Vassal Sterling D'Este (top 10 books of all time .TXT) 📖

And he was right.

Etienne had failed.

He could not respond, could not free himself. He just closed his eyes, desperate to block out the sight of Alphonse standing with the heart raised above her head while his tears soaked through the fingers of Tristan’s glove.

❂

The last fluttering beats of the heart drummed in her palm, and Enyo sighed, stroking it lovingly. She turned and spotted Delyth, and more importantly, Calamity.

Her blessed, beautiful, clever little sword. So sweet. So darling.

“Ba’oto. You wield her well.” Her voice was husky with lust. Sauntering closer to the priestess, heart in hand, she was preening. Her bloody fingers ran through her hair, combing it back from her dirt-smeared, gore-spattered face. She swallowed in anticipation and stopped only a foot away from the priestess.

Her priestess had offered this sacrifice. She had killed and maimed in Enyo’s name. In honor of her Goddess. “For my most faithful servant.” Enyo held up the mangled heart, ember eyes wide with hunger but steady. She would let Delyth have the first taste.

༄

Delyth came back to herself in a series of dizzying flashes. Her head was pounding, the blood rushing through her ears. Her breathing was heavy, but there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen in the air around her, and her hip throbbed painfully. A stab wound? She didn’t remember getting it.

All around her lay the dismembered bodies of dead farmers. Boneless. Sightless.

Again.

It had happened again.

And it was useless to blame the sword. Cowardly. But still, she wanted it out of her hands. Off her skin. She wiped it hurriedly and thrust it back into its sheath.

Delyth was already a monster.

She didn’t need Calamity’s help.

And then there was Enyo, standing before her with the still-warm heart of the man she had killed dripping down her forearm, thrusting it towards her priestess, her Ba’oto.

All this carnage and still Delyth had not been able to stop Enyo from sullying Alphonse’s hands with the death of another.

“Isn’t this—” Delyth’s voice broke around the words, her hands outstretched towards the bodies around them. “Isn’t this enough for you?”

Flame filled eyes widened even more, the look of a dog about to snap.

“Yuk, Ba’oto,” Enyo commanded.

Delyth just turned her face away. She would not eat the heart.

Hadn’t she proven herself animal enough?

The Goddess’s lips peeled back in displeasure as Delyth refused to eat the offering. Just as it seemed she might slap Delyth or consume the heart herself, she chuckled.

Flames turned to embers, which transformed into amber eyes, and Alphonse stood before her, heart still outstretched as if she were offering some sweet fruit to her lover.

Her pale face crumpled and she choked on words barely whispered, her lips moving but only the weakest of sounds coming out. “No… no… no…”

Delyth’s expression twisted with grief as Alphonse took in the scene around them, her gentle features morphing into a silent scream. Tremors rippled through her body, and the heart jiggled in her clutches as Alphonse shook. It looked as if she’d be ripped apart by the convulsions as she turned to see the man, prostrate on the ground. Missing a heart.

Of all the cruelest things Enyo had subjected the healer to, none had come close to this, to waking up to find herself coated in the blood and flesh of a simple man.

Never before had Delyth wished for Enyo to have remained.

She stepped forward and placed a hand on Alphonse’s face, dragging her eyes away from the carnage. “This was not you, bykhan.”

She could not erase the scene around them, could not scrub it from the healer’s memory like so much filth.

But she could get them away.

Delyth tugged Alphonse closer, leaned down, and swept her up so that she was cradled against the warrior, legs hanging over one arm, back braced by the other. Then, with a sweep of great, black wings, Delyth flung them both into the air and away from the battlefield.

Below her, she could see Tristan step back from Etienne to watch them depart, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. All that mattered was getting Alphonse away from the stench of blood and broken bodies.

Delyth pressed Alphonse close to keep her from the bite of the wind and turned from the road almost immediately. She kept her eyes down and flew close to the treeline, searching.

It took a while before she found what she was looking for, but when she did, she angled quickly downward, taking more care than usual with her landing.

When she straightened, they were surrounded by the gentle rustling of mountain pines and the trickling of a small, cold spring. It wasn’t much water, but it would carry away the blood that drenched them. The priestess set Alphonse down gently and caressed her cheek.

“Are you with me, aderyn bak dewr?”

❀

Alphonse couldn’t stop the shivering even if she wanted to, her body as repulsed by what she had done as her heart.

Quickly she loosened her grip on the mangled clump of flesh still in her palm, wincing as it plopped onto the ground with a wet smack. Her hand ached, as if punching it through that man's chest had nearly broken her bones. It was a miracle it hadn’t.

Turning away, Alphonse looked up at the nearby trees, mute now. They had been murmuring and laughing the entire journey, but now they stood in repugnant silence. 

Alphonse couldn’t blame them. She found herself deplorable as well. The dark smudge in her heart where Enyo had rooted was growing, becoming a gaping maw that all but consumed the healer.

Empty eyes trailed down to her hands, stained red.

Delyth slipped around Alphonse and took her cleaner hand, leading her slowly towards the stream. At the bank, she kneeled and tugged Alphonse down after her.

“This will be cold, little bird.” She took both Alphonse’s hands and thrust them into the frigid ice melt, scrubbing at the dried blood with her fingers. “You’ll feel better when it's gone, dear one. I promise.”

Swirls and spirals of blood dispersed in the freezing water.