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“I used to hear him too,” she continued, taking my silence as confirmation.

“He came to me at night, when I was already lost and alone.

He talked to me at first, pretending to care.

He told me I was powerful, important. He proclaimed he knew the potential I held.

Then he turned angry and violent. He would threaten and berate me.

He tormented my mind, and I, a young woman already dealt a hard hand by the world, nearly broke beneath the weight of it.

“I had no home then, no family. I was broken and alone and I prayed for guidance from whoever would listen. That was when the Dark One came. He knows when we are most vulnerable, and he exploits our weaknesses. He senses them, like a predator. So when I was asking for help, he offered me his. Although it was in truth no help at all.”

She sat down on the edge of my cot, as if we were two friends just having a chat.

“But my Lord Enos saved me. He came to me in a vision. Told me I was His Chosen One, a beloved child of His own blood. He told me I would be a great leader, and bring safety and security to all of Elvik. I pledged myself to Him there, and baptized myself in His name in the Gravesend River. I was washed clean of my past, born anew. I became His High Priestess, and never again was visited by the Dark One.” Her voice rang with pride.

She looked down at me, and placed what was meant to be a comforting hand on my leg.

“So if he does indeed haunt you as he did me, if he torments you, steals you from sleep, know that there is salvation in the Light. You can be cleansed of him, of your past, your shame. You are welcome in His Light.”

She rose and left quietly.

∞∞∞

The voice––the Dark One, as the High Priestess called him––had been mercifully more quiet that day.

He spoke to me in low tones, calm and collected.

Sometimes silent altogether for hours, like perhaps he felt guilty for his previous outburst. I should have seen his mellow disposition for the warning it was: The calm before the storm.

I climbed into my cot, delirious with lack of sleep, and waited for his menacing laugh. Surely he’d ruin my sleep again tonight, just like every other night. He’d rip me from my dreams into his nightmare.

But I slipped into unconsciousness without interruption. Merciful, restful sleep.

I don’t know how long I slept before he came, but I awoke into his hallucination feeling like I had actually rested.

I was in a bed draped with dark curtains, smooth onyx sheets and plump pillows, a room of all black.

Candles were everywhere. On the nightstand, on the dresser, many floating suspended in the air.

They cast a warm glow about the shadowy interior.

I sat up and looked across the room to see a dark haired, dark eyed man staring at me. His strong jawline and short hair framed an unsettlingly handsome face. Two horns rose in sweeping spikes from the peak of his forehead. He wore no shirt, only black pants. His body was incredibly muscular.

He smirked at me, and I stared back.

“Who are you?” I asked tentatively.

“You know who I am, Halja.”

I shuddered at the familiar voice. Of course it was him. I should have known better than to think I’d be allowed to sleep.

But he whispered something under his breath, and the dread that his presence brought faded.

It ebbed away, receded to the background, and was replaced with a blank tranquility.

I felt high, as if I was looking at myself from far away.

Then I felt something more. As I looked at him, taking in that chiseled figure, he stood and sauntered toward the bed.

“I thought we’d try something different tonight.”

His deep voice was soft, almost soothing now.

I knew that tone of voice, that appraising look as his eyes wandered.

Knew what men wanted when they looked at me like that.

I may have just recently found out I was an Archfae, but I had been a woman my whole life.

And there are instincts, gut feelings you learn as a woman out of necessity, for survival.

I did not move as he approached, as if I was held there somehow. Trapped and prepared to meet his every wish, prepared to save myself any way I had to.

He looked into my eyes with arrogance and intensity, and I felt myself soften, loosen under his gaze.

The instinctual fear slipped away, pushed out by an external influence.

I reached for Source, wanting to fight the spell with my own, but nothing answered.

I was not in my world, after all. He stepped close to me and brushed a strand of hair from my face.

I shuddered, a flood of desire running through me.

Desire that turned sick and sour in my stomach.

Desire that came from outside of myself, not within. Inorganic and false.

I knew, I knew it was wrong. I was painfully aware of just how terrible it was.

But his touch felt good, too, and I was far away from the reality of it, the understanding that this wanting was not real, was not mine.

The edges of my vision dimmed into dream-like fog and my consciousness slipped away from my body.

Not entirely, just enough to lose control.

He had cast something on me, and his power was undeniably strong.

Much more manipulative and intrusive than all the previous dreams and visions.

He grabbed my chin, pulling my face up to him, and leaned over and kissed me.

I was overwhelmed with desire as his lips met mine, flooded with a false passion that stuck to the insides of my ribs like burnt sugar.

My body betrayed me, yearning deeply, while my mind raced, my awareness flitting about like a trapped bird beating its wings against the sides of a cage.

He kissed me hard, his tongue soft but insistent.

When he stepped back and removed his pants, the physical show of his desire sprang free.

He was on me again in an instant, sliding his hands down to cup my breasts.

He was hard satin against my lips, thick and long. His fingers twisted into my hair as he gently drew my jaw down and pushed into my mouth. Slowly at first, he moved in and out, a little deeper with each thrust. I took it as best I could. I had no other choice.

My body responded to none of my commands, only his. In the depths of my mind, I watched myself. Whatever was left of me witnessed it in horror and shame, screamed against the mental shackles that bound me.

He pushed me back on the bed, climbed on top of me.

When he smiled, it was a horrifyingly beautiful and vicious thing.

Long daggers of incisors shone in the candlelight, and he leaned over my naked body, dragging his teeth softly and delicately across my neck, breasts, and stomach.

