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she had, after all, been lonely for such a long time.
lonely and at once too far and too close to other people—close enough to see the spark slipping from their eyes, death stealing all their years as though seven decades and scant moments weighed as much as each other, both lighter than feathers. but then again perhaps she had nothing to blame but her own nature, her lack of will, her inadequate resistance to her nature. whether mortician or maiden of war she was more than a tool in the hands of others; having been granted a soul of her own with which to suffer the ensouling of others she should, by all rights, have taken herself to the farthest and darkest corner of amphoreus and lived there alone.
in enough years with only her own death-colored life to corrupt she would, she knew, eventually go insane, as she had in fact seen the lost and broken people without homes go insane the farther they journeyed from the flock’s fold. principles she pretended to uphold dictated that insanity was a fate preferable to reaping but she was, bitterly, a pretender, and chose to live among people as a tool, denying her own will in order to embalm a portion of her own guilt in the heart of the one who wielded her. in the end it mattered not whether it had been amunet or aglaea that decreed death through castorice’s hands, for as long as she was the one to commit the act she carried it in her soul with the same weight: criminal, child, infirm or broken she added their stolen years to her own imprisonment and found no redemption in telling herself it was for the better.
and that being what she was, the whole of the nature of that crypt she termed a soul, should have brought some bitterness or antipathy towards the bright world—it would have been easier. it did not. death’s hands, her hands, grasped for life with despicable fervor. she wanted. the monstrosity of her wanting outstripped her ability to speak. in her darkest and loneliest moments it outstripped her thoughts, her guilt, her profound awareness of her damned state. she drew the curtains in her chambers in okhema until it was as dark as she could make it and pretended she was lying in her own grave, buried beneath the earth in a vault of stone and unable to touch anyone. she wrapped icy fingers around her body, around her throat, pressed them into her eyes, as though she could destroy herself with her own touch. but her body was immutable. she had walked into funeral pyres, carved the skin from her wrists, turned to every element and every weapon for an answer to her curse and at the crest of every torment found that peak as unapproachably distant as ever, her own death defying her in a mockery of her existence—
but now she was here. among people. among others of golden blood. in her long years of wandering when she told herself that she was looking for a place of stillness where she could lay down the scythe and succumb to the night, she found herself always moving, always restless, a mausoleum in search of its effigies. a cadaverous and wretched creature of wretched desire. it was her shame that she could not bring herself to refrain and remain in her tomb. she let them capture her again and again, let them use her as a weapon and a gravekeeper, all in search of thin fleeting moments of warmth. farcical, beyond unforgivable. but only she knew the extent of her crimes and only she, therefore, could judge herself, and though she never lied she was not always honest either. she had been driven away too, and grateful for the fortitude of others when her own had faltered, but always ended up in the snow weeping selfishly for her own desolation.
it began with aglaea. goldweaver, fatepiercer of the chrysos heirs. “you are a truly beautiful young woman, castorice,” she once said. “it is a pity that i cannot tailor a dress for you.”
castorice had stumbled her way over assuring aglaea that no such thing was necessary. aglaea, amused, let her tread all over her own words for minutes before saying, “you misunderstand me. i am first and foremost a priestess of mnestia, a seeker of beauty and a creator of art. my most prized customers are fitted as they stand before me, so that no detail is left to chance. i would drape your body in silk.”
“but,” castorice said dumbly. “my curse.”
“what else are garmentmakers for?” one of them drifted over with a tape measure. before castorice could say anything, the garmentmaker had already encircled her wrist with it. she felt the moment her fingers brushed it, golden threads withering. it fell to the ground in a graceful tangle, an awful clatter. she clapped her hand to her mouth. “i am so deeply sorry, lady aglaea—i am sorry,”
“the fault is mine—” lady aglaea was saying, but castorice had already run out of the room.
but she thought for weeks about that brief touch, the metallic surety in the garmentmaker’s fingers. imagined those fingers on her. measuring, stitching, weaving. longed, longed for thread.
she knew desire. it was her great shame. she knew she brought death to those she touched and she still yearned to touch them. she should have known better by now than to give in to her imagination, because it brought only a deeper misery in its wake. but she was bereft, and her thoughts wandered.
