Crown Me Yours — Chapter 11

Chapter

Eleven

Elara

ale recoils as if I’ve slapped him.

He goes utterly still, his chest rising and falling in ragged, unevenV breaths. The lust that darkened his features moments ago drains, leaving behind a blank, hollow expression that chills me more than any snarl could.

I expect him to argue. I expect him to laugh it off, or perhaps to vanish into the trees and leave me with my wish ungranted.

But he does neither.

He simply stares at me.

His face begins to shift. Not magically—not yet—but emotionally. A flicker of incredulity gives way to a grim set of his mouth, which then

dissolves into something tired. Something ancient. His features seem to ripple in the gloom, unsettled, as if the creature beneath the skin is pacing the cage, unsure whether to rattle the bars or simply sit down.

My mouth pops with sudden dryness as I repeat, “I said I—”

“I heard just fine.” He runs a hand through his hair before he lets out a sound that lands somewhere between a scoff and a sigh. “Clearly, I am a fool for you. In a few weeks, you have managed to outmaneuver me more times than the entirety of humanity has in a millennium.” He shakes his head, looking down at his boots. “Very well. Let us be done with it. It

should be quick.”

He steps back.

Then, he steps out.

He moves into the pool of silver moonlight, bony toes barely touching the ground before his entire form distorts. His velvet coat loosens into black linen. Threads unfurl from his sleeves. His shoulders broaden, not with muscle alone but with presence, as if the space around him is being forced

to make room.

Then the illusion tears.

It stretches upward, growing until alabaster bone and pale-gray skin blot out the stars. Shadows wrap around him, forming a cloak that seems woven from the night itself.

My heart stammers a frantic rhythm against my ribs. His face… The left side is stark, white bone—an eye socket of hollow darkness, half a nasal cavity, the jawbone laid bare, a polished curve of ivory ending in teeth, roots visible where gums should be. Behind them, the wet, dark muscle of his tongue moves as he breathes. A thick, ropy tendon, gray and glistening in the moonlight, stretches from the hinge of the bone jaw to the column of his neck, holding the nightmare together with a taut, biological precariousness that makes my stomach turn and my fingers itch to touch.

I squeeze my eyes shut for a heartbeat, forcing air into my lungs. It’s

just bone. Flesh. Skin. Organs.

It’s just a corpse.

When I open my eyes again, the terror has receded, leaving behind a trembling, fragile awe. His jagged skull fuses seamlessly into the pale face of the man on the right, though his eye on that side is a dark pit, half-hidden by a black strand of hair, holding a sort of…sorrow?

“Is this what you wanted? What you wasted your wish on?” His voice is different—a rumble like millstones roughing together that vibrates all the

way into my spine. “Are you…satisfied?”

My mouth snaps shut on a gulp.

Satisfied? Not nearly.

I step closer to him, toward a god stripped of all pretense, something ancient laid bare to its mesmerizing truth. Is his pale blue skin cold to the touch? Freezing like the grave?

Death’s head turns a fraction, tracking my movement. “You are

trembling.”

“I am.”

But that doesn’t keep me from lifting my arm. Slowly. Deliberately.

I reach for where his hand hangs at his side, half-hidden by the night- cloak. It’s easily twice the size of my own. Two fingers are long, elegant, sheathed in pale skin. Three are stripped clean, nothing but articulated ivory, bright and polished, clicking softly against one another as he shifts.

A moment of breathless hesitation.

Then I press my fingertips against a transition point—where gray flesh gives way to the stark white bone of his knuckles—expecting the bite of

winter, the numbing chill of a tomb.

Instead, a shock of heat burns my skin.

I gasp, snatching my hand back.

As does he, more violently so, jerking the limb away with a hiss that scrapes through the exposed teeth of his skeletal jaw. The movement is so sharp the wind from it buffers my face, and he cradles the touched hand against his chest, the black pits of his eyes locking on me.

“No mortal has ever touched Death like this.” His growl trembles like a caving mine deep underground, yet it can’t scrape the hint of surprise from his tone. “You asked to see. Now you saw.”

