Chapter 17: The Bleeding

Sasha had Lark pinned to the floor in an ugly mirror of when the roof came down on them in Clocktown. His hand was fisted in the front of Lark’s fancy blouse. Not the bleeding hand, thank the gods. That one was poised to strike

The marble around them was fractured in several places, implying a violent chase. Sasha imagined himself thumping around after Lark, executing blows that could have cracked bone—who knew how narrowly they missed? Had any landed?

It didn’t appear that way. Lark was roughed up, rumpled, but not physically harmed. Rather than keep trying to squirm to freedom, he stilled upon seeing some lucidity return to Sasha’s expression.

And maybe Lark was a fool in more ways than one, for whatever else he saw in the monster’s face had him reaching up to cup its stubbly, ashen cheek. His touch was soft, warm, and terribly gentle. Familiar.

“There you are,” he murmured. Sasha’s attention darted off to the side. “No, don’t look at them—look at me. Yes. Just keep looking at me with those pretty eyes of yours.”

Lark’s touch and voice were meant to soothe, but it wasn’t enough. There was too much going on around them, too much noise. The telltale rustle of chains as the guards closed in caused Sasha’s heartbeat to skyrocket again.  

They wanted to lock him up. They did not know he could kill them all.

The voice squirmed in delight at the thought. His hand fisted tighter in Lark’s blouse, ripping the fabric. Weak. Prey.

Lark released a shaky breath, his pulse fluttering erratically under Sasha’s gloved fingertips.

“S-Sasha, it’s all right. They—just want to help. I promise, it’s going to be—”

Another blackout was knocking. It drowned out all sound, obscured the edges of Lark’s face.

If Sasha let it take him, there was no telling what that face would look like when he woke up.

Before it could, he hastily tugged a vial from his pouch and uncorked it with his fangs. With little hesitation, he spilled every last drop of shimmering blue liquid down his throat.

The effect was almost instantaneous: his heart rate slowed, the tips of his fingers went cold, and the world and all its pesky problems started to melt away.

The next thing he knew, his head was resting in Lark’s lap. He focused on the two worried blobs hovering overhead. Moss in winter. He liked that green. He liked that green a lot.

The last thing he saw before fading off into mossy dreamland was a bright red spurt as a guard took the butt of his axe to the back of Lark’s skull.

༻❁༺

A small dose of the nightshade potion knocked Sasha out for almost a week; the coolness did something to his body chemistry, temporarily changed it. He had downed the whole bottle.

He had no way of knowing how much time passed while he was out. It could have been weeks. Weeks of blissful unconsciousness, weeks of having no clue what was happening to his body, to Lark’s.

Only darkness, long and serene. The occasional dream. Sometimes he was on the balcony, sometimes gazing at a halo of blondish hair, sometimes gazing at the stars. He was almost sad when it ended.

The first thing that hit him was a pang in his stomach. He was sure he had died of starvation at least once judging by how tight and sore the muscles around his abdomen were, how painfully hollow he felt.

Following the pang, other sensations returned. Cold, hard ground beneath him. Stone. Damp. Mildewy. Experimentally, he moved. Heavy weights around his ankles—

He sat up suddenly, too suddenly, when memories of the party came flooding back. His brain throbbed like someone had jammed a knife between his eyes. He screwed them shut before they could unblur, clutching his forehead. His wrists jangled with the motions.

Blood was rushing back to limbs that had been stagnant for too long. Everything hurt. Everything. It took several minutes to will away the pain so he could reopen his eyes and see what Hel ‘had in store’ for him.

He was in a dungeon, a locked cell with square bars. Dank and oppressive. He had been stripped down and dressed in threadbare rags. The reinforced chains around his wrists and ankles were long, anchored in the walls.

There wasn’t much else to look at. His cell was furnished with a bucket and some straw. All the other cells were empty, guards stationed outside the door at the far end.

He stood with a labored groan. He must have been below the kitchens. Through an iron grate on the ceiling, he could hear two women, one he recognized as Shona, in faraway conversation.

“Shame about what happened,” Shona said. “To lose him to—what’d they say it was?”

“Sepsis,” the second woman provided. “Shame, indeed. Such a holy man.”

“A calming presence, to be sure. Whenever I asked how his day was, he’d say, ‘every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day.’”

“My, my. Words to live by, indeed. He will be missed.”

Sasha tuned them out. At least he could confirm they weren’t talking about Lark.

The thought of Lark worsened his aches. He staggered over to the bundle of straw and fell on it, resting his back against the wall. He had to drag his legs into a comfortable position.

