The final chapter of this story, I hope it was enjoyable, if a little unusual.
Persephone
X
It seemed very poetic and yet not quite accurate to say that Charlotte had gone to bed a girl and woken up a woman, although it sure would've been a nice comforting thing to hold onto. Mostly she woke up sore and alarmed, wondering what kind of spectres had jumped into her skin last night and gone deciding crazy things would be a good idea.
She would've known without looking, but she just had to check that he was still there on the other side of her bed like it was their bed and no one else's. He seemed to be sleeping, or at some stage of rest in which he wasn't easily disturbed. She couldn't quite put the picture of him at peace, eyes closed, together with the memories and experiences of the night – or whatever it was – before. With an arm draped loosely over his body, he appeared as naked as, well, she was, not that she was going peeking under sheets to find out.
If she had been out of her depth when she arrived in this world, now she'd no hope of seeing the surface again. She'd completed the unholy, scared ritual. She'd given her virginity away to this man-demon-immortal who slept lazily on like it'd meant nothing. She was going to have to go home and live this life, strange and foreign as it seemed.
She was ready to move away, to roll out of the bed and go as far away as she could and sit in a corner for some days or weeks until she stopped feeling like this – or got used to it – when he drew a hand as if on string and trailed it along her leg.
"Wife," he pronounced with a low purr, eyes still closed like he was still asleep. Lottie didn't know what to do, held under his palm and summoned by title.
"...Yes?" she queried, and with deft grip he curled a hand around her hip and scooped her up like a pancake, pulling her to him until she was flat on his chest with one sturdy arm worn around her waist like a belt.
"I wondered if you would answer," he declared with sleepy confidence, bare slits of his eyes appearing under heavy lids.
"I guess so," she said timidly, and with a smirk that had simmered like embers all night, he put his mouth to her throat and she felt his tongue and she forgot all about running away and made an elongated vowel and let him hold her.
She looked down at her body on top of his, the contrast of their complexion and how little and short she seemed against his miles of legs. Pushing herself up on her forearms she looked over him, eye to eye. He couldn't lie to her any more.
"We're really married now, aren't we?" It seemed obvious but she had to hear it.
"Yes," he rumbled, hands mapping the cartography of her body inch by inch. "The union is complete." She imagined that she could feel it; a greater connection. As if she could reach into his skin and feel him for brief moments, only to be shut back out by a barrier that she knew held off some unimaginable pain and horror.
"So... I'm yours?" she phrased tritely, but his chuckle was not of irritation.
"And I yours," he responded, and she quirked her head to one side and took him in. A man, lord, prince of this-and-that of the underworld – now hers.
"So I can do this?" she baited, and then with childish impulse ducked forward and kissed him on the mouth, unprepared for the token. He wore a grin as he rolled, turning side-over-side until she was underneath him and he the sky over her, a scent like incense and something human and lost.
"And much more," he slurred, dipping his mouth to meet hers with total security. She accepted it as though it were hers – well, it was hers. She'd have to get used to it. "I knew it," he panted upon breaking apart, bristling like a porcupine and moving out from over her. It seemed more conspicuous not to be touched somehow.
"What?" Lottie forwarded, edging closer. "Was it something I did?" She was still new to all this bridal stuff, although she didn't know how much of what she'd learned in etiquette class was going to apply in here. Certainly not cooking and cleaning or the running of a household – though to be fair she'd no love lost over that.
"No," he secured, turning to one side and propping his head on his hand. "I know what their game is now."
"Who?"
"The spirits," he answered dryly. "I was sure they had some design in giving you to me."
"Oh no," she mumbled, thinking of his fear and terrible things.
"I see it now," he remarked. "Horribly simple, really. Being with someone – with you," he specified even though it didn't need to be done and Lottie liked that for some reason. "It feels the most... it's still the same. The only thing that feels the same."
"Is that important?" she queried.
"Oh yes," he purred. "It's a bribe."
"A bribe?" she chirped. The word was oddly shaped in her mouth. "Why would they be paying you off?"
"To serve," he murmured. "Lock a dog in a cage with a bitch and he'll stop scratching at the door."
"Hey!" she chided.
"I'm just explaining," he remarked, and there was curtness back in his voice again. The real him was back, no longer a spellbound lover with sleep in his eyes.
"Well you coulda picked prettier words," she berated, sitting up with the covers bunched about her chest.
"Poor girl," he chuckled, and it was like he branded her with every syllable, pressed them red-hot into her skin with the word – mine. "There's good news, though," he picked up, and Lottie fastened her babydoll eyes on him like a pair of earrings. "They expected me to fool you into eating."
"You tried," she pointed out, only to receive a careless shrug in return.
"To eat binds you to this world for good," he reiterated, and boy didn't she know it. "The consolation prize of Atlas's hardships. You're not meant to leave, yet you are able – with my help."
