The Blessing
And the Blood God had respect unto the Druids and their offerings, and blessed them so. -214:4–5 - Book of Dendralis
Blood: my blood, Throllo’s blood, Pietr’s blood, blood of another nameless acolyte who died at my hand. So much blood I was caked in it, the stains bleeding into one another until I was one open wound. They said Thromarra ran red…well, so did I.
Vetrius,Lycandor, set me down by the hearth, both of us now locked behind the iron door to his rooms. He’d left me for a half a turn or so, just so he could retrieve the tome and his armour, both of which were now stashed in his chamber. But he was back now, and I was still where he’d left me, lost to the flames.
“Cold?” he asked.
I nodded, wiggling my fingers closer to the hearth. Though I felt the fire’s burn, its warmth evaded me, brushing over my skin, but refusing to seep into my bones where I needed it most. Shivering, my teeth clacked together as I huddled closer, chasing the heat.
But before I could consider wandering into its grate, two hands draped a shawl over my shoulders, careful not to disturb the wounds at my front.
“It’s rather different,” I confessed, once the shivering had ebbed. The fire licked at the logs, streaking them orange before singing them black. I pulled the shawl tighter. “What is?” He spoke from behind me, his deep cadence somehow managing to penetrate where the fire’s warmth could not.
Blackened wood crumbled to powder.
“To kill someone close, rather than from afar.” A log snapped, embers coiling upward towards the scorched mantle before fading to ash.
His boots thudded on the rug, and he joined me by the fire.
“In the end, distance does not matter, only the destination. When a heart stops beating, it cares little for the geography of its unmaker.” He prodded at the dwindling hearth with a poker, sparks flitting towards us like fireflies.
“Do you still believe me blessed with mercy?” I asked. “Was it mercy to slit their throats? Mercy to gut his innards like swine? Mercy to unman him?”
Helm fixed on the fire, his silence was telling.
“Acolytes died before, in the Room of Rites,” I continued, watching the flames dance. “Tens and tens of them, when the sky fell on our heads.”
He hummed, his swallow thick even under the barrier of chain. “But I reasoned, even if by some impossible chance my blood was the cause, I had no need to feel guilt, norremorse. For why should I? It was not my will, nor my plan. A truth?” I abandoned the lure of the flames to gaze into his veil.
“Always.” Finally, he turned towards me. Through the mesh, I hunted for his eyes; two pinpricks of light, like the faintest of stars, glinted behind the metal.
“My will or no, I was glad of it,” I whispered, knowing he would scent my truth. “After everything, as I was forced to look on as laurel after laurel succumbed to bloodstone and then the hammers. It felt like justice.”
Itstillfelt like justice.
“It was,” he affirmed.
That urge to rip away his covering consumed every muscle until I was taut with it, as if his eyes, or nose, or godsdamned mouth, could give me some clue as to what in the pits had made this druid, the Butcher of Dendralis, grateful for the deaths of his brethren.
“But today…” My palm, the one knotted with linen, tingled beneath its bandaging, its sting banished by Lycandor’s blessing. “That feeling bloomed again; the breath after I slit Throllo’s throat. I don’t think I could have done the rest without it.”
I blew out a breath, the burden of another truth leaving me lighter. “What does that say of me? That one throat was one toomany? That I may have dropped the shard and let them bleed me dry. Is it cowardice or bravery to simply endure?”
“Neither.” He shifted closer, his elbow grazing my arm. “It is simply who you are.”
“It is not who my blessing wanted me to be. Perhaps it was my blood that trembled the earth and kindled the tree, for I swear I could feel its hum in the ground. In thewalls.Like a shoot, ready to burst from the soil.”
His thumb swiped at the curve of my cheek, collecting a tear. He rubbed it against the base of his forefinger, as if feeling for what it was made of.Inevitability, I nearly confessed. There’d be no hope to fly with Demetri, or even plummet together. Not after what I’d done. Not when the High Druid and Falstaff found out.
I turned back to the fire. “Today was different from what happened in the Room of Rites. To slice a man’s throat, even under the hold of my blessing…to feel the tension in my wrist, so similar to canvas, always blunting the shears. The effort, the—”
“The resistance.” His hand cupped mine, the one that cradled Esioul’s eyes, and he nudged at my fingers. I didn’t open them. I couldn’t. Not yet. Then I’d have to look.
“It is as if the flesh and bone fight back,” he added, coaxing my smallest finger to unfurl.
“What in the pits is it? Thisthinginside me?” I demanded, tugging my arm until he let go.
