Chapter 27 Scarlett
Scarlett
It was difficult to sit today, but wearing the clothes he had put out for me to wear was easier than the clothes Thomas had given me to wear for the Leaders.
Leather corsets always made my lashings sting that much worse, but the dresses Azrael let me wear were soft and silky, not pressing on the bandages at all.
It still hurt to breathe though.
It was my fault for painting that picture. My fault for allowing my imagination to run wild. My excitement had gotten the best of me.
But it was more than that. I wasn’t the only one in pain.
I had felt the difference as soon as the door opened. Something terrible had happened. Something that had shifted the storm that had been brewing all these years.
I couldn’t find the right word for the electricity I felt in the suddenly heavy air, but it made me want to shrink away from him as he sat before me, watching me.
It made me want to shrink away and lean in at the same time. I wanted to know everything, but I didn’t want those angry eyes directed at me.
We’d just been sitting for a while now, so long that the mint had already disappeared on my tongue. His eyes on me, my eyes on where the soft black fabric of the dress rested between my legs. Black and red today.
I liked this dress. It puffed up in the skirt, layers of red tulle underneath. It made the skirt sit higher on me. Mid-thigh. I really liked this dress.
But I was not excited about today. I couldn’t be. My back burned today, and all I wanted was to sleep until it was fully healed so that I wouldn’t have to feel it anymore.
What I didn’t mind feeling was that chilling burn in my stomach. It had grown a little larger after the lashings Thomas had given me. I wasn’t sure what it was or what it meant, but I reveled in the way it felt because it felt almost as good as the ache between my thighs.
It was my belief that they were one in the same and I wanted them both to grow.
“What do you have in your left hand?”
My right hand tightened. Before the lashings, he had ripped my painting into pieces. I managed to hold onto one single piece of it. It was easy because of how I was told to sit and stand. Nobody ever looked at my hands. No one would ever suspect that I was holding onto something important.
Azrael saw everything though. He probably saw the bruises on my knees from when Thomas had shoved me down after tearing up my painting and made me suck his cock. He probably saw the way my spine straightened a little more just to try and lessen the pain of those lashings. He probably saw it all.
“Anger,” he said, his voice quieter, more calculated than it had been before. “Show me.”
Anger. Is that what it was? The ice in the pit of my stomach, the burning in the back of my eyes, the way my muscles tightened and flexed. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like feeling this at all.
At the quiet command in his voice, I felt any hesitation within me dissipate. I was angry and he was…electric. All I wanted to do was make him happy again. Hear that lilt again.
I lifted my hand, turned it over, and opened my fingers one by one, revealing the piece I had kept. It was just a corner of it. A piece of paper with random colors, a line or two, and part of the word ‘tock’.
A moment passed before I felt the paper disappear from my hand and I felt my heart skip. His fingers had been so very close to touching mine, yet the chasm hadn’t closed an inch. I wondered if I would ever feel his touch. I wondered if I ever wanted to.
“Your painting,” he hummed, much to my shock.
But of course, he was watching the cameras. Everyone with access to the Back Hall watched those cameras. They had to make sure I always obeyed the rules.
“Your betrothed did this?”
I tapped my finger on my thigh, my left hand still outstretched, waiting for my next command.
“Hmm.” Seconds ticked by before I heard a soft shuffle. “I’ll keep it safe,” he told me. “You have my word.”
His word?
“Like a promise, but stronger,” he explained.
I felt the tightness around my lips shift. I felt my lips fight to part, dull sparks, like the sound of the bass in the church band, thrumming through me. I wondered what the name of this feeling was.
When I could no longer keep my hand up. It slowly fell to my thigh, my ears straining to hear any shift in his demeanor, any breath of a command.
We were following his rules now, I could move when I needed, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t change the rules without telling me.
Thomas did that sometimes. He said it was to ‘keep me on my toes’, but all it led to was more punishments.
“Did he also leave more lashings on your skin?”
I tapped once, although my finger shook.
Telling on my betrothed was against the rules.
He was allowed to do whatever he wanted to me except for penetrating me, of course.
