Page 86 of Satanic Shadow
The little girl skips while holding a large hand, a dog runs after a ball, and an old man cleans his glasses with a cloth before reading a book.
It’s not clear what exactly each silhouette is doing. It’s a guessing game if they’re even humans or creatures; if they’re bad or good. But I just know they’re protecting me.
There are more here than usual. Some sit in the corner of my room, watching me like guarding statues, and some follow my bare feet like dogs sniffing on the ground as I walk into the bathroom.
They usually disperse when I use the bathroom, thankfully.
I try to sit up, and dizziness has me falling back down again in a huff. My knotted hair sprawls over my face, sticking to my skin.
To my dismay, I’m sick. It started last night, after Dane left. My skin burns, my tongue is drier than a desert, and I think I’ve sweated away half my body weight.
I also don’t answer the door whenever someone comes knocking, even if it’s the twins sliding trays of food under my door—via magic presumably—with a note.
Yesterday it was Poppy.Eat up, my little dandelion.
Today is evidently Mel.If you don’t eat, you’ll die.
I sent Mel a message only hours ago, informing her that I wasn’t dead or kidnapped again, and that I was perfectly fine and needed as much sleep as possible. I was simply feeling under the weather.
Because humans get sick, projectile vomit while drunk, come down with viruses, and suffer from illnesses that vary from giving us the sniffles to making our organs fail before the light leaves our very mortal eyes.
Unlike these undying creatures who don’t even know what goddamn asthma or diabetes are. I once tried to explain to Poppy the applications of injecting insulin into one’s body and why, and even described an inhaler and how it opens our airways. She just stared at me as though I’d grown two extra heads. Which isn’t exactly uncommon around here.
When I bathed this morning, I waited for Dane to abruptly crack the atmosphere in two, to appear and shove my head underwater. I wanted him to. I crave the feel of his hands on me, even if it’s in an act of violence.
So, so badly I wanted him to slide his rough hand between my legs and pleasure me into the abyss while the water splashed across the floor. I wanted my lip between his teeth, wanted him sucking on my throat while he edged me.
When he didn’t appear, I tried to do it myself. Sans the throat sucking because I’m not built that way. I gave up, hoping he’d appear and finish me off. He still hasn’t come for his morning siphoning session, and I may or may not be wearing the most revealing sleep clothes I own here in the academy.
From being seconds from having sex to him only touching me when he grabs my wrist, I’m close to exploding. I know everything we’ve done previously has been for the assignments we need to complete, but we’ve already overstepped on other tasks, so why not now?
I truly hate him, but I would gladly let him dominate me from every angle. Does that make me sick? Maybe. But that doesn’t explain why I feel like I’m physically on the brink of death when I’m not around him.
Since that moment we nearly joined as one, my body has never felt so alive, which is weird, since I feel like I’m dying.
If I had a thermometer, I know it’d be hitting a feverish temp.
Sweat coats my skin, and I slowly blink as the saltiness drips into my eyes. I wipe it away with the back of my hand and freeze, lifting the other to study both as I flex my fingers.
The staining on my hands is getting considerably worse. It usually takes an entire day to spread, but now it’s happening faster. Both of my hands are completely black, burning and spasming every so often, with tendrils curling around each wrist, spiraling in vines as they climb up and snake at my elbows.
When Dane left last night, he had to siphon more than usual, and he fell asleep on the chair beside my bed. I woke to the chair being empty and what I could have sworn felt like the linger of a kiss on my forehead.
I attempted to grab my phone from the top of the dresser this morning and it practically flew to my hand.
If it weren’t for all my memories of growing up, I’d swear I was a witch in disguise—or something a lot worse.
It’s the curse. It has to be. Because not only am I experiencing all of this, but I can also hear and feel Dane when he isn’t even near me. I know when he’s asleep in his cell, when he wakes, if a sense heightens, or when he feels strongly.
The curse building on my hands is to blame—it has to be. Humans simply cannot do what I’m doing with Dane.
But going by the book on the Shadow Realm that magically appeared in my room days ago, I should be dead. Dane siphoning it is slowing down whatever it’s doing, but even extracting an infinitesimal amount of a curse to this degree depletes a creature’s powers—which is why he struggled to properly fight against the guards or heal his wounds but was able to toss a blanket over my nakedness, so the guard didn’t see my exposed body.
Despite all these thoughts, all I can think about is… If he was as weak as that, how the hell was he going to have sex with me?
So, yeah, all tasks are still on the table. At least we finished task four. Next, we need to pleasure ourselves in front of one another without touching each other. Either at the same time or at separate times.
How do I even bring this up in conversation?