“I asked to explore.” I take a step back into his space, tilting my head until my neck aches to look up at the nightmare towering over me. “You can’t explore a map that’s folded shut, now can you?” I lift my hand to his again, ignoring the tremor in my fingers. “Exploring requires touch.”

When my thumb finds his warm, bony finger, the heat jolts me again— less startling now, more…fascinating. It’s warmth that can’t belong to a corpse, warmth that suggests the presence of life rather than absence.

Death shudders.

Probably from how I slide my fingers up, tracing the line where tendon bands into muscle along his arm. Where pale skin clings smooth as parchment stretched over strength, higher into his sleeve, until— Gods, he’s tall.

I strain upward, my boots sinking into the muck as I stretch onto my tiptoes. It’s futile, my hand hovering mid-neck on a creature that scrapes the lower branches of the oak.

“Kneel.” The word hangs in the cold air, sharp and absolute. “Please…”

Death does nothing. He simply looms, perhaps hoping the logistics of his enormity will force me to abandon this madness. Never… “You granted me exploration,” I remind him, my voice steady despite my own audacity souring my tongue. “So, unless you plan on lifting me up”—I glance meaningfully at the hand that could easily crush my waist —“you need to come down.”

A low, grating sound vibrates from his chest. It might be a growl. It might be the clicking of his rib cage shifting beneath the linen.

He holds my gaze for one long, agonizing second. Then, slowly, terrifyingly, the god descends.

It’s a collapse of gravity. One massive knee hits the earth with a thud that I feel in the soles of my boots, followed by the other. The ground shakes, dead leaves shuddering around us. His height cuts down, shadows spilling around him like pools of black ink, until his skull levels with mine.

Death’s face is inches from mine.

I step between the V of his spread knees, my boot rustling against his shadowy cloak, a sound that seems deafening in the vacuum of silence.

Trembling, I raise my hands.

He flinches as I cup his face, his breath hitching, but he doesn’t pull away. My right hand finds the familiar: the high, sharp cheekbone of Vale, the smooth, pale skin that feels fever-hot against my palm. My thumb brushes the corner of his brow.

I search the black hollows of his eyes, the shadows that seem to writhe there. “Can you see me?”

“I see everything,” he rumbles, the vibration traveling through his jaw and into my palms. “I see the blood pumping in your veins. I see the fluttering in your throat. I see the bright radiance of your life.”

I slide my fingers to the bridge of his nose, over the ridge where the skin tears from the cavity, and onto the polished ivory of his skeletal cheek.

Despite the indignity of a mortal petting his exposed structure like a lapdog, he doesn’t pull away.

Instead, a long, ragged exhalation leaves his chest as his skull leans into my touch, all but nuzzling against the warmth of my hand with a desperation that makes something inside my chest clench. It’s the reaction of a creature that longed for touch for a long, long time. Eons.

The intimacy of it intoxicates me. It floods my veins, dousing the fear until I slide my thumbs inward, tracing the line of his naked gums, my thumb hovering over the exposed roots of his teeth. What would it feel like to kiss Death? To press my mouth to something that is half lips, half bone?

The gravity of that question pulls me deeper into the heavy space between us. My body leans in, abandoning disgust for the dark pull of the unknown. His head tilts, the movement disjointed and eerie, the black pits of his eyes lowering to focus on my mouth. He leans closer, the distance shrinking until his breath ghosts over my lips.

We are so close that I should be choking on the stench of the grave. I brace for it, for the cloying sweetness of rot or the metallic tang of blood, but…there is nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Because he’s no corpse.

That realization makes my hands drift from his jaw, sliding down the column of his neck to the heavy, smoke-like darkness resting on his

shoulders.

I grip the edge of the shadow-cloak.

He stiffens, his breath hitching audibly in the quiet wood. “Elara…”

“No, I want to see.” Slowly, deliberately, I peel the darkness back.

“Everything. All of you.”

His hand rises, hovering over mine as if to stop me, his skeletal fingers trembling. “There is no beauty to be found, Elara.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

The fabric—if it even is fabric—slides away like fog, pooling at his elbows, leaving his torso bare to the moonlight.

