Her fingers curled around the railing of her twisted iron balcony until her knuckles were stark white. She trembled in rage. Three whole blocks had been lost, burned to cinders, before the raging inferno had been put out. The sky was still coffin black, the stars blotted out with curling ash-gray smoke.
Vassiago had said he suspected Merris, but it was hard for Lillandyr to accept. You broke his heart, she reminded herself. Lillandyr closed her eyes and turned her back on the fire. She wore only a thin nightdress and while the air was warm enough, she shivered. She rubbed her arms as a strange emotion curdled inside her and tightened her throat. Sudden, angry hurt tears stung her eyes.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd cried, but she did so now, softly, into her hands. Oh, not for the lost lives, even if she should cry for them. She'd been too hasty with Merris and she had lost his friendship. Lillandyr hadn't realized how much she'd valued it until now. She swiped at the tears. She was a fool. He was after her Quarter, that much was plain now. He'd never cared for her. She was being played, just as she'd been played years before.
Many years before her stint as the Marquis of the Flesh Quarter, Lillandyr had worked with a black market merchant and militant revolutionary. It had been necessary to work with the radical group to bring her father down from his seat of power and to raise the Flesh Quarter from nothing. Dealing in the black market of the Underground had built the wealth needed to do both.
The merchant, Sylandris, had seduced her easily, for she had been younger then. He was handsome and charismatic, his smile as slick as oil on water, his touches slow and burning. All that wealth he had helped her to attain? He wanted to make it his. He'd used her. She'd been a fool.
Even thinking of it now made her face burn in rage and embarrassment. She wept harder for it. That Merris had been no different wounded her far more than it should.
Her mute servants hovered by the door to her room, looking out at their mistress crying on the balcony. They looked afraid. Good, she thought. They should be afraid. The whole city should tremble. And if they weren't already, she'd make them. Lillandyr stormed into the room and sent them away. They whimpered in fear of their mistress's displeasure and held each other's hands as they fled.
As soon as they were gone, she realized she didn't wish to be alone. "Xaphan," she called out sharply for her demon. She wished to have tea. Perhaps this time she'd let the demon have tea with her. In order to control him, she'd had to beat him into submission and he was a weak, sniveling creature now. Despite this, Lillandyr found his golden skin and strange, hissing speech lovely. Venorith's servants were all strange and lovely things and she desired to be close to her god now. Though not as favored as Merris was, Lillandyr held her own sway with the god of darkness. She was studious and faithful. She was powerful with mortals and held influence. Venorith admired such qualities in his mortal servants.
The demon did not come to her. She called again. Three more times. She pushed open the heavy doors to her private chambers, her study, and bedroom. Nothing. He was gone. Fear, like ice water, churned in the pit of her stomach. Lillandyr could feel the blood drain from her face as she sagged back against the wall. The demon was either free or Venorith had called him home to the Infernal Plane.
All of her arrogance peeled away and she sank to her knees. If Xaphan were free, he would come for her. He would rip the flesh from her bones, devour her, rape and torture her. Over and over. In this plane or his own. She had visited a great deal of humiliation on the creature because such flagrant examples and power plays were pleasing to Venorith.
Sinking to her knees she offered prayers. Exaltation. Begged forgiveness. There was no answer from the god. No brush of his angels' fingers. Nothing. That in and of itself wasn't cause for concern, for Venorith was fickle. But she couldn't shake her nervousness. Maybe it was the charred smell in the air, the cloying scent of death. All of that, coupled with Merris' betrayal and the disappearance of her demon, left her certain she'd displeased Venorith.
She dressed hastily in a thick, dark cloak thrown over her night dress. She yanked on her jackboots and wore a dagger at her hip. Lillandyr flew from her tower into the streets with the cowl of her cloak pulled low over her face. At street level, the damage from the fire was even more devastating. The smoke and flames had touched nearly every home. Soot rained from the sky still and the streets ran with dark, ash stained water. She passed a woman weeping openly in a gutter, holding the charred remains of... someone. Her child perhaps. It was hard to tell; the body was little more than blackened bones.
