Chapter 41 Red Dress
Red Dress
Caramyn
“Don't look so dismal, Ijia” Ragna muttered. “You'll realize your place is here, among the maidens. They all accept it sooner or later.”
Caramyn finally broke her hours-long silence. “Have they accepted it? Or do they simply have no choice because this place has broken their spirits as well as their bodies?” Caramyn shook her head, biting her tongue before she lost her temper and ruined her chances of escaping.
Ragna walked her to the great lodge of Hrothvor, where a heavy door with an iron ring awaited them.
Caramyn scrutinized the layout of Hrothvor’s outpost. Beneath the snow-coated slopes of the back roof, there was an opening.
An icy glass window that overlooked the settlement of tents and snowcave homes. A promising exit point, if needed.
She missed having Nocthar’s eyes. He would have found the best route.
But he wasn’t there. And without him, she'd have to trust her own instincts on the ground.
She was taken into the clan leader’s home, and her thoughts raced.
How was she to administer the vial of poison tucked away in the bosom of her dress?
How would she administer it? She couldn’t assume there would be a drink in his room, or that she would even have a chance to slip the potion into it if there was.
What if he kept guards inside of his room?
He probably wouldn’t be the type to mind an audience.
.. But as she dared to entertain all the things she was sure he would try to do to her, she thought of something that just might work, if it didn’t kill her first.
The vial was so small that it hardly contained a sip’s worth of liquid. She couldn’t waste a drop. As she walked, she popped the lid off, hiding her movements underneath her woolen shawl.
Ragna knocked on the door. Hrothvor’s voice on the other side granted them permission to enter, and her skin turned to ice.
She felt sick but forced herself to maintain her focus.
The crane-woman shoved her forward into the fire-lit crackling room and closed the door.
The space was dim, just as she’d hoped. Scanning her surroundings as quickly and discreetly as she could, she was relieved to see that there was no one else in the room besides the hungry-eyed Frostlord.
Her window of freedom lay just across the room, an open gateway into the night sky.
She waited for a brief moment when he looked away as he adjusted himself, and with one swift motion, brought the vial to her lips and took in the liquid, careful not to swallow the small amount.
It burned, and tasted like sour blood and sea, but she ignored the bitter taste and feigned normalcy, her face nonreactive and unreadable.
“Come here.” Hrothvor demanded from his spot on his elaborate, fur covered bed.
He sat up, braced against the timber headboard underneath a wolf pelt, naked and baring out all his jagged scars.
Caramyn fought the burning urge to resist his command, and slowly strode over, drawing near to the bedside with a feigned smile.
“I see Ragna has taught you some manners.” He laughed in a way that made Caramyn’s stomach turn. “Already doing as you're told without a word. And so damn beautiful. I don’t think I can share you among the clan like the others. You might just have to be my special little pet.”
His odor was that of sweat, horseshit, mead, and something with a bitter copper twang.
He reached up to stroke her arm, trailing up to her chest, and bile rose in her gut.
But she couldn’t show any of it. As he groaned, Caramyn fought her desire to grab the nearest object and slam it into his face.
Instead, she feigned willingness, quiet and docile, just as he’d want.
Still holding the poison in her mouth, she knew she must work fast, before he got her into a position she couldn’t get out from under.
Though it repulsed her, she climbed onto the bed and over Hrothvor’s hulking body, pressing her open mouth to his, ignoring the grating feel of his cracked, wind-worn lips.
As he expressed his pleasant surprise with a nauseating moan, she pushed out the poison from between her lips, ensuring that his mouth was open and praying that at least some of the liquid would wash down enough to take effect.
The man choked a bit as she pulled away, but he didn’t react as she had expected him to. “You taste like the sea,” he grumbled, wiping his mouth. “A bit defiant. But I like you. Do it again.”
She hesitated for a second, watching with bated breath for the elixir to take effect, and hoping it would be enough.
“I said, do it again.” The Frostlord’s voice deepened as he reached for the back of her head and pulled her down to him, forcing her mouth to meet his again, the warm stench of his breath making her ill.
She pressed her mouth shut tightly, but he fought his way in between her lips, his anger clear in his violent movements and the force of his slimy tongue against her teeth.
Her heart raced with fear, and all at once she felt glad for every man’s life she’d let the Shadows’ take.
She wished more than anything to give this vile clan chief the kiss of an arrow in his chest, but for now, poison would have to do.
