Vassal
Page 34
He could not respond, could not free himself. He just closed his eyes, desperate to block out the sight of Alphonse standing with the heart raised above her head while his tears soaked through the fingers of Tristan’s glove.
❂
The last fluttering beats of the heart drummed in her palm, and Enyo sighed, stroking it lovingly. She turned and spotted Delyth, and more importantly, Calamity.
Her blessed, beautiful, clever little sword. So sweet. So darling.
“Ba’oto. You wield her well.” Her voice was husky with lust. Sauntering closer to the priestess, heart in hand, she was preening. Her bloody fingers ran through her hair, combing it back from her dirt-smeared, gore-spattered face. She swallowed in anticipation and stopped only a foot away from the priestess.
Her priestess had offered this sacrifice. She had killed and maimed in Enyo’s name. In honor of her Goddess. “For my most faithful servant.” Enyo held up the mangled heart, ember eyes wide with hunger but steady. She would let Delyth have the first taste.
༄
Delyth came back to herself in a series of dizzying flashes. Her head was pounding, the blood rushing through her ears. Her breathing was heavy, but there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen in the air around her, and her hip throbbed painfully. A stab wound? She didn’t remember getting it.
All around her lay the dismembered bodies of dead farmers. Boneless. Sightless.
Again.
It had happened again.
And it was useless to blame the sword. Cowardly. But still, she wanted it out of her hands. Off her skin. She wiped it hurriedly and thrust it back into its sheath.
Delyth was already a monster.
She didn’t need Calamity’s help.
And then there was Enyo, standing before her with the still-warm heart of the man she had killed dripping down her forearm, thrusting it towards her priestess, her Ba’oto.
All this carnage and still Delyth had not been able to stop Enyo from sullying Alphonse’s hands with the death of another.
“Isn’t this—” Delyth’s voice broke around the words, her hands outstretched towards the bodies around them. “Isn’t this enough for you?”
Flame filled eyes widened even more, the look of a dog about to snap.
“Yuk, Ba’oto,” Enyo commanded.
Delyth just turned her face away. She would not eat the heart.
Hadn’t she proven herself animal enough?
The Goddess’s lips peeled back in displeasure as Delyth refused to eat the offering. Just as it seemed she might slap Delyth or consume the heart herself, she chuckled.
Flames turned to embers, which transformed into amber eyes, and Alphonse stood before her, heart still outstretched as if she were offering some sweet fruit to her lover.
Her pale face crumpled and she choked on words barely whispered, her lips moving but only the weakest of sounds coming out. “No… no… no…”
Delyth’s expression twisted with grief as Alphonse took in the scene around them, her gentle features morphing into a silent scream. Tremors rippled through her body, and the heart jiggled in her clutches as Alphonse shook. It looked as if she’d be ripped apart by the convulsions as she turned to see the man, prostrate on the ground. Missing a heart.
Of all the cruelest things Enyo had subjected the healer to, none had come close to this, to waking up to find herself coated in the blood and flesh of a simple man.
Never before had Delyth wished for Enyo to have remained.
She stepped forward and placed a hand on Alphonse’s face, dragging her eyes away from the carnage. “This was not you, bykhan.”
She could not erase the scene around them, could not scrub it from the healer’s memory like so much filth.
But she could get them away.
Delyth tugged Alphonse closer, leaned down, and swept her up so that she was cradled against the warrior, legs hanging over one arm, back braced by the other. Then, with a sweep of great, black wings, Delyth flung them both into the air and away from the battlefield.
Below her, she could see Tristan step back from Etienne to watch them depart, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. All that mattered was getting Alphonse away from the stench of blood and broken bodies.
Delyth pressed Alphonse close to keep her from the bite of the wind and turned from the road almost immediately. She kept her eyes down and flew close to the treeline, searching.
It took a while before she found what she was looking for, but when she did, she angled quickly downward, taking more care than usual with her landing.
