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. 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.