The Gilded Lily had once been a grand structure. She'd hired architects from the Artisan Quarter to design it. It was done in the style of the cities to the North. The cities across the sea. It had sweeping lines and pillars made of red marble. Golden discs had been fitted atop it so that it caught the light of the rising sun. The Gilded Lily had been the jewel on her crown. Now? It was a gutted out husk. It looked like the charred bones of some creature. Some monster. She stood and stared at it, feeling bile and anger eat away at her insides.
She heard the whispers. Ashtorath, the Lady's brother, had done this. The Unquenched should be burned. All of them. The Pale Witch had returned from her unexplained sleep and was raising the dead again. It was only a matter of time. They'd never be able to face her. The Lady was in league with the witch. A worshiper of Nehmain and Venorith.
Lillandyr sneered under her cowl. Fools, she thought. It wasn't all gossip. But those accusations needed to cease. Immediately. She ran the largest, most profitable Quarter in all of Belshalara. Being the largest made it the hardest to control. The dissenters needed to be quietly and swiftly put to the sword or sacrificed in the Flesh Pits.
Her delicately balanced house of cards was falling, caught in a spiral she feared she couldn't stop. Failure would mean her death. Her cloak was caught in the wind and it whipped it out like a dark flag. She felt like a harbinger for bad tidings and people hurried from her cloaked figure standing in the middle of the street looking at the shell of her once lovely Gilded Lily. Lillandyr looked down at her hands, delicate and beautiful. No one knew the things she'd done to have all of this. The lies she'd told.
And it had to stay that way.
Imperial police were said to arrive soon with their blood sniffing dogs. Good, she thought with venom. Let them all beat a path to Merris' door. Let them all suffer. She'd sent her own guards to his manor already. She walked amongst the burned ruins of the Lily and let the guards there see her face so that they let her. The place had yet to be consecrated; the deaths had not been in any god's name.
Lillandyr drew her dagger and carved the slashing star symbol of Venorith. Baellith's Feast was soon. But this? This was in the name of the god of darkness and despair. Her blood welled in her palm bright and lurid in the dim light of the gas lamps. She knelt in the rubble and threw her hood back. She closed her eyes and pressed her bloodied hand to the still hot earth.
She gave Venorith all her reverence, all her prayer. With her teeth bared and her eyes burning she ground her lacerated hand into the still smoldering ground. Bits of wood and glass bit into her skin, and the soil and ash drank her blood.
"Every death," she whispered as the rain began to fall from the gray, swollen sky. "Every anguished cry. They belong to you, Venorith." Her prayer was heard and the lines in the soil made by her blood glowed a malevolent red. Heard and favored. Her god wasn't angry. Not with her.
She stood and affixed her cowl. Her clacking, angry steps led her to the manor of Meriweather Osterious. It was a dour, bleak looking building. Colorless. It was gray and looked as though it were built from the bones of the earth. She pressed her bloody hand against the twisted iron and ebon wood gate. "Curse you," she said. She could see her men along with the imperial guard moving in and out of the main entrance to the manor, searching it. If they found even a scrap of evidence against him, he would be brought to the Flesh Pits.
The words of her curse died on her lips as she watched lamps being lit in the house, golden light blooming from window to darkened window as her men moved about inside. A slow, sinking realization stole over her. She cared for the strange man with the moth sigil. She ached to go to him, to touch him again. Even after all he'd done.
With her blood and the ash that still stained her hand, she traced a simple sutra on the gate. "Venorith," she breathed softly. "Watch over him. Blind my men so that they find nothing." She leaned in and kissed the jagged star traced in her blood and felt the heat and tingle of magic at her lips.
