Chapter 21
Chapter twenty-one
Ashara
The Truth
He had licked me. Was licking me.
Face twisting, I tried to yank my hand, trapped beneath his veil, but his grip was unyielding.
My other wrist, still chained, clattered against the bedpost, ringing against the wood like templum bells.
I kicked and twisted, attempting to wrench myself free, only to snare my legs further as the linens wound around them.
The scent of hearthfire and jasmine billowed from the mattress, so dense I thought I might choke on it.
“What in the pits are you doing?” I cried. “Release me!”
He did not answer. Still, he licked. Licked and licked whilst I thrashed and screamed.
At last, his grip loosened. Seizing the opportunity, I reclaimed my hand from under his mesh, holding it up to the light. Saliva gleamed along my palm, mingled with fresh blood where the beginnings of a scab had been torn away.
A shudder ran through me as I stared, fingers spread, disgust mingling with something I hadn’t the courage to name.
Intrigue, perhaps, though more likely horror.
My gaze flickered between the split in my skin and the Butcher.
Shoulders slack, he settled back into the chair as though he had done nothing at all.
As though a prophet of Dendralis had not just put his tongue to my flesh.
“You licked me,” I said, mouth dry.
He regarded me in silence, helm fixed upon my face for a heartbeat. Then he shrugged. Shrugged.
“Why?” I demanded, curling my hand to my chest. “What sort of creature licks an open wound?”
My fist curled tighter at his silence as I kicked myself free of the linens, wriggling loose like a silkworm shedding its cocoon.
“Nothing to say for yourself?” I pressed, my tone blasphemous in its bite. “No confession? No truth to offer as to why you would taste me like a godsdamned animal?”
A lock of hair fell into my eye and I clawed it back, fingers snagging in the ash-dusted knots. His helm followed the motion and he rolled his shoulders, working his neck until the joints cracked.
I braced myself, preparing for the edict of penance. A flaying, perhaps, or a scoring of razors. I deserved it—after all, Thromarrians had been punished for far less.
“I did it to help,” he said at last.
“Help?” I scoffed, the heat bubbling within me enough to rival Ovidus’ core. “Help? You reopened it!” I thrust my hand towards him, holding it between us. The wound was cleaner than before, undeniably so, and the pain…
“It needed cleansing,” he replied, words slow and over-pronounced, patient in the way one speaks to a dolt. “Otherwise, it would fester.”
I stared at it, awaiting the sting to return. “In my enclave, we use herbs,” I said, mirroring his cadence, trying to ignore how the slash no longer burned. “We do not go around licking each other like alley cats.”
A deep, knowing breath—one that suggested I was not long for this realm—whooshed from under his veil.
“Cats clean their wounds to stave infection, Seamstress,” he said. “And to ease the pain. Does it feel better?”
“The tongue of a druid and the tongue of a cat are not the same…though both seem to lick places they shouldn’t.
” Flexing my fingers, I sought out the ache that had plagued me only moments before, but it was gone.
In its place lingered a blessed kind of numbness, and beneath that, a faint, almost pleasant, tingle. Like the tickling upon the dais.
His helm tilted, just slightly. “Better?”
“Better,” I admitted, voice faltering. Clearing my throat, I let my hand rest upturned in my lap. “But foul beyond measure. Do not do such a thing again.”
He leaned forward, fingers indenting the mattress near my left thigh.
“You are in no position to tell me what I am and what I am not to do.
Have you forgotten that it is you who is chained to a bed, injured and under inquisition by order of the High Druid of Dendra.
Do you talk to all druids this way? ‘Tis a wonder your body is in my bed at all and not strung up in a piazza somewhere, left to age like dried meat long before your offering. The druid of your enclave must be forgiving indeed, to tolerate such transgressions.”
I bit my lip, tasting ash again. “I do not speak to druids this way.” If I had, Capriche would have made it his crusade to see little bits of me pinned to every Door of Judgement in Dendra, a limb for every chappellum.
“Then make not a habit of it,” he replied, fingers relinquishing their hold to brush out a crease on the undersheet. “Others will not be so tolerant. Speak to Falstaff that way, and spared by the Blood God or not, an acolyte’s belt would be the least of your concerns.”
“But I did,” I breathed, stomach jolting with the memory of my heresies upon the Blood Tree’s dais.
I pray for the end of all things.
When your time comes, I hope it is a torment.
To the fucking pits with you, the Blood God as well.
He leaned a fraction closer, and I fought the urge to shrink back from the sharpened knives of his helm. “You know who I am, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And what they call me? And why?”
“The Butcher.”
He eased back. “A butcher cares not for what lies on the block, only that the cut is clean. Falstaff will not touch you while you are under my charge, especially not if you give me your truths.” He uncorked the glass bottle, its pop making me jolt.
Soaking a strip of linen with its contents, he reached for me. “Your hand.”
I drew it closer to my chest. “Are you…” I began, cheeks ripening to tomatoes, “are you going to lick it again?”
