Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Ashara
The Reunion
The scars on my back pulsed with prickling heat, something they hadn’t done in cycles.
I stared into his face, that familiar, devastating face, and they burned. I wondered if his had roared to life, too. If, like me, his teeth were clenched and muscles taut, punished with the memory of the scaffold.
“Demetri?” My disbelief was a lie. I’d known he’d be here. I’d always known.
He bowed at the waist, one arm curling across his stomach, eyes glinting between two wayward curls. “In the flesh.”
His sidelong grin felt like home, one left abandoned to rot.
Knees wobbling, vision blurring, I placed a steadying hand on a pillar to my right.
The blue sky and the dark Ovidian rock of the atrium warped into the grey clouds and cobbles of Dendra.
Under my hand, the gritty texture of stone seemed to transform into the grooved curves of a wooden post, the sounds of chatting laurels growing fainter and fainter under the crack of a whip.
One that struck again, and again, and again.
“Ashara?”
I opened my eyes.
“Where did you go?” His hand lifted, as if to touch me, before returning to his side.
Gaze sharpening, it morphed into something suspiciously close to discernment.
He must’ve noticed the pinch to my lips, or the narrowing of my eyes, because his own softened, peering down at me with a careful warmth that was enough to flip my stomach.
“I don’t know how to… I have so much I…fuck.” His hand swiped down his face. “I—”
“Who dares quarrel in the Grand Templum of the Dendralis?” A paxiam appeared, hovering over Iagor’s crumpled body, still lamenting the affront to his ‘fruits’ upon the mosaic.
“Attacked,” Iagor croaked, his reddened face scowling at us between strands of greasy hair. “Struck down in front of the blessed eyes of the First.”
The paxiam’s eyes rolled to the clouds, his armour rattling with the shift of his arms. He levelled the spear in the empty space between Demetri’s chest and my neck.
“Ye lives may be forfeit on the morn, but there be no rules I can’t poke ye with little holes in the meantime.
” He directed the spearpoint to Demetri’s lower stomach, the tip hovering an inch from his belt.
“Takes an awful long time to die if I stab here…” He dragged it across, angling it towards my lower ribs, brushing the ridge of my bodice.
“Or here.” I sucked in a breath, pressure ghosting my skin.
“They’d still have plenty to take come the offering. ”
Demetri’s fingers banded my arm, my wretched pulse jumping under his touch as he yanked me back by the elbow, pressing himself between me and the guard.
“Unnecessary, paxiam. ‘Twas but a misunderstanding. The laurellian female wasn’t involved,” Demetri explained, hands waving over Iagor dismissively, a practiced smile etched onto his face.
I pulled on my wrist, prompting him to release me, gaze fixed on the paxiam. Would we face penance for it? Despite the allowances of the templum, did fingers on elbows carry the same sin as hands within laps?
Paying Demetri’s touch no heed, the paxiam withdrew his spear until it faced skyward. “No. Brawling.” He jabbed his finger between Demetri and Iagor, the latter now managing to stand.
Demetri nodded, chestnut curls bouncing. “But of course. We would never dream of insulting our beloved Father. For Blood Demands Blood.” He cupped his hands, and I resisted the urge to cuff his head, sarcasm dripping thick from his tone.
Not that the paxiam noticed. “Blood Demands Blood,” he repeated, ambling off, red-stained armour clanking with each step. His backplate vanished into the sea of white-clad laurels as he returned to the foot of the dais, where the queue for the First grew ever shorter.
Arms crossed, Demetri wiggled the little finger closest to me. “Those spears are definitely compensating for something.”
Godsdamn me to the pits, I smiled.
“By the Other, I’ve missed that.”
My brow creased.
“That smile, darling girl.” He motioned to my mouth, his arm hairier than I remembered, bulkier, too. “Although, I’ve always been more partial to your frowns.” It was a relief to hear the playful lilt in his voice, so different from the last time I’d heard it: cracked, raw, and broken.
I relaxed my face, angling back towards him. “Good thing, too, since you were always more deserving of the latter.”
“I scent no lie,” he whispered.
A silence descended between us, eight cycles worth, turning the air viscous. So many words to say, so little time, and though I had planned an almost limitless number of them, every syllable evaded me.
After a quick glance over his shoulder, at the small clusters of laurels and sullen faces of the paxiams ensconcing us, he stepped closer, straight into where the silence was thickest.
“Ashara,” he started, forcing my eyes to open—I hadn’t realised I’d closed them.
His tongue rolled over the swell of his lips, wetting them.
I had the sudden urge to brush the gloss of spit away, the sudden urge to lick it.
Would he taste the same as he used to? His eyes landed on my lips, glazing with something that mirrored my own.
“I have thought of you,” he said, his gaze never leaving my mouth. “I have thought of this moment, every day for the last eight cycles.” He drew in a breath, lifting his head to the sky. “I…I have so much to say to you, and not nearly enough time.”
Had he planned grand speeches, too? Most nights, I’d rehearsed them long into the early turns: apologies, confessions, reassurances.
And on my darker days, scoldings and demands.
Demands to know why he’d ever taken my hand that day and led me to the yard; why he would endanger us both, endanger me.
Come morning, I always knew the answer—it was the same reason I had returned to him every Seventh Day, again and again and again.
We were addicted to each other. Addicted to the way we had made each other feel. Addicted to small sins.
“You look well.”
Eyebrows lost to my hairline, I choked on a laugh. “I look well?”
