CW/TW: Slight non con. Sexual content
Castalline followed after Merris and his growing entourage. They tugged at him, ushered him to and fro. He looked beautiful, resplendent in the white robes they dressed him in. Like an ancient Pithian king. But he looked nervous too, afraid. No one else noticed, but Castalline did. His hands trembled.
Hope fluttered in her heart. He didn't want to do it. He didn't truly love Shadowglade. She had a chance and he wouldn't cast her out as the Maestro had done. She would be free to love and live like a normal woman for once. Not some god-touched thing.
She wore all gray and had let Lauris wind pearls around her throat. She was dressed like a little doll or a girl. Not a woman. On soft leather shoes she padded far behind the trail of revelers and well-wishers. The air sang with music and cheering. Streamers and ribbons in every bright color under the sun trickled down from windows as people waved the Osterious banner. On them, on a gray field was the black death's head hawk moth. Castalline gathered her flowing skirts and skittered along in the shadow of the parade.
There were so many people and it terrified her. She could get lost so easily, swept aside in a sea of flesh. No one really paid her much mind; they were all too busy groping at each other. It made her sick, turned her stomach. The air stank of people and sweat and writhing bodies. Merris marched onwards, farther and farther away from her. She wanted to cry out, beg him to come back to her. She felt that if he did this, he was lost to her forever.
Every mortal brushed by the fingers of the gods could see into the future, at least in some small measure. Castalline convinced herself that it was a bleak vision of a dire future and she pushed through the crowd as the drums throbbed and the crowd screamed in a fevered pitch. The earth tipped wildly under her feet, but she pressed on, dizzy and nauseous. She couldn't see Merris anymore and her cry of his name only joined the thousand already doing so. She was insignificant. She didn't matter. He was gone and she had lost him. Gone forever.
It hollowed her out and she wept, still pushing at arms and legs and bodies that got in her path. Her very presence inspired more debauchery. Hands that had only accidentally brushed against her now touched her with purpose and intent. She said no, but wasn't heard. Hands tore at her dress, her hair. They spilled her pearls on the street and they skittered away. Castalline's eyes filled with tears.
She managed to break from the mass of bodies as they churned down the street. Terror stole her breath and made her tremble. With wide, gray eyes she watched the procession head towards the tall, glittering spires of the temple. Merris, she thought. There was surely still time.
But fear made her legs leaden and she just shook against a cold, damp wall of an adjacent building. A butcher's shop. Tears, hot and stinging, snaked down her cheeks. She felt scraped out, a vessel and cup, an empty place for devils to dance.
Castalline didn't know what to do. It was a bigger thing than she could manage. She couldn't stop what was going to happen. Merris would ascend the temple and lay with Lillandyr Shadowglade and her doom would be spelled out in soft moans, cries of pleasure and skin against skin. She would never taste his kisses or hold his regard. Not ever again.
Despair curled inside her like poison and she carved out her own black place in a bright world of ticker tape and streamers and bright sigils on flags that whipped in the sweet, spring air. With a guttural sob, Castalline pressed her palms to the sides of her head and sank down, sprawled against the wall. She wept bitterly.
Cruel, harsh hands curled around her fragile arms and dragged her up so that her still lacerated back screamed in pain and protest. Castalline cried out and was silenced by a leather glove sliding over her mouth. She barely got to look at him before the man dragged her away with strength his lithe form should not have possessed. He was dressed in leather and velvet and lace, gilded and lovely, all in peacock colors. His shoes were curled with bells that jangled and lace spilled from his collar. Gems sparkled on his harlequin's costume, and the mask that sat half on his face was painted to grin like the most wicked devil. His face, oh, but it was beautiful. Beautiful like the angels of Eryss, angular and perfectly formed. His eyes were a smoldering amber and his hair the color of spun gold.
But he was no angel.
The man, the clown and jester, broke down the door to the butcher's shop and yanked her after him. It stank of copper and meat, though it was cool and dark. He pushed and prodded until he had her against a metal wall, the tip of a dagger under her chin, his other hand on her hip, leather creaking as his fingers sank into her skin.
"Should not have flown from your cage," he hissed in her ear. "Should not be out and about making trouble, silly – little – Muse." His voice was music laced with poison, spilling threats into her ear.
Castalline trembled and cried, but found no mercy. "Oh, why do you weep, hmm? We must know why it is so sad." His nose brushed down her cheek as he inhaled against her skin. Smelling her. He was smelling her.
She couldn't answer him, not at first, not until his dagger bit the tender flesh under her chin and drew a bead of crimson. She couldn't even scream. So she spoke, spilled the secrets of her heart to the devil in the darkness. "Merris," she gasped out. "I love him and he goes to lay with Lady Shadowglade."
The man laughed and pressed himself against her. "Oh ho? Do you? You love the Moth? Stupid girl." He didn't call her an "it" or a Muse. But a girl. It made her oddly pleased. Even if she died here, she'd die a girl with love in her heart and not a god's voice in her ear. The dagger dropped away but Castalline didn't breathe any easier. "If you love the Moth as you say, we think you must do something about it, yes?"
Castalline turned her wet face towards the clown. He was so beautiful and oddly familiar, the cut of his jaw, the precise symmetry of his features. "Do... something?" she asked, feeling stupid, foolish as he said.
"Oh yes. Yes. We don't like the designs the Moth puts on our Lady of Shadows. We think our little Muse should do something about it." His hand came up to cup her chin, to pinch it between thumb and forefinger, turning her head this way and that. "The pretty, sad little Muse should drive the Lady of Serpents away. The Muse wants to keep the Moth all to herself, does she not?"
Her brow furrowed and she tried to wrench her face from his grasp, but it was futile and he snarled at her. "I do," she confessed. "But I... can't. He doesn't love me. He loves Lady Shadowglade."
