The Minotaur’s Bride

They dressed her in white samite,

cold as unshed tears,

laid lilies in her lap like guilt

and called the act sincere.

_________________________

No knife between her ribs—just rope

that bit her lily wrists.

(The priests knew well a willing throat

resists the blade's harsh kiss.)

_________________________

She woke to breathing dark,

to warmth of straw and musk,

to something large and trembling there—

not fangs, but hands that shushed

_________________________

The monster kept his horns bowed low,

his tears like morning snows.

"I cannot eat what love might grow,"

he rumbled through the black.

"My teeth were made for crunching bone,

my tongue for tasting lack."

_________________________

She touched the notch between his horns

where moonlight sometimes fell:

"Then let me feed you better things—

words that hunger well."

_________________________

With stolen altar knife she wrote

where torchlight dared to dance—

"The beast who kneels before his grief

has left the beast's advance."

_________________________

He traced the letters with his claws,

each groove a subtle feast,

and found the click of 'kindness'

sweeter than thousands of slain priests.

_________________________

Now, when new victims shriek below,

they hear an answering call—

not roar, but rhyme in antlered tones

through labyrinthine hall:

_________________________

"Fear not the hands that shush forlorn,

nor tears like morning snow—

the truest monsters starve for more

than blood you've feared to show."

From the Defaced Temple Archives of : The Lost Books - "Libri Perditi"

Where even curses learn new shapes.