The Knight of Slaughtaverty

Saving Grace

Slaughtaverty 1745

With nervous breath struggling through her anxiety-narrowed windpipe, Mairead Doyle takes one tentative step after another, entering the cold cell where the boy she'd met in the graveyard is lying writhing in pain against the farthest wall.

He is covered with a thin blanket, barely keeping the cold from his shivering body. His hair, so full and beautiful and shining the last time she saw him, is lifeless and dull, merging with the straw he is lying on.

This boy showed Merry things she'd never known lived in her heart. Dreams, ideals, and a future... hope...

He showed her secrets she never dreamt of knowing. He wrapped her in the loving embrace of warm memories, washing away a lifetime of anguish and loneliness.

Every fibre of her being is longing for more of that warmth, more of that joy, even though she knows with a knowledge far beyond her years that it could lead to her death. Hearing him groan in agony, his pain - not only physical but emotional as well - swelling inside her tears her apart from within, and she yearns to end his suffering. She craves for him in ways that are beyond her understanding.

"Noooooooooo!" he cries in a voice hoarse from screaming when she reaches him. He turns his head to face her, arching his body away from her approach. "No! Please," he sobs, sounding defeated. His eyes are grey and wet with tears. They're the only part of him that is still filled with emotion and life. His face is gaunt, gradually turning into a skull covered in parchmentlike skin, stretched taut and cracking. The knowledge that he will dry up completely and turn to dust pierces Merry's heart, calling tears to her eyes.

She drops to her knees beside him, the scattered stalks of straw scraping and stabbing at her soft skin through the thin material of the delicate night dress she's wearing. Clothes that aren't hers, made from soft cloth as fine as cobwebs. She can feel the cold stone floor through the patches of straw, and her body steadily increases in its shivering now that she can feel her surroundings once more.

"Please take me blood, me lord," she whispers, instinctively bringing a wrist to his lips. She is too shy to offer him her neck again, though she longs for the touch of his lips on the sensitive skin there. She doesn't quite understand the source of her desires. Though life had treated her harshly, and she'd seen and heard things no 13-year-old should have to see and hear, Merry managed to retain most of her innocence.

Since she woke up screaming in that soft bed, her mind has gradually been filling up with knowledge she has no life experience or maturity to understand. Still, kneeling beside the emaciated, dying boy, she knows that she does not want to continue living in a world where he does not exist. She doesn't know why she feels like that, but it is overwhelming and frightening, and she doesn't dare question it.

"No," he croaks, averting his face, too weak to shove her hand away from him. "And I am not your lord."

His voice is barely audible, husky and filled with pain, his breathing scraping rawly between each word. He is battling for every breath, the hunger for her blood crippling him almost as much as the pain ripping through his dying body.

"Aye, but ye are, me lord," Merry assures him. "Ye saved me."

"I did not save you, you fool," he growls with a sudden, desperate burst of ferocity, turning his head to face her, his eyes burning into hers with a frightening intensity. Merry is not afraid, but she can feel the push. He is trying to reject her, trying to force her to leave, but though his effort is impressive, he is simply too far gone. Too weak. "I tried to kill you," he chokes. "I didn't even care how beautiful your soul is."

"Naw, me lord," Merry whispers, tears streaming down her smooth, healthy cheeks. His rejection hurts her in a way she cannot put into words. It is more than emotional or physical; it reaches her very core, the pain excruciating, amplified in his own. "All I know is that me body was a wreck of scars and pain for most of me life, and now I can finally move without any effort or burden. I feel no pain of me own, and all me scars are gone too."