The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 07

Sparrow fell still, his playfulness evaporated. He stared up at her, his heartbeat taking over his entire body.

She let go of one hand, holding the other like a charm, and traced over his chest, drawing a pattern with her lethal fingernail. The tingling trail left behind it another bloom of rosy inking, this time a strange symbol flowering over his breast. It was a triangle rising like an arrow head, its tip pointed up to two interlinked rings with a crescent moon sketched inside their conjoined outline. Two seraphs each rose from the top and fell from the bottom of the rings, like hands pointing up and down. The mark inked down the shallow furrow on Sparrow's chest. He blinked at it. "What is this?"

"My sigil," she replied, still tracing its outline with a soft smile. "I bind your heart." She darted her eyes to his. "You love me."

Sparrow took an enthralled breath and nodded. He focused himself. He clung to her hand.

"I bind your heart, you put your faith in me. I bind your heart, you worship me. I am your beginning and your end. North, south, east, west. Earth, water, air, fire. Four times I bind you. You are mine."

Sparrow exhaled slowly. Something left him, something old, something he didn't need anymore.

She snapped her fingers. The dark outline of the sigil sprang into tiny flames. Sparrow squeaked and scrabbled beneath her, pulse rocketing, staring in terror at the fire on his skin.

Vestalia clutched his hand and squeezed it hard. "Feel, Carissime, don't presume. Does it hurt?"

Sparrow gawped at her through the flickering, amber light. He breathed carefully. No, it didn't hurt. Insanely, the fire crackled on his chest and all he felt was a warm, tingling kiss. His lips parted in wonder. "How..."

The flames danced in the centres of her pupils and reflected on her pearly skin. "I rule the fire. Nothing I rule will ever hurt you. Trust me."

Sparrow's heart glowed as if the fire was inside it. The heat on his skin flowed into his blood and made his cock thrum. He beamed in awe. "I trust you, Mistress."

She smiled and stroked over the pattern of flames smouldering over his heart, displaying her invulnerability, her incredible power. The ruddy light spiralled up her strong arm. She leaned into the glimmer, putting weight on his cock, eyes refracting. "As your people baptised you in water, I rebaptise you in fire. Water made you theirs. Fire makes you mine. All that came before is undone. Mine is your only eternal kingdom."

Sparrow stared, the pounding of his heart making the small flames shimmer. He felt the heat on his lips. He swallowed, fighting to keep his breathing steady, to stop himself from summoning pain through expectation, to just exist in this incredible moment. He met her eyes through the haze. His whisper gusted tendrils of smoke between them that curled to beckon her. "I trust you. I love you. I belong to you."

She leaned over him, firelight on her face and breasts, bleeding into the diamonds around her collar and turning them to rubies. Their eyes connected and Sparrow felt the truth of it break over him. It was sealed. Everything was over. Everything started from here. Everything.

He smiled.

She blew on the flames through a tempting pout. They snuffed out in a wisp of smoke, lingering on his skin like lace. She beamed and came to recline on top of him, caressing his face and bringing him into a kiss that dissolved him. He wrapped her in his arms and tilted his hips to press his cock into her heat. The prickle from the flames left his skin enlivened and his body relaxed. The cosy caress of the wax-and-sex-infused air lulled him.

She slipped her hand between them and began to tease his cock. "I think you've waited long enough, my brave boy."

Sparrow put a hand hastily on her arm and looked into her eyes seriously. "No," he murmured. "Don't let me come tonight. Let me prove how much more this is to me than that."

Her expression smoothed affectionately. She tutted and kissed him sweetly. "You are my treasure."

He sighed and kissed her ardently.

The fire crackled in the hearth. Silk shushed under their embrace.

"Tell me again that you love me," she whispered against his lips.

"I love you, Mistress," he replied, not parting from her.

"Now, tell me that you love yourself."

He pulled back an inch and frowned curiously at her.

"Say it, Carissime."

He raised his eyebrows. "I love myself?"

"That is my final rule." She ran her thumb over his puckered lips. "I will only accept service from one who loves himself. I will never be someone's enclave for self-hate or worthlessness. Faith should only raise up the faithful, and this is a house of worship."

Sparrow nodded in understanding. His heart filled with light. He lifted his face to kiss her again, cuddling her close on top of him, entwining their legs and pressing to her body.

She stopped him gently. "Say it again."

"I love myself." He said it sincerely this time, filled with love and pride and courage. "I love myself. I love you. I love us. I love this."

She smiled, eyes sparkling in the golden darkness. She let him curl into the shelter of her body, kissing him deeply and moving softly on his cock, laying him into a lagoon of pleasure and candlelight.

*

"Gracious, Captain, you must have smoked half a tree." Father Petru's smile was weak but warm. A sincerely kind smile. He was packing a pack of playing cards and a dusty ale bottle into a basket.

Sandu's heart tugged. She glanced around his cosy home, at his mother snoring like a wolf in her chair, at the scattered crumbs from dinner, at the small stack of notes for his next sermon, the details of a life modestly lived, devoted to others. She tried to look into his face and see the deceiver, the murderer, the fallen, corrupt shepherd leading his poor flock to ruin. She could not. She saw a humble, generous man, haggard by work and hunger and care. She could feel only pity, only grief for what he might have been. The defaced Bible weighed heavy in the inside pocket of her coat. She moved her forearm across herself to conceal any hint of its shape and pushed a good humoured smile onto her lips, making them feel brittle. "I am so mesmerised by the stars up here."