Deep underground. No windows. What time was it? Day? Month?

Did it matter? He had killed a man and attacked Lark. He deserved this.

He hoped Lark was okay.

The day or night—early evening, maybe, based on what Shona was cooking—trickled by at a snail’s pace. One guard made the rounds, dropped his torch with a yelp when he noticed Sasha awake and glowering at him.

A short time later, the dungeon doors swung open to reveal a sight so bright and grand it magnified Sasha’s already raging headache.

Hellebore was poised in a plush gold armchair, the rich fabric of which shimmered in the torchlight. Four guards, one for each leg, were dutifully carrying the weight of both her and the chair. They shuffled into the dungeon, straining with effort.

A different sort of energy exuded from her. She was more relaxed, but also more petulant. Apparently, while not under the scrutiny of her subjects, the halo came off and a sharper tongue emerged.

As soon as the guards set her down several feet from Sasha’s cell, her lip curled.

“Why are we speaking from opposing mountaintops?” she berated. They hustled to readjust so she was positioned closer to the bars.

“Bad day?” Sasha rumbled when all was settled. He sounded rough. Might very well die again if he didn’t get some water soon.

“Get him something to drink,” Hellebore ordered as if reading his mind. “He sounds like an old boot. Bring his platter as well.”

A platter of food was the assumption, but when the guard returned with a bucket of water and a silver platter covered by a spotless silver dome, a rotten stench assaulted Sasha’s senses.

He covered his nose with his hands. Bad. Wrong. Visceral. Couldn’t possibly be food.

Hellebore crossed her legs, devouring his reaction with greedy eyes. “Keen nose,” she complimented. “Is that part of the Abomination parcel?”

Sasha didn’t answer, too focused on keeping down the acrid bile that bubbled in his gut. Behind the stench, there was something else—a hauntingly sweet perfume.

The guard carelessly tossed the bucket through the bars, spilling half the water, then carefully set the platter down at Hellebore’s delicate gold heels.

Like a wild animal, Sasha lurched back on hand and foot. That stench. That perfume.

Hellebore leaned forward and removed the dome top with an enthusiastic flourish.

“Recognize this?” she asked. “What am I saying—of course you do. It once sat betwixt your lover’s lips.”

Sasha’s mind fizzled then popped, going staticky as he stared down the platter’s gruesome contents. A dismembered tongue was arranged neatly upon a red velvet pillow that had been doused in Lark’s perfume.

The tongue must have been severed a while ago; it was rotten, green and black in places, crawling with maggots. The point of dismemberment was swollen, ragged, rough-sawn.

It had to belong to someone else. Sasha refused to believe that, while he was off in la-la land, Hellebore’s men had strapped Lark down and done this to him.

So, for Sasha’s sanity, the tongue had to belong to someone else.

Because it couldn’t be Lark’s. It just couldn’t.

“Not lovers,” was all he managed to choke out. Pathetic.

“Come on,” Hellebore scoffed. “I’ve known him since puberty; never seen him so infatuated. There is no doubt this tongue has tasted your vile seed.”

Her vulgarity came in swinging, cracking Sasha again in the coherence. “I never…we never—”

“Listen to you!” She clasped her hands, quibbling in mock contrition. “I swear, miss, I n-never—we never! I’m almost starting to think…is it possible the new you is a virgin? Oh, the irony.”

She was testing the waters, trying to shock him, goad him, pokes holes. Maybe she wanted him to go dark again. Did she think she had more control when he had none?

He needed to nip that in the bud. He had no idea what his body was fully capable of when he was under, nor did he want to find out.

“I could break these in a blackout,” he warned, arms flexing against the chains with a soft rattle. “The bars too. This isn’t one of your games—this is reckless.”

“Everything is a game when you make the rules,” Hellebore replied. “And every piece that matters is in my possession.”

“Leave him out of it. As you said, he’s just a—”

“Pawn. If you don’t cooperate, blackout or no, I will sell him to the elf.”

“You ‘corrected’ the elf.”

“That trick only lasts a few days. Nathair is long back to his old self, trading in bodies…Lark’s is of particular interest, kept intact by my will alone.”

Intact, Sasha thought. Would she really use that word if Lark had already been dissected?

It was just enough to reinforce the lie Sasha kept telling himself. The tongue did not belong to Lark.

Hellebore huffed and flopped back in her chair in such a way that her legs draped over one of its arms. She took the crown off her head, dangled it on a finger.

“But if you want the truth, Sasha, it’s that my will is nothing, for I am queen of nothing. This may as well be a dunce hat.” She tossed the crown over her shoulder. A guard rushed to pick it up. “Do you wish to know why I allied with the elves?”

