MALAKOI
“In a kingdom where the king rewrites the word of God, desire between men is a death sentence.”
MALAKOI (μαλακοί) — the word scripture used to condemn men who desire men. In Solaire, it is spoken as a verdict. This book takes it back.
A warrior’s loyalty becomes treason
Valentin is the most disciplined warrior in Solaire — a kingdom where church and crown share one throat, and King Maximus rewrites the word of God to fit his appetites. Valentin’s path is set: marry the princess Eveline, serve, obey, survive.
Then the prince is carried home broken, barely alive — and Valentin is the one who refuses to let him die. Through candlelit chambers, chess games, forbidden books and a recovery no one believed possible, something begins between the warrior and Eirian, the gray-eyed prince who learned in the East that love is held between people, not between genders.
But in Solaire, what Valentin feels has a name. Malakoi. And the witch who saved the prince’s life knows exactly what Valentin is — and what her silence costs. Nothing is free.
A dark fantasy of forbidden desire, faith twisted into power, and a body that becomes the evidence against itself.
“No one is going to die. I feel the same.”
“Nothing is free, Valentin. And today you have nothing left to offer that I want.”
Régis Souto is a Brazilian-born, Toronto-based multimedia artist whose paintings, video work and writing form one continuous body of work: queerness, migration, and the body as territory. Malakoi was first published in Portuguese under the pen name Refer Libérico (Editora Viseu). The Deviant Throne is its definitive English edition.