The Whore of Babylon

Chapter 28 | part 2a (Micro chapter)

Author's note: Sorry guys, I have had a really busy day and not had much time to write a full chapter. This is just a micro chap to keep you going until this chapter comes out properly tomorrow night. Hope it's satisfying though! TPx

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Eliana was not required to attend the Brute's execution, but she chose to go. He was a demon who had haunted her nightmares and her waking hours equally for well over a decade. If she didn't see him die with her own eyes, she could not believe him truly gone.

Her world was changing – the time for softness and kindness was past. The Brute had gambled on her gentleness, had mistaken it for weakness. He had lost his gamble, and she would see him pay the price.

With not so much as a flicker of emotion in his face, he stared at her as he was led out to his death. Her insides went cold. In that stare, she felt every moment of terror he had ever caused her – from the first time she laid eyes on him as he murdered Mari's brothers, to his vicious assaults when she first came to the palace; from beating and restraining her so that they could kill her sister, to attempting to murder her in her bed. There was joy in knowing that every smug look and savage blow he had ever given, he would pay for in this moment.

But when the moment arrived, she could not watch.

Samsu had ordered him torn apart by horses, and the court had gathered in the exercise yard to witness it. The Brute had few allies, and fewer still who would be sorry to see him die. Of all the court, only Susa, Ani and Adra seemed to be in mourning – Susa had reportedly collapsed when she had heard the news, and Adra had not spoken a word since the condemnation.

Guards, former comrades, forced him to the dirt, chaining each limb to half-wild stallions who champed impatiently at the bit, prancing in place, anxious to run. His torso secured to the ground, he was ready.

He raised his head from the ground and shot a look of pure, unadulterated hatred at Eliana. It was a look that would have made her tremble in other circumstances, now she met his eyes with a steady gaze as clear as her conscience.

Her body betrayed her. As Samsu gave the signal, the four riders raised their whips and brought them down on the horses' flanks with stinging cracks and the beasts lurched into a gallop... her eyes squeezed shut of their own accord.

Her ears, she could not close so easily. The man from whom she had never heard anything but taunts and insults gave one chilling, piercing scream, straight from the depths of the underworld – it tore the air and cut to the quick, echoing in her mind long after the sound had faded. It would stay with her until her dying day.

When she opened her eyes, he was the Brute no more. The man who had had the power to hurt, to terrify, to kill... he was just a mass of meat, his torso still twitching and convulsing as the horses trotted back, each dragging a limb behind.

He was as mortal as anyone else. She was almost surprised.