unimaginable suffering, struck with the force of a physical blow, each syllable a fresh spike through the heart. Too late. Nothing left. He chose damnation. The room spun, the heat suffocating, pressing the life from her. Gadreel’s pronouncements, no mere explanation but a testament of profound personal loss and unspeakable betrayal, erased every shred of hope she had forced herself to cling to all this desolate time.

“You sacrificed yourse because you loved him, didn’t you?.” And she could only pity him for that.

“Stifling… air…” Gadreel gasped, as he lurched towards the balcony doors, flinging them open with a desperate surge of force. A blast furnace heat roared in, thick with the guttural hum of the abyss below, scorching Benzosia’s skin, stealing her breath as if her lungs were being seared from within. Below, the infernal landscape pulsed with rivers of fire, casting grotesque, dancing shadows. Gadreel teetered on the edge, wild-eyed, his silhouette a broken line against the inferno.

Concern, an unwelcome sentiment, had her reach out, extending her hand to pull him back from the precipice. “You’ll fall.” Her voice was a choked whisper.

“And you would be the only one to care.” He grimaced, then laughed, a harsh, self-mocking sound that made her heart ache for this creature, broken beyond repair before her very eyes. He turned, pulling her into a fierce, bruising embrace as she instinctively stumbled forward, his arms surprisingly strong, reeking of blood, stale sweat, and the sweet, cloying wine.

“Forgive me, Benzosia,” he whispered brokenly against her hair, his breath hot and ragged. “For my cruelty, for wanting to wound your spirit… but never for the child. Never.” His grip tightened for a moment, a desperate, final plea for understanding.

“Unhand her!” Heavy, rapid footsteps. Basileus stood in the doorway, his face a mask of thunderous rage that felt utterly, chillingly false. "The queen is not yours to touch!" His voice cracked like a whip, sharp and venomous. He moved with predatory speed, his earlier solicitousness shed like a reptilian skin. His hand clamped around Gadreel’s throat, fingers digging cruelly into the already ravaged flesh.

“Basileus, Stop!” She clawed at Basileus’s arm when he didn’t instantly let go, but her fingers felt clumsy and numb, her strikes seeming useless. He ignored her completely, his eyes fixed on Gadreel’s terrified, contorted face with cold, near reptilian focus.

“You’re not worthy to even breathe her air,” he hissed, shoving Gadreel bodily towards the yawning, fiery maw of the balcony, the heat waves shimmering around them.

“Stop! What are you doing?!” Benzosia shrieked, lunging, but finding her legs heavy. Panic, raw and primal, warred with the insidious weakness spreading through her limbs like ice. “Let him go!”

“No,” Basileus scoffed, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts, his eyes gleaming with a terrifying, almost orgasmic excitement as he shoved Gadreel again onto the narrow, crumbling precipice.

“He’s already been punished!” She willed her body to press between them, but she was instantly sent stumbling back, desperately grabbing the searingly hot railing to keep from collapsing. Her vision blurred in the unbearable heat, the abyss rushing up, seeming to lick at her feet with tongues of fire. The wine… the numbness… Oh gods, the wine… it’s not just numbing… Her knees buckled. Not just any poison, but her poison, the one she’d measured for this very moment, now turning her own limbs to lead, her will to water. Basileus, her confidante in vengeance, had made her the victim of her own desperate gambit.

“As long as the Herald is alive, he remains a danger to you-” Basileus purred, turning his head slightly. The shift in his voice was pure ice down her spine, cutting through the wine’s subduing fog with horrifying clarity. His face, inches from hers, was transformed by a cruel, triumphant smile, his eyes blazing with undisguised malice and a chilling, profound amusement. He leaned closer, his breath a hot, unwelcome, fetid caress against her ear. “And here he stands—powerless, injured, and wingless.” He tapped his fingers rhythmically against his thigh, a grotesque parody of contemplation. “A much tidier alternative to decapitation, wouldn’t you agree, my Queen?”

“Basileus… this is… monstrous… it’s murder,” she whispered.

“Don’t be overly dramatic.” His smile widened, predatory and final, teeth glinting like fangs in the firelight. “It’s just… gravity.” With a final, brutal shove, he sent Gadreel tumbling backward into the roaring, fiery abyss.

"What have you done?" Benzosia demanded, whirling on Basileus, her heart raw with betrayal and fury.

“What you ordered me to do,” Basileus tilted his head, assessing her weakened state with cold, clinical eyes, and then he grinned, a slow, reptilian stretching of his lips. “I filled his cup, as you commanded. How could I have possibly foreseen such a tragic, unfortunate accident?”

“The wine…” Realization crashed down, a physical blow driving the air from her lungs, extinguishing the last spark of fight. Basileus had spiked both their wines with the drug she had provided him.

“Don’t worry.” Basileus waved a dismissive hand, stepping closer as she swayed, his eyes clinically assessing her rapid decline. “The official narrative will be quite straightforward. A disgraced Herald, tragically unstable after consuming too much wine, accidentally plummets to his fiery demise. My discretion, and that of the ever-so-loyal succubi,” he chuckled, a low, guttural sound that scraped against her raw nerves, “ensures no one discerns your... compassionate hand in his final moments. Your secret, as it were, is perfectly safe with me.”

