Spider's Game ((Book One) #Wattys2016 Winner!)

Chapter 8- Tears & Blood

The darkness crept into every crack of the room, kept at bay by a single bedside lamp. Darith stirred in the semi darkness. He felt the night in his bones. It called to him in the same way he'd been called as a child to leap into the lake's deep water. Only, he didn't want the pleasures the night offered him. Warm blood and screams. He felt Marim's fear riding the air, drew the shaking of her hands into his lungs. Her nearness spoke to him past walls and doors, and the closer she came the more urgently he felt her confusion.

Like a wraith Marim entered, red hair strung with daisies from the garden, and her face as pale as the moon in the darkness. A night shift covered her body, offering little in the way of modesty. She stared at him with her eyes huge and frightened and reached her arms out, a daisy chain hanging from her fingertips. The promise of her dangled in front of him, so different from the promise of the dark.

Darith tried to go to her. Then he lay back with a short, harsh laugh.

She went to him and laid the flowers in her hands on his head, a child's summer crown. Darith ripped the carefully twined stems from his hair and tossed them at the wall.

"Outside the funeral parlor, your hands twined in mine," Marim said, her eyes stripping his anger away. "You sat in the grass with me and braided flowers to lay on Petyr's coffin. I loved you then, and I love you now."

Marim clasped Darith's hand and laid her head on his chest. Her body was soft and warm. Her breasts flattened against him, and every breath pressed her body into his. The promises her flesh made were well-crafted lies.

He shoved her away and stared at her face. There was a time he would have enjoyed having a well-bred woman come half-dressed to his bedchamber, but what was he now? He was nothing. Even the shadowy magic he'd practiced for years had left him. He was powerless. She knew it, or she wouldn't come.

"You didn't come in here to offer me love I can't use."

"Something is wrong," Marim whispered. She let her voice drift off into the hungry arms of the night before she continued. "I hear the voice inside me and it and there is nowhere for me to run. No one believes me ...but you, you were there. Please, tell me you feel the changes."

Fear. That was all he saw in her pretty face. Did their wickedness not tempt her as it did him?

She sat up by his side. In the dim light of the moon, he watched her move. She took his hand and pressed it to her heart. It beat, pulsed against his hand.

"My blood is telling me there is something wrong," Marim said. "I'm not mad. I'm not."

"You are mad, and so am I."

At the trembling of her lip, Darith pulled her against him. He held her there. Her hand curled into a little ball on his chest. They took a breath.

"They say I went back to the party and that I danced. I don't remember that. All I recall is the night, and now...tonight has the same pulse. My blood sings and I'm scared."

"They're morons. They say a man did this to me." He smiled into the night; he knew the night understood the joke. The darkness heard him. "The funny thing is, there isn't any pain...I don't remember any pain the whole time. Pain would be something real. Something to hold onto. Otherwise, it's all a dream."

"Oh if only it were all a dream. And we'd wake up among the roses. And it would have been only us that went out into the garden." She smiled as she shivered against him. "We'd wake up in the sunlight."

"Don't," Darith stated and turned his head to the side away from the woman who lay against him. Her leg rested on his, but he couldn't feel her silky skin. Her entire bod draped carelessly against him, and that couldn't mean anything to him. Marim slid up his body, and her thigh rested on his stomach. She cradled his head against her small chest.