Meum Miraculum

Chapter 40

My lips part, mouth feeling parched as I stare at Alaricus, but he refuses to look up at me. He keeps his gaze down, looking at the floor instead of me, but his plump lower lip trembles as we sit in silence.

"After that I was- I was nothing. There was nothing left for me, I was a beast, a horrid beast, who was the reason my beautiful mother and sister had died. They'd died in the misery I'd promised to take them away from." He says, his deep voice shaky.

"The Eros you know is nothing like the Eros I knew. He was made from the darkest parts of me and in those moments I was so far gone into the dark that no light penetrated through. I was enraged, so miserable, and so very lonely. I tried hiding out, I tried killing myself but the curse was unmovable. I was stuck living, I was stuck with every dreaded breath, unable to stop them. After years I became so angry, I began hunting pythonissams." He says and I blink away the tears that trail silently down my pale cheeks.

"She was right, I was stronger than her, but not her curse. I hunted pythonissams into extinction. Every creature on earth that was even rumoured to be related to witchcraft I ended. I hunted down the lines of the families, killing even their young that hadn't shown any signs of magic. There was a very low chance that an offspring may develop it later on. I wanted to ruin them for ruining me. And I did, they no longer exist, they haven't for centuries. But I saved her for last." His voice grows deeper as he speaks, something fractionally more primal.

"It was nearly a century later that I found her. She was the last one, I'd even removed the very evidence pythonissams existed from the face of the earth. I knew she was far too grieved by the death of her husband and only son to even consider reaching out to another, let alone recreating. By then my reputation had grown, I was the feared beast, the monster some thought could only be a horrific legend. I killed her." His eyes seem nearly void as he speaks, as if he didn't feel anything for what he'd done. As if he'd tried to push it down for years, and finally came up with the rewarding emptiness.

"She didn't beg me to stop like the others, in her eyes wasn't fear, it was relief. For in her eyes too was the loneliness that coursed through me with every passing moment. You don't know how it angered me to know I'd never get that relief. We had one thing in common we were both miserable beings, tired of our existence and with her last breath she said the one thing that would forever torment me. She thanked me. For pythonissams, royals, they could too choose immortal life only to end with the death of the one who loved them, and they too loved. But the king didn't love her. She'd purposely made my curse this way, so I could kill her, but forever have to live in agony." I crave to beg him to stop, but I had asked. I would get through listening to his story, I wished to know.

"Every being on earth quaked at my mere name, and it was how we liked it. We were the infamous Alpha King. Centuries had passed and I had grown so lonely that I just wanted people to recognize me, to feel something for me. Even if it was fear. By then I'd gone insane. I craved chaos and the misery of others. I was despicable. I can't even remember some of it, it's all a blur to me now. There was nothing left for me, but it was one night, I was an insomniac, still was until very recently." His eyes threaten to flicker up to me, but instead they go back to their position gazing at his feet on the floor.

"I saw a young girl, she couldn't see, she was begging for change. When she removed her glasses, she had big green eyes, like Lilium's. She smiled at me when I pressed a coin into her thin palm. Then she began to unbutton her dress, and upon being asked to stop she told me this was the way the new world was. Nobody just did good anymore. For the first time in centuries I felt sick. I realized that for all the people out there innocent like my sister and mother, I was creating a world crafted to defeat the good within them. Giving them a fate similar to one I'd given to my family and I couldn't do it anymore." He pauses, a slight shiver passing through him.