His smile was all claws. “Although, it is with my sincerest regret that I must inform you…you’ve gone grey.” He schooled his face into a show of mock horror.
“You dolt. I’ve always been grey.”
“True, but you’ve never had those.” The little heathen pointed to the fold of skin between my brows. “Wrinkles, no less,” he tutted. Gods, but a few breaths in each other’s company, and I already wanted to strike him.
“Knowing you will do that to a woman,” I accused, rubbing self-consciously at my forehead, as if I could smooth them. “Stress is the most notorious thief of youth.”
“I know the markers of pining when I see them.” He smirked. “That’s not stress etched across your face, my darling.”
Something dropped in my stomach. My hand fell.
“I don’t think I’m your anything. Not anymore.”
He flinched before he could catch himself, hurt shuttering his eyes before it cooled to something far, far worse.
“You have been, and will always be, something to me, Ashara.”
I couldn’t make sense of it, the feeling his words ignited within me. Shame warred with relief, regret with hope. I clenched with the effort to remain still, hands loose at my sides. To not reach for him, to not grab him with both hands and lose myself in the home of his body.
Did he smell the same? Like cherry wine and fresh air?
“Gods, Ashara. Your mother…”
My mother. Offered. Dead.
“I am so fucking sorry I wasn’t there,” he continued, breaking our gaze, his head shaking.
I blinked, looking away, the chasm in my chest growing wider.
“Blood Demands Blood,” I whispered, examining the twisted spires of the templum between the gaps of the pillars.
Her death stalked me everywhere, another hole in the ground, like Adelaide’s, waiting for the moment I tripped.
I’d gotten very good at skirting around their edges.
“Your parents?” I asked, fiddling with the damned buttons.
They’d moved to another enclave in Dendra, a decision probably motivated by Demetri’s and my indiscretion. Both cypresses, they’d been allowed to marry and live well into their fiftieth cycles.
“Father was summoned two cycles past, but Mother’s alive,” he revealed with a frown.
“I don’t think she’ll live to reach hers, anyway.
More likely to weep herself into an early grave long before that.
” His eyes briefly lost focus. “First Adelaide and now me. The state of her when I left…” He hung his head, curls cascading over his brow.
“You know what she’s like. Straight to hysterics over a weevil in the flour.
Now, she must endure without any of us.”
Parents outliving their children was commonplace in Thromarra. Roselli would be left with no one, and I could not decide which was the worse fate: to die alongside a familiar face or to live amongst strangers.
Another silence descended between us. It had never been awkward before. Perhaps it was my fault, or perhaps we had grown too far apart to ever bridge the gap now between us.
So little time. So little left.
“Ashara.” He edged closer, and my instincts roared to take one step back, conscious of the rest of the atrium. But I held my ground. We’d not be punished for impropriety here, not so near the end. A mercy of the Blood God, as Capriche had promised.
His face, earnest and open, became imploring. I didn’t look away, though nothing good ever came from looking.
“I never said it. I told myself I never had the chance, but really, if I wasn’t such a fucking coward, I could’ve found a way to come to you.”
Tears threatened to spill. No, I wanted to beg. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.
“I am beyond apologising for what happened, for it would never be enough. Not for what they did to you.”
Examining the floor, my vision bled red as the tiles warped and blurred.
“I should’ve known better than to put you in that position,” he continued. “I should’ve heeded our mothers’ warnings… but I was so fucking selfish. I couldn’t let you go…not until I was forced to.”
Gods, please don’t talk about the acolyte. Please. Please. Please. Anything but what he did. If faced with a choice, even now, I’d choose Druid Capriche’s whip over the acolyte’s fingers. Brutality over shame. Public penance over a private inquisition.
“We both paid the price for a debt that was mine, and it cost you more than it did me. It was I who asked you to meet that day.” He spoke as if we were at confession, and I, a druid who could somehow grant him forgiveness.
I’m not sure why, but something uncomfortable wracked through me, jostling my spine.
“What’s done is done—it was both of our choices to be there. What does it matter now? We were destined for the block, regardless.” I straightened, ensuring his amber eyes saw what was burning in mine.
“What they did to us that day was wrong, Ashara,” he reassured, eyes darting to our left, to the dais lined with red-armoured paxiams and the few laurels still waiting.
“We committed no great sin.” He spoke to the First, gaze fixed where she loomed above us—the pinnacle of the templum, hands upstretched, body glowing red in the sun.
“We kept our promise to never go beyond a touch or two.” His voice dropped, hand twitching towards me again as his eyes lowered to meet mine once more.
I gulped, something bitter caught in my throat.
“I have…I have thought about you every fucking day since they hurt you,” he admitted.
They’d hurt him, too. So, so much.
“Nearly eight cycles, Ashara. Eight cycles stationed overseas in the crusiax. I’ve journeyed to countless lands, witnessed indescribable horrors, but nothing could chase the image of you, bound to that post, bloodied and raw, from my mind.” His tone was hoarse, stripped of his usual playfulness.
“It haunts me, too,” I confessed. Not just the pain, which I refused to admit out-loud, but the shame.
Gods, it clogged my arteries like butter, thickening and congealing until it felt like my heart might stop.
I’d never said goodbye. I couldn’t even turn to look upon his face one last time as we departed from the scaffold.
He must think me a coward, a deserter. It was a surprise he could even converse with—
Every spiralling thought drained from my mind. All of them, like water down a basin, at the feel of it.
Demetri was holding my hand.
In the Grand Templum. In front of the paxiams. Under the relic of the First.
Demetri was holding my hand.