Suddenly, Hrothvor’s lips fell loose. The iron grip he held went limp. He muttered something weakly as she quickly pulled away, and his eyes fluttered until they shut completely. It had worked.
She watched Hrothvor’s chest rise and fall. He wasn’t dead, but merely in a sleep, his blood likely thickening and slowing within his veins.
She glanced around for something she could use to finish the job.
She found a mirror near the bedside and took it as far from the door as possible, placed a blanket over it, and stomped it with the heel of her shoe to break the glass.
She carefully bent over and selected the sharpest shard of the broken mirror, eyeing her own broken reflection as she held the makeshift glass weapon in her hand.
As she stared back at herself, something within her made her take pause.
To reconsider, just for a breath, whether she was meant to bring judgment upon this man.
Perhaps killing him in cold-blood was not the answer, no matter how easy or justified it felt.
Unlike when she was in the Woods, her certainty wavered over whether she had the right to choose whether this man lived or died.
She didn’t know what had shifted within her these past few weeks.
She hardly recognized herself in this moment.
If a man like Hrothvor had so much as stepped a toe in the Shadow Woods, she wouldn’t have thought twice about killing him.
Yet now, here, despite how horrible he was, she couldn’t fully convince herself that it was her place to stop his heart.
Even if he truly was a monster, perhaps she didn’t have to let that make her into a monster, too.
She laid the glass shard down and rushed towards the door to make her escape. And found it locked.
She turned and fled upstairs to find the window she’d seen earlier.
And no sooner was she striding towards it than when she heard a cry from outside.
She crouched and crawled to the window to keep hidden, watching as below, outside, a young girl, fourteen at most, was being forced to move along by another elder woman, similar to Ragna but softer, and with the looming presence of a man walking with her.
Decorated and wearing a similarly seductive dress as Caramyn’s, she resisted the entire time they dragged her along toward Hrothvor’s door.
It was the Gahmean girl from the docks—the one with the terrified eyes. As Caramyn took in the scene, the girl’s intended fate became horrifyingly clear. Rage flared hot in her veins as she watched them force the girl inside. Caramyn held her position, waiting for them to enter the house.
But the door was locked, and if they couldn’t get it open—if Hrothvor couldn’t answer them, it’d alert them that something was wrong.
She scurried back to the main room, searching in the dim, space by only the hearth’s light.
She found a key on the small wooden stool by the bed, by Hrothvor’s sleeping body, and she rushed to take it to the door where someone was now knocking.
As she thought of the Gahmean girl on the other side, any inkling of hesitation was gone. Hrothvor was exactly the type of monster that needed to be put down.
In that young girl, Caramyn saw herself, scared and trembling, fighting to run away.
No one had been there to save her when she needed it.
And her soul had become distorted and merciless for it.
But she would not let this girl suffer a similar fate.
She would not let her become prey to this traumatic horror and lose herself in darkness as she had.
Maybe it was too late for her. But it wasn’t for this girl.
And because of that, she wouldn’t leave this let this abhorrent man in the room draw another breath.
She crawled back over the balcony and retrieved the broken mirror glass, a revived need for vengeance coursing through her veins.
Another knock at the door. Caramyn held her mirror shard behind her back and opened it to see the servants and the girl as she expected.
“The Frostlord is in the middle of a massage. He told me to answer the door and said not to disturb him further.” She said with a gentle smile, as calmly as possible, not sure if they even understood her.
They nodded and sent the girl forward into the room with her.
She closed the door and locked it, tossing the key into the heart.
It wouldn’t matter. They wouldn’t need it.
And she didn’t need to be carrying evidence on her later.
Caramyn peered at the girl, whose face was stained with the tracks of tears.
She bent down towards her with a finger to her lips, warning her to remain quiet.
The girl nodded fearfully. Caramyn placed a hand on her shoulder to calm her, then gestured for her to turn around to face the hearth and to keep staring into the fire.
The crying girl complied, and Caramyn guided the girl’s hands over her ears as she whispered her only instructions. “Don’t listen.”
When the girl was standing with her back turned and ears covered, she slowly crept away and snuck to Hrothvor’s bedside.
She preferred killing from a distance, but she knew how to do this, too.
She’d make it as quick and clean as possible.
She looked down at his sleeping figure, then at the young girl’s silhouette in the corner.
It was all she needed to reassure her that her choice was the correct one.
It had to be. She lifted the razor-sharp spire above her head, and then in one swift motion, swiped the glass across the man’s throat.
She was glad her dress was red.