Turning, body no longer wrought with tension, he relaxed.
I was locked in with a madman.
A deep, steady breath echoed from the confines of his helm, his wide chest shuddering with the exhale. “San Vindictam Vultaer.” The handful of unfamiliar words were spoken with such unexpected reverence that my mouth parted.
I took a moment to study him, then, before I could think better of it, asked, “What does that mean?”
Helm tilting, he sighed, returning to gaze out the window, fingers still fiddling with something at his hip. “Something dangerous, laurel. Something you would do well not to repeat in the small turns you have left.”
Silence hung between us, punctuated only by an occasional, sharp sniff from the window. I had a need to break it, take a hammer to it all.
“And I should like to spend those few turns somewhere other thanhere. If you have found me innocent, then by your leave, Your Holiness.” I made to stand.
He prowled towards me, boot prints trailing smears of crimson upon the stone until he reached the rug, a large hand pressing on my shoulder to force me back down. “Tell me, laurel, is that because there is someone you’d like to spend them with?”
A wash of nausea roiled through me, stealing my breath and dampening the unfurling heat blooming within.
He’s dead. He’s dead. He’sdead.
“Did you slit his throat, too?” I asked, words shaking, longing to know the answer but desperate not to find out.
Two arms caged me in, gripping the sides of the chair. “I will tell you a truth.” The cool kiss of his chainmail pooled over myclavicle. “If you give me one in return, since you have given me none this night.”
There it was, the shaking, a pulse vibrating in my calf, twitching both knees.
He backed away, folding his arms across the expanse of his chest and towering over me. “What do you really think, laurel? Of this?” He gestured around him, and I resisted the call to look upon Osric’s slit neck. “The offering? It will not change things if you tell me, since you are to be put down like a mange-ridden dog, regardless.”
Dog.
The world seemed to shake with my rage, the ground thrumming beneath my feet. Something simmered in my chest until it spilled over, and I stood—permission be damned—fists curling at my sides. “Is he alive?”
The Butcher’s helm rotated, surveying the room before settling on me. “The offering, laurel. A truth for a truth.”
Grinding my teeth, I debated whether a lamb could tackle a mountain. Whether hooves could match stone. Whether wool might temper metal.
“It’s barbaric,” I whispered. There, heresy. And gods, if it didn’t feel like a prayer on my tongue. A headiness, like warm mead, flooded through me, and I was lighter for it.
“And?” he encouraged.
“It’s a wretched way to live, cast in the shadow of your death.” The frayed threads of restraint began to snap, twenty-eight cycles of it, one after the other, faster and faster, until an irreparable rip tore through what was left. A laugh tumbled from my lips, so like Esioul’s.
“You say you are saviours.” I rounded the desk, fingers pressing into the wood, its surface slick with blood. “You preach you are the shield, the buffer between us and His wrath.”
He followed as I circled to the other side, the scent of iron and poisoned berries smothering the char of wood from the hearth.
“But it doesn’t make sense, does it, Druid Vetrius?”
He straightened at the sound of his proper title. I backed into the desk, dress bunching against its rim.
“The cost of salvation from death…is death? We give, and He takes.Youtake—take, take, take.”
For the first time in eight cycles, since the twentieth lash, I felt something akin to elation bloom in my chest.
“I think we should slaughter you all,” I admitted, daring him to step closer, the space between us narrowing to a width of a finger. “Cull you in one sweeping strike. Give others the chance to grow wrinkled and old, to die in their beds as is meant to be the way of things, blood plagues be damned.”
The shadow of myself reflected in his helm. She was unrecognisable, warped by the metal into something with a far straighter spine than I.
“That’s my truth,Butcher,” I hissed, watching my face curl into a sneer. “I think you should burn alongside the smoke of your brothers, and the sky should turn grey with your ash.” I pushed away from the desk, intent on his veil. “Now formytruth. Does he live?”
