The Fires of Spring

Chapter Ten

There was a short pause, the sound of chattering teeth and the humming of the light the only audible sounds. The heavy door shut out all other sounds and light and sealed them off in a world of cold and dark.

"What did they do to you, Lilith?" asked Christopher.

"Deduce, Christopher." Her reply was sharp. She would not allow any sort of fear into her voice to make Christopher any more nervous than he was. She could see fear in his blue eyes, glinting and flashing as he regarded her.

"You won't let me see," he replied, and he, reaching out his hand, let it fall.

"Cat-o'-nine-tails," she explained, her voice harsh. "In layman's terms, I was whipped."

Christopher was speechless for a moment, which was odd for him. "How are you so calm, Lilith?" he asked at last, the question he had posed before. "How did you-"

"Because no good will come of panicking! Listen, I don't know what the fuck they want from me, but it's something to do with you, and I know nothing! But I can't change that. All I can do is stay calm and-" she said.

Christopher interrupted her. "What did they ask you, Lilith?"

"I don't know - some secret you have. But it wasn't about your sexual activities," she replied.

Christopher paused. When he spoke, his voice was soft.  "I don't have any other secrets. You know all my secrets."

"Pah!" cried Lilith.

There was another pause during which Christopher, shuddering madly in the cold, accepted Lilith's proferred embrace to keep the two of them warm. It would do some good, she knew, to try to conserve the heat of their bodies, and she suspected that Visage did not intend to kill them now.

"What do they want from us?" murmured Christopher.

"From me? Only what I can give them on you. But you..." said Lilith, not sure if she should share the truth of her suspicions with Christopher.

"Tell me, goddamn it," snarled Christopher.

Lilith would never have obliged him with an answer in any other circumstance, but these were not ordinary circumstances.

"I suspect - I can't be sure - but I think they're trying to break you, Christopher. They saw how you were without me before - shitting yourself and crying, really - and now they're going to take me away again," explained Lilith. "And then you'll give them whatever it is the hell you know."

Christopher, who had his arms tight around Lilith, shivering and shuddering into her body, growled softly into her ear:

"I was not shitting myself and-"

Lilith gave a soft laugh. "Not yet."

There was another pause, this one stretching nearly an hour. In the time, Christopher had drawn her as close as he could, the heat from their bodies doing little to keep them warm. Lilith had never, not in so long she had been married to him, ever been so close to him. Not in any publicly feigned embrace had he ever held her quite so tightly. Now she was close enough to feel his heart beating wildly against her chest, and to feel tears dampen her shoulder as he cried in fear or anger or perhaps both.

"You're fearless, Lilith," said Christopher. Lilith, numb with the cold, had noted how her shivers began to fade and be replaced with a sleepiness that meant hypothermia would not be far behind.

"Am I?" she said.

"You are," he marvelled. "Are you ever afraid or anything?"

Lilith did not want to be truthful. She did not owe Christopher an answer, but gave one anyway.