Lillandyr stole down dark alleys to go back to her tower. When she ascended the main carpeted steps up to her room, she found that she was too exhausted to even bathe. She let her cloak fall and stripped off her boots. Her nightdress too. Her hand was caked in blood and ash and it seemed fitting that it stay that way. At least till dawn. She felt empty inside and she sent away her servants with harsh, painful thoughts that made them cower and weep.
She felt cruel.
She lay in her bed, sinking down into the silks and velvets. She wept bitterly like a child. She thought herself foolish. Lillandyr longed for... she didn't even know. Something. Someone. It was never enough. Not enough power, not enough coin. Not enough magic. She had to have more. And others had to suffer so that it could all be hers. She would be Empress. And then she would conquer the cities across the sea. And beyond that and beyond that...
These thoughts lulled her to sleep. She wished and prayed for sweet, soft dreams to soothe her jagged nerves, but it was a night for dark magic. Baellith had drunk much blood and had consumed much flesh. The Flesh Pits doubled their sacrifices in preparation for the Feast Day. All the dreams in the Flesh Quarter were steeped in sex and death.
Lillandyr's were no different, for as powerful as she was, she was not god-touched. She was merely a mortal woman.
In her dream she was falling and falling, tumbling end over end. She wore a gown of crimson silk that trailed high, high behind her, whipping in the darkness as she hurtled towards black waters that yawned wide to drink her whole.
She somehow knew, as one does in dreams, that if the water took her, she would die. She would drown in the cold black. She screamed and screamed as she fell forever.
But soft hands touched her, drew her from her spiraling downfall. They were warm, silk. They drew her close and brushed away the tears from her face. She couldn't see. Her savior was blurred and against her. His hands were everywhere and she needed and wanted. Please, she moaned, please save me. Help me. Don't go.
But he left her alone in a strange place. The earth beneath her hands and knees was writhing, slick flesh. It sickened her as it undulated and sighed, a thousand copulating bodies entwined. They all wore her face. Even the men. She was ill and she ran as their hands grasped at her ankles, as they tried to draw her in. They tore at her clothes and hair. They ripped her to shreds.
Then she was walking naked along a gray shore, tired and cold. She didn't know where she was going but the rocks and pebbles hurt the soles of her feet and the sound of the crashing waves was deafening and only grew louder and louder. She smelled blood.
Lillandyr sank to her knees, too tired to go on. It was then that she felt his hands on her once more, warm and soft. He tipped up her chin. Merris. He spoke to her, but it was too quiet to hear over the crashing waves. I love you, she told him. I love you, please... He didn't hear her. Her lips weren't even moving. She was nude before him, stripped of artifice and deception. She wore no fancy silk or cosmetics. Only her skin. She trembled and ached for him. He touched her breasts, her stomach; he drew her atop him, straddling him. She kissed him. Oh, his mouth was sweet.
In his parlor with the stuffed, dead creatures watching, their maws full of razored ivory teeth, the gods were there too. Venorith, tall and rail-thin with the head of a raven and the breasts of a woman. Nehmain, the ram's skull blazing with green witch lights all dressed in rattling bones and stinking of the open grave. Baellith, a smiling, golden haired youth, his mouth full of blood and nude with both sets of genitals. Turtih drenched in blood and ringed in fire. Eryss with her ephemeral visage, ever changing, happy and sad and enraged and calm. She was like the sea. Ysimul with the head of a fox, clever and quick, she danced and danced as Merris pressed her down on the wine-stained rug. Their very union was written in the stars.
And the stars wheeled above their heads, constellations changing until their names were scrawled over the heavens like graffiti. She reached for him but he was cruel and he pinned her arms above her head.
He took her on a marble slab and it was cold and bit at her soft skin. He wore the masks of the gods over his face, each one in turn. He fucked her and he had many hands, many arms. She cried out sweetly over and over as he pushed inside her. I love you, she told him. I'm sorry. Forgive me, forgive me.
