25th May 1103

Warning, this post could be disturbing to some people due to the violent nature of its content. If you want to skip it feel free, this part of the story will be covered in the next chapter.

Radomir gazed at his wife over the scribbled pages of writing that lay open before him. He had never had a neat hand, clutching the quill between fat, sausage-like fingers as his father rained down blows on his shivering weak, shoulders. Forcing himself to write with his right hand had always felt unnatural, even now the letters scrawled away from his quill, sloppy and misshapen.

Valeriya perched rigidly on the edge of the chair, her frail body alert to the slightest of movements. She did not look at him. She never did. Though there had been six visits like this, her eyes flitted around the stark room, sometimes resting on the hand that grappled with the quill, other times falling on the sinuous curve of the embroidered snake tapestry that was the Moraghdu birthright, occasionally even darting across the pages where his spasming hand spewed up great blots of ink. But never at him. It was as though he wasn’t even there.

“Are you comfortable there my dear?” he murmured, his eyes fixed on her pale form.

She didn’t answer, only turned her body away from the sound of his voice, hunched over like a trembling dove cuddled up in its wings as the rain pelted down.

Christ she was beautiful, though the illness had robbed her of much. Her arms may have hung limp at her sides, scrawny where they were once full and plump, her belly a hollow curve where it was once soft. Her cheekbones jutted out, angular and stark in the white wasteland of her face, a smattering of kissable freckles spread amongst the pallid glare. Her hair, once thick and luscious, drifting in curls down her creamy back, now brittle and thin. And yet, he still desired her more than anything on this barren mortal world. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, ever coveted in the dark of the night. Ever wanted. Ever loved.

He tiptoed across the room, a great hulking figure trying to make himself small to sit beside her on the lumpy couch. Perhaps if he just reached out his hand she would hold it in hers, engulfing the hairy brawn in her tender grasp. His brow prickled with sweat in the stuffy room an errant drop drizzling down the side of his face and catching in the web of his beard.

“I asked if you were comfortable? I had Mistress Rawtharn make all these cushions for you. I was hoping you might like them.”

Still she did not turn to him, not even a glance, her eyes fixed stonily ahead as though she examined in intricate detail the ugliness of his handwriting. All the hours he spent picking out patterns like some blustering woman. All for her, in the hope that she would like the rich embroidery and the sumptuous colours. That she would coo over the fine needlework and material, some of the last available to them from Branwhuld. Her very elbow was now indenting the doughy shape of the pillow, as though she rested heavily on a drowsing body. He imagined her head, resting sleepily on his belly, her golden hair fanning out from her ghostly white face, as he twisted a single curl between his fingers.

“I asked you a question,” he grumbled, irritation flaring, firey and bright in the depth of his gut.

Would she not look at him even now? He fought back a rising urge to slap the dull expression from her face.

“Look at me when I speak damn you!” he shouted and she flinched startled at the molten rage that was pouring from his mouth.

He was startled too, but that part of him was buried deep beneath the cascading flow of superheated fury that was pouring over his insides, drizzling down to fill even the tiniest of cracks.

“Why won’t you look at me?!” he demanded, his voice becoming shrill, “don’t you love me at all?!”

And still she did not turn her head. With an animal growl he threw himself at her, his heavy body slamming her against the couch sending embroidered cushions spilling onto the floor. Her hands flew up to bat him away, but they were ineffectual against the force of his passion and his rage, tiny wings beating helplessly against his muscular shoulders.

He pressed his mouth against her, sobbing incoherently as his lips met hers, crying into her mouth “I love you” over and over as she turned her head this way and that.

She pushed away from him, her legs squirming beneath the weight of his body but he only grasped her tighter, deperate to hold her, desperate that he should not lose her again after all of this.

“Valeriya please…” he wept, tears running down his face and splashing hotly onto hers which was pink-cheeked, eyes closed, hands clawing at him as he squeezed.

She was his. She was. She had to be. He couldn’t love her so much and let her go. She had to love him. She had to. He was nothing without her. Nothing. He would make her his again.

“Please,” he moaned, as she wrenched up against him with all the weight of her frail body, kicking out with sprawled legs as he held her tighter, his body pressing down between them.

She slid from his grasp, slithering to the floor with a thump. He slumped down with her, wrapping his arms around her fighting body.

“Please, please… you love me, you do love me,” he was sobbing open mouthed, snot running from his nose, “Please…”

He clutched at her flailing arms, grappling with her, pinning her like a dead bird laid out for dissection. His heart was thundering in his ears as he sucked in deep shuddering breaths choking on the tears and snot running down the back of his throat.

“You love me,” he wept, “you do. Look at me… see me!”

She went suddenly limp in his arms, her struggles ceasing like an injured bird, its bones cracked and broken. He smothered her with his body, pressing against her feeling the grooves of her hips and thighs meet his aching, lonely body.

And then she looked at him.

His heart stuttered in his chest and froze, his blood clotting icy and thick in his veins.

In her pale grey eyes he did not see love, only fear. The breath that was panting out of her frantic body was not passion only rattling dread. Her bared teeth were not a welcoming smile, but a grimace of animal terror.

She stared at him now, her eyes accusing him of things he had done and what he had tried to do. Hot tears slopped from his eyes and scrawled wet streaks along the perfect, white parchment of her face.

“Valeriya,” he moaned and she held his gaze, unafraid now as he trembled above her.

He rolled off her, crumpling into a ball of shivering shame and sorrow.

What had he done? Oh God, forgive him.

He was nothing. Nothing. With her or without her. He did not deserve her. His soul was misshapen and crude, an untidy scibble by the fickle left hand of God. He did not deserve her.

He heard a scuffle as she pulled herself to her feet. She stood for a moment, hovering by the door.

“Go! Get out of here! Just go!” he howled.

The door slammed shut behind her.