Strange Magics 1.5: When the Stars Align- a M/F Demisexual/ Transgender romance

7- Sacrifices and Vows

*****Thank you to @NayyabRai for pointing out to me that I'm a dork & spaced on finishing uploading this one... I need a new brain. If anyone is selling one, I'd buy it... Just kidding. Sort of.*****

HESTIEL—

The sounds of Roslyn's screams as she died, slowly and with so much pain I could nearly feel it shooting off of her and over to me. All the way to my shaking body and frozen limbs. The smell of sweat and blood and urine. Of fear and agony and death. The feel of thick, clammy fingers digging into the fleshy part of my upper arms, holding me back from Roslyn's body as they finally let it drop to the ground in a heap of broken flesh.

Dear gods, my mind repeated, over and over and over again. I knew I couldn't pray for her life. That was gone already, I knew that. I couldn't pray for mercy for her. It was too late. I prayed only because what else was I to do? What else could I do when I was left helpless, watching as a woman I had loved, who had been by my side since I wore diapers and toddled on hands and knees, was slaughtered?

The woman who my father had chosen to bear the agony of my punishment. The punishment for once again keeping from him the thing he wanted most: more power. Riches to fill his greedy coffers. I couldn't even remember what it had been this time. A misplaced— freed— shipment of slaves here. A bit of blackmail to stop a deal with pirates or mercenaries there. It didn't even matter. Over and over I kept my father from atrocities. I kept my brother from the hands of evil men, and those around me as safe as I was able. That was always my goal, what I worked toward. I wasn't always successful in my endeavors to keep those outside of my circle from his grasping fists, but it was all I could do. It had to be enough.

But I had gone too far. Pushed too hard. And now Roslyn was dead, slaughtered as I screamed, begged, pleaded and bargained, and I dangled from the arms of two of my father's advisors, my brain gone completely silent. It was too much. I hadn't been enough and now I had lost something that had never been part of the equation.

My father had flipped the game around and taken from me that which had been my foundation. The very ground I stood on. The woman who had been my mother when my mother hadn't been capable of caring for me. When my own mother had been too sick, too distracted, too weary to pay me any attention or love me at all. The woman who had taught me, given me every lesson she had learned as a woman in a place where women, even free women, were less.

I stared up into the dancing, laughing eyes of my father as he towered over me. His smirk was set, the lines of his mouth twitching as he watched me with an expression that spoke of his satisfaction. Droplets of blood across his left cheek drew my eye and once my eyes had caught onto them I was unable to look away. He'd had others do his dirty work— whipping Roslyn until her screams stopped and she stared blankly into nothing— but somehow her blood still tainted his skin. The sight of it had bile rising up into my throat. Again. I had already pissed myself, already vomited down the front of my dress, unable to even lean over so as to vomit on the ground for the hands holding me so tightly. But the sight of Roslyn's life blood spattered across my father's face had my stomach twisting as if to expel what it already hadn't.

"I am done with your games, Hestiel. Let this be the end of your defiance. I will not hesitate to spill more blood to put you in your place, little girl."

I heaved at the words, nothing coming up but my body violently wanting to find something, anything to expel. Because everything was vile and putrid and I needed it out.

My father made a motion and the men at either side of me released me, letting me drop unceremoniously onto the stone. I let my head hang for a moment, my breaths coming in and out of my mouth since my nose was so clogged with tears and snot I couldn't breathe. My hair hung around my face, my chest heaving, my fingers digging into the stone, leaving bloody trails as the rough edges of stone ripped into my skin. The utter silence of the room alerted me of the departure of the men and my father.