A Soul to Keep

When Reia wakes up, she is curious if the sun she sees through the window is real, then is disturbed by the marks on the walls counting the days the previous humans survived in the Veil. The longest stint is eight days. She fights the urge to leave and sneak out. Now, with the diadem on, she remembers that Orpheus said some fled and died and some were taken, meaning he did not kill all of them and that he promised to protect her life.

Tired of wearing the wedding dresses, Reia asks to change them after her bath. Orpheus offers her some organic dyes from the garden, which excites her. At her smile, Orpheus’s eyes turn purple again. He then leads her outside, asking her to wait on the porch while he places more protections to keep her safe. He also tells her that she can help him make the protective totems, as they do not require magic to craft. Reia watches and stays close to Orpheus while he places the protective totems and makes a salt barrier to keep the demons at bay, as he can only cast the protective spell he used on the village once every 10 years. Reia then sees Orpheus’s garden and the numerous fruits and vegetables he grows to feed his humans. She appreciates the sunlight she feels in the Veil, as the climate is milder than in the human world.

While admiring the garden, she is attacked by a demon. Orpheus kills it before it can harm her, but he is angry at Reia for not staying near him and chastises her for putting herself at risk. His anger is assuaged when Reia tells him she likes the garden and his home, even if it is still a cage. He reveals he planted the garden for a woman long ago but dodges Reia’s questions about who she was or what happened to her. They pick vegetables for dinner and go inside before night falls. 

Orpheus watches Reia make vegetable soup. While it cooks, he teaches her how to make the protective totems. He is hopeful about Reia as no other human wanted to learn from him in the past. She eats her dinner with him and asks if sometimes she can eat outside. As they work on the totems, Reia wonders why humans don’t use magic to make their own and reveals to Orpheus that her family is dead, though she refuses to answer his question about whether demons killed them.

On her third day in the Veil, Orpheus builds Reia a table from a tree near the house so she can eat outdoors. Reia contemplates running away once Orpheus trusts her enough to leave to hunt. She feels conflicted about her decision as she has empathy for Orpheus. She also grapples with her growing attraction toward him, which confuses her as he isn’t human, but she seems to desire him anyway. Orpheus watches her from afar, hopeful about her companionship as her scent of fear is completely gone. He realizes that he’s attracted to her beauty and scent, and he appreciates that she doesn’t seem to dislike his company and asks him about himself. He places the first protection trinket she made him above his bed and thinks of her as he falls asleep each night. 

Reia’s time in the Veil continues. After Reia finishes dinner on the seventh day, Orpheus draws her bath using his blood magic to summon the hot water. Reia asks him to bathe her without his gloves as she no longer wants two baths a day. As Orpheus touches her, she grabs his hand and examines it, which flusters him. He continues to wash her, enchanted by the softness of her skin. He realizes he desires her as he touches her body. Reia seems affected by his touch, but Orpheus doesn’t recognize it as desire. When he finishes bathing her, she spends longer in the bathroom than ever before.

Reia has a sexually explicit dream about Orpheus. When she wakes, she realizes Orpheus is crouched over her, arms caging her body, because of the smell of her arousal. It takes him a moment to realize she is aroused, but once he does, he uses his tongue to pleasure her. He stops after tasting blood, worried he hurt her. Reia tells him she’s “pure” as per his request, meaning she has never had sex, which is why she bled. Orpheus states that the purity he wanted was from disease, as he did not want to be given a dying human. Reia’s arousal passes, and Orpheus leaves her alone, satisfied that he was able to give her pleasure.

Reia runs away in the morning when Orpheus goes to the stream to get her more drinking water. She ponders why she’s running; she feels shame for being intimate with Orpheus, but she is also afraid of the fact that she is starting to like him based on his kindness toward her and her attraction to his smell and his appearance. She even likes his skull face and his glowing eyes. She is drawn out of her thoughts when she becomes trapped in spiderwebs. The Arachnid Demon of Sorrow attacks her, binding Reia with spider webs and dragging her to its lair. Before the demon binds her mouth, Reia screams, hoping Orpheus will come. Orpheus hears the scream and runs toward Reia, heartbroken that she ran from him and also afraid to lose her. The spider demon wants to taste Reia’s sadness, so it makes Reia hallucinate about her dead family, telling her that their deaths are her fault. Reia cries and barely notices as Orpheus arrives and fights the spider demon, eventually killing it though he is injured in the process. Before dying, the spider taunts Orpheus, saying that Reia does not like him and that she will die like the others, especially the woman whom Orpheus won’t talk to Reia about. Afterward, Orpheus begins to hunt Reia. He finds her quickly, and as he is about to eat her, she hugs him and thanks him for coming to save her. He picks her up and begins to carry her home quickly, as her protection amulet is missing.

Orpheus runs home with Reia, pushing her into the salt circle before collapsing from the spider venom in his veins. Reia drags his unconscious body across into the salt circle as demons appear. Orpheus’s body smears the salt circle, so the demons enter and attack Reia. She retrieves the sword from Orpheus’s room and attacks the demons after one bites Orpheus, fighting them off before dragging Orpheus inside to his bed. She washes the demon blood off herself and then removes Orpheus’s shirt to bandage his wounds. She sees his body for the first time; his chest is furry, his ribs and spine are on the outside, and he has fins on the back of his arms and along his spine. He looks different than a human, but Reia is not disgusted. The demons taunt Reia from outside the house, but she settles in beside Orpheus and tries to sleep a little.

Two days later, Orpheus wakes with Reia underneath his arm, using his body to block her scent from the demons outside. She fills him in on the demons outside, and he leaves the house to kill the demons, irate that they hurt Reia, who stays asleep in his bed. He kills a few demons and banishes the rest outside the salt circle. He then returns to the spider lair to retrieve the enchanted diadem. When he returns home, he sees his blood all over the house and begins to clean it so Reia can wake to a clean house.

Orpheus bathes and hears Reia wake. When he comes into his bedroom, she is sobbing in bed. She shares how her family died and how the Arachnid of Sorrows made her think that their deaths were her fault, as the village called her a bringer of bad omens who attracted demons. Orpheus explains that there is no such thing as a bringer of bad omens and that the demons did not kill her because they could not sense her hiding quietly in the dark. He promises she is not a special human who attracts demons because he would have heard about such humans in the demon town where the more intelligent demons dwell. He comforts her and then goes outside to get food and water for her as she was trapped inside while he slept. She doesn’t want to bathe again, so she suggests sleeping with Orpheus to mask her scent. She lets him cuddle her until they fall asleep, which Orpheus adores.