For despite the damage she inflicted, as yet she could not conceive of murder. Without assistance, she would not do it. She would instead hurt him, humiliate him, possibly even ruin his beautiful body—but she would not strike a killing blow.
Her body did not have more resolve than her mind, yet it needed to.
The smell of the crushed spell rose from the sheets, warmed her lungs and loins. Her labia swelled, pulsed between her legs. She moaned and ground her wetness against his kneecap, smearing a trail of her spell over his thigh. Its surface hardened, cracked, and floated into the air, a fine cloud of diamond dust that settled upon their skins. She imagined with what horror he breathed the magical essence in, uncertain of its exact composition or effect.
It did the same for him as it did for her, filling him with fury sufficient to melt steel. Ultimately, both of their minds would swell with murderous intent—but only she would have the ability to act on it.
Despite the swelling waves of anger, her desire remained. She lifted her head and straddled his hips, positioned so that the head of his cock pressed against her anus. Slowly, carefully, she lowered herself upon his erection. It took much care, for he was larger than she had anticipated, and she did not typically allow a man this access.
“A gift,” she whispered, rhythmically tightening her sphincter on the base of his shaft—a surprisingly pleasant sensation. “And a reminder of what you will never experience again.” She leaned forward, one hand on his chest and one poised over his face. She pried his left eyelid open with the thumb and middle finger of her right hand, and waited until he met her gaze. “Have you always loved men? Did I mother you too much?” She positioned her index claw over his eye, nearly touching it. “Is that why you never looked at me?”
She paused, and in this moment her spell asserted itself fully, flooding her with surety and purpose. Rage, acidic and deliberate, as inexorable as the revolving of the planets, moved her finger, plunging her claw into the soft tissue of his eye.
The delicate, lashed mouth of his eyelid closed around her finger. The punctured eyeball spasmed. Tears and blood flowed from the wound, pooling in his ear and soaking the sheets under his head. His chest shuddered and heaved under her hand, and his other eyelid fluttered, revealing an amber pool, a madly vibrating hourglass.
Her finger was now buried in his eye up to the first joint. She crooked the digit and tugged, at the same time rising off his erection. After a moment of resistance, the eye came free with a loud pop and his penis slid free of her anus. The sharp pain made her gasp, and she inadvertently ripped the optic nerve and blood vessel free from their socket. A mild disappointment, for she had planned to prolong his pain and discomfort.
The breath wheezed from him.
The tongue in her hand flickered back and forth, in a frenzy over its prize. The iron and salt taste of blood came to her, filled her entire.
Two hearts leapt against the confining walls of her ribs as she guided his erection into her. She rocked atop him, searching for the right angle. When she found it, the temptation to begin bucking nearly overcame her.
But she resisted temptation again. Wicked magic flowed within her veins, its temper granting her control over her ferocious libido. She would drag this out, his pain, her pleasure, until she knew for certain she could strike a killing blow. As her hips slowly rose and fell, she crushed his disembodied eye against his chest and smeared the gore over his inked torso.
“Is this your first cunt?” she asked. “It is not so bad, is it? Pol, you fucking fool. If you had but submitted to me every now and then, let your pride falter now and then, you could have fooled me completely. I love you, Pol. I love you.” She tightened herself around his cock, hard enough to cause a swift intake of his breath. “But you have known that for some time, have you not? And still you chose to betray me.”
She thrust faster, leaned forward to press her torso to his. Turning his head so that only his good eye showed, she whispered into his ear, “Another thought occurs. You intended to betray our faith. You would see everything that I have worked for destroyed, and for what? So that you may influence Adrash to cleanse the world? What inspired such evil thoughts? Certainly it was not me. I would have steered you away from evil.”
Her thighs twitched against his hips as waves of pleasure crested and broke throughout her body, and she finally started to buck, slamming her hips into his. Her breaths came fast and shallow. She closed her eyes, moaned his name.
Of their own accord, her fingers crawled up his chest and tightened around his throat.
‡
She had kept the man Jarres in her apartment for two weeks. As the full extent of Pol’s betrayal became apparent, the tortures she inflicted upon his lover grew more severe. By the eighteenth day, he was little more than a bloodless husk of flesh, kept mere seconds from death by a collection of preservation spells Ebn had extorted from the Medicines Proctor.
The progression from threats to outright torture had not been rapid, nor had it occurred as a result of the information the man provided. In truth, his account rarely varied. Instead, something within Ebn changed. She listened, and with each repeated word grew to hate the man. He came to symbolize all that had been taken from her by Pol’s betrayal.
Her hope, her desire, perverted and made hollow. Her love, turned to hate. She punished Jarres for reminding her of these facts.
She punished him when her informants revealed that Pol had not called on Jarres’s home or inquired at White Ministry hospital, despite the man’s nearly two-week absence. This further proof of Pol’s callousness enraged her. Jarres suffered for Pol’s sins. He begged, and screamed, and Ebn erected a sound barrier to keep others from hearing.
She listened, and then she stopped listening.
Memories filled her head. Memories of Pol, the shy sixteen-year-old boy who had come into her life. Eating breakfast with him, once every month. Teaching him, watching him grow into an adult. Feeling her lust turn to devotion, knowing she could not control its headlong progression. Love’s assumption of her entire life.
Pol’s voice came to her on the wind, out of the mouths of strangers, woke her from a dead sleep. Hoping to hear anything new, some sign that he had not actually betrayed her, she lingered on every word and slowly killed Jarres, who only confirmed what she already knew.
The bearded man’s voice became ragged. He screamed until he coughed blood. When there was no blood left to thrust up, he wheezed and he cried, and then there were no more tears, no liquid in his body. His eyes stopped tracking and shrunk within his withered face. She anointed him with alchemical salves, spells to keep his pitiful body from failing. Pressing an ear to his chest, she listened to the creak of his lungs, the parched stutter of his heart. Like so many of the sounds she had heard since Shav’s visit, these too resolved into words:
You are a relic.
You are a fool.
Finally, she killed the man, silencing his horrendous, dry-rotted voice. But instead of release, the act filled her with new urges, desires that spoke with the rustle of dead leaves and old bird bones, alien cravings that whispered as softly as flakes of rust under one’s feet, as quietly as hairs ripped from the scalps of corpses.
She watched the Needle rise every evening, and imagined it descending to the surface. She pictured the fiery gouges the spheres tore in the atmosphere as they fell, the new stars blooming on the horizon, the clouds of molten earth rising into the sky. She felt the world’s crust crack beneath her feet. She heard the voices of millions crying to their god for salvation.