The Demon’s Bride

Recommended song for the chapter (for better experience use Spotify) Torn Apart on the seams by Evan Call

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Maroon walked on the corridor alone. The party had ended and the servants had retired after cleaning the room halfway, leaving the rest to be clean tomorrow as the servants were unlike him a human who had limit. He often wondered why humans were weak, almost sounding as though he had been a demon since his birth when he wasn't.

The past of his life seemed like a far far dream for Maroon. He almost forgot how he was but he could tell in the past he was difficult than he was now. He remembered himself to be a fairly friendly person who is often talked to in the village he lived in. The woman he loved, Lilith Salyn was even more of a lively person than he was.

The most fear that time could do to people who aged slower than others or who cannot aged at all was to erase memories. His master, Lord Ian White, suffered from the scarless pain. They were both haunted by the guilt, regret, and anger of the past after loosing their dearest ones but the time had worked the opposite of their wish by moving froward, erasing the places that held memories. Now, he barely had anything to remember fortunately he still had the faint memories about his dearest wife who couldn't make it in time when he arrived.

Maroon's finger unconsciously circled and touched the locket on his neck, playing with it mindlessly while tearing at the full moon. his eyes dazed as he closed his eyes and remember the wide smile on his lips when finding out Ian had killed and burned down the slavery house. The smile vanished in a blow, however, when he found out Lilith's body in the house of the nobleman who had bought her.

Not all slaves had good luck and was fortunate enough. Elise had pulled a diamond with her luck as he did but his wife didn't. Lilith had been bought by a bastard who enjoyed torturing people.

It was all too late by the time he found his wife. She had been beaten black and blue. Her fingers had the deep calluses and her fingernails chapped. Maroon could still remember everything well because revenge was what drives him forward. He could recollect it all from the single thread of Lilith and remembered the scars and wounds she suffered before her death.

He relished his anger by killing that noble whose name soon he had forgotten. Closing his eyes he remembered the face of the nobleman stricken with fear when finding out Maroon had killed the servants and guards he ordered to protect him.

'There is no one in your mansion who is alive anymore,' said Maroon, his eyes were deep red not as deep as his master but enough to glisten in the dark and frightened the human man.

'What is it that you want?! I will give it to you, everything! Wealth, status, or women? You can even choose all the three that I offered. Whatever you wish I will see it through that's why spare my life!'

maroon took the time to think which raised some hope of the nobleman as it appeared to him as if Maroon was considering his offer.

'Can you bring back dead people?' Maroon then questioned, catching the happiness that briefly danced on the man's face slowly morphed into realization. 'I know you can't then I will take your life.'

Maroon had made sure to kill the man in the most painful way he had. Also torturing the nobleman for three days before hanging him on the top of the clock tower. His eyes came back to see the moon.

"I remember that in another two weeks the blood moon will appear," a woman's voice came behind him.

Maroon didn't have to turn his eyes or look at the woman's reflection that came on window. His lips were thinned. All his emotional swirl disappeared form his eyes, turning him passive. "I don't think it is time for you to walk outside, Miss Harriet."

Lilith smiled. Maroon was so close and yet she couldn't touch him. She couldn't tell him who she was and neither could she ease him from the pain that she could see passed by his eyes while she was standing behind him, watching how his eyes sunk down and his fingers playing the locket that she remembered to have given him a day before their horrible separation happened.

"I cannot sleep and thought to take some fresh walk and air," Lilith answered and she took three steps forward, seeing Maroon quickly walking aside as though he was allergic to people's touch, something which had never happened before but did now. Not because Lilith had entered Harriet's body. When she was still alive, Maroon had been the friendly and energetic man but now he was a shell of himself. "That is a beautiful garden that this castle have. It is a shame that it's winter. I love flowers and planting you know. I often plant during summer and love the view of the spring."

Maroon's brows were raised that had Lilith realizes she had spoken very similarly on her own self. 

"A coincidence. I also love to plant. I learned it from my wife," Maroon answered. He was not someone to bring up things from the past and perhaps it was the full moon that compelled him to speak.

"I know," whispered Lilith in a very very small hushed volume that Maroon who was a demon couldn't even sense her lips moving. "What do you like to plant, Mr. Maroon?" She then questioned and watched him thinning his lips.

"I like to plant heavy stuff, such as flowers that take years to bloom. It is my greatest pleasure to see them blooming for the better," answered Maroon ambiguously.

"For the better?" Lilith who caught the oddness of his words asked him.

"What do you mean about blood moon, Miss Harriet?" Maroon asked instead of replying to her.

"No, I was just thinking to myself," answered Lilith, "It is often said that everything starts with full moon and ends with blood moon. Blood moon is a funeral day and they said that people who are the happiest during full moon will receive their deepest misfortune during blood moon."