He sighed with a note of satisfaction and looked up at the ceiling, as if he could see through it. "The wonders of His works."

"God's?"

"Who else's?"

She nodded with a tight grimace, then poked her nose at the basket. "Are you off?"

Petru blinked then perked up. "Ah, yes. Vasile and I meet after sundown on Fridays and play cards. A little vice, since we are soon to be absolved in church on Sunday." Another weak-warm smile, like badly brewed tea.

Absolved. Sandu's gut knotted. She chuckled companionably. "Then, please, take this to share between you, as a thanks for your hospitality." She drew out her flask from her pocket. "It's the best brandy in Skarpo."

Petru shook his head courteously. "I couldn't possibly. You'll need it for your journey. And you already gave so much today, your time, your work."

"Nonsense." She strode forward with a clink of buckles and put the flask into the basket.

Petru let her and smiled again. His face looked like a reflection in a grey, rippling puddle. He inclined his head graciously. They said a gentle goodnight, and he shuffled out of the door and across the grassy square to Vasile's house.

The two drank deeper than usual, glugging the brandy late into the night as they slid the bone white cards around Vasile's broad table. Overhead, a large, sumptuous embroidery of a folk dance soaked in firelight, the figures seeming to twirl and stomp as the fabric quivered.

"What do you make of this captain, then?" Vasile grunted, shuffling his hand.

"She's been a polite guest," Petru replied mildly, fanning his.

"She means change."

"We need change, that's why we..." Petru cleared his throat and moved a pair of hearts together, old thumbprints on the fraying cards.

"Then I wish she'd come before." Vasile tugged on his moustache. "It's the last fucking thing we need now."

Petru smirked with tired eyes. "Language."

"The least of my sins."

"I don't think she's a danger to us."

"No?"

"No."

"Why?"

Petru's face was yellow in the firelight. "I trust her, I suppose."

Vasile snorted. "How pleasant for you." He swigged from his wooden cup and hissed through his yellow teeth. He picked up the flask to inspect it. "She said this was Skarpo's best? It's fucking bitter."

Petru shrugged and sipped. "A little."

They played their hand. Petru won. He gathered up the cards and shuffled.

His heart thumped. It shocked him. He dropped the cards, spilling them like snow over the table.

"Are you alright?" Vasile asked with a heavy frown.

Petru nodded. "My heart is beating all of a sudden." He rubbed his chest. The thumping was so hard it pummelled his stomach. Nausea hit him in a wave. He gasped and skidded his chair back from the table, grabbing his knees.

"Father?" Vasile leaned toward him. "What the devil?"

"I..." Petru's chest constricted. He tried to speak. He couldn't breathe. Sweat frosted him, as if he was sloshing in snow. The erratic, thunderous beating of his heart filled his senses. His vision blurred.

Vasile stood to hurry to his side, but as he did, he lurched forward and fell to his knees, palm slamming to the floorboards. "Good God..."

Petru gaped at him, tried to form words, tried to get to him to help. He couldn't move. His vision was darkening at the edges. Petru's stomach heaved, sour, brown liquid splashed from his mouth and stained his cassock. He screeched for breath, his lungs wouldn't receive it.

Vasile clutched his barrel chest, eyes blackening in realisation. He lunged for the flask with a choking curse. He missed it and sent it skidding from the table across the floor. Its final contents trickled like blood into the wood grain.

Petru collapsed from his chair. He vomited again. It lodged in his throat. His pulse hammered violently in a nonsense, frantic rhythm, muffling the sound of Vasile's curses. Things were fading. He was hot. He was Hell hot. Things were fading. His heart beat, beat, beat...

The tapestry rippled in a draught from the window, the dancers gambolling with jubilant eyes.

The hooves of Sandu's horse sent baritone thunder claps into the vast rock. She galloped from the village under the hurricane of stars, her thick hair and the hem of her coat billowing behind her. The steed's flanks pumped like bellows, their shared rumbling breathing echoed in the empty, hard landscape. The deformed Bible slammed her side as she sped deftly along the crooked pathways, jabbing her over and over with the ugliness of the day.

They would be dead by now.

Pray God it didn't hurt, but that wasn't easy with monkshood.

She didn't have a choice. There was no restoration of a soul lost to the Beast. Once she had a mortal in her thrall, it was like an infection. This village was gangrenous. Her rot had grown in it and the only way to save the body from rot was to sever the infected limbs. Prolonged treatments only let the disease spread and fester. That had been one of her first lessons from Sang Mortel in Schegischone, that she was training to be a healer as much as a fighter. She was to remember this: surgeons draw blood because it is right for the body. Sang Mortel was always for the greater body.

Always.

Always.

She repeated it to herself coldly in the rhythm of the flying gait of her horse, eyes focused like spears ahead of her into the quiet, consuming night.

And Sparrow lay his cheek on his mistress' soft breast and sighed and closed his eyes.

He surrendered himself to the dark.