Chapter 39 #2
“Lycandor?” I repeated, the beginnings of unease stirring somewhere near my ankles, climbing up, up, and up.
Squinting, I tried to spy the telltale points of his helm or the bulk of armour, but…
were they breasts? The pad of slippers, not the thumping of boots, approached the bed, a sister’s headdress materialising under the struggling flame.
“Lycandor? First name privileges with the Butcher, darling girl?”
Every drop of blood I had somehow managed to keep from Falstaff and his acolytes drained to my soles. A loose curl escaped the wimple to fall over his brow, as it always did. Warm eyes sparkled beneath it, a full mouth curved into a familiar, smackable, side-long grin.
“And in his bed, no less?” He tutted, padding closer. “Oh, I don’t mind, clever girl, your wiles may just save us all. Though, I do hope his cock isn’t bigger than mine—I fear I’ll never recover.”“Demetri?” I squealed, disentangling myself from the linens to press my bare feet upon stone.
He opened his arms. “Found you.”
I ran.
My body collided with his like a lance, hurtling into the mould of him. Each of us yelped as two rock-like spheres rattled my collarbones.
Pulling back, I rubbed tender spots at the base of my throat. “What in the—”
Two rounded breasts jutted from his chest, implausibly pert.
“Oh, shit, the apples.” He fiddled with something at his back before, one after the other, two green apples plonked to the floor, one rolling under the bed.
A smile, so wide it hurt, spread over my cheeks. I laughed, the sound rebounding around us until it tempted Demetri to join, catching in its abandon.
Still laughing, he yanked me back to him, so tight I could barely breathe.
I nestled into the crook of his neck, inhaling his scent: wine and forge-fire and lard soap.
There was a distinct Demetri-ness to it, under the cloy of the templum, and suddenly, we were there again; in the daisy meadows, playing Kings and Queens with crowns made of flowers as he bent on one knee.
We were wrestling in the grate of the hearth, sooted from ash as our mothers sewed into the night.
I was there, on my knees in the smith’s yard, his hands roving into the roots of my hair, pulling me closer, taking him down.
I gulped down another thick breath. He smelt like home, like before.
My laughter bled into a cry, a wail I tried to smother against his shoulder, lest it wake the whole templum.
“Shh,” he soothed, stroking the back of my head the way he used to. “It’s okay, darling girl. I found you. It’s okay.”
We clung to each other like that, my nails digging into his flesh, his hand a vice on my nape, as I came undone.
After a breath, or a turn, or an age, I drew back, the patch of his shoulder darkened with drool, tears, and snot.
Demetri wouldn’t mind; he never cared about mess, only the fun of making it.
“The door… Who brought you here? How did you—” I started, but he pressed a finger to my lips, shaking his head.
“We don’t have time, Ashara.” He brought his cuff to my nose, wiping at it before tending to his own. “Are you harmed?”
I shook my head. My injuries were healing, mostly numb. And what was done was done.
“Has he hurt you?” he asked, unsatisfied.
“The Butcher?”
“Yes, the Butcher.” He spat the word, his mouth curving into a sneer.
“No,” I said quickly. Too quickly.
He stared at me for a moment, his eyes flickering between mine as if hunting for a lie.
“I know what you’re searching for,” I hedged, skimming his smooth cheek with my fingers. “And you will not find it. He has not harmed me.” I glanced down at him, at his body, leaner now but still sturdy. “But what of you?”
“Think not of what has happened to me. I breathe, do I not?” He turned into my hand, laying a kiss against its side. “There are boons in my chest. I have all my appendages. My legs, my tongue, my cock, my eyes. For now, that will do.”
Clasping my hands in his, he descended to his knees, his chin jutting into the swell of my stomach.
“Ashara. You must listen to me.”
His fingers curled around the backs of my thighs, grasping at them as if I were the Blood God Himself and he a devotee reciting his dues.
“The druids… they—” He buried his face in the folds of Lycandor’s shirt, his breath breaching the fabric, warming my skin.
“They’re… fuck.” He pounded his temple against my thigh, as if trying to shake the words from his skull.
“What I am about to tell you will sound inconceivable. It’s difficult to—” He took a deep breath.
“They’re milling the bloodstone, the bodies of the offerings, the—” He shook, the vibrations humming up my legs to my hips.
“The sisters… they’re forced to grind the offerings until they are dust. They put them in the druid’s pouches and consume them. ”
I gripped him tighter to steady myself, his truths hurtling too fast for me to disentangle. “Why? Why would they—”
“It’s all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.” His nose raked the expanse of my upper groin as he rocked his head.
“Consuming us?” I breathed. “As in, they powder the food and the wine?” I eyed the plate the sister had fetched me, now but crumbs, and fought the urge to be sick.
“No, no, they have bags and”—he wiped under his nose, inhaling deeply at the dip of my belly button—“they use it, like opium…” I fisted his curls as he leaned into my hand, recalling Capriche’s pouch attached to his waist. I pillaged my memories, rifling for one where I had seen the same on Lycandor, though certain I hadn’t.
He rose, the tip of his nose outlining my middle all the way up. “I’ll explain when we’re half a fucking realm away, but right now you need to listen.”