she had traveled many years with the army. she knew well what men did to girls, girls who came to her afterwards, destroyed by nightmares and convinced of their impurity. they begged her for an end to their misery. even as she granted it she was more jealous of their pain than anything—what would it have been like? to be desired, to be touched, to have what she wanted without the sin of wanting it—she dressed the girls’ ravaged bodies and learned the colors of pleasure only as they appeared in the mirror of violence.
once, in the grip of rage, broken by what she had seen done to others, she walked to the culprit and stripped before him. “look,” she said. “look at me. rape me.”
he hesitated. then he came forward. he said, “aren’t you the maiden of death? how do i know you won’t kill me?”
she looked at him impassively. slowly, he reached within his trousers and pulled out his cock, somewhat inflamed with lust. he stroked himself erect, looking back at her the entire time. in the space between their bodies there was nothing, for a moment. his lust drenched the air in a sour haze. he gripped his shaft in one hand and said, “lie down.”
she lay down.
“spread your legs,” he said. “i’ve seen you kill. i know how you do it. are you going to do it to me?”
she said nothing. in her eyes was the imprint of the body of the girl he’d destroyed. she had seen burns inside the girl’s vagina. bruises on every inch of her skin. blood pouring out between her legs with every step.
“are you going to do it to me?”
he knelt between her legs. he crawled forward. at the last second, without thinking, she placed the tip of her finger on the tip of his shaft. it was lightning-hot, and then he screamed.
it was over quickly. at the last second, somehow, he released. it landed whitely on her thigh, hot then cold. a great sickness welled up inside her. her stomach rebelled. she scrambled away, leaned against a pillar, and felt a great lurch of shame, for she had never before killed of her own volition. she would come to kill again, though she did not know it yet. then she knew only the depth of her disgust, and a roaring heat between her legs, which stuck to her fingers when she touched it. she couldn’t bear it. she wanted the heat to die, and stuffed her own fingers inside, crying out at the abrupt sharp pain, the wrongness. every time she tried to remove her fingers the heat was still there. she was convinced she could carve it out if she tried hard enough. eventually, when it was over, she moved to a corner of the room and vomited.
she never solicited anyone’s attention again. she thought that, if she could, she would maim her face into something beyond lust, mar her body, sew the hole between her legs shut. she saw, sometimes, the unmistakable desire of others. soldiers who stroked themselves when she walked by. whistled at her. didn’t care that she could kill them, because they were too close to death anyway to care.
but aglaea. oh, aglaea. aglaea was no venal soldier in a blood-soaked army field. aglaea was surrounded by beauty, the finest weaver in the world, and had said to her, i would drape your body in silk.
she imagined it; she touched herself. she imagined golden threads manipulating her like a puppet, like a garmentmaker, needles flying around her, sewing silk into flesh into a second skin. a body of fine cloth and feathered gold that could be touched without bringing death. she wanted the needles inside her, craved it with a yearning that rammed through her like a dawn’s light itself solidified, she wanted the needles in her lips and eyes, in her nipples, in the tips of each finger and between her legs. a second skin. oh, aglaea.
a few weeks later she would learn that aglaea truly did see everything, when she presented castorice with the gift of woven armour. it was not enough to keep death at bay but shame flooded every pore, and she did not speak for weeks, humiliated.
and lady tribios—she had been older when they met, the red core of dawn’s light, warm and immeasurably gentle. “you know,” she said once. “we have never seen you eat.”
“i do not need food to live, lady tribios,” castorice said. “besides, all food comes from death—the death of a plant, or an animal. i cause enough death as it is.”
“have you never tasted apples?” lady tribios said.
“no.”
“here,” she said, and carved the apple she was holding into two slices. “open your mouth!”
“please set it down, and i will pick it up,” castorice said.
“as you wish,” lady tribios smiled. “we thought we had you.” she put the second slice into her own mouth, and her face glowed with pleasure. “sweet and just a little tart…oh, it’s perfect. absolutely perfect. mhmm.”
castorice flushed. she picked up the slice of apple and nibbled on it. before she was half done it had dried in her hand.
