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These are hard to write. The third one here was the hardest. But it's also my favorite in this bunch.
Title: Angry Games We Play
Fandom: Black Jewels Trilogy
Characters: Lucivar Yaslana
Prompt: 043. Candle
Word Count: 610
Rating: PG-13 for general darkness
Summary: It's a new game.
Lucivar gritted his teeth and tried to shift to a more comfortable position, his wings cramped and aching, pinned beneath him as they were. The chains were too tight to allow that, though, and he twisted futilely, teeth bared with vicious frustration.
They’d purposefully left him lucid, undrugged. The room was empty except for the game bed, a small table, and a single lit candle, guttering slightly. There wasn’t even a window.
He waited. It was a new game, no doubt about it – but what? It occurred to him, as images of the exquisite agony they could write on his body whirled through his mind that it was this, the fear of anticipation, that they wanted him to feel. That they were manipulating him to feel.
He snarled, twisting his head and shoulders to the side, muscles straining until his bonds chafed painfully at his bare skin and he trembled from the strain of fighting chains he could not break. He fell still, his breathing harsh and loud in the oppressively complete silence.
His eyes drifted to the candle. It looked about to go out, but then it flared up again. The pool of hot wax at the base of the wick lapped against the ridges of the candle’s edge.
Lucivar began to count. One, two, three, four…he made it to ten, completely silent and motionless, before the witches got bored, as he had predicted. They announced their displeasure with the gut-tearing sensation of a knife twisting in his groin. He writhed, clenching his teeth so no sound could escape, not even a whimper.
His wild eyes caught the flame of the candle and fixed on it, staring at the wax, bulging slightly over the edge but not spilling over. He refused to blink, until his vision blurred and one flame became two, then four, then eight…quick panting breaths hissed between gritted teeth, his head swimming. The pain seemed endless.
He started to count again. Onetwothreefourfive eyes fixed on the growing puddle of wax and the single guttering flame nineteneleventwelve-
He reached thirty before he realized that the pain had stopped. He was curled on the bed, fists clenched, chest aching from the screams he’d held in. A single drop of wax breached the barrier of the edge of the burning candle, followed by a stream down the side. Reflexively, Lucivar tried to turn to take his weight off his wings, expecting to feel the painful chafe of the shackles on his wrists, but he met no resistance. He got up slowly, eyes searching the room before coming back to the broken chains on the bed, spreading his aching wings and rolling his cramped shoulders.
He prowled over to the candle and touched the string of hardening wax. A little pool of moonlight spilled through the window to surround the little flame, and he reached out to touch the little pinpoint of heat and light, feeling as though his mind and body were very far apart. His hand hovering above the candle, a jarring thought moved sluggishly through his mind.
Moonlight? There was no window…
He slammed back into his body screaming, his eyes snapping open. The wax hadn’t spilled yet, burgeoning within the confines of its prison. Even as the pain subsided, Lucivar’s body shuddered and trembled with leftover agony. He closed his eyes in weary disappointment.
Someone began to laugh, softly, cruelly. He half opened on eye, his fury an impotent knot in his belly, his wings aching beneath him, trapped, pinned, submissive. Lucivar barely caught a glimpse of the bitch’s face before she crossed to the candle and bent to it.
It guttered once and went out.
Title: Lover
Fandom: Black Jewels Trilogy
Characters: no one specific
Prompt: 083. Love
Word Count: 1,780
Rating: R
Warnings: rape and a death
Summary: "He told me he loved me." A broken witch tells a story about lies and truth, and pain.
He told me he loved me.
He said he loved me when we met, and I believed him then because I was young and naïve and alone. Loneliness lowers one’s guard like nothing else. I lived on the fringes of the court. Dorothea had already begun her work, breeding fear of the Black Widows. My kin were dying, one by one. I didn’t know it then, though, newly made a full Black Widow, I was floating, and couldn’t be brought down by distant gossip.