When she straightened, they were surrounded by the gentle rustling of mountain pines and the trickling of a small, cold spring. It wasn’t much water, but it would carry away the blood that drenched them. The priestess set Alphonse down gently and caressed her cheek.
“Are you with me, aderyn bak dewr?”
❀
Alphonse couldn’t stop the shivering even if she wanted to, her body as repulsed by what she had done as her heart.
Quickly she loosened her grip on the mangled clump of flesh still in her palm, wincing as it plopped onto the ground with a wet smack. Her hand ached, as if punching it through that man's chest had nearly broken her bones. It was a miracle it hadn’t.
Turning away, Alphonse looked up at the nearby trees, mute now. They had been murmuring and laughing the entire journey, but now they stood in repugnant silence.
Alphonse couldn’t blame them. She found herself deplorable as well. The dark smudge in her heart where Enyo had rooted was growing, becoming a gaping maw that all but consumed the healer.
Empty eyes trailed down to her hands, stained red.
Delyth slipped around Alphonse and took her cleaner hand, leading her slowly towards the stream. At the bank, she kneeled and tugged Alphonse down after her.
“This will be cold, little bird.” She took both Alphonse’s hands and thrust them into the frigid ice melt, scrubbing at the dried blood with her fingers. “You’ll feel better when it's gone, dear one. I promise.”
Swirls and spirals of blood dispersed in the freezing water. A remote part of her mind noticed the cold, but Alphonse couldn’t care. Couldn’t flinch at the painful rubbing against her bruised knuckles.
She deserved to suffer. She didn’t need to feel better. Never again. She was a healer. She was supposed to mend and preserve and repair.
Not rip and tear and destroy.
Kill.
She moaned as her soul ripped further along that raw edge. She had killed a man. And not swiftly and mercifully as Delyth had. Not to protect. She had done it for sadistic malice. Pure glee. A cat playing with a mouse.
The bandit’s squeals were death cries a bird might have made as some wild dog tore free its wings.
And she had felt so ardent as she did it.
Her stomach heaved.
Delyth left off cleaning Alphonse’s hands to press her hair back away from her face while she gagged, gently twisting the tawny volume into a more manageable rope.
“It wasn’t you, bykhan,” she said again. “It wasn’t you. You couldn’t stop her. Even if you remember it, it wasn’t you.” The words became something like a litany, a feverishly whispered prayer.
When she stopped, the priestess took handfuls of pure, mountain water and poured them down Alphonse’s arms until even the longest streaks of blood were no longer visible.
Alphonse let Delyth use damp hands to wash the blood from the healer’s face, to tease it from her hair. As if that would somehow hide the massive dark crater in her soul. For a long time, all she could hear was the pleading in her own mind, demanding, begging that this not be true.
When that faded to a whisper, she could hear water dripping off her hair and hands, the subtle splashes of Delyth, likely washing her own hands of the hot, sticky stuff. The steady beating of her traitorously whole heart. That it should work while that man’s lay in the dirt, separated from his body…
He had said he had children.
“No,” she mumbled to herself, finally opening her eyes to see the priestess…
༄
With Alphonse free of as much blood as possible, Delyth turned to clean the gore from her face and arms. She found slices and bruises she didn’t remember. New scars to try to forget.
Her hip wound was an ugly, jagged thing still bleeding sluggishly. It wasn’t easy to clean, but she kept at it, dumping handfuls of water over it again and again until they began to come away clear.
Behind her, Alphonse muttered, too quiet to be intelligible, and Delyth looked up. She didn’t want to ask to be healed, didn’t want Alphonse to be reminded of the blood or to feel guilty about not noticing.
She remembered what it’d felt like the first time.
To wake up in a sea of bodies.
For her, though, it had been easy to kill them, easy to categorize them as attackers, as enemies who would kill and maim those she cared for. She had killed some two score people now, though it was difficult to be sure of the number.
And Alphonse. Gentle Alphonse had been used to kill one. That one was devastating to her in a way Delyth had never felt, tearing her apart visibly.