A fresh wave of violent nausea roiled through her, the heat of shame and rage setting her soul ablaze, even as her legs gave way. He caught her with an insulting, almost contemptuous ease. “I trusted you.”

“I know.” His grip was firm, inescapable, his touch sending waves of revulsion through her, even as her consciousness frayed.

“Let’s get you back to your chamber.” His eyes swept over her, a cold, proprietary assessment. “We wouldn’t want his majesty to find you in this condition, would we?”

She drifted in a suffocating twilight, aware only of the humiliating strength of his arms carrying her, the disorienting movement through oppressive corridors, the feeling of utter, abject helplessness. She surfaced briefly again, a flicker of agonized consciousness, only when the familiar cool silk of her own bed met her burning, feverish skin. The familiar room felt vast, menacing, the light cast by unseen fire gleaming off the obsidian mirrors surrounding her marital bed.

Methodically, Basileus began to unlace her gown. His touch, feather-light, almost reverent against her burning skin, felt like the utmost, obscene violation. A chilling deliberation in his movements turned her stomach. Her eyelids fluttered weakly; she was trapped within her unresponsive body, a prisoner of poison and unspeakable betrayal, forced to endure the cool slide of his hands, the intimate removal of her garments, each touch a cold, calculated assertion of power over her utter, degrading helplessness. A silent scream built in her chest, a torrent of terror and rage with no escape.

Then, the atmosphere shifted so profoundly it cut through the densest layers of the toxic fog in her mind. A deep, penetrating coldness, sharp as obsidian shards, leeched the infernal heat from the air. A weight descended, an immense, familiar presence that seemed to inhale the very shadows, silencing the air itself, drawing all energy towards it.

Asmodeus. He materialized from the deepest darkness near the door, a figure of absolute, terrifying power and chilling, preternatural stillness, his presence an abyss drawing everything into itself.

Does he know? The thought drifted, hazy, through the remnants of her poisoned mind. He must. Oh, gods, he always knows. Asmodeus’s abyssal gaze swept the room, flickered over Basileus with less than a moment's acknowledgement—as one might dismiss a piece of furniture, an inconsequential speck—before landing, with crushing, inescapable weight, on her prone, vulnerable, naked form.

No grief for his Herald. No anger at the audacity of events. A horrifying thought crystallized as she met his unreadable gaze: He doesn't care. Gadreel was…expendable. Only that terrifyingly familiar, all-consuming possessiveness, now intensified to an unbearable degree, focused solely, intensely, on her. Her heart hammered against her ribs, each beat a frantic drum against the encroaching dread.

As Basileus finished his task, leaving her bare beneath the King’s unwavering, penetrating stare, Asmodeus moved towards the bed. The air crackled with unspoken intent. His hand, surprisingly, shockingly cool, cupped her chin, tilting her face towards him. The contact sent a confusing jolt through her – primal, abject fear warring with a deeply unwelcome and horrifying awareness of his overwhelming power. Her skin crawled where he touched her, the desperate urge to recoil suppressed by her own unresponsive body.

“My king.” Basileus bowed low, a perfect picture of deference, yet Benzosia, through slitted, heavy eyelids, caught the ghost of a triumphant, challenging smirk directed towards the King. “the Queen awaits your attention,” Basileus murmured, the words dripping like poisoned honey as he smoothly back towards the door, leaving her alone with the abyss made flesh.

“I don’t want..” Her tongue felt much too big,  rendering each word a struggle. Then, Asmodeus claimed her mouth. It wasn't a kiss; it was an invasion. A branding. A declaration of absolute, irrevocable ownership, searing itself onto her soul like a molten sigil. Cold, possessive, brutal – the absolute antithesis of warmth or affection. His lips moved against hers with demanding, bruising pressure, a raw, controlled violence that tasted of ancient power, cold starlight, and the ashes of millennia. It wasn’t a kiss of passion, but of consumption. With his mouth, he drew not just her stolen breath, but something more vital – a faint, desperate shimmer of her inner self was unraveling, her light siphoned into the chilling void of his being. It was a profound, hollowing drain, as if her very spirit was a vessel being emptied, her inherent brightness being consumed, leaving behind an echoing, bone-deep cold. Each touch, each breath he stole, leeched the light from her, leaving her not just empty but... erased, her essence a dwindling whisper in the face of his overwhelming void. He drank her gasp, consumed her rising terror, leaving her feeling stripped bare, marked, and utterly, terrifyingly hollowed out.

He kissed her through it all, heavy and deliberate, a silent, chilling promise of deeper possession, further intrusion, further draining. He offered no comfort, no acknowledgement of her incapacitated state, no flicker of any emotion save that terrifying, absolute claim. He simply took, as was his right.

His lips finally lifted, leaving hers feeling cold, bruised, ravaged, and terrifyingly empty. His abyssal eyes, fathomless pools of mirror black, stared down into hers, reflecting nothing but that horrifying, all-consuming void.

“Gadreel is gone.” His dark gaze seemed to pierce through flesh and bone, and linger on the resilient Light still burning within. “You belong only… to me.”

A beat of charged silence, heavy with unspoken threats and desires that promised further desolation.

"Nothing," he breathed, the word a cold, final, damning promise against her skin, "has changed."