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"You may leave now."
There's a brief bit of silence, a second of hesitation, before the guards adorned with the white insignia of the Candescent Creed saluted her and left, closing the heavy door behind themselves. It was the briefest of silences, like an empty space between two strikes of the clock, but Yanessa hated it. She hated that her orders weren't carried out immediately. She hated that these soldiers dared to think, even for a moment, that they had the right to do anything but carry out her command.
Yanessa put a hand on her abdomen, thumb moving over the slight roundness of it. Soon, they'll stop doubting her. Just a little more.
She walked down the corridor and into Aetheon's chamber.
"Hello, my dear."
The chains rattled as the celestial yanked at them. But even though the chains were thin, looking more like jewelry than manacles, they held him. The Lloy steel, gathered and repurposed by Yanessa's ancestors at a great cost, held strong. She ran a finger over the links, as if in a caress.
"I'm sorry I haven't visited in the past weeks. You know how difficult things have been since your creator's…" she sighed, shaking her head. "And there's just so many vipers that need taking care of, even within our own house."
There were those who dared to request of her to take a husband. Who had spewed profanities about how it was essential for the leader of their house should establish a strong position as soon as possible and that was the easiest to achieve by an alliance with another one of Sundered Houses. Even her sibling, her own sibling, was talking behind Yanessa's back. Throwing around snide comments about how she was still unmarried, still without an heir while they have already taken care of prolonging their bloodline.
The creature jerked. Yanessa looked down, at her hand grasping tightly at the radiant skin of Aetheon's leg. Filament glowed under her nails as Vanessa took her hand back.
"Don't worry, my angel. I'll make sure they don't interfere with my plans," she soothed him, starting to untie her clothes. "I probably should leave the boy alive, though. The public loves a good, heartwarming story and I could always train him into a loyal dog. And our son could use a plaything to have, someone around his age. Don't you think?" She let her robes fall to the ground and stepped out of them, picking up only one thing that had been concealed in her sleeve. A shiver ran up her spine as her bare feet touched the stone floor.
Months ago, during the first attempt, she had Aetheon moved to be horizontal, lying on a slab of marble like an offering on the altar. Now, she climbed it, skin shining from Aetheon's radiance, sweat already forming on her brow from the divine heat. She straddled his thigh as well as she could, the brightness of him almost hurting her, the tattoos on her body feeling as if they were trying to pull her closer to him, as if the Filament yearned to go back to its source.
Halovars didn't need any other family to help them stay strong. And Yanessa didn't need a man standing by her side. She would take everything she wanted, everything her family needed. She would tear it from heavens with her own two hands.
She looked into the monster's eyes.
"The old gods are dead but people love to worship and abase themselves so much. It's only fair that we, the priestly house, lead them towards the new, bright future. It's only right that we show them their new divinity."
Yanessa wrapped both of her hands around the hilt of the dagger and plunged it into Aetheon's thigh.
The chains strained around her, light reflecting from the shiny metal, making the light touch every corner of the chamber. She could barely hear his screams with this muzzle he had on, but she felt him try to thrash against his bindings as Yanessa put all of her weight behind the push, trying to drive the blade deeper into the muscle.
"And you're helping me create this divinity, my dear Aetheon. What an honor I bestow on you. What a privilege to be chosen by the leader of the new religion."
The Filament seeped from the wound, trickling down, touching the naked skin of Yanessa's inner thigh. She bit on her lower lip.
It burned. It burned so much.
She whined, grip tight around the handle of the dagger. She had to take a deep breath before forcing herself to take one hand from the dagger and dragging her fingers through the thick, acidic liquid to gather some of it.
With a cry, Yanessa pushed her fingers, sticky with Filament, inside herself.
She had tried spells. She had tried rituals. She had tried ingesting the Filament, her tongue feeling like it was covered in blisters and food tasting like ash for a week after that attempt. It took embarrassingly long time to figure out that she ought to use it like this, taking the Filament into herself like she'd do with a man's seed, pushing the essence of the angel into herself during the time when her body was capable of conceiving a child.
(But one dosage wasn't enough. Yanessa knew that she had a child growing in her, glowed with satisfaction of finally breaking through one of the greatest obstacles in her plan. But then, about eight weeks in, she had lost that child.)
"Just a little more," she whispered, to no one in particular. "Just a few more times, until he gets strong enough."
She kept the dagger moving in Aetheon's wound to keep it open against his natural healing. Her body spasming, hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, Yanessa kept gathering more and more Filament, pushing it into herself. The pain slowly turned into euphoria in this strange way she was starting to get accustomed to. Her heartbeat quickened. When she looked up now, she didn't see a monster but a thing of cosmic beauty laying beneath her. She wanted to lower herself into him, press herself against Aetheon, until they became one. She wanted to whisper all of her sins into his skin. She wanted to recite prayers that appeared out of aether inside her head, words she had never learned in a language she didn't speak. She wanted to crawl on her knees to Aetheon's face, to kiss him and then weep from the embarrassment of how imperfect and weak was this expression of mortal love. To keep taking more and more of Aethon inside of her, until his radiance had burned every last dirty, human part of her…
Yanessa froze.
No. That's not what she wanted.
"Okay…" she gasped, her arms and thighs trembling as she moved to push herself up. Her skin burned. Her cheeks were itchy from rivulets of salt that were left on her skin after the tears evaporated. "Okay, this should be enough."
Yanessa clumsily climbed down from Aetheon, from the altar, her legs stiff and not offering much support. She quickly pulled on her clothes, searching for comfort in their weight, hoping that they'll make her feel less small and cold. With a sleeve of her robe, she wiped her face clean.
"Well, thank you, my angel," she smiled, straightening her back. "It's a shame that my visits always have to be so short but there's a lot of preparation still to be made," she folded her hands in front of her stomach. "I'm sure you want only the best for him too, don't you?"
Aetheon let out a low, gurgling sound that had the hair on the back of Yanessa's head stand up.
"Ah, that's right. I almost forgot."
Yanessa grabbed the hilt of the dagger and twisted it left and right as much as possible before pulling it out of Aetheon's leg.