I hear my small intake of breath.

Not of horror. Of fascination.

On the right, he’s all man—a sculpture of pale, smooth skin and slabs of hard muscle, a pectoral clearly defined, rippling as he shifts in discomfort.

But as my eyes travel inward, the illusion dissolves.

The sternum is a borderland.

To the left, the flesh simply…gives up. It sloughs away to reveal the gleaming white arcs of his ribs, an ivory cage entirely exposed to the night air. There’s no skin to hide the mechanics of him here, only the raw, biological reality. Gray, fibrous muscles weave between the slats of bone, anchoring the skeleton to the man, pulling taut and quivering with every ragged breath he takes.

“Do you feel this?” I whisper, tracing the jagged landscape of his stomach where smooth skin fights for dominance over exposed sinew.

Death looks down at himself, at the abs on his stomach clenching harder

the lower his cloak slips. “Yes…”

The lower I go, the faster he breathes.

My fingers hook into the waist of the shadow cloth, giving a tug until— Bone clamps around my wrist.

“No,” he grinds out, the word fracturing in his throat as he holds me there, suspended inches from…from what?

I look from his desperate, skeletal grip to the fabric straining beneath my trapped hand. Even through the heavy material, I can see the outline.

The rigid, unforgiving ridge that betrays him.

“Guess you were right when you said that Death is a man.” I don’t pull against his hold. Instead, I splay the fingers of my trapped hand, running my nails over the twitching thickness of him. “Can you father a child?”

“I—” His breath hitches, a jagged intake of air that sounds like a sheet ripping as his grip eases on my wrist. “I do not know.”

I take the opening. I grip the fabric and shove it down.

Shadows pool at his knees.

Moonlight claims the rest of him.

My breath catches. There’s no bone here. No rot. No horror. He’s entirely man where it matters, and…proportionate to his height. His cock is massive—thick and heavy, a pale, veined length that strains upward from a nest of dark hair. It pulses as the cold air hits it, twitching, hardening further, yet it is so incredibly heavy that it fails to stand fully upright, resting instead with a thick, bobbing weight against his abdomen.

Death looks at me, his chest heaving. He’s rigid under my scrutiny, his body a coiled spring of tension. Black hollows fixate on my face, waiting, watching for the curl of my lip, for the flinch of revulsion.

But the disgust never comes.

“I thought you’d be cold and…decaying.” My hand slides easily from the remnants of his grip as I struggle to wrap it around his length. He’s hot there. Hotter than the rest of him, pulsing with an impossible living existence. “You’re neither.”

My fingers curl, straining to encompass his full girth, but my tips don’t even meet on the other side. It’s an impossible task, trying to hold a god in a mortal hand. So I slide my hand down his length, past the straining root, and lean in closer, cupping the heavy, heat-drenched sack.

Death’s head lolls back against his shoulders, a low, guttural groan tearing from his throat. “Enough…”

“Only I get to decide when I’m done exploring.”

I fill my palm with him, dense and weighty, testing the heft of him as I gently lift. Death hisses, his skeletal jaw unhinging slightly as his hips buck forward, seeking the friction of my grip. He’s starving for this. Just like I

thought.

My eyes go to his throat.

Wed him. Bed him. Slit his throat. The words heat my blood, sharper than the strange desire uncurling in my belly.

I tighten my grip, sliding my hand back up the formidable column of him. The motion draws a broken, hissing gasp from his throat, his hips jerking instinctively to meet my palm.

“There was no need to hide this,” I murmur, my thumb circling the weeping head before dragging back down the vein-roped shaft. “Could’ve showed me sooner.”

My hand continues its slow, rhythmic work, stroking him from root to tip, and the effect is devastating. Every glide of my palm pulls a ragged, broken sound from the depths of his chest as our faces drift closer once more.

He tries to turn his away, the sharp angle of his jaw tense with desire.

“Don’t…”

“Why not?” I whisper, drifting closer until the tip of my nose brushes against the cartilage of his.

His groan warms the air between our mouths. “You have to stop.”

