“Yes, the Butcher.” He spat the word, his mouth curving into a sneer.
“No,” I said quickly. Too quickly.
He stared at me for a moment, his eyes flickering between mine as if hunting for a lie.
“I know what you’re searching for,” I hedged, skimming his smooth cheek with my fingers. “And you will not find it. He has not harmed me.” I glanced down at him, at his body, leaner now but still sturdy. “But what of you?”
“Think not of what has happened to me. I breathe, do I not?” He turned into my hand, laying a kiss against its side. “There are boons in my chest. I have all my appendages. My legs, my tongue, my cock, myeyes. For now, that will do.”
Clasping my hands in his, he descended to his knees, his chin jutting into the swell of my stomach.
“Ashara. You must listen to me.”
His fingers curled around the backs of my thighs, grasping at them as if I were the Blood God Himself and he a devotee reciting his dues.
“The druids… they—” He buried his face in the folds of Lycandor’s shirt, his breath breaching the fabric, warming my skin. “They’re…fuck.” He pounded his temple against my thigh, as if trying to shake the words from his skull. “What I am about to tell you will sound inconceivable. It’s difficult to—” He took a deep breath. “They’re milling the bloodstone, the bodies of the offerings, the—” He shook, the vibrations humming up my legs to my hips. “The sisters… they’re forced to grind the offerings until they are dust. They put them in the druid’s pouches and consume them.”
I gripped him tighter to steady myself, his truths hurtling too fast for me to disentangle. “Why? Why would they—”
“It’s all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.” His nose raked the expanse of my upper groin as he rocked his head.
“Consuming us?” I breathed. “As in, they powder the food and the wine?” I eyed the plate the sister had fetched me, now but crumbs, and fought the urge to be sick.
“No, no, they have bags and”—he wiped under his nose, inhaling deeply at the dip of my belly button—“they use it, like opium…” I fisted his curls as he leaned into my hand, recalling Capriche’s pouch attached to his waist. I pillaged my memories, rifling for one where I had seen the same on Lycandor, though certain I hadn’t.
He rose, the tip of his nose outlining my middle all the way up. “I’ll explain when we’re half a fucking realm away, but right now you need to listen.”
I leashed the thousand questions clawing at my throat and squeezed his hands. “I’m listening, Demetri.”
His smile was sin, and for a moment, the darkness lifted. “I’ve always loved it when you do as you’re told…”
I pinched his cheek, half chastising, half to check that he was real.
“The druids, all of them, they’re diseased. They have these…” Mouth parted, brow furrowed, he seemed to search for the word. “Thesered scabs, all over their bodies.” He motioned to his, releasing my hold. “They call itsuccumbing.”
Again, my thoughts jolted to Lycandor, his helm…his distinct reluctance to show me his face.
“It’s a side effect, I think,” Demetri mused, unaware of the invasive memory of the Butcher’s lips hovering just above my own, his groin pressed to mine. “From sniffing the bloodstone…it changes them.”
“Everything’s rotten,” I declared, attempting to banish all thoughts of Lycandor to the deepest pits of my mind, worried what I’d find if I didn’t. “The whole templum; right is wrong and wrong is right, and right is wrong, then right again. I tire of it.”
Try as I might, I could not shackle one particular question, the one with the sharpest teeth. “Does Lycan—Druid Vetrius—”
“It doesn’t matter now.” He kissed my palm, the one freshly stitched, and entwined his fingers with mine.
“I have to know. Does he also—”
“It does not matter if he partakes in the consumption or not.” His grip tightened, and I willed my own into it, matching its tenacity lest he was torn from me again. “What have I always said, darling? A cunt is a cunt is a cunt.” He glanced at the bed, honed on the ruffled sheets, as if they had shit in his stew. “But much to my fucking dismay, he may be the only chance for us to escape here.” He kissed my knuckles, again and again and again. “We’ll fly, Ashara. Like you said. Fly and fly and fly until we are lost to Dendralis forever.”
He spoke with the fervour of one drunk on hope; I recognised it as the same malady coursing through me.
Unbidden, the words came anyway. “He isn’t like the others, Demetri.”
His hand loosened, unwrapping itself from mine to graze along the underside of my jaw.
“Ashara, he’s a druid.”
“I know, but—”
