Someone told me once that I was like a flock of crows, when I gather murder follows. I'm the darkness that haunts these halls beneath the mountain. I wrap myself like water around my victims' souls with a suffocating silence, eliciting from them their unwilling truths while they gasp for release. With just a touch I'm his justice and I walk swift and silent in his shadow. I'm a being outside of time, a creature made, through him, to only know the dark. The light has become a frightful foreign invader to the peaceful coldness of my stars, of my damp stone, of the fireflies that sometimes wander the corridors of my cage. The lights that watch me as I work the crowd, lightly grazing a finger across the palms of his subjects, don't cast judgement but I do.
The hatred and fear is palpable as I enter the room, my compatriots in misery, that stand silent witnesses to each step of my approach. The members of Aéd's court —high born fae, low born fae, social climbers, thieves, and whores all tremble. With a touch I know their deepest thoughts, desires, what they had for lunch, anything I seek is mine. To me they're all naked. To them I am a nameless and faceless thing dressed in a drab green robe with his collar masquerading as jewelry. Delicately and beautifully painted chains.
For a thousand years he's paraded me out in front of his court and used his collar to force me to share my gift with him. To let him see through my eyes, what I see, he sees. The width, the breadth of it — he experiences it through my eyes. I'm able to hide quick glimpses sometimes by pushing through to other visions but if I'm not cautious he'll beat me. I prefer the beatings. It's like closing a curtain before the light illuminates the full room, if I do it quickly enough he can't make sense of the images like I do. It's something I've tried to do only a handful of times throughout my life, something sparingly I've used to keep precious moments to myself, to lock away someone's love or passion for me to examine later. Most of my experiences in life are theirs, lived only through stolen moments. I don't remember kindness, softness, warmth... I'm sure I experienced it once but it's long gone.
Sometimes when I'm alone I catch flashes, glimpses of a memory I think might be mine. A woman with red hair framing green eyes and sun-kissed skin like fresh leaves that dance across the sand. And then it's gone, that sand slipping through my fingers. That leaf off with the breeze.
Tonight is no different. I trace a light finger across a palm and my necklace grows hot as the images flash behind my eyelids and his. I'm not looking at him but I know he's wearing the matching bangle, when he's with me he's always wearing it. My curse a gift that gives him a twisted thrill.
Afterwards he pulls me into his chamber, into his bed. A thing he uses over and over again. Sometimes before he does he whispers warm words that don't reach his eyes or match the cold metal against my breast. I don't know much but I know that you don't imprison something you claim to love. You don't force yourself on something you love. I may have never been truly loved but I see glimpses of it in the minds of others. I see what love looks like, what it felt like for them and I know it's not this.
Sometimes he doesn't remove the bangle when he mounts me. Every touch against my bare skin sends me into a memory, in it I'm him. Most of the time I'm looking at the same woman over and over again. Dark hair pulled away from her face, intelligent amber eyes just staring at me. Expressionless as she goes up in flames. I feel warm metal in my right hand grow hot, and then as I turn my head to look down the vision ends. I can never quite see the thing I'm holding but I know it's important.
When I flash back into my body I feel him on me, the weight of his grubby fingers. I'm a lightening rod for this memory and I notice each time I flash back from the image of her on fire — my horrible safe haven, that he's slipped off his bangle. It's a memory that shines a mirror on something he's tried to forget. A memory he's ashamed of. So I try to force myself there.
Some nights are worse. Some nights I relive the other nights with him, the ones I missed while relishing the silence in the shadow of her fire —her quiet death. In shared memories we trade places, I'm him and he's me. On those nights he keeps the bangle on. I feel myself wrap around him while he reaches for my core, over and over again, before releasing his seed deep into my belly. I feel his excitement. I feel his euphoria at the release. Mentally I close my eyes to it, like it's not my own body I'm violating over and over again. Like the breast I tasted in his mouth isn't my own. The nipple I'm suckling isn't mine. The honey I'm licking between my thighs comes from bees, the soft heat I'm prodding with my thick fingers belongs to someone else.
When I flash back from those memories he seems giddy when he looks down at me. It's the only time I see him truly express joy. It's not pure joy but the joy of an addict hooked on a drug. When he first discovered the bangle could do this he became infinitely gentler and more diligent in his ministrations over my body. His only goal in pleasuring me was to pleasure himself when he relived it later. He called my release a symphony and he sometimes confined me to his bed for days before he trotted me out into the court again. Before he discovered the bangle would let him experience his violations he'd been brutal and violent. Sometimes his violence would break a bone, or I'd be so thoroughly used up that I couldn't stand and I'd bleed for a week. It only took him falling into the memory and experiencing that once for it to stop. So this new torture was a blessing and curse. I preferred the pain than his false kindness, to the sensations he would illicit not to give me pleasure but to doubly pleasure himself. He uses me for his thorough amusement.
On other days I'm left in a dark room. The cold wet stone meant to punish me, to train me to want to be there. I'll never want him like he wants me. I feel nothing when I look at him. I'm empty and he knows it because when he's in my memory he can feel the absence of it. Like an addict though it doesn't matter because it's the stimulus he illicits, pleasuring himself through me, that truly entices him.
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I press my fingers against my swollen belly, the wetness of my tears mingling with the dampness of the cave floor. I don't want this for you, this will not be your life.