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She woke in the first moments of morning, the threadbare and tattered curtains providing no defence against the suns sickly glow. Eye's fluttering open she lay motionless trying to recall the last nights dreams, images of fire and salt, a nightmare where she had destroyed everything he had cherished and protected, where she had gone too far and the country burned.
Slowly she shifted on the makeshift bed, a pile of foetid clothing the previous owners had left. If there had been more time left she would have found something better, dragged a hay stuffed mattress from a neighbouring house also abandoned perhaps. Another creature would have simply moved into a more suitable den, but she was ever a creature of territory and this was her house and her home for as long as the day lasted.
She rotated her right hip to alleviate the pain of an old fracture and paused, her body tensed,certain she could hear something moving downstairs. She could, several bodies by the sounds of it, the warped and splintering floorboards beneath her provided little to prevent the noise reaching her quiet as it was. They were moving listlessly their muted movements due to nature rather than intent. She allowed the tension to ease out of her body her visiting devils were as she expected and they would not make the first move for some time yet.
Unworried by expending her energy on the unexpected she languidly moved herself into a sitting position then adjusted her clothes that had become twisted, tight and painful around her torso. Rolling her shoulders she checked her surroundings, or more importantly if her belongings were where she had left them, a tightly bound bundle and a sword propped against the wall to her left just under the cracked and grimed window.
Fishing around in a waistcoat pocket she pulled out a length of ribbon the last of his gifts to her she still owned, it was one of the first given to her when they had only just left childhood its once bright cloying yellow now muted and hinting at grey. Dragging her fingers through her russet hair she tried to remove the worst of the lugs giving up after two passes and tying it behind her in a rough ponytail.
If only she had been able to save more keepsakes, it was really just this ribbon, a dribble of perfume and some charred bones that she had been able to retrieve from the collapsed house they had shared up until seven years ago. If only she had more, then he might have come back right. Unsteadily she stood up locking her legs into a rictus-stretch and thrusting her arms out behind her. Dropping the stretch she moved the few steps to the bundle and sword, crouching down by it the mildewed stench of the window frames catching in her nose.
Snapping the strings on the bundle she laid its contents out. She could hear the devils below stirring more now all creaks and lifeless thuds. In it were the last few possessions she owned and would ever own, everything else of importance stowed in her memory. Of him there was only the bottle with the remnants of her 'favourite' perfume. She hated it but had never had the heart to tell him so. The bones were long gone given up to an abyss to allow him life. Life which he had squandered and spurned. What good was life without love?
Every year since he had refused her, in the first year twice. He had fled, bawling and braying in pain and blaming her for it. Months later he had sent a messenger asking her to relinquish her love. How could she? The messenger a putrid thing of gangrenous flesh had loped off silent and stinking. Every year since a different messenger had visited her, sometimes begging, sometimes demanding that she let him go. Each time she refused no matter how eloquent the missive or persuasive the messengers voice. She remembered the messenger on the sixth year, handsome lithe and not unalike him it had promised to be hers if she would just let its master leave. She had refused, as she always had and the messenger the following year was hard muscled and a voice that was raw and sounded as painful as the thorns that jutted through its flesh looked.
It had taken her all those years but she had found him finally. A small collection of settlements in a blasted wasteland, those like him had coalesced there seeking comfort in those who know their pain and those unfortunate mortals in the area professed their fealty to him. She could not understand why he had been chosen as their king. He was not monstrous, violent or prone to political calculation all he had ever been was kind and intelligent.
Picking up the blessed water from her roll she placed the two small bottles of it accessibly in her pockets. The perfume she upended letting the last few drops splash onto her fingertips. She smeared the cloyingly floral scent behind her ears and across her collarbones. The sword as unaccustomed to it as she was she hefted in her right hand. She was clever enough to know that she didn't know how to use it properly but having never chopped wood neither did she know how to use an axe. It was immaterial in the end, there was no finesse needed to hack at rotten flesh as she was dragged to the floor.
Leaving the decrepit bedroom she moved down the hallway to the top of the rickety stairway, steps evidently missing from its denaturing whole. The sound of the devils was louder now they were drawing into formation. She knew she could have waited until dusk before they would make any effort to assault her but the appeal of starting and it ending on what time she could control was appealing. Her hand snaked into her waistcoat pocket its fingers closing around the bottle of water, she crouched and edged her way down the stairs until she could reckon where they were stood and then threw the bottle with as much force as she could muster.
It broke with a crunch, the tinkle of glass muted by its liquid contents. They reacted in their own ways, a grunt, a shriek and a tut which must have been the sixth, none of the others had been quite so alive as to do something so human.
''You know how this will end, how this day will end for you, so perhaps you could stop trying to drench my companions?” The Sixth's tone was warm and had the hint of an accent, one she knew well having grown up there. She finished the flight of stairs that led straight into the single large room of the building she had made her house. As she had expected they were all there, all seven of the devils. The first with its vile flesh, the seventh towering over the rest it's silhouette punctured by thorns, the fourth big eared its face all smiles on a gaunt and unmistakeably damp body. “There's a girl. I'm going to make you the same offer you have had before. I know you won't take it, but that's no reason to be vindictive about things.”
She nodded, acknowledgement and rejection in one. She raised the sword, catching the floral scent across her collarbones. Her final reminder of him. She wondered one final time why had he come back wrong, why did he not love her? Could he not see she loved him, that death no matter how much it hurt couldn't keep them apart? She knew as well as he did that she would love him to her final breath, a love that kept him alive.