Page 103 of Iron Blade

Idid not relish the pain of another human. Not normally. But the moment he started prophesying about Kira’s demise… Well, that bastard was going to hang to his death. I would make it slow and painful, as if every pain on his skin could be one I save my wife from feeling.

The more he suffered, the less Kira would.

I changed clothes in the basement, rinsing myself with a small shower head off the mud room.

It was a ritual I had started since coming here, because the idea of sullying my wife with blood-soaked hands twisted my heart and soul. I always came back to her with clean hands.

But something was off this afternoon. She often ran to me with open arms when I got back to the room, but not this time.

“Did you have a good day?” she whispered, the sculpture of the golden Tree of Life complete, with a base of gold dust at the bottom. Small roots poked out, gracefully adding to the beauty of it.

Something was off. Something was very, very off.

“Aye,” I said, slowly. “I did. You?”

I took off my shirt, even though it was new, and went to the adjoining bedroom, to pick up another. It was a routine, really, just to make sure that I didn’t bring blood up from the basement.

While I was by the dresser, the sight of a bowl on the table by the door caught my eye. A bowl of bread. They weren’t from breakfast or lunch. They were assorted, meaning she had gone down to the bakery…

The bakery in the basement.

The basement.

My blood went cold.

I stood at the door of the studio, watching her fingers moving over the gold sand, piling it precisely to give the impression of earth.

“What did you do today?” I asked, my heart hoping for a confession. Why? I didn’t know. But if she spoke to me - if she told me, then I could do something about it. I could fix it. I needed a moment of honesty from her - just a sliver of it, and I would give her everything.

“Nothing much,” she said, cryptically.

The disappointment ran deep within me.

“Did you go to the kitchen?” she would have had to, to go to the basement.

She froze, her fingers stilling. Then she started moving them again and shrugged.

“I got hungry,” she answered.

If I wasn’t an observant man, if she wasn’t my great obsession, then I wouldn’t have noticed the hitch in her movements. But I was keen and obsessed. I noticed these things about my lying temptress.

“I’ll ask you again,” I said carefully, letting fear come out like anger. Though what I felt was hope - a hope that my Kira would speak to me. She would talk to me. “What did you do today?”

I knew the moment she abandoned her tactic.

She rushed to her feet, and tried to run around me to the door. She was slower than normal, likely from her lack of sleep, and the long days she spent in this room. I grabbed her easily by the shoulders, spinning her to face me.

“Kira, it’s not what you think!” I shouted, and she shook her head, trying to squirm from my touch. “Kira, let me explain!”

She squirmed out of my grasp and in a state of madness I let her go. I ran to the front door, opened it and beckoned a guard on the stairs. “No one leaves this room without my permission!”

My heart was aching with fear. I couldn’t let her leave. I couldn’t let her leave if she had seen something… if she had seen me in the basement. If she did, then it would be a death sentence for her. My father would make it so.

I was doing this for her own good.

I slammed the door shut and turned around, her eyes were wide with fear.

“Eoghan, please… you can’t leave me in here. You can’t…”

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