Book Read Free

Derrick Boden - [BCS312 S02]

Page 3

by The Patron (html)


  So did the daemons. Her bodyguard had been right—they’d put her on this throne because of her pity. Plumbing her emotional reservoirs—not for sadism, but sympathy. Not for horror, but hope. Her employ was not just payment: it had purpose. Under the right conditions, humanity might emerge from the unlikeliest of places.

  The preacher’s son might come to mourn his father, rise up, and destroy the Cult from within. The apothecary might recommit to her calling on account of her compromised cure-all, raise her child into an honest doctor who in turn would launch the desert’s first open clinic. The honcho might grieve his daughter so fiercely that it would drive him to self-exile, sparking an era of tentative peace.

  Or, maybe not.

  Perhaps it was the next visitor that would one day deliver them all from this hell.

  Whatever the case, the Patron would be waiting. Amidst the reek of death, she reclaimed her seat at the throne. As the cries of the blood locusts died on the evening wind, the Patron hardly noticed the chain at her feet, severed.

  © Copyright 2020 Derrick Boden

 

 

 


‹ Prev