He could starve me, boil my skin, set me on fire if he so chose, and I could do nothing about it.
It was his God given right, and mine was to obey.
He went quiet again, and for several minutes, we sat in that silence.
What was he thinking? Why was he so loud yet so silent at the same time?
If I could speak, I might have asked him “What happened in your world while I was away to make you feel so loud in your silence? Was it the spades? Was it the Jabberwocky? Or was it something your Wonderland has never seen before?”
“There are more people in my world than I ever wanted there to be,” he finally said, my mind latching onto every word. “They don’t understand that meddling will only hurt my world. Will only damage it, but now I have no choice.”
Was his world in danger now?
Would we have to save it too?
“The information you have, little sinner, will aide in bringing this corrupt kingdom to its knees, but my plans were only plans when they were mine. Now there is a Cheshire Cat sitting in the sanctuary. She is fierce, her fur red and black, and her blue eyes glow like a predator in waiting, but while she is cunning and vicious, sometimes her need for the absolute clouds her mind from seeing what’s right in front of her. ”
But the Cheshire Cat was friends with the Hatter. I remembered that. They were friends. Why was she here? Why was she sitting in the pew? Why was she watching? And why couldn’t I tell her gaze apart from the rest of the congregation?
“I will do my best to control the narrative, but the thing about stories is that sometimes the characters have their own plans, and the writer must allow them to be free or the story will collapse in on itself. Time is not our friend, sinning doll, no matter where the story goes. Tonight, I will meet with the cat, the white rabbit, the queen of the chessboard, and others to discuss what they know and why. Tomorrow, there might be a shift in the air, one this entire Kingdom will feel. You must prepare your mind for the spades, little sinner. For they may come in the night, but don’t you worry, your Hatter won’t stop until the blood is spilled. ”
I swallowed, gripping into my skirt, feeling that tightness in my chest grow. How could I prepare for something I didn’t know was coming?
“They mean well,” I heard him say, but the way he said it made me think that he was no longer speaking to me.
“They’re ruining the game. We must do what we have to.
Tick tock tick tock tick—” I heard the soft scrape of the cane across the carpet, his breathing strangled and rough.
“Their punishments will be great, their suffering worse. Nothing will be left if we stay on course.”
I talked to myself too. In the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep or the nightmares woke me up, I spoke riddles in my own mind. Sometimes, I didn’t even understand them. They were just meaningless words, but they always helped.
He laughed quietly, the sound disjointed and irregular. “My world was built brick by brick, I will not allow them to affect this. To affect me. They want to control me?” Another disjointed laugh. “The rivers can run red with their blood too.”
That laughter made my heart race and my thighs tighten. It made my head spin, and my body feel lighter. As if I were floating. I liked that laugh. I wanted to be a part of that laugh.
Seconds passed before he spoke again, the laughter gone. “Were all the churches at that convention last week?”
No, they weren’t. One of the churches was missing. Pastor Masters had to contact them about what happened at the convention. Thomas had talked about it once. Said it was pointless because Azrael had already picked me as his Favorite, but Pastor Masters claimed that it was needed.
“How many were absent?”
I tapped my finger once.
“Was it the newest one?”
I angled my head ever so slightly, thinking back to who I had heard. I barely knew the Leaders of the other churches or their Pastor’s, but I know who introduced themselves to Thomas. All of those names I had recognized. I tapped my finger.
“Do you know where this new church is located?”
It had to be in California. That’s where the last one had closed down.
No, no, I remembered the conversation. The one in California had been so severely compromised and they decided not to open another one there.
Any gathering of the Daylighters there was done without an official Church of Daylight building.
They decided to name it a branch rather than an official church.
The new church had been opened in…
I straightened and tapped my finger. “Yes, it was—”
“Is it located in Russia?”
I lifted my finger only a little because part of it was located in Russia. They had had a church in Moscow, but that church had a branch here. That’s what had burned down last year, the fire that took the rose.
“I’m sure you’ve heard bits and pieces of that story. How tragic it was that the Delepski’s died in that fire, that it was a loss for the church,” he hummed. “Them being such new members, making such big mistakes.”