She fought him, raged at him. She thrashed and screamed and garnered far too much attention. His kind was not loved and seeing him dragging a hysterical woman through the streets was not at all endearing. But Ashtorath was fearsome and no one followed. At least, not alone. They formed a small mob of men with bats and swords, kitchen knives and clubs, torches too.
It made him smile. Untrained, the lot of them, some of them drunk, some of them old. Ten men, no more than twelve. He'd taken on half a village only hours before. They posed no real threat but he would be happy to meet them in battle if that was their desire. He'd have a belly full of their flesh by dawn.
Even weighed down by the thick, black plated armor that covered his body, Ashtorath still ran faster than the men chasing them. He took great loping strides over the cobbled streets. The sky was lit an eerie orange and gray from the blazing fire at the Gilded Lily. He wondered why they thought he'd done it. He'd never use fire. If he wanted those whores dead, he'd have killed them with his bare hands. Fire was the work of someone who wanted to hide something. Ashtorath never hid his handiwork.
But he was tired of fighting her, tired of running. It angered him because she was ungrateful for what he'd done. For the lives sacrificed because of her. Many parts of the Flesh Quarter were empty, too run down to be habitable. They were old row houses from the time before Lillandyr had come to rule, before she'd made a proper Quarter out of the dung heap that had occupied this space formally. Not all portions of the Quarter were finished being remade. She used the Feast of Saint Baellith to garner coin to fix up the city. This pushed the illegal prostitutes and drug dealers deeper and deeper into the ruins or down below in the Hidden Quarter. He knew that though this place looked empty, it was far from it. People hid in the rubble like cockroaches. It wasn't safe, but it would do. They wouldn't linger long.
With a plated boot, Ashtorath kicked a door and the rotten, sagging wood flew into splinters. He dragged her by her thin, pale arm into the "house." It was just a room stinking of piss and shit, ammonia and other unpleasant smells. Mold. Death. She protested loudly and he slammed her against a wall with peeling, floral paper and clapped a hand over her mouth. Hard. Too hard. It would likely bruise her. He was sorry... he was so sorry but he couldn't stop himself.
"Llara," he rumbled. "Don't scream."
Her eyes narrowed at him.
"Please. Give me only a moment. Just be quiet." He tried to sound gentle, but he knew he snarled in her face like a wild, rabid animal. "Hear me. Please." He only wished his begging sounded sweet. It didn't. It sounded like a threat. Slowly, he let his hand drop from her face. Blood smeared her lower lip. He'd been too rough.
Everything inside him constricted. His vision tunneled. Blood. Her sweet, red blood. It sang to him like a siren and her death would be the rocky shore that would break him apart and destroy him. He could rest then, couldn't he?
But no. He would never allow himself rest if he snuffed out the only good thing left in the whole world. With trembling fingers, he touched her face. She hated him. Feared him. He couldn't keep her. He knew that.
He cupped her soft, lovely face in his hands and leaned in and pressed his cold, blue lips to her forehead. Grief twisted inside him. He smelled the sweetness of her hair. He trembled.
"You can go," he told her, his voice a mournful wind across the jagged mountains, the stony cold of lonesomeness and loss. But he held her now, crushed her to his chest, tangled his fingers in her hair. Don't, please, he thought. I'll lose myself if you go. She should, he realized. She should go and be happy, live her life in the sun. Be free. He was greedy and cruel. He couldn't cry anymore. But had he the ability, he would've then.
She made muffled protests and didn't hold him back. Why would she?
It broke him anyway. Now, he wanted her to pretend. To lie to him. Just once. Just once he wanted and needed her to lie and love him.
"I love you," he told her. His voice was too soft. Did she even hear him? "Llara," he murmured, his voice a deep rumble, his voice as cold as winter. He kissed her softly, like she deserved. It was still too hard. He couldn't be delicate. He felt numb. "I love you. Stay. Stay with me." He looked down into her face. He didn't see the love or the lie. He saw her naked fear and revulsion. "I don't have long, Llara. Soon, the madness will take me. But I won't let it. I will end myself before it happens."
He released her and took a step back. Her arms had a myriad of purple bruises. Her mouth too. He was a monster.
"Why?" she asked him, her voice quiet, but not timid. She was never timid. So strong, Llara was the strongest woman he had ever known. "Why... me?"
He turned to look at the moon's silver light spill over the broken floorboards. "I do not know," he told her truthfully. There were women more beautiful. Women who would've pretended to love him for the right amount of coin. "I just know that when I was drowning and lost, when despair clawed inside me and the madness was swallowing me whole, your light pulled me to the shore. I am lost without you."
Now, standing with a woman he had stolen who did not love him, Ashtorath realized that he had abandoned his men and the duties his half-sister had given him. If he went back he'd likely find no solace with either. He could not promise her that he would not hurt her, that he would not turn on her and kill her. He could promise her nothing but misery.
