Page 67 of Widow

Chapter 16

Camellia

Iwoke up in the softest bed I had ever laid in. My head felt full, like I was about to have a migraine. I slowly opened my eyes to see that I was in some kind of cave.

Had I passed out, and Ric brought me back? The light shining in the room was not firelight or the light from Picard.

I stretched under the covers and then looked down at the mattress beneath me. Except it wasn't a mattress. It was spiderwebs. The sheets were made of spiderwebs too. They were tightly woven together and almost looked like cotton.

An odd calmness washed over me. I felt safe here, like I was home. But I definitely wasn't home.

There was a door in the stone wall that was made of wood. The bed wasn't a bed at all. Instead, it was spiderwebs strung in the corner of the room. There was a bedside table with a lamp that was lit by what looked like fireflies. They flew around in circles inside of the glass. The sound of their wings made a soft buzzing noise.

I sat up and put my feet on the warm stone floor. Someone had taken off my boots and left them at the foot of the bed.

I couldn't really remember what had happened. Obviously, I was with the Widows. Everything had gone black. I vaguely remember some conversation, but not much else.

I heard voices on the other side of the door, and I tiptoed to it and put my ear against the wood. The door was thick and of high quality. I couldn't hear what they were saying since they were talking in hushed tones. They were definitely women.

I tentatively reached out for the doorknob and turned it slowly. The door creaked open, and the voices went silent. I poked my head out to see almost a dozen women gathered around a sitting area. The room was also made of stone, with wooden furniture scattered throughout. A lot of the furniture was just the wood frames with spiderwebs woven to create the surfaces.

I froze in place, the door handle still in my hand. I squeezed it tightly.

"She's awake!" A younger-looking woman jumped to her feet and started heading towards me before an older woman put up her hand to stop her.

"You don't say?" The woman appeared to be in her sixties. She stood and walked towards me. Her gait was smooth, almost as if she was gliding.

Her eyes flashed solid black before morphing back to a deep brown color. Her skin shimmered with what looked like spiderwebs underneath. I resisted the urge to violently shudder.

"What's your name, child?" She stopped a few feet in front of me but didn't move closer. It was like she could sense my fear, especially when I backed up a step.

"Where am I?" I looked at the group of women, who all had a similar appearance to the older one in front of me. They had different hairstyles and hair colors, but all of them had eyes that constantly flickered black. Their skin looked like it was laced with spiderwebs too.

"You're in your home." She paused, pursing her lips together. She didn't strike me as a very patient person. "What's your name?"

I met the woman's eyes and tried to relax my body. They hadn't hurt me. They hadn't even locked me away in a room. At least not yet.

"My name is Camellia."

She nodded and moved back to the sitting area to sit in her chair. She gestured to a chair next to her.

I hesitated but then walked over to it and sat down. The spiderweb was rather comfortable. I would've expected it to be sticky.

As if knowing what I was thinking, a few of the women laughed as I touched the fabric of the chair. "You have two types of web. One is for building a comfortable home, and the other is for capturing prey."

I hadn't even known I could make spiderwebs. Would it shoot out of my wrists?

"What happened to my friend?" I had been with Ric. What had they done with him?

"We left our spiders to deal with him."

My stomach dropped, and I brought my hand to my mouth. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn't come. If they had left their spiders to deal with him, that meant-

"Your spiders stayed behind too. They were fighting with ours. We let them have at it." The old woman laughed. "It's always fun when they disagree with each other."

"Is he... did he..." My ears rang, and my voice sounded foreign. I couldn't lose him, not after I just got him.

"Alive. Strung up in a tree."

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