“cas…” lady tribios said. “here, take another.”
“it’s alright, lady tribios. this is my fate.”
“it’s such a heavy thing to bear, though,” lady tribios burst out. “it’s not fair! you must be so lonely… oh, cas. there are hundreds of us. surely one of us could—”
“no!”
“but we’d be delighted to—”
“no!”
lady tribios never mentioned it again. eventually she forgot, and castorice never brought it up, glad of her silence as she watched lady tribios die again and again, dwindling in age and number, glad she had never with her selfishness destroyed a shard of dawn’s red core.
lady cipher, who from the moment they met, flirted incessantly. castorice did not recognise it as such until both lady tribios and aglaea mentioned it; “that one would sleep with you if she were not so careful of her own skin,” aglaea commented.
“and the carefulness does not stop her from trying!” lady tribios giggled.
castorice said nothing. but everything lady cipher did and said took on an added shade of aggravation in light of that knowledge. she couldn’t know, shouldn’t know, that castorice had touched herself to the thought of the swell of lady cipher’s luscious breasts, the exposed expanse of her thighs, the ass she flaunted at every opportunity. she could never know. castorice said nothing.
and then—lord mydei and lord phainon. hyacine. anaxa. anaxa, who told her, “do not be afraid to take what you’re offered. fear is the enemy of knowledge.”
anaxa, who declared that if she would let him, he would touch her—not in fear of death, but in the pursuit of it, a pursuit unlike what she’d ever before seen, not egged on by blind faith but by a clear-eyed impelment towards reason. he chased answers wherever they were, and if some of them were inside her, he found it no impediment. he handed her tufts of grass, flies and mice, flowers cut from the stalk and flowers still connected to the root. he demanded to know the limits of her power, and decreed that nothing done for answers was done in vain. for the first time she found herself curious in regards to herself and he kindled that curiosity with a passion that shocked her; she found herself inescapably drawn to him and his laboratory, where he conducted experiments at all hours.
once he invited her to witness one such experiment. “i’m going to test the amount of soul in the human body,” he declared, singular eye dancing with an excitement more vivid than the whole storied night sky. “do you want to see?”
“i,” she said. “okay. okay, professor. why not?”
“that is the spirit,” he said pompously.
they met in his laboratory. he locked the door stringently behind her and gestured her to a chair, practically dancing, utterly deranged. he stripped naked without hesitation in front of her, uncaring of what she thought of him; of the scars under his chest, and the absence of a male organ between his legs. but there was no time for her questions. he sliced his arm open for blood and began to work.
she thought she had seen madness; she had never before seen absolute insanity harnessed to absolute reason, the imperturbable certainty of genius. he cut open his stomach to pull out an organ and then stitched himself shut, subjected the organ to an endless series of baffling tests. “one-hundredth part of a soul,” he declared eventually. “my calculations are exact. of course, breathe no word of this to anyone else.”
he held his organ still in his hand. “do you want to hold it?” he asked her.
“no,” she said shyly. “i’ll only destroy it.”
“i have no more use for it,” he shrugged. “i want to see what you do with it. come here.”
so she went, and showed him what she could do with him. he was impressed, he later said. he had made many notes. it had advanced his research by leaps and bounds—only later she’d find where those leaps had taken him.
she knew that hyacine and phainon slept with each other. she saw them together, pretending they had not just been with each other, both of them smug, easy in their laughter together and friendly with her. since they did not speak of it she did not pry, and restricted herself to glancing from a distance at hyacine’s angelic smile and phainon’s muscles, in the sun, glazed with sweat.
and…lord mydei. he was the worst. he had offered, more than once, to be what she needed. “no one can live on nothing,” he said to her. “not even someone as strong-willed as you, castorice. and i know death the way nobody else does, not even you.”
“it’s true that i have never died,” castorice said. “but i do not take it lightly. and i am fine and fulfilled, no stronger-willed than any other chrysos heir. i must simply do my duty as it is to be done.”
“i am finding here in okhema that there is more to life than duty.”
“i cannot,” castorice said. “i cannot.”
