I began to penetrate her with my fingers even harder. “You are impure, witch. Your cunt traps those who walk the righteous path.”
“You are anything but righteous.”
I slammed my fingers as far into her as they would go, and she yelped beneath me. “You will watch what you say to me, demon.”
She said nothing more.
The anger arrived behind my ribs and spread. Not the clean anger I’d felt earlier. Something older and uglier, and I didn’t know what to do with it, so I put it somewhere useful.
“The demon within you has lured some poor fool, or perhaps even more, into fornication,” I said. “You have corrupted an innocent...”
I thrust my fingers inside her again. And again after that. She made a sound that was short and sharp. Almost a laugh, except it wasn’t.
“Did Lancelot penetrate you?”
“No,” she answered, glaring at me.
“Who was it that you lured into your bed of sin?”
She looked at the ceiling but didn’t speak.
“You will tell me his name.”
Nothing.
“I will know regardless. I will simply—”
“—then know it regardless,” she said flatly.
My hand moved before I’d decided. The crack of it was very loud in the room, and her head snapped to the side, but she didn’t make a sound, which somehow made it worse, the silence, the way she simply turned her face back to me afterward and waited.
“This is your own doing,” I said. “Every moment of what is happening to you now is a direct consequence of your refusal to cooperate with me, with the examination. Do you understand?”
There was nothing from her. Just that flat watching.
I stood, then I crossed to the altar and took down the scourge, and when I turned back to her, she was standing, which surprised me. She’d scrambled upright while my back was turned, and she was now pressed against the far wall with her chin up, her tunic torn at the sleeve, and something in her eyes that wasn’t fear any longer.
“Kneel,” I said.
Her jaw moved. She didn’t kneel.
I crossed the room, and she flinched—finally, finally, a flinch—and I caught her shoulder and brought her to her knees. I bared her ass and pushed her legs apart so I could see the part of her the demon worked from. The first stroke of the scourge caught her across the back of her shoulders, and she made a real sound this time, sharp and raw. It did something to me that I shoved immediately beneath the words of the Litany of Correction.
“The body is the vessel. The vessel must be cleansed. What is impure cannot be permitted to persist in the presence of the holy—”
My fingers were back inside her. The next stroke hit her across the hips, and she bucked. I pulled my fingers from her and though I could not say what overcame me to do so, I smelled them. The scent did something to me that I didn’t understand. It roused the beast within my braies, the appendage that had been more vexing and uncooperative in the last three weeks than it had ever been. The scourge hit her across the ass and left bright red welts. I shoved three fingers inside her.
Put your cock inside her. Fuck her.
No. I cannot. I will not.
Another hit of the scourge. I stopped after six blows.
My arm was shaking. Not from exertion.
I made her kneel there for a long time after I’d pulled my fingers from her and stopped beating her. I didn’t know exactly how long I sat there, chest heaving as I stared at the unclean flesh between her thighs.
Then I told her to cover herself and return to her pallet, and I went to the altar and prayed.
