Lustborn

The morning after the demon touched her dreams, she didn't speak.

She washed her face in silence. Her fingers trembled when they touched her lips, as if still remembering a kiss that never happened—but left her breathless anyway. She looked at herself in the polished copper mirror and didn't recognize the girl staring back.

There was something new in her eyes. Something wild.

She tried to pray. Sat on the cold stone before the altar, candles flickering against the walls. The words wouldn't come. Her mind was thick with heat, fogged by last night's dream—if it was a dream at all. She had felt him too clearly. The smell of his skin. The way he said her name like it wasn't just a sound, but a hunger.

She thought of the way his mouth had pressed to her shoulder. The heat of his breath sliding down her spine.

And how she hadn't wanted it to stop.

No. She shook her head and stood too quickly, knocking the bowl of ash onto the floor. She left the chamber without cleaning it up.

That night, she tried not to sleep.

She braided her hair again and again until her fingers ached. She whispered psalms until her throat went dry. But when the lamps in the hall were extinguished and the moonlight spilled thin across her sheets, her eyelids betrayed her.

She fell into the dark.

And he was waiting.

Not in the mist this time. But in the room.

She opened her eyes and he was there, sitting at the foot of her bed. Not smoke. Not shadow. Flesh.

The demon.

He looked like a man carved out of dusk. Dark skin glowing faintly, like heat rising off smoldering coals. His hair was long and fell like ink. His eyes—those eyes—held no white, only deep silver with a center that swirled like a storm. He didn't smile. He just watched her.

"You're not dreaming," he said.

She pulled the blanket up to her chest. "You're not real."

His voice was low, quiet, but it shook the walls inside her. "I am more real than anything they've ever let you touch."

She wanted to scream. But nothing in her moved. Her body... it betrayed her again. Not with fear. With something else. That same burn under her skin. The ache she'd felt since childhood. The one no prayer could cure.

"What are you doing here?" she whispered.

He tilted his head. "I crossed because you called me."

"I didn't."

"You did." He leaned forward. "Last night, when your fingers slipped between your thighs and you moaned my name—"

"Stop."

"You invited me."

"I didn't mean to."

"But you meant it."

She hated how her body flushed. How her heart slammed against her ribs. How the wet heat gathered again between her legs, even as shame curled inside her.

He stood, slowly. Walked toward her like a storm held in a man's frame. Every step made her breath catch.

"I won't take what isn't freely given," he said. "But you should know—your fire is not a curse."

"It's lust," she whispered.

"It's power," he said. "And it's waking."

She swallowed hard. "What do you want from me?"

He knelt beside her bed. His eyes didn't leave hers. "I want you to stop pretending. You were not born wrong. You were born of something older than their gods. Something they fear."

She stared at him.

"You are Lustborn," he said.

The word cracked something inside her.

He reached for her wrist, slow, careful, as if afraid she might vanish. When his fingers touched her skin, it felt like lightning. But soft. Terrible. Beautiful.

Her breath hitched.

"Come with me," he said. "There is more than this temple. More than silence and shame. There is a world that needs you. A war that waits for you. And a throne meant only for the one who burns like you do."

She didn't speak. Didn't know how.

But her body leaned forward.

And that was enough.

He smiled.

Not cruelly. Not like a demon. Like a man who had waited lifetimes for her to say yes.

Then he faded.

Not into mist.

Not into dream.

He simply vanished.

But when she looked down, his handprint glowed faintly on her skin.

Still warm.

Still real.

She didn't sleep after that.

She sat by the window, watching the stars, heart beating fast.

And deep inside her… something had awakened.