“you can,” mydei said, unmoved. “if you want to.”
she left. she did not let him see her for days. phainon found her, after dinner, and said, “mydei asked me to deliver his apology, if he offended you.”
“the offense is not his,” she said stiffly. “it is mine. thank you, phainon.” she shut the door in his face, slammed her own into a pillow, and screamed.
the problem was her; always her. but in this case it was also lord mydei, who walked around leaving nothing to the imagination. even in the baths, naked, she had seen him—seen him soft, yes, but felt her ears redden, for he was brutally proportionate. the red carvings on him snaked over every purposeful band of muscle and guided the eye to linger. he was powerfully sure of himself, addictively persistent without deviating from his course. she saw phainon fall for it, running laps around mydei to prove himself, eager for approval and reproach alike. were it not for her own curse she would have done the same. brought him flowers, like every other girl in the city. she was no master of the art of courtship—she knew her awkward ways. she would have made a fool of herself in front of him, run away, and cried.
as it was she was entitled to nothing. she refused to look at him. she refused to entertain the idea of touch.
she watched him train with phainon from a distance. they were at it for twelve hours at once, eighteen, unflagging and evenly matched, but lord mydei won more than he lost. after every defeat he hauled phainon to his feet and lectured him on where he had gone wrong. phainon listened, rubbing the nape of his neck, and then they’d clasp hands and start another round. standing at the window she was not far enough to forget their beauty. her body ached for sin. her nipples pressed against the soft shroud-wool of her dress. her mouth was dry, but her cunt was wet, so wet.
then phainon saw her and waved. lord mydei began to turn and she shut the window hurriedly, crouching down to escape notice.
she took a private bath. she rubbed the bar of soap against her cunt until it burned unpleasantly. she made sure the water was icy.
later, at night, he came to her room. she almost didn’t open the door at all, but then he said, “castorice. listen to me.”
“i’m listening,” she said.
“i will leave soon for castrum kremnos. i am not in okhema for much longer. and before i go, i want to have no regrets.”
she opened the door slightly. he’d clearly just finished fighting phainon, and had yet to refresh himself. the fact that he’d come straight to her made her ears red again. “i am not a charitable enterprise, lord mydei. i appreciate your concern but i do not need your help. i am happy to do my duty regardless of what the other chrysos heirs can do for my condition—and the pleasure of this companionship is more than i ever could have asked for.”
“i understand,” lord mydei said. his braid was coming loose; he removed one gauntlet and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “it’s not charity. i want to do this.”
“why?”
“because i want to.” he looked at her, a puzzled lion with a tousled mane. “do i need to say more?”
“i mean,” castorice took a deep breath and regretted it, for the smell of the clean sweat of exertion and something distinctly male undid much of the work of her bath. “i mean to say that—i have survived a thousand years without touch. i can survive until the end of this journey.”
“without ever knowing?”
her heart lurched. “it is cruel,” she whispered. “it is cruel of lord mydei to parade a feast in front of a starving woman. that the woman will only destroy the feast if she’s invited to the table is hardly—hardly an excuse. i am not inhuman.”
“i’m not asking you to be,” lord mydei said. “and stop calling me lord. it’s just mydei. i’m not under the impression that you’re inhuman—i think you are. that is why i’m here. because only you understand death the way i do, believe me when i say that i’m not taking this lightly.”
she retreated. she left the door open, and he followed. she had never been afraid of anyone other than herself, so the awareness of sharing the room with a king among warriors did little to faze her. no, what fazed her was the very sight of him. the danger he posed to others was his strength; to her the danger was his beauty and his resolve. she felt the savage weight of a thousand years untouched. she felt it down through every bone.
he was offering less than she was ready to take, she reminded herself fiercely. it was only a touch; a singular action. that she was infinitely more greedy than anybody knew was not upon him to bear.
“sit,” he said. “has anyone before…”
“no,” she said shortly. “everyone dies.” he reached for her hand, and she stepped back instinctively. “i, i do not want to feel your death.”
