The Price of Her Love
dnd pc backstory smut / 6,957 words / oops! sometimes your court gets caught and you are killed while traveling, and the ways you choose to pay your patron back are with your body— all of it. / cws for character death, dysphoria, s/m, bloodplay, manipulation, gore / everyone who's not fen belongs in part to @mercilessperciless !
The thing was, his hasty plan had worked the way he’d mapped it out. The displacer beast had seen someone with no armor and leapt straight for him, allowing him to release the fireball he’d prepared and watch the Blaze bloom all around him for just a moment as he scorched deeply into its flesh. He just… hadn’t managed to dodge the beast fast enough to avoid the heavy claws that came down his chest and knocked him to the ground.
There was still adrenaline flooding through his veins, though he knew that wouldn’t last long. He didn’t know if she could hear him, but it was worth a shot. “Moth—” Blurry edges framed his vision as the adrenaline began to fade from his body, leaving him to ride a wave of pain that left him breathless. To finish asking for help was no longer an option; now it was just him clinging to the raw and bloody pain of being torn open (so different from the burns he knew and loved) to keep some sort of consciousness. Not that it was easy— this pain pulsed a deep red with the beat of his heart (not good, that was him bleeding out), a visceral ebb and flow that was much more fickle than the exponential-increase-until-peak that he’d grown to understand from burns. No, this was more like when the Viscereine raked her claws down his skin in bed, on a far larger, deadlier scale. It made it difficult to cling to the shreds of his consciousness, each flickering thought moving too quickly (was this it, no, this couldn’t be it, She was still alive and as long as that was true he couldn’t die, fuck, he could hardly breathe, the black edges threatening his vision—)
Hands, featherlight, brought him back to himself enough to recognize the Prince’s Moth, kneeling over him. Calm as ever, she spared his face no second glance as she assessed the wound, hands beginning to glow with her hot white light. Obviously he needed healing, but he had no idea how he was going to stay conscious through all of it (fuck that hurt) as the sear of magic began to burn throughout his body. He did his best to stay still, but there was little he could do to stop himself shaking wildly under her practiced hands. Everything had its price, and her price was pain.
His vision flickered in and out. The Viscereine was there when she hadn’t been before, closely studying the flesh that lay beyond his skin. “Oh, Herald,” she looked at him with her same beautiful, unreadable face, “that was very brave.” It did not sound like she thought that was brave, but he was a little too focused on not dying to figure out what it did sound like.
“Get him talking,” he heard the Moth murmur.
He saw something shift across the Viscereine’s face, and she said something he couldn’t hear. Then she was kneeling next to him as well, fingers hovering over his open chest in a way that made him wonder for a moment if she was about to undo all the Moth’s work so far (she wouldn’t right? right?). Instead, she began to trace imaginary lines over him, starting at his neck and working her way down. “Would you mind if I took a look inside you, Herald? Your stomach is exposed already. I’d have to crack open your ribcage to get to anything good up top, but we could see how your lungs are faring after your time here. And of course,” her smile was knife-sharp, “I’d love to pull out your heart so we could look at it together.”
There was a small part of him that knew this was simply her trying to follow the Moth’s orders. There was another small part of him that knew how deeply creatures with organs and insides intrigued her, and that this was (probably?) a compliment of some sort. The largest part of him, however, was most concerned with not dying at the hands of the woman he not a good time to think about that right now not dying at her hands. “Maybe don’t—” he grit his teeth and clenched his fists as a new wave of pain washed over him, “— don’t pull out the organs the Moth is—” fuck, don’t pass out, “— working so hard to keep in me.”
Whatever the Viscereine might have said was lost to him as the Moth put her hand into the (still very raw and bleeding) flesh that made up his chest, and he nearly bit off his tongue as he clenched his teeth in an effort not to scream. Again, his vision flickered, in and out, in and out, darkness creeping inward from the edges. Panic was quickly beginning to set in as it hit him full-force: no matter how hard he fought, no matter how much he struggled to stay awake, he might still die anyway. Already-unsteady breaths were growing faster, shallower, as fear took hold of him and he began to ramble— something, anything, to keep the black at bay.
