by Plum Pascal
The great hall might have been distinguished at one point. I’m too biased to give it a fair assessment. The red granite stone floor and whitewashed walls may be attractive, but I can only see the stain of blood that lines them still. I can only remember what it felt like to be strapped with a dozen other screaming souls to the table as horrors were done to our bodies. I can only remember the bare rafters as the anchor point I clung to when the worst came. The windows are too high up to allow escape for anyone but the most determined bird shifters.
Sigils are hung on the walls here, standing in silent ceremony behind the throne. A full sun, beaming out light and heat, for Sol, the God of light. A pair of intertwined dancers spinning with glasses in their free hands for Bacchus. A sword wrapped by vines for Vita. A flaming wolf’s head for Lycaon. A sparking wand and golden crown for Septimus. An oil lamp for Hassan and a timepiece for Kronos. And then of course, there’s the commander in chief…
A single dazzling star in the middle. Morningstar’s sigil is the brightest and most offensive of them all.
Pain zings across my right cheek as the person holding me grows weary of waiting. I buck on instinct, shying away from the touch. I know to whom it belongs. And even with my heart gone, I remember the horror of everything as if it were only yesterday.
My captor chuckles.
“Ah, so you do remember me,” she purrs.
I’m no coward. Never was, even before the incident. The change in my biology prevents me from feeling true terror. But it takes some effort to drag my gaze up to meet hers.
She’s as beautiful as I remember. Shining dark hair piled high on her head, exposing a long neck. Thin-faced and gaunt kept only from looking haggard by her immortality and liberal application of face paint. Sharp cheekbones carve out a profile that’s attractive but haughty. Her eyes are dark and fathomless, like the bottom of a well. White teeth show behind cerise lips. I know what those teeth feel like. She bites when she gets in a certain mood.
She’s undeniably stunning and I know what it’s like to be inside her. I hate her for that knowledge.
Her nails scrape along my scalp, a painful caress that raises every hair on my body. I squirm and find myself trussed tight like a waterfowl. I try to snap the binds, but the agent used to put us to sleep still lingers. Discordia laughs at my flailing attempt to free myself.
“Struggle all you like, dear Sorren, you know better than anyone it’s no use.”
I don’t dignify her with a response. She can throw my rape in my face if she likes, detail it in full to my family. Tell them that both female goddesses had their fun with me, along with some of their retinue, only after giving me Bacchus’ wine to make me fight less. All of that is secondary at this point.
Where is Kassidy? What has this bitch done with my little dove? If she’s so much as laid one finger on her, I will find a way to carve out her heart before I die. I’ve got little time left, and I’m going to take this bitch with me. I cast my eyes around the room but can’t see anyone within my sightline. Where are Nash and Leith? Held in the dungeon? Murdered?
Discordia tuts. “Oh, my little pet, why won’t you play with me? We used to have such fun together.”
“Fucking is only fun when both people are willing participants, you bitch,” I snarl. “Where are they?”
Discordia draws a hand back and slaps me hard across the face. The slap catches me just beneath the eye and it begins to stream blood at once. I’m sure three bloody track marks run across my cheek now, echoing the shape of Discordia’s talons. I can feel the blood sluicing down my face. She didn’t mean for that part to happen, I’m sure. Discordia likes my face pretty.
She sinks onto her haunches in front of me, a sickly-sweet smile on her face. I recoil when she draws closer, shudder when she cups her hands around my jaw like a parody of a lover’s touch.
She tsks at me. “Now look what you made me do, lover,” she purrs reproachfully.
A pale pink tongue darts from her mouth and she licks the blood from my cheek as I withdraw… inwardly. Outwardly, I try to keep very, very still. One might think a decade or more would be enough to cool her ardor. Apparently not. I have a sinking feeling I’ve just offered myself up as a party favor to the bitch who helped make my life a living torment.
“Just get on with it,” I hiss. “I know why you brought me here.”
She gives me a serpentine smile and a light laugh that rolls like silk over my skin. “So eager.”
