Sera couldn’t breathe.
Her lips were parted. Her chest barely moved. Her body was limp in Lucien’s arms soaked in blood and s*x and something older than either of them had ever touched before.
Her skin glistened with sweat. Her thighs still sticky with what he’d done to her. Her hair stuck to her face in damp strands, and her mouth..oh her mouth…hung open like it had just whispered a secret the world couldn’t handle.
And at the center of it all
The healer stood
Her arms lifted high
Her voice thick with the weight of history
“(Exi, daemonium. Exi, malum. Exi, semen spurcum.)”
(Leave, demon. Leave, evil. Leave, unclean seed.)
Her feet were bare. Her robes dragging across the blood-slick stone. Gold ash painted across her cheeks like war paint, streaking down with sweat. And when she