“H-hey Moth, any chance you could get rid of my tits while you’re working in the area? They’ve been a, uh, haha, weight on my chest for a long time and—” (Her head shook no.) “— no? Might need a new binder then, don’t think I’ll be getting this one back—” The tears that had begun to drip down his face evaporated in the heavy heat before they could get far. “— please, please I can’t die yet, I have to find Her, I have to make things right—”
He heard the sigh before he saw the Viscereine’s eyes drop to his face (when did she stand?), lips pursed ever so slightly. “So don’t die.”
What was once the fear of dying was shifting into a gripping, desperate fear at the thought of disappointing her. If he died— he couldn’t afford the thought. He wouldn’t die. End of story.
It seemed that in the time he’d come to that decision, she’d gotten bored and left.
His scattered mind could hardly hold thoughts, but the feeling of her loss was real. His possible death wasn’t even interesting enough for her to stick around, which was its own fun little hell to live in as the Moth slowly finished healing him. Across his (bare! bad!) chest was now a set of claw scars running from his shoulder to his waist on the other side, angry and tender, but closed. She carefully helped him up to sitting, where he resisted the urge to cross his arms and cover his chest (and touch his wounds in the process). When she pulled a roll of bandages from her bag, he audibly sighed in relief.
The Moth was methodical with her wrapping, not slow, but not fast either. Logically, he’d fucked everyone in the court, it shouldn’t really matter all that much if they saw his tits; they knew he wasn’t a girl, and that should have been what mattered, right? Except that in the Blaze, he was able to keep his chest bound, able to control on some level what they saw of him. There, he had no choice, every ugly inch of him finally laid bare; and the Moth’s eyes on him were a necessity for her to finish bandaging him. He’d have to grit his teeth and wait it out, if he could keep consciousness that long. Bandages meant he was stable, right? Wouldn’t die if he blacked out (which was quickly becoming likely)?
He didn’t get a say in the matter as he finally passed out, going limp in the Moth’s arms.
/
It took three days before he was allowed to travel again. If he’d been given a choice, they would have been moving again the next day; but the Moth had taken his staff and made it clear that he was not ready to move, and that if he tried, she would not hesitate to knock him back out. While he wasn’t scared of her, he knew he was still unsteady on his feet, and that she’d likely have little problem carrying out her threat. Plus, the Keeper had brought up a good point when they’d brought him lunch: if they encountered trouble again while he could barely walk, he’d be dead weight. There was little he could do to argue with that, so he had three whole days to do nothing but trance and reflect on his failure.
And boy, did he reflect. Every angle examined, every decision, every spell, what could have been done better. Not that he had much idea what the displacer beast could do, seeing as he was busy trying not to die for a good chunk of that fight; but it still ate at him, knowing that he’d become a burden, even if it wasn’t for long. Knowing how much he’d have to do to make up for it all.
It took another week after that before he was cleared to participate in every aspect of the Blaze (he was welcomed back thoroughly by everyone, which, while much-needed and much-appreciated, left him with some trouble walking). Only after this, the next evening, did the Viscereine approach him one-on-one, eyes sparkling with delight. “Hello, Herald.”
It was hard not to be suspicious of her when she approached him like that. He squinted at her, crossing his arms. “What do you want?”
“What do you think I want?”
Fuck, he hated playing these guessing games with her. Just once, it’d be nice to have a clear fucking answer. But no; instead, he got to deal with her unclear language and come to his own conclusions (and if he came to the wrong conclusion? That was on him). Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath, filtering his frustration through a layer of manners to get to an acceptable set of words. “I don’t know, my lady. That’s why I asked.”
Rather than any sort of answer, she asked, “You’ve just had your first Blaze in a little while. How are you feeling?”
It took a moment of gritting his teeth (why did she have to be so difficult) before he could reply in a tone that didn’t beg for trouble. “Sore, but otherwise fine.”
She let a moment of eyeing him pass, as if deciding for herself whether or not he was lying to her. Apparently, she was satisfied he was not, because her lips curled into a smile, revealing brilliant white teeth. Oh, she was beautiful alright, but she was cunning and slippery and scheming too, and that sort of smile put him on edge with no real information. “I’m glad to hear that.”
It took a lot of willpower not to snap and demand what she wanted again. Instead, he took another deep breath, focusing on the ache of his sore muscles and using the feeling to ground himself again. She’d asked how he felt after the Blaze. An inquiry into his well-being, his recovery, as well as how he was handling after a long night of wild sex. Which meant she was trying to steer his thought process in one, or both, of those directions. She was here alone, which obviously meant she wanted something— oh, of course. She wanted time to fuck, just the two of them. But that was him drawing conclusions very quickly, and he was uncertain this one was the correct one. Better to ask and be certain. “Sorry, is this you wanting to fuck?”
