Belladonna

The stench of death was potent as I entered the candlelit room. Waxy white flames were stuck to the stone walls, the room looking far more like a location for a dirge, rather than Belladonna’s resting place. But she lay in the middle of the room, flat against a stone sarcophagus, looking pale and frail.

My footsteps echoed, sending the shadows scattering. I was light that had once been dark and the beings that thrived in the bleakness of the world were hesitant to come near me. My hands rested by her, touching the cold stone. It all felt so very wrong. This wasn’t Belladonna. This wasn’t the woman I loved.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said.

“I don’t even understand what ‘here’ is.”

Her eyes were still closed, lips pale and cracked. “My heart, go home.”

I reached out, taking her hand in mine. “You are my home.” Her hands were bony as I lifted them up, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. The skin there was thin and translucent and the blue veins that no longer carried her own blood, were stark against the paper thin veil.

She cracked her eyes open then, looking at me with that twist of her lips that I had fallen in love with so long ago. “Simp.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. It was wet and corroded with the kind of grief that came when watching someone die. But I would not let her go from my side. Not now. Not ever. Eternity was to be ours.

“What is it I can do to help?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. The ritual didn’t take the first time. Or the second. Gadora assures me that the new priest knows better on what they are doing.”

I looked around the room. I couldn’t understand how anyone could possibly heal here. It was too stark. Not personal at all. Devoid of the finery that Belladonna surrounded herself with in order ground herself to her humanity.

Sighing, I rubbed a hand across my face.  “I’m getting you out of here.”

“You would have to pick me up to do that, and I am going to put my foot down at being held like a yearning young maiden.”

“Lucky for me you can’t put your foot down. You can barely lift your arm.”

“Rude,” she muttered, but I noticed that she did not correct me.

“This is no place for healing. You don’t even have your books here.”

“I will kill anyone that comes down here with my books. This place is far too damp and drafty. The books would not survive.”

I leaned in close then, my nose practically pressed against hers. “And neither will you. Please, let me take you home. I will take care of you. If it’s a ritual you need, I will find someone to do it or learn it myself.”

“You are going to perform a ritual that is thousands of years old.”

“I am thousands of years old. I most likely predate the ritual.”

She sighed. It was in that way that Belladonna often sighs when she has decided she has won an argument, and I have yet to discover how. It was always full of tired pity and indicated the end of her patience.

“Dear heart, I know what I am doing. I will be fine by tomorrow. Back to ruling the district with sensuality and grace and making grown individuals grovel at my feet.”

“And what makes this time so different from all the times before?” In her own words, the ritual had yet to work. Everything that she had been trying had failed, which was an omen all in its own, when it came to someone like Belladonna. “You are sick, Bella. This is not working. And I’m beginning to worry that someone is doing this to you.”

“No one is doing this to me.” It was not the first time that had been brought to her attention but for some reason, she refused to give it even the smallest thought.

“Then why have you not gotten better?”

She turned her head away from me, looking off into the dark. An insane part of me wondered if there was something in the shadows. Something I needed to go take care of. As if Gadora or one of her many other minions were just lurking, spying on the entirety of our conversation.

“I do not wish to fight,” she finally said.

I pushed her hair aside, running my fingers over her temple, the arch of her cheek. “I am not fighting with you. I am worried. I do not like seeing you on a cold slab in the dark.”

Her hand gripped my own. “Then stay with me.” The vulnerability was there. The one I had yet to get used to. It was what worried me far more than anything else. And while I wanted to pick her up and carry her home, there was an agonizing part of me that wondered if it would kill her in the end.

Sighing, I lowered myself down to my knees, a worshiper in supplication. Bending my head, I pressed my cheek against our joined hands. I would stay with her. For however long it took. And when she was better, I would burn the market down to find out what was happening to her.