She leans in close, and I take in the last breath I’ll breathe for a while. Her skin smells like soured apples, stinking of sweet rot.
“I can’t wait to feel your cock again, Sorren,” she whispers in a hiss. “I’ve missed it so.”
But before her lips can press into mine, something small comes flying at her head and impacts dully. For an instant, I’m hopeful someone’s speared her in the skull with a throwing knife or a chakkar. But no.
Discordia retrieves the shape from the floor with an indignant huff and holds it up to the light to be examined. It’s a cloth slipper, not unlike those used by palace members to keep the cold off during winter. She turns it over in her hand and then scowls at a spot directly behind me. She gets a grip on my hair again and drags me with her so we both can get a look at the attacker.
Leith, Nash, and Kassidy are chained to the far wall, their arms extended over their heads. Nash and Leith are still unconscious, owing to the poison they’ve inhaled. And Kassidy’s shoulders look like they’ve been wrenched out of their sockets. The chains were meant for a taller creature than she, and her slippered feet don’t touch the ground. Or I suppose, one slippered foot. Discordia holds the other in her hand.
“Pay attention, bitch,” Kassidy huffs. I can tell she’s hurting by the strain in her voice. She’s doing her best not to let it show in her demeanor.
I’m too frightened for her to feel any gratitude for what she’s trying to do. Fucking Discordia—or rather being fucked by her—will put a stain on my non-existent heart. But watching Kassidy die? That will mangle it beyond repair. I want to shout at the golden-haired beauty to stay silent. But I can’t. It’s not in Kassidy’s nature to stand by while atrocities happen. And if Discordia learns that Kassidy matters to me, Discordia will ensure that Kassidy’s torment will be unending.
Discordia looks at Kassidy for a long while, tapping the slipper against the palm of her hand like she used to wield a riding crop. She releases my hair and sidles away from me. I try to shuffle after her on my knees, which just makes her laugh. I look like a dog desperately snuffling in her wake. I make if a few steps before I overbalance and hit the stone floor with another muted blow.
Discordia saunters right up to Kassidy, plucking one thick golden strand of her hair. She examines it critically, the shining gold texture of it threaded through with lighter accents where the light hits it. It looks mostly like burnished gold and stands out like a beacon, with Discordia’s own glossy hair a literal shadow to the color.
“You shouldn’t be the one to wake first,” she muses as she drops the lock of hair and Kassidy pulls her head back. “You’re...what? The size of a small farm girl? Long Winter’s Nap should keep you out for a day or so at least. Yet, here you are.”
“Yet, here I am,” Kassidy spits back at her.
Discordia nods and continues to study her with interested detachment. “A bear’s metabolism could burn the poison off so quickly, but you...”
She trails off, running a finger down Kassidy’s chest, down between the small valleys of her breasts and comes to rest over her heart. Discordia closes her eyes and screws up her face, concentrating.
“Ah, magic,” Discordia says as she opens her eyes and pulls her hand away. “You’re a witch. Powerful. An acolyte of the thrice-damned Tenebris, I presume?”
Kassidy huffs with effort and actually manages to bring her knee up and lodge it into Discordia’s stomach. The blow drives the air from Discordia in a surprised huff and she staggers back a step, seemingly more
shocked than pained. Then all her gentle playfulness and idle curiosity drops away and I see the true face of the monster I despise.
Without charm to disguise it, she’s like a grinning skull. Lifeless and eerie. Anger transforms her from minx to murderess in an instant. I heard tell she was once a goddess of peace and mercy before Morningstar corrupted her and made her into her current incarnation of pure, unadulterated evil. But I can’t see it. Can’t imagine a world in which Discordia isn’t a heartless bitch.
Discordia’s hand shoots out and she catches Kassidy’s foot. She squeezes hard, like she’s trying to squeeze juice from a fruit. At once, at least three of the bones in Kassidy’s foot break and Kassidy whimpers, then catches herself and bites down on her lip. Meaty popping sounds mean Discordia probably also snapped the tendons. Kassidy’s back bows off the wall and her head clacks against the stones as her body shies away from the agony of what’s been done to it.