He was young and handsome, with the darkened skin of the our Hayllian race, dark hair framing fine, prominent cheekbones in a handsome, fine-boned face. His eyes, golden and warm when he met my eyes and told me he loved me, captured my attention first, and second was his laugh. It was rich and low, and any woman shivered when he laughed, imagining that handsome, husky voice whispering to her at night. And he came to me. He didn’t shy from me as so many young men did, but came to me with a drink and started a conversation, and words flowed from me and I talked to him as I had talked to no man since girlhood. I never once felt that I bored him, only that his eyes were fixed on me, attentively listening to every word I said, nodding when he agreed, murmuring sympathy when appropriate. I’m afraid I told him my whole life story. I didn’t even learn his name until much later.
He told me he loved me when he came to my room at midnight, begging to be let in, saying that he’d been thrown out of his Court, that he needed somewhere to stay, just for the night. I believed him because I was lonely and my house was small and cold. I was the only Black Widow in the Court – the others had left, fled, and I didn’t know where. I had been born here, and I didn’t follow. No one spoke to me on the rare occasions I went to the court, and my webs were no comfort, with their messages of doom and destruction, of loss and a terrible ending of what was beginning.
His eyes that night were earnest and affectionate, pleading with me for a place to stay. I could not refuse him or his eyes, and I let him in, closing the door softly behind him. His feet hardly made a sound on the floor as he looked around, not commenting on the shabbiness of my small abode, not even commenting on the rolls of spidersilk on a shelf in the corner. The one time a male had come here to deliver a message, he had shied from those shelves as if they bore poison. I set up a bed on the fraying couch I owned and went to sleep, feeling him watching me as I went to my bedroom.
He came to me late the next night with a story of a chill and loneliness, asked if he could share my bedclothes – nothing more than that! He hastened to assure me. It was just that it was so cold in the living room, and he felt so alone, knowing that he couldn’t go back to the Court…it was only later I found out why they’d expelled him. But then, that night, his hands cold as he held my hand, eyes wide and hopeful, I couldn’t refuse him, couldn’t say no to the first offer I’d ever had to share my bed.
He slept there, and it took me a long time to fall asleep, and when I did I had restless dreams of tangled webs and shattered chalices. I woke in the morning with his arm around me, his body warm in its closeness, and I sprang away and fled, a startled deer to his hunter, even as my skin tingled with exhilarant longing.
He told me he loved me the next day when I offered that he stay with me. I offered that it might be boring – that my life wasn’t the luxurious and busy life of a Court he was doubtless accustomed to, but he kissed my hand and said that nothing would please him better, that right now he had no stomach for Court life, wished nothing but to live here…with me. I flushed and laughed, perhaps a bit nervously, and finished making him breakfast. He smiled at me all that day and the next few, touched my hand often, caressed my shoulder. It made me nervous, but it also excited me, a little – males had never had any interest in me. Not I; not the Black Widow.
He told me he loved me every night when he came to my room with a new story and asked to share my bed, cuddled close and held me to his body. I couldn’t say no, not when he whispered how he loved me and longed to be with me forever, if I would please, please, please only accept him. Always I laughed and refused, politely, my nervousness growing, but I could not refuse him my bed when he asked, and eventually he stopped asking.
He told me he loved me when he came to bed too late one night smelling of drink, pawed at me, demanded that I yield to him, begged that I let him have my body. “No one else will ever have you,” he hissed. “No one else will ever want you. Give yourself to me and you won’t die a virgin at least…”
I was angry, so angry. I threw him out and locked him outside. He pounded on the door for hours, screaming for me to let me in, that I didn’t know what I was missing, that I had to let him fuck me. I cowered in a corner, my hands over my ears, and tried not to hear. It took a long time, but he left. The next day was lonely in my house by myself, but in a strange way I felt relief, even with the knot in the pit of my stomach, wondering. I went to town late in the day to eat, and when I came back, he was there again. This time, he didn’t ask to be let in.
