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“Tell us what you saw, boy,” the bishop’s voice dripped with malice, a sound which twisted the baron’s stomach. “Tell us now and avoid further punishment.”
Through tears, Drystan turned toward the baron, his eyes pleading, but they had no effect on him. Should he tell them, the baron stood to suffer more than a few burns to his flesh. A long and tense silence followed, and the way Drystan squirmed told the baron his secret was not safe with his cousin. Except, to his surprise, Drystan clenched his jaw, eyes hardened with stubborn tenacity. “I saw nothing, Your Grace.”
The sound of sizzling flesh crackled beneath the overpowering scream that bounced off the walls. Drystan shook and jerked against his binds as the iron seared his naked belly. Skin tore from his body as the pentrosh lifted the iron away from him.
“You speak with the tongue of the devil, boy.” The tenuous clip in Bishop Venable’s tone spoke of no mercy and little patience. The older man nodded toward the pentrosh who strode back toward the brazier and warmed the iron rod again. “If it is the threat of consequence that keeps you from speaking the truth, know that I will pardon you on this occasion.”
The baron’s eyes shot to his cousin’s once again, only that time, Drystan didn’t look back at him. He kept his gaze cast toward the floor as he breathed heavy and fast through his nose. A minute later, the pentrosh strode up to him again with a freshly warmed iron and lowered it toward Drystan’s thigh.
“He can heal his own wounds! He has the power to heal his own wounds!” As the confession flew from Drystan’s lips, a tight grip of alarm squeezed the baron’s chest, and he backed himself away. “I swear I would not think it possible myself, Your Excellency, but I saw it with my own eyes. Wounds that should have taken weeks to heal had done so by the morning after his punishment.”
The bishop jerked his head toward the pentrosh who placed the iron back into the brazier and removed his glove.
Drystan sagged against his binds, his obvious relief nearly palpable.
“Remove the good baron’s clothing.”
The pentroshes rushed toward him, but the baron pushed them away and threw a fist toward the jaw of the older one. The man stumbled backward, knocking over the brazier on a scintillating plume of embers. The second pentrosh lurched toward him again, but the baron gave one hard kick to his chest, knocking him backward, as well.
He spun on his heel to head back toward the door, but the tip of a blade met his throat, the steel pinching against his Adam’s apple. Alaric stood with a smile, casually holding his blade. “These holy men are far too polite to remove your head. But I’m not.”
The baron bit back the urge to punch the guardsman in his smug face, and felt the harsh jerk of his arms as the pentroshes yanked him backward. At either side of him, they removed his vest and tunic, until his upper half was as naked as Drystan’s.
A collective gasp filled the room. A cold finger dragged across the flesh he’d healed himself, and the baron sank his teeth into his tongue, swallowing back the disgust trapped at the back of his throat.
“It is true. Not a scar mars his flesh,” the bishop said, his voice tinged in what the baron took as a cross between awe and revulsion. “Strap him to the cross.”
Hands jerked him around, and the baron watched as a pentrosh released Drystan from his binds, catching the boy before he fell to a slump on the floor. “See to it that his wounds are looked after,” Bishop Venable said, as they dragged the other boy from the room.
The smile on Lord Praecepsia’s face grated on the baron, when the pentroshes dragged him toward the cross and secured him facing the opposite direction as Drystan had, so that his stomach rested against the wood and his back was exposed. With the last of the bindings locked in place, the baron braced himself for what would inevitably come next. There’d been too much venom in Venable’s voice for him to believe they would grant him any level of pity. And if he were being honest, he did not want their pity, particularly that of his father. The baron lifted his gaze toward the elder Lord Van Croix, and when the first tendrils of heat brushed over his unbroken flesh, the boy gritted his teeth, waiting for that hot iron to kiss his spine. He willed his mind to the dark mind-space, where nothing existed. Nothing could touch him.
A white-hot burn crackled throughout the room when the pentrosh held the iron to the baron’s back. A jagged light flashed behind his eyes, his body trembling with the agonizing pain that speared through his detachment, clawing at his attention. He did not cry out, though, nor did he make the same pathetic mewling sounds that Drystan had moments before. Instead, the baron clenched his teeth and curled his fingers around the binds. The intensity of the burn eased and the wet sticky sound that chased the lifting of the rod could have only been his flesh tearing away.
In the reprieve that followed, he found his father staring back at him, the look of disappointment bringing a smile to the baron’s face.
“We will see after tonight if these wounds heal. And we will know the truth, young baron.”
The bishop’s voice grew distant to the thoughts in the baron’s head. Strange that, when one was accused of devilry, the parents who’d borne the child failed to face any punishment. Of course, the elder Lord Van Croix could have easily blamed such an aberration on the baron’s mother. His father had been far too entrenched in the Pentacrux, held too high a position, to be seen as anything but holy and righteous.
Had they only seen what he had seen in the woods.
In the boy’s periphery, he caught sight of the pentrosh striding toward him with the hot iron once again, and the words of his mother echoed inside his head.
“They should all fear you.”
They were the only words that kept him grounded. That gave him the confidence to know these men couldn’t truly hurt him, if what his mother had said was true. When the pentrosh placed the iron to his flesh, he feigned a tortured outcry. Not because that particular torment hurt any more than the last.
He did it for his mother, and the promise he’d made to her.
* * *
Wet concrete scraped across the baron’s cheek, the unyielding surface smashing against his shoulder as the two pentroshes tossed him into a dark cell. The cool, dirt floor of the cell offered only a small measure of relief, while the torment he had suffered wreaked havoc on his body.
“You will stay here overnight for observation.” The bishop stood over him, the hem of his robes dancing over the baron’s wounds as if to tease his pain. “A pentrosh will be on guard to watch for any sign of trickery, or magic. We will check your wounds in the morning, and by the Holy Father’s grace, if they have healed, so will begin your exorcism.”
Exorcism. The baron had heard rumors of the ritual. Bloodletting. Floggings. Tongue burning. Inversion therapies, all designed to banish evil from one’s soul.
After another sweep of his hem over an open wound, all of them left the cell, closing the iron door behind them with a heavy thud.
