Page 84 of Spider Demon's Kiss

“But, at the time you thought you were home.”

I opened my mouth to deny it and then stopped remembering what had happened. It wasn’t the first year with my father’s business partner that Yuki was referring to. It was during the second. Or, perhaps it was the third. But, after a while, I had stopped fighting my circumstances and had given in to them.

Past what went on at night, I had had freedom. I couldn’t go anywhere without his permission or have friends. But as long as I was accompanied by one of his men, I could do whatever I wanted. I could drink. I could blow off my tutor. Hell, I could blow my tutor if I wanted.

In that hazy delusion, I began to see myself as royalty. Think about it. I was caged, my body wasn’t my own, but I could buy anything I wanted, and treat people however I pleased. I was a Disney princess.

“I was young and stupid back then. Now I am not.”

“But again, you think you are home. The new cage father has put you in is again your home. Would you have left your first home if someone hadn’t freed you?”

“Freed me? I freed myself,” I said knowing my master had been the spider demon’s first victim.

“And the second man father gave you to?”

“Then too,” I said less confidently.

“And the third?”

“Yes,” I said rattled by Yuki’s questions.

“Hm,” she chirped before grabbing the mug and taking a sip.

Chills crawled up my arms. My heart raced as I fought to look calm. She knew something and she wanted me to know that she did. But what? Did she know how I had killed them? How could she know that?

“I’m not leaving here,” I told her.

“You will,” she said confidently.

“I’m not going to do what I did before?”

“What did you do? Tell me, how did you free yourself?”

“I… killed them,” I admitted as a feeble attempt at a threat.

“Who have you killed? Tell me. Who do you have the strength to kill?”

I didn’t need to tell her. Everyone knew what they called me. I killed my lovers. Even the ones I liked. She knew this. Why was she making me say it?

And then it hit me. She was making me say it because… I hadn’t. What hadn’t I done? I had killed them. But they were all dead. I woke up next to all of them. Each was dead.

I got up overwhelmed by the memory. Why was she making me relive this? Each time I fell asleep next to them and woke to a cold corpse and the smell of shit or piss where their bowels had relaxed and relieved itself.

I paced the room remembering the stench and horror of it all. I remembered my tears and the way I screamed when I realized that I had done it again. I remembered the call to myfather, sobbing uncontrollably. I remembered the shame as my father’s men carried the bodies away.

I was the spider demon. I killed everyone who dared love me. And I remembered one other thing. Maybe not the first time it happened or even the second, but the other times I remembered there being a scent in the room the night before they died.

It was faint. It was always faint. It was more of an instinct than anything else. A registration that lingered just below my consciousness. It was the same scent I smelled… tonight.

“You!” I said, it hitting me like a sledgehammer. “It was never me. It was you!”

She stared at me unfazed, unyielding.

“But, how? Why?”

“You are mine,” Yuki said casually. “Father gave you to me.”

“I… What?”

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