“When I was on that table”—she rounded on him, prowling at his feet, light on her steps—“I felt every one of his touches.” She sidled closer to my side, trailing the dagger up his bony thigh, which trembled in its wake. “‘Tampered with?’ you asked me. ‘Have you allowed him to defile you,laurel?’” She tutted.
I punched his stomach. Air left him in one mighty gust, a snap insinuating I may have shattered a rib.
“The only defilement I’ve known in my life is at the hands of holy men.” She skimmed the blade down his face. “A sinner’s touch was far kinder than yours.” He coughed, winded and broken.
“Then you stuck your cold, slimy fingers inside me until you could shove them in no further.” Her words were gutting, but her face was all smiles. I struck his jaw, a tooth flying to the left.
Resting the dagger on the edge of the cot, she knelt to pluck the tooth from the floor.
“Fascinating…” Ashara examined it like a rare gem. “Have you beentamperedwith, Pietr?” She brought the tooth to his pursed lips. “Druid, help me with his jaw.” I prised it open, allowing her to shove his tooth back inside. She clamped a hand to his lips until he swallowed it down, choking on its bulk.
“Keep his leg straight.” With no additional warning, she reclaimed the dagger and drew it up the inside of his thigh, following the line towards the inner crease of his groin. His fleshunseamed under her touch, eliciting a scream, his blood soaking the linens already darkened with her blood.
“‘Tis time for your inquisition, acolyte. Druid, how long will it take him to die if I stab here?” I tracked the tip of the blade to where she hovered it just under his cock, angled at his bowel.
A part of me winced. “I can do it if—”
“No,” she dismissed, her tone soft, grin wide. “It ismydue.”
The other part of me smiled. “A short while, Seamstress, if the right artery is severed. Half a turn or more if it isn’t. The dagger is curved, so point it like this”—I rotated her wrist—“and pull up. Plunge deep and twist if you wish to hook an intestine or two. Either way, it’ll be agony.”
“Blood does demand blood,” she mused, and then stabbed.
The dagger drove into him with ease, the blade tearing through his soft, vulnerable flesh. He squealed like a pig, eyes vacant and widening as it twisted inside him, her hand tugging it left and right and right again. Blood swamped her wrist, gushing out in rivers of red. She jerked the blade, readying to yank it free—and no doubt his intestines along with it.
She tried again, chest quickening, refusing to unlatch her other hand from whatever it cradled to add momentum.
“Seamstress, are you in need of my help?”
“It’s stuck!” she sniggered through rapid breaths. “I can’t—”
I looped my hand around hers and heaved. The blade slid free and ropes of mottled pink flesh followed, twined around the steel like snakes. The acolyte was silent now, only a few weak whimpers amid his trembling, the markers of shock.
Flicking the flesh from the blade, she brought it down upon him once more, forgoing his bowel for his manhood, slicing and slicing until it was severed in two. She laughed, stabbing again and again. A few breaths later, his head fell, eyes wide, filmed not just with an acolyte’s sheen, but with death.
A fresh wave of her joy pumped through the air, its sweetness deepening into a heady, suffocating musk.
“Ashara?”
She froze midair, blade poised above her head, ready for another strike. The thick, cloying mist of her joy evaporated, leaving only the sharp, metallic scent of blood.
“I—” Her brows knitted, her head angling towards the dagger still clutched in her hand.
“Ashara?” I repeated.
The dagger clanked to the ground as she dropped it.
“Lycandor?” I had no time to register the sound of my name on her tongue, not when mine became immediately coated with a wash of fresh herbs, her confusion spilling into my mouth.
Her eyes, lidded with euphoria only moments ago, widened and glazed. She glanced down at herself: at her body, cut and marked; at her dress, blotched crimson; at the three acolytes. She raised her hands, one still fisted, twisting them this way and that.
Finally, she looked at me, searching for my eyes beneath the veil.
“You came.”
Chapter thirty-eight
Ashara
