Vassal by Sterling D'Este (ebook reader computer TXT) 📕

A remote part of her mind noticed the cold, but Alphonse couldn’t care. Couldn’t flinch at the painful rubbing against her bruised knuckles.

She deserved to suffer. She didn’t need to feel better. Never again. She was a healer. She was supposed to mend and preserve and repair.

Not rip and tear and destroy.

Kill.

She moaned as her soulripped further along that raw edge. She had killed a man. And not swiftly and mercifully as Delyth had. Not to protect. She had done it for sadistic malice. Pure glee. A cat playing with a mouse.

The bandit’s squeals were death cries a bird might have made as some wild dog tore free its wings.

And she had felt so ardent as she did it.

Her stomach heaved.

Delyth left off cleaning Alphonse’s hands to press her hair back away from her face while she gagged, gently twisting the tawny volume into a more manageable rope.

“It wasn’t you, bykhan,” she said again. “It wasn’t you. You couldn’t stop her. Even if you remember it, it wasn’t you.” The words became something like a litany, a feverishly whispered prayer.

When she stopped, the priestess took handfuls of pure, mountain water and poured them down Alphonse’s arms until even the longest streaks of blood were no longer visible.

Alphonse let Delyth use damp hands to wash the blood from the healer’s face, to tease it from her hair. As if that would somehow hide the massive dark crater in her soul. For a long time, all she could hear was the pleading in her own mind, demanding, begging that this not be true.

When that faded to a whisper, she could hear water dripping off her hair and hands, the subtle splashes of Delyth, likely washing her own hands of the hot, sticky stuff. The steady beating of her traitorously whole heart. That it should work while that man’s lay in the dirt, separated from his body…

He had said he had children.

Had that been a lie? Did that make it any better if it had been?

“No,” she mumbled to herself, finally opening her eyes to see the priestess…

༄

With Alphonse free of as much blood as possible, Delyth turned to clean the gore from her face and arms. She found slices and bruises she didn’t remember. New scars to try to  forget.

Her hip wound was an ugly, jagged thing still bleeding sluggishly. It wasn’t easy to clean, but she kept at it, dumping handfuls of water over it again and again until they began to come away clear.

Behind her, Alphonse muttered, too quiet to be intelligible, and Delyth looked up. She didn’t want to ask to be healed, didn’t want Alphonse to be reminded of the blood or to feel guilty about not noticing.

She remembered what it’d felt like the first time.

To wake up in a sea of bodies.

For her, though, it had been easy to kill them, easy to categorize them as attackers, as enemies who would kill and maim those she cared for. She had killed some two score people now, though it was difficult to be sure of the number.

And Alphonse. Gentle Alphonse had been used to kill one. That one was devastating to her in a way Delyth had never felt, tearing her apart visibly.

The comparison was stark in Delyth’s mind, Alphonse’s hands still clean when laid next to her bloody palms. Enyo was right. It was the priestess that was the monster.

Only, there was no time to dwell on that now. There was her wound to see to. And Alphonse, still shivering. Perhaps healing would show Alphonse that she was still good, that she was still gentle and worthy of love.

Delyth scooted closer. “bykhan, will you heal this? I was careless and did not realize I was hurt.”

Lost eyes turned slowly towards Delyth. Alphonse’s lashes were fluttering to no purpose, blinking far too often. She tipped her chin down to see the injury and automatically held out a hand to fix the gaping flesh.

Nothing happened.

Delyth had seen Alphonse heal a hundred times, knew that it happened effortlessly, that the little healer just placed her hands on the injured and with a warm glow of green light, their wounds stitched together.

Her little bird’s face darkened, and a crease appeared between her brows. She was holding her breath, her outstretched hand tense. She had never struggled to heal before. Never hesitated. For it to happen now… Delyth’s chest gave a painful twang. Was this Enyo’s doing?

Alphonse removed her hand and closed her eyes in shame. “I am a monster.”

Delyth moved closer until she could wrap Alphonse in her arms.

“If you are a monster, then I am as well.” The healer was still shivering, her body somehow smaller than Delyth remembered. “You’re in shock, Alphonse. You’ll be able to heal again, I’m sure of it.”

And it wasn’t a deep wound. Nothing she had not lived through before. She shouldn’t have asked at all, should have been more thoughtful.

“We wanted to eat it. We were going to eat it… What kind of person does that?” Alphonse asked, blinking up at Delyth. Her face was devoid of hope or any emotion but shame. Shame Delyth wished she didn’t feel. “You wouldn’t eat it. I saw.” Which, of course, had been why Enyo had brought Alphonse back. To punish Delyth for disobeying her. Delyth knew it. The Goddess hated to be denied. “I make you weaker…”

Delyth just closed her eyes and laid her forehead against Alphonse’s. Slowly, she shook her head. “You aren’t Enyo. You know you’re not Enyo. She’s not a person, Alphonse. She is something so much bigger and older and worse, and I’m so sorry you have to be the one to do this. I’d take it from you if I could.”

She laughed ruefully, the sound desperate and humorless. “Besides, you do not make me weaker. If— if an army were to march through these woods, I would stop them for you. I’d tear through them like a summer storm just to keep you safe.”

❀

Alphonse could see the truth in that,