Bones

Content note: Contains brief scenes of physical violence and blood.

A gentle breeze tousles Olia’s hair and teases the hem of her yellowing slip while a trace of grey fur bobs in the distance. Its full shape is disguised by soft ripples as the North Sea rolls towards the beach.

A voice croons behind and lures her gaze to the right. Her chin angles over the expanse of speckled sand, stretching for miles, farther than her companion’s eyes can perceive, farther than hers too, which blur a little more with each passing day and the weight of her splintered heart. Still, Leon keeps it from shattering completely. It lies in shards, not dust, granting her traces of hope.

Leon’s fingertips snake around her waist and weave together over her abdomen. His body presses into the curves of her back. She shivers and sinks backwards, skin tingling under his touch. Her eyelids flutter shut, and a soft, contented hum falls from her lips. His earthy aroma mutes the crisp smell of seaweed and the dark ocean lapping up the shoreline as the salty foam glistens white underneath a crescent moon.

‘What’re you thinking about, love?’ Leon asks.

Olia’s lips draw thin. White foam creeps up the beach, coating the sand between her toes, and draws away as the tide drifts back out to sea. Sharp splinters of shattered femurs and soft pink seashells scratch and bruise her heels with each tiny shift. Her hand twitches below his coarse palm, and her gaze hardens. She touches the locket around her neck and sighs, eyes locked onto the seal idling on the horizon.

‘My sisters. It’s been so long since I’ve seen them. I fear I never will.’

‘Are they still out there?’

Olia shakes her head. ‘Nowhere I can reach them. They’re only memories now.’

His thumb traces her hip, mouth nestling into her raven locks. He can offer her no comfort, and she knows he’s aware of it. She sees it at night when she reaches across the aether with what little sense she still holds, however tenuous a grip on the inter-dimensional, and slips into his dreams. She spies his hesitation, the thoughts which loop in his head, the sorrow in his heart at her plight. She watches him, relives the months they’ve spent locked up in the dank, crumbling tower, her melancholy coiled tight around his neck, and her midnight lullabies haunting his dreams. He can’t help her, but his love is as loud as thunder, as thick as blood.

‘Maybe I can help you get back to them.’

‘No,’ she murmurs, tilting her head back to glance at him. ‘I’ve tried a thousand times, a thousand ways to find them. I even sought a witch as ancient as I, but she denied me.’

‘She couldn’t help?’

‘Poor, naïve soul. So human,’ Olia muses, her brows quirking. ‘So quick to empathize yet how little you know. Nothing like the others…’

‘How am I different?’

Olia shimmies around in his arms, her chest flush against his. ‘You would never steal my skin.’

‘No.’ Leon nudges her, nose to her forehead, and places a kiss upon her crown. ‘I don’t think I could live with the guilt of doing that to you. I’d steal it back if I could.’

‘Impossible. When they stole my skin, they burned it. There’s no returning from that. A seal cannot return to the sea without her skin.’

His grip tightens, eyes narrowing, as his mouth turns down at the edges. Olia takes some comfort in his anger. She’s long surpassed it herself and lingers now between bargaining and acceptance. His presence pushes her closer to the latter, but still traces remain of loneliness. For centuries Olia has mourned the loss of her freedom. The bonfire they’d tossed her sealskin upon still burns bright in her mind and the stench of ashes heavy.

The thought of enduring centuries more of this captivity, forbidden from her sisters, all because the Gods stubbornly refuse to take pity upon her, to put her out of her misery? Unspeakable. Her saving comfort is Leon. It’s her irony too. Her only hope, like every soul before him, is his death. What a cruel twist. Here he is, his love crashing into her like a tsunami, a man who’ll die before hurting her, but his death is the only way she can think of to force the Gods’ hands.

She dreads it. That acute agony, a knife twisting in her gut, as sharp and suffocating as her lifelong separation from her sisters. She’s bereft without them, but she’ll feel the same without him. One love for another. Oh, the Gods are spiteful, wicked things.

‘Thank you, though.’

‘For what?’ Leon asks, tilting his head.

‘For making my imprisonment a little easier to bear. But everything ends.’

Olia breathes into the nape of his neck, curling her hands around his elbows. She squeezes until her knuckles whiten. He tries to free his arms, but his efforts are cut short with two quick snaps, misshapen elbows, and a deep rasping yelp. His green eyes, wild with fear, lock onto her. His knees tremble.

