Chapter 42 #2
In answer, he gave a small shake of his helm before his hand returned to my arm, ushering me forward.
All thoughts of Capriche—of his whip, his teasing, his pouch, that ominous warning or threat, whatever it was—vanished as we reached the foot of the dais and the wall of druids that began to encircle its base.
Handsome wooden chairs, lined up by monks, ensconced the foot of the throne, the druids lowering themselves down one by one onto the plush red velvet.
Some tapped their feet, others cradled their helms in their hands, like the sons of farmers forced to rise before dawn to tend the wheat, half-asleep at the dinner table.
I had a sudden urge to take an acolyte’s hammer to each one, ringing their helms like bells until their skulls cracked.
What a pity for them, to have to watch a penancing at this hour, never mind how brutally Demetri and I were to be maimed, even if Lycandor might yet spare our lives.
As if sensing my wrath, he squeezed me, in warning or encouragement. I had no idea which.
Ahead, the acolytes forced Demetri to a stop in front of the line of seated druids, just him and him alone, pitted against a dark wall of iron.
“Remember your promise,” I chanced, voice so quiet I wasn’t sure Lycandor had heard. A monk, to our left, angled ever so slightly towards where we stood.
“You fuck him in my bed and expect me to keep him safe?” he returned, loud enough to turn heads.
His words landed like a punch to the gut.
I had a curious feeling, like the wounds he’d only just healed had bloomed open, though the stitching held firm.
I refused to blush, or cry, or do any of the things my body was insistent on doing.
Instead, I straightened, swallowing down the hurt.
Not that he wouldn’t be able to scent the truth anyhow.
What would he smell? The cloy of guilt? The stickiness of shame? The bitter pith of remorse?
Overwrought and useless. Overwrought and useless.
But if that were so, then why did I feel them all the same?
I returned to Demetri, his face angled towards me, though his eyes were glued to Lycandor’s mesh. They softened as they landed on me. Don’t look, he mouthed. Don’t look.
I huffed through my nose, shaking my head. This wasn’t the end, it couldn’t be, not yet.
Closing my eyes, I tried to summon it, the wrath.
I begged, I pleaded, I yelled at it, ransacking every part of me, ready to haul open whatever door it cowered behind and drag it out, kicking and screaming.
If Lycandor’s plan failed, or he’d abandoned it entirely, it would be our only chance.
But as usual, it evaded me. Gods, how I wanted to curl into a ball, keep my eyes shut, and open them only when this was over.
Wake up at the end, to whatever plan Lycandor might still be enacting—the pouches, the succumbing, the offerings—all of it a nightmare, a dream, a result of one too many meads around the hearth and a headache. Nothing more.
A small feeling, like the kiss of butterfly wings, coaxed my eyes open.
His hand had slid down my arm, fingers now grazing my wrist, rubbing them in small, delicate circles, the movement shielded by the bulk of our bodies.
He released me, to bring it up to his heart, his palm hovering over the left side of his breastplate.
“Truth,” he whispered, so faint I strained to catch it. Before I could answer—some half-formed thought beginning to take shape regarding his truths, or lack thereof, about his father, his supposed decrees, his aid—both our heads turned at the grating squeak of leather on stone.
Two monks down the valley of where the crowds parted, wrestled with a spasm of grey, her arms flailing, legs kicking.
A sister. Though she was silent, she was vicious, biting, scratching, clawing at whatever spot of exposed flesh she could.
Shorn heads beaded with sweat as they finally reached the dais, throwing her down, the thunk of her head setting my bones on edge as it collided with the ledge of a step.
Lycandor and I jerked with it, but then his arms were around me.
The tension in them was all wrong, like he didn’t know whether to lurch forward or back.
She rose to all fours, back arching like a cat, her blood swallowed by the red of the marble.
Then, the acolytes descended, hauling her up.
Imprisoned in bindings of flesh, not rope, I could only watch on as they lashed a belt around her wrists, pinning them to the small of her back.
She cried then, the sound breathy, without voice. Just the clicking of a throat.
Lycandor’s arms shook.
Just as I dared hope the ground would.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
“Templum of Dendra, bow for His Eminence, High Druid of Dendra,” a voice announced.
The herald struck every calf like a rod, the mass of them falling to prostrate on the ground.
Lycandor pulled me down with him, tugging my elbow and hair.
The sister slammed to the floor, and Demetri went with bitterness on his lips, sneering the whole way down, the crescent I could see of his face cold as the faintest of moons.
Murmurings stuttered to silence, despite the hundreds of bodies now swarming the sanctum: helms, shaved heads, the boxy headdresses of sisters.
“Rise.”
At the High Druid’s command, something other than my knees rose within me. Not my blessing, no, but boundless and unbridled hatred.