“it’ll be over in a moment,” he said, and did not let her protest again. he caught her hand and stripped away the glove quickly, clasping their hands together. his hand was warm, shockingly alive. the sickness of being touched rose in her like a serpent from under the waves. she had never felt anything like this, life, life and more life, the constancy of it, undying. a sob tore its way out of her throat, followed by a jagged, low sound, a funereal keening. her body rent in half.
his life flowed into her like a wildfire into the night, spreading inside her, spreading into the dark, without end. but she thought she felt him die. she thought she found him, almost at the peak, that they would step together through death’s door. but it was barred by iron. it refused to open.
only strife’s flame could hurt like this. nothing—not pyres or swords, not spears or spiked maces, had ever hurt her the way this did. nothing—with such totality. her senses obliterated. death surged in her and then retreated, meek for once before a greater disaster. she was awesomely convinced that she herself was dying. she couldn’t make sense of what was happening, the pulse of blood, the life that went on living, the touch, the eradicated space between their palms, his presence continuing, her own body, which she suddenly realized had been this whole time a corpse, or was now and forevermore a corpse, or was dead before and dead after and only alive now, as she was touched, touched without cessation by another who was still here, and she couldn’t breathe. she had never breathed. if she did so now it was only to scream again. her throat ripped and the sound continued. she was aflame in paralysis.
there was a long time before she recovered. she had, at some point, crumpled to the floor. he was holding a wadded cloth to her head.
“what,” she said hoarsely.
“you hit your head against the dressing table when you fell,” mydei told her.
he was no longer touching her. noticing this enraged her. how dare he—how dare he give her a taste, and then take it away? how dare he?
“i hate you,” she said fervently. she had never before uttered those words without a mirror. “i hate you.”
“okay,” mydei said. “do you want me to touch you again?”
her hand, once burned, now felt like necrotic at the end of her wrist. the death she had failed to deliver was festering inside her. she wanted a knife, in fact, to remove it forever so that it could not poison her mind, her heart, her worthless dead soul. she could smell the stench of her own rotting.
if he touched her again she would have to throw all of herself away. it would take a hundred pyres to cleanse this scourge.
“yes.”
this time, he put his arms around her, tugging her close. it was not nearly so intense at once, so annihilating; perhaps the awareness of her impending decay raised some precaution in her mind. she felt him guide her head to his collar, where she could hear his blood hammer in a steady metronome against her ear. he radiated heat. his hand on her back made her pleasantly nauseous, as though someone was making her do things she didn’t want to do. she found comfort in that sensation. her mouth felt as if it was full of blood, as though it would spill out with every word. she said, thickly, through her teeth, “i saw you sparring with phainon.”
“he told me.”
her cheeks grew warm. “i think,” she mumbled. “i think i’m dead.”
“i’m not,” he said, with inordinate cheer. “i haven’t felt myself die even once.”
she could. she could feel the death that welled up in her, like lightning that knew not where to strike. that struck and bled and broke and failed to deliver itself. scorching her from the inside as his touch scorched her from the outside.
then he grew serious again, and said, “i have nowhere to be. so we can do this as long as you need.”
“as long as i need,” she said shortly. “a thousand years?” she took a deep breath. “you cannot imagine what it will be like to lose this.”
he said nothing. they remained entwined. she could feel everywhere his body pressed against hers, his bare chest separated from her breasts by funeral cloth. but desire floated in a flood of depthless grief; selfish grief. sobs welled up in her, shaking her body, shaking out from her core in ripping waves. they turned again to screams, and dwindled to wails, broken animal wails like she was being hunted, like she’d been felled, like she was being skinned alive. she would need to be skinned alive after this. her skin would not remain hers. it would tear itself off if no one else could bear to do it. it would crawl away from her like a brood of bloody maggots. it would leave her flensed and ugly, an unpitiable monster. she would deserve it.
“shh, castorice,” mydei said, in between her damned shrieks. “castorice…”
“how could you do this to me?” she screamed. “a thousand years! a thousand years i lived a monster and now you are—and now this—how am i to do my duty now? how am i to do anything but follow you for another touch, another touch, another—”
“castorice,” mydei said softly. “you can have anything you want from me.”
“I CAN’T.”
it was a dragon’s roar. it came from within her. it came from the mouth of a devourer.