Her laugh was soft, light, and clearly amused by the bluntness of his statement. “So crass, Herald! But not incorrect.” (Oh thank gods, he was right.) “Would you care to accompany me to somewhere a little more private?”
He knew better than to think that was a request. “Of course.”
It was to her personal tent he was led, a sight of beauty every time— a brilliant, deep crimson with flames that licked at the bottom. Ducking into the tent, he was not surprised to see a bed set up with fine silk sheets. On top of it, near the end, lay his strap and some lube, ready for him to get straight to business if she so desired.
“Well, Herald,” the Viscereine sat gracefully on the bed, crossed her legs one knee over the other, and snapped her fingers. The candles around the perimeter of the tent lit one by one in quick succession, small flames that were clearly meant to set the mood. “Are you going to leave me waiting?”
Somewhere in his mind, a switch flipped. He moved forward with intent, hungry for the feel of her skin against his, for every second he could have alone with her. The bed sank under his weight as he dropped onto it to kiss her deeply, hands already sliding the straps of her dress from her shoulders. She was clearly pleased, if the noise she made against his mouth was anything to go by. That was one thing she liked about him: slow was a word that rarely applied.
When she pulled away, it was only enough to make sure he knew that she was tugging at the neck of his tunic. “This,” she murmured, breath warm on his ear, “needs to come off.”
It took a total of less than a minute for all of his clothes to be shed— maybe he was a little too eager, but she seemed to enjoy the haste with which he moved, watching with lazy delight as he slid into the harness that waited for him and turned to her once more. When she beckoned him back towards her, he came less to her side and more practically on top of her, a paragon of reckless abandon as he grabbed for whatever he could— her waist, one perfect breast, and then her face as he pulled her into another heady, hot kiss that left him breathless. It was here that he first clocked something as off about the situation; but she seemed fine, no hesitation in her reciprocation, and he was fine, so he put it to the back of his mind.
Most of all, he wanted her out of that dress. He reached around to her low back where a clasp ought to sit, fingers unbothered by the flames that waited where her skin, her back, ended. Getting singed was just a part of fucking at least half the people here, so he’d learned to lean into and embrace it; his fingers, calloused from metalwork anyway, only felt the heat if he let them stay in it. One by one, each clasp came undone, and he watched the dress loosen with hungry eyes until he could slide the straps all the way down her arms, tug the skirt out from under her, and toss it onto the floor below them.
There was never going to be a time where he didn’t find himself stunned by her body, a masterpiece of curves and angles he could map with his eyes, his hands, his mouth, for forever (or at least for as long as she’d let him). His left hand splayed across her lower back, index finger just edging into the fire that lay inside, leaving his right hand free to tangle into her hair as he— well, to say he kissed her would have been an understatement. He pulled her body flush to his and felt the impact of their lips in his teeth; she bit his bottom lip, tugging at the cracked skin until it split, and slid her tongue over the now-bloody mess, into his mouth. The blossom of pain, the taste of iron, the feeling of his finger beginning to burn, pulled an unholy noise from him that made her smile against his lips.
Pushing her back onto the bed, he trailed red-stained kisses down her stomach, two fingers sliding inside her easy as anything. The sounds of her irregular breathing, her soft moans, sent a spike of heat deep through his core. “I missed you so much,” he murmured, glancing up at her through his eyelashes as his fingers moved. She writhed under him as he sucked on the nipple of the breast he had yet left unattended; her hips moved to meet his hand, and he felt her grab for his back, sinking her nails deep into him. He was relentless, falling into the clarity of that pain and chasing her orgasm. He liked seeing her like that, unwound, knowing exactly what she was feeling and that he was the cause for it. It felt nice, being useful. Being wanted.
She was a vision of beauty, glistening with sweat and radiant in the glow from her own fire as she came undone in his hand. Her nails dragged down his back, down his hips, scoring hot red lines into his skin that made his nerves sing, alight with pain; and then she was letting go, soft and loose under him, looking at him like he was actually worth something to her. He was careful, tender as he tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, ignoring the way his heart twisted inside his chest. There was no happiness that didn’t end up hand in hand with fear. The more he shoved that shit back, accepted what they were and didn’t dive into the details, the better for both of them.