‘Olia…’

‘I’ll regret this one,’ she whispers. ‘But I’ve no choice. The more lives I take, the less they can look away. A life for a life.’

Her features distort. Her nose stretches a little longer, her irises darken and yellow slits peek through her pupils, teeth sharpening and curving as they swell out of her burgundy lips. She closes her mouth and places a gentle kiss on the nape of his neck before sinking grooved fangs into his carotid. His heartbeat thunders in her ears, against her tongue, and hair stands on end, faint bumps pricking along her arms.

A litany of moans escape as she swallows and shudders with each mouthful, her black eyes rolling back. Blood dribbles down her chin, sticky and stinking of iron, the last drops no less heady than the first.

Death, her only comfort in the abyss, cushioning the blow of rousing every day to the same acrid melancholy. His taste, his scent, the claret staining his porcelain flesh, this loss a nightmare to torture Olia until the next soul.

Each life, she prays, begs, might yank her closer to the day the Gods finally put a stop to her. If she can’t return to the sea, to her sisters, and she can’t be human with Leon, then maybe she can build the body count so high the Gods can’t hide from her. She’s nothing left to lose, and even less to fear.

She drinks her fill and loosens her hold on Leon as her stomach rumbles. Blood and tissue smear her lips and she drops his broken body onto the beach, slumped atop the cracked ivory ridges of thousands of bones stretching for miles. Her cheeks flush, electricity ripping through her, and her shoulders rise and fall with each breath. A pitiful smile dances across her lips, twisting her jaded features into something desperate.

‘One more for the collection,’ she muses yet swallows, pangs of guilt striking deep. She can’t shake it, try as she might. Her conscience fractures. Tears well in her eyes, muddying the blood slick on her cheeks. Leon’s glassy eyes haunt her, hollowing out her insides. But this is the only way she can see to claw her way home. One more body, one more step. ‘End it. Please.’

‘Olia.’

Olia jolts, her gaze flicking over her partner’s body before searching for the source of the voice. Nobody in sight, disappointment strangling her. Alone on the shore, again, and hallucinating. The little sanity she still clings to, abandoning her. A hand claps down upon her shoulder. Olia spins on her heels. Her eyes meet his, as green as they were in life. His gaze pierces her soul. Once kind, once softer than feathers, now tinged with ice. Olia shivers and turns from him. The skeletons are gone, all but his and a sprawling expanse of seashells and sand.

‘Am I dreaming? Am I dead?’

‘No, my love,’ he said softly, fingertips tracing her shoulder. ‘This is neither. I’m one of them now.’

Olia weaves her fingers through his, relief washing over her. It buries the knot in her stomach, his body granting her a moment’s welcome reprieve from the surging guilt, and the grief. She leans into his chest, fingertips curving gently around his arm, not an ounce of rage within.

‘I loved you,’ Leon murmurs. ‘I would have died for you, willingly, if you’d asked. But they’re angry with you now. That’s why they sent me. To pass sentence.’

‘Sentence?’ Olia echoes.

He nods. The ice in his gaze fades, remorse seeping in to replace it. Olia exhales and casts her eyes to the sea. She’ll take anything but her sisters. Her eyes lid, her breath still as she braces herself, shoulders loose in her anticipation.

‘When?’

‘The moment they sent me back to you,’ Leon whispers, his fingers tracing circles on her back. ‘You’ll never see nor be seen again. You’ll spend your eternity here. Unable to pass. To love.’

‘Alone,’ she breathes. What a thought. ‘Forever?’

‘Forever.’

‘Before you go…’ Olia trails off. She sighs and buries her doubt, knowing she won’t have another chance to tell him the truth. ‘I hope you know how I felt for you.’

’I know. But it wouldn’t be enough. Growing old with me. Dying together.’

‘It’s a beautiful dream,’ she whispers, savouring the tingle in her fingertips as he pulls her close. ‘Maybe a dream is enough.’

His lips crack into a smile atop her head, slowly turning somber as the sun darkens. He eases his hold on her and steps back.

‘It’s time.’

‘One more second. One…’

Alone again, and invisible. Stone-cold and every bit as twisted, as smug, as the Gods’ best work, and no less creative than any kill Olia has indulged in. A fractured smile accompanies Olia’s glistening eyes as Leon’s dissipating warmth leaves her bereft, staring toward the setting sun with only her thoughts for company and an empty space where he should be.