Chapter 31
Chapter thirty-one
Demetri
The Throat
Esioul didn’t swing from her chains anymore.
She didn’t laugh, didn’t speak. In fact, if it wasn’t for Maxius, with his natural patience and tenacity with a spoon, she wouldn’t eat, either.
“Come on, lamb, one more.” He nudged the slop of soaked bread to her lips, tempting them open.
Spilt milk dribbled down her chin before he wiped it away with a tattered sleeve, undaunted by the holes in her face.
The sisters had done as good a job as they could, and the wounds remained free from infection and rot.
Between them and Maxius, her dressings were changed regularly until each pit had scabbed.
He lowered the spoon. “A nibble on my finger, then?” he coaxed. “I’ll even let you bite it.”
If not for the rise and fall of her chest, I would have thought her dead—her head limp against her shoulder, her palms upturned, fingers slack where they rested on the flagstone.
“Let her starve, ye dolt. More for us.” Iagor spent most of his time curled in a ball, scratching crude etchings into the wall with a splinter of flint, facing away from the rest of us.
That suited me fine, since no one wanted to look at his miserable face anyway—we were depressed enough.
Although I’d be whiny too if my cock had been skewered like a prawn.
Max ignored him. “One spoonful, just one, and I’ll recount the time I robbed an acolyte whilst he penanced a thief.
” He lifted the spoon again, wafting its contents under her nose.
Esioul stayed unmoving, her eyeless stare fixed on the stone wall to her front.
I twiddled with a piece of straw I’d plucked from the sunken mattress, its stalk a yellowing brown. The motion strained my wrist, though the holes were nearly healed. That one fucker though had been deep enough to meet bone. It was a small mercy they had not inquisitioned us for almost two weeks.
“I’ll tell ye anyhow.” Max’s deep voice was a balm in the darkness.
The tapers had long since burned to wick; the lone sconce, our last source of light, casting an orange glow over his dark skin. His eyes sparkled, mouth animated with the throes of nostalgia. He told her a story most days, though she never requested one, nor ever responded to them.
Roderiq shuffled closer, rubbing Max’s arm and listening to his tale far more intently than Esioul. I tossed the strand of straw to the ground, hugging my knees to my chest.
“Brother.” Max motioned his head to where I sat, my eyes meeting his over the caps of my knees. “Come, tell Esioul of the cursed caves in Ordana.”
“Not today, Max.” I was bored of that story. I was bored of waiting. I was bored of His love and their questions and threats, and I was perilously, doltishly close to doing something very foolish. More foolish than Osric. Hold on a little longer, cherish each boon.
Max’s shoulders slackened, and he tossed the wooden spoon into the bowl with a plop. A deep sigh pushed from his nose, looking every inch defeated.
For love of the pits. “Esioul,” I called, knowing I’d get no reaction. “Why don’t you ask Iagor to tell you about that time his dick was—” A slash of pain lanced through my brow. “Fuck.” I swiped at it with the back of my hand, my knuckles streaked with fresh blood.
Iagor turned back to the wall, his hands freed of the shard he’d been etching with. Instead, it lay upturned in my lap, its jagged edge crimsoned with blood.
“What the fuck, you toothless worm?” I pressed the wound and glanced over at Max. His head was tipped forward, eyes warning from under his brow. Never mock a man’s groin, he seemed to say.
Esioul’s mouth quirked, a hint of a smile lifting its corners.
I nudged my head to the left, trying to alert Max without speaking, lest she close her mouth again. He cracked a wide smile, relishing the chance to start shovelling spoonfuls of food onto her tongue, and she let him, though he barely waited for her to chew before ladling in another.
I twiddled the flint, another weapon to add to my splinter of wood. Sharp enough, perhaps, to slit a throat… I traced its edge, where it grazed the skin rather than split it. Perhaps a quill, then, if Adelaide ever returned with another roll of parchment.
The days turned, one after the other, and that seemed less and less likely.
It hurt—thinking of her, of them both—and I pressed the flint harder, trying to temper the ache. But it came anyway. Adelaide, her ruined, beautiful skin; Ashara, locked away somewhere unknown, despite my sister’s assurances she was unharmed, for now.
Had she read my letter?
I’d rehearsed my words turnly since Adelaide had equipped me with the small nub of coal and strip of parchment in the stillroom.
