“What needs to be done?” I asked through gritted teeth, the keen sting in my hand asserting itself, radiating up the length of my arm. “Where are the others?” I did my best to ignore its angry pulse, sitting as upright as the chains allowed.
The Butcher turned, unstrapping more of his armour, his helm angled towards my bound wrist. “And here I was assuming I’d be the one leading the inquisition.” His breastplate dropped with athudonto the rug at the same time as my stomach.Inquisition.He retrieved it, hanging it on a hook beside another door of padlocked iron, hatchless, unlike the one to the room of parchment—the room where he slit Osric’s throat. “Answer some of my questions, and I may feel inclined to answer some of yours.”
His attention shifted to the wooden table beside the bed, and I followed his gaze to its surface, scarred with watermarks. He strode back to the bed, rolling his sleeves, steps lightened now free of some metal. I willed my heart to calm, watching him rifle through the top drawer, his corded arm passing within inches of my face. The scent I had woken to clung to him: hearthfire, parchment, and night jasmine, a flower that favoured the moon more than the sun, thriving in shadow…just like him.
“What needs to be done, laurel,” he said, slamming the drawer shut. “Is that we must unpick, seam by seam, why a mere trickle of your blood was enough to shake the godsdamned earth and topple towers.”
The surprise at his casual blasphemy was lost in the torrent of confusion. “My blood?” I asked, catching my blurred reflectionin the dark iron of his helm, hair wild, eyes wide. “You thinkmyblood did this?” Lungs emptying of air, I thought of the warmth, the elation, the giddiness of summer wine blooming in my chest, so similar to that on the scaffold.
“Hmm.” He dragged a chair from the corner, seating himself close to my side. “I think you know something, laurel,” he whispered, as if we were in the midst of a crowd rather than alone in his chamber. The tingle of thousands of hairs standing on end prickled over me as he edged closer. I couldn’t move away, held tight by the chains. “Something that would help us understand why the ritual ground lies scorched, why acolytes were found broken, mutilated.” I winced, unable to hide the scrunch of my brow. “And why no offerings can be made until another tree is gifted, one that cannot be grown without His special blessing.”
“Will the plagues not return?” A sickness roiled through me at the thought of Dendra and its many children, no older than the First, running through the cobbled streets, too young to fathom what could rise from the ground.
He stroked a hand down his veil, sinking into the chair, legs spread. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
I blew out a breath, eyes lifting to the canopy. “I do not know why I was spared,” I admitted, recalling Falstaff trembling beneath an acolyte. An urge to smile rose within me, only for the pain throbbing through my hand to chase it away. “Or why the earth rattled, and the tree burnt to nothing.” There it was again, that foolish, dangerous thing fluttering in the centre of my chest. “Perhaps…perhaps He has finally had His fill? Perhaps He granted us mercy.”
A world without offerings. Without laurels, or cypresses, or pines. Where death remained a mystery, something distant and unknowable, far, far away, no longer haunting us every waking moment. It was almost unfeasible… Almost.
He shook his helm, elbows settling on his knees. “You lie, or at least, tell part of one.” His hands, veined and tanned, threaded together, washed clean of the pink stain of Osric’s blood. I swallowed, imagining them collared around my neck like iron, how easily he could squeeze the life from me. Perhaps it would be a kindness. Kinder to end it now. Kinder than what would await me should I speak of the warmth, of theelation, lest they name me possessed and try to scorch out the madness.
“Will I be penanced?” I dared to ask, still intent on his hands. “What will it be?” I levelled my stare to his mesh, honed on the chain. “The thrash of a whip? The strike of a hammer? The sting of a needle?” Pain was inevitable, though the manner of it would decide my truths.
“For lying?”
“I am not lying.” Chains rattled as I tensed. “For what happened,” I clarified, softer this time, knowing my words were dangerously clipped to be aimed at a druid.
“That depends on what you have done.”
Lifting a shoulder, I pressed my face against its ridge, attempting to brush away the riddle of hair stuck to my cheek. “If I tell you a truth, will you give me one in return?” I asked. The memory of Demetri’s eyes, burning with life, with warmth, refused to leave me. I had mistaken him for another, mourned and wept as I watched him succumb to a plague, to the hammers, before they swept him away into nothing. As I stared at the Butcher, at his hands, his veil, his knives, I wondered how many more times I was fated to endure Demetri’s death, since the gods had clearly decided once would not be enough.
“I am nothing if not just,” he replied, one hand moving to his heart.
“I blasphemed.” Heat crept into my cheeks, recalling the curses, thespit. “To you. To Druid Falstaff.” An icy chill settledinto my skin as I remembered Falstaff’s poison in my ear. It sank like rank milk, churning my stomach.
“The Blood God cares nothing for your offering. I shall never face the torment thou promised, nor ever know death’s wilting touch.”
Words he had chosen to wound, to unsettle, to disturb. I could not cease to turn them over in my mind, their echo gnawing and gnawing still, like the bite of my hand.
“I am not concerned with blasphemy.” His words cut through my reverie, warm, as if spoken through a smile.
“I thought that was all druids were concerned with.”
He sighed, the mesh of his veil twinkling in the firelight as he turned from me to the hearthfire. “You will come to find I am not likeall druids.”
He was a shadow, an ink splatter upon parchment, the darkness of the pits, ebbing all light from the corner, despite being cast in the glow of a sconce. “I see that already, Your Holiness.”
He swivelled again, his invisible eyes clashing with mine, that same needling gaze burning into my skull. “There is something you keep hidden from me…something you refuse to name, though perhaps we are going about this all wrong.” His fingers tapped his knee, drumming in a rhythm of three. “I will find it, laurel. Root it out and strip it bare.” I refused to blink, schooling myself to stillness, despite the temptation to sink into the bed and let it swallow me whole. “There will be no secrets left between us when I am done.” His voice lowered. “For Blood Demands Blood. All in good time.”
I reared away, the chains pulling taut and hissing as my palm splayed, stretching the tear.
He snapped to my hand, to the fresh trickle of blood staining his sheets.
“But first…”
Reopening the drawer, he dropped a bundle of supplies onto the table’s surface, retrieving items from a drawstring bag with methodical care, arranging them neatly to the side. Lighting a taper on a nearby sconce, he dipped out of sight, rummaging for something towards the back of the bed.
“What are you doing?” I asked, tracking him as he moved, slipping in and out of my sight.
