19. Threads
Chapter 19
Threads
“ L ord Azure…” Celestine croaked the words.
I am frail glass, in pieces on the ground from Tristien—and you want me to gather the pieces so you may hammer them into dust?
Was this what all Seasons were? Why should she expect any different? How many thousands of women had died and writhed under their attentions in their annual bride hunt? They were hungry gods. Tristien had shown her that. To sleep with a Season was to feel the touch of war, the lash of control and dominion.
Celestine glanced around the campfire. What sweet lies this one made.
“I fear, if you do not,” Lord Azure motioned to the cushions. “You may die, Final Bride.”
Celestine nodded. This will be it. Perhaps if I had come here first and Tristien last, I would have made it. Or Encarmine last. Perhaps that would have made a difference.
She undid the hem of her gown, which was caked to her back from the healing lashes and deep bruises that had turned into wounds. As her gown fell, her naked form his to capture, Azure did something that surprised her most of all.
He averted his eyes. Was he ashamed?
“Please, sit by the fire, facing the sea. So I can see from the moonlight.”
Celestine’s mind went blank. For nothing seemed real anymore, nothing seemed to matter. Numbly, she walked towards the cushions and faced away from him.
I’ll stare at the sea, the ocean, when he takes me. He’ll probably bend me over like Tristien used to, but at least then, some part of me had wanted it.
Lord Azure sat behind her. He handed her a long, thick fur and she covered the front of her with it. She kneeled, waiting for his touch.
“Please sit. It’ll be more comfortable.” Azure said. He still sounded so at ease, so knightly.
Celestine inhaled a trembling breath, hoping the numbness in her mind and heart would not leave her while she served him.
“Forgive me. My people do not know the shame of covering themselves. I know things are different in your lands.”
“Am I your property to observe as you see fit?”
“No,” Azure stated, the deep timbre of his voice sliding over her shoulder like the warm fur. The fire crackled next to them. He tossed her gown into it, where it burned and curled. Celestine stared at it, watching it curl and smoke. How long had she worn it?
“But you are a guest in my camp, and I cannot permit you to die.”
What?
Azure reached out, touching her skin with the back of his hand.
He’s reading me. She shuddered. He will know so much of what Tristien did, and perhaps I did as well.
"Perhaps I should have let Encarmine take his head,” Azure said to himself. “Your resilience is astounding, but tragic. You can rest here. I will not tell you that you are safe because no person is ever truly safe once they leave their mother’s arms. And you knew that gift so briefly”
Azure reached for a pouch and bowl, and he mixed herbs and water. “My land is filled with many fine plants. I am no Lord of Spring, but this should aid your flesh.”
His touch was gentle and kind. As his fingertips dabbed her wounds and bruises with differing pastes that hardened upon her flesh, it was as if his touch was having a conversation with her flesh. If wounds were words, she had paragraphs of them on the parchment of her flesh. Azure didn’t remove them, but he dulled their fine stamp upon her soul with kindness and medicine.
His voice bathed her with its depth, “The worst wounds are not upon our flesh, as you know. You are strong, Celestine. All women hold this strength within them. Men are like talons of a hawk. Strange that they abuse that which gives their lives meaning. That they tear at the flesh where they would continue their bloodline.”
More and more, he soothed her. Laying her down, covering her bottom, sliding the pelt down only to administer more salve. He kept her close to the fireside, where the lotions and ointments warmed and hardened like clay.
“Your gown may have been lovely once but it bears his markings too much. I can smell his perfumed stink.” Azure said. “While in my lands, my people made you these.”
Celestine glanced back, her will melting under his touch. It wasn’t that he was a Lord. It was the gentleness in his attention and that he sought nothing for himself.
Such a simple thing, yet it means the world.
"Will I heal?” Celestine asked.
Azure stopped sliding his hands along her wounds, now sealed, inspecting them. “That is up to you.”
“The women who came to the Bride Hunt in the years past. What happened to the ones you caught?”
Azure stood, walking around her, going to the tent to fetch something. He was tall and broad, but with a hunter’s grace. “They are here, among the plains. Many are buried here.”
Celestine watched him. Am I, too, to be a screaming skull under the plains of your land? What terrible atrocity do you have in store for me?
Azure continued, “Many had children, are grandmothers now. Not all took to my bed, but many did.”
“Did any leave?”
“No.” Azure turned, his circlet upon his brow. Unlike other Lords, his did not seem to emanate power. His sword hung in its ornate scabbard on the post near the falcon Ferro. “Though they were free to. The plain heals and gives so much; many wish to remain within it. But my people are travelers, revelers in great contests. They sing beautiful songs and write poems, and they wander. Seeking to be seen.”
Celestine pulled the fur closer to her, feeling the pull of the fire. The pipe still had her feeling soft and fuzzy.
He means to heal me. He read me to see what occurred and now wants to fix it.
“Please, dress.” Azure smiled. “It will take much more time, but we will heal the Final Bride in time.”
Celestine reached for the clothes he had set for her. Lord Azure stepped beyond the tent to give her privacy. The trousers were soft linen, not the thick and roughness she had worn with Encarmine. The shirt fit her perfectly, and the nape at the neck opened with ties.
Tristien would have picked something more revealing. To punish me for daring to show my flesh.
The shirt opened as much as she wanted, so she tied it completely closed. Long sleeves ended at her wrists, and leather boots and thick slippers were her options for her feet. She chose the latter.
Once she had dressed, Lord Azure walked from behind the tent. Her wounds ached less, but she still felt like shaking. The herb from the pipe dulled some things, but like he said, it didn’t remove anything.
“Thank you.” She motioned to her clothes.
“Please,” Lord Azure spoke and beckoned her to sit. “It is worse than I had thought. Solis almost killed you, which would have been understandable. It is his way. But it is worse than I imagined. He nearly split your soul apart. It hangs by threads.”
“Can you fix that?” Celestine sat and looked at him, the handsome and broad nomad-night with skin of dark pallor. She remembered who had stood against Encarmine’s swiftest wrath and was at ease.
Azure shook his head. Celestine felt her heart tumble.
“Someone I know may be able to.”
They sat by the fire, and they sat in silence. Azure had brought her to this place, this plain, and despite everything, he had surprised her with his attention. He had left her to herself to wander barefoot among his fields. Shared fire and food and comfort with her and tended to her wounds.
But his greatest gift after her time with Tristien was their silence. Sitting by the fire. Celestine’s mind found peace in its flickering light, like the stars above. If just for a moment. If she looked within her soul would be in tatters. A ravaged corpse. Emaciated, dying for the need of something she did not know the name of.
The only sound was the wind and the fire, the soft whinny of the horses wandering the grasses.
It was enough.