The comparison was stark in Delyth’s mind, Alphonse’s hands still clean when laid next to her bloody palms. Enyo was right. It was the priestess that was the monster.
Only, there was no time to dwell on that now. There was her wound to see to. And Alphonse, still shivering. Perhaps healing would show Alphonse that she was still good, that she was still gentle and worthy of love.
Delyth scooted closer. “bykhan, will you heal this? I was careless and did not realize I was hurt.”
Lost eyes turned slowly towards Delyth. Alphonse’s lashes were fluttering to no purpose, blinking far too often. She tipped her chin down to see the injury and automatically held out a hand to fix the gaping flesh.
Nothing happened.
Delyth had seen Alphonse heal a hundred times, knew that it happened effortlessly, that the little healer just placed her hands on the injured and with a warm glow of green light, their wounds stitched together.
Her little bird’s face darkened, and a crease appeared between her brows. She was holding her breath, her outstretched hand tense. She had never struggled to heal before. Never hesitated. For it to happen now… Delyth’s chest gave a painful twang. Was this Enyo’s doing?
Alphonse removed her hand and closed her eyes in shame. “I am a monster.”
Delyth moved closer until she could wrap Alphonse in her arms.
“If you are a monster, then I am as well.” The healer was still shivering, her body somehow smaller than Delyth remembered. “You’re in shock, Alphonse. You’ll be able to heal again, I’m sure of it.”
And it wasn’t a deep wound. Nothing she had not lived through before. She shouldn’t have asked at all, should have been more thoughtful.
“We wanted to eat it. We were going to eat it… What kind of person does that?” Alphonse asked, blinking up at Delyth. Her face was devoid of hope or any emotion but shame. Shame Delyth wished she didn’t feel. “You wouldn’t eat it. I saw.” Which, of course, had been why Enyo had brought Alphonse back. To punish Delyth for disobeying her. Delyth knew it. The Goddess hated to be denied. “I make you weaker…”
Delyth just closed her eyes and laid her forehead against Alphonse’s. Slowly, she shook her head. “You aren’t Enyo. You know you’re not Enyo. She’s not a person, Alphonse. She is something so much bigger and older and worse, and I’m so sorry you have to be the one to do this. I’d take it from you if I could.”
She laughed ruefully, the sound desperate and humorless. “Besides, you do not make me weaker. If— if an army were to march through these woods, I would stop them for you. I’d tear through them like a summer storm just to keep you safe.”
❀
Alphonse could see the truth in that, and she nodded numbly.
“You’re a very good fighter. Humane…” Not like Alphonse.
She fell silent again for a long time, staring vacantly at the little stream before shuddering and crossing her arms over her chest in some attempt to shield herself from the cold.
Etienne was right. She had lost sight of the goal. She had lost hope.
She was turning into Enyo.
Delyth’s words floated back to her in memory, and Alphonse looked at the warrior. “I’m glad you don’t have to bear Enyo. I wouldn’t want you to be broken apart into tiny pieces that will never fit together again. You’re too precious…”
She was tired. So very tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of being afraid. Tired of feeling guilty. Tired of becoming a monster.
It would be easier to just… let Enyo have her.
“Where do you think we go when we die?”
༄
Delyth was crying, thick rain-drop beads making hot tracks down her face. Gods, was that what it felt like? To have everything you were broken into smaller and smaller pieces? She couldn’t imagine it. She couldn’t let it continue. She was losing Alphonse just as the healer had come to mean so much. Losing her to something old and vindictive.
And maybe she wasn’t carrying around that pain.
But this was going to break her just as certainly.
Delyth shook Alphonse, her expression fierce. “Don’t you dare leave me. Hold on to those pieces. Take them in both your hands and fucking hold on. You’ve been so strong. My brave little bird. Hold on.”
❀
The shaking actually startled Alphonse enough that she blinked, expression changing. She looked up at Delyth, her doe eyes beseeching. What was there left to hold onto?
Small hands offered to Delyth, empty.
