The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 06

Cyrus' back hove into the moonlight as she rounded the bed. His skin was layered with fine scoring, like chipped bark; criss-crossing marks, peppered pinpricks, and messy bursts of white marring; decades of strikes hewn into him, like an old tree that lovers sign with knives.

She came to stand behind him, bracing her bare feet. She slowly uncoiled her hand from the tasselled, twin tails and smiled subtly at the pale flush on her palm. "Are you ready for me to hurt you, my scavenger?"

Cyrus' shoulders rolled and the muscle shifted disjointedly in his tensed back. "I am, Mistress."

"Do you desire pain?"

"I do, Mistress."

"And will you take it until the ghoul's frenzy is abated? You accept that you need this pain? That it is your responsibility to take it, to yourself and to me?"

"I do, Mistress." Cyrus' voice was a toneless chant, ritualistic. "Please, hurt me, Mistress." His fingers splayed on the damask wall. "Break me with pain and own me with compassion. I ask you, Mistress, beat me like a beast to keep me human."

"I will. It is my right, because you belong to me."

"It is your right, because I belong to you."

She raised the whip. She brought it down in a powerful stroke with the spitting sound of a cobra. It whisked across Cyrus' back. He barely flinched. Another mark vanished into the thicket. She flexed her wrist, fitting her grip perfectly to the hilt. She struck again, harder. Again, harder. Her unnatural strength stirred, her bicep rising and her abs tensing under her hanging nightgown. Cyrus stayed still, not breathing. She pulled her hand back further and the writhing tongue gashed the moonbeams and lashed him with a splitting sound. His fingers went crooked on the wall. She spotted the infinitesimal movement and sucked on her lip. She repeated the act. Muscle memory flickered awake. Her body slotted into the familiar routine of reclaiming, wiring to sense his needs where he could not. His knuckles went bulbous. He was starting to feel her now, even in his numb flesh. A cold thwip through the air and he grunted this time as the impact barbed him.

"You know no hunger," Vestlia cooed. "You know no rage." The whip flung her voice through the air. "You are emptied of them now. I beat them from you, like dust."

"Dust," Cyrus husked.

The whip cracked across his back. It didn't exactly sting, but there was something resounding to it. He felt it deep. It shook something lodged inside him. He heaved a breath in. It didn't give him the energy of someone who needed to breathe, but he could feel it in his body, his lungs inflating and his ribs bowing outwards. She hissed and it went up his spine. The strike that followed was warm. It gave him the sensation of melting wax in his stomach. He was becoming unstuck.

"Feel this pain, Cyrus." His mistress' command came a touch strained, she was throwing her power into the discipline. "It is my gift to you, so honour me and feel it."

He closed his eyes, the dark damask printing onto the inside of his eyelids. He drove his focus onto the whip, bringing the dead skin to life. She lashed him between the shoulder blades. The pain was muffled, as if through a crust, but it was present. At last, something was present. He clung to it. "Please, Mistress, will you strike faster?" he asked meekly. He needed the sensation to stop fading, he needed it to build, to cascade.

"Alright, my shadow."

The reassurance in her tone grounded him. He shuffled his boots firmer to the floor. He heard her breathe and hum. The ruffle of velvet. She hit him three times in quick succession, four times, five times, six times. She didn't stop. She ticked like a metronome, strike, strike, strike. Ten, eleven, twelve. The scuff built to a thud to a prickle.

"I want to hurt you, Scavenger. Remember that. It pleases me to hurt you."

Sixteen, seventeen. The prickle heated. It itched. He scratched the wallpaper. He screwed his eyes shut. Only darkness and sensation.

"You are dirty and pain is clean. I am cleansing you. Do not disobey me and feel nothing."

He grit his teeth and forced every scrap of his will into the skin on his back. He begged himself for pain, begged her to give it to him, his patron deity, his sacred text. The itching fizzed, static tingles in his pores.

Twenty three, twenty four, twenty five.

"Tether yourself." Her whispers came in sharp snicks through the lashes. "Listen to the whip speaking to you. Hear it laugh at your numbness. Hear its certainty that it will rip it to shreds. Hear mine."

There was no doubt in her, not in her voice, not in the increasing flowing momentum of her beating him, the whip singing through the air and snapping shrilly against him. Each strike was more precise than the last, an expert archer hitting the bullseye, then splitting each successive arrow, punishing one perfect spot.

Thirty, thirty one.

Old scars rekindled. Cyrus' back spread with almost-feeling, as if matches were being held to his hairs. That unsticking inside him grew. He was trembling. He was deconstructing. The impact may not hurt, but it was hard enough to slam a living man to the floor. As he took it standing, absorbing its force like lightning into rubber, it coursed inside him and shook his stoic core.

