Pretty Spelled by K.A Knight

Lilith

Wrapping my arms around myself, I bring my knees to my chest and prop my chin on them as I silently cry, the tears running down my frozen cheeks. Not that I can feel them. I don’t even know if they are real. I’m more like a phantom here, my body wasting away as the days pass. I started whole, fully intact, able to feel my pulse and the pounding of my heart…now I’m just cold. And the tips of my fingers have started to turn invisible. I know logically I cannot physically exist inside my own body where I am trapped by the darkness, but I have a feeling that’s what is happening. This physical manifestation of me…is my soul.

And my soul is dying—screaming in pain, constantly cold, and alone. I’m trapped in this dark existence, the pitch-black surrounding me completely. I can hear most things, even see sometimes when she wants me to. The darkness opens like one of those screens humans are obsessed with today. I watch it play back, unable to react, like now for example, as I observe them battle to stay alive.

But once…once I clawed myself to the surface, screaming and banging, trying to stop her from killing that witch and my brothers. Then something strange happened, I fell through the shadows, and I was myself again. I felt my blood flow, my heart hammer, and my power surge. I could smell, taste, and hear. It was only for a minute, just long enough to warn Cassandra, and then I was thrown back into the darkness and left there for so long.

She was mad.

She took it out on innocents and made me watch, but I could feel her fear. She didn’t know how I did it. Slowly, I have been fighting my way back, trying to control it for longer and longer periods of time. Each time she wakes up furious and people die, so I stopped trying unless it’s completely necessary. I can’t stand the sight of blood on my hands, across my face, and in my mouth.

Their pain is palpable, and their harrowing screams haunt me.

Each of their faces is burned into my mind, their souls weighing heavily on me. For so many years, I have been trapped here, watching her kill, maim, and torture. Her pleasure doubles my own pain. She enjoys killing, enjoys suffering, but she enjoys how it destroys a piece of me each time.

I will never forget each and every life she has taken in my body. It’s my face they see as their killer, I am the last person they touch before they die. Knowing that corrodes my heart and soul, and so I start to disappear. I hung on for so many years, hoping there was a way to stop this, to free myself. Foolishly, I thought I could be with my family.

I know better now. I will never be free.

I will die here with the memory of Atlas’ stern, hurt face staring at me as we try to kill our family and their mates.

There is another great pleasure she has recently discovered—sex. I burrow my head in my knees to block out the sound of the moans and flesh slapping together. She fucks people all the time, using my body to gain their pleasure and power as well as to mentally torture me. She knows I hate it, detest it, that someone is touching me, tasting me, using my body, fucking me in a way only my mate should…

Atlas should.

It makes me sick to my very core. I separate myself from it, I have to. I think of it as her, not me. It’s not my body they slam into. It’s not my shoulder they grunt against. It isn’t my pussy they come inside of. I wouldn’t even have dared thought such words and acts before her. I was too innocent. But what’s the point of being innocent, of fearing those words or being embarrassed, when she uses them against me? I thought if I accepted them it would help.

I was wrong.

I feel dirty, depraved, and used. My consent was stripped from me.

I’ve been defiled.

In every single way possible—mind, body, and soul—and now she has started on my heart. She’s hurting those I love, hunting them, trapping them, and taunting them with their own pain.

I watch as Atlas makes his decision, she lets me see. He moves to protect Khalid’s mate, the one with such strength it makes me ache. I wish I had it. He’s defending them rather than chasing me. For a moment, my heart slams. I know it’s the right decision. He needs to protect them from me, he should.

But my heart still breaks a bit more, another piece cracking and falling away to show the cold oblivion now lurking inside. I foolishly wished he would come after me, free me. Kill me. Anything. For once…choose me. It’s selfish and I hate myself for it, but it’s true.

She laughs in the darkness as we turn away and disappear into the mist she conjured, transporting us to her safe haven. She has many such sanctuaries placed around the world.

You cry now, but just wait until I rip his skin from his body. Remember, he left you. Rejected you.

I lift my head, searching for her, even though I know it’s pointless. Her voice is all around me.

I was the one who helped you. Saved you. Pulled you from the fires. Never forget I spared you, child. And now, you will save me and mine.

She says things like that all the time, even though I don’t know what she means, but how dare she disrespect my mate? She has no clue what he has been through. What he survived. What he has endured.

You saved me to damn me,I snarl, screaming into the abyss.

The world needs darkness as much as it needs light.

I laugh bitterly. It’s about balance. The world already has evil. Don’t try and pretend you are doing this for them, for anyone but you. You enjoy pain, enjoy death, and you want to raze the world until they worship you.

Is that so wrong?She laughs as we appear in the rainforest, her guards around her. The chatter of the monkeys is loud until it cuts off. She’s blocking me again, but not before sending a final parting shot. The light has had its turn, it’s the dark’s time now. My people will thrive once more.

Then she’s gone, leaving me alone once more in the darkness which seems to close in on me. I hug my legs tighter, closing my eyes and rocking as I force myself to focus past the tears, the pain, and the aching loneliness. Oh, to be touched again. To feel love, to feel the air on my face. To feel anything.

I open my mouth and start to sing to distract myself. The echoing of my low, mournful voice is loud enough that I know she hears it. Good, let her. The words are familiar, the tongue not the language of today, but of my childhood. It’s a song my mother used to sing to me at night to help me sleep when the world was too dark, too scary. When the baying of the wolves was too close for comfort, the approaching armies’ drums matching my racing heart.

Armies Atlas and his family always saved us from.

They will save me again.

I have to believe it.

Have to…