Chapter 27 #2
The rest of my fingers curled around the underside of his chin, pressing into the soft flesh of his throat.
His pulse thundered, though his breath remained steady, its heat fanning over the expanse of my wrist. He swivelled my hand so that my thumb pointed downward, the pad resting against the slickness of his tongue.
My eyes widened as his jaw closed, his teeth holding me gently at the knuckle.
With a slow, deliberate roll of his tongue, he nudged my thumb to the side and nipped at it, carefully re-agitating the small wound.
Then, with the tip of that same wetted muscle, he guided it back, positioning the bleeding mark at its centre once more.
Sparks erupted in my chest, a spitting log fire displacing my heart. I closed my eyes, silently chastising myself for whatever was happening in the depths of my chest. I didn’t like it. I didn’t.
“We haven’t all day. Begin.” His voice was clumsy with the weight of me.
Then, he sucked. Some unnameable feeling bled from the tip of my finger, coursing down my wrist, my elbow, my shoulder, pooling beneath my ribs before settling in the deepest pit of my stomach.
My mouth parted, a small sound wrangling free from my throat—one I would have given almost anything to swallow back down. But it was too late for that.
With a pop, he let me go.
“Delicious as that whimper was, I do need actual sentences, Seamstress.”
“That was nay a whimper.” Before I could pull back, he’d drawn me back between his teeth.
His laugh filled the Unmantle, ricocheting off the walls like thunder. “A lie,” he announced, voice slick with amusement.
I was grateful for the lattice, certain my face was an open book. Perhaps a little too aggressively, I shoved my thumb further into his mouth, towards the back of his throat. At his sputter, I smiled.
“I am a seamstress,” I managed, eyes scanning the filigree. I traced its pattern as a slow, deep pull throbbed from my thumb. My attention shattered completely at the sound of his throat contracting, swallowing down the blood he’d taken.
“We grew tomatoes in our courtyard,” I managed. The same suckling sensation flared anew, only this time, deeper.
“I had a goat called Henrei who spoke in riddles,” I rushed out. With one final suck, he released me. I heaved in a breath, the air riddled with hearthfire, metal, and jasmine.
“The last is a lie, as is the first. You are no seamstress, but an assassin. Tell me, could you have shoved your thumb any farther down my throat?” His hand clasped around my wrist like a manacle, holding it aloft beyond the filigreed wall.
“Your blessing is corrupted, Druid. Perhaps you’ve fallen out of favour.” I pulled at my arm, attempting to reclaim it, but his grip was unfaltering.
“The lie was too obvious,” he tutted. “I would be able to scent it from the other side of the templum. Make it not so easy this time. Be ambiguous, less black and white, more grey—something you should excel at.”
The metal took the brunt of my withering glare.
“The hardest lies to discover have nuance,” he continued, unaware of my scowl, or simply unbothered.
“Truths woven within them, patching the stain underneath. Tell me something complicated, wrought with emotion. Perhaps one about the laurel you’re friends with…
with the unruly, brown hair. Demmerick, is it? ”
I stiffened, my waves of panic detectable even to my unblessed senses. “How do you know Demetri and I are friends? Your blessing?”
“Demetri.” He muttered his name like a promise.
A roil of unease surged through me, and I inwardly cursed myself for offering a piece of him so freely.
The Butcher would have discovered it either way, what with the records and the eyes and ears of the acolytes—but still, it lingered on my tongue like betrayal.
“Friends, you say? Do friends often reek of desire when in each other’s presence? It was laced so thick upon him I almost gagged.”
I renewed the efforts to reclaim my arm, throwing my weight into it, heels braced against the divider. Still, it would not budge.
“Concern yourself not. Now let me go.”
“But it is my concern. If the two of you were allied in some scheme to destroy the Blood Tree, I must know. I will know. Convenient, is it not, that you both contrived to be among the last in line, despite my order instructing you otherwise?”
“We planned nothing!” My wrist momentarily loosened from his hold, slick with sweat from my efforts. I twisted, wriggling like an eel, hoping to slip from his grasp, but his fingers tightened.
“I scent your honesty.” His voice faltered, the markers of doubt evident in his tone, despite what his blessing informed him.
He released me,, and my back crashed into the Unmantle’s wall, bones rattling alongside the metal with the force of it. I rubbed the back of my aching skull, staring daggers at the latticed holes to my front.
“I have already told you I do not know why, nor how, the Blood Tree was destroyed. Is it not enough you can scent my truth?”
An exasperated sigh echoed from his side of the box.
“Two truths, one lie—make them to do with Dennick. Ensure the lie is as close to a truth as you can. Give me your thumb.”
I didn’t bother to correct him this time but extended my hand, scrambling for ideas about what I could tell him. He took it, more forcibly than before, and lifted my thumb again to his lips.
Before he could take me into his mouth, I spoke. “If I acquiesce, will you answer some of my questions, too?”
As soon as his tongue pressed against me, said questions evaporated like mist. I capitalised on his deliberate silence by listing them again in my mind, careful to rehearse the most pressing ones should he permit me to voice them.
“I’ll allow you three. After I have a true taste of your lies, I will ask the same number. Just, no?”