"You say you lack clarity? That you're coming apart? How dare you be so disrespectful? I hold the building blocks of you. Only I may tear you down. Only I make you. The ghoul is weak and I am strong. We are strong."

We are strong.

The tremors rumbled through him, wriggling his gut, plucking his intercostal muscles. As his insides crumbled he found his buried horror, the vile part of himself always waiting to claim the ruins of him. The deranged undead. The mindless, grotesque, twisted creature that craved corpse meat and lived in the dirt. It didn't stand. It didn't speak. It didn't love. No loyalty. No dignity. No creed. Just foul hunger and gurgling, confused misery. She struck, the creature lurched in his gut. It was large and boney. It jabbed his intestines with its thrashing. He clenched his stomach to keep it caged. He groaned and dropped his head between his raised arms and pushed on the wall to bring the whip deeper. It cast across his back and rocked his body. The creature tumbled.

Forty.

"Cyrus." Her voice came soft. "I think we should stop, your skin doesn't heal."

"No!" Cyrus choked on his grating plea. "No..." he rasped, calmer. "More. I need more. Please. I can take it."

His mistress paused. Then lashed him again. And again. The itching began to fissure, to sting, really sting. Feeling. He was feeling. He ached for it. He ached for her. He was aching. He was feeling.

The creature inside him, the stinking starvation, halted. She lashed him. It scurried. It was like a rat as something hammers on the cellar door. She was breaking into Cyrus, filling him with purifying moonlight. He opened his eyes and glared at the sheen on the wallpaper. He thought of water, white water under the moon, he thought of cool wind, he thought of white hot fire. He hurtled into it. She beat him until the great dungeon of his body was breached.

"I will fill you with pain, Shadow. You will have no space in you for madness. You will be crowded with pain."

Yes. Drive it out. Drive the inhuman out of him and salt the ground it festered on with pain.

Fifty.

The sting erupted.

Cyrus released a roar like rockfall. The whip finally obliterated his numbness and pain came stampeding into his body. It gushed into his muscles like dawn into the sea. It exploded in his stagnant blood. It was a marsh fire. The scrabbling creature inside him was reduced to ash. The fraying edges of his mind knotted into the sensation and held fast. He clawed the wall, like a mountain lion climbing a verge. He growled long and low as he fought to contain the pain inside him, whisked higher by her continuing strikes, sharper, lancing him. He banged his mallett forearms to the wall and arched his spine. Everything hurt. It was bliss.

Vestalia lowered the whip and watched Cyrus in quiet awe. He was still standing after an onslaught that ached in even her strong arm. She let him swim in the pain for a while, keeping her distance, watching for any signs of trouble. In the pale light he looked like a battered boulder after an avalanche.

After a long, silent moment, Cyrus began to breathe, using the motion to direct the pain meticulously around his body, storing it in his flesh for nourishment as he began the cycle of possession and exorcism again.

He dropped to his knees.

She tossed the whip away and rushed to his side, falling too in a billow of black and red. She flung her arms around him and brought his head onto her shoulder. His weight collapsed against her, his lavender scent laced with dust. She held him tight and stroked his hair and cooed. "Where are you, my shadow? Tell me where you are."

He curled his fingers softly into the folds of her nightgown, tremors sinking down his dense body in her arms. His whisper shook with them. "Here, Mistress. I'm here with you."

"And that graveyard?"

He shook his head, rubbing his hair on her neck. "I can't see it." He sighed heavily in relief. "I'm here."

She pressed a kiss to his tousled curls. "I've got you, Cyrus. You're mine and I've got you."

"I know." He turned his face down and pressed his brow to her shoulder. "Thank the Gods. I know."

She rubbed his arm and massaged the tremors out of him, feeling him settle and soften in her clasp.

"Mistress?"

"Yes?"

"I can smell you." She could hear the smile in his deep voice. "It's beautiful."

*

The hearth crackled comfortingly away as the two of them sat once more in the window seat. Vestalia leaned companionably back against Cyrus' chest, her robe discarded and him running his dry, cracked fingers up and down her bare arms. She breathed his herb and earth scent and gazed down at the garden, at all he cultivated for her with his constant devotion. The hair on his chest was soft on her cheek. They sat mostly in silence, the comfortable speechlessness of people who know each other beyond words.

"Does it still hurt?" she asked after a while.

"A little. It's good," he replied.

"I know I should be used to it, but I don't like that you won't let me treat it."

He bounced her on his chest with his wry chuckle. "What treatment could you give skin that can't heal?"

She shrugged. "Something to soften the edges, at least."

He kissed the back of her head. "The longer I can feel it, the better."

She nodded. "I also wish I could tell you to get some sleep."

He chuckled again. "No sleep for the wicked."

She reached back and tugged his beard in reprimand. "You are not wicked."

"Just cursed."

