Fairydale

by Veronica Lancet

One day, she would realize that she hadn't killed the butterfly. She'd given it life.

I love and am loved in return, yet there is a gaping hole in my heart that seemingly bleeds invisible blood. It's something I've lived with my entire life—this sense of missing something integral to my being. But it's also something I've never admitted to anyone else. To do so would make me seem ungrateful, and that is the last thing I am. I am just...restless.

"Are we not all a little mad, Lizzie mine?" He draws back, a gentle smile on his face—one that's shadowed by great sadness. "But what if my madness recognizes yours?"

Excitement thrums through my veins and for some reason, I know this night will irrevocably change my life. Like a seed planted in fertile soil, this, too, feels like the beginning of something.

"You don't have to say anything witty to have my full attention, Lizzie mine," he murmurs against my hand, his warm breath penetrating the lacy glove and meeting my naked skin. "You only have to exist and you're all I see," he continues, coming closer and tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.

"Wherever you are, wherever you go..." he pauses as his gaze pins me to the spot. "Whoever you are. I will find you. That is my promise to you. Always."

"I may not know everything about you, but I know your core, Lizzie mine. And it's the most beautiful thing in existence."

I'm lost in the abyss, and he is my Vergil—the only one who can bring me to the light. Or...drown me in the dark.

"I've spent my entire life at the bottom, and when you're down, there's only one direction you can go." "Oh, how wrong you are, Miss Darcy," he chuckles. "Maybe you've known what it's like to be at the bottom, but I doubt you've known hell."

For a brief moment in time, I was his—truly his. And he was mine.

It doesn't matter what my mother says. That he was a bad man. That he was a debaucher of innocents and the epitome of evil. He could have been that and more. But for that moment in the maze, when he'd looked at me as if I were his entire world, I know he was mine—so irrevocably mine.

"How could I want anyone else when I am only because you are? I exist for you just as I exist because of you,"

"Even if the entire world hates me—even if they all revile me—as long as I have your love and your regard, nothing else matters. I can be the enemy of people, Lizzie. But if I am your lover, it's more than enough for me. I told you before," he purrs huskily, "I may be bad to everyone else. But to you, just to you, I'll be good."

"I've been waiting for you for a long time," he gives me a sad smile. "When all you have is time, you devote it to perfection,"

"I didn't forget you," I whisper as a tear rolls down my cheek. "I could never forget you. Even when I couldn't remember, I knew I was missing something—a central part of myself. How could I forget you when you're part of me?"

God, but I know he would give me the moon in the sky if I asked for it. Yet for all his powers, we're both useless in the face of fickle fate.

"What's in a name, love," he murmurs lovingly as he lays a kiss on the top of my head. "You would be mine under any other name. Just like I would be yours."

"I'm here. I've come for you," I tell him fervently. "I would always come for you. I'm just sorry it took me so long," I say as tears fall down my cheeks.

"I would have waited an eternity for you," he murmurs. "Knowing you would come for me is the only thing that kept me sane."

There's nothing more potent than knowing I am with the only man who completes me in the entire world—the one who claims my heart, my soul, my goddamn essence and everything that I am.

"You will never kneel before anyone, Darcy. If anything, the world will kneel in front of you,"

"People can think the worst of me. They may think I'm Satan personified, the epitome of evil or destroyer of worlds, but as long as you love me and see me, I don't care."

"Please never leave me, Amon. I would never survive it." "Never, darlin'. Where you go, I go. If you exist, so do I," he confesses thickly before he kisses me anew. "And if you're not, nor am I."

For as long as she exists, I shall exist, too."

"Our lives will be forevermore intertwined. As long as he is, I shall be too."

Memories might not be the core of a person. But they certainly give you depth of feeling—for you must have loved to know loss and you must have lost to know the fear of loving again.