Hekate’s Bride

*Rune*

The water is soothing for most. For me, nothing can ever be soothing.

I watch her wade in the water and make a fool of herself. I despise her, but it goes farther than cutting her hair and poisoning me when we were children.

The feeling of hate is mutual, but a lot of other feelings are mutual. Feelings that will never come to fruition because of what I am and what she is.

All they fear, all they run from, all they fight against lives within me, breathes within me. An entity of darkness that I cannot control. A being of evil that I have become one with. Not by choice, of course.

She is our love. Our redemption. Our curse.

Bound by duty, bound by a curse. Of the Goddess’s making, I am not quite sure. I was born this way. With this evil living within me. I have kept it at bay for as long as I can, but the thinner the veil gets, the lesser hold I have over him.

For this same reason, I cannot have her. I’ll only kill her. Again.

Our eyes meet across the pool and my gut squeezes. The beast in me stirs, muttering the words I must never speak to her. *Mine.*

I turn away from her, even if it is the last thing I wish to do. Ginevra’s blue eyes are clouded with countless emotions, all of which scream pain and betrayal. She knows. It doesn’t matter that I will mate with her and make her my queen. It doesn’t matter that I pride her as my betrothed before the world.

She knows the truth.

That she will never have my heart or my affection. That though I warm her bed, I think of another while I do it. Ours is an arrangement of convenience and it is all it will be. I will fight to keep it that way if it means protecting her.

My Erasthai.

Astrid.

**********

*Astrid*

He’s here again.

There’s an odd feeling when he’s here. That heaviness in the air. That inky darkness that follows. The putrid stink of anger and pain that follows in his wake.

I feel his ancient eyes on me before I am even fully awake. My head hurts like hell and I can’t tell if I am seeing things or he’s really here. I’d bet on the latter though.

Perhaps, he has come to kill me like the rest.

My eyes crack open and I glance around my room, searching for it. Him.

I find him by my window, staring out of it. He almost looks normal-actually, I can’t say for sure. He is mostly shrouded in darkness. As usual.

“Princess,” he says, and though he is looking elsewhere, I feel his eyes on me, everywhere.

I feel fear, but it isn’t as numbing as the first time. Perhaps, it is because I am partly drunk.

“What do you want?” I ask, pushing back the covers and wincing when sudden pain shoots through my head, causing stars to explode behind my eyes. I shouldn’t have drank so much.

But then, it was just one glass.

I don’t even remember how I got back in my room. Hell. I don’t remember much of what happened after I gulped down that glass of whatever shit that was.

The Hekate moves and the darkness follows. He stops by the edge of my bed and I wonder if flicking the light switch will cleave through the darkness that surrounds him. “You,” he says, voice thundering in numerous layers.

His aura is monstrous and I am grateful that I am currently on the bed. Even yet, my shoulders hunch immediately and it is a struggle to not fall to his feet and grovel like some lowly servant.

But I am not a servant. I am a princess, and I bow to no one.

“Why? How are you even here? Shouldn’t you be beyond the veil?”

I can’t see him, but I know he just cocked his head to observe me. The movement is familiar. Too familiar.

“I am, yet I am not.”

“That doesn’t make much sense,” I mutter, rubbing at my temples.

Why am I not afraid, you might ask. Well, I know I’m dreaming.

How do I know I’m dreaming? I just know I am. You know, that point in your dream where you know it’s a dream but you want to keep going to see where it ends? Yeah. I’m having one of those.

I can’t be too sure though. I wouldn’t bet on the words of a drunk woman. Ps, I’m the drunk woman.

“I can be wherever I wish to be, whenever I wish to be. I cannot be bound unless I wish to.”

I snort, laying back down on my bed. “And yet, the Goddess has cursed you to the Void beyond.”

“You should not be here either.”

I close my eyes as my eyelids grow too heavy for me to lift them. “Tell me something I do not know.”

“There is a great deal of things you do not know about. Where shall I begin in telling you?”

I chuckle. His sense of humour is just as old as he is. “You’re not trying to kill me today. Why?”

“Different approaches yield different results, I suppose,” he murmurs.

“And what do you hope to achieve?”

He goes quiet for a moment. I do not hear the sound of him breathing or the the soft padding sound of foot against marble.

My eyes slant open and I jolt when I find him hovering over me, watching me with eyes that I cannot see. It doesn’t matter how hard I try to see past the shield of darkness. I just cannot make out his features.

“I wish to see your face,” I blurt without thinking.

He goes still and silent again, and just when I think he will not answer, he says, “But you already have.”

“But-”

“Sleep,” he says and a gust of wind blows in through my window in that second, causing me to pull up the covers, shivering. My eyelids droop and I could have sworn I felt fingers graze my cheek as my eyes closed.