Chapter 22
Chapter twenty-two
Ashara
The Thermae
I followed the swish of the Butcher’s cloak into the templum’s labyrinth, spiralling down through narrow stone passages, corridors, and turnpikes upon turnpikes, all lined with slitted windows and guttering sconces.
With each turn, the cool evening air bit deeper, raising gooseflesh along my skin.
Crossing my arms, I rubbed the linen over my shoulders, hoping to elicit some warmth.
Down and down again we went. Below lay the place where it had happened, where the laurels had become rock, then pebbles, then dust. My stomach twisted at the memory of the hammers, at the rumble of bones and skulls mulched to nothing.
I saw again the acorn-laurel’s head—hewn from her body and smiling up from the roots.
The Butcher’s helm rotated, the mesh fixed on the sound from my middle, and I lifted my chin, cradling my abdomen.
“We’re nearly there,” he revealed from over his pauldron.
My lips parted.
“No. Questions.”
I closed them.
Cold or no, sweat still beaded my brow and my palms grew slick.
I pressed them into my skirts, wary of the grime and ash brushing the newly sewn cut.
We neared the end of the long, narrow walkway, and a wall loomed ahead, its bricks weeping, heavy droplets running down their faces to puddle on the floor.
The air was warm and humid, a relief from the cold, if it weren’t so sticky.
The fibres of my dress soaked through, turning the dusting of ash to paste.
I swiped a finger through it, gathering a gritty, grainy pile on its tip, remembering its taste: bitter smoke, rich earth, burnt bark.
Metal clinked as the Butcher reached overhead. I smeared the grey sludge onto one of the last clean patches of my bodice, by my right hip, just as a tear rolled down his cuirass, his iron misted with condensation, as if I had breathed on it.
The lone sconce he’d grasped—its wooden holder darkened with damp—did little to dry the air. He pulled it, the flame lurching forwards, and with a click, the wall gave way, rock groaning and grinding as it swung inward.
With a steadying breath, I stepped over its threshold, attempting to peer around the bulk of his armour, twiddling the buttons on my sleeves.
A wall of heat enveloped my skin, the hot air banishing the tinge of mould, enriched with the scent of olive oil, warmed terracotta, and the saltiness of wet skin.
“A thermae?” I asked before slapping two fingers to my lips. It was feasible that the templum possessed its own; after all, Dendra had many underground baths where the waters ran hot.
“Warmed through the hand of the Blood God,” Capriche had told us.
Ignoring my outburst, the Butcher’s boots clipped forward, already half-way into the chamber and nearing the bronze bowl in its centre, alive with fire.
Elevated on a podium, its flames wafted the scent of burning rosemary from its heated core.
Smaller bowls lined the walls, perched on thin metal rods, bathing the room in a warm, steady glow.
Lungs singeing, I drew in the fumes, savouring the burn—a reminder with each stolen boon that I still drew breath, that I lived, despite it all.
My slippers shuffled across the mosaic, smearing a trail of brown and grey against their glossy, slick surface.
Like the atrium, small tiles lined the floor and walls, each fragment slotting neatly into the next to form a sweeping mural of the Promethean Alps.
Garnet Mountain rose tallest of all, its snow-capped peak stretching high enough to invade the ceiling, curving overhead as though it might come crashing down upon us.
I craned my neck, grateful to be free of the rod, and wondered if I’d ever look upon the real one again, or whether I’d have to make do with its render. Whether this would be my lot.
“A few turns is everything, darling, when you have so little left.”
Vivid red tiles spilled down its slope, a scar marking the path of the first blood plague, crimson rivulets bleeding into the floor at the mountain’s base.
“The archway to the right leads to the bath. Go that way.” The Butcher’s deep timbre made my neck snap downward, gaze levelled on his helm instead of the mountain overhead.
“I’ll have a sister bring you a change of clothes and leave them in the preparation chamber. Deposit your dress on the floor—” He paused, as if to check I was still wearing one. “They’ll burn it; you have no need for it now. Keep your hand out of the water.”
I pinched the buttons. My mouth parted, readying to ask—
“Insolent, foolish woman,” he chastised, voice low, striding to where I stood and closing the gap between us.
His helm shifted almost imperceptibly, gliding from one door to the next—real doors, unlike the hidden threshold we’d entered through.
“I said no questions. No. Questions. No as in none, nought, zero, and questions, as in those irksome muddle of syllables that spill from your lips despite my repeated instructions to keep them firmly inside.”
I swerved to one of the doors he had looked at, unlocked and ajar.
“Yes, I know, but—” I froze as his thumb and forefinger, ungloved, clasped my lower face.
A cool, firm touch below my chin rotated my head until my eyes clashed with chain.