She had no magic. She couldn’t heal anymore. She had broken her oath as a healer, she had betrayed her best friend, she had lied to her paramour. She was tainted and dirty and rotten and broken.
Enyo had won. She didn’t need to make it to the temple. Alphonse was ready to admit defeat.
“What do I have left?”
Delyth took Alphonse’s proffered hands and pressed one to the skin above her beating heart and one to her cheek, still damp with tears. “You have me, Alphonse.”
Those glassy amber eyes shuttered and opened again. She inhaled unevenly.
“You still want me?” she asked, actually surprised. Who would want to be with a murdering heart-eating blood-drinking monster?
Delyth made a choking sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Gods, Alphonse, what about this says anything else?” She let go of Alphonse’s hands to rub her face, scrubbing away at tears with an almost angry frustration.
“I—But I don’t understand… I— Because I was going to eat that heart and… I know you’ve been letting us drink your blood. I mean— You shouldn’t be with someone who— who does that to you, Delyth.” She had assumed Delyth would have enough of this.
Enough of flip-flopping between brutal Goddess and whimpering, frail mortal. Enough guarding and enough managing. Protecting Alphonse, protecting the world from Alphonse…
Something wailed in Alphonse to shut up. If Delyth was still willing, she shouldn’t shove her away. The girl knocked that voice aside.
“I want you to be treated better. To be treated kindly and reverently. You don’t deserve this punishment, Delyth. Not because you’re a warrior and not because you were born different. If this is some sort of— If you’re trying to pay some debt… You’ve done enough.”
༄
Maybe Alphonse was right.
Maybe Delyth had done enough.
Maybe she had fulfilled every obligation she had ever owed to the temple that had raised her.
But it had been a while since she was here just for the temple.
Delyth put her hands on either side of the healer’s face and looked down into her amber eyes. How could she possibly make her understand? The priestess wasn’t going anywhere. She wasn’t going to let Alphons
e give up. Wasn’t going to let her fade into smaller and smaller pieces.
And it had absolutely nothing to do with what either of them deserved.
“Alphonse,” she said finally, “I love you.”
❀
Incredibly, Alphonse laughed. A sudden, bright musical sound that made absolutely no sense in the fading afternoon light by the stream. The sound was jarring coming from her stiff lips and tear streaked face.
“You can’t love me! You love me? No… You shouldn’t love me. How could you?” She babbled, fluctuating between beaming up at Delyth and then scowling. No one could love her. She was nothing. She was dust.
She was glittering pieces of diamond lost on the wind because Delyth loved her.
“How? How can you love me? That’s impossible.” Color, warm, dusky rose pink, was slowly blooming in her face. Her eyes were brightening.
Another laugh escaped her, and Alphonse clamped her clean hands over her mouth, trying to hold it in. What was happening? Her stomach was knots of guilt and butterflies of joy. Her mind was whirling and dancing and weeping.
But her heart.
Alphonse dropped her hands to feel beneath her breast. It was beating. It wasn’t completely hollow. Completely empty…
It had that little piece of love.
“Love? Love.” She tested the word. It felt fuzzy on her lips. On her tongue. Like it popped and bounced of its own accord. No one had every said that word to her before.
“Yes, love, you silly woman.” Delyth found one of Alphonse’s hands and kissed the palm. Kissed her shoulder. Her cheek. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
Each kiss felt like a tiny shock of energy, of life. Each kiss brought warmth back to Alphonse’s cold and numb body.
And those words.
They filled her heart and her mind and her body until there was nothing left but Delyth’s voice, chanting.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Alphonse tilted her chin up to Delyth’s face, wanting a kiss on the mouth.
The priestess’s gaze traced a path from Alphonse’s amber eyes to her lips and back again. She reached out to wrap both arms around Alphonse’s waist, pulling her close and leaning in until she could feel Alphonse’s breath against her skin. Then, Delyth kissed her, hair falling forward to mingle with Alphonse’s curls. She pressed I-love-you’s into the healer’s mouth, drew them with her tongue.