She doesn’t scream, which I laud her for. In her position, I’ve been much noisier.
“Insolent little welp,” Discordia hisses. “I will snap you like a pile of matchsticks!” She takes a step nearer Kassidy and goes for her throat. I can’t handle it any longer.
“Stop.” The word escapes me without conscious permission. My heart must be very near, because with just its proximity, feeling is beginning to creep back to me. Inconvenient feelings that cloud my reason. Feelings of guilt. Fear. Protectiveness.
Reason declares that I should use the time Kassidy commands Discordia’s attention to escape my bonds and attack. But my distant yet still beating heart can’t allow the woman I care for to be brutally tortured while I wait for an opening to kill Discordia.
Discordia half turns to me, eyebrows raised. “Dear Sorren, I do believe your clockwork heart is beating faster. Is it that close to the end then?”
“Five days,” I pant. “Five days left, Discordia. So if you want to have your fun with me, you should do it now.”
Discordia’s lips twist in a playful smile and she’s all sex again. She slinks toward me in a motion that’s meant to titillate but mostly makes me ill. At least I’m grateful for the break now allotted to Kassidy. Not that it will last long. As soon as Discordia’s done with me, she’ll return her hatred to Kassidy.
“Admit you still love me, Sorren, and I’ll have the little doe healed.”
“Leave him alone!” Kassidy yells.
Discordia ignores her and continues to stare down at me, a strange smile on her face. “Fuck me here and now and bring me to orgasm, in front of her, and I’ll have her thrown into the dungeon rather than left outside the gates for the crows.”
“My cousins too. They receive the same bargain.”
“Of course,” she croons.
I take a deep, shuddering breath, then pause when I spy something over Discordia’s shoulder. She’s too preoccupied with our little melodrama to notice Kassidy behind her. I almost grin.
That clever little thief.
She’s clutching a small key ring between the toes of her good foot. With one kick she’d managed to steal the keys to her manacles. Now she twists like an acrobat, wiggling to get the key into the lock. She needs time. I need to distract Discordia.
“Take off your dress,” I coax, forcing my eyes from her face to her cleavage that sits prominently above the plunging line of her dress.
“Tell me you still love me first,” Discordia insists.
I stare at her and narrow my eyes, giving her the disobedience for which she yearns. “Sit on my cock and I’ll tell you what I think of you when I’m buried inside you.”
Discordia smiles a frigid little smile. It barely moves her face. I try not to let my revulsion show. I know she has supplicants, men who worship her like a goddess. There are men, sick men, who would kill to be in my place—to be able to fuck Discordia.
I can’t imagine who would be able to pine after something so obviously false, so obviously a sham. She’s an image trapped in marble, cold and unfeeling. I’d happily fuck a dunghill if I could escape this.
She hikes the slick black material of her dress up around her slim legs. Her ankles are as dainty as a girl’s, her bare feet soft and shapely. She drops down on top of me, straddling me so I can feel the heat of her loins directly above my cock. And my cock doesn’t stir, doesn’t grow harder. It’s as put off by her as the rest of me.
She leans closer, forcing her cleavage into my line of sigh, and something that has been tucked beneath her breasts falls into the light. I stare at it, transfixed.
It’s a glass pendant about six inches in length, shaped like a heart. Magic hums from it. And in the center of the heart shape is a real heart. It’s miniaturized, bespelled to remain smaller than it truly is, trapped in the enchanted glass like an insect caught in amber.
It’s my heart.
The heart Discordia and Vita carved out of my chest so many years ago. My hand half-lifts from the floor, curiosity overwhelming my reason. Will the glass feel warm if I touch it?
Discordia grins at me. “Dearest Sorren,” she croons, big inky eyes roving over my face in a look of mocking pity. “Just how stupid do you think I am?”
I have just a half-second for those words to sink in. A half-second when I realize how badly I’ve misjudged the situation. I’ve been counting on her desire, fickle and shallow as it is, to give me an edge. And she let me. Let me think I had that edge so she could torment me still further.
She strokes along the swells of the miniaturized glass heart.
