It was written in blood. Her blood. Eyes shuttering, I traced my finger over the curve of an r, trembling at the image of her hurt, or maimed.
I chanced a glance at Esioul and offered a smile, along with the most imperceptible of nods.Thank you, I wanted to say.Fucking thank you.
Piece by piece, I swallowed the evidence alongside the apple, the words fuelling me more than mere fruit ever could.
I would find her.
I would save her.
And together, we would fly far, far fucking away, fast enough to outrun His plagues.
Core stripped, I dropped the stalk onto the tray beside the empty bowls, my thoughts already occupied with the sister who had delivered them. She most likely knew—perhaps had spoken to Ashara. The question was how to reach her. How to get her alone.
The door creaked open again.
For a heartbeat, my chest lifted in expectation, hoping the small sister with chubby hands and dragging feet would enter, a plan already forming. Maybe I could convince Esioul to biteanother ear, or rile Iagor until he had no choice but to beat me senseless, forcing the sisters to drag me from the cell…
Instead, a dark, thin shape filled the threshold—crimson robes hanging from arms spread wide as if in welcome.
“Laurels,” rasped a wretched voice. “The Blood God demands that thou prostrate before Him, lend Him thine ears, and listen to His wisdom, and behold His most divine love.”
***
His love came daily, though more of Ashara’s letters did not.
I was thankful for their absence, for the lack of reminders concerning how I was failing her. How I had not found her, nor had any chance to escape. Strung up by our wrists and hanging from hooks, with weights fastened to our ankles, the acolytes prepared us for His most devout adorations, as they had done for weeks, or was it phases? Time was difficult to discern in the dark.
“Weeeeeee!” Esioul, swinging from her chains like a child on a rope, kicked harder, her body sending a gust of air through the small, dank space. It was a blessing that both her shoulders hadn’t dislocated.
“Ye godless and possessed, cease it!” Iagor gritted, his exposed, hairy stomach no longer bloated but flat.
I eyed Maxius’ limp form hanging from the beam opposite mine and shot him a wink. He owed me another drachma. I had quite the takings now—a debt he’d settle in the beyond. Iagor always snapped at her fiftieth swing. Another blessing that Maxius had never learned to count beyond ten. I was quietly thankful for Ashara’s mother’s insistence on our education, strange though it was for folk of our ilk. Adelaide had at least been spared her constant, and thorough, tuition.
“Weeeeeee!” she giggled, pointing her toes as if to touch the grimy rock above our heads.
Fuck, even smiling hurt. A splintering ache flared along the right side of my torso, and I chewed my lip to chase a cleaner kind of pain. A fractured rib, probably. Perhaps two. But that was nothing compared to the itch. The relentless itching in the holes. But that would come later.
Every day followed the same brutal routine since they’d first escorted us towitness His wisdom and behold His love. We’d wake in our cell and break fast. I’d expected starvation, but we needed to be fed, didn’t we? For how else would we have the stamina for the turns of agony that followed?
Next, the silent sisters would arrive, bells jingling like a herd of cows shuffling through pasture, come to shepherd us towardsHis blessed touch. The small sister hadn’t returned, though I looked for her in every headdress, every crimson knot or tinkling bell. None were her. Too tall. Too thin. Too plump. An acolyte, sometimes two, waited with a pair of the more vindictive monks, patronising smiles pasted across their stupid fucking faces, ready to strap us to the beams. On rare occasions, a druid attended. An honour, apparently. The Butcher was always glaringly absent, having no stomach for foreplay.
After a while, left hanging like offcuts, then came the recitations from theBook of Dendralis.
Like clockwork, the armoured door groaned open. First came the punctured belt, then the red sweep of an acolyte’s robes. His stained fingers pinched the fabric high, lifting the hem clear of the filth below. Esioul’s chains quieted as her swinging dwindled to stillness, her laboured breath loud enough to carry even over the clanging of iron.
“This day, we read from theVerse of Devotion,” he announced from his pulpit; a wooden stool to the rear of the cell, its wood stained dark with splotches of blood. Our blood. “Brothers andsisters, by the mercies of the Blood God, we ask thou to present your bodies as a living shrine, holy and acceptable to His magnificence, and worship Him with your flesh and bone and blood. You share in suffering for our Lord, for Blood Demands Blood.”
“For Blood Demands Blood,” we bleated.
Esioul stuck out her tongue. Small mercies indeed the acolyte was too busy preening the scripture to notice.
It didn’t take Capriche’s blessing to prophesize what came next: theinquisition.
The questions were always the same, and so too were our answers.
“Where were you born? Who were your parents? What is your trade?”The easy ones first.
“Are you a loyal servant of the Dendralis? Have you ever been penanced? Do you heed the holy scripture? Have ye sinned?”
