And still, she rides it.
I grip the edge of the platform, pulse pounding.
The crowd watches, breathless. Waiting.
“Look at her!” I bellow, voice raw, wild. “She’s not just flesh—she’sfaith! This is what devotion looks like!”
Johnny cackles from the other side, twirling his blade like a conductor’s wand.
“She’s singing,” he grins. “Can’t you hear it?”
Her sobs turn to whimpers, to gasps, to trembling prayer.
Lux leans close, dragging the edge of a blade across her collarbone. “Bleed for them. Make it beautiful.”
Not deep. Just enough to draw red.
Johnny hums, climbing the other side of the platform and whispering into her ear, “How’s it feel, baby? Having your cunt peeled open for an audience?”
She sobs and leans forward. Lux catches her hair and yanks her head back.
“Don’t you fucking fall,” he snaps. “You stay on that blade like a good little shrine.”
The crowd moans. Some cheer. A masked woman starts crying and fingering herself against a post. A man in chains jerks himself raw while biting down on a hot coal.
“Look what you’re doing to them,” I whisper in the girl’s ear. “You’re making the whole world come.”
“Can I come?” she pleads, eyes wide, body trembling as her blood soaks the beam.
“Only when the gods do.”
I press my fingers between her thighs—slick with blood and arousal—and push two inside. She howls.
“You feel that?” I growl. “That’s your shame. That’s your prayer.”
Johnny’s behind her now, stroking himself over his pants, hips swaying like he’s dancing to a tune only he can hear. His head tilts, eyes wide and glossy, that unhinged grin stretching ear to ear. Blood streaks his cheeks like warpaint, and his chest rises with shallow, giddy breaths.
“This is so beautiful I could cry,” he whispers, voice thick with awe and madness—like he’s watching a sunrise made of sin.
“You’re fucking crying already,” Lux mutters.
“Nope,” Johnny giggles. “Just drooling.”
He spits in her hair and she moans.
I grip her hips, lifting her slightly, then slam her down again. The peak drives deeper and she screams again. Louder. Higher.
“You were made for this,” I tell her. “Made to bleed for something greater.”
She shakes. Her eyes roll.
“Please,” she whispers. “Please let me come.”
“Do it,” I say. “But know this—your pleasure belongs to the gods.”
She wails and shudders. Coming hard as blood drips down the beam in rivulets.
And then Johnny slams the hilt of his blade into the back of her head.
