Enigma

by RuNyx

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. —Donna Tartt, The Secret History

Death was a curious thing. Planned or unplanned, mitigated or unmitigated, cruel or comfortable, it was the only universal truth that everyone lied about. Most adults she’d encountered spent their lives not thinking about it, trying to outrun it yet heading straight to it. She didn’t know if they realized what she had at such a young age—death was inevitable. It chased everyone from the moment of the first drawn breath and caught them at their last.

“Cost me what?” she whispered. Curiosity was her catnip, mystery her narcotic.

She had looked like a goddess, a mystical creature hovering over the dead, come to life from the sea behind her. And in that one instant, she had become his muse.

He had asked her to stay away and she had deliberately not. She’d thrown the gauntlet, and fuck him if he didn’t pick it up.

“I can do sexy a lot harder than you, little asp. Be careful what games you play with me.”

Caz van der Waal was an enigma, an unknown variable in her equation, an unsolved mystery, and she had always loved and hated those in equal measure.

“Try it. Try walking off a cliff, I will block you. Try making yourself bait, I will catch you. And try being with another man, I will use his blood and make you the canvas.”

“I own your mind. I’m going to own your body. And then, I’ll take your soul. Because you’re coming for mine, aren’t you? Mind, body, and soul. Now tell me, has anyone owned this pussy before?”

“Beg me again, little asp,” he murmured over her lips. “Infect me with your poison.”

“That’s a dangerous offer for someone like me, little asp. I could defile you, destroy you, damage you beyond repair. Do you want that?”

“You could bring gods to their knees, you know that?” he murmured softly, his hands tightening on her hips, before drifting to the corners of her eyes, tracing them like he did. “Just one glance from these eyes would have driven men to murder in old times. Still might.” Salem tilted her head to the side. “Would it drive you to murder?” He pulled her closer. “Oh, little asp. It would drive me beyond.” “What is beyond murder?” “Damnation.”

“Because I was a man on the path to damnation and I saw salvation instead. Because being near you makes me feel something beyond rage. Because the chaos inside me quietens when I’m near you.” His words were shaking by the end of his sentence, his hands holding her possessively. “You’ve become my muse, little asp.”

She was his. And coming for her would make them all understand why they’d called him Death in prison.

“Insanity is a spectrum,” he answered, like he was in class and provoking her. “We’re all a little mad here.”

“I want to be the only villain you see. I want to be the only devil who drags you to hell.”

“Because life with you feels greater than death. Because you make the artist in me burn with the need to create, make the man in me burn with the need to possess, make the killer in me burn with the need to protect. You make me want to live, Salem. You give me a modicum of peace in a world of chaos. Is that reason enough?”

Even after they would be gone, future generations would look at his art and know she had been his muse, that she was his lover, that she was his.