'If only one person is deserving of your love, give that love to them—-without holding even the tiniest bit of it for yourself,' said the witch who dared to fall in love with a demon. She was remembered not for her magic, but for how she died—upside down on a burning cross, her bloodied gaze locked on the one who condemned her.
He didn't even flinch.
Eve sat on the cold stone floor, haunted by the witch's last words, which felt so much like a warning.
'Better to love yourself, than to destroy yourself in the hands of a monster.'
Eve pushed up her sleeves a bit to reveal her red, swollen left arm as a result of last night's endless scratching. Her nails dug painfully into her raw skin as she itched to ease the irritating feeling briefly, before pulling her sleeves back down to conceal her weakness.
"Oh, I heard there was none like him in all of Hell. Women who have seen or caught the smallest glances of him faint, and they never seem to recover from that experience of being swept off their feet because of his beauty."
The other girls around her swooned, their eyes teary in adoration, hands clasped together underneath their chins as they, too, fantasized a possible future with the Demon King.
She itched nonstop without anyone noticing. After the nuns that oversaw this orphanage, she would die if her sisters knew that she had just a few years left to spend with them in this world.
Eve's light baby blue eyes widened too in silent adoration as she tried to focus more on this hot topic moving in-between their midst than on her quiet pains and sufferings.
"I also heard that he has these ethereal violet eyes that could make ten thousand angels fall at his feet in awe."
Everyone's eyes then widened at each other in interest, while Eve silently shook her head at them, hoping these irritating itches would leave her be for a second so she could focus more on this gathering that entails long nights of dreaming, wishing, hoping, and sometimes worshipping this enigma of their world.
The Demon King.
His beauty, charm, and fame were enough to shame the devil himself and keep him buried deep in the hearts of a lot of other demons, witches, and humans like them. No one really cared about his ugly side, or that he was also a charmed warrior that loved to draw blood, or that he could be unhinged when he wanted to—everyone was just interested in getting to see and meet with him once in a lifetime.
It was mostly impossible for every single person in Hell to agree on one single fact about you:
That you are drop-dead gorgeous on the outside.
And possibly a monster deep within.
But as the saying goes in this wicked realm, no one was really that pure as the angels that seek their destruction every given day, so it really didn't matter if their king of more than a hundred hellish years was a rotten apple on the inside.
"No, Maya, I have seen it in different look-alike paintings of him they sell at pretty expensive prices on the gold streets. His eyes are blue—like Evie's eyes but deeper and seductive."
Eve, desperate to say something or at least be noticed for once since she joined their little sect of admiring and lusting after the Demon King, shook her head at Kira.
"Deeper and seductive? What's that? Is the Demon King a demonness as well?"
Everyone sighed and rolled their eyes at Maya's level of dumbness. Of course, Eve meant to say his eyes were enough to stir all forbidden feelings of lust and desire with a single glance from him.
"What our dear Kira was trying to say is that his beauty is an intelligent mix of both feminine and masculine. The devil has one too. But this is more beautiful than the devil's, as the devil always looks ridiculous."
They all laughed, mocking the god of this realm, comparing him to the demon king.
Eve sighed and withdrew a little in sadness. Since no one was going to look her way and get it right, she might as well crawl back to her room in the attic and suffer in silence.
That was exactly what she did. The laughter and voices from her family beneath her room echoed and muffled. She turned on the almost melted-out candle wax she had been consciously managing for months now, and it did its best to light up her cramped room.
Since she was the girl no demon or witch was interested in buying for labour or adopting as a family, she grew up to know this place for more than twenty years. She helped raise most of the abandoned kids and babies the nuns were kind enough to bring here to shelter and feed. She grew up to be the caretaker of this place as well. And now, in the next three years, she would be gone from this realm forever, and she wasn't sure if anyone would care enough to miss her.
She stared wishfully at the sky before pulling down her dress to stand naked before the mirror.
If not for the red scratch marks all over her skin, an aftermath of being diagnosed as terminally ill, her beauty and frame were enough to rival any goddess or demon in this unholy realm.
Her curvaceous figure blended perfectly with her slender frame, her hips wide and breasts large enough and full to get any demonlord she wanted or desired. She was never pitiful on the looks, but her sickness was starting to weigh on her the most, and it's making it harder day by day to appreciate that all her endowments would one day go to waste if she remained a virgin until her deathbed and never once had the opportunity to give all the love she had coupled in her to that one person.
He has dark, red, and gold eyes.
She smiled as she swayed left and right on her feet, her happiness growing the more she thought of him.
He is about this height.
She stood on her tiptoes as she raised her hand above her head to describe his height in front of the mirror. Her smile growing, tears almost falling from the corners of her eyes when the phantom she was describing suddenly appeared behind her to hold her lovingly around the waist, deeply invested in her imaginations of him.
She giggled when he reached down to kiss her ears, his hands moving around her body because she was the one he admired and loved the most.
He turned her around for her to stare up at his tall frame. His rich, gentle hands came under her chin as he raised her head up a bit to stare deeply into her sparkling, blue eyes under the dull influence of the candlelight.
"When will you be mine…blue eyes?"
The Demon King asked with a smile—a smile that actually made tears run down the length of her baby face. Her body and hands trembling as he held her still with that question lingering.
"Soon…" she sobbed out, with her hands clenched by her sides, and the phantom of her imagination smiled down at her in pure adoration. His dark, red-golden gaze softened on her in genuine affection as he held her still to himself. His insidious horns blending with the partly dark room as the very essence of him clouded her thoughts and robbed her of her sanity. "...Soon. I will do all that I can to come to you, wherever you might be hiding in that big Red palace on Gall Stones Mountain."
The demon before her was proud. It was vivid in the way he looked down at her. She was the most adorable creature he had ever come to love in his long years of existing.
"And when I do…please…recognize me. Huh?"
It was a desperate plea to nothing, but it was wrapped with so many emotions and tears that flowed down nonstop from her cheeks.
Without making any promises, he only leaned down to place a soft kiss on her forehead before vanishing from her grasp.
Eve only closed her eyes in pain as her hands curled around her stomach. She fell to her knees and vomited out the blood that found its way up her digestive tract and had been irritating her throat for a long while now. The dark, bloody spit she threw up was a reminder she had not much time at her disposal.
The clock of death was ticking, and ticking fast.
If she was still passionate about giving up her love to that one person for life—that she would have none to hold on to—she had to start acting now, to pursue the true and hidden form of her imaginary lover, or she might end up dying sooner or later with many regrets.