I swerved to one of the doors he had looked at, unlocked and ajar. “Yes, I know, but—” I froze as his thumb and forefinger, ungloved, clasped my lower face. A cool, firm touch below my chin rotated my head until my eyes clashed with chain. I tried to pull back, but he held on, unyielding in his strength.
“I do not know how else I can say this to you. You avoided one offering but remain intent to waltz straight into another.” His fingers pressed deeper, enough to bruise bone. “I am a druid, theButcher, and you are in the godsforsaken templum, Seamstress.You will listen and hold that blasphemous little tongue of yours.” He lifted my chin, forcing my gaze to Mount Garnet’s peak. “The walls, the tiles, the very ceilings have ears,” he whispered, tilting my head down. “The stones underfoot prate of the soles that strike upon them.” His touch softened, tipping my eyes to meet his beneath the metal, that needling pinch almost making them water. “Your blood was the last to soak the roots of the Blood Tree before it turned to dust. They will be searching for a reason,hewill be searching for a reason; desperate to find a cause worthy enough to have your body desecrated and left to rot, strung up on the reach.” The question regarding whohewas scratched at my throat, but I swallowed it, urging another about why he would care down at the same time. “He’ll seek a way to justify that this was no act of mercy from the Blood God; that you were not chosen to be spared, but selected to endure a fate far worse than all you have witnessed. So play the silent devotee, or you shall be dead before the sun rises—or, at the very least, you’ll wish you were.” He shook my chin, punctuating the threat.
Head angled back, I glared down the line of my nose. “I am meant to be.”
“Yes, you are. Yet you would squander what has been given to you by not heeding the advice of someone who is trying to keep you flesh instead of stone.” His grip grew firmer, his voice softer.
I couldn’t stop it for all the chappellums in Thromarra. “And tell me, Druid Vetrius, why is it that you wish to keep my blood hot?” His words echoed back to me from his room of parchment. “Make sure you’re the first in line.”I gasped, a truth settling. “You know something, do you not? What you told me in your office. Does it have something to do with Greg—” His hand darted from my chin to my mouth, sealing it shut.
Helm snapping left, then right, his attention landed on the doors. “Do not speak of that here, of him,” he whispered through clenched teeth, vowels hissed, consonants keen. “Do not speakof it anywhere but my chambers.” He lowered his hand just enough to allow me breath. “And do not bite me again.” My jaw flexed, mouth pooling.
“There are things I do not understand,” he continued, his grip still firmly pressed to my lips. I resisted the urge to swipe at him with my tongue, the salt of his flesh invading my mouth. “And there are things you do not understand, either. Together, we may find the answers we seek.” His pressure eased, fingers brushing instead of crushing into my cheeks. “But do not repeat but a syllable of what I divulged to you… to do so would place us in unspeakable peril. And I assure you, laurel, with absolute certainty, if I die, you die…hedies.” I inhaled sharply, the scent of his skin—all salt, fire, and jasmine—fighting with the memory of cherry wine. “As it stands, I am the only one capable of delaying Druid Falstaff’s wrath.”
A smile teased the edges of my lip until I wrestled it away.
“He would see you hung, drawn, and quartered before the day was done had I not convinced the High Druid of Dendra to investigate your blood.”
My stomach curdled, the smile forgotten. Hand still bandaged over my mouth, he released me, palm hovering a hair’s breadth away. Delicately, suspiciously so, he slid down the side of my face to cup my chin once more. The crackle of flame fell away, and so too did the steady drip, dripping of condensation. A silence descended, vast and hollow, just like my dream, until there was only his voice and the thump of my heart.
“I will give you some truths if you give me yours. For now, you need to bathe.” His gaze dipped. “Andeat. I will come af—”
“Ashara?”
I fell and flew all at once.
Before I could move, the Butcher’s touch darted from my chin to the hollows of my cheeks, squeezing them hard enough thatmy lips parted, forced open by the indentations of his fingers either side.
I knew that voice. I would know its master anywhere. My name on his tongue.
“This will be the last time you disobey me, laurel.” His voice shed its whispered cloak to don a knife-like sharpness. I tried to squirm, to search for Demetri, but his grip was punishing. His fingers flexed, digging into my flesh, a warning, or… My eyes widened with realisation, the Butcher’s chest deflating when he saw it.
A plea to play along.
“Yes, Your Holiness,” I managed through warped lips, heart hammering, as Demetri’s presence washed over the room like floodwater, my muscles straining towards him.
He held me there, a silent promise stretching between us, pulled taut by the weight of Demetri’s gaze pressing into the side of my face with as much tenacity as the druid’s fingers. One final squeeze, a warning, and still gripping my cheeks, he rotated my head for me to our left.
There stood Demetri, encircled by half a dozen paxiams, and behind them lurked the dark shadows of a few others, one in the form of a druid, two metal horns rising from his helm like mountains.
“Fie, what unexpected marvel is this, Druid Vetrius?”
Chapter twenty-three
Demetri
The Touch
All we like sheep hath gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way. Be not the sheep but the earth under each foot,and return to the ground with the ash and the soot. -53:6 - The Book of Dendralis
His hand was on her chin. His fucking giant godsforsaken hand was on her chin, cradling her face like a lover.
I wanted,needed, to look into her eyes, but I could not pull mine away from where his fingers still dug into the softness of her cheeks—cheeks flushed pink with the vigour of life, with the blood that still pumped through her veins.
She was alive.
She was alive, and she was in the hands of the Butcher, poised a footfall apart, as if he were about to embrace her,about tokissher. No, he would sooner hack her head from her shoulders, the bloodlust in him too potent ever to yield to the other kind. By the pits. I tracked each knuckle, my own fingers flexing, aching with the need to tear his hands apart, to wrench each finger from its joint, pluck them from the bone for daring to touch her. Then, helm and all, I would rip his head from his neck with my own godsdamned teeth if I had to, and chew on what was left of him.
His helm angled left, an amused lilt in its points preceding the glide of his grip from her face to her neck. It lingered there, a collar of flesh, the muscles cording his forearm rippling as he tightened his hold, drawing a strained sound from her throat. I stepped forward, though not entirely of my own volition.
