“You’ve had sex with Orpheus.”

She felt her confidence crumble and turned her head down to look at her own stomach. Shit, I didn’t think she’d understand what they meant.

She quickly grabbed her dress to shove it over her body.

The woman mistook Reia’s body language of wanting to hide the wounds on her stomach because she rose to stand.

“Like I said, you don’t have to be ashamed.” She began to lift her dress, revealing her tied underwear, as well as her navel. Reia’s eyes widened at what she saw. “I’ve been in your shoes.”

There were five semi-moon scars on her stomach. Scars that mirrored the freshly healed wounds on her own lower belly.

“You...” Reia’s knees nearly crumbled in shock, revolution, disgust. “Your...”

She’s had sex with Orpheus. She’s...

She lowered her dress. “My name is Katerina.”

She’s the fucking woman!

She couldn’t believe this.

“He’s told me of you,” she blurted out.

Yeah, he’d told Reia of their story, but not her name nor the fact she was still alive!

Her lips turned into a cruel pout, her eyes crinkling with humour. “Of course, he has.”

“That was nearly two centuries ago!” She stumbled back a few steps. “How-how are you even still alive? You should be dead.”

Gesturing her hand towards the rest of the castle, she said, “Jabez has been keeping me alive with his magic. He’s handy when I need him. I kind of like him too. He’s a jerk, but he’s also quite pleasant to be around.” Then she shrugged, starting to pat and stroke the front of her dress to smooth it over her body and back into its proper place. “And I can’t possibly have sex with human men. He’s the only one who could even try to satisfy me, and even that sometimes isn’t always guaranteed.”

Questions. So many questions swirled around in her mind.

She’d wanted to talk to her from the moment Orpheus had told her about Katerina. To ask her why she had done what she did, why Orpheus couldn’t win her affections. Why Reia had ended up in his cabin instead, slowly, but surely beginning to care for him when this woman couldn’t.

“You lived with Orpheus for five years. If you wanted eternal life, why didn’t stay with him?”

“Stay with Orpheus?” she scoffed, folding her arms across her chest. “Because he’s a Duskwalker. He stole me from my home, made me live in a cave.”

Unable to help herself from leaping to his defence, Reia retorted, “But he built you a house.”

“Because he wanted to keep me compliant!” She stomped her foot, her arms folding tighter over her large chest. Her shout made Reia recoil. She didn’t seem angry with Reia, but angry with Orpheus and was venting her frustration. “He gave me whatever I wanted because it meant his own gain.

I was trapped in a damn house that was so small I could barely breathe, and I wasn’t going to go running through the Veil to escape like some idiot. I spent five years with that monster hoping for a way out.”

But he’s not a monster. She’d thought that too at first, but then he’d shown her how sweet he was. He wants to snuggle like a puppy with its master. How could anyone think of Orpheus as a monster after spending an extended period of time with him?

“You know how it feels,” she said beseechingly. “He changed our bodies for himself! Just so he could have sex with us, and we had to give it to him or else.”

She was making it sound like... like Orpheus had forced himself on her, but he’d never done that to Reia.

And I asked him to do this to me. Sure, she didn’t know what he would do, but she had wanted all of him, and he’d given it to her.

She’d never felt ashamed of it. Never regretted it. And a part of her enjoyed seeing his claw scars on her abdomen, the evidence that they were able to share moments of passion because of it.

“Did you tell him no?”

All Reia had needed to do was say that she was too tired, and his desire had turned into care. Instead, he’d curled around her to sleep, letting her rest in peace in his embrace throughout the night.

He hadn’t even tried to touch her intimately in the morning during the bath after she’d woken. He’d fed her, made she sure drank water, asked her if she was well, and had even apologised for being too much.

“Tell him no?” She threw her hands forward while laughing, like what Reia had asked was absurd. “Did you? I didn’t want to fucking die. All I have wanted is to live. Why would I do something so stupid? The last thing I wanted was to be fucking eaten by a damn horny Duskwalker.”

Reia’s lips curled into a smile. So that’s it. It wasn’t because Orpheus was a monster. It was because she couldn’t see past what he is to see him as anything else.

This woman, Katerina, had never voiced her wants, had never denied Orpheus, simply because she was too blind to

see he would have stopped touching if she had just simply said no.

Orpheus had accepted male offerings because he didn’t want to be alone. He wanted a companion, even if it was only a friend. He may have desired Reia, but it was her that initiated touch.

He was just trying to make her happy because he cared about her, and all she saw was a Duskwalker. Not the gentle, sweet, male creature that didn’t want to be alone.

Who was full of emotions and thought being intimate in any way was sharing themselves.

He’d told her he liked being connected to her because it made him feel they were closer to each other.

Katerina had thought Orpheus was just trying to make her compliant, giving her whatever she wanted just so he could obtain sexual release, when in reality he was doing it because he was wanted to satisfy her in any way he could.

She created her own nightmare.

Reia had met the Mavka who was a little stupid, and she could see Orpheus being like that with Katerina. Overtly curious and inquiring about her, discovering her in a way that might have appeared off-putting, but really had been inquisitive.

She could see it in her mind’s eye. This woman had just sat there and let Orpheus be his curious self and had allowed it. He’d never seen a pussy or had sex before. If she’d smacked his hand away and told him no, like Reia had done to the Mavka who had become surprised, Orpheus would have backed down like the Mavka had as well.

They were so similar. Both lonely, both tender in their own way. The Mavka had wanted to protect Reia just as much as Orpheus had when going through the Demon village.

In some ways, she couldn’t blame Katerina for what she’d done. She thought she was surviving, but she had never allowed herself to see Orpheus for who he really was. She

had wanted to see a mindless beast of a monster, and she’d made one.

“So, you escaped with a Demon instead?” Reia asked, unsure of why they were different to her.

He was just as much as a monster as Orpheus. Neither were human, and both would eat them within the blink of an eye.

“A Demon King,” she added in. “Who lives in a castle, not some hut in the woods.”

“But he eats humans too.”