She twisted and shot him a warning look.

"And blessed," he corrected.

She smiled and pecked his cheek.

"I should get back to work," he said simply.

She rolled her eyes. "What could you possibly have left to do?"

He raised a bushy eyebrow. "Whatever keeps me occupied. But at least I can work in peace again." He smiled sombrely. "Thank you, Mistress."

"You thank me with your service, Cyrus." She patted his chest. She heaved out of his comfortable embrace and went to fetch his shirt.

He lumbered to his feet and caught it lazily as she tossed it to him. He pulled it over his head, mussing his already wild hair, and straightened it roughly on his torso. He hefted the air in his lungs, his nostrils flaring.

"Can you still smell me?" Vestalia asked with a quirk to her mouth.

Cyrus smiled sadly. "No. But I remember your scent, that's enough." He looked down at her and his eyes seemed to deepen, two immense vats of flammable oil. He opened his arms and folded her into a close hug that warmed her even without body heat. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed to him, to his sturdiness, to his shielding. He turned his face to touch his temple to hers. She nuzzled into his thick curls and closed her eyes. She stroked his hair. He rubbed her back. They took a deep, mirrored breath, bodies rising to each other and shrinking away. They parted, his hands still on her waist, hers on his arms. He squeezed her softly between his palms and said, "You don't drive men mad, you make us sane. You don't imprison us, you set us free. He's a bird, and birds always choose what will make them fly."

Vestalia's heart swelled. Her smile bloomed vibrantly. She cupped his face and beamed up at him. "Plant me some more sage."

He nodded, eyes still creased sweetly at the corners. "Yes, Mistress."

He pulled away, kissed her hand, and strode from the room.

Vestalia watched him go with her heart a little lighter. She almost followed him, but she wanted some time alone to think. She dressed slowly, spending a while at her empty mirror, powdering her breasts and nose and brushing and brushing and brushing her hair until it shone like polished obsidian, falling into the rhythm of it as she let her thoughts take their various journeys unfettered. She didn't notice how much time was passing. She had coffee brought to her room and sat in a wide armchair by the fire, warming from the window. She flicked idly through a book of Japanese poetry, making notations on clumsy areas of translation. Her gaze caught on a line.

I will entwine you in my arms, unknown to anyone.

She ran the end of the pencil over her lips.

how I've come to hate myself because I love you so.

She bit down on the pencil. She thought of the horror in the boy's eyes, the elation, the revulsion. She wondered how much he had thought about her today and how much about his own heart and mind. How much about his soul.

I find myself wishing that I could live forever.

A soft knock came at the door. She didn't look up from the book, a vague thought about Cyrus perhaps forgetting something flitting across the page. She called out casually. "Ah, well done, you've learned to knock properly. In you come."

The door whispered over the floor. The sound of mouse-light steps from bare feet caught her ears. Her pulse fluttered in her fingertips. She looked up sharply.

Sparrow stood just in front of the threshold. He seemed, rather bizarrely, to be wearing Cyrus' clothes. They drowned him in earth grey, emphasising the darling delicacy of his frame and the autumnal warmth of his skin. His hair tumbled loosely around his face, like unravelling, undyed cotton. His nut brown eyes were shadowed by pale blue streaks underneath. He looked tired. But his tender mouth was settled and his long, slightly crooked fingers were at rest by his sides. He stood straight, an alert fawn. The spring sunshine still painted across his pretty nose and cheeks. Deep down, she ached a little. Her skin kindled.

She stood, putting the book and pencil aside, rising into the glow of the hearth. He was muted by the shadow. She could hear his heartbeat through the darkness; a strained, speedy patter, a caged bird.

He pressed his lips together, it left them with the slightest glimmer. She watched it as he spoke, quietly, carefully. "Can we talk?"

She smiled, opening her hands invitingly. "Always, Carissime."

He nodded. He closed the door soundlessly behind him and took a few steps further into the room. He stopped at the very edge of the spilling hearth light. She could just glimpse the mark of her teeth under his tousled hair, a tickling mixture of pleasure and guilt in her stomach at the sight of his delicate throat so deeply wounded.

She wished he would walk to the window so she could look at him in the starlight. She didn't say so. She curled her hand over the back of her armchair and put her other hand on the cool fabric over her waist. "I thought you would be too upset to speak to me again."

He slipped one hand over his fine wrist. "I was."

She smiled. "And yet."

He breathed in. He breathed out. She felt the still air of the manor stir. His voice lowered, soft like the beating wings of a hummingbird. "I have decided that you, like everyone, must be treated with humanity."

Vestalia levelled her gaze at him and showed her teeth through the curve of her red mouth. "I am not human."

"No." He took a final step and the firelight broke over him, his beauty shining in the night. "But I am."

Her heart beat once.