Was… Was I not supposed to eat it? This seemed wrong. He thought he would feel something, like a connection to her, the ability to feel her presence. All he felt was the fluttering warmth that he thought one might feel when they’d eaten a satisfying meal – even though he’d never experienced something like that.
She was dead. He knew she was dead, could see it, feel it, hear it, but he somehow thought it would spring her back to life. Like the dagger would disappear and she’d reach up to hug him. She is gone?
She can’t be gone. He didn’t want her to be.
“Reia?”
He tilted his head as he bumped his snout against her cheek, trying to stir her back to life.
Deep blue, deeper than he’d ever seen it, filled his vision, making everything he looked at a swallowing colour of sadness.
He removed his arm supporting her lower back so he could gingerly use a claw to move some of her hair covering her face. He was waiting for something, anything, a sign that said she would be okay. However, it felt hollowing to crouch here holding his lifeless female.
The moment he moved her hair, the skin on her cheek flaked like a piece of ash that was breaking apart. He darted his hand away, but another appeared above her brow, then the side of her jaw.
An acute whine shuddered his lungs when Reia began to disintegrate. Like ash, she was breaking apart, pieces of her skin curling before falling from her.
Faster and faster she broke apart before the comfortable weight of her became significantly lighter. She caved in around his arms, giving him nothing to hold.
He dug through the ash while fretting, claws cutting at stone, as the little grey flecks grew smaller as if she was turning to dust.
His orbs felt weighty as coldness trickled over his skull, but he didn’t stop digging even when there was nothing left.
“Reia? Reia!”
Where is she? Where did she go?
“That was strange,” Jabez chuckled. “But it looks as if she is gone, Mavka. No little human for you.”
He started to clap, applauding the show Orpheus was giving him as Orpheus panicked, darting his head around to look for her. She can’t be gone. She can’t be dead.
She gave him her soul. She is meant to eternally be with me, safe. That was what the Witch Owl told him. She said that if he wanted to be content with a human, they would need to give him their soul and he would take it to keep, to protect, to hold for them.
She didn’t tell him to eat it, only that he would know what to do with it when he saw it. Orpheus had felt an uncontrollable desire to eat it, consume it, have it within him.
Reia’s soul was his to keep.
The sweet cloaking aroma was finally gone, but he didn’t feel an urge of hunger at Katerina’s body and the smell of blood that was coming off her. There was lots of it, enough to put any Mavka into a frenzy, but all he felt, all he thought about, was finding Reia.
But she disappeared. Vanished in front of him. Did she go somewhere?
Did the Demon King have her?
Orpheus growled as he lifted his gaze to him. He was a threat. He had harmed Reia, and the idea that he might actually be harbouring her somewhere filled him with rage.
He was filled with powerful magic, maybe he had stolen her once more by tricking him into thinking she’d crumbled apart.
Lunging, he ran through the bubble shield and dived for Jabez. His eyes widened and Orpheus managed to slice his claws across his face before he disappeared when he tried to grab him.
By the time he was materialising, Orpheus was already moving. His desperation, his determination, made him quicker. The adrenaline felt like acid moving through his veins, pumping his muscles with cold burning.
“Give her to me!”
Jabez hissed at him when Orpheus tackled him while snapping his jaws to chomp into his head. The Demon King had to dodge his head to the left and then right, so he wasn’t bitten before fading.
“I don’t have her, Mavka.”
Orpheus wasn’t listening.
For centuries, this creature had been teasing and tormenting him, using any means to make Orpheus suffer. To fight him, to try to destroy his home when the charms had broken, to steal Katerina and then many of his offerings. Orpheus had known he’d kill them before he could make it to the castle, and the only reason he’d hoped he hadn’t done the same to Reia was because he’d left behind the amulet this time.
Orpheus was like a rabid, crazed, animal as he sprinted across the throne room with such speed it had Jabez on the back foot. He was growing angrier, Orpheus’ constant attacking – and injuring him – irritating him.