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HER SMILE is a troubling kind.
It's a sick looking thing. Cracked lips stretching across bright, big teeth and stained with her purple ichor. The ends pull across the sharp planes of her skull, tugging at the bruised olive skin. She has not stopped smiling, no matter a great deal of pain rained down on her. The scream of her muscles being pulled apart by chains, the sting of a whip at her back, his hard glare boring through her. SHE STOPS FOR NONE.
Her ocean gaze through thick lashes does not move from his. The smile fails to reach them. Everything hurts her. Every breath, spasm, and blink. Her arms have been stretched as far as the human form allows, bound to the walls by thick, rusted chains. Her knees, like the rest of her, tell a story of brutishness that she did not know mortals possess. She hangs there for days, muscles slowly repairing only to be ripped apart again, listening keenly to the distinct footsteps of each guard. And yet, whenever he steels himself enough to check on the progress, she's there, smiling up at him, sick and overly saccharine.
SHE FEELS SO FAMILIAR. He knows that smile in his bones. That's what troubles him most. It's that smile that keeps him up at night. It's the very image of it—burned into the back of his eyelids—that eats at him when he lays at night, Euanthe hanging on to him under the stars.
THERE IS A DEBT TO BE PAID.
Word travels fast throughout the region of his uncle's death. Tales infect every corner of every dank alley of an assassin, covered in his blood blessed by the gods—a beautiful temptress who brought the Elder to his pleasure and slit his throat with his member still sheathed in her warmth. A WHORE, Argus' mother spreads, A GREEDY WHORE WHO SHALL PAY FOR HER MOST HEINOUS OF CRIMES! There are calls for crucifixion. To fasten the killer to a board, heavy iron bindings wrapped tightly around her wrists, ankles, neck. To tighten the collar until she can't breathe, until her eyes are bursting from her skull and the screams can no longer rip themselves from her throat.
