Chapter 26: Cured Wax

Loria woke inside a wall.

That was the only way she could describe it. She opened her eyes and could not move. Her arms were pinned at her sides. Her legs were locked. A hard, hot, glossy yellow crust had sealed her from the neck down, and it smelled of honey and burning tallow. Her head was free. She could turn it a little. She could breathe.

Beside her, three feet away, Vili Wyrnia was pinned in an identical shell.

“Ah,” said a bright, cheerful voice. “There she is.”

Knoxia Lunore was sitting on an overturned crate in front of them, legs crossed, one arm in a sling, singed to the roots of her hair. Her left wing was torn, and half her face was a raw, shiny burn. She looked terrible. She looked delighted.

“Pegoris,” she said, without turning. “Show them.”

The enormous boy stood a little behind her, swaying, one shoulder gone, half his chest a ruin of slumped yellow wax. He was crying, quietly, steadily, big soft tears cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks.

“I did what you said,” he whispered. “I did it exactly.”

“You did wonderfully, darling.” Knoxia patted his knee, though she had to stretch to do it. “You see, my dears, Pegoris is a Waxen. Flatin’s people were bred to burn. But the Flatin kilns cure their tallow with salt and ash, and once it hardens, it does not melt.” She rapped the wall of yellow around Loria’s chest with a chitinous knuckle. “Not to fire. Not to any fire. Not even your pretty gun.”

Loria strained. Nothing moved.

“And the venom,” said Knoxia, “is my own. It takes about a day to wear off. Sweet dreams.”

Vili’s head came up. His face was gray and streaked with blood. “You will not…”

“Oh, I will.” She waved a lazy hand. “But not yet. The Second Bell is a day and a half away, and I want to enjoy this. It is not every day I get to be a monologue.”

She stood, stretched, and began to walk a slow circle around them.

“Do you know what my Saladin is doing right now? Right this very moment? He is sitting in the Throne Hall at the top of the Keep, drawing a circle. It is a very old circle. It is older than this Sanctum, older than the Empire, older than the Dichotomy.” Her amber eyes glittered. “There are five men in black cloaks helping him. They have been waiting beneath this school for a hundred years.”

“What,” said Loria, through her teeth, “is the circle for?”

“Oh, it is a door.” Knoxia laughed, delighted. “When the Third Bell tolls and the Kings are drawn to the Throne Hall, the door will open, and something will come through. Something very old. Something that was here before the first star. Saladin’s people called it the Great Serpent. It will eat this Sanctum. It will eat the capital. And then, if it is hungry, it will eat the rest of the country.” She spread her arms. “Isn’t he wonderful? Isn’t he the most wonderful thing you have ever seen? The trial was never a trial. It was a key.”

“You are mad,” said Vili.

“I am loyal.” She dropped to one knee in front of Loria and pinched her chin between two chitinous fingers. “But that is the future. In the present, I have promised myself two whole days of fun.”

Her voice grew soft and dreamy.

“Let me tell you what I'll do to you, my crow, before the second bell tolls. First, the hair—that pretty black braid. I'll cut it away at the root, and then I'll take the scalp with it, in one clean piece, and pin it to the wall where you can see it. Then I'll start on the skin. It is a very fine trick, de-gloving. You begin at the wrist, and you work slowly, and you keep the ribbon whole. I'll take the rest of that pretty ivory skin off in sheets until you're pink and paralyzed on the floor, skinless, crying for mercy that will never come."

Loria said nothing. Her crimson eyes did not leave Knoxia's face.

"And you, princeling." Knoxia turned, her smile widening. "I will start between your legs. I'll castrate you with my bare hands and serve you your own balls as the main course—you'll eat your punishment before I finish with dessert. And then, my darling, I'll take your eyes. I'll eat them in front of you. Blue ones. I've never had blue."

"Please," said a voice.

It was Pegoris. But he had not dropped to his knees in fear—he had fallen to them in desperate, groaning hunger. He was sweating, his massive frame shaking, his face flushed crimson as tears streamed down his cheeks. "Please, Knoxia," he begged, his voice thick and choked. "Don't take her yet. Let me have her first. Let me use her. I want her body. I want that pretty hair wrapped around my fist."

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

He crawled forward, trembling, drool spilling from his lips. He rose behind Loria, pressing himself against her back, and buried his face in the nape of her neck. He inhaled deeply, a wet, ragged sound, and as he did, hot liquid dripped from him onto her skin, already beginning to sizzle and dissolve the fabric of her clothes.

"I want to rip you in half with my love," he whispered against her ear, his tongue darting out to lick the hollow of her throat.

Loria felt it then—a huge, bulging pressure growing and pressing against her buttocks, unbelievably huge, so strong it pushed her body forward as it swelled against her. She went rigid, paralyzed by despair, all emotion draining from her face into a mask of pure horror. She could not scream. She could not move. But tears began to roll down her cheeks, and her skin flushed red as Pegoris sniffed and licked lower, his wet mouth trailing down her neck, across her shoulder, toward her exposed breast.

