The Vampire & Her Witch

”Come,” Owain said, his voice gentle as he guided Jocelynn closer to the suspended Inquisitor. The knife felt impossibly heavy in her hand, the strange curved blade designed for skinning prey rather than the sorts of delicate knives she was accustomed to for the dinner table, or even the simple utility blade she’d carried while riding or traveling.

”We’ll start by removing his robes,” Owain said calmly, resting one hand on her back, between the shoulder blades, while he used the other hand to guide her knife hand. ”Just like he stripped away your beautiful dress, we’ll strip away the precious robes he thinks will keep him safe.”

Owain’s hand closed over hers on the hilt, his strong, calloused fingers warm and steady where her fingers had gone cold and stiff. He positioned the blade against the high collar of Percivus’s crimson robes, and, with a smooth downward motion that guided her trembling hand, drew the sharp edge through the fine fabric, just like he’d done with the acolytes earlier.

This time, the robes beneath the knife’s blade were much more elaborate than the simple crimson robes the acolytes wore. There were extra layers and a half cape that hung from his shoulders, giving the Inquisitor a larger-than-life presence despite his small stature. And yet, no matter how fine or expensive it was, the cloth parted before the sharp skinning knife with barely a whisper of resistance.

”That’s it,” Owain encouraged as the blade traced lower. His chest pressed against Jocelynn’s back, and his other hand settled on her waist to steady her as they worked. ”Slow, careful cuts. There’s no rush,” he whispered, his breath hot on her neck and his lips mere inches from her ear.

But her hand wasn’t steady. It couldn’t be, not with Percivus’s cold, disinterested hazel eyes watching her from above the gag. Not with the weight of what Owain was making her do settling like lead in her stomach. For a moment, the contents of her stomach felt like they might rebel, but under the cruelty of Percivus’s instruction, she’d learned to swallow down anything, holding onto each meal no matter how much her body wanted to expel it, because the next meal was anything but guaranteed.

As Owain guided the blade down through the layers of crimson and gold, the knife slipped sideways in her trembling hand, and the sharp tip bit into pale skin beneath the parting fabric.

The blade was so sharp that there was barely any resistance, even when it encountered flesh instead of fabric. Instantly, blood welled up in a thin red line across Percivus’s collarbone, leaving a cut not very far from the spot where Bors Lothian’s knife had once cut into Jocelynn’s flesh. As soon as she saw it, Jocelynn flinched and would have dropped the blade if not for Owain’s hand steadying her own.

The Inquisitor, however, didn’t flinch. He didn’t make a sound behind the gag. His eyes never left hers, and somehow that made it so much worse, seeing that he could watch her cutting him, watch her hands shaking with revulsion and reluctance, and yet he could still remain so utterly, perfectly calm.

”Don’t worry about a few nicks,” Owain said, either not noticing her distress or choosing to interpret it as righteous anger. ”He’s earned far worse than that for what he did to you, and to your cousin Eleanor,” he added, cupping the knife in her hands and holding her until the trembling passed.

Under his guidance, they continued cutting, Owain’s hand leading hers in long strokes that peeled away the voluminous robes piece by piece. The crimson fabric fell away in strips, revealing more and more of the man beneath, and with each cut, Jocelynn’s blade slipped at least a tiny bit. A shallow slice across his ribs. Another along his shoulder. A third that drew a line of blood down his sternum.

Each time, Percivus remained silent and still, his gaze never wavering, as though the pain were beneath his notice.

When the last of the robes finally fell away, pooling on the floor beneath his suspended feet like a crimson puddle, what remained was almost shocking in its ordinariness.

Percivus possessed the thin, almost fragile build of a scholar who had spent his life hunched over books rather than training in the practice yards. For all he spoke of the virtues of the grueling work done by the common man, his chest was narrow, and his arms lacked the muscle that came from wielding weapons or doing manual labor. He looked almost frail in nothing but his loincloth, the scholarly physique seeming at odds with the methodical cruelty he’d inflicted on her and Eleanor.

His physical weakness should have made him less intimidating, comical even, and yet his eyes remained hard as flint, filled with that same unsettling confidence, as if the stripping of his robes and the marks of the blade had happened to someone else and he’d only watched it happening from the side.

”There,” Owain said with satisfaction, finally releasing Jocelynn’s hand and stepping back to admire their work. ”Now you can see the truth of the man beneath the robes of the Inquisition. He’s just a man like any other, and likely weaker than most. He’s not some terrifying instrument of divine judgment, no matter what the Church would try to have you believe,” he said with a sneer.

The knife clattered to the floor as Jocelynn backed away from what they had done, not because she found herself in the presence of a nearly naked man, covered only by a small loin-cloth, but because even though she’d imagined using a knife on Percivus and even on Owain in order to claim her vengeance, she’d never once imagined drawing it out in such a slow, methodical way that left more than half a dozen small cuts across the other man’s body.

One cut or stab. That was as far as she’d gotten in any of her flights of fancy when she thought about taking her vengeance. A cut across the throat or a stab to the heart in order to end the terror and cruelty of these men once and for all. But now, she found herself participating in the very same cruelty that made her want to see these men dead...