“Surely that’s not all you have for me?” Her vibrant crimson eyes were now speckled with yellow, twinkling in anticipation as her angles, her edges, returned.
For all intents and purposes, that was a challenge, and he was not there to disappoint or lose.
Again he leaned down to kiss her, to lift her to sitting, feeling his heart beat in his bruised lips as heat continued to pool deep in his core (he was wet behind the strap, aching for some sort of relief, but he could wait). This time, it was she who grabbed a fistful of hair, her sharp tug pulling a gasp from him as she forcibly separated him from her. There was no kindness in the way she shoved him back onto the bed, wind knocked out of him as he hit the silk beneath, and he stared up at her breathlessly with keen delight (gods she was a sight to behold). Running her thumb over his ragged lips, she seemed to contemplate the situation she’d put them both in for only a moment before a wicked smile cut its way across her visage. “Time to put that mouth to good use, Harbinger.”
He barely had time to suck in that missing breath before she spread her legs to kneel over his face. He grabbed the soft flesh of her hips, supporting her weightless form as she lowered herself to his waiting lips— she was divine and he was, despite everything, blessed enough to drink from her cup, time and time again. If his body was a temple, this was his prayer: some sort of communion no one at home would ever approve of— to taste a god and know that this was how she let him go on in spite of his sins, to dream of what peace was like in the sharp cradle of her thighs, to feel how hungry he was for some scrap of relief that would rid him of the needling red ache of desire burning inside him. He was intent, desperate, as he took everything she had to offer him— his pain was as much his own pleasure as it was hers, so when her claws drew fresh blood where she gripped his wrists, he faltered for the whine that he could not keep trapped in his throat.
“Do not stop,” her growl, low and guttural out of her chest, paired with the hot, thick red liquid rolling down his skin, only grew the feverish need lighting every inch of him. That was an order he could hold himself to, working fast, relentless circles with his tongue until she was shaking overtop him, thighs clenched around his face. He held her hips steady as she came, scalding his mouth, and drank down every drop he could (he could not begin to describe her taste, only knew that despite her lack of internal organs, he still had something to swallow, and it burned, and he loved it).
As determined as he was to take her apart again, he was also desperately trying to keep his head on straight through the fire pulsing out from his center. When her grip on him loosened, when he could breathe again, he gasped and moved her easily off his face, to his stomach, propping himself up on his elbows to stare up at her. His wrists ached pleasantly where her claws had pierced him, bleeding sluggishly onto the sheets below (much like his back), but that alone was not enough. “Please fuck me,” he begged, watching his words clock in her face, her head tilt as she considered the option. “Please, I want you, I want you to touch me, to hurt me—”
“Do you think you have the right to ask me that?”
Her voice cut cold and clear through the haze in his mind, and the feeling of something being off that had caught him earlier was finally something he could understand: she’d been rather hands-off considering how they usually fucked, allowing him to do the work while she indulged in the benefits. If she wanted him to keep begging, she’d make that clear; no, she was dead serious about this question.
“I— I thought so,” he said, though it was uncertain enough that it sounded like a question to him. He racked his brain for what he might have done to piss her off this time, struggling through the anxiety bubbling up in his chest— fuck, all he’d done since nearly dying was rest, and that was not exactly by choice, if she was mad at him for that then what the hell was he supposed to do? “I-I’m sorry, I don’t— what did I do wrong?”
“If you think that my saving your life is without price, I would advise you to think again.”
Of course. Of fucking course. This wasn’t a ‘Welcome back, glad you’re not dead’ fuck like the Blaze had been; this was a ‘You owe me’ fuck, a reminder that nothing was without cost, that he was subject to her whims, and that his own needs were an afterthought. She’d gotten what she wanted; why would he matter?
Between the binder, the position he sat in, and her sitting on top of him, the deep breath he took was strained. “Okay. Rethought. My— my bad. Are we— are we done here? Or do you—”
“My Harbinger,” her eyes, cold and knowing, did not match her smile, “you will know when we are done.”
No release and no relief. Sure. Okay. He could swallow back his protests like a good boy, because arguing wasn’t going to get him anywhere, he knew better than to think he could change her mind on something like this. All things considered, this was a small price to pay for his life, right? He was still here getting to fuck her, which would not be possible if he were dead. This was her version of mercy; there was no point in being bitter about it. Time to turn off the brain and follow orders.
