Chapter 37
Chapter thirty-seven
Lycandor
The Lesson
I ripped open the doors, a stained-glass panel shattering in my wake. Two paxiams guarding the sanctum jumped to attention as I barrelled through them, one slamming sideways into the wall.
“Your Holiness…how can we ser—”“Fuck off.” I had no need for paxiam spears. The fewer witnesses, the better if blood needed to be spilled, for under the scent of Ashara’s fear was the unmistakable tang of rotting meat and truffle.
I sprinted.
The templum’s labyrinthine curves had always served my cause: places to hide, places to scheme, places to spy.
Yet, for all its uses, I cursed the sheer idiocy of whoever designed this many fucking stairs and doors and stupid, narrow fucking corridors.
Unlatching my pauldrons, I shed the bulk of the metal weighing me down, slowing my steps.
They fell to the floor with a thump, my gauntlets following suit.
Bits of metal shed from me like leaves, bread-crumbing a trail to her chamber.
I clutched at the underside of my helm, fingers twitching, readying to tear it from my head. My hands trembled—fucking trembled.
Just take it off. Take it off. I left it on.
Monks and sisters passed in a blur. I was close now, yet the scent of her fear was thinning, wilting like plucked flowers left too long in the sun.
What replaced it made my stomach churn…for under the acuteness of horror lurked the peel of excitement.
Something citrusy and tart, though tainted with a fusty kind of rot that belonged to one druid, and one druid only.
Falstaff.
As I ran, I grappled with the possibility that I might have to end his life, though the consequences could be disastrous. An acolyte’s head was an inconvenience—something I could explain away after a slapped wrist. But a druid’s? It could unseat me.
Still, whilst my father would condemn it, no decree had been issued against it. I could take a hammer to his neck, chisel away at that crusted skin until his head toppled just like the rest. No matter how thick the coating, there was always soft flesh to be found beneath.
One more turnpike.
I vaulted the steps two at a time, chest heaving, grateful for the lightness of bare linen and breeches, free of metal, save for the helm and my veil.
As I caught sight of the top, something in the air shifted, and I ground to a halt. The fear…its earthiness, gone. In its wake…
My mouth watered as if I were back in the catacombs, drunk on the reek of bloodstone. The very ground seemed to vibrate with the hum of it, and I almost crashed to my knees, steadying myself on the Ovidian wall.
Sugared almonds. Spring peas. Ripe peaches splitting under the tongue.
It was joy, or something close to it. Not Falstaff’s…hers. It grew heady, twisting into something else.
Powdered pollen, crocuses, trumpet lilies.
It eclipsed her fear tenfold. Stronger than anything I had savoured in an age.
Too strong. I coughed, chest tightening as I sprinted onwards, the cloy of it coating my lungs.
It thickened, making every breath akin to inhaling rosewater, the perfume of it burning like grace.
I powered through, making quick work of the final passage.
With a kick, her door crashed to the floor, the weight of it squelching in a puddle of… I lifted my boot, the sole of it drenched in blood.
The scent of another’s fear struggled to rise under the weight of the bouquet roiling over from the cot. It still lingered though, the tinge of onion, far tangier than the peatness I’d come to recognise as hers.
I took in the scene before me. Amongst the carnage, Falstaff was nowhere to be seen, the space too small for him to hide anywhere but the armoire. From the faintness of his scent, it was likely he had already left the chamber.
I gazed at the floor.
A dead acolyte, face down, leaked with blood, piss, and shit, the fluids crawling into cracks in the stone and soaking the rug where he lay.
Next to him, another clutched at his neck, blood spurting from between the gaps in his fingers.
He gargled, words indecipherable but perfumed with the overripeness of desperation.
In the corner, another huddled, pinned between the dresser and the wall, as if he had shoved it there to serve as a shield to the woman and his front.
His eyes were locked on her, standing at the foot of the cot.
In a shaking hand he grasped the knot of his belt, brandishing it, ready to strike.
Back turned, her slate hair swirling like storm clouds, she faced him, the backs of her thighs pressed against the cot’s lower frame.
Fisted at her sides, one of her hands dripped with blood.
The red beads of it pattered harmlessly onto the floor—harmless, at least, considering the ceiling had not rained down on their heads and the walls did not shake. Unlike the acolyte.