He told me he loved me as he held my wrists too tight and kissed me hard enough to bruise, his other hand roaming over my back and neck, pressing too hard, painfully. He said that I just needed to give him a chance, that he’d prove it, how much he loved me. I struggled and tried to scream, begged him to let me go. His tongue thrust into my mouth with ruthless fierceness, his breath foul. His hand moving to toy with one of my breasts, holding me so I could not pull away. I tried to kick him and he threw me down, beating at my head and face, holding my right hand so I couldn’t use the snake tooth beneath my ring nail, then twisting my wrist quickly and brutally so it snapped in a spasm of agonizing pain. My hand went limp, and I tried to push him away as he forced another kiss on me, gripping my one whole wrist and guiding it down to his groin so I could feel the hardness there. “I want you, bitch,” he snarled. “No one else ever will, so I’ll have you.” I tried to kick or squirm, but he dragged me to my feet by my broken wrist and I was too busy screaming to fight until he threw me down on the bed we had shared so often.
He swore he loved me as his hands worked frantically to undo my dress and finally simply tore it away from me. He promised that he loved me as he spread my legs with efficient ease, kicked free of his pants and bared himself. He drew me close and kissed me harshly, roughly as I sobbed with terror and pain, still trying to fight, his tongue violating my mouth once again as he plunged forward into my body.
My pelvic muscles locked and spasmed in sudden pain, and he moaned softly, withdrawing slightly before thrusting again and again, pounding my body, his hands squeezing my breasts too hard. My back arched involuntarily, struggling to get away, to fight –
I felt myself break. Something was torn away from me, somewhere between the screams, and suddenly the sense of loss was stronger, much stronger. I could feel tears streaming down my face as I tried to understand, groping for something I had lost, not knowing then what it was. His body stiffened and then went limp, and I vaguely understood that it was over, somewhere distant in the haze where I was still alive.
He told me he loved me as he kissed away my tears, too gently. He told me he loved me as he rolled off me and caressed my body gently, his voice soft and urgent, swearing that he loved me. My blood flowed and I felt dizzy, but it was not that that hurt most, but rather that empty, gaping place of something I had lost. I stared into the distance. He promised he loved me, that he would stay here forever. He drew me close and kissed me again, his tongue pressing greedily against my lips.
Blood washed the walls. Fury raged cold in me and I was hardly aware of killing him, driving the knife I kept for webs on the bedside table deep into his heart, feeling it pulse once with his last heartbeat before he sighed, blood flowing from his last wound, as red as my own.
I stumbled to the door and dragged myself outside, trying to reach the stream, needing to wash myself, scrub myself free of him. I didn’t make it half that far.
________________________________________
He will never tell me he loves me again. I thank the Darkness for that. I am, once again, on the fringes of the Court, but I am no longer dangerous. No longer a witch. I will never use Craft again. I shiver constantly, unable to stay warm, always too cold, even wrapped in layer upon layer. Some treated me with pity, others with caution, most with fear. I can look none of them in the eye. I think I see him sometimes, and I always turn and run from Hayllian young men with long dark hair and strong cheekbones. I am haunted by the feeling of my hand on the hilt of the knife, feeling the last pulse of his heart before he died.
Title: Gone Again
Fandom: Black Jewels Trilogy
Characters: Daemon Sadi, Tersa
Prompt: 062. Shadow.
Word Count: 972
Rating: PG to be safe
Summary: Tersa and Daemon have a chance to talk. Well, sort of.
Daemon sat on one side of the table, watching Tersa. She did not meet his eyes, tracing a triangle over and over on the table, over and over and over, the same triangle, as though tracing invisible lines only she could see. And perhaps she was, he thought with a pang of sorrow. Perhaps she did see lines invisible to him. Her world, after all, was hardly imaginable to him – one of shadows and shapes and blurs, one of madness.
He reached for her hands, caught them between his. “Don’t do that. You’ll make your fingers bleed,” he said softly, keeping his hold on her hands loose, nonthreatening. Nonetheless, she twitched, began to pull away, then looked at him. Her eyes widened slightly and her grasp tightened, then her vision clouded again and her hands were limp, uncaring, in his.