“you can make me do what you want.”
she couldn’t speak any more. she couldn’t. she took his claw-tipped hand and dragged it to her throat. “do it,” she demanded. she was crying again. she couldn’t seem to stop. “do it, mydei. do it now!”
he dragged her by the neck into his lap, leaning against his shoulder. cradled like a child, cradled as she’d never been, she stared into amber eyes as they squeezed the breath from her lungs. it did nothing. it never did. she was alive and could not die. but she could feel pain, and she loved pain. in the depths of it there was a clarity without thought. she wanted that clarity.
“hurt me,” she wrest out, with the last sliver of her breath. “hurt me more…”
“you could have just asked,” he said. it was dry; she had nothing left with which to laugh.
when her breath returned she tried to gather herself. shifted around in an attempt to find a way out of this predicament, and accidentally nudged herself against a rather distinct shape.
she looked down, then up. his expression was stony, but his cheeks were quite red.
“lord mydei…”
“i was raised to revere those who excel at violence,” he said bullishly. “the soldier who fights to the end even when injured. the scout who gives nothing away under the enemy’s torture. women with the strength of dragons.”
it was her turn to blush, hotly. “you knew that…i wanted you.”
mydei shrugged. “we all want each other in our own ways, don’t we?” he said matter-of-factly. “aglaea and anaxa hate each other, but they bicker and bicker until they’re in bed and come out the next morning still bickering.”
“phainon once said that they only have sex to shut each other up for a moment,” castorice said.
“i’m not surprised. and phainon slept with hyacine and cipher sleeps with aglaea. and i sleep with phainon. we are fully-grown and the time between battles can pass in a manner agreeable to all.”
“oh,” she mumbled. “does phainon know that…”
he gave her a puzzled look. “yes? he wanted to join but i told him that he’d just scare you.”
“is he scary?” she found it hard to imagine.
“he’s overeager and full of ideas,” mydei said darkly.
that she knew. “i know that lady tribios and i are the only ones who…abstain.”
she was still in his arms. he was still hard. he touched her bruised throat. “i didn’t know that you were…so inclined. it’s not a matter of shame. i simply didn’t know.”
“i don’t expect more than what you’ve already done for me,” castorice said hurriedly.
“castorice,” mydei said. “do you want to fuck?”
she snapped her mouth shut. “yes,” she whispered.
“then nothing else need matter.”
“alright.”
he began to take off her clothes, without asking, a battlefield pragmatism brought to a different land. she was familiar with it and was relieved by his propensity to take charge. she wanted more than anything else to surrender her will, to lose both mind and voice until she was a puppet in the hands of a murderer, ridden with guilt but unconscious of it. but that was not what he offered. he brought an annihilation of a different kind. she had to press her teeth together to hold back her screaming.
when she was naked, he lifted her as one would a fresh-forged greatsword, with an awareness of its edges, and laid her on her own bed. it was big enough for two. she lay there and looked, unavoidably, down the length of her body; her corpse-white breasts with their pale nipples flushed and risen, heaving with every ragged breath, her stomach, unscarred, dappled with goosebumps, her cunt, her clit and the gash below. and then, at the end of this forsaken sight; him. golden and red, warm-blooded and alive. she felt the absence of his touch like a mountain tied to her tongue.
“please,” she tried to say. “please keep that gauntlet on.”
“as you wish,” he said. and smiled. the promise in that smile scared her for the first time, because now it had to do with her. it had to do with what was about to happen to her.
the rest of his clothes came off easily. he shook his head and brushed his hair back and she yearned for him as a cow yearned for a cattle-prod, a stupid beast conditioned to beg for torture. there was no greater pain than being touched. even lying in his arms, comfortably and quietly held, the pain had blotted out every other thought. it was like being eaten alive. a hundred times worse than the next worst thing.
the sight of his cock, which rose thickly between his legs, cleared her mind for a second. she wanted. it did not matter if it looked like it would never fit. he could make it work; neither of them were dying anytime soon. she would learn to like whatever pain came with it.
“you can do anything,” she said breathlessly. “as long as you’re touching me.”