I shivered under his touch, a toxic combination of rage and false desire incinerating my core.

He rose to my neck again, kissing softly.

Then harder. His hand found my hair again and he pulled my head back, exposing my throat to him.

“You have such beautiful skin, Halja, my darling,” he purred against me. “So soft. Such a long, tender neck.”

Sharp teeth punctured the column of my throat, sinking in just enough that I felt pinpricks of blood well to the surface.

He licked it off, delicately at first; I felt the desire rising in him.

He pulled away and smiled, sharp teeth blood-stained.

Then he drove his sharp incisors down into my skin again, wrapped his lips around my neck, and sucked hard.

The pain of it was enough to reach me beneath the heavy weight of the spell I was under, enough to dredge me from its depths.

I thrashed in my mind against the paralysis and reached for the Source within me.

I had no connection to the outer world, but I still had what was inside of me.

My power connected with my will and my body was my own to control again, if only for an instant.

But an instant was all I needed. I kicked him back and he stumbled away from me, naked and laughing, amused by my outburst. In my rage, I raised a hand and summoned flame.

Too much flame. I hurled it at him but it was too late, out of control. The inferno engulfed us both.

I bolted upright on my hard cot, drenched in sweat, my singular blanket tangled around me.

He was nowhere, and it was quiet in my head.

Yet I felt my body’s betrayal still. I raised a shaking hand to my neck and drew it back.

Blood stained my fingers. My stomach turned, and I let out a small, shattered cry that turned into sobs.

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I wrapped my arms around my knees and hugged them close.

“It isn’t real. It isn’t real. It isn’t real,” I repeated.

“It was just as real for me as it was for you, my darling.” That horrid, rumbling voice in my skull again.

“Fuck you!” I screamed into the dark amidst my sobs. “It isn’t real! You aren’t real! Leave me alone, you fucking monster!”

I heard only his deep, mocking laughter.

∞∞∞

Days, weeks, months passed. Time lost all meaning.

I had nothing to set the days and nights apart from one another as I was kept awake by the black nightmares.

I experienced no seasons to anchor my perception of time either.

I knew only that the daylight grew shorter, and that my cycles came and went with each month.

Two passed. I was provided with clean woven cotton pads when I needed them, but none of my usual herbs to manage the pain.

My memories were blurred, mixed. During the day I was tormented by the High Priestess, either her unsolicited preaching or her violence. At night I was stalked by the Dark One.

My resolve began to waver. I was exhausted.

Most days passed in a delirious blur. I began to see the Dark One in the daytime, often when I was wide awake.

Sometimes he sat in a corner of the room and stared at me, unblinking, for hours.

Other times, he clung to the ceiling above my cot.

Usually he appeared as the handsome, horned fae man I had shared a bed with against my will.

Sometimes he was the eyeless, pale monster I had seen in my poisoned memories. Other times, he was simply black fog.

Sometimes he would walk through the door instead of the High Priestess and I would lose an hour, uncertain if I spoke to her or to him, unable to differentiate between the two as they spoke together.

They became an amalgamation, a monstrous mix, speaking to me in a blended voice through two mouths out of the same head.

I never knew if any of these visions were real or the waking hallucinations of a woman losing her grasp on reality.

Even meditation offered me little reprieve. My calm, welcoming internal ocean was corrupted, inky black and viscous. It became unfamiliar, unsettling, unsafe.

I went over Byrgir’s face, again and again, in my mind.

Every day I studied his image in my memories.

Every day the pain of it was enough to bring me to tears, sometimes to deep, wracking sobs.

It broke something in me, to miss him so helplessly.

It undid me. But I would not forget him.

I would not lose his face. I clung to it like a lifeline, like a rope tethered to shore as I was ripped and tossed on crushing, stormy seas.

The only thing pulling me through the disorienting darkness of each day.

I didn’t hear the High Priestess’s words anymore.

I didn’t feel the pain of her strikes when her frustration with me boiled over, when she forced me into a writhing mess on the floor.

I didn’t taste the bland porridge that the Deacon brought, didn’t feel the grime building on my skin or the weak sunlight that passed through the window. I felt nothing.

I became an empty shell of myself. Another person entirely.

Not even a person. A creature. I was a mindless, scrabbling creature, living in the husk of what had once been a fae woman.

An Archfae woman. Someone who was supposed to hold more power than almost any other living being.

Yet they had cracked me like a rotten egg.

Shattered me like a dry, brittle bone. I’d been neutered. Tamed. Emptied.

∞∞∞

The lock turned, the door opened. The High Priestess’s heels cracked into the ground, then stopped. I squinted into the light shining through the door behind her.

“I’ll do it,” I croaked.

“Pardon?” She had heard me, but her surprise made her ask again.

“I’ll do it,” I said, a little more audibly.

“Splendid,” she replied. She sat on the cot beside me and rubbed my shoulder with insincere comfort.

“I am proud of you, Halja. This is the first step to healing. The first step to truth. You will be a shining, brilliant example of the powers of our Lord of Light. From wretched darkness to His divine service.”

“Can I sleep?” I asked.

“Of course you can,” she said, and moved as if to leave. She had misunderstood.

“No, can he help me sleep?” I pleaded. “Can he drive away the dark? I am so tired.”

“He can. And He will. Once you pledge yourself to Him. I will make everything ready for you to take the rite and pass into His loving care.”

She left, locking the door behind her. I was left in my empty madness.