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.
He teleported behind Orpheus to grab his horns so he could hold onto him, and he quickly spun his head around on his neck to face him over his back. Orpheus snapped his jaws around Jabez’s hand before it could reach him, gnawing through the muscles, tendons, and then the bones of his forearm.
Jabez yelled, yanking back to sever his own arm while Orpheus’ body was slowly turning around so he could claw at him.
He teleported next to his throne to escape.
“This is no longer entertaining,” Jabez bit while holding the stump of his arm, placing his palm against it to stem the bleeding. “Leave, Mavka. I don’t have your human.”
Orpheus shook his head, hearing a singular bell jingle, as he snarled and crawled closer.
“You stole her from me.”
His female, his human, his little doe that didn’t deserve to die the way she did.
He shouldn’t have had to witness her weakening heartbeat, her lungs wheezing on breaths. To feel her body growing cold with lifelessness. He knew he’d never get the memory of it out of his mind.
Within seconds, Jabez was on his back, slow from blood loss and pain. Orpheus tore into his chest before he managed to get his bare feet between them.
“Get the fuck out of my castle!” Jabez roared as he booted Orpheus off him.
Orpheus flew across the room, and through a small portal.
Landing against dirt that puffed into the air at the disturbance of his body, he rolled over it into thick grass.
The sun was fading, the Veil’s forest making it seem like night was settling in long before it was supposed to.
Swiftly turning to the portal so he could face Jabez once more, it was gone, and he drifted his gaze around to find himself in front of their home.
A curt whine ached his chest. Reia?
He walked towards the house on all fours, shoving himself through the doorway that was too narrow for his body in his monstrous form.
The air felt cold, the house empty without the candles lit yet. He pushed the living room chairs out of the way, trying to see if she was curled up in hers even though he could plainly see she wasn’t.
He walked into the kitchen, sniffing the ground, before knocking over the chair she usually sat on at the dining table to check under it, but she wasn’t there either.
Stepping down the hallway, the scents in the air told him they were old, that she wasn’t here, but he couldn’t stop himself from looking, from checking, thinking perhaps his nose was misleading him.
He opened her bedroom door and found the sheets empty.
He lifted the bed to check under it. The side table fell onto its side when he turned in the room so he could leave it.
Sniffing at the bottom of the door of his room, he clawed open the door, wanting to find her in his bed, but found nothing. Shoving his head under it, as if she might be hiding, he didn’t find her there either.
He also didn’t find her in the tub, a place where it was difficult to smell her if she was covered in water.
The garden? She wasn’t usually in the garden at this time of day, but he went there anyway, being careful not to damage the plants she would eat.
Orpheus circled their home, hoping she would appear, but she never did. He had no idea where she could be.
He sat, digging his claws into his back and chest when his insides felt as though they were squirming. The cold trickling sensation on his skull never ceased, and his body felt wrong. Nothing felt right. His heart felt as though it was going to burst on every pump, so filled with loss and pain. It ached so deeply. Every breath was a wheezing cry, and he gouged his claws over himself.
He felt lost.
I didn’t protect her. Orpheus had failed her. She was hurt because of me. Because of Katerina and for whatever Orpheus had done to her to make her hate him so much.
What did I do wrong? Why wasn’t Orpheus allowed to have Reia, to live, in Katerina’s mind?
He had wanted to make her as happy as she had made him.
Where is Reia? His feet started moving. He headed towards the forest, crossing the salt circle so he could check behind shrubs and trees, under large stones as if she could hide under them.