But it was all a trick and the waters swallowed her down greedily. The water was ice and it made her limbs sluggish. She tried to fight, to kick, and struggle her way to the surface, but a thousand hands with sharp fingers sank into her flesh and dragged her down. There, below the churning, raging sea were the angels and demons of Venorith. Hungry for her flesh and blood.
She drowned and they feasted on her body. And yet she dreamed on. She watched them tear her apart, her soul thin and tired dancing in the eddies of the current of the cold ocean. Her soul, she knew, would be next. Black, shadow fingers curled around what was left of her. And it was Nehmain, it was death. It came for beautiful women in their towers too. Death came for everyone.
Lillandyr woke screaming.
There, on the pillow next to her head was...
Xaphan. His eyes were rubies ringed in golden lashes. She startled, but it was an odd comfort. Maybe Venorith had been so pleased by her blessing that –
No. No, it was all wrong. He was too still. There was a foul smell in the air. She sat up and saw that his head wasn't attached to anything. And that coiled around her body were his long, long golden limbs. Each one severed very neatly, surgically.
Panic and bile bubbled up in her throat and screams tore from her lips. She threw back the blankets. And that's when they scurried. That's when she saw them.
Spiders, pale, spindly spiders crawled over her naked skin. Some were on her breasts, some at her sex, her thighs, her legs, and arms. Spiders made of flesh. Fingers. They were stitched together fingers, and they caressed her, touched her, and danced over her skin.
Lillandyr flung herself from the bed and tore them from her flesh. They tried to dig in, left red welts on her with their sharpened nails. Sobbing, she made her way into the bathing chamber and shut and locked the door. Her heart drummed painfully behind her breastbone as though it were trying to beat a path outside her chest. She was disoriented from sleep still and couldn't quite make sense of what she'd seen. Felt. The dream was on her tongue and fresh in her mind, though parts of it were lost in fog.
Parts of it were lost, but not the parts where she confessed her love and adoration for Merris the Moth.
He had done this, she thought. She knew instantly. He had sent those... things, those spiders made of stitched-together fingers. He had butchered her demon Xaphan and placed him in her bed. He had burned down her Gilded Lily.
And she loved him.
And she hated him.
Lillandyr screamed and screamed in fury and pain and rage until her servants arrived despite the demand that they stay away. They couldn't scream, not really. They moaned in terror and fled. They fled their mistress to get the guards. A butchered demon lay posed in her bed and his blood stained everything and scented the room in rot and sulfur.
She drew a scalding bath and scrubbed until her skin was angry and red and aching and stinging. She sobbed and couldn't catch her breath.
Lillandyr never noticed when Vassiago stepped into the room. He was always so light on his feet. She didn't know that he picked her lock. She couldn't see his maniacal smile as he drew her weeping from her bath and held her, stroking her damp hair.
"Our golden serpent," he murmured to her. "Our lovely Lily." She didn't catch his play on words. She was too distraught. He petted her and took no liberties with her body. Surely he wasn't that foolish. He shushed and soothed, lips curled in a rictus grin she couldn't see. "They are all gone now, driven away. Burned and cast out. The demon? Gone. The guards didn't see. We took him away and you needn't fret."
She nodded, her eyes wide as she held onto Vassiago. Her hands fisted into his velvet doublet. She was mute, in shock and shivering though she wasn't cold.
She couldn't go to Merris now. It was all past forgiveness. He despised her. And she hated him for doing this to her. It was beyond violation. He knew. And he threatened with this knowledge. He knew what god she worshiped. He could ruin her.
She had to ruin him first.
"My Lady," Vassiago murmured, his tone hesitant. "Now may not be the time, but you must know. We can keep nothing from my lovely Lady of Shadows."
She nodded. Tell me, she thought. Tell me.
"The Oracle has chosen. She has spoken the name. The fires burn red in the temples and the smoke that rises is pinked. Baellith has chosen who will defile you in his name."
Her heart thudded painfully. "Who?" she croaked, her voice breaking.
Vassiago drew in a sharp breath and held her very tightly. "Meriweather Osterious."
She wept.