My lips brush the corner of his human mouth, soft and tentative. He jerks back, a sharp intake of breath, but I follow him. I trace the line of his lower lip until I meet teeth. We hover there, suspended in a terrible,

beautiful gravity. He wants this. Gods, he wants this so much that the heat radiating off him feels like a physical weight.

I squeeze him, hard, at the same moment I tilt my head. His resolve shatters. A low, anguished noise tears from his throat, and he surges forward

to bridge the gap.

Our mouths connect.

The right side of his mouth acts as Vale would—lips parting, warm and soft. But the left… The left is a threshold of hard, unyielding ivory. My tongue darts out, tasting the stark difference, sweeping against the

smoothness of his exposed teeth.

It should horrify me.

Instead, it maddens me.

The contrast of soft flesh and hard bone is tantalizing. I moan, the sound vibrating against his skull. My strokes slow, growing heavier, dragging the skin of his cock tight until he matches my rhythm with a desperate, bucking grace. I’m lost in it, the scent of carnation, the sensation of bone pressing against my own teeth as I— Death rips his mouth from mine, heaving. “Enough!”

It isn’t just a shout; it’s an ancient roar that silences the woods and arrests my heart mid-beat—his clenched teeth, those black pits of his eyes wide with something close to panic.

I could argue that I haven’t reached the end of my explorations yet, but what’s the point? Looking at the rigid tension in his frame, I’d be arguing with an earthquake. But that only gives me wiggle room, doesn’t it?

I slowly withdraw my hand, smoothing my skirts with a composure I don’t feel. “Fine,” I say, my voice steady despite the rapid hammering of my pulse. “I’ll consider myself done exploring, if…”

He exhales, a long, annoyed breath. “If…?”

“If you come to one of the orphanages with me.”

His skull tilts, incredulous. “You want to parade Death through a house of children?”

“I wouldn’t mind, but I’m sure the carriage would prefer your Vale costume,” I say. “Agree, and we’re done here.”

Death straightens his neck while shadows knit up along those knees still pressed into the ground, the fleshy side of his mouth thinning. “I will accompany you.”

Then he rises. It’s a sudden, soaring ascent, and yet I see it, the red flutter behind the white of his ribcage. His…heart?

“Wait!” I don’t think. Impulse overrides sanity, moving my arm before my mind can catch up to the horror of what I’m doing. I reach up. No, not

up.

Up and into.

My hand passes through the bottom of his ribcage, reaching into the warmth of his chest and straight for an organ that beats wildly against my palm.

Death goes absolutely still, looking down at me with shock-choked eyes. He doesn’t breathe, doesn’t move. He just watches, paralyzed by the intrusion.

“It’s…actually broken,” I whisper, my thumb brushing the scarred, uneven surface of the muscle.

“Destroyed,” he corrects, his voice a hollow shell of sound. “Hanging on by merely a hair of a thread of my last remaining heartstring. The second, I accidentally tore completely in my rage, while the third pulses in your crown.”

I narrow my eyes, squinting in the gloom. “That’s not what I’m seeing,”

I murmur, tracing the distinct artery. “The second string is shredded, alright.

But the first one…it seems intact. Strong, even.”

Death stares at me, and the black void of his eyes suddenly seems to… deepen? In a blur of motion, he clamps his hand around my wrist and yanks. He pulls my hand out of him, his chest heaving, looking at me with a strange, almost frantic expression that chills me more than any grave ever has.

“Is it… Is it true?” I ask carefully. “Can you really not feel love?”

He swallows. I watch the gray tendon in his throat work, a hard, painful movement. “I feel joy,” he says hoarsely. “I feel… some sadness. I feel blinding anger. And…lust.” His gaze drops to my mouth, darkening for a brief second. “I cannot feel love.”

A profound, aching sadness washes over me, heavier than it should.

“What kind of existence is that?” I ask softly. “To live without love?”

Death looks at me for a long moment. Then, his form begins to dissipate. He melts into the night, but the grating rasp of his voice echoes

through the clearing one last time.

“A sane one.”