“you are impressively single-minded,” mydei said. “do you know what you like…?”
“i am a virgin,” she said. “but you’re welcome to stick your spear into my guts. i’ve done that before. it wasn’t bad, but it didn’t last.”
his lips quirked into a smile. “you have a dark sense of humour when you aren’t holding back. i enjoy it. it’s almost kremnoan.”
“no,” she said. “it’s aidonian. am i to wait until era nova…?”
he crawled on top of her. she stopped speaking, especially when he slid a hand under the small of her back and lifted her body, like it was dead, like he was disposing a corpse. it hurt.
maggots, she thought. her skin fleeing the curse of her soul. a monster unmasked. but that made it worse, made her cunt wetter, to think of herself as a dead woman on a battlefield and of him—worse than he was, worse than he’d ever been—mydei as a soldier, the last living man desperate for anything into which he could thrust his cock. she had seen the desecrated dead. she had dressed their bodies and performed their rites. she had been quiet about her own yearning; there was no one after a war left to listen.
“castorice,” mydei said. “come back to me.”
“i’m here,” she said brokenly. “but it hurts.”
“what…?”
“being touched,” she cried. “can you even imagine it? i have never, i never once have had this! it hurts. how does anybody bear it? is this what it is always like?”
she knew, she knew it was not. but that reality was so impossibly distant from hers that it was easier to picture the worms and the rot than it was to imagine a world in which intimacy was not in itself an unbearable torture. she only wanted it because she loved the pain; if she hadn’t, then she’d have run, yes, run, never looked back.
“take deep breaths,” mydei said. “the pain will pass.”
she did as she was told. she did not dispute him. but she said, “you don’t have to be so careful. i have seen priests rape young children and deer alike. i have seen what armies do wherever they go. i have seen what i need to know.”
“i am not those armies, or those priests,” mydei said. “you are not deer.”
“i have wished i was,” she said harshly. she said it to shock him, and it worked, though briefly.
“what else have you wished?”
“i have wished to die,” castorice said. “for my curse to backfire. i have wished to lose my voice and thoughts and will. i have wished for insanity to protect me from reality. i have wished for rape, so that i don’t have to take responsibility for the moment they die, and pretend it was their fault. i have wished for all of that, and worse.”
“castorice,” mydei said. “i too have wished to die. i have wished that there was anything in all amphoreus that could withstand my strife. there is enough war in me to destroy all of what we have left to us. i hold it down at every turn. i wish for a day when i must no longer endure.”
he pressed his mouth to her breasts as he spoke, and though it hurt, it hurt beautifully. he was not soft. he was not kind. his teeth were so sharp and she felt a broken consciousness of the impossible softness of her breasts, the fragility of the rotten, the way it broke when touched. that was her. she was white plaster crumbling and he had brought hammers. every touch devastated.
more and more. every moment. he pressed clawed fingers into her cunt and spread her open, hard metal ridges, sharp tips. blood and slick trickled out of her. all the while he mauled her with his mouth and his other hand, pinching her, tugging at her, twisting the tips of her ears, slapping her face, slapping her again until she opened her mouth and he could touch her tongue, pull on it until she gagged. “have you ever fucked yourself?” he asked. she made sounds, helpless to answer. he went on: “have you ever shoved anything into yourself? into your throat, your cunt? were you too scared?”
she didn’t need to speak to nod. he bit her, sinking his teeth deep into the tender pain-warm flesh of her breast, biting so hard that golden blood flowed. she cried out, again and again, heat growing painfully between her legs. she wanted that heat to come out. she wanted him to come in. to hurry.
he was cruel. he dragged the hard length of his cock between her legs, steady against her soaked cunt without ever slipping in. it was agonizing. “now,” she said, clawing at him. “now, mydei, lord mydei—”
he slapped her cunt. she stopped talking. there was no need to be so desperate when they were still touching, and had been this whole time, the pain so sweet it didn’t need to go away. it was to be cherished. adored.
“oh…”
“you liked that?” he pinched her clit viciously. she wailed. “you like the roughness?”