The liquid falling from him pooled and steamed, dissolving her garments completely, revealing her sexy, feminine figure—full breasts now bare, nipples hardening in the cold air, her curved hips and smooth thighs trembling uncontrollably. Pegoris groaned at the sight, and with a wet tearing sound, his trousers ripped apart, revealing a monstrous phallus, disgusting and humongous, already leaking thick fluid from its swollen tip.

He shuffled closer, his member drooling onto her stomach, her thighs, marking her with his arousal. Loria finally let out a muffled scream, her body shaking with silent sobs, knowing exactly what was about to happen as he positioned himself behind her, his massive hands gripping her hips, when suddenly

Something went off in Vili Wyrnia.

It was not a scream at first. It was a silence, a terrible, gathering silence, like the moment before an avalanche. His blue eyes went white. Then they went gold. A light kindled behind them, fierce and bright and steady, and it spread across his face in thin, burning lines, and the shadow he cast across the floor lit up like a forge.

“Do not,” said Vili, in a voice that was almost quiet, “touch her.”

“Ooh,” said Knoxia. “He’s upset.”

The wax around his chest cracked.

Every grain of sand in the room woke at once. It streamed from his sleeves, from his hair, from the floor, from the walls, a river of gold that twisted around his body in a whirling, blinding corona. The cured wax split. The venom, which should have held him for a day, burned out of his veins like water on a hot pan. He rose to his feet in a rain of yellow shards, and his shadow, huge and gold and fiery, rose behind him.

Pegoris stumbled backward. “No,” he said. “No, no, I didn’t…”

Vili raised one hand.

The sand went through Pegoris like a thousand knives. It was not fast. It was precise. It sliced him where he stood, thin, exact, patient slices, a hundred, a thousand, a whole hive of them, and the big soft boy stared down at his own body as it fell apart in neat pale slabs. He opened his mouth to scream, and the sand poured in.

It filled him from within. It rushed down his throat, into his lungs, into every hollow. His chest swelled. His cheeks bulged. His eyes went wide and wet. Golden grit streamed from his ears and his nose, and for a long moment, nobody breathed.

He burst.

It was a wet, gruesome, thunderous sound. Blood, wax, sand, and the small, hot flames of his own wick-fire showered across the room in a dark and glittering spray. The hard yellow crust around Loria was splattered red. Knoxia, six feet away, was drenched from head to foot.

She was not laughing anymore.

“Wait,” she said. “Wait, wait, I…”

She tried to leap. The sand caught her before she could rise. It closed around her ankles, her waist, her chest, in a tall, hard, golden column that locked around her like a sheath. It stopped at her chin. Her head stuck out of the top, wide-eyed, gasping, with her wings crushed flat against the pillar.

Vili walked toward her. He was not hurrying. His shadow burned behind him like a second sun.

“You said you would take my fingers,” he said. “One by one.”

“I was joking! I was…”

“Here they are.” He held up his silver-wired hand and flexed it. “Eight in ten. Count them.”

“Please. Please.” Her voice had gone thin and high. “Vili. Prince Vili. I’ll be your servant. I’ll do anything, I’ll do whatever you want, you can have me! All of me!, I’ll…”

“You said you would peel her.”

“I didn’t mean it!”

“You said you would eat my eyes.”

“Please, please…”

He took down his trousers and started uninating on Knoxia’s face, as she gargeld in the putrid acid, above the pillar, a great boulder of sand began to gather. It rose out of the dust, huge and round and gleaming, and hung over Knoxia Lunore’s face like a small dark moon.

“It seems,” said Vili gently, “that I did mean it.”

The boulder descended.

It came down slowly, because he wished it to. It touched her forehead, and she began to scream, a long, unbroken, shrieking wail, and it kept coming down. Her voice broke and rose again. The crunching started somewhere low. It lasted a long time.

When it was over, the boulder rested on the pillar like a lid on a jar. A dark stain spread slowly from beneath it across the floor.

The gold in Vili’s eyes flickered and went out.

He stood there for a while, breathing hard, staring at nothing. Then he turned and crossed the room, and knelt in front of Loria, and with one wave of his hand, split the yellow shell around her. She sagged. He caught her. She could not move; the venom still held her. But her crimson eyes were open, and they were fixed on his face, and she was very, very awake.

The burn on her cheek was already blistering.

“I am sorry,” said Vili, hoarsely. “I am sorry I was slow.”

“You were not slow,” said Loria. It was barely a whisper. It was the first time she had ever used his name gently. “Vili.”

He gathered her up in his arms. Then he closed his eyes, and a soft golden mist rose from his fingers and settled around her, thickening and weaving and finally falling in a single cool, shimmering sheet: a mantle of pure sand, spun so fine it moved like silk. It wrapped her from shoulders to knees and sealed the burns from the air.

“Mother Sable would be very pleased,” he said, to no one.

He carried her out of the ruined room, toward the white staircase, the burning garden, and the friend he had left there alone.