“Yes, my lady.”
/
She did not tell him to leave when she was finished with him, a pleasant surprise that he accepted without question (trancing with her fire near gave him a sense of security that he could never find alone). Even more of a surprise the next morning was her pulling him up and out of his trance and telling him to dress, because they were going for a walk. Uncaffeinated and unfed but uncertain of what was happening, he did not protest: if she wanted an early-morning fuck somewhere scenic, he certainly wasn’t going to say no. He might even get to reap some pleasure of his own this time.
A soft blue mist hugged the ground where the sun had not yet risen to burn it off; the path they followed led to a secluded little clearing in the middle of the kaleidoscope pine forest they were traveling through. There was no bed, just the two of them off the bank of a small stream, which, sure, alright, he could work with the ground and the trees. When she paused to turn back and look at him, he was ready with a sweet kiss, pulling her in close to tangle his hand through her long, auburn hair. The noise of soft, surprised delight that she made against his lips was enough to make his heart jump, to finally fully wake him; unable to keep the smile off his face, or his hand from wandering from the back of her neck, he traced the edge of the hollow of her back until it was resting on her hip. “May I?”
To his confusion, she put a hand over his to stop him. He blinked once as his mind began to race with what he might have done wrong— had he been too hasty here? Misinterpreted her invitation? Been unsatisfactory last night? Had she finally gotten fed up with all of his bullshit? Every possibility was worse than the last, and they wouldn’t stop coming.
The anxiety must have shown, because she put a finger to his lips to shush him before he’d said a word. “That’s not what I asked you here for, Herald.” That did not make it any better. “Come, let’s sit.”
She led him over to the stream where he followed instinctually, sitting beside the bank as she did too. It felt very strange and mildly uncomfortable to be so close to the water, small as it was, though she seemed to have no such qualms as she studied him intently. The silence sat heavy between them, laced with the anxiety he was trying so hard to tamp down, until she finally spoke again. “Do you recall, while the Moth was healing you, when I asked you if I could take a look inside you?”
That was enough to put a skidding halt to all of his thoughts. “I do,” he said cautiously, playing with some of the multicolored needles that littered the forest floor around them. It was no fire, and it was no metal, but it was something to keep his fingers busy.
Her smile was not kind, but he could tell she was pleased with that answer. “I would still like to do that.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” The sentence slipped from his mouth before he could think, hand tightening into a fist around needles that jabbed into his palm. “You want to— what, take a look at my organs?” That was a lot. That was a lot, even for him. “You realize that would kill me, right? The very thing I just got done paying you back to avoid?”
“Your debt remains unsettled,” she countered, a statement of fact that would have rung false if not for the fact that he knew she could not lie. “I did not name my satisfaction as my price, and we did not agree to it as payment.”
Oh. So that was the game she was playing— when she’d forced him to find a conclusion from her empty words, when he’d fucked her senseless and received nothing for it, he’d foolishly assumed that that was his payment. He was as frustrated with himself for making that assumption as he was about the fact that the sinking feeling in his gut told him she would be getting her way, one way or another. “Okay. So your price is tearing me open and looking at my entrails. Do I have that right?”
“You do,” she tilted her head slightly, waiting for his inevitable followup.
“How, exactly, do you plan to do that without killing me when the Moth’s back at camp?”
Her smile returned, sharper than before. “My Harbinger, do you remember pleading for your life before myself and the Moth?” (A shake of his head no. Much of that exchange was blurry; he only remembered the Viscereine asking to look inside him because of how graphic she’d been.) “You told us that you couldn’t die yet, that you hadn’t yet achieved what you needed to, in essence. So I told you not to die.” (That part, he did remember now: that gripping terror of disappointing her hadn’t left, simply tucked itself away to rear its ugly head again later.) “That was more than a request. You cannot, will not, die within the next twenty days,” she placed one clawed finger to the scar tissue at the center of his chest, sending sparks through his skin at the point of impact, “and I have waited patiently to see how beautiful you are inside. So I ask you: is this an issue for you? Or are you prepared to accept this cost?”
It couldn’t be an issue for him. This was her price: if he refused, if he asked to wait, it would only get steeper. She would be sour, disappointed, which was the last thing he wanted. Besides, if he’d handled almost dying and the Moth’s healing, surely he could handle this, which was just the almost dying part. Plus, if this was happening one way or another, there was no point in putting it off: it would be a waste of time to keep healing while knowing that the injury was simply going to be reopened later. He took a deep breath and shook his head no, exhaling slowly as he tried to keep himself calm. “No. It’s fine. Just— I need to take all of this off,” his fingers had moved from pine needles to the edge of his tunic, “there’s no point in ruining it.”