Sasha shook his head. Naturally, because people so rarely respected his wishes, Hellebore answered anyway.

“For one, they’re rich. Two, they…produce the only fertilizer capable of growing anything in this hellscape.” She nodded when he cringed. “That’s right—it’s shit. We are kept from the brink of ruin by magical elven shit, which we collect from their chamber pots, dry out, and sprinkle on the food that goes in our mouths.”

“I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”

“Heavy is the head that wears the dunce hat. Sometimes you need to vent.”

“Let me go.”

“Well, all right.”

He paused. “Really?”

She rolled her eyes. “No.”

“What do you want?”

“So glad you asked.” She waved a flippant hand. “Fetch him.”

For a moment, Sasha entertained the idea that the guards moving out at her command were on their way to fetch Lark. The idea was dashed as they dragged in what could only be described as the spitting image of Sasha.

The guard he had touched at the party. The guard—the man he had killed.

The man was now mutant. He looked just like Sasha with his glassy eyes, grey skin, mismatched fangs, drooly tongue…only he wasn’t in chains. He was free to drool and sway on his feet like a reed in the wind.

He was docile.

“This is your prodigy, Martin,” Hellebore said, waving again. “Come say hello, Martin.”

The guards used the butts of their spears to poke ‘Martin’ over to her chair. He came to a sluggish stop before the bars. A raspy moan creaked from his lips when Hellebore laced her fingers in his and playfully swung his limp arm to and fro.

Sasha was too horrified to speak. He felt sick to his stomach again.

Martin looked, sounded, and behaved exactly as Sasha had before he taught himself how to walk, talk, and periodically swallow the drool.

Was this what his blood did—hollow people out, turn them into husks?

“Martin said his first words yesterday,” Hellebore praised, giving Martin’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Go on, petal. Show us.”

“For…the…queen,” he croaked after several groaning starts. More saliva dribbled from his fangs.

Hellebore released his hand to clap. “Very good!”

Sasha couldn’t keep it down any longer. He lurched sideways, limp hair mercifully shielding him from the sight of Martin and the tongue as he hacked up all the bile.

Over the ringing in his ears, the blood rushing in his head, he heard Hellebore chuckle.

“See,” she said, “when we heard that a nameless man of extraordinary girth—a man with hair like midnight and a voice that could melt chocolate—was championing the smallfolk, I knew it was you. Sovereign of the misfits, you never could resist a charity case. That is why I sent the fool.”

Sasha lifted his head to glare at her. “What are you talking about?”

“I realize it was a gamble; you wouldn’t remember your life before and might have grown differently…what matters is that I was right. The initial outbreak in Fort Faellen killed you, changed you, but you didn’t turn out like the others. You became what we wanted all along—an empty, unbreakable shell.”

“What you…” Sasha settled back on his heels, struggling to wrap his mind and tongue around the words. “You…wanted?”

Hellebore leaned forward in her chair. “Yes, Sasha,” she said brightly. “The plague is ours. Of course, things did get a little out of hand—”

“A little?”

“—test subjects got rowdy, escaped the fort, hell broke loose…then the North put up that blasted Bubble. With your help, though, we can finally move forward. We can raise an army to take back the land, take the South, using your blood—”

“You can’t,” Sasha spat. “I won’t let you have it.”

Hellebore pursed her lips. “In that case, I will let the sadist have him and toss his mutilated corpse in there to rot with you. The choice is yours.”

The dungeon fell silent as Sasha stared at the dark veins in his wrists. They bulged with the blood that had created Martin, blood that would create many more like him if the queen had her way.

Had someone asked however long ago, Sasha would have maintained that choosing the one over the many was a bad thing—something villains did. In summary, he most likely would not have chosen Lark.

Now, he understood how easy it was to convince yourself that the situation with the one was more dire; that they needed to be saved first; that you’d find a different way to save the many, all right? You just needed more time.

Convince himself he did, shoulders slumping in defeat. “Take what you need.”

Hellebore beamed. “In all honesty, I was going to either way, but it is good to have your permission. Keeps us civilized.”

“Can I see him?”

The question seemed to surprise her. She let out a gusty sigh, stood, and sauntered so close to the bars that the guards hustled forward to retrieve her.

Before they could, she reached through and placed one of her small, statuesque hands atop Sasha’s head.

“No, my darling deformed,” she cooed, fingers running through his hair. She hit a snag and tugged upwards, forcing him to look at her. “It is time for your first bleeding.”