She didn't answer him. He could hear the quick beat of her heart, the sharp, panting sounds of her breath. She shifted and the grit under her low-heeled boots was loud in the squalid house.
"Stay," he said again, sliding his hands up her arms. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her jaw. He teased the razored edge of his wicked teeth along her throat. Llara drew in a sharp breath and he did not know whether it was in desire or fear. So he pulled back to look into her eyes, to see the truth that she couldn't hide with her whore's smile.
"I'm... scared," she admitted in a tiny voice. "I'm... afraid of you," she confessed. Yet her eyes did not tear away. She did not cower. She admitted her fear boldly and nakedly.
He dragged his big, rough fingers down her face, her cheek. "Good," he said. "I am a monster." It was not a difficult admission. It was not boasting. It was a simple admission. There were more words, more things he wanted to say, but he didn't know how.
He had given her the option of running, of leaving and escaping. But she did not leave. She instead looped her arms around his neck and pressed her forehead to his cold, dead skin. A splash of tears leaked from her eyes down his neck and looped across his throat like the cut of a knife. He felt her tremble as more tears dropped from her eyes. "But you're a monster who saved me," she said in a shaking whisper.
For a long moment, he didn't hold her back. Her tears, her wounded expression cut through him. He didn't feel calm. He didn't feel the anger rise inside him or the lust for blood, he felt nothing. Cold and detached. He hadn't saved her, he thought. He'd only just wanted her. He tipped her chin up and kissed her; it was brief, rough. "You should run."
He felt the press of her lips as she kissed him back. She attempted to linger when he pulled away, but then relented. "No," she said as she brushed her hand through the melted moonlight of his silken hair. "Not unless you run with me." Her pale brows knotted in concern as she looked into his face. "Will you come with me?" she asked. "Protect me? We can... we can go beneath the city. And perhaps from there, we can travel elsewhere. Anywhere. For once, we can both be free."
She gave herself to him and it was what he wanted. For himself. Not for her. He pulled her to him and kissed her until he could feel it. Until it hurt her, not because he wished to cause her pain; he didn't. But because it was the only way he could feel it too. His hand tangled in her hair and he pulled her head back and laved his tongue over her throat, over the frantic beat of her pulse. "Until the madness takes me," he rumbled against her neck. "I will be with you."
She made a small, squelching noise as if a pang of fear and pain laced through her. She said his name quietly, "Ashtorath," but then she was pliable and loose. A rabbit caught in the jaws of a wolf. An intake of sharp, cold breath and she tightened her grip around his neck. She attempted to reel him closer, against the chilly, moldy walls of the house.
She had never wanted him before, never desired his touch, or sought it willingly, not really. She didn't have to now. He would, if she wished, let her go. But that little spark, the tightening of her grip around his neck, tugging him to her undid any reserves of tenuous self-control he had left and he lifted her, wrapped her legs around his waist, and pushed her against the wall. He couldn't make love to her, no, but he could please her.
Like a boy, his hands trembled as she moved against him. Maybe, he thought, she was just pleased to be able to make a choice for once. "Ah, I wish," he told her as he sank to his knees and placed her legs over his shoulders. "I wish... and wish..." He slid her dress over her slim legs.
Tears slipped down her cheeks and her lower lip trembled, still stained with her blood and bruises. "What do you wish, Ashtorath?" she whispered, still so afraid.
With his icy, dead fingers he tugged her underthings to the side. He never answered her. He lapped at the slit of her sex, delved his cold tongue between the sweet lips, and drank her honey. Her taste was bright and sweet, warm and alive, and her cries were poetry. They were cool waters in which he could bathe his sore and ragged soul. His fingers pressed into her hips. Ashtorath wanted to weep. I wish I were alive. I wish I could make love to you and make you heavy with my child and have that life I wanted so badly. My farm. My son.
But Llara was not the wife he murdered.
She would never quicken with his child.
His son was dead.
And so was he. And soon, the madness would take him away and Nehmain would drag him to the Underworld to serve for all eternity and he would never find any sort of peace, and he would never get to see his Llara again.
So he savored her now. He worshiped her now and it was bright. It burned him to cinders and tore him to pieces. But that was all right. He felt her writhe, her small fingers slide through his hair as she bucked against his mouth. And when she came he rose to kiss her mouth, to let her taste what he'd done, to let her feel how her skin had warmed his face.
Llara's kiss was so sweet, so trembling and fleeting, and he thought that this was the moment. That he'd caught the moment in time so precious when things between them changed. And though it wasn't possible, he was certain she saved his soul with that yearning kiss. He was sure in that moment that he wasn't a damned, dead thing.
But it was over so quickly. He could hear them, the men with their torches, rattling their weapons, calling for his head. He smoothed her skirts and brushed her hair away from her face.
"You can still run," he said as he moved to the door. He half turned and held out his hand to her.
Her face was grim and flushed, but she took his hand and this time she ran with him.