“it’s what hurts less!”
he softened. “less than being touched?”
she closed her eyes. “anyone can light a fire,” she said hollowly. “twist screws. swing a sword. raise a whip. you can do all that without touching a single hair of me.” shyly, and with difficulty, she whispered, “fuck me.”
“beg,” mydei’s eyes were smoldering.
“please,” she said, without dignity. “please. i—i have been all my life a monster. i’ve been death. but i am a woman, lord mydei. i am a woman and my cunt has never been torn. i want to bleed for you—i want you to make me.”
“fuck,” mydei snarled. “if that’s what you want—” he fucked into her, considerate and cruel at once. unrelenting. she spread her legs and cried out encouragingly. cried out on every thrust, every battering blow his cock struck to her body’s iron-walled defenses that broke them open, found the spot that shed blood and tore through it. she screamed and screamed but no one in a thousand years had come to her aid; no one came now. mydei heard and grinned like he’d won.
she raised her arms, the first time she’d touched him of her own volition, and twined her fingers through his honey-blond hair as he continued fucking her, stroked admiringly over the beaklike prow of his nose, defined eyebrows, his eyelids as fragile and tender as a child’s. the beautiful shape of his mouth.
it hurt to touch him; he burned like oil on her virgin hands. it hurt and she kept doing it, because he was touching her below, and deep inside, in the place no one else would ever reach.
no child, she knew, would survive her womb. but if anyone could have, he’d have been the one to manage it.
he was touching her and it was like being guilty of every crime at once, living every sentence, and only knowing it as bliss because she loved the sin. she was the sin. she had never felt anything like it before, such peace in her own existence.
she touched his corded neck, the heft of his shoulders, his arms. here was a man strong enough to throw an iron coffin into the sea. she saw in her mind the boats of the dead, murderers and rapists cast into the depths. she had stood by and heard their screams as they were nailed into their iron tombs. she had lit their lanterns. all her pain, set aflame, burnt in the colors of bliss.
he tortured her clit gently, with metal-clad fingers, stroked her to the agonizing edge and held her there, turning his attention to her breasts, which he lavished with almost paternalistic fervor, as though he saw them as fruit to feed his young. he was truly brutal, truly unrestrained. his eyes were mad. but there was no sense left in her either. they were alike, abandoned to each other and shared insanity.
she moved slowly, guided him to his back without letting him slip out of her, until she was straddling his body. she pressed her hands down on his chest and squeezed the beautiful breadth of them, laid over the most solid muscle. in this position his cock bore into her with the inarguable quality of gravity. her own weight and body worked against her. he was far too much inside; it was beyond what she could take, and she knew she was wet with not just slick but blood. but he knew too, and neither of them stopped. she rode him in quiet earnest. she rose on her knees until only the tip of his cock remained in her, and only the tips of his nails dug into his chest, and then collapsed, spearing herself. golden blood colored her nails, painted his shaft. it was beautiful.
he raised a hand to her hair, wrapping it around his fist, and wrenched her head back. “i want to see your tits bounce,” he said thickly. it brought tears to her eyes, strangely; this more than anything, that he saw her as a woman to desire for her body—he touched her and fucked her like a man. like he knew how to wring pleasure for himself out of her body where countless others had found only disaster.
he set a faster pace, driving herself harder, echoing her own wailing cries as she broke herself open on him—life into death, fucking it into submission. all this shattering a thousand years in the making.
when she came at last it was like cresting that peak at last, ripping through the clouds to see the sun or parting flowers to face death. an ecstasy she’d considered ever out of reach. and he came too, came inside her, came from her nails and her cunt’s animal tightening, and he shouted as he spilled, throbbing deeply into her, where she’d feel him even if she lived another thousand years.
i am done for, she thought. but she was tired, too. liquid with exhaustion she lay herself down on him without caring that he was still within her. it was so good to be full. full of life. it was so good to feel the way her cunt split for him, to take him. to cradle him selfishly inside her for as long as she could.
he kissed her mouth. her nose. her smarting ears. she moaned, melted iron, and did not even care that she was still in all but name a body of pain.
she slid weightlessly into sleep. he dozed off not long after, thinking that her body was no colder than his, and no more warm. they were the same.