Whether what I’d said was enough, or I’d penned the right message.
If Ashara would be able to read within three sentences, my sentiments that were enough to fill a whole book, the small strip of parchment ill-suiting for the oaths upon oaths I’d wanted to lay before her.
Whether I could keep them…that was another matter entirely.
I’d wanted to vow to slit the Butcher’s throat.
To promise to burn the whole templum to ashes, just like the Blood Tree.
To see each monk, acolyte and druid, beheaded and bleeding and punctured with holes.
To snap every bone in Falstaff’s brittle body and lay them before her, an offering blasphemous enough to usher in another bout of His plagues.
I wanted to tell her the truth: that for eight cycles, I’d thought of her nightly, and now, thought of her even more still.
Turnly, every minute, every breath. I wanted to tell her I could still feel the ghost of her wrapped around the length of me, though we’d barely joined.
That it would never be enough, but also, more than I’d ever dared to hope for.
I wanted to recount the suppleness of her skin under my touch, the heat of her breath in my mouth.
The incomparable feeling of her warm, wanting cunt.
Instead, I had rationed a few words, just the most pressing of all.
I will find you. Hold on a little longer. We will take wing, or else plummet together.
I will find—
I jumped at the knock, fumbling to conceal the flint in a loose seam of my breeches.
It was not the sharp rap of an acolyte that echoed through the dim, but something far worse: the gentle tapping of a sister, a sound that seemed to mourn the day before it was done.
I knew with terrible certainty before it had even opened that it would not be Adelaide on the other side, come to steal me away.
Our rest was over, and another inquisition was due.
Iagor groaned, his curved shoulders rattling with a wet sob.
“Come, Iagor, or they’ll fetch the acolytes,” Roderiq urged, helping Maxius lift Esioul to her feet. She let them angle her as they wished, like Ashara’s doll she’d sewn from hay and spare fabric—Matilda, she’d called her, before giving her to Adelaide.
I smiled, remembering the little thing’s face that we’d stained with charred wood, trying to mimic Adelaide’s own beautiful marks—the crinkled brown patches she’d worn on her face since birth. No longer, though; not now that a druid had seen fit to purge them with his “absolving” hand.
I spat on the floor and rolled my shoulders, knowing whatever pain awaited me, I deserved. Deserved it for all the things I imagined doing to Falstaff when my thoughts strayed from Ashara. Terrible things. Unspeakable things. Things that would see me broiling eternal in the pits.
With a phlegmy sniff, Iagor hoisted himself upright, eyes red and swollen, and turned to face the door as it creaked open, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of us.
In the threshold stood a gaggle of sisters, Adelaide’s small frame nowhere among them. What they did have, though, were enough bells between them to raise the alarm should one of us try to flee. I’d thought about it. A lot. Too much.
The tall, burly one seemed to scent it as we made our way to the inquisition cell, closing in behind me. The small mercy she’d granted Adelaide—ten minutes alone with me—seemed all but forgotten, her shoes near-scraping my ankles.
But with a wash of that foolish liquor of hope, we passed the cell by, heading instead for the stillrooms. Roderiq cast a puzzled glance over his shoulder; I shrugged, already mapping the different torments one might endure through the guise of healing.
Perhaps we were not headed there at all.
I began to sweat at the possibility we were on a march to our deaths, the sisters leading us down an alternative route to the Room of Rites.
That, or some unknown ditch; the templum’s cesspit.
My hand fingered the flint and splinter in my pocket. It sickened me, a little, knowing I may have to kill a sister. A difficult feat with so many swarming our fronts and our backs. But I’d do it, or at least try to. To find her. To fly.
Just wait a little while longer.
My hand loosened its grip, my heart fractionally calming, as we stopped outside the stillrooms, pausing our descent into the templum’s bowels.
I let out a grateful breath and eyed the sister to my right, a pale, wispy thing, the veins in her wrist a marble of blue.
I gulped, forcing myself not to imagine what it would feel like to slit them; the thought made it hard to breathe.
Still, the feeling was nothing compared to the one that hollowed my chest whenever I grappled with the notion of never seeing Ashara again.
Roderiq disappeared into his room ahead, his shaggy hair rustling with the turn of his head as he no doubt searched for Maxius behind. But Maxius was gone. Esioul was gone. Already locked in their stillrooms, facing whatever awaited on the other side.