Her crescent-moon smile didn’t change, and her eyes didn’t move off him as he stood once more. He undid his belt, tossing it about ten feet away, where hopefully everything would stay free of blood. With the tunic and the leggings tossed away too, he was left in just his bandages and underwear. Those, he supposed, should probably go too. By no means was it his first time naked in the middle of an unfamiliar forest, but most of the time, there was the Blaze going to keep him well and warm; the only fire here was what smoldered in the Viscereine’s back.
The air was cool, and the ground was prickly against his skin as he sat once more, closer to her this time. Stripped entirely bare, of his own volition. (Just don’t look down. Just don’t think about it.) Certainly, she took her time drinking in the sight of him, raking her eyes thoroughly over every inch of him. It would be nice to know what was going on in that head of hers, but that simply wasn’t how she operated; so instead, he sat there under her gaze in silence, listening to the babble of the stream, trying not to think about the inevitable. Which was kind of a tough feat, all things considered, especially when one factored in the inevitability of his curse until She was dead. There was so much he knew could be coming, but he never had any idea when, or in what manner, his curse would act out. The precautions he took, were they to become the arbiters of Her will? How much of his fear was reasonable? He didn’t know how strong it actually was in the grand scheme of things—
A touch to his shoulder was enough to snap his attention back to the Viscereine, who had moved to be directly in front of him. “I’d recommend lying back,” her hand crept down and inwards, towards the scars, lazily pressing him towards the ground. He let her, following her pace as he leaned back, trembling with the effort (her chuckle did not go unnoticed). He made it to the ground regardless, where he was grateful for the support below him.
She gave him no time to let the anxiety sink back in: in the blink of an eye, the tips of her fingers were embedded in his chest. A gasp proved to be a poor idea, letting him feel where each sharp claw now rested inside him; blood began to pool, slow and steady, around her fingers. The adrenaline now coursing through him was a shock of clarity, leaving no room for thoughts that weren’t about foreign object in my chest. So far, tolerable.
That changed when she began to rip open his scars, and he screamed so loud he thought the entire forest must be able to hear it. She must have been enjoying it, because she was slow in pulling him apart, scar tissue stretching and tearing like his flesh was nothing but a shell in the way of her prize. His writhing under her fingers was seemingly of little consequence: she simply put her knees to his shoulders to pin him down, and continued to pull and pry his chest open, little by little. Ribs cracked around her hands; all he could see was her face, spattered with his blood, and the unbridled joy she wore. How ironic that after so much time spent wondering what she was thinking, it was here, now, that he could tell.
With him lying back, gravity was doing its job; his screams cut off as he choked on the blood that had begun to seep into his throat, coughing violently (a terrible mistake). Apparently, this was of note to the Viscereine, because she smiled at him so sweetly that it was hard to reconcile the fact that she was the one doing this to him. His mind was beginning to falter as she sat him up (more pain fuck fuck fuck), supporting him easily with one arm. “Ready for the main event?”
She must have taken his swaying as a yes, because he felt her hand wrap around his quickly-beating heart in his chest. With one swift motion, she pulled it free of the cavity it resided in, and held it between them for the two of them to see.
Under any normal circumstances, that would have been more than enough to make him black out. Under any normal circumstances, having your heart ripped out meant you were dead. And he sure did black out, but not for long: from numbness, from a body that had lost so much blood already, came a spark of fear that ignited through every limb: the panic, the terror, of disappointing her and dying. That magic coursed through his veins, keeping his eyes open, his heart beating, despite its place in her hands. A thread of fire running through it connected it back to him, and, honestly? The burn was the most comforting feeling he had. He was grateful for its anchor as his body screamed in agony.
Still dizzy and reeling, supported only by her arm, he watched as the Viscereine lifted his heart to her lips and kissed it tenderly, almost reverently. It was… the kindest he’d ever seen her look, and it sent him spinning with desperation in all sorts of ways. What would he do, what would he give, to see that expression directed towards him again? It didn’t bear thinking about in this state. His vision was going black again; another deep pulse of magic, this time one he could only just see as the fire flared around his heart, kept him there still. “Fascinating,” she breathed, captivated by the sight.