He released her hands, set them gently on the table, and drew back his own, knowing she didn’t want the pity he could feel in his face but unable to deny it. “How have you been, Tersa?”
She gave him a quick look, twisting her hands, toying with her fingers. “Fine, fine,” she murmured, despite the fact that her hair looked like a bird’s nest and she was little more than skin over bones – Daemon knew better than to try to make her eat. “Daemon –“ She paused, shook her head, and went back to tracing the triangle on the table. One side, the other, a third, then back again to repeat the same motion.
“Yes, Tersa?” he inquired, gently, keeping his voice soft and low, like coaxing a frightened dog or horse nearer. The comparison jarred him, made him flinch, but it was unavoidable.
“Be careful,” she burst out, looking up at him and stopping with her mysterious drawing.
Daemon tried not to laugh. It did no good to explain to Tersa why her warnings did not make sense, except to hurt her, and that he never wanted to do.
“All right. What should I be careful of?”
But, having given her cryptic warning, Tersa had gotten up and gone over to a nearby tree, stroking the bark, touching the branches almost lovingly. Daemon got up as well, slipped his hands into his trouser pockets, followed her.
“What does he say to you?” He asked her, not mocking.
“She,” Tersa corrected him, “Says that the waiting is nearly over, and the Prince must be patient.”
Daemon sighed, quietly. It was the same message she’d given him for months, and he knew it didn’t come from the trees. But Witch was not here, Witch had not been here, and he had begun to feel that Witch would never be here. “Yes, Tersa,” he said, though, patiently. “Would you like to go walking?”
She looked worried, and he quickly retracted the invitation. “Though if you would rather stay here…”
“I would.” She wandered back over to the table, past the table to the holly bushes, brushing her hands over the prickly leaves. Daemon winced, but didn’t try to draw her back, knowing that it would do no good, that she would just look at him and shake her head and vanish again, and he thought maybe he could convince her to stay, to eat something.
He sat down, watching her. “Tersa, if you like I can find you some new clothes.”
“Nothing wrong with these ones,” she said, almost petulantly, and Daemon closed his mouth again with a sigh. He’d known the answer, but he always asked anyway – it gave him a pang to see her shivering in rags while Dorothea was warm and dressed in Hayll’s finest.
“Daemon?” Tersa asked softly, just behind his right shoulder. He turned quickly to see her shy away, and held up both hands, showing himself weaponless.
“I’m sorry. You startled me. Yes, Tersa?”
She opened and closed her mouth, staring at him in something like consternation. Then she shook her head violently. “No, no, it isn’t time yet. I agree. Wait, wait, wait.” She turned and wandered off again. He almost caught for her arm, but realized quickly the stupidity of that and instead called her name gently.
“Tersa?”
She turned and looked again at him, seeming bewildered. “What is it, Daemon?”
“Will you stay here with me? I am lonely.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “I can stay…for a while,” she said, slowly. He stood up, offered a hand to her. She took it gently.
“I’m glad to have the honour of your company, Lady.”
She laughed, a ghostlike, misty sound less of mirth than of regret. “Lady.”
“You will always be a Lady,” he said firmly, “More than they ever will.”
She smiled at him and said no more, but released his hand and went to smell the flowers at the side of the walk. Daemon continued home with her by his side, waiting for her when she wanted to pause, humming softly to himself. When they reached the cottage, he turned to invite her in and found the path behind empty and deserted. “Tersa?” He called softly, but there was no answer.
She had gone again.
He went inside alone, prepared a plate of food, set a White shield on it, and laid it outside the door, ten feet away from the house before going back inside to prepare his own meal.
The next morning, the plate was clean, and the napkin had been folded neatly, painstakingly, into a square, writing in clumsy block letters reading “FOR DAEMON.” He opened the note and read it, his chest aching.
Thank you for the food and your kindness you are very good to me please be careful of yourself Tersa.
He half smiled, bitterly, and crumbled the paper, setting light to it with his thumb. The ashes drifted away on the wind, like snowflakes, or ghosts.
