The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 457: *Reaching Out*

Chapter 457: *Reaching Out*

Even with the sky visible, the light didn’t change.

Malzkael assumed it had something to do with her being able to look out the window and see that the birds looked virtually still, as did the city below them.

So this is what time compression is like...

Maybe night would come, but who knew how long it would take?

She found herself at that edge, staring down for subjective hours, unsure if she saw any shift in movement outside, even when she squinted at the distant tides.

"Are you alright?" Ferro’s voice didn’t startle her, but it did make her take a sharper breath.

"I’m not alright," she admitted.

"Anko’s asleep. Do you want to talk about it some more?" She turned, looking at Ferro’s big green eyes.

"What would be the point? I thought coming here might help me get my confidence back, but without this suit, I’m just as useless as ever." She felt her chest constrict as she held her hand to it. All her effort, and who knows how long in this dungeon, and the only thing she’d managed to do were a few small spells, a little healing, and a lot of work in the sigil core, trying to make up for her failings with Kiryu’s system.

Her Aiko memories, far from helping, only filled her with the knowledge of how far she’d fallen compared to them, even the Aikos who didn’t have magic at their beck and call.

"You’re not useless. Here, come sit," he proceeded to lower himself into a cross-legged position, leaning his back against the barrier.

Malz slumped next to him, careful of her wing.

"Are you sure this is really about fighting?" Ferro asked.

"What else could it be about?" she said into her arms, which rested atop her knees.

"I don’t know. I just think... maybe this has more to do with what happened, uh, up there..." There was only one place Ferro could mean.

"What? You mean my home breaking apart?" She didn’t want to say it, but something in her mind fell away, and her emotions flooded out. "Or how I might have caused it? I was supposed to be an Executioner. A warrior. And now I’m... I killed my home. No matter how fake it was... No matter what I hated about it... I didn’t want it to die."

Tears fell from Malz’s eyes. "And now I find out I’m some sort of copy of this woman who, stars Ferro, she helped make the world. Across lifetimes. What am I compared to that? Me. Malzkael, not Aiko. I was weak, and I paid for that weakness for years until I escaped. And the people I wanted to see more than anything else... Were they there? Did I end up killing them? I don’t even recognize myself in the mirror anymore. I’m just... broken. Ugly and scarred and..."

Her speech died as a sob killed her voice. She pushed her eyes into her knees and wept with ragged breaths. The moment Ferro touched her shoulder, she flinched away, but he drew her into a hug.

"You are one of the few people I would consider truly beautiful. And if the ones you fell in love with you can’t see that, then they don’t deserve you."

"You don’t have to lie to me," Malz croaked.

"Malz, look at me. I’m going to show you something I normally never show people willingly."

She pulled away and wiped her eyes, sniffing as Ferro touched the collar of his suit the way she taught him, turning his back to her.

"Wh-what am I looking for?" she asked.

"Scars," Ferro said. "You can use your hands if it helps."

Tentatively, Malz reached out, passing her fingers through Ferro’s fur. She felt him shudder at her touch, and her fingers found the raised lines of tissue that ran down his back, thin and yet thick, suggesting they ran deep. And as she felt along him horizontally, she found more. Spaced apart like...

"Clawmarks... what happened to you?"

Ferro turned a bit so he could see her face. "One night, we found a, um, cairn... in the Duat. I know it means something different up here, but they don’t just bury the dead down there. If a group can’t carry everything back, they also cover up those supplies. Mostly, it just spoils before anyone can get to it, but we found a few bottles of wine. It was... thick, I guess. Needed to be watered down, like getting wine from across the desert in Aaru."

He took in a breath. "The man I was owned by... his name was Lanoch. He drank a whole bottle without watering it down. And after that..." Ferro held his chest. Malz’s eyes widened as she guessed what happened. "... he took me. I didn’t realize what he’d done to me until the pain hit. It was unbearable, and he thought my screams meant..." Ferro shook his head, tears rising as he tried to banish the memory.

"You don’t have to continue," Malz said.

"No. I need to... I’ve never spoken to anyone about this. Not really. Afterwards, he told our healer to make sure the scars stayed. He said he wanted the world to see I was his. As if he hadn’t done enough to me already... I thought that... maybe if I scarred the rest of myself, he wouldn’t want me." He sniffed heavily.

"But I didn’t, because I feared that if I wasn’t... wantable... I’d be too useless to keep alive. Even training my magic, I’d never be as strong as I am with this," he gestured at his suit. "It’s a crutch, I know, but it’s also a tool. And... I guess my point is that scars heal. We’re both healing... and I know with time, you’ll find your way back to realizing you’re still beautiful, scars and all, because you’re alive. Because you aren’t like the people who used and broke you. Not even if you kill them. You are Malzkael Memoriam, and-"

Malz pushed herself forward, kissing Ferro on the lips. She felt, for the first time in ages, that there was someone she truly wanted to share herself with. This month or more in the desert and the tower had been hard, but if Ferro could believe in her, then she wanted to show him she believed in him too.

His shock gave way to returning her affections as she pressed herself against him, parting only to reach up and brush her collar, removing her suit.

Ferro blushed through his fur, his ears and eyes shy. "I, um, it’s been rare for me with... with a girl..." Not since before Lanoch bought him, now that he remembered.

"I can stop if you want," Malz offered, embarrassed at her thoughtless surge of desire. She blushed, looking down at her cock, which had gone so long without sexual arousal she was leaking copiously. She took a breath, looking at Ferro’s soft, cat-like member as she readied herself for rejection...

"I... don’t want to stop," Ferro said. He reached out, passing his hands along the many little scars on her body. All of them had the same story, but he looked at them as if he could feel her pain. "Do you mind taking the lead? I-I trust you, but we’ve never discussed what we like in, um, bed..."

Answering him without a word, Malz leaned in and kissed him once more, feeling a shock up and down her spine as his hands found her breasts. When they parted, she rubbed his cheek before guiding his head down and down.

She barely remembered Anko was hidden by the stairwell as she bit her finger, stifling her moans as Ferro took her into his mouth. The texture of his tongue, rough compared to Rainier or Cassiel, ripped through her nerves with lightning as her whole body quivered and shook and, within seconds, gushed her load into his mouth, her jewels rising with each long pump of seed into his muzzle.

When the sparks finally started to leave her eyes, she looked at Ferro with fluttering lashes. "That was amazing..." she looked down, finally finding him hard. "May I?"

Ferro blinked. "I can’t remember anyone ever doing that for me," he blushed again, but followed Malz’s lead as she leaned between his legs and took his cock with her mouth. She may have lacked Ferro’s skills, but she licked along his cock and between and under the soft barbs, which scraped her mouth with a texture she’d never imagine enjoying.

After almost two minutes, she could taste Ferro’s readiness, and she bobbed her head beneath his hand, faster and faster, her tongue tracing intricate shapes until he came in her mouth. As she showed him his own load, he lunged forward to kiss her, sharing the taste before she could swallow it by herself.

The slight musk of his seed blended with the salty raindrop taste of hers as she pressed her body against his, pushing him to the ground as her cock pushed between his cheeks. "May I take you?" she asked, giggling as his tail tickled one of her feet.

Raising a hand to Malz’s cheek, Ferro let the warmth of his palm sink into her before he said, "Yes, I would love that very much."