Handmaiden's Fury (12 page)

Breathe.

“Why are we doing this Handmaiden”

“They will suffer as well. They and
their families. Gryn’s wife will beg while she watches me defile their children.
She will offer me everything a man could want.”

“Stop? You know better, Handmaiden.”

Orin leaned forward. “Emlie is more
difficult, of course. Her brother is one of the Sires. I will have to tend to
her over months. I will return Emlie to her family only after she is a
desolation. She will be your shadow, Keiri. Her passion and depravity will blot
out the sun, and her family and your temple will despair.”

“This is Her Crucible.”

Sharp, white burning agony sliced
into my mind.

I stood. I cried out, but I stood.

I took single, perfect step.

“Do you think this is all the Once
Ways have to offer, whore?” Tight fury laced his voice. He spoke darkness
again, and the pain doubled, tripled.

It was ten thousand tiny cuts. It was
iron nails in my flesh. It was the loss of everything I loved.

Trembling, I still stood.

“Creating the bond will place a tiny
shadow of him within you. I worry for you, Handmaiden.”

With all the will I could spare, my
mind reached for
Ouigiin,
the sigil that bound me to Orin, the sigil
that revealed his secrets. I grasped it and released its awakened power.

The passion bond tethering Orin to me
burst into life.

For the moment, we were one. In that
brief, shining moment, we became the same entity.

The world darkened, cold. The
townsfolk held me in disregard. If they couldn’t use me to their ends, they
wanted nothing to do with me. Considering me unworthy of their time, they left
me friendless. They thought their disdain didn’t show, but I knew! I would show
them! I would reveal my glory, my power! If they would not bow, they would be
destroyed, their corpses piled before my fe
—!

Orin’s
feet.

Corpses would be piled before Orin’s
feet. Not mine.

His strong mind fought to submerge me
in him.

Yet he knew nothing of true strength.
He had not been tempered in the Lady’s Crucible.

He did not know pain.

Not like I did. As a friend, a lover.

I would show him Rydia’s cleansing
flame.

My pain for my Lady raged across our
bond. Mirrored between our two linked souls, it quadrupled in my mind.

My legs nearly buckled.

Orin began to scream.

Sinking to his knees, his screams
echoed off the walls. He possessed no understanding of what he was feeling,
even though we had shared this link before.

“Keiri!” Sire Mattias now held back
all five of the masked monstrosities. Backed against the wall, their success
was inevitable. “End him, Keiri! Quickly!”

My Sire knew nothing of my current
agony. Each breath echoed a silent scream. Orin writhed on the ground, but our
pain showed no signs of slowing. As if its master had lost the reins, the pain
he called ran free.

I took another step, grimacing. Blood
flowed from my nose, but I couldn’t care.

Another step.

Then another.

I knelt next to Orin Devariis, the
most dangerous man in Stormhaven. Every joint in my body stabbed and cut and
burned.

“Orin.” My voice fell in a hoarse
whisper.

He turned his head toward me.

I reached for the grinning silver
mask and pulled it from his face.

“Keiri.” Pure hate. His breath came
quickly in ragged bursts. His eyes lolled wildly in his head.

“Release me, Orin.” I could taste
blood in my mouth.

“I—!” Cold fury burned in his eyes.
He tried reaching for me but could not overcome the pain of his own magic.

“Handmaiden!” My Sire’s voice held
the faintest touch of panic. If I didn’t dispatch Orin, the masked abominations
would slaughter my Sire.

But I knew better than to kill
someone while bonded. Orin might drag me into the darkness with him. My Sire
would be safe, but I would be dead as certainly as Orin would.

Stalemate.

I reached in my mind for the
Ouigiin
sigil on my back. Before, I had only kissed Orin with its power.

Now I had something more permanent in
mind.

Exactly as I had with Rand, I drank
the power from
Ouigiin
, feeling it fade from my body as if it had never
been.

Then I kissed Orin.

Rydia’s flame leapt to life inside of
me. I felt Her lust turn to passion turn to bonds of love and duty. His emotion
became tinder for the fires of my Goddess. His enmity, his desire for victory,
everything of his will burned to ashes. All that remained was service and
servitude, tempered in love that could not be bent.

I took him. I took him and destroyed
everything he had been.

Orin Devariis was mine.

