She’s probably proud of them, he thought dully. Like Selena feeling blessed despite her wound. To the bloody Deeps with this god and both its faces.
Jude’s grip turned into a gentle caress over the line of his jaw. “This night has been long. Longer than I anticipated, and not half so smooth. But now it shall progress properly. The way it should.”
A scream, muffled but nearby, resounded in the earthen temple. A woman’s scream. Sebastian’s heart clenched. He looked at Jude with wide eyes. Another scream sounded on the heels of the first, jagged with agony.
“Make that stop,” Sebastian breathed.
Jude smiled. “Not yet.”
Palace of Ice and Bone
The assassin was beaten. It was the screams, Accora knew.
He thinks they’re Selena’s.
She pondered whether to comfort him with the truth, but for the last several nights she had dreamt herself in her greenhouse, dodging a demons’ slicing blades and waking to the sounds of shattered glass.
He deserves no comfort. He is Sebastian Vaas.
They had been left alone in Bacchus’s chamber, she and Lunos’ most feared assassin. He was afraid of the smallness of the space.
A strange, silly weakness, she thought, but then the chamber shook her bones with terror too, though for other reasons.
Her eyes trailed to the slab upon which so much pain had been visited on her. She tried not to let the fear swamp her but it crashed over her in waves and battered her with memories of the last time she had been Bacchus’s prisoner. She knew what kind of tortures she faced should Selena fail, and yet a miserable little flicker of hope burned in her heart that this time she would be granted a quick death.
I’m an old woman. Surely Bacchus would not…
But five years before she had been an old woman and Bacchus showed no discretion, no mercy, no deference for her age. The only thing that kept the hope alive was Selena.
A woman’s scream came again, and tapered off into a weary whimper. Sebastian’s breath hitched and he seemed to wilt further. Accora sighed.
“Oh for the gods’ sake, that’s not Selena.”
The man lifted his ashen face that seemed to have aged ten years.
Accora snorted. “You’re pitiful with hope. Besotted, yet you can’t tell your lover’s voice from another.”
“Who…?” Sebastian asked, and then said, “Ori.”
“Aye.” Accora said. “I tried to make her what Selena is. But she is weak. Mediocre. She has no future. Better that she die now.”
“Better, aye, now that she has outlived her usefulness to you.” Sebastian spat a wad of red on the floor by Accora’s knees. Relief had made him gritty again. “She is useful to Bacchus now as bait?”
“Bait to catch Selena. Jude let you think she was Selena to watch you squirm.” She smirked. “First thing the woman’s done right all night.”
Sebastian spat again and struggled against his bonds. “You don’t care for Selena. You never did. You just want Bacchus dead.”
“Yes. And no. Selena has strength. I care for that. I care for that very much.”
“Aye, to further your own ends. Killing him won’t close her wound,” Sebastian said. “Will it?”
Accora gave him an arch look. “Suddenly we are very concerned about who has been honest with Selena, aren’t we, Captain Tergus? How droll.” The wry look turned to disgust. “Every word you have ever spoken to her has been a kind of lie, and yet you accuse me of using her to my own ends. And what of you? You think standing in her light will dispel your shadows? Fool.”
The door at the rear of the chamber opened and Bacchus returned, dragging Ori by the hair. Jude and a handful of Bazira followed. Despite what she’d said to Sebastian, Accora breathed a small prayer for Ori. The Haru whimpered hoarsely. Her skin bore patches of gray and white.
Bacchus filled the room with his presence: a boulder rimed in ice that rolled into their midst, ready to crush them all. He regarded his prisoners. Accora’s mouth went dry and her heart stuttered in its bony cage as it had the first time.
Do not lose yourself, she chided. You are not alone this time. You are not so helpless.
“This one is drained.” Bacchus nudged Ori with his boot. “What say you, mother?” he asked Accora. “Have you the voice to guide the Aluren home?”
He sent a small bolt of ice that struck her in the chest, rendered casually and with the sacred word only barely muttered. She wheezed as the cold ache spread out inside her, tightening her lungs and making her shiver enough she thought her bones would shatter.
“Selena w-will e-end you…”
Bacchus snorted. “You send a broken weapon at me and believe it will strike true.” He shook his head, the greasy hair that fell over his face brushed his jutting chin. The crags and lines of his pale skin were stark in the light of the lone torch that guttered on one earthen-packed wall.
“She is not as broken as you believe,” Accora whispered.
“She is a fool to follow you. Fools are easily bested,” Bacchus told her, as Ori mewled on the floor at his feet. “Your screams or his—” he inclined his head at Sebastian—”will draw her. But her wound…” Bacchus’s fingers clenched and unclenched and an eagerness lit up his dark eyes. “Her wound is a gift of the Shadow face to us.”
“You will thank me for it,” Accora whispered, “when Selena kills you quickly and with mercy before I have my turn with you.”
She tensed, waiting for the blow that would knock her senseless, or kill her. “The same empty words from an empty husk,” he said. “I will keep you alive long enough to watch your Aluren die and then grant you your peace.”
Accora’s hands clenched behind her back. Bacchus’s notion of “peace” was very far removed from the actual meaning.
The Reverent looked to Jude. “Where are my Bazira and how many?”
Jude’s pale face paled further. “Half a hundred men await your command, my priest.”
Bacchus narrowed his eyes at her, as if he couldn’t comprehend what sort of creature stood before him. “Only one night ago, my men numbered near two hundred.”
“M-my men report that Selena Koren h-has an army, my lord. An army of Zak’reth, fighting for her. They k-killed the hundred men I sent to retrieve her after Accora abetted her release from my camp.”
Zak’reth army? Accora looked at Sebastian. He shrugged almost imperceptibly.
“Your failures compound and compound, like dirt shoveled on a grave,” Bacchus told Jude. “Zak’reth?”
“It’s true, my lord, I swear it.” Jude cleared her throat and thrust out her chin. “But I promise you will have Selena Koren by dawn. I swear—”
Bacchus blasted her with three bolts of ice to the midsection and Jude crumpled to the ground.
“Zak’reth army,” Bacchus said and snorted like a wild boar. “That is no such possibility. The men lie to you to cover their failure and you repeat it to cover yours. It does not matter. The Aluren comes. I feel her. Take the remaining Bazira and get her. Succeed, Jude Gracus,” he told her as she crawled to her feet.
Accora watched Jude swallow a lump of fear. “Yes, my lord. And what of the dragonman?”