The Unchaste

Crimson Confession.

Frivolous thing; and just as reprehensible as it went _ she ended up once again in the chamber she had previously occupied when still working at Stormcastle. It had been past midnight and they had nearly lost the boy to death till he was saved. So, as much she desired it, Delilah couldn't find it in herself to move Zillah and her son out of the castle at two in the morning for the sake of her own pride. It was, afterall, her own pride had brought them here in the first place.

And then_ the basement affair! Electricity has nothing to do with autopsies; you needed a stout mallet, vicious saw (for the bones!) and keen scalpels. Not circuits and motors. Lighting, nor Storms.

She certainly had barged into something very momentous going on down there_ something very far-fetched to be understood by an uncomprehending mind but resulting_ because she had to abide by glares and cold looks of the other doctors throughout the time they were treating Brandon. As for Dr. Steven; he looked almost beaten as he went about diagnosing and examining his charge. Almost foredone, the way one feels when exhilaration dies suddenly, falls short like a cliff.

Lord Winter didn't show up throughout the night after she had seen him; and unseen him, in the autopsy room.

It was queer_ this stillness didn't sit well with Delilah.

Dignity didn't allow her to take the bed, or perhaps it was merely the mud she had collected at the hem of her skirt, so she settled onto the sofa, cooping into a small corsage of silk and cotton. Placing her head in the cradle of her arms, Delilah worried what she could say when, or if, she now met the duke.

Regard or disregard, love or its lack, trust or the emptiness its absence wields _ nothing excused the truth that lay ahead of it all. Something big had been sacrificed by Lord Richard and his doctors only so that an immaterial child was saved. No matter it was his job; duty can be evaded. Significant people often bear lesser sense of duty.

If a murderer was a savior, which deed outweighed which one? It was ironical how this question had an equal askance to Delilah.

Among these quiet chaos of these puzzling mind-sets, Delilah fell into an unquiet sleep.

***

Welcome heat was caressing her cheeks and bonfire like glow was quivering at the underside of her eyelids as Delilah shivered into unhurried wakefulness, with a manifestly sundry scent of a man stirring up her lazy senses. Delilah woke up in light and warmth, but quite inquisitively, she observed_ it was candlelight and candle-warmth. The window, that should have featured daybreak glow, was still oozing darkness of the deadest kind, not a single bird chirping yet.

Delilah's lethargic head did not care much for that but there was something distinctly alien in the room. A regal, unmistakable shadow sitting on the chair across the tea-table caught her attention.  Her intellect, faded from the brief sleep, did not trigger in alarm as it should have_ instead, Delilah lifted her head slightly and blinked at the shadow, the single candle casting a slow light on her face. He was there, concealed in the layer of her reality and reverie_ perhaps a figment of her nightmare lingering still.

An accessorial wine flute balanced between his long fingers, Lord Richard Winter sat there, right there.

Delilah sat up slowly, with the caution of a feline against a wolf. She sighed, oddly composed. In the entire creation of galactic setups, this was the likeliest place and time for his wining, was it not?