Title: Angry Games We Play
Fandom: Black Jewels Trilogy
Characters: Lucivar Yaslana
Prompt: 043. Candle
Word Count: 610
Rating: PG-13 for general darkness
Summary: It's a new game.
Lucivar gritted his teeth and tried to shift to a more comfortable position, his wings cramped and aching, pinned beneath him as they were. The chains were too tight to allow that, though, and he twisted futilely, teeth bared with vicious frustration.
They’d purposefully left him lucid, undrugged. The room was empty except for the game bed, a small table, and a single lit candle, guttering slightly. There wasn’t even a window.
He waited. It was a new game, no doubt about it – but what? It occurred to him, as images of the exquisite agony they could write on his body whirled through his mind that it was this, the fear of anticipation, that they wanted him to feel. That they were manipulating him to feel.
He snarled, twisting his head and shoulders to the side, muscles straining until his bonds chafed painfully at his bare skin and he trembled from the strain of fighting chains he could not break. He fell still, his breathing harsh and loud in the oppressively complete silence.
His eyes drifted to the candle. It looked about to go out, but then it flared up again. The pool of hot wax at the base of the wick lapped against the ridges of the candle’s edge.
Lucivar began to count. One, two, three, four…he made it to ten, completely silent and motionless, before the witches got bored, as he had predicted. They announced their displeasure with the gut-tearing sensation of a knife twisting in his groin. He writhed, clenching his teeth so no sound could escape, not even a whimper.
His wild eyes caught the flame of the candle and fixed on it, staring at the wax, bulging slightly over the edge but not spilling over. He refused to blink, until his vision blurred and one flame became two, then four, then eight…quick panting breaths hissed between gritted teeth, his head swimming. The pain seemed endless.
He started to count again. Onetwothreefourfive eyes fixed on the growing puddle of wax and the single guttering flame nineteneleventwelve-
He reached thirty before he realized that the pain had stopped. He was curled on the bed, fists clenched, chest aching from the screams he’d held in. A single drop of wax breached the barrier of the edge of the burning candle, followed by a stream down the side. Reflexively, Lucivar tried to turn to take his weight off his wings, expecting to feel the painful chafe of the shackles on his wrists, but he met no resistance. He got up slowly, eyes searching the room before coming back to the broken chains on the bed, spreading his aching wings and rolling his cramped shoulders.
He prowled over to the candle and touched the string of hardening wax. A little pool of moonlight spilled through the window to surround the little flame, and he reached out to touch the little pinpoint of heat and light, feeling as though his mind and body were very far apart. His hand hovering above the candle, a jarring thought moved sluggishly through his mind.
Moonlight? There was no window…
He slammed back into his body screaming, his eyes snapping open. The wax hadn’t spilled yet, burgeoning within the confines of its prison. Even as the pain subsided, Lucivar’s body shuddered and trembled with leftover agony. He closed his eyes in weary disappointment.
Someone began to laugh, softly, cruelly. He half opened on eye, his fury an impotent knot in his belly, his wings aching beneath him, trapped, pinned, submissive. Lucivar barely caught a glimpse of the bitch’s face before she crossed to the candle and bent to it.
It guttered once and went out.
Title: Lover
Fandom: Black Jewels Trilogy
Characters: no one specific
Prompt: 083. Love
Word Count: 1,780
Rating: R
Warnings: rape and a death
Summary: "He told me he loved me." A broken witch tells a story about lies and truth, and pain.
He told me he loved me.
He said he loved me when we met, and I believed him then because I was young and naïve and alone. Loneliness lowers one’s guard like nothing else. I lived on the fringes of the court. Dorothea had already begun her work, breeding fear of the Black Widows. My kin were dying, one by one. I didn’t know it then, though, newly made a full Black Widow, I was floating, and couldn’t be brought down by distant gossip.