“Handmaiden.” His breathy whisper
pleaded when I broke the kiss. His eyes, though clouded with pain, grew wide in
worship and wonder.

“End the pain, Devariis.” I trembled
from it, wracked with knives and cold.

“Yes, Handmaiden.” He whispered a
word of darkness and bile that my mind refused to hear.

I gasped. The cessation of the agony
brought rapture. For an eternal instant, my body shuddered in ecstasy.

I fell back to my knees. Orin—what
used to be Orin—became my newest Devoted. Through our original bond, I sensed
the roil of emotions draining from him. As if flinching away from filth, I
severed passion’s bond between us.

I never wanted to feel the inside of
Orin’s head again.

“Keiri!” The sound of my Sire’s voice
seemed so far away.

“Stop your creations, Orin. They are
unnatural.” My voice seemed distant as well. Tired. So tired. “Destroy them if
you can. Give them rest.”

“Yes, Handmaiden.” Orin sounded
ashamed, horrified that he could have ever created something I found
distasteful. He pushed himself up, making a quick gesture with his left hand.
He muttered quietly as he did, words that seemed made of darkness and spite.

The creatures halted in place,
immobile. My Sire stood for a moment, his rod still held high in defense. For a
long moment, he stared at them, uncertain if the leering creatures would
continue their attack.

Then, slowly, they began to crumble
into a fine, white dust. Their masks slipped and fell to the floor.

The room went dark beyond my Sire’s
rod.

Orin’s darkness was quenched.

It was over.

Still, we had no time to waste. Orin
might have acolytes still about.

“Is there another key to the inner
gardens?” I asked.

Orin gazed up at me, fawning. “Around
my neck.”

“Give it to me.”

Happily, eagerly, he pulled the chain
from his neck and handed it to me. I turned and gave it to my Sire. Then I
knelt back down to Orin. I whispered, thin and deadly, “Orin, you know I can’t
let you go unpunished. Not after what you’ve done.”

Tears filled his eyes. “Yes,
Handmaiden. I know.”

I thought back to the human-kin
woman, hung to die in the gardens. “The Thae woman. How many of your
blasphemous signs did you burn into her skin?”

Like a naughty child, his eyes fell
from mine. “Over three thousand, Handmaiden. Three thousand and six.”

“Did she die from the cuts?”

He winced. “Mostly. A combination of
the blood loss and slow starvation. The vessel cannot take food, or the rites
are ruined.”

I differed to my Sire, but his gaze
remained impassive. He knew I couldn’t take Orin back to the House of Pleasure
and wanted to see what I would do.

“Your life will have to be the price,
Orin.”

He nodded his head in agreement,
tears running down his face. “Will that please you, Handmaiden? Will it atone
for my sins?”

I looked at him for a long moment. “I
have no idea how much blood is on your hands, Orin. I have no way of saying
what it would take for you to atone.” I placed my hand under his chin and made
him meet my gaze. “But it will please me. Yes. Your death will please me.”

“Thank you.” He nuzzled himself at my
leg, leaning on me as sobs wracked him. “Thank you for letting me die for you,
Handmaiden. Thank you.” His words were a rush, merely babble.

“We will leave you here.” I made him
meet my gaze. “To please me, you will stay in this very spot.” I pulled his
knife from his belt. “When you are hungry, you may cut a piece of your own
flesh to eat. You shall die in darkness, and be darkness consuming darkness.”

He nodded, still crying. “Yes,
Handmaiden. Thank you.”

“When you have cut three-thousand and
six pieces of your own flesh from your body, you will take no more. You will
sit here in your own filth, in the black. You will die alone from the cuts and
starvation.”

“Yes. Please, Handmaiden. Let me
serve.”

“This pleases me, Orin. Show me.”

Trembling, he took his knife from my
hands. He continually glanced to me, making certain he did as I wished.

At my nod, he began to pare away a
small piece of his chest no larger than a copper gnot but enough. He winced and
trembled as he did it, his face blanching.

Sire Mattias and I watched, unmoved.

Orin’s eyes met mine. At my slightest
nod, he put the flesh in his mouth and began to chew.

“Three-thousand-five more times,
Orin. Once done, sit and wait for death. When I think of you, I will be
pleased.”

His words came out in a gush. “Yes,
Handmaiden. For you. Anything.”