"No!" the clown barked in her face, his teeth very white. In the dim light, they looked sharp, though they weren't. "The Moth can't love. Doesn't love. He is cruel. But he can be yours. Pretty little Castalline. Oh yes," he said when her eyes widened. "We know your name. We know what you've done." He shook her and laughed, his hands tight on her arms. She cried and begged and it only made him laugh harder. "Shut up! Stop blubbering. We hate weeping. It's so... so pointless. He hates it too, crying. You mustn't cry. We know. We know what he likes. What you must do."
His hands gripped her arms just shy of bruising them and his breath was warm and sweet, washing over her face. He wasn't an elf, she realized as she looked fearfully into the golden disk of his eye. Nor was he an angel or god-touched. He was something else entirely.
She swallowed thickly, her head swimming. "Wh-what must I do?" she squeaked, trying not to struggle too much. His hands only gripped her more firmly when she did; he only pressed himself harder against her when she tried to get away.
The jester's hand gently stroked through her hair. He allowed the silvery ends to drip through his fingers. He answered with a hiss, his tongue flickering against his teeth like a snake. "Tell him," he whispered in her ear. "Tell him that you and he – he and you –" he paused and giggled with a jester's grimace, "Should be together. The Lady of Shadows does not love him, cannot love him. She is too good for him, our precious Lady. But think about it. Think," he said as he tapped her temple, his fingertip striking her too hard, like the beat of a drum, "how perfect you are for each other! God-touched and precious. You two could understand one another, couldn't you? Kindred spirits."
Her pale face blossomed in color. Castalline became breathless with the thought. Perfect. Ordained in the stars. Destiny. "Yes," she murmured, fear forgotten for a moment. "Yes, I'll tell him. I'll tell him how much I love and desire him. I have from the moment I saw him," she told the clown. "I knew and I would never talk to him as Lady Shadowglade did. I'd never reject him!" Her tone was so hopeful that even she could catch the thick desperation in it.
He pulled away and hopped on one foot, then the other. It was a tiny dance of glee. He clapped his hands. Then he stopped. In a liquid thrust, he was close to her again. Too close, he hovered over her. His lips brushed her throat as if he were about to strike with twin venomous fangs. He did not; he only spoke. "Perfect," he breathed, his hands sliding through her soft tresses of hair. "Perfect, wonderful, and lovely... lovely as you, dear Muse. We work together, you and Vassiago. We protect our Lady, keep her name honorable... and you? Why, you get the flutter of a moth. Hmm. Hmm..." He brushed suggestively against her as his eyes came to a daydreaming close.
At first, she almost found his maniac dance delightful. He was a madman, but then, hadn't she been accused of madness herself once or twice? She allowed herself a childish little smile until Vassiago stole it away by pressing intimately against her. It was the Feast of Saint Baellith and everything, every whisper and touch of skin, was charged and blessed. And though her heart belonged to Merris Osterious, her pulse quickened and she sucked in a sharp little breath. His lips were soft, like the brush of a feather against her throat, and she could smell the leather of his clothes and the rich perfume about his person. Her eyes fluttered shut too. "I'll do it," she promised him, licking her suddenly dry lips. "I... I can convince him it's true." Oh, but she wasn't supposed to use the powers of Eryss in such a fashion. "I can make him feel doubt and fear when he hears her name."
"Good! Good," he muttered as an afterthought. It was clear that the strange harlequin had barely even heard her. His lips were dragging against her neck, his hips brushing against her body. "Do it," he sneered again, his teeth raking on her throat. Vassiago's hands had draped down her sides against her small, bony hips.
Desire lanced through her, hot and urgent. She knew that it was the work of Baellith and his angels. The god demanded that all lust and pain and pleasure this day belong to him. And though she knew there was no shame in giving into the will of the god, she felt it color her face anyway. Her mind buzzed with fear and trepidation and want for Merris, but her body curled up to meet the clown's touches.
Vassiago tore away the rest of her clothes, stripped her down to only her ivory stockings. He laughed at her, cruel and mocking, and turned her to press her against the wall. He oooh'd at her scars and traced his gloved fingertips over them. Then his lips. Then his tongue. She arched for him and moaned. Castalline could feel the pounding of the drums outside through the wall of the butcher's shop, feel it in the hard tips of her breasts, her belly.
She thought of Merris then, on the altar. She wished...
Vassiago bit her throat and stroked gloved fingers between her legs. He only teased her a moment and then made her taste her own arousal on his leather-clad fingers. As his fingers slid between her lips he pushed himself inside her. "And now," he snarled, his voice low and full of a darkness so profound it made her weep. "And now I have your Muse too."
It was artless and brief. It was hateful and frenzied and over very quickly. He left her without another word. Only the cold at her back and the warmth of his seed trailing down her thigh heralded his leaving. Slowly, Castalline turned, trembling to gather her torn clothes. She dressed as the crowd rose up as one voice to scream the name of her love to the vault of the heavens.
And she wept and wept over the love of Merris. She gnashed her teeth and let the madness tear into her. She clutched at the sides of her head and sobbed and screamed. She couldn't even hear her own voice over the din of the revelers. Jackals, vultures, she thought balefully. Hate and jealousy curdled black inside her, their tendrils strangling every last tender part of her until they lay dead and gray inside her heart. Her nails bit into the flesh of her palms and drew blood. The pain was good; it brought clarity and she bled in the name of Baellith.
"Help me," she murmured. "Lord of Flesh."
And the god listened to the little Muse. Her sacrifice of pleasure and pain had been pleasing. She rose, mopping at her face, composing herself. She walked home and she waited like a tiger in the tall grass for Merris.