I nodded, then remembered he could not see me. “Just,” I agreed, surprised by his compliance.
“At your leisure, Seamstress.” He popped my digit back into his waiting mouth, the heat of him scorching. I steadied my breath and searched for the lie. Complicated. Emotional.
“We share the same name day, born on the same night, within a turn of each other.”
Together, we fly.
He sucked.
“Before the rite, we had not seen each other in eight cycles.” Another drag of my blood.
My heart jumped, preparing to speak a lie woven with truth.
“We were publicly penanced for sharing a kiss.”
After another thick swallow, his teeth loosened their hold. He brought my hand down to rest atop his knee, limp, awaiting the next time he would have need of it. I stared at my thumb through the latch, the tip of it catching the sconce light, glistening wet with his saliva.
“The last is the lie,” he said after a while. “Though you were penanced, but for what exactly?”
I had the sudden urge to claw at my back, prickly heat racing up my spine before burrowing through my ribs, as if seeking a path to my heart.
“It doesn’t matter now.” My voice was quiet…quieter than I intended.
“Heed caution around him,” he said after a while.
My head shot to the lattice. Caution?
“The one you call Demetri,” he clarified. “If you ever see each other again, that is.”
The heat in me flared, and I retracted my hand, resisting the compulsion to scratch him as I did.
“What need would I have to heed caution around someone I’ve known since I drew my first breath?
The only one I should be careful around is you, Druid.
Considering Demetri and I have known each other for twenty-eight winters, and I have known you but for a handful of days.
” I searched the Unmantle for something to strike him with, though certain I hadn’t the nerve to see it through.
“I speak the truth, that is all.” The softness of his pity only added wood to the flames. “There is something he keeps hidden from you. I could smell it.”
I scoffed. Even if the Butcher spoke true, it could have been an infinite number of things that were now insignificant—how he felt about the penancing, his anger, or worse, disappointment at me for never saying goodbye.
A sudden pang of something shot through my heart, spearing its core.
Even if I could find a way to send the letter, would he even deign to read it? To answer it?
“Ask your other questions. I will not speak of him further.” I tried to push him from my mind, but the thought of him wouldn’t budge. He’d never truly leave, woven within me as lies were with truth.
The Butcher’s hand—the one he’d rested on his thigh in the absence of mine—grew taut, knuckles protruding as his knee bounced up and down. He splayed his fingers wide, letting them relax, before reclaiming mine once more.
“Are you allied with any heretical groups, or enemies of the Dendralis?” Wet mouth. Slick tongue.
“No.”
“Has anything occurred before the Room of Rites that would suggest you’d been blessed, or that your blood had unsanctified powers?” Soft lips. Sharp teeth.
“No.” Before he could swallow, a memory pooled of the strange warmth—the sunflower in my chest that had unfurled on the scaffold and right before the Blood Tree kindled to ash.
“Ah, but there is something that happens to you?” he asked around my thumb. “Something you cannot make sense of?”
“I get a feeling sometimes…” I confessed, though unsure of what it was I was meant to unveil. “Something that blooms in the centre of my chest and spreads through the rest of me.”
“What does it feel like?” he breathed, his tongue writhing beneath me.
How could one describe unbridled euphoria?
It seemed too large a feeling to compress into words.
“I’m not certain. Happiness…bliss? A feeling of undisputed certainty that all be well.
It comforts, but distorts…” I hesitated, realising I may offend the Blood God or the Other, whichever god may have chosen to bless me, if that’s what it was.
“Distorts?” he prompted, releasing my thumb to rest on his lower lip. He flattened both of his together, as if to kiss the tip of it in encouragement. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why I didn’t pull away.
“When it blooms, it feels as if I’m wearing the skin of another.
That I see the world differently. My pain dissolves to nothing, but I’m unable to grasp the horror of it within others.
” The tip of his tongue darted between the swell of his lips and licked at the incision, tasting my blood as I gave him the truth.
“Curious,” he rumbled, his teeth clamping down on me as if he were about to worry his lip, forgetting I was there.
“I thought blessings were only for druids. Have you heard of such before?” I struggled to piece together why the gods would grant me such a gift, knowing I had indulged in small sins, knowing I had blasphemed, allowed doubt into my heart…allowed Demetri between my legs.
A pause.
“No. But you must tell me if it happens again.”
“Very well.” Tasting me was pointless, for even I could hear the ring of truth in my words.
“Do you know who your parents are?” His last question struck me off guard, and I frowned. Surely he knew this? It seemed such a waste.
“Yes. My mother was a seamstress, she was—” My throat constricted, feeling dry and tight. “She was offered five cycles past, as I’ve told you already. My father was the son of a blacksmith and was offered a few phases before I was born.”
“Hmm.” It was a dissatisfied sound, as if despite being the truth, it was not the answer he’d sought.
With a playful nip, he let me go. As my hand returned to my side of the latch, I had a sudden, and hideous inclination, to bring it to my lips and taste him.
Two days and a night in the templum had driven me to madness.
Appalled with myself, I wiped the wetness over the skirts of my gown instead, watching the grey darken with a streak of his spit.
“My turn, Druid Vetrius.”