Kindness and Cruelty • Chapter 19
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cw: violence, blood, choking
Kaguya needed to buy time. Really, she needed to buy Subaru time to steady his hands and take another shot, one with sufficient speed and accuracy that The Hound could not simply dodge it. But time is expensive when one is losing oxygen, and there would be no bargaining with the wild-eyed man who held her by the neck, so Kaguya decided to cut this deal with a knife. She slipped her side blade from under a fold in her skirt and stabbed upward. She caught The Hound right in the middle of his wrist—at the cost of cutting herself too. She felt blood well up in the hollow of her throat.
The Hound snarled and tore his ruined hand away. All too quickly, though, he used his other hand to grab Kaguya by the arm as she made to break free.
“Damn,” he said with a grin. “No wonder Veyron had so much trouble.”
“Please,” Kaguya spat, not meaning politeness at all. “Don’t flatter me.” He had me by the throat, she thought. I wasn’t going to make it easy for him, but he had me.
The Hound forcefully pulled her towards him. Kaguya attempted another swipe of the knife, but her movements stalled when The Hound did something entirely unexpected. He yanked down her sleeve to expose her skin and he took a deep sniff. Then he lunged forward and inhaled the scent of her hair.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded, half in fury and half in sheer genuine confusion. Kaguya threw her shoulder against The Hound’s chest. He fell back but did not let go of her.
“You smell…”
“Excuse me?!” Kaguya choked out. “Ugh, so you’re evil AND rude?”
“Oh…I see,” he said, which was a rather odd way to respond to an insult. “I knew I…ah. Ha. Just can’t manage on his own, can he?”
“What does th—”
His grip tightened to the point of pain. Kaguya grunted and struggled, but it was as though she was nothing more than a worm wriggling in the fist of a child who had not yet learned that hurting helpless things for fun was wrong. The Hound’s sharp blue gaze flickered down to the little reservoir of fresh blood in her clavicle, to the exposed span of her neck, and finally to the still-healing cut of her bitten lip. “Well, at least you’ve finally done something interesting.”
