The Unchaste

Empoisoned

Delilah was a pent-up ball of reckless rage by the time she emerged from one of the smashed windows of the castle, carefully bringing Emily out after herself. The metal artifact in hand was dripping with stale, aqueous blood; chanting a end of those who had stood in her way, came too close and foretelling the fate of those yet to come.

Emily stepped down the windowsill, only to set her foot on the first shard of shattered glass that incised deep in her soft sole. Emily’s face twisted in a pained scowl but not a whimper left her throat.

Delilah gasped, threw the makeshift weapon away and lowered herself to catch Emily’s other sole in her palm before it landed on the ground too. She lifted the girl away from the ground and brought her down on her lap, placing herself on a platform nearby.

They were hidden in the riddle of bushes and shrubberies but this shelter was not to last long.

They didn’t have the time.

“Emily.” Delilah tore a generous section of her cotton underskirt, in single sharp rip before settling it on the clean grass. “I am so sorry you have to abide by all this, my child. I am_”

 “Are they all dead, milady?” Emily interrupted with a tilt of her head, astonishingly indifferent of the abrasion she had just endured.

Delilah’s hand froze mid work. “Who all?”

Emily’s face didn’t alter from its statue like stoniness. “Whom we just_ evaded.” Her eyes flitted across, at the now discarded artifact that had blood pooled under it.

“Not_ Not dead.” Delilah stuttered, lowering her gaze back to the embedded splinter in the soft sole. “I only suppose they are unconscious. Wounded, yes.  Perhaps incurably. But they will live.”

A small frown marred the small face, Emily’s eyes went deeper and darker. She resigned inward as if she had a very personal thought to keep.

“I am sorry you had to bystand such violence, Emily.” Delilah caressed Emily’s shallow cheek fleetingly. “I am sorry I invoked to you nightmares for eternity.”

Emily didn’t answer and it was hard to access whether or not Delilah had even been heard_ thus, she tried to concentrate on getting rid of the intrusive glass piece from Emily’s foot. She was greatly uncertain how to do it. All this time, Delilah had only known how to stab in. Undoing that_ de-stabbing, she had little understanding of.

She did it the slower way, carefully shifting the shard out and left and right until it emerged out whole from the flesh setting free a fresh rivulet of thick blood. And it unnerved Delilah how Emily didn’t hiss, didn’t whimper nor flinched even once when the painful administration was committed. The girl seemed too far gone with her own contemplations.

Delilah dabbed the extra blood clean with one half of the fabric and proceeded to tie the gaping puncture close with another.

The air smelled metallic, tasted cold.

“I wish they all die.” Emily spoke suddenly. “Why do you apologize, milady? I do wish they suffer and they die.”

Delilah paused, shuddered, but did not stop in what she was doing.

How familiar! That contempt Emily just flavored her voice with, the desire to hurt others because you have been thus brutally damaged_ it was so familiar. So personal.

Delilah knew this tang. This_ desire_ to taste the blood of your transgressors on the roll of your tongue and dip of your canines.

The craving, to be a sinner for those who sinned against you.