“But he spends much of his time examining and experimenting with my blood,” I continued, hoping he’d press for the grisly details. I scrunched my face, crinkling my nose into a wince. “It has been…rather intense. Most days, I have no capacity for disrespect, so exhausted am I by his searching for the truth.”
I fought the urge to glance at the door, my ears tuned to the slightest clink of metal in the corridor beyond.
A scoff. “Ah, laurel, I doubt not that we shall find our answers…Yet I fear, verily, that His Holiness is more enraptured with that which lieth between thy thighs than with that which runneth in thy veins. Druids be holy men, but men still.”
A set of smiles twisted the acolytes’ mouths, their gaunt cheeks stretched and tight.
“He hasn’t touched me,” I protested, still pulling at the drawer. Falstaff chuckled.
“Ah, child, thy attempt to dissuade me is commendable, yet thou shalt not avail.” With a leaden wave of his hand, the acolytes resumed their advance. “He was ever too sentimental, our Lycandor, even in youth.” His tone softened, wistful, as if recalling a cherished memory. I seized the moment, slipping my hand into the drawer I had managed to open, my fingers seeking the shard of the carafe. “His father and I did spend what seemed an age moulding him into a scythe, nay a butcher, as the men do herald. He is far too clever for the block.” He sighed, the sound a mockery. “But alas, sometimes defections may not be vanquished, even by the most thorough of tutors.”
There. The bite of glass dug into my flesh as my fingers curled over its edges, squeezing until it vanished into my palm. I leaned into the dresser, using my weight to close the drawer, just as two sets of acolyte hands clamped round my arms. Their grip tightened, forcing a yelp from my throat. The third simply watched, his face slack with indifference, even when I started to thrash. Falstaff crawled closer.
“I wager he hath yet to scratch the surface of the secrets you hide,” he cooed, lifting his hand with a trembling arm as if he had granite for bones. Three of his outstretched fingers inched towards my cheek.
I recoiled, reeling back as far as I was able, when the third acolyte moved. With practiced precision, he struck the side of my temple with the back of his hand. Head snapping left, I gasped with the shock of it, face burning from the sting of his knuckles.
“As thus,” Falstaff continued, his hand lowered, “I wonder if he hath drawn upon the ancient study of humours… He knoweth it well enough.”
My vision blurred.
The acolyte struck again. I clenched the shard of glass tighter, its sharp bite a temper to the throb of pain in my cheek.
“It is courteous to hearken when a druid seeth fit to share knowledge with thee, my child. Ignorant though thou mayst be, it remaineth a privilege that asketh thy full attention. Stand thou straight.”
Bones groaning against his demand, I forced them to shift.
“Nay straight enough.” Another strike to my stomach. Robbed of air, the acolyte’s hands denied me the relief to scrunch at the waist. Coughing and sputtering, I stood as straight as I was able.
Hewouldcome.
“Better. Hands at thy front,” Falstaff commanded.
I obliged, inwardly counting the creative ways one might kill a druid with but a shard of glass.
“Atonement and liberation are as one, child. In submission is freedom found. To thy knees, laurel.”
A breath of hesitation was enough.
The third acolyte dipped behind me, wedging himself between me and the dresser. A kick to the backs of my knees sent me crashing to the floor, bones quaking with the impact of stone.
“Ah, so much the better,” praised Falstaff, his long, thin fingers lifting my chin. “There is a rightness in this; thou knelt upon the stone. The Blood God is well pleased with thee, laurel.”
“Is this your version of justice, Your Holiness? For what I said upon the dais? A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye?” Whatever pain awaited, Falstaff’s penchant for penance was a gift. Vetrius would scent me. He’d come. I thought of his heart, of its steady rhythm under my hand, and willed my own to join it.
A chuckle.
“On the matter of eyes...” Releasing my chin, he fondled his robes.
“Hold out thy hand, laurel.” The acolyte to my right yanked at my arm, prying open my fingers and presenting them to his master. Small mercies it was the one that was empty.
Two milky orbs, rubbery and nearly translucent, dropped into my palm.
“I had them pickled. A reminder that they who are blind to truth have little need of sight. For blood alone is not only that which He demands.”
I unfocused my eyes, as I did with the Doors of Judgement, a thousand voices seeming to scream from within to shut them entirely.
Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look.