“Ashara?” I took a step closer to her. The acolyte, paler than parchment, opened his chappy lips, hope fizzing through his fear as if I were his saviour come at last.“Your Holiness! She is possessed. Such blasphemy, such profane injustices to my brothers this day. To the cells, to the cells with her!” Craning his neck, he dared search behind my shoulder, hunting for a paxiam spear or two.
Ashara turned, following his gaze, and I emptied.
Every thought, every feeling, every plan, stripped away to nothing.
I was derelict, turned to rubble by the sight of her.
Her face… I had expected panic, fear, or at the very least, some sort of shock at the scene that lay at her feet.
But her lips, full and blushed pink, bloomed into a smile.
It was all teeth, unapologetic in its brilliance, not the bashful sort I’d glimpsed over a book.
Her eyes were lidded, as if drunk or cast in the throes of desire.
She threw her head back and laughed—not a manic sound, or one born of a grimace, but true, unabashed laughter from the pits of one’s belly.
Under the veil, I smiled back like a dolt.
It soon fell when I beheld the rest of her.
Cut down the middle, her dress sliced in two, her breasts lay exposed to the chamber.
I stared and stared, not with wantonness, but because one had been carved, the tissue of it opened and parted, blood flowing freely at its sides.
Another wound, padded with linens, bled crimson, like a rose attached to her hip.
He’d touched her.
He’d maimed her.
And I wasn’t quite sure why I wanted to kill myself for it. The urge to plunge a dagger into my heart overwhelmed me, so much so, I grasped for its handle.
I toyed with the leather binding, a breath away from skewering it into my chest, through muscle and bone.
“Gods, what an afternoon I’ve had, Lycandor,” she breathed.
At the sound of my name on her tongue, all thoughts of piercing my heart dissolved to nothing.
There’d be nothing to spear anyhow, not when it had leapt from my ribs.
“It’s rather beautiful, isn’t it?” Her left hand, the one dripping with blood, pointed to the bodies, a shard of glass peeking through her fingers. The carafe. “He bleeds such a lovely colour.” She gestured to the second acolyte, now dead alongside the other. I returned my gaze to hers.
“It is rather beautiful,” I agreed, no longer wishing to impale myself but to fall to my knees instead.
But what needed to be done had to be done standing.
I turned, lifting the door from where it lay on the floor and wedged it back into place. Boots sloshing through blood, I approached her side.
“Seamstress,” I tutted, finding delight in the way the last of the acolytes’ eyes widened in horror. “You do love to make a mess of your rooms.”
“A pretty mess?” she asked, all heavy lids and rosy cheeks.
“The prettiest,” I agreed.
“Your Holiness…a penance! Every limb should be forsaken. The High Druid will see her stripped of every one.”
I peeled my eyes from Ashara to address the trembling acolyte at our front.
“What is your business in this chamber, Pietr? And where is Falstaff?”
Pietr blanched. Acolytes bled together; their skin, eyes, and shorn heads were usually indistinguishable from one to the next. But Pietr’s scent of desire, an oil-slick whenever a penance was due, was always his tell.
A weight at my side had me stiffening. Ashara leaned into me, her shoulder pressing into the crook of my elbow. I held a breath, waiting to see if she’d retract. When she didn’t, I returned the pressure, just slightly, straightening beside her.
“He left with a vial of her blood, Your Holiness, before the wayward wretch attacked us like some feral beast. We came to assist in collecting samples, to aid your endeavour, you see, to serve,” he sputtered, dropping his belt to outstretch his hands, his palms stained with her blood.
I licked my lips. Strange how the craving for grace had somehow diminished.
All I could taste was her. Ashara spun, her presence leaving my side, and twirled her dress in the blood at her feet, eyes closing, another smile etched on her face.
“Did I ask for your aid, Pietr?” My eyes were on Ashara, even as I asked him the question. Faster and faster she spun, drawing circles of red with the edge of her slippers.
“Well, n-no, Your Holiness… I—”
“Did I give you permission to come here? To lay your filthy hands on her?” I looked at him then, at his thin, exposed neck.
Ashara stopped her spinning and returned to me, taking my hand.
Together, we edged closer towards him. I thrust my other hand out to grasp the acolyte’s throat, pinning him against the wall.
She dropped her head onto the ledge of my forearm, resting along its length as I choked him, his gasps for air vibrating down the muscle.
“He’s the one who touched me before,” she mused. “The one who inspected me.”