Poor little Maeve McCrum. She was the last of her kind, meaning she was the only one left to be punished.
I almost pitied the mortal female. Unlike the rest of her kin, she had no knowledge of what her family had done to me. She wasn’t privy to the dark secret her precious home held.
Maeve’s ancestors had stolen everything from me. They knew the truth of what I was, the curse that bled me of my magic. None of them tried to set me free. Why would they? I was the battery that fueled their livelihoods, and kept them warm through the centuries, fed through the famines.
Deloras and Liam McCrum were lucky that it was Otherworld cultists that broke in and killed them. They’d died at gunpoint, quick and clean.
I wouldn’t have been so merciful.
It wasn’t the first time cultists had broken into the store in search of my eye, though it had been decades. They’d be back. They always came back.
Chances were good they’d kill the girl this time, too. The thought filled me with fire. Her life was mine to snuff.
Fantasies of her death danced in my mind. I’d take my time stripping her flesh from her bones, working to the music of her screams. Then I’d set the mess I made of her aflame and inhale the smoke like fine tobacco or Blackweed.
My dark thoughts melted into the black of my brain when the painting lifted off my eye.
The last time I’d seen Deloras and Liam’s granddaughter, she was barely more than a girl. Now, she had to be in her late twenties.
Fire and fury.She was beautiful, with hair as pale as wheat and eyes as blue as sapphires. And she was so feckingwee. In my true size, she’d fit in my palm. Just a twitch of my fingers and her bones would break like dry twigs. She had a round face, with full-pouty lips that begged to be kissed. I imagined them red and blistered from the heat of my own skin.
I loathed humans. There was something about them that turned my insides molten. Maeve was no exception, but there was something different about the fire she stirred inside me. The urge to play with her before ending her life spread through me like wildfire.
The girl was so short she had to grab a chair to lift up the painting hiding my eye. Just like when she was younger, and would sneak peeks at the stone when she thought no one was looking.
Back then, Maeve had taken in the topaz with wonder. Now she eyed it with weary suspicion. Even if her human rationale told her not to believe in the legend of Balor, there was no denying the malevolent energy pouring off my gem in powerful waves.
When she placed the canvas back over my eye, I tried to shout at her. Not that damn painting. If it weren’t for the curse draining every last drop of my magic, I could ignite it in a blink. Without my magic, I was blinded. I could still hear her though, tromping up the stairs to the apartment above to unpack her luggage.
In the past, the noises in the shop and upstairs didn’t intrigue me. I’d sink into the back of my mind, think about the old days. My home in Tír na nÓg, the uprising. How I’d nearly won, and taken Ireland for the Fomorians.
So it was strange that I found Maeve’s sounds interesting enough to keep my ears perked. Even just her unpacking, andher mutterings. Ordering food to the door. Her footsteps. Her sniffles—she’d been crying again.
Some hours later, she’d finished her food and, by the creak of springs, went to bed. But she didn’t go to sleep.
There was the sound of rustling fabric, followed by faint and breathy huffs.
“Fuck,” she moaned as she touched herself. She didn’t bother being quiet; she didn’t think anyone but Gilly could hear her.
For years, I’d tuned out the McCrums—their fights, their boring small talk with customers, their rutting. I didn’t listen to any of it. I didn’t care about their lives. Only their deaths interested me.
Maeve, at least this older more damaged version of her, was different. I strained the only sense they hadn’t taken from me, eating up the filthy noises bleeding through the floorboards. Her heated moans, the obscene little squelches as her fingers slipped inside her dripping mound, the rustle of fabric as her toes curled into the sheets.
A dangerous cocktail of hunger and frustration burned through me as I listened to Maeve pleasure herself. By her quiet sobs, she wasn’t having any fun. She was probably rubbing one out in hopes it would help her sleep.
Ages had passed since I’d buried myself between the thighs of a woman. Even if by some dark miracle the curse broke, I could never bed another woman again. Monsters and fairies and other magical beings were long extinct. What was left? Human women? Too small. Too flammable.
I couldn’t touch humans without killing them.
My size alone would be too much.
Maeve would never survive me.
But that didn’t stop my imagination from going wild.
If these were the old days, I’d transform into my true shape—the building would be destroyed and perhaps I’d pluck Maeve'slifeless body from the wreckage and wave her around for all of Ireland to see while I smashed my way across the country, crushing and burning everything in my wake.
These days I’d have more finesse.
