Arthur
BLOOD.
“No.”
CONSUME.
“Go to sleep.”
DESIRE. WANT. NEED.
“Your vocabulary has increased.”
NEED HER.
“Rest.”
DESIRE HER.
I slapped a pillow over my face, screaming into the soft down. It was better than the alternative of hunting Reshina down in the corridors and consuming everything between her thighs right then and there, which was exactly what the Beast wanted me to do.
GO GET HER.
“It doesn’t work like that,” I seethed, tossing the red velvet pillow across the room.
“Hello?” her voice called from the stairs that led into my rooms. “Arthur?”
The Beast gave what sounded like a dark chuckle as Reshina peered around the stone archway. She had pinned her hair back into place, omitting the silver crown she usually wore, replaced with a twig of holly that grew in the hedge maze.
MINE.
Forcing a swallow and the Beast away from the front of my mind, I took a deep breath. I didn’t bother covering my bare chest, but slid my hands behind my head on the bed instead—out of reach of her and any sudden moves that might overcome my thoughts. “Have you come to kill me?”
She took my question as an invitation, slipping into the room on her heels—a melody across the stone floor. She wore the same purple gown ruffled at the waist with sleek lines along the bodice and black lace along the neckline.
“No,” she said with a grin.
I wiped my hands down my face in exasperation. “Then get out.”
“I simply wanted to return this.”
I heard the soft thunk of something landing on the bed.
When I sat up, she was already turning to leave. I was desperate to make her stay. “What did you think of it?” I picked up the book of poetry—the one she’d taken from my rooms that night she’d discovered them.
She waved a hand behind her as she turned to go. “You’ll see,” she called dismissively, her shoes sounding up the stairs quickly before I heard my door close behind her.
I flipped through the pages, curious at what she meant.
She’d added notes.
And her handwriting was…messy.
I laughed out loud to myself, flipping through the pages to discover her quick scrawl along the margins of some of the poems I’d left blank.
The sunlight dapples on frozen sheets.
And still my bed is empty of you.
The frost licks over tall grasses, iron fences,
blanketing every surface.
And still my bed is empty of you.
Must you go, my love?
Must you leave me in the coldest of seasons,
when all hope is lost,
and the loss of you might last a lifetime?
Oh, moonlit night when the stars cannot shine above us,
for the sky weeps in the absence of you—
in frozen tears shed softly
to the soft skin of my cheeks,
where your kiss once lay, I perish with the thought
that you will never return to me.
There in the margin she wrote,
A bit dramatic, really.
I laughed again, flipping to the next poem I’d never noted.
the ease of my fingers through
your dark curls
begs me to forgive
this endless want
inside me.
Her script tore across the bottom of the page.
Are these the “dark curls” I think he’s referring to?
I knew I loved her then.
One simple jest at a poem written in the language of love sealed any wonderings I’d had on my feelings towards the Ravenfae Goddess of Revelry.
Previously infatuated, quickly obsessed, I recognized that something more had grown within me.
And until I was dead, I’d be tormented with her presence, never resting, always filled with hunger for her.
With a smile that could not be doused, I laid back and read the notes of the woman who had captured my attention many years ago, and held the entirety of my cold heart in her warm hands.