“I wanted you to see it,” she whispers conspiratorially. “I wanted you to see your heart before you die.”
And then she drives her hand down, nails transforming to a vulture’s talons, tearing into the already ruined left side of my chest. Those talons drive in hot and deep, like a poker through butter, sizzling the flesh in their path before rending through my ribs like they’re nothing but stubborn saplings. Her fingers close around the fragile clockwork piece in my chest before she yanks it out and squeezes.
My heart flies to pieces in an explosion of gears and pendulums.
My time is up.
TWENTY-THREE
Kassidy
“No!”
The shriek claws itself from my throat. I twist the key in the lock without much thought, without caring for silence or stealth. It’s not necessary anyway. Any sound I make, including the cry of horror that twisted itself loose from my mouth, is drowned in the two simultaneous roars that Leith and Nash bellow into the silence of the hall.
They’d been keeping quiet, feigning sleep so I could work the locks and free them as well.
Sorren bucks weakly, his face showing only soft, childlike confusion. He doesn’t even seem to react to the pain, aside from the sharp inhale he took as Discordia reached into his chest and pulled out his clockwork heart.
His jaw works for a few seconds as though he might say something. Then his body unfurls, sinking into the stone floor with languid stillness. His face goes slack, the light in the depths of his eyes dimming. He’s still breathing, but for how long? It seems like a futile gesture. The body’s useless denial that it is, in fact, dying.
Discordia straightens and allows a dozen golden, bloodstained screws, bolts, and cogs to spill out of her palm and onto the stone. They tinkle on contact. It sounds like something one would hear at a May Day fair, not the background to an accursed nightmare like this. She slides her palms down the sleek black dress she wears, as though the streaks of scarlet are something vile. The blood doesn’t show against the midnight material. I wonder how much blood she’s wearing at the moment.
The lock clicks at last and I drop several feet and impact the ground. It’s agonizing to land directly on my broken foot, but I school myself. I won’t scream. And my arms are aching as they were very nearly pulled from their sockets. Regardless, I won’t give this evil bitch the satisfaction of knowing how badly she’s hurt me. I stalk forward with a lopsided step, drag, thump cadence. She deigns to fix me with
a supercilious smile and watches my approach with chilly amusement.
“Poor little dear. Did you love my dear Sorren as well?”
“He was not your Sorren, you vile bitch!”
Everything within me quivers, the power I still have in reserve threatening to explode outward in a cataclysmic explosion that will bring the fortress down around our ears. I know I can do it. I can drag this building apart stone by stone and bury us all in a granite grave. If Nash and Leith weren’t chained behind me, I might consider it.
Discordia barks a laugh and begins to circle me like a dark exotic cat, assessing my weakness and searching for a time to strike. She’s gathering power too. Should I drive her mad with her own power? Or burn her to a clinquant pile of char and white bone fragments?
Fire sparks at the fingertips of my right hand while seething darkness collects in the palm of my left. Discordia watches me advance still faster, mild alarm twitching her fixed, superior expression into something new and a little less confident.
“That’s impossible. No mage can duel wield elements like that, unless...”
“That’s right,” I snarl. “Unless they’re Chosen.”
Discordia shrieks; “Guards!”
But it’s already too late. I thrust both hands forward as my mouth opens. “Regressus!” I yell! I don’t know what the word means, where it came from, or the language it’s spoken in, but the effects are instantaneous. The power shoots from my hands and misses Discordia by mere inches. She twists her body in an impossible, almost serpentine manner to avoid the jet of flames. My power hits the far wall instead, leaving a scorched and smoking starburst in its wake.
“That’s impossible!” she screams again. “You’re just a girl!”
I shriek wordless fury at her and redirect the flames and spinning darkness toward her. She evades again, launching into an impressive back handspring, tearing her silken dress as she goes. She’s beyond caring though. At this point, survival is her only goal.
The guards she summoned file into the room, spears and polearms at the ready. My surroundings are a forest of pointed blades jabbing at my elbows, my knees, my back. I’m about to be skewered like a pincushion.
