Chapter 37 #2
My hand grew slack, and he heaved in a breath, rasping and sputtering. I dipped my helm to meet her eyes, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at him.
“I felt sad, I think…that day. And frightened.” Her brow creased, small furrows deepening to firm lines. “And shame. So much shame.” My veins hollowed with it, something twisting every capillary.
“But I feel wonderful now.” She shrugged and patted my chest, just over my heart. Returning her head to my arm, she nuzzled into it as though intending to sleep, her nose resting in its crook.
I returned the pressure, his bones readying to pop.
“He touched me…” She peered up, lifting her head. “Here.” She pointed to her core, and my hand itched for my dagger.
Her joy swirled around us, flowery and thick, so at odds with her words.
“He laughed between my legs. He poked and he prodded, and he…” She giggled, and I scanned her face, certain that for the first since it had been bestowed upon me, my blessing had failed.
She was happy, triumphant with it, the air heavy with the flora of her, my every breath laced with it.
“He said I’d forgotten what my mouth was for.”
“Ye sinful wretch,” Pietr rasped as my hand had loosened, distracted by Ashara’s strange pollen. “Ye had bruised tonsils! She be a whore, Your Holiness. And now a murderous one. Allow me to return to my quarters, and I shall assist you however you—”I tightened my grip. “Seamstress?”
She beamed at me, and Other damn me, I beamed back.
“Yes?”
“How shall he die?”
He wheezed, every breath a struggle, and I relented my grasp, lest his suffering end too swiftly.
Her smile, if possible, grew.
“Oh.” She took a deep breath, blowing it out between rounded lips. “Painfully, I fancy.”
“Then it shall be done.”
I slammed him against the wall, his head bouncing off the stone with a crunch.
“In a moment, maybe two, you will die, Pietr. How you behave in the next few breaths will determine just how painful it is. Say another word about her, and I’ll slice off your cock and shove it down your throat.
Let your tonsils bear the bruising whilst I allow her to tear you into a thousand tiny pieces. ”
He gulped, the thick bob of it rolling under my palm. Ashara clapped her fists together, one still clutched around the glass. Blood dribbled down her wrist.
“Give me the shard. I have something better.”
I ripped at the hem of my shirt with my unburdened hand. “Don’t move,” I spat at the worm, allowing him a few lungfuls of air.
She dropped the shard into my open palm, and I tossed it onto the cot. I spat on the strip of it, wrapping it around her hand before tying it into a knot. My lips thinned as I surveyed her other injuries; they would need proper attention—stitches as well as my blessing.
“His death needs to be as efficient as it is painful, Seamstress,” I instructed, thumbing the bandage. “Fortuitously, I am equipped for such.” Unstrapping a blade at my thigh, I presented her with a small, curved dagger, carved like a crescent moon. She accepted with a delighted squeal.
“Do you want me to show you how to sever a nerve?”
“Yes,” she breathed, eyes dancing over the sharp edge of the blade.
My heart jumped.
Pietr whimpered, eyes dipping to his belt. In one slice, I cut the hemp, flinging his iron-spiked knot across the room. It embedded with a squelch in the back of a dead acolyte’s head.
“Here.” I grabbed her hand, careful to manipulate her hold around its handle so as not to disturb the bandaging.
She grasped it with confidence, and I sucked in a breath, the floral notes still enough to water my eyes.
My hand guided her towards the cervical nerves at his neck, whilst I kept him still with the other.
She laughed through her nose, swaying slightly like one does after too much mead.
“Concentrate,” I chastised through a smile.
Before I could aid her in making the incision, she pulled back her arm and mine with it, near jumping with excitement. “The cot! The cot! Put him on the cot.”
I paused, hand still wrapped around hers. “The cot it is.”
Releasing her, I grabbed Pietr, his flailing akin to wrestling a twig. In a few heartbeats, I had him lashed to the bed with the rest of his belt.
“Open his legs,” she crooned.
“Ashara—”
“Open. His. Legs.”
He writhed, like most do in the end. But I acquiesced.
“No, Your Holiness. Please, no. Mercy, mercy, I beg of ye, have mercy!”
My chuckle was a deep, monstrous thing. I shook my helm, nudging it towards Ashara.
