However, she thought she’d feel different if she did. That she would no longer be in pain or be dying, but she could feel the life draining from her body.
With the last of her strength, she cupped the sides of his jaw.
She didn’t know what would happen now or if this had even worked. It may have been too late. Reia could still disappear from him. But she hoped that everything would
be alright, and if it wasn’t, she wanted him to know just how much she cared for him.
“I love you, Orpheus,” she said so softly even she barely heard it coming from her, but she looked directly at him, so he knew it was the truth.
His orbs turned bright pink, and once more tears welled in her eyes. He— before she could even finish her thought, she became dazed as her vision blurred heavily and her arms fell limply. He...
Blackness washed over her as she lost consciousness.
She gave me her soul.
There was a heat in his stomach that didn’t belong to him, but it felt remarkable as it was slowly started fluttering around his body to find a place to live.
Orpheus watched as Reia’s eyes rolled unnaturally into the back of her head as her eyelids slowly started shutting at the same time. Her hands fell from him, one slipping to the side to dangle while the other landed across her stomach.
The pink in his vision quickly turned to white when he heard her heartbeat stop, when her lungs quietened into utter stillness, when blood ceased flowing. She felt warm, but it was fading.
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.
