A/N: This week sucked the life out of me I'm so happy it's over... I hope you enjoy this chapter, love you guys.
Warnings: Okay this one is a bit dark, so unwanted pregnancy and um how can I put this, post-pregnancy abortion... infant deletus if you will. MNDI
Bughuul x OC l Bughuul's POV
My world, eternal, endless, unchanging, cracked. Demons do not procreate, we replicate, we corrupt.
But for some reason we had. She called it a sacrilege; I called it a curse. One night, she pressed the edge of a dagger to her belly. The moon outside our window bled silver across her skin, and for a moment I didn’t recognize her. She was so different, she wasn’t the terrorizing queen of my realm, She became a prisoner. “It grows inside me like a vine,” she hissed. “Twisting my ribs apart. I hate it.” I said nothing. I watched her stand naked before the mirror, her silhouette sharpened by pregnancy. She didn’t touch her stomach the way humans do. No cradling, no awe. Only disgust and loathing. She smoked like she was trying to burn it from the inside out, drank wine until her lips turned black and her eyes went glassy with hate. And I, Bughuul, eater of innocence, who has known centuries of silence and screams, could only watch her self-destruct from the sidelines.
The child had not come from our passion, it had come from weakness. A moment where softness got past our lovemaking. A thing that fed on the edges of our cruelty and tried to reshape it. It did not belong to us, and it was certainly not ours.
As the months passed, her body twisted. She clawed at her skin, bruised her thighs, screamed into the pillows as her dreams filled with lullabies sung backward. “It has my eyes,” she wept. “But not my soul.” I tried to kiss the pain away, but she did not want affection, I wanted to release her. I wanted my queen back.
We didn’t nest, didn’t name it, didn’t prepare anything but a coffin. She whispered to me at night telling me stories of women who drowned their infants in rivers, of witches who birthed fire and choked on the smoke, and I would hold her after the stories ended, not tenderly, but with reverence. Because I knew she wasn’t broken. She was defiant, ready to challenge God. How dare he punish her. The labor came in violent waves, she screamed like a banshee, her fingers dug into my skin and split it. And when the child emerged, it did not cry, it simply breathed. Like it had been waiting; like it knew. Its eyes, too awake. Its smile, too human. “It is not mine,” she said with disgust, “And It's not yours either.” She was right, this child was not our legacy, it was our undoing. A coil of fate that had wrapped around our necks and promised to one day choke the fire out of us. So I took it in my arms, and for a moment, I hesitated. It blinked at me, curious and soft. It's little arm reached for me then for her. Sensing my doubts, Ishtar spoke. “Do it. Consume it.” So I opened my mouth, I swallowed the soul whole before its heart ever beat its tenth beat. It tasted like milk, blood and parental betrayal.
“We almost lost ourselves,” she said. I nodded. We almost became something lesser, almost let something else redefine us: make us human. Her body slackened against mine, eyes heavy with relief. We burned the coffin; didn’t speak of it after. We returned to ourselves slowly. Me drinking children’s soul, her relishing in men’s fears again, dancing in candlelit ruins, fucking under blood-red skies.
We hunt again. We haunt again.
The realm pulsed differently now. Hungrier. Ishtar walked through it, hips swaying to the rhythm of torment. I watched her from the shadows, arms crossed. She was art. My finest masterpiece and the way she had blossomed since I devoured what fate tried to force on us; it was intoxicating. There was no softness now. No chains of motherhood around her slender, pale neck, no warmth where it didn’t belong. Just her: my Ishtar, temptress of mortals, empress of my realm.
Once, in the dead hush between hunts, we lied tangled in shadows, breathless and bare, eyes reflecting flickers of flame and undying love. “Do you ever regret it?” she asked.“The ...child?” I pressed my mouth to her shoulder, grazing her old scars. “No,” I whispered.“It would’ve ruined you.” “And you?” “I would have loathed it.” I lied She turned to me then, her voice cracked with tired laughter. “We’re not meant to create life, are we?” “No. We destroy it,” “Beautifully.” She added.
• Chapter I • Chapter II • Chapter III • Chapter IV • Chapter V • Chapter VI