"So what?" she puzzled, not knowing why it made any kind of sense and smelling scheming like milk on the turn.
"So, I can have you but still look for my way out," he lauded. "When you go back it'll be even easier to- hey." His device abruptly ended at the moment Lottie ran out of the bed with covers trailing behind her like a bridal train, tears ready to turn to steam on her cheeks.
"Well isn't that all just swell!" she burst, crossing the room and grabbing awkwardly for her dressing gown where it'd been too carelessly dropped. "I'm glad everything's working out so great for you. Not like I-" she stopped her mouth with a plug before she could say too much and shifted the gown tighter around her.
She'd been kind and foolish and the worst kind of rube. For a moment he'd seemed human, full of blood and not black magic, and she'd fallen for it, gave her whole self to him like a sympathetic idiot.
"Wait, wait a sec-" he fussed, chasing her out of the bed with loose pants sweeping around his ankles – she was glad he had something on, at least. The material was dark and fine, as if it could've been spun out of midnight, and fell fluidly from a poker-straight waist like it might have been a skirt. Were Lottie in any other temperament she'd have found it amusing.
"What's all this about?" he cooed like he could or would care a fig about her, but she shook his hands off her back like an ugly scarf when they came to rest there, turning an icicle of a shoulder in his face.
"Did you mean any of it it?" she hissed, crossing her arms like they could padlock her heart shut.
"Yes?" he sounded surprised. "Yes," he soothed as the words sunk in, reaching for her again with the cunning crows he had tamed for hands. "Why this trouble?" he probed, daring to ask like it might not be obvious or worthwhile.
"I'm not just a thing you have," she ground out. "Some bit of... I don't even know, that you snatched and seduced and now you think you can just, just-" she was getting hysterical, and in other worlds with other company she might have been told to calm down. He did shush her, but it was a soothing hiss that came with a petting hand on her arm, not a command for silence.
"No," he said quietly. "It isn't like that."
"Well you said I was your... you know," she spited. "That you could have me, like it's just... like it's all I am-"
"No," he insisted, wincing like he was hurt. "Charlotte," he murmured, weaving through her eyeline like a bird, trying to catch her gaze as if it were an insect. "You're..." he trailed off, words faltering. He moved like he might kiss her, but she wasn't having that.
"What?" she demanded. Turned her mouth away from him like a denied bowl for soup. "What am I?" He didn't take to her rejection and darted quick hands to hold her by the face, turning her back to him like positioning a parasol.
"My bride," he said with a flash of that intimacy again. More gently, he tipped her face upwards, not forcing any more. "You mean more."
"Than what?" she spat. "Prove it." He gave a sly smile.
"I would, but aren't you still sore?" he commented, and the laughter in his voice skipped down her back like a stone skimming on water.
"I didn't mean that," she deferred. Not to mention it would only prove her fears, that he was just after the one thing they said men like him were after. "Something sincere."
"Are you asking me for a symbol of my affection?" he posed with just a slight of sarcasm under the velvet of his tone, words chosen as carefully as bullets. She supposed she was.
"Exactly." She propped her hands on her hips and stared him out and wouldn't be intimidated or shamed, because if she was wrong she was so very wrong, and she couldn't look that kind of failure in the eye.
For a moment he was still as undisturbed water, a resting pool of thought, until a thread pulled up one end of his mouth. He raised both his hands to her and spread spidery fingers wide, closed and open again, then crossed and made to pull something from the air, tucked up in his palm.
"What have you got?" she cheeped, but he kept his fingers viced shut and shook his head when she moved to unfold them. He nodded to her left hand, which she held up and watched, the same as it'd ever been.
Things made more sense when he took it inside his own, a pearl sitting inside a shell. He bowed low, almost at right angles as he pecked like a bird and pressed his mouth to her knuckles, warm and slightly abrasive and full of sinister energy.
At first she thought he was only putting on theatrics, that it was a game to distract and entertain her. Then she looked at her hand and saw the ring. Without feeling anything, through pure power of his magic, he had wrapped her ring finger in a band of shimmering black metal. He had planted it with a kiss and there it grew, a part of her as much as her skin or hair or heart.
"Oh," she said in soft blurred breaths. "Well, I..."
"Is that good enough?" he asked smugly. He could read her and knew exactly how she felt. Biting her lip, she bobbed her head in affirmation. Her hand felt heavy as he chuckled and pulled her to his chest, but she let him because she had neither the heart nor will not to. Wearing the weight of a world on one of her skinny pink fingers, she shut her eyes and breathed him, let the rains come as she turned her face to the sky and accepted lips on hers, a mouth that would match and mimic her own.
She was bound in metal and blood, for better or worse.
End of Act 1 : Persephone