I leashed the thousand questions clawing at my throat and squeezed his hands. “I’m listening, Demetri.”
His smile was sin, and for a moment, the darkness lifted. “I’ve always loved it when you do as you’re told…”
I pinched his cheek, half chastising, half to check that he was real.
“The druids, all of them, they’re diseased. They have these…” Mouth parted, brow furrowed, he seemed to search for the word. “These red scabs, all over their bodies.” He motioned to his, releasing my hold. “They call it succumbing.”
Again, my thoughts jolted to Lycandor, his helm…his distinct reluctance to show me his face.
“It’s a side effect, I think,” Demetri mused, unaware of the invasive memory of the Butcher’s lips hovering just above my own, his groin pressed to mine. “From sniffing the bloodstone…it changes them.”
“Everything’s rotten,” I declared, attempting to banish all thoughts of Lycandor to the deepest pits of my mind, worried what I’d find if I didn’t. “The whole templum; right is wrong and wrong is right, and right is wrong, then right again. I tire of it.”
Try as I might, I could not shackle one particular question, the one with the sharpest teeth. “Does Lycan—Druid Vetrius—”
“It doesn’t matter now.” He kissed my palm, the one freshly stitched, and entwined his fingers with mine.
“I have to know. Does he also—”
“It does not matter if he partakes in the consumption or not.” His grip tightened, and I willed my own into it, matching its tenacity lest he was torn from me again.
“What have I always said, darling? A cunt is a cunt is a cunt.” He glanced at the bed, honed on the ruffled sheets, as if they had shit in his stew.
“But much to my fucking dismay, he may be the only chance for us to escape here.” He kissed my knuckles, again and again and again.
“We’ll fly, Ashara. Like you said. Fly and fly and fly until we are lost to Dendralis forever. ”
He spoke with the fervour of one drunk on hope; I recognised it as the same malady coursing through me.
Unbidden, the words came anyway. “He isn’t like the others, Demetri.”
His hand loosened, unwrapping itself from mine to graze along the underside of my jaw.
“Ashara, he’s a druid.”
“I know, but—”
“He penances.”
“I understand—”
“He’s the Butcher, second to the High Druid of Dendra, for fuck’s sake.”
Before I could protest, Demetri fastened his palms to my hips, gripping them like handles.
With a gasp, he thrust me against the bedpost, the pad of his hand cushioning my skull before it crashed upon wood.
That’s how he held me: one hand clenching my hips, the other pressed to the back of my neck, his head angled down, chestnut curls falling into both our eyes.
“We do not have nearly enough time for you to waste it talking about the supposed moral ambiguities of your druid, darling girl. I need you to understand something…something very”—he bit my bottom lip—“very”—he nipped at the top one—“important.”I swallowed, lips stinging from the scrape of his teeth, that keening ache that had never quite settled rising anew.
“We fly or we plummet this night, and all on the whims of a cunt. If this is it, then let us be done with small sins.” He pulled at my hair, forcing my eyes to lift, and I groaned, wanting him to tug harder.
I deserved it. In bed with a druid. “We were granted a turn here and there, every Seventh Day. A stolen kiss in the alley.” He suckled at my neck, drawing at the skin with a forcefulness as if he wished to suck me dry, or brand me.
“A fondle by the fire in the yard.” He nipped me, and Other help me, I moaned, grinding against the hardness under his dress.
A smile clawed its way free. Of course he’d seduce me in a gown.
He skirted to my breast, thankfully numb, rubbing over the cotton until he found my bud, already puckered and wanting. “I am finished with rations.”
His other hand dipped under my hem, skirting up until his fingers streaked through the wetness dripping down my thighs. “I am done with denying what our bodies and souls have ached to do for a decade. Not when death lurks for us at every turn.” I parted for him, open and begging.
Demetri. Demetri was here. As he was always meant to be. My Demetri.
“The Blood God, the Other, some heathen fucking witch from the south, whatever high and mighty cunt it is who chooses which way the winds blow, has granted us a second chance. I will not, darling girl, under any circumstances, squander it. I loved you once.” He stopped his trailing, perilously close to my core.
I quivered with it: the need to be touched, to be felt.
Tears pooled, streaming down my cheeks, truths welling on my tongue and slipping over. “I loved you, too,” I breathed, my eyes searching his in the dark. They were glazed, possessive, more feral than I’d ever seen them. We were both dying. We had always been dying…it just took living to realise it.
“I still love you,” he declared, voice splintering like wood. “Then, now, the next breath, the next turn, the next phase, for however long we have before the Blood God and His merry band of armoured fuckwits try to claw us apart, I will love you.”
I loved him, too. He was home. With Demetri, I didn’t have to look.
Sometimes, you need to, a small voice whispered. I strangled it until it quietened.
“I love—”
“No.” He cupped a hand over my mouth. “Don’t say it because I said it.”
“I’m not. I—”
“Darling girl, if one more thing comes out of your mouth, I’ll penance that tongue of yours. I might not cut it out, but by the pits, you’ll wish I had when I’m done.”
“You wretched little—”
“Fuck, there it is—”
With that, our mouths collided.