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

Delyth closed her eyes and turned her face away. “I—it’s alright,” she said after a moment. “I don’t mind.”

The warrior looked back towards Alphonse and opened the wing to its full length.

Turning in her spot, Alphonse set her teacup down so that she might run her hands, soft and gentle (and thanks to the tea, warm) over the interior of Delyth’s wing. She ran her fingertips meticulously over the arch of bone that was the apex of the wing, then down each spine that created the individual sails.  Alphonse drew the back of her hand across one leathery sail, noticing Delyth’s shiver. The wings must be incredibly sensitive too.

She had already known those wings were strong, to be able to sustain flight, but now she felt the muscles there. The answer seemed to be that Delyth flew purely due to brute strength.

An incredible feat.

She traveled along the top of the wing to find where it met Delyth’s back, then back across to the very tip. Alphonse estimated the wings were easily five feet long when expanded. Each wing. That would make her wingspan ten feet. No wonder Delyth’s shoulders and back seemed so toned. Her core must have been too. And her legs, from carrying such weight.

Really, Alphonse must seem so very frail to Delyth, barely able to carry her heavy pack all day without tiring.

“Marvelous,” she pronounced, done with the inspection. Smiling, Alphonse folded her hands in her lap, looking up at the sky with a sigh.  These quiet times before bed were becoming her favorite time of the night. Just she and Delyth, the stars and tea. Simple. Easy.

Perhaps the only things that were simple or easy anymore.

༄

Gods, Alphonse’s hands were so small. So gentle.

Alphonse was just a healer, curious at having found something new. Nothing more. Still, it was a strange sort of relief when Alphonse finished. Like some part of Delyth wanted her to keep going.

She swallowed hard at Alphonse’s little conclusion and pulled her wing back in. People just didn’t call her beautiful or marvelous. “We should probably sleep. It's getting late, and tomorrow will be just as long.”

Alphonse nodded in agreement, picking up her cup of tea and draining it. The cold night air had sucked the warmth out of it quickly.

Delyth sat and finished her tea too, taking her time in front of the fire’s flickering coals while Alphonse entered the tent and changed. When she stood, she stretched and turned her face up to the clear, star-smattered sky above until her breathing was low and deep and calm had seeped through all of the muscles in her back and shoulders.

As always, she pricked a finger at the entrance to the tent she shared with Alphonse and carefully traced the same simple rune into the fabric. The spell was an inefficient one. Tonight’s blood would be spent by the time they packed up camp the next morning, but Delyth did not think she would be able to sleep without the assurance that Enyo could not slip away without her waking.

The ward finished, she stepped through the flap of the tent.

Alphonse was not laying down on her pallet as she normally would have been. Instead, she was standing right by the entrance, and the moment Delyth slipped through the tent flap, she was on the warrior.

Or rather, Enyo was.

Her hand clamped around Delyth’s wrist harshly, forbidding her from yanking away. Her eyes, more catlike than Alphonse ever looked, peered up into Delyth’s face and then down to that pricked finger.

“What do you want?” Delyth growled. Not exactly the response of a dedicated priestess. She needed to get Alphonse back as soon as possible so that she could sleep. Otherwise, this had the potential to escalate quickly.

“Why is it, Ba’oto, that you have not offered me proper tribute?” She asked, voice low, something between a whisper and a growl. “Do you not wish your Taouk to be satisfied?” Those ember eyes tore away from the blood just once, to see Delyth’s face, before returning to the cut.

“You want blood,” Delyth said, her voice flat. It wasn’t a question. Enyo was esurient, after all.

In her mind’s eye, she could see countless morning offering ceremonies in the temple in which she had been raised. Priests dripping beads of blood into a thirsty flame… It wasn’t as though she had not been warned that Enyo demanded offerings.

“Take it, then,” the priestess said.

Enyo chuckled. “Such devotion…” Still, she didn’t drink. She sniffed the blood, clearly excited by it, but she paused.

Those luminous eyes moved up to Delyth’s face again. “Unlessing you’re offering something better?”

Delyth ground her teeth together.

“Will you turn down the blood of a priestess, Taouk?” she asked, her eyes dark and glinting. “I didn’t think it like you to refuse a tribute.”

Enyo was hardly one to argue, and quickly she brought Delyth’s pricked finger into her mouth. Sucking on the wound as one might suck the nectar out of a honeysuckle flower.

With a popping sound, she withdrew the finger and sighed gratefully. “Moaz’s bloodline always did have such virile life force,” she murmured, running her thumb over the wound. It appeared Enyo was learning some of Alphonse’s magic because when she removed her touch, the little cut was healed.

Delyth swallowed hard. Gods damn her to the depths of hell. Alphonse’s mouth was soft and warm.

“I am interested, Ba’oto, in how the Hunter’s bastard ended up in my service. He’d be furious to know this. It pleases me, though…” Slowly she let go of Delyth’s hand, stepping away.

The halfbreed shook her head, angry, though at herself or Enyo, she wasn’t sure. The Hunter’s bastard? How was that even possible? Delyth was only twenty-five, and the Gods had been banished for three hundred years. Unless she was just a descendant, a part of some bloodline sowed by a God’s careless lust.

Did that mean there were more like her?

Delyth didn’t want to show Enyo how little she knew. The Goddess was already