“Look at her, acolyte, not at me. It is she who can afford you as such. I am merely here to assist.”
“You would take orders from a laurel?” He gaped at me. “What blasphemy is this?”
“The sort that feels better than a prayer.”
With his hands bound, I took each of his ankles, lashing them to the posts of the foot of the cot and prying open his legs, as was demanded of me.
“When I was on that table”—she rounded on him, prowling at his feet, light on her steps—“I felt every one of his touches.” She sidled closer to my side, trailing the dagger up his bony thigh, which trembled in its wake.
“‘Tampered with?’ you asked me. ‘Have you allowed him to defile you, laurel?’” She tutted.
I punched his stomach. Air left him in one mighty gust, a snap insinuating I may have shattered a rib.
“The only defilement I’ve known in my life is at the hands of holy men.” She skimmed the blade down his face. “A sinner’s touch was far kinder than yours.” He coughed, winded and broken.
“Then you stuck your cold, slimy fingers inside me until you could shove them in no further.” Her words were gutting, but her face was all smiles. I struck his jaw, a tooth flying to the left.
Resting the dagger on the edge of the cot, she knelt to pluck the tooth from the floor.
“Fascinating…” Ashara examined it like a rare gem.
“Have you been tampered with, Pietr?” She brought the tooth to his pursed lips.
“Druid, help me with his jaw.” I prised it open, allowing her to shove his tooth back inside.
She clamped a hand to his lips until he swallowed it down, choking on its bulk.
“Keep his leg straight.” With no additional warning, she reclaimed the dagger and drew it up the inside of his thigh, following the line towards the inner crease of his groin. His flesh unseamed under her touch, eliciting a scream, his blood soaking the linens already darkened with her blood.
“‘Tis time for your inquisition, acolyte. Druid, how long will it take him to die if I stab here?” I tracked the tip of the blade to where she hovered it just under his cock, angled at his bowel.
A part of me winced. “I can do it if—”
“No,” she dismissed, her tone soft, grin wide. “It is my due.”
The other part of me smiled. “A short while, Seamstress, if the right artery is severed. Half a turn or more if it isn’t. The dagger is curved, so point it like this”—I rotated her wrist—“and pull up. Plunge deep and twist if you wish to hook an intestine or two. Either way, it’ll be agony.”
“Blood does demand blood,” she mused, and then stabbed.
The dagger drove into him with ease, the blade tearing through his soft, vulnerable flesh.
He squealed like a pig, eyes vacant and widening as it twisted inside him, her hand tugging it left and right and right again.
Blood swamped her wrist, gushing out in rivers of red.
She jerked the blade, readying to yank it free—and no doubt his intestines along with it.
She tried again, chest quickening, refusing to unlatch her other hand from whatever it cradled to add momentum.
“Seamstress, are you in need of my help?”
“It’s stuck!” she sniggered through rapid breaths. “I can’t—”
I looped my hand around hers and heaved. The blade slid free and ropes of mottled pink flesh followed, twined around the steel like snakes. The acolyte was silent now, only a few weak whimpers amid his trembling, the markers of shock.
Flicking the flesh from the blade, she brought it down upon him once more, forgoing his bowel for his manhood, slicing and slicing until it was severed in two.
She laughed, stabbing again and again. A few breaths later, his head fell, eyes wide, filmed not just with an acolyte’s sheen, but with death.
A fresh wave of her joy pumped through the air, its sweetness deepening into a heady, suffocating musk.
“Ashara?”
She froze midair, blade poised above her head, ready for another strike. The thick, cloying mist of her joy evaporated, leaving only the sharp, metallic scent of blood.
“I—” Her brows knitted, her head angling towards the dagger still clutched in her hand.
“Ashara?” I repeated.
The dagger clanked to the ground as she dropped it.
“Lycandor?” I had no time to register the sound of my name on her tongue, not when mine became immediately coated with a wash of fresh herbs, her confusion spilling into my mouth.
Her eyes, lidded with euphoria only moments ago, widened and glazed. She glanced down at herself: at her body, cut and marked; at her dress, blotched crimson; at the three acolytes. She raised her hands, one still fisted, twisting them this way and that.
Finally, she looked at me, searching for my eyes beneath the veil.
“You came.”