Orpheus was lost to the chaos within.
His sweet memories of her that he’d never obtained from another offering was the only seam within him that wasn’t
allowing his hunger to win. If she had been like the others, he wouldn’t have tried to free her from her cocoon. He would have bitten into her before the arachnid Demon even had the chance to leash a whip around his throat.
She would have been trying to fight for the remaining parts of the corpse as Orpheus fell into hunger, eating while fighting for his meal.
But the fleeting memories of her smile, her eyes on him, and her trinket hanging above his bed, fought the gripping hands within his skull. The taste of her skin, her arousal, made his mouth salivate for that aroma just as much as blood. And her pretty voice saying his name, her laughter, and her moans of pleasure as she came, eased the tension in his muscles.
He hungered, but his want to protect soared when he found her about to be eaten by another.
“The human was in my territory,” she hissed, her lipless face contorting into fury as her mouth opened to reveal her own fangs. “I stay out of your home, Mavka.”
Orpheus backed up to be above Reia while the Demon began to walk backwards up the side of the tree so she could hang from above. It made her backwards body appear upright, and her black hair fell over her shoulders rather than from the top of her head.
“Do not touch!” he roared.
“Oh?” Her three sets of red eyes widened, before she began to give a wheezing snicker. “Is it one of your little playthings?” She crawled over the web-covered canopy above, staying just out of reach of him unless he jumped. He would have if it wasn’t for the fact he could land on top of Reia when he came back down. “How pitiful. How long will it be before you eat this one?”
Agony swirled around his heart as a light whine rattled the bottom of his lungs.
“No,” he demanded.
He did not want Reia to end up like the others.
“I can see how much you don’t want to,” she snickered, moving above him until he had to turn around to face her.
“It ran from you. It hates you.”
Orpheus growled in answer, his anger spiking, but it was tangled with sadness. She was right. Reia had run away from Orpheus, just like many others.
He’d felt this before, this cold taste of sadness. Orpheus becoming fond of a human only for it to leave because of its disgust in him. Is Reia the same? Would things end up as they did long ago?
“It left you, Mavka.” Her head twisted to look down towards Reia’s face. “I see its memories. It was always planning to leave you.” The Demon turned her grinning face back to Orpheus, its red eyes bowing with nasty humour.
“You will not be able to keep it.”
That swirl of sadness took charge, and he was filled with hopelessness like a constant ache in his heart that he’d held for eons. His vision turned to such a deep blue that it made everything appear darker and lonelier, like a veil had been laid over his face.
“It will end up like her.”
His sight turned down to Reia to find her green eyes were still tear-filled but wide as she stared up at him. Orpheus shuddered as he reached up to the top of his head to dig his claws in. It felt as though his skull was cracking under the pressure of his mind, the Demon reaching into his deepest uncertainties, doubts, and fears.
She will never want me.
Why was Orpheus bent on trying to find a companion, even a bride, when it always ended in tragedy? The humans, this human, would never grow fond of him. No matter what he did, what he tried, he would lose them one way or another.
“I sense your guilt.” The Demon’s voice turned softer.
There was almost a comforting, caring, hint to it, like she cared for Orpheus despite it being nothing more than a cruel
manipulation to get what she wanted. He knew this, but it was hard to ignore for it was the first time anything had truly spoken so kindly towards him. “You do not want to eat them. You do not want to harm them, but you cannot stop from spilling their blood.”
Faces began to flicker over the Demon’s, showing him each human he’d lost over the last hundred and eighty years, with an additional one filtering between each of them. That one face, repeating when the others didn’t, was to ensure he felt overwhelmed in loss, in pain.
Gone. All of them gone. All of them lost... because of him.
Dead because of his actions, because he brought them here. Gone.
“This human will be no different.” She pointed a claw at Reia. “Why bear the memory of you eating it?” Then she dared to come a little closer, her voice even gentler. “Give it to me. I will punish it for leaving you. I will take that guilt away so you may try again.”
Red flared in his vision, bright and as dangerous as ever.
“No!” he roared, making her flinch back.
She was trying to get into his head, trying to latch onto the tethers of his pain to have her meal. She was the Arachnid Demon of Sorrow.
Orpheus wouldn’t allow it!
He spun to Reia below him and slashed his claws. Her cocoon split apart, leaving only a few strands that he tore away carefully with his other hand.
“She is mine!” He jumped forward, away from Reia, to grab a hold of one of the dangling arms of the Demon.
They both fell with the spider on top of him before they rolled over the hammock. It bounced, followed by the vibrations that came from where Reia was as she moved now that she was free.
The Demon shrieked when he ripped his claws into the back of her human torso before she scuttled away from him on her eight legs. Purple blood oozed from her in heavy
drops as she sprinted forward with her claws bared to attack him.