Sire Mattias placed his hand on the
small of my back. I took a breath and one last look at Orin Devariis.

Then, we turned and looked no more.

As we left that place, we took our
light with us. The last thing I knew of Orin Devariis, he whispered in that
dark and lost place. The last thing I heard from him chilled me.

“For you, Handmaiden. Anything for
you.”

Eventually we returned to the door,
behind which Orin’s sigils glowed no more. The body of the Thae woman, once
hanging there as a testament to blasphemy, was simply gone. I knew that
whatever spirit the human-kin had possessed was now free from the cold
darkness.

I buried my face in my Sire’s shoulder and wept.

We took Emlie with us when we left as
we did not know who in Orin’s house might have known of her investigations. She
was more than pleased to be quit of that place, and I knew that my Sire would
reward her well. We made our way to the outer gates and passed the guards there
unmolested. I did not know or care what they thought. Probably, they simply
believed we were some of Orin’s guests.

I wondered then who they had been.
Socialites and merchant princes? Probably. People who had become enamored of
Orin’s power and had sought to share it by whatever means he required. What had
Orin said?

“I did not slay these. They gave
themselves to me. They asked, begged.”

That was the nature of sorcery, of
course. It reduced people to less than slaves, merely cattle to be consumed.

I thought of him then, alone in the
dark, feasting on his own corruption. He would spend his last days yearning for
me, slicing away pieces of himself and swallowing his own darkness.

His fate was horrifying but fitting.

Brys was, as ever, exactly where we
had bid him to await us. He helped me into the carriage, seeing my trembling
hand. As always, he was there, ready to catch me before I even suspected I
might fall.

My Sire and I did not speak on the
way back to the House of Pleasure. He held me, and I all but fell asleep on his
shoulder. For once, I felt at peace. The Lady’s Fire was little more than
glowing coals inside me, and all I wanted was sleep.

I felt as if I could sleep for days.

In the end, Brys helped me to my
room. He stripped me of my dirty, tattered clothing and tended to the gashes
and cuts on my body with lavender unguent. He washed my body and soothed my
heart, his every action full of reverence and worship. I smiled at him as he
put me to bed.

“Thank you, Brys.”

He smiled in return.

I slept then. For the first night
since I had forged the bond with Orin, I truly slept well.

When Sire Mattias slipped into the
bed beside me, I cannot say. I awoke in the wee hours wrapped in his arms. I
turned to face him and found him awake.

I slipped one hand up to cup his firm
jaw and pulled his face down to mine.

“I love you,” I whispered, my lips
brushing his.

He smiled. I felt it against my mouth
and was amazed at the rush of happiness it gave me.

“And I love you.” Mattias’ voice made
little more than a rumble that I felt more than heard.

He pressed his lips to mine, slowly,
gently, letting our fire build. Gradually our chaste kiss became something
more, something hot and passionate.

I relished that kiss, like thunder at
dawn, but soon I pulled away. “What happens now?” I asked in a whisper.

He grinned wickedly in response.

I laughed. “Yes.” I pressed my lips
to his, hard, a quick burst of passion. “But what then? How can we…?” I
gestured all around us, encompassing the temple and everything it held. “Be
what we are, here?”

“We will figure it out. Together.” He
kissed me then, long and hard.

When he pulled away, my breathing
came in ragged pants.

“You and me, together, with Rydia’s
blessing are unstoppable,” he said. Joy danced in his silver eyes.

“You know Rydia approves?” I was
startled.

He smiled at me and cupped my head in
both hands. “I prayed for you,” he said. “I prayed so hard for you. And She
answered.”

I pressed my forehead to his.

“I prayed for you, too.” My voice
dropped to a harsh whisper, all I could manage.

“I would have given everything up for
you,” he continued, “but now I know She approves. And She has a plan for us.”

That must have been true. Otherwise,
surely Her gifts would have failed us.

I nodded, my forehead sliding against
his. “She does. And we’ll find out what it is and go forth in Her Name,
together.”

His tender smile kindled a fire in my
heart.

“Together,” he said.

I slid my arms around my Sire’s neck
and kissed him.

As he wrapped his arms around me, I
could feel residual heat on my back, flaring with Rydia’s approval.

I slept, knowing I would awaken in a
different world.

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