But he was torn from me, as was inevitable—ripped apart by acolyte hands.
“To the sanctum,” Lycandor’s father announced, giving us his broad back, draped in more of that chain. “Gather the rest; the whole templum. The Blood God has demanded a penance, and it’s high time they render their dues.”
Chapter forty-two
Ashara
The Sanctum
Raise thy children in the way o’ the Blood God, and when they are old, they will not shun from thee. -272: 6-7- The Book of Dendralis
If the Room of Rites was the templum’s belly, then the sanctum was its heart. Everything ran red—the walls, the floor, the pillars, the busts, even the twenty-pace-high steps rising beneath the cupola, upon which perched the High Druid of Dendra’s throne. It pulsed with it; red, red, red.
Bare feet slapping against the red-veined marble, I couldn’t help but gawk at its terrible beauty, even knowing it might be the final place I drew breath. A hand shot to my chin, snapping my jaw shut with a clack of teeth. I flinched, though Lycandor had already returned his appendage to his side, the motion so quick none but I would have noticed. I prayed, though I wasn’t quite sure to who, that the warning glint of my eyes pierced through his veil. A fool’s wish, to hope he’d read in them that I had no need of a druid’s hand to mind my mouth, only the desperate longing that he might still save us all. If he ever had any intention to, that is.The High Druid’s son.
Sealing my lips lest questions tumble out, I feigned disinterest in the impossibly tall, domed ceilings overhead. I might have widened my eyes, might havecooedorahhedat the fresco of Thromarra and the rivers of blood that coursed through it, all rendered in paint that looped along the curve of the windows, their panes tinted ruby. But I had no stomach for art, not when it was roiling with… What was the name of thethingthat wracked through me? Fear didn’t seem quite right. Yes, I was afraid, but more than that, I wasinflamed. Not with the heat of passion or the warmth of Demetri as he and I joined, but with something that scorched cold. By the Other, I was burning with it. We’d stolen more time than our dues ever allowed, but it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. I wanted it all now. I wanted a lifetime—to wither and wrinkle and die in my bed, not on the floor of a sanctum.
A firm hand banded around the crease of my arm, tugging me forward down the makeshift aisle, bodies converging around us.I glanced down to where he held me, the wool of the sister’s dress rippling outward from the press of his fingertips. Whilst they didn’t clasp hard enough to bruise, gone was that careful gentleness of his touch when he’d healed me. Lycandor clung to me as if I were indeed a prisoner, bound for penance, or, perhaps, it was the grip of someone who simply didn’t want to let go. With no face to read, I couldn’t discern.
“His secrets have secrets. Untrustworthy. A druid, for fuck’s sake.”
Demetri’s truths rang in my ears, alongside another—Lycandor’s omission. A truth more important than the rest: the truth of who he called father. His father, who reared him, raised him, soothed him. Who directed him,instructedhim; though, perhaps not anymore. If there was any mercy at all, then it wouldn’t be so.
We delved deeper into the red, revelations piling atop me like dirt.
Engulfed in a polish of shorn heads, five or so bodies deep before us, acolytes drove Demetri forward. I savoured each catch of a wayward curl, holding tight to the sounds of his cursing and grunts.
Still alive. Still alive. Still alive.
“What has your little pet done this time, to drag us all from our warm sheets, and a sister or two, at so late a turn?” I swirled to my left, the twisted point of a helm breaching my eyeline.
Capriche’s hand moved as if to brush over my cheek, but I was jerked back, crushed against the frigid chill of Lycandor’s armour before it could land.
“Keep your fucking hands to yourself,” Lycandor warned, quiet enough that no spying ears would be drawn to the sound.
Capriche’s breastplate rose with a laugh, his palm flattening over his stomach. Tutting, the spire of his helm wavered to andfro, head shaking as if to chastise us both.Pointy-headed prickDemetri once called him, and I dare say, it suited.
“Now, now, brother,” Capriche murmured, voice heavy with mirth. “I have yet to get a good look at thefamedlaurel who made dust of our tower and prompted the Blood God to bonfire our tree. What has she done this time?”
I sneered up at his mesh, unable to school the sharp curl of my lips.
“Pretty little thing.” He prowled closer, and Lycandor took a step back, dragging me with him.
“You look devastatingly familiar.” Capriche’s boots rooted on the marble, but he bent at the waist, his chainmail hovering a finger’s width from the bridge of my nose. “Not a frequenter of the taverns in Dendra’s lower enclaves, are you?” The lower enclaves: home to beggars, heathens, and whorehouses abound. My mother would have strung me up on the Doors of Judgement herself if I’d ever been caught loitering in those alleys. No place for a druid; no place for anyone who feared penance more than they craved indulgence.
“Certainly not.”
“She speaks!” He straightened. “I’d rather thought of her mute, like a sister.”
Lycandor’s grip hardened, though he’d pushed me away from his body, a cavernous gap widening between us. Monk and acolytes’ eyes drifted towards where we’d paused, their side-long glares drilling into my temple. I found myself standing taller, not smaller, beneath their disapproval.
“I’ve gathered that’s how the Dendralis like their women: knees bent, face down, lips shut.” Unlike Capriche and Lycandor, who had kept their voices low, I let mine ring out, smiling at the sneers, twisted lips, and wrinkled noses. “Whereas you druids really do love to droneon and on,”I continued, despite the hardening of Lycandor’s clasp on my arm.
“Oh yes, I definitely know this one. But if not from the lower enclaves, then where?” Capriche drawled, his helm dipping as if in appraisal.
For the sake of Lycandor’s supposed—possibly farcical or already doomed—plan, I resisted the urge to wriggle free and claw at his veil.
Plan.