He was young and handsome, with the darkened skin of the our Hayllian race, dark hair framing fine, prominent cheekbones in a handsome, fine-boned face. His eyes, golden and warm when he met my eyes and told me he loved me, captured my attention first, and second was his laugh. It was rich and low, and any woman shivered when he laughed, imagining that handsome, husky voice whispering to her at night. And he came to me. He didn’t shy from me as so many young men did, but came to me with a drink and started a conversation, and words flowed from me and I talked to him as I had talked to no man since girlhood. I never once felt that I bored him, only that his eyes were fixed on me, attentively listening to every word I said, nodding when he agreed, murmuring sympathy when appropriate. I’m afraid I told him my whole life story. I didn’t even learn his name until much later.
He told me he loved me when he came to my room at midnight, begging to be let in, saying that he’d been thrown out of his Court, that he needed somewhere to stay, just for the night. I believed him because I was lonely and my house was small and cold. I was the only Black Widow in the Court – the others had left, fled, and I didn’t know where. I had been born here, and I didn’t follow. No one spoke to me on the rare occasions I went to the court, and my webs were no comfort, with their messages of doom and destruction, of loss and a terrible ending of what was beginning.
His eyes that night were earnest and affectionate, pleading with me for a place to stay. I could not refuse him or his eyes, and I let him in, closing the door softly behind him. His feet hardly made a sound on the floor as he looked around, not commenting on the shabbiness of my small abode, not even commenting on the rolls of spidersilk on a shelf in the corner. The one time a male had come here to deliver a message, he had shied from those shelves as if they bore poison. I set up a bed on the fraying couch I owned and went to sleep, feeling him watching me as I went to my bedroom.
He came to me late the next night with a story of a chill and loneliness, asked if he could share my bedclothes – nothing more than that! He hastened to assure me. It was just that it was so cold in the living room, and he felt so alone, knowing that he couldn’t go back to the Court…it was only later I found out why they’d expelled him. But then, that night, his hands cold as he held my hand, eyes wide and hopeful, I couldn’t refuse him, couldn’t say no to the first offer I’d ever had to share my bed.
He slept there, and it took me a long time to fall asleep, and when I did I had restless dreams of tangled webs and shattered chalices. I woke in the morning with his arm around me, his body warm in its closeness, and I sprang away and fled, a startled deer to his hunter, even as my skin tingled with exhilarant longing.
He told me he loved me the next day when I offered that he stay with me. I offered that it might be boring – that my life wasn’t the luxurious and busy life of a Court he was doubtless accustomed to, but he kissed my hand and said that nothing would please him better, that right now he had no stomach for Court life, wished nothing but to live here…with me. I flushed and laughed, perhaps a bit nervously, and finished making him breakfast. He smiled at me all that day and the next few, touched my hand often, caressed my shoulder. It made me nervous, but it also excited me, a little – males had never had any interest in me. Not I; not the Black Widow.
He told me he loved me every night when he came to my room with a new story and asked to share my bed, cuddled close and held me to his body. I couldn’t say no, not when he whispered how he loved me and longed to be with me forever, if I would please, please, please only accept him. Always I laughed and refused, politely, my nervousness growing, but I could not refuse him my bed when he asked, and eventually he stopped asking.
He told me he loved me when he came to bed too late one night smelling of drink, pawed at me, demanded that I yield to him, begged that I let him have my body. “No one else will ever have you,” he hissed. “No one else will ever want you. Give yourself to me and you won’t die a virgin at least…”
I was angry, so angry. I threw him out and locked him outside. He pounded on the door for hours, screaming for me to let me in, that I didn’t know what I was missing, that I had to let him fuck me. I cowered in a corner, my hands over my ears, and tried not to hear. It took a long time, but he left. The next day was lonely in my house by myself, but in a strange way I felt relief, even with the knot in the pit of my stomach, wondering. I went to town late in the day to eat, and when I came back, he was there again. This time, he didn’t ask to be let in.
