The Vampire King's Toxic Consort (bxb)

Chapter 26 Don't Go

Dorian was not a complete stranger to pain.

Agony had come to him in many forms throughout his long, lonely life. The ones burned his heart when his father king favored Silvan over him when he was a vampling, and when he saw the sadness congealed at the bottom of his mother's beautiful black eyes. The despondent pain when he and his mother were forced to leave Emberton and live in exile like vagabonds. The longing pain when he fell in love. The soul-crushing pain when he watched his mother burn yet could do nothing while trapped in a human form, and when he watched Lucius sacrificed himself and couldn't save him. And the hopeless pain when he was betrayed by the man he loved.

Yet, he had never experienced so much physically inflicted pain that surged toward him like a tsunami with endless magnitude.

As an apostle vampire, he used to experience much less physical pain than a regular human, as even the major wounds that would have been deadly to humans often healed within hours, and minutes if he drank blood.

And now, the super virus had taken away that privilege. He was feeling everything as acute as a human, if not more. When those monks hammered the first silver spike into his palm, he screamed and screamed until his throat bled.

And that was just the beginning. They would command him to lower the realm he conjured over Eternia, and every time he cursed them or mocked them or spat on their face, they would nail in one more spike, and then another, and then another. He heard his bone crack, felt his muscles spasmed, and his every nerve fried in the hell of suffering.

He didn't want to scream, didn't want to give his tormentors the satisfaction, but it was too much.

And when that hunter named Dan chanted some archaic spell they probably found in some ancient vampire tombs to compel him to show his wings, he had no strength to resist it. But that was another doorway to a whole new level of torment.

His wings were directly connected to his soul, and as they pinned his wings to the wall with those longer spikes, the pain was not only coming from the outside but also from within him, as if his very existence was cracking, shattering.

On top of all of these, they whelmed him in the artificial sunlight twenty times stronger than the real sunlight, and though he didn't burn like other vampires due to the Elderly power that came with Azreal's feather, it still scorched him, draining anything left in his body.

He couldn't see clearly, and the priests and monks' chanting nauseated him. He couldn't think, and the only thing left in his brain was that he could not surrender.

The realm was the last thing standing before the complete destruction of Eternia.

Suddenly, the scorching artificial sunlight dimmed, and a blissful coolness encompassed him like the deepest seawater. It reminded him of that night on Lucius's birthday when they dived into the sea and shared their first real kiss as orcas danced around them.

It was such a beautiful but distant dream. Were he to die, he hoped that memory would be the last thought on his mind.

"Dorian..."

The clouded mind stirred. Who was calling him?

The voice...so familiar...so soft...so sad...

It was a voice he had been hearing in his dreams, so was he dreaming?

But then the soothing smell that he had longed and reminisced for many nights percolated the shroud of pain and woke a sliver of clarity. A pair of warm hands cupped his cheek. The touch was so gentle and tender, as if afraid of shattering him.

"Dorian, my love." A shaky but insistent voice called again, and Dorian finally gathered enough strength and lifted his eyelids.

Beautiful hazel eyes gazed upon him, swelling with woe and ineffable affection. The pretty, youthful countenance attempted to put on a tearful smile.