The emptiness stuttered, a flame in the night. I went to speak, Lycandor’s plan be damned, not quite at peace, but with an understanding that I too would part from my eyelids, lips, or ears. If Adelaide had endured, then so would I.
“Guilty,” a voice answered—one I would know even in the deepest, blackest pits of the Other. The voice I’d witness shift from the squeak of a child to the depth of a man. A voice I had laughed with, quarrelled with. The voice that had whispered sweet nothings into my neck, that had fed me withits delicious words, moans, and promises.
So, so many promises.I will find you.
A voice that wasn’t Lycandor’s.
I hadn’t noticed him return to my side until a hand clasped over my mouth, gentler this time, the slick of his armour, coated in Adelaide’s blood, wetting my back.To the pits with his gentleness.I tore at him with my teeth, unlatching my jaw before he could seal it shut, chomping into the soft pad of his flesh until I felt tendon and muscle rip. He pressed firmer, seemingly immune to pain.
No, no, no.
“It is commendable, at least, to admit one final truth.” The High Druid towered over Demetri, a mountain against a mere man. “Though you are no longer worthy of mercy, perhaps, you will find some from the Other once your soul has paid its dues broiling in the pits. Any final words, laurel? Perhaps to beg for clemency in the beyond?”
“I have three,” Demetri returned, his voice husked from despair, but honed like a blade; sharp, cutting and raw. He made for the dais, dragging the acolytes with him as I wrestled with a druid, pitifully outmatched.
“You’re a cunt.”
The sanctum erupted.
Demetri raised his voice over the din, his curled head whipping to me. “Oh, and Ashara, darling—” He drove his fist into the face of the acolyte clawing at him, the crack of their nose as sharp as a pickaxe on stone. Slipping from their grasp, his eyes locked with mine, the amber of his irises burning like hearthfire. “I love you.”
No.
The acolytes regained their hold as Lycandor removed his palm from my mouth. They thrust him towards the first step of the dais, their feet skidding in the wet of Adelaide’s blood.
“Your promise, Lycandor,” I begged, uncaring if this was his fault or not. I’d take mercy from anyone: acolyte, druid, or god. Anyone, anyone.
Whirling around, I clutched at his pauldrons, uncaring of who noticed, though they were too lost in the mayhem of penance to care, jeering at the dais. “Youpromised. You vowed it. Spare him. Just him. Oh gods, please, spare him.” His palm hovered over the curve of my cheek, crescent-mooned and bloody with the marks of my teeth.
“I will give you anything!” I wailed. “Whatever’s inside me: my blood, my truths, mybody…whatever you want. Justsavehim.”
Lycandor’s limbs locked tight, unflinching in his resolve. I struck his armour with both fists, the metal clanging under their assault. With a final strike, my knuckles cracking and blooming with pain, I turned, just in time to see Falstaff advancing from behind Demetri, scalpel raised. Demetri’s head angled upwards, facing his fate, shoulders squared against the wraith in black about to carve him apart. I somehow knew, in my heart of hearts, that he was smiling. Smiling in that familiar, sinful, sidelong way of his.
“What have I told you, Seamstress? I keep my promises.” The armoured mass of Lycandor passed me by.
A small light, the taper in my chest now shielded by a hand in a storm, flickered to life as a small sizzle of hope unfurled from the abyss.
Lycandor strode towards Falstaff and Demetri, sword drawn, steps purposeful.
It would be us against them—three against hundreds, if he could save him.
Nails and teeth would have to do, since I had no spear, no sword, no bow. But I’d fight ‘til the end. I’d fight for them both. Blessing or no.
Hoisting my skirts, I ran for the dais.
Lycandor levelled his sword, readying to slice Falstaff in two, the sharp length of it hissing through the air. Demetri turned, tracking the attention of Falstaff’s retreating helm, the druid poised for escape.
My feet froze, halted by the sight of his smile.
Something was wrong with it.
Something was very, very wrong.
It started to slip, not from his cheeks, but all of it, the whole thing, shifting sideways.
And not just his smile, but his eyes, his nose, the dimple in his cheek. I couldn’t make sense of it.
Demetri’s face…itmoved, slipping and sliding, down and down and down until it dropped to the floor, splashing in the mire of blood. It rolled, cartwheeling towards me like we’d practised in the meadow.
