Page 92 of The Kingdom of Flames

Threads

“Lord Azure…” Celestine croaked the words.

I am frail glass, in pieces on the ground from Tristien—and you want me to gather the pieces so you may hammer them into dust?

Was this what all Seasons were? Why should she expect any different? How many thousands of women had died and writhed under their attentions in their annual bride hunt? They were hungry gods. Tristien had shown her that. To sleep with a Season was to feel the touch of war, the lash of control and dominion.

Celestine glanced around the campfire. What sweet lies this one made.

“I fear, if you do not,” Lord Azure motioned to the cushions. “You may die, Final Bride.”

Celestine nodded. This will be it. Perhaps if I had come here first and Tristien last, I would have made it. Or Encarmine last. Perhaps that would have made a difference.

She undid the hem of her gown, which was caked to her back from the healing lashes and deep bruises that had turned into wounds. As her gown fell, her naked form his to capture, Azure did something that surprised her most of all.

He averted his eyes. Was he ashamed?

“Please, sit by the fire, facing the sea. So I can see from the moonlight.”

Celestine’s mind went blank. For nothing seemed real anymore, nothing seemed to matter. Numbly, she walked towards the cushions and faced away from him.

I’ll stare at the sea, the ocean, when he takes me. He’ll probably bend me over like Tristien used to, but at least then, some part of me had wanted it.

Lord Azure sat behind her. He handed her a long, thick fur and she covered the front of her with it. She kneeled, waiting for his touch.

“Please sit. It’ll be more comfortable.” Azure said. He still sounded so at ease, so knightly.

Celestine inhaled a trembling breath, hoping the numbness in her mind and heart would not leave her while she served him.

“Forgive me. My people do not know the shame of covering themselves. I know things are different in your lands.”

“Am I your property to observe as you see fit?”

“No,” Azure stated, the deep timbre of his voice sliding over her shoulder like the warm fur. The fire crackled next to them. He tossed her gown into it, where it burned and curled. Celestine stared at it, watching it curl and smoke. How long had she worn it?

“But you are a guest in my camp, and I cannot permit you to die.”

What?

Azure reached out, touching her skin with the back of his hand.

He’s reading me. She shuddered. He will know so much of what Tristien did, and perhaps I did as well.

"Perhaps I should have let Encarmine take his head,” Azure said to himself. “Your resilience is astounding, but tragic. You can rest here. I will not tell you that you are safe because no person is ever truly safe once they leave their mother’s arms. And you knew that gift so briefly”

Azure reached for a pouch and bowl, and he mixed herbs and water. “My land is filled with many fine plants. I am no Lord of Spring, but this should aid your flesh.”

His touch was gentle and kind. As his fingertips dabbed her wounds and bruises with differing pastes that hardened upon her flesh, it was as if his touch was having a conversation with her flesh. If wounds were words, she had paragraphs of them on the parchment of her flesh. Azure didn’t remove them, but he dulled their fine stamp upon her soul with kindness and medicine.

His voice bathed her with its depth, “The worst wounds are not upon our flesh, as you know. You are strong, Celestine. All women hold this strength within them. Men are like talons of a hawk. Strange that they abuse that which gives their lives meaning. That they tear at the flesh where they would continue their bloodline.”

More and more, he soothed her. Laying her down, covering her bottom, sliding the pelt down only to administer more salve. He kept her close to the fireside, where the lotions and ointments warmed and hardened like clay.

“Your gown may have been lovely once but it bears his markings too much. I can smell his perfumed stink.” Azure said. “While in my lands, my people made you these.”

Celestine glanced back, her will melting under his touch. It wasn’t that he was a Lord. It was the gentleness in his attention and that he sought nothing for himself.

Such a simple thing, yet it means the world.

---