He told me he loved me as he held my wrists too tight and kissed me hard enough to bruise, his other hand roaming over my back and neck, pressing too hard, painfully. He said that I just needed to give him a chance, that he’d prove it, how much he loved me. I struggled and tried to scream, begged him to let me go. His tongue thrust into my mouth with ruthless fierceness, his breath foul. His hand moving to toy with one of my breasts, holding me so I could not pull away. I tried to kick him and he threw me down, beating at my head and face, holding my right hand so I couldn’t use the snake tooth beneath my ring nail, then twisting my wrist quickly and brutally so it snapped in a spasm of agonizing pain. My hand went limp, and I tried to push him away as he forced another kiss on me, gripping my one whole wrist and guiding it down to his groin so I could feel the hardness there. “I want you, bitch,” he snarled. “No one else ever will, so I’ll have you.” I tried to kick or squirm, but he dragged me to my feet by my broken wrist and I was too busy screaming to fight until he threw me down on the bed we had shared so often.
He swore he loved me as his hands worked frantically to undo my dress and finally simply tore it away from me. He promised that he loved me as he spread my legs with efficient ease, kicked free of his pants and bared himself. He drew me close and kissed me harshly, roughly as I sobbed with terror and pain, still trying to fight, his tongue violating my mouth once again as he plunged forward into my body.
My pelvic muscles locked and spasmed in sudden pain, and he moaned softly, withdrawing slightly before thrusting again and again, pounding my body, his hands squeezing my breasts too hard. My back arched involuntarily, struggling to get away, to fight –
I felt myself break. Something was torn away from me, somewhere between the screams, and suddenly the sense of loss was stronger, much stronger. I could feel tears streaming down my face as I tried to understand, groping for something I had lost, not knowing then what it was. His body stiffened and then went limp, and I vaguely understood that it was over, somewhere distant in the haze where I was still alive.
He told me he loved me as he kissed away my tears, too gently. He told me he loved me as he rolled off me and caressed my body gently, his voice soft and urgent, swearing that he loved me. My blood flowed and I felt dizzy, but it was not that that hurt most, but rather that empty, gaping place of something I had lost. I stared into the distance. He promised he loved me, that he would stay here forever. He drew me close and kissed me again, his tongue pressing greedily against my lips.
Blood washed the walls. Fury raged cold in me and I was hardly aware of killing him, driving the knife I kept for webs on the bedside table deep into his heart, feeling it pulse once with his last heartbeat before he sighed, blood flowing from his last wound, as red as my own.
I stumbled to the door and dragged myself outside, trying to reach the stream, needing to wash myself, scrub myself free of him. I didn’t make it half that far.
________________________________________
He will never tell me he loves me again. I thank the Darkness for that. I am, once again, on the fringes of the Court, but I am no longer dangerous. No longer a witch. I will never use Craft again. I shiver constantly, unable to stay warm, always too cold, even wrapped in layer upon layer. Some treated me with pity, others with caution, most with fear. I can look none of them in the eye. I think I see him sometimes, and I always turn and run from Hayllian young men with long dark hair and strong cheekbones. I am haunted by the feeling of my hand on the hilt of the knife, feeling the last pulse of his heart before he died.
Title: Gone Again
Fandom: Black Jewels Trilogy
Characters: Daemon Sadi, Tersa
Prompt: 062. Shadow.
Word Count: 972
Rating: PG to be safe
Summary: Tersa and Daemon have a chance to talk. Well, sort of.
Daemon sat on one side of the table, watching Tersa. She did not meet his eyes, tracing a triangle over and over on the table, over and over and over, the same triangle, as though tracing invisible lines only she could see. And perhaps she was, he thought with a pang of sorrow. Perhaps she did see lines invisible to him. Her world, after all, was hardly imaginable to him – one of shadows and shapes and blurs, one of madness.
He reached for her hands, caught them between his. “Don’t do that. You’ll make your fingers bleed,” he said softly, keeping his hold on her hands loose, nonthreatening. Nonetheless, she twitched, began to pull away, then looked at him. Her eyes widened slightly and her grasp tightened, then her vision clouded again and her hands were limp, uncaring, in his.
