Chapter 12 #2
“Hmm.” He peeled off his gloves, sagging with blood, tossing them into the hearth and dulling their flames whilst the ones inside me crackled hungrily.
His black tunic, embellished with filigreed thread, strained as he rolled up each sleeve, forearms sinewed and veined, looking just as capable of snapping a neck as slicing it.
Caressing my throat, my fingertips traced the small dip in its centre, the same place where Osric’s flesh had unseamed.
I swallowed, feeling the lump travel down.
“Sit,” he commanded, voice rumbling.
Though some foreign thing begged me not to, I fell into the chair on the opposite side of the desk, eyes fixed upon the Butcher’s arms—anywhere but the dead man to my left, his blood dripping from his corpse.
“Who are you?” he asked, taking the chair opposite mine, larger and padded in velvet.
Chin dipping, I focused on the rise and swell of breath inflating my chest, a reminder of the boon Demetri had promised. “Ashara Laurel.”
“Ashara Laurel, Your Holiness,” he corrected, unfurling a roll of parchment and dipping a plumed quill into an inkpot.
“Ashara Laurel, Your Holiness. Seamstress by trade, belonging to the Eastern Enclave of Dendra. Only child of—”
“I know about your lies.” Cutting through my words, he scratched something out on the scroll. I craned my neck, trying to decipher the letters, but he dragged the blackened candle stump across the parchment, shielding my view. “Curiosity begets trouble. Perhaps Osric was right.”
I felt it then, the moment his eyes met mine, like a pin, its sharp point boring into my irises from beneath his veil of chain.
I cleared my throat. “I have not lied.”
He sucked in a breath, robbing the chamber of air. “Allow me to rephrase the question.” Impatience clipped his tone. “What are you?” Leaning forward, the desk groaned with his weight, its legs creaking.
I glanced down at myself, to my neckline, splattered with wine and blood. Osric’s blood.
“A woman, Your Holiness?”
That pricking sensation left my eyes to nip at my neck, the line of his gaze roaming over the expanse of my flesh before lingering upon the seam of my bodice. “Well, yes, I can very much see that.”
He returned to his scribbling. “Are you who Gregorei spoke of?” He set the quill down with an obscene gentleness, so unlike the swish of his wrist when his blade slashed Osric’s throat. I watched his hands, stained from the blood, barely registering his words.
“Gregorei?”
“Hmm.” Lifting his arms, he leaned back, crossing them over each shoulder so his hands could cradle his neck. “Clever. Most clever.”
I blinked. “What is, Your Holiness?”
“I can fucking smell it on you.” He dropped both arms to thump his palms on the desk, chair scraping as he rose to a stand.
Boots squelching in the sodden rug, he stormed over to the small, slitted window and peered out into the night, his fingers toying with something tied to his belt in sharp, quick twists.
“Why have they sent you so soon?” His voice was oddly soft.
Turning, body no longer wrought with tension, he relaxed.
I was locked in with a madman.
A deep, steady breath echoed from the confines of his helm, his wide chest shuddering with the exhale. “San Vindictam Vultaer.” The handful of unfamiliar words were spoken with such unexpected reverence that my mouth parted.
I took a moment to study him, then, before I could think better of it, asked, “What does that mean?”
Helm tilting, he sighed, returning to gaze out the window, fingers still fiddling with something at his hip. “Something dangerous, laurel. Something you would do well not to repeat in the small turns you have left.”
Silence hung between us, punctuated only by an occasional, sharp sniff from the window. I had a need to break it, take a hammer to it all.
“And I should like to spend those few turns somewhere other than here. If you have found me innocent, then by your leave, Your Holiness.” I made to stand.
He prowled towards me, boot prints trailing smears of crimson upon the stone until he reached the rug, a large hand pressing on my shoulder to force me back down. “Tell me, laurel, is that because there is someone you’d like to spend them with?”
A wash of nausea roiled through me, stealing my breath and dampening the unfurling heat blooming within.
He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.
“Did you slit his throat, too?” I asked, words shaking, longing to know the answer but desperate not to find out.
Two arms caged me in, gripping the sides of the chair. “I will tell you a truth.” The cool kiss of his chainmail pooled over my clavicle. “If you give me one in return, since you have given me none this night.”
There it was, the shaking, a pulse vibrating in my calf, twitching both knees.
He backed away, folding his arms across the expanse of his chest and towering over me.
“What do you really think, laurel? Of this?” He gestured around him, and I resisted the call to look upon Osric’s slit neck.
“The offering? It will not change things if you tell me, since you are to be put down like a mange-ridden dog, regardless.”
Dog.
The world seemed to shake with my rage, the ground thrumming beneath my feet. Something simmered in my chest until it spilled over, and I stood—permission be damned—fists curling at my sides. “Is he alive?”
The Butcher’s helm rotated, surveying the room before settling on me. “The offering, laurel. A truth for a truth.”
Grinding my teeth, I debated whether a lamb could tackle a mountain. Whether hooves could match stone. Whether wool might temper metal.
“It’s barbaric,” I whispered. There, heresy. And gods, if it didn’t feel like a prayer on my tongue. A headiness, like warm mead, flooded through me, and I was lighter for it.
“And?” he encouraged.
“It’s a wretched way to live, cast in the shadow of your death.” The frayed threads of restraint began to snap, twenty-eight cycles of it, one after the other, faster and faster, until an irreparable rip tore through what was left. A laugh tumbled from my lips, so like Esioul’s.
“You say you are saviours.” I rounded the desk, fingers pressing into the wood, its surface slick with blood. “You preach you are the shield, the buffer between us and His wrath.”
He followed as I circled to the other side, the scent of iron and poisoned berries smothering the char of wood from the hearth.
“But it doesn’t make sense, does it, Druid Vetrius?”
He straightened at the sound of his proper title. I backed into the desk, dress bunching against its rim.
“The cost of salvation from death…is death? We give, and He takes. You take—take, take, take.”
For the first time in eight cycles, since the twentieth lash, I felt something akin to elation bloom in my chest.
“I think we should slaughter you all,” I admitted, daring him to step closer, the space between us narrowing to a width of a finger. “Cull you in one sweeping strike. Give others the chance to grow wrinkled and old, to die in their beds as is meant to be the way of things, blood plagues be damned.”
The shadow of myself reflected in his helm. She was unrecognisable, warped by the metal into something with a far straighter spine than I.
“That’s my truth, Butcher,” I hissed, watching my face curl into a sneer. “I think you should burn alongside the smoke of your brothers, and the sky should turn grey with your ash.” I pushed away from the desk, intent on his veil. “Now for my truth. Does he live?”
“Ashara.” My name on his tongue clicked like a lock. “When the acolytes come for you, make sure you’re first in line.”