Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

“He’s right. You’re far too beautiful.” “Do you think you’ll ever see him again?” “I don’t know.”

“I was thinking Lilia’s Elixir would be appropriate.”

Two small black frames each held a moth, and frowning, I rounded his desk, coming to a stop before them. Patroclus and Achilles had been etched into small gold plaques below each preserved moth. They’d passed two weeks prior, having completed their lifecycle. What had compelled him to keep them? The gesture was so wildly out of character for Devryck, yet adorable at the same time, that it brought a smile to my face.

“I have a board meeting in two hours. I need to kill some of this tension.”

“Had to keep my first successful specimens. Naming them was brilliant, on your part.” “I told you.” “And I’m telling you to turn over and spread your knees,” he whispered.

“Panties are for the modest,”

“Why does the forbidden have to be so fucking sweet?”

“Do you need a proper fucking, Miss Vespertine?” “Yes, Professor,”

“Look how well you take my cock, Little Moth. You were made for me,”

“Do you feel that, Lilia?” He ground my hips against him, rooting himself so deeply it sprang tears to my eyes.

“Tell me what feels different?”

The way he held me. The freedom and security, and our heated bodies entwined together like two flames. Soulmates. It was his eyes. The way he was looking at me. The feelings he stirred inside of me with that obnoxious gleam of reverence.

“Say it.” “Just fuck me already,” I snapped, frustrated for reasons I couldn’t tell him. “Is that all you want? A quick fuck? You know I can give you that, but I think there’s something inside of you that craves more.”

“I feel it, too,” he said, as if reading my mind. “It’s inside of me. Burning like a fever I can’t shake. It’s a spiteful, prideful anger that refuses to admit the truth.”

“What truth?”

“That I would kill for you without a beat of hesitation, or remorse. And yet, at the same time, I could be reduced to nothing more than a pile of a...

“Why do you have to make me cry?” “Because I know there’s a truth inside you, too. One you refuse to admit, but I want you to say it. Say it to my face.”

“What are you afraid of?” “That the universe will hear it, too! And it’ll steal you away.”

“I wanted to say it to you so badly that day at the ocean, when you were slipping away from me. I was screaming inside my head. Tell him! Tell him before it’s too late. But I couldn’t, because I knew if I did, you’d be gone forever. And now? Now it feels cursed. Like I’m carrying a cursed secret inside of me that I can never say aloud.”

“I’m not going anywhere. You and I? This? There’s no escaping it. Doesn’t matter how fast you run, or how far you get, I will always be inside you just like this. In your bones and in your blood and in your head. It doesn’t matter what you tell the universe–what secrets you spill. Nothing can change what we are, what we’ve become.”

“I want to tell you. I’ve wanted to tell you for a while, but my heart feels too hard. Too guarded. And in some ways, I’m glad, because the harder I am, the less I feel, and the less I feel, the less everything hurts.”

“But he will never hurt you again, Little Moth. I will bleed out every one of your demons until you feel safe.”

“I love you. And I don’t think I can stop loving you.”

“I will never reject you, or turn you away.”

“I have lived a lifetime in death–a cold existence in an endless void. Never feeling. Never knowing the warmth of touch. Every unfulfilling breath a suffocating reminder of how hollow I’d become. It wasn’t until you came along and cast the first ray of light that I felt a pulse of life. A pull that I couldn’t resist.”

“Don’t ever hesitate to touch me, Lilia. You’re the only one who can. It was you who dragged my heart from this insensate slumber. And it’s you for whom it beats now.”

“It’s a fucking wreckage, though. Scarred and caged by ravaged bones. But i...

“You’re mine, Lilia.”

“And I am yours.”

The veneration of a powerful man. One the monsters in my head feared the most. It was in that moment, I believed him when he said he belonged to me. Like a vast ocean claimed by a single grain of sand. My dark sea. The mystifying depths that both captivated and terrified me.

I’d come to learn that at the heart of life was suffering, and pain was an inevitable consequence of love. A slow gnawing ache that began the moment we dared to admit what it was. The shadow behind every adoring glance. The anguish that punctuated those fleeting moments of peace.

Love was also a sickness. An incurable disease. The kind that crawled inside the muscles and bones, and persisted long after death.

Mortui vivos docent. The dead teach the living.

And it was there that I’d faced death head-on. So smitten, I fell in love with him–his abrasive heart and blood-stained hands. The dangerous and erudite professor, with fiery eyes and cold steel flesh. We hid away in shadows, stealing kisses under midnight stars. He taught me passion and courage, and to seize what I wanted by the teeth. And in return, I taught him to feel again.