He released her hands, set them gently on the table, and drew back his own, knowing she didn’t want the pity he could feel in his face but unable to deny it. “How have you been, Tersa?”
She gave him a quick look, twisting her hands, toying with her fingers. “Fine, fine,” she murmured, despite the fact that her hair looked like a bird’s nest and she was little more than skin over bones – Daemon knew better than to try to make her eat. “Daemon –“ She paused, shook her head, and went back to tracing the triangle on the table. One side, the other, a third, then back again to repeat the same motion.
“Yes, Tersa?” he inquired, gently, keeping his voice soft and low, like coaxing a frightened dog or horse nearer. The comparison jarred him, made him flinch, but it was unavoidable.
“Be careful,” she burst out, looking up at him and stopping with her mysterious drawing.
Daemon tried not to laugh. It did no good to explain to Tersa why her warnings did not make sense, except to hurt her, and that he never wanted to do.
“All right. What should I be careful of?”
But, having given her cryptic warning, Tersa had gotten up and gone over to a nearby tree, stroking the bark, touching the branches almost lovingly. Daemon got up as well, slipped his hands into his trouser pockets, followed her.
“What does he say to you?” He asked her, not mocking.
“She,” Tersa corrected him, “Says that the waiting is nearly over, and the Prince must be patient.”
Daemon sighed, quietly. It was the same message she’d given him for months, and he knew it didn’t come from the trees. But Witch was not here, Witch had not been here, and he had begun to feel that Witch would never be here. “Yes, Tersa,” he said, though, patiently. “Would you like to go walking?”
She looked worried, and he quickly retracted the invitation. “Though if you would rather stay here…”
“I would.” She wandered back over to the table, past the table to the holly bushes, brushing her hands over the prickly leaves. Daemon winced, but didn’t try to draw her back, knowing that it would do no good, that she would just look at him and shake her head and vanish again, and he thought maybe he could convince her to stay, to eat something.
He sat down, watching her. “Tersa, if you like I can find you some new clothes.”
“Nothing wrong with these ones,” she said, almost petulantly, and Daemon closed his mouth again with a sigh. He’d known the answer, but he always asked anyway – it gave him a pang to see her shivering in rags while Dorothea was warm and dressed in Hayll’s finest.
“Daemon?” Tersa asked softly, just behind his right shoulder. He turned quickly to see her shy away, and held up both hands, showing himself weaponless.
“I’m sorry. You startled me. Yes, Tersa?”
She opened and closed her mouth, staring at him in something like consternation. Then she shook her head violently. “No, no, it isn’t time yet. I agree. Wait, wait, wait.” She turned and wandered off again. He almost caught for her arm, but realized quickly the stupidity of that and instead called her name gently.
“Tersa?”
She turned and looked again at him, seeming bewildered. “What is it, Daemon?”
“Will you stay here with me? I am lonely.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “I can stay…for a while,” she said, slowly. He stood up, offered a hand to her. She took it gently.
“I’m glad to have the honour of your company, Lady.”
She laughed, a ghostlike, misty sound less of mirth than of regret. “Lady.”
“You will always be a Lady,” he said firmly, “More than they ever will.”
She smiled at him and said no more, but released his hand and went to smell the flowers at the side of the walk. Daemon continued home with her by his side, waiting for her when she wanted to pause, humming softly to himself. When they reached the cottage, he turned to invite her in and found the path behind empty and deserted. “Tersa?” He called softly, but there was no answer.
She had gone again.
He went inside alone, prepared a plate of food, set a White shield on it, and laid it outside the door, ten feet away from the house before going back inside to prepare his own meal.
The next morning, the plate was clean, and the napkin had been folded neatly, painstakingly, into a square, writing in clumsy block letters reading “FOR DAEMON.” He opened the note and read it, his chest aching.
Thank you for the food and your kindness you are very good to me please be careful of yourself Tersa.
He half smiled, bitterly, and crumbled the paper, setting light to it with his thumb. The ashes drifted away on the wind, like snowflakes, or ghosts.