“No. Since I find your whining intolerable, I shall clean it as they do in your enclave. Now, your hand, Seamstress.” His fingers curled, beckoning.
“Why?” I asked. “Why bother?”
His hand flexed, ready to take rather than wait. “You must stay alive for what comes next. No more questions.”
“What comes next?”
An exasperated breath rasped beneath his veil. “Are you so eager for the kiss of a belt?”
I pressed my lips together, sealing the swarm of questions buzzing on my tongue—most, if not all, about Demetri.
Relenting, I offered my hand, turning my face to the wall.
Dark stone loomed beside the bed, its rugged grooves and crevices dancing with the shadows of firelight.
I traced every dip and crevice as he worked, the cloth moving in slow, careful dabs.
There was no pain, only a mild, tentative pressure.
“I am going to sew it,” he said, his low voice breaking my focus. “This may sting.”
I glanced back to the curious sight of my hand cradled in his, his skin cool compared to the clammy heat of mine. The wound was clean, pink and damp, stripped of dried blood and the remnants of his earlier…ministrations.
I nodded.
He threaded the needle with practised ease, his hand steady beneath mine.
I flinched only once as the point pierced my skin, the motion precise and nothing like Falstaff’s jagged slash.
Helm dipped in concentration, his chain draped over his chest, swaying between us, occasionally ghosting my skin.
He paused to roll back its hem, tucking it into the collar of his tunic.
The chain links were astonishing this close, the metal so fine it was almost threadlike, the thin weaves moving like liquid.
I found myself wondering whether the links were as light as gossamer or silk, or if its appearance was deceiving, heavy like sodden wool and bending the neck.
“Is it cumbersome?” I asked, inclining towards his veil.
Another sigh. “Is what cumbersome? Enduring yet another question from one I have expressly warned to keep silent? Someone who seems incapable of keeping their mouth closed unless teeth are involved?”
I snapped my jaw shut, the click of it loud in the quiet, before turning back to the wall.
“Yes,” he said eventually, over the crackle of hearthfire.
“When do you take it off?” I asked, eyes still on the wall, indulging my secret curiosities I’d never again have the chance to ask.
His stitching hand paused. “Eager to gaze upon my pretty face, Seamstress?”
Heat crept up my neck. “Pretty? Doubtful, since you all insist on hiding behind iron.”
“Perhaps that is true of Falstaff,” he said, returning to sew my wound. “But I assure you, I am devastatingly handsome.”
I raised a brow, head spinning to face him again. “And modest, too.”
A huffed laugh escaped the metal. “What I lack in modesty, I possess in good sense…enough to know when silence serves me. You are finished.”
He released me abruptly, letting my hand flop to the side. I lifted it, inspecting his work. The stitch was precise, the sort that would scar but heal cleanly, the boiled thread drawn in taut, trim lines.
“Well?” he prompted. “Surely a seamstress has an opinion.”
“It is adequate.”
“Adequate,” he mocked, stashing the remaining supplies in the drawer.
“Why doesn’t it hurt?” I pressed, scrunching my palm. “I feel nothing.” Nothing, save for a pleasant sort of tingling. I wiggled my fingers again, enjoying the way the sensation spread, like snowflakes landing and melting against warm flesh.
Metal shifted as he rounded the bed, unlocking my other shackle. I sat upright against the headboard, rubbing my red and tender wrists.
“I will indulge one last question. Is that your choice?”
I shook my head, hand already forgotten. I let the words sit on my tongue for a moment, deciding how best to arrange them. How to present them palatably, without drawing too much attention to Demetri and me, though he probably knew already.
“Where are the other laurels? Are they safe?”
“That’s two.”
“Are they safe?”
He waved both hands to the beams. “This is the Grand Templum of Dendra—the Blood God’s earthly abode. No one is safe from His wrath.”
I hugged myself, holding my arms with a vice-like grip, determined not to unravel in a druid’s bed.
Sighing, he perched himself on the end of it, ducking his helm under the top frame. “They live. He lives, if that is what you truly meant.”
I exhaled, feeling the knot in my centre loosen, and relaxed into the cushions that padded my lower back.
“A small, but important, morsel of advice.” He tugged at the covers, their weight pulling beneath me. “Witless questions beget witless answers. It is no offense, but a courtesy, to be direct. Now, come,” he said, throwing a thumb towards the iron door.
He left the bed, prowling towards his breastplate. Unhooking it, he clamped the metal over his middle, tightening the leather straps on each side with practised ease.
“Come,” he repeated, raising his helm while I stayed pinned to the headboard.
He clicked two fingers and pointed at the floor by his boot, the stone polished smooth by countless heavy steps.
The knowledge that Demetri had survived was enough to stop me from hurling a cushion at his loathsome, metal face.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
His hand came to his veil, scrunching the mesh as he tilted his forehead into his fingers. “When we leave my chambers, you will ask no more questions. Not a single, godsdamned one. Do you understand?”
I nodded, swallowing another.
“I am taking you to the baths,” he said, unlatching the bolts on the iron door with unnecessary violence, each one clanking free with a bang. “You reek of death.”