She let the tension hang in the air between them, studying his heart, his face, the way the magic was keeping him alive. There was a part of him, distant and sleepy, that was fascinated by the magic too. How often did he get to see something like this in action, up close? If he’d been able to study himself, he would have in a heartbeat. What was the magic? What were its limitations? Was its ability to defy death innate? She seemed convinced he wouldn’t die, so how far was she going to push that?
The answer, as it turned out, was very far. One by one, she took her time removing and examining every organ she could get her hands on, until he was numb to the sensation. What was her pulling out his stomach when she’d already wrenched out his heart, lungs, diaphragm, and liver? What was the same exact kind of pain in a new spot when he should have died dozens of times already? There was nothing left in him to spend anymore, just a literal hollow in his chest and the same flickering threads of magic that tethered him to the corpse body he inhabited.
It wasn’t until she began to put everything back that he slowly came to himself again. There was… no describing the way it felt to have his internal organs returned to where they belonged. Missing puzzle pieces didn’t even begin to come close: how could he try to put to words the feeling of blood beginning to flow again, of burning magic reconnecting that which had been separated? It was everything at once flooding into him: the magic reignited feeling in every limb, every inch of his body, a beautiful, awful reminder of what being alive felt like (it felt like so fucking much).
He remembered the trip back in fragmented bits and pieces: the shock of the cold water against his open wounds. Dressing. Following the Viscereine blindly forward. Physically holding his guts in as he stumbled back to the camp. Realizing through the haze that he’d ruined his clothes. Until then he was at the Moth’s tent, and the Viscereine was cupping his cheek and telling him, “I had a wonderful time. Thank you, my Harbinger.”
She placed a quick, stinging kiss to his lips, and left him alone at the entrance.
His duck into the tent was uncomfortable (agonizing) as he tried (and failed) not to shift any of the viscera. When he sat in front of her, it was closer to a collapse than any sort of controlled descent. The Moth watched him silently, waiting for some sort of word of affirmation from him for the obvious task at hand. “Please heal me,” he forced out, trying to focus on her face as his vision blurred again.
She moved the instant he was done speaking, carefully grabbing his shoulders and laying him down. Her only hesitation was at the tunic, looking to him again for confirmation that she was allowed to remove it (this came in the form of a weak thumbs up). Rather than try to jostle him more, she simply cut the fabric down the center and pulled it apart to get at him. Whatever her reaction to the injury was, her face didn’t change; her hands simply began to glow with that familiar white light while he braced himself.
This time, there was no screaming, no thrashing, no flailing. That would have required far more energy than he possessed: this time, he just let himself stare silently at the Moth, slipping in and out of consciousness as she exacted her price for his healing. At least he knew it was coming. At least he was familiar with this kind of pain.
When her white light had faded to a soft glow, a last pass over everything to make sure he would be fine if she left, he spoke. “I’m sorry all your hard work was undone,” he murmured, keeping his gaze to the side. How to even put to words what had happened in the forest? He had to try, to let the Moth know this wasn’t just him being careless. “Um. The Viscereine took me out, and... wanted to play.” Too vague. “With my insides.” Still sounded sexual. “By taking them out and looking at them.” That’d do.
He looked up to see her nod solemnly as the last glow of magic faded from her hands. She wasn’t upset, or disappointed, and honestly? That was all he needed. Pushing himself over onto one forearm, he began to sit up, only to see the Moth’s mandibles clicking softly in displeasure: a warning. Right. He wasn’t supposed to push himself when he was injured like this. He lay back down, staring up at the ceiling. Another three days of doing nothing but reflecting.
He was tired of being blindsided, and angry with himself that it had taken this long, this much of a toll, for him to come to this conclusion. He’d have to start asking people for their prices up front before accepting anything, no matter what it was. Meals from the Hearthkeeper and clothes from Imölia came with the price of service to the Court, he was pretty sure, but he was uncertain of even that now. How much time had he spent indebting himself to the Court? Too much, if he had to question it like that.
Well, fine. Lesson fucking learned. Nothing was ever free. Not for him. Not from anyone. The end. This was his life, and until the curses were broken, he’d pay the cost to keep it, no matter what it might do to him.
(It would do awful things to him, but he would swallow them all down regardless; and they would twist and burn deep within him until they were inseparable from who he was.)
