I looked all the same.
Two irises peered up at me, and I loosened at the sight of them. Not amber, nor hickory, butblack. Dulled, but unmistakably black.
Though, my relief was fleeting, for staring up at me, round and defiant, were the eyes of Esioul.
I closed my fingers around them, firm but careful, and brought them to my heart. If he wanted them back, he’d have to break every knuckle.
“They were not yours to take.” I levelled my gaze at his veil, pulsing my hand around the shard of carafe. Was she dead?Was Demetri?
“Perchance I shall claim one of thine.” His gloved finger tip brushed the soft curve of flesh under my eye, tracing its arch. It was the scuttle of a cockroach and I tried not to balk, letting him do as he wished, for now. He moved on to the other, as if weighing which jewel to pluck from which socket. “Emeraldsaremore valuable than obsidian,” he mused. “How fair they would look, set within a chain. Perchance I shall fix one upon my wrist, that thou mayst walk with me always, ever within my reach; a token that it was mine absolving hand that guided thee unto our Lord’s true will. For I am but a loyal druid, as ever I have been.”
“Your loyalty is a cruel thing, faithful only to pain. It is you who is the true butcher of the Dendralis. And I warn you,” I said, extending my neck and inching closer to his mesh. “You put your godsdamned fingers anywhere near my eyes, and I’ll bite them off,absolvinghand or not.” I bared my teeth like the animal I promised him I was.
A swelling breath rattled his chest, tracing the sharp line of his ribs beneath the cloth covering. He nodded to the acolyte who clasped my arm on the left. “Throllo, make certain her hands are pinned, and that she keepeth the heathen’s eyes within her sight. I desire their witness.” His helm tilted as he addressed the acolyte to my rear. “Put her upon the cot, Pietr.”
Pietr?
The name was a taper, dripping memories like wax down the length of my spine—of tables, of straps, and of cold, searching hands.
I screamed then, thrashing as though aflame, desperate to be free of their grip. My flesh ached beneath the unyielding press of their hold as they wrestled me, wailing and writhing, onto the cot. One pinned my feet, Pietr my hips, Throllo my wrists. I clenched my hands, spitting curses at their blank, expressionless faces. One palm closed around Esioul’s eyes, the other against the glass beneath me.
I bucked against them, kicking and flailing. Sweat gathered at my brow as I pushed with what little strength remained, the ache in my muscles a tell it was draining away. I would need to keep some of it for the terrors to come.
Falstaff’s face hovered a nose-width above me, his veil of chain resting along the base of my neck, heavy enough to choke.
“As I was saying unto thee, laurel—the humours.” Carrion laced his breath. I heaved.
“‘Tis a most fascinating theory…how several parts of the body may harbour differing fluids, and thereby shape the quality of the blood that floweth there. Some healers have sought to gainsay it of late.” He scoffed, moving farther from me until his veil no longer pooled at my throat.
“Yet, I hath lived long enough to know the sciences of the human form are a fickle art. Beliefs do shift, only to circle back unto their beginnings, not decades hence. And truly, it can do no harm to test a theory, can it?”
He patted my thigh, as though offering some bastardised comfort. “Throllo, bring the scalpel.”
Pietr shifted, his hand replacing Throllo’s now-occupied grip at my wrist. My forearm buzzed with the protest of his flesh upon mine and I avoided his eyes, terrified of what I’d find there more than any penance Falstaff could afford.
From the knot at his belt, Throllo plucked a spike longer than the rest, one not stained orange with rust, but gleaming silver—clean steel, primed, and ready for surgery.
There was no way to guess the distinct brand of pain it would bring. I imagined a keen sting, like vinegar poured on a cut, but more potent, somehow. Esioul’s eyes grew slippery, wetted by the sweat seeping from every pore.
Falstaff took the blade without thanks, his sinuous hands trembling slightly.
I tensed every muscle, wringing one final attempt at escape through every sinew and vein. But blessing of mercy or no, it wasn’t enough.
“Oh, child,” he creaked closer, the mesh chafing against my jaw. “These efforts are but in vain. Thou shalt not leave this cot for a long while yet, not until we have gathered that which the Blood God demands.”
Breathing hard and fast, my traitorous eyes darted to the locked door and then my pillow, the books’ edges barely hidden under the stuffed linen. I couldn’t help the way they flicked towards the armoire.
Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? We plummet together.
He rested his hand, the one wrapped around the scalpel, atop my stomach, relaxing it until it pressed down with his full weight. Though skeletal, it may as well have been a boulder, for how it pressed me into the down. I silently cursed my blessing and its absence, for a stranger’s euphoria would help me endure far more than my dark, deep dread.“Where were we? Ah, yes—the humours. The liver, to wit.” He skimmed his hand down to the soft flesh of my lower abdomen, veering slightly to the right. “A seat of bile; the blood that floweth through and about this organ is thought to take on its purifying virtue, able even to dull the deadliest of poisons. Why, if but a single drop of thine could make the earth tremble, then perchance a sample drawn hence might serve as an antidote against death itself.”
“It was not my blood!” I yelled, though a seed of resolution settled just under where his scalpel hovered. “Druid Vetrius has enough of it to fill a quarry, pray, ask him of it! It was a mercy of the Blood God, and I ask for your mercy now.”
He sliced through my skirts, exposing a line of flesh to the air. The acolyte holding my legs thrust his full body into his hold, my lower half contorting away from the blade. “Pietr, the vial.”
His fingers rummaged until they produced a translucent, tubular device from his robes. I jolted as its coolness pressed against the heat of my skin. I was panting, aching to sprint from their touch.
Perhaps… perhaps he would not come. Him and my blessing both.