I tried to pull back, but he held on, unyielding in his strength.
“I do not know how else I can say this to you. You avoided one offering but remain intent to waltz straight into another.” His fingers pressed deeper, enough to bruise bone.
“I am a druid, the Butcher, and you are in the godsforsaken templum, Seamstress. You will listen and hold that blasphemous little tongue of yours.” He lifted my chin, forcing my gaze to Mount Garnet’s peak.
“The walls, the tiles, the very ceilings have ears,” he whispered, tilting my head down.
“The stones underfoot prate of the soles that strike upon them.” His touch softened, tipping my eyes to meet his beneath the metal, that needling pinch almost making them water.
“Your blood was the last to soak the roots of the Blood Tree before it turned to dust. They will be searching for a reason, he will be searching for a reason; desperate to find a cause worthy enough to have your body desecrated and left to rot, strung up on the reach.” The question regarding who he was scratched at my throat, but I swallowed it, urging another about why he would care down at the same time.
“He’ll seek a way to justify that this was no act of mercy from the Blood God; that you were not chosen to be spared, but selected to endure a fate far worse than all you have witnessed.
So play the silent devotee, or you shall be dead before the sun rises—or, at the very least, you’ll wish you were.
” He shook my chin, punctuating the threat.
Head angled back, I glared down the line of my nose. “I am meant to be.”
“Yes, you are. Yet you would squander what has been given to you by not heeding the advice of someone who is trying to keep you flesh instead of stone.” His grip grew firmer, his voice softer.
I couldn’t stop it for all the chappellums in Thromarra.
“And tell me, Druid Vetrius, why is it that you wish to keep my blood hot?” His words echoed back to me from his room of parchment.
“Make sure you’re the first in line.” I gasped, a truth settling.
“You know something, do you not? What you told me in your office. Does it have something to do with Greg—” His hand darted from my chin to my mouth, sealing it shut.
Helm snapping left, then right, his attention landed on the doors.
“Do not speak of that here, of him,” he whispered through clenched teeth, vowels hissed, consonants keen.
“Do not speak of it anywhere but my chambers.” He lowered his hand just enough to allow me breath.
“And do not bite me again.” My jaw flexed, mouth pooling.
“There are things I do not understand,” he continued, his grip still firmly pressed to my lips.
I resisted the urge to swipe at him with my tongue, the salt of his flesh invading my mouth.
“And there are things you do not understand, either. Together, we may find the answers we seek.” His pressure eased, fingers brushing instead of crushing into my cheeks.
“But do not repeat but a syllable of what I divulged to you… to do so would place us in unspeakable peril. And I assure you, laurel, with absolute certainty, if I die, you die…he dies.” I inhaled sharply, the scent of his skin—all salt, fire, and jasmine—fighting with the memory of cherry wine.
“As it stands, I am the only one capable of delaying Druid Falstaff’s wrath. ”
A smile teased the edges of my lip until I wrestled it away.
“He would see you hung, drawn, and quartered before the day was done had I not convinced the High Druid of Dendra to investigate your blood.”
My stomach curdled, the smile forgotten.
Hand still bandaged over my mouth, he released me, palm hovering a hair’s breadth away.
Delicately, suspiciously so, he slid down the side of my face to cup my chin once more.
The crackle of flame fell away, and so too did the steady drip, dripping of condensation.
A silence descended, vast and hollow, just like my dream, until there was only his voice and the thump of my heart.
“I will give you some truths if you give me yours. For now, you need to bathe.” His gaze dipped. “And eat. I will come af—”
“Ashara?”
I fell and flew all at once.
Before I could move, the Butcher’s touch darted from my chin to the hollows of my cheeks, squeezing them hard enough that my lips parted, forced open by the indentations of his fingers either side.
I knew that voice. I would know its master anywhere. My name on his tongue.
“This will be the last time you disobey me, laurel.” His voice shed its whispered cloak to don a knife-like sharpness.
I tried to squirm, to search for Demetri, but his grip was punishing.
His fingers flexed, digging into my flesh, a warning, or…
My eyes widened with realisation, the Butcher’s chest deflating when he saw it.
A plea to play along.
“Yes, Your Holiness,” I managed through warped lips, heart hammering, as Demetri’s presence washed over the room like floodwater, my muscles straining towards him.
He held me there, a silent promise stretching between us, pulled taut by the weight of Demetri’s gaze pressing into the side of my face with as much tenacity as the druid’s fingers. One final squeeze, a warning, and still gripping my cheeks, he rotated my head for me to our left.
There stood Demetri, encircled by half a dozen paxiams, and behind them lurked the dark shadows of a few others, one in the form of a druid, two metal horns rising from his helm like mountains.
“Fie, what unexpected marvel is this, Druid Vetrius?”