THREE
ARTEMIS
A burlap sack had been thrown over my head. Not that it made much difference, I didn't tell the men that though.
We walked in silence for what felt like forever.
We walked until the chill of the night passed and the sun began to warm my body.
It was the little things I had missed the most.
The scent of honey suckle and something sweet wafted through the air, I lifted my nose in the air, trying to catch a better scent.
Distant chatter met my ears, the scent of fires, of people, of wolves.
I thrashed against their thick paws. "Please." I begged, I didn't know what it was about the thought of being taken back to the place where these beasts live, but something about it filled me with dread. "Please don't! Just let me go!"
"Silentium!" One of the men hissed, and something hard struck my head, I collapsed in their arms. If I couldn't fight them then I would at least make it more difficult for them. "Please! Where are you taking me!" I cried, trying to find some purchase on the hard ground as they dragged me.
"Where rogues like you belong." A gruff voice deadpanned.
"I'm not a rogue!" I was. I did the only think I could think of to defend myself, I lied. "I'm a healer! Please believe me!"
"You lie." The other man growled and something sharp dug into the base of my spine. "You lie!"
The burlap sack was pulled off my head, and I was spun around. "Don't lie to m- Quae est infuernum!"
"What's wrong lo-" another man began, footsteps could be heard coming towards me before he stopped mid sentence, shock evident in his quivering tone. "What the fuck happened to you."
A rough hand on my face, warm breath fanning my face. "Her eyes, Ozy look at her eyes!"
The man that was most likely Ozy hissed to the men. "Take her to Astoria. Don't tell the Alpha... at least, not yet."
We walked, we walked and we walked some more. The scent of winter fires and incense grew stronger until we stopped. There was a knock on wood, "Astoria!" One of the men shouted, "Out you witch!"
There was a creek of wood on wood, blowing with it the scent of the burning and the warmth that came with it. "What do you want." Astoria hissed. Hostile and unforgiving.
"We have a gift for you." I could hear the sickly sweet smirk in his voice. I was shoved forward, falling to my knees when my legs collided with wooden steps. I didn't cry out, I didn't make a sound.
The men left, their bittersweet laughs and rough hands left with them. Instead soft hands clutched my wrists, guiding me to my feet.
"Come." Her voice was low, yet held a type of catlike purr that gave me the feeling that in another life, she could've been seductive.
I followed her, carefully up the steps and into the warmth and security of the cabin. "Sit."
I did as she said, my body meeting with the plush fur covered wooden bench. Wolfs fur.
"You're blind." She deadpanned, no emotion or feeling in her tone what so ever. I could sense her circling me like a predator would circle its prey. A hand ran its way through my tangled hair, dragged its way across my shoulder blades, a single finger swept over my parted lips. "Yes." I said breathlessly, the scent of incense hanging heavy in my lungs. "I can help you." She said, I felt her presence leave, the sound of pots and pans, metal on metal jingles through the air.
"However, everything comes with a price."
"I don't have anything... I have nothing to give you." I whispered, staring with dull and empty eyes down at my palms, but instead all I was darkness. Nothing but the black abyss that was my world.
"It's not a matter of material things." She hissed. "Those mean nothing to the gods."
"What then?" I asked, what could she possibly want from me, I had nothing.
"Your mate."
A great weight buried itself deep within the pit of my stomach, I had a bad feeling about this. "I don't have one..."
"Relinquish your ability to have a mate. That is the price of sight." I flinched as all of a sudden her voice was behind me, her cool breath fanning my ear.
Anything, anything to make the darkness go away.
"Do it." I blurted before my mind could even comprehend the words that danced on the edge of my tongue.
A sudden chill blew through the air, I wrapped my arms around myself to keep warm. A low whistle dances through the air, the sound of old wood in the wind, the jingle of an ancient wind chime that danced in the movement of air.
"Close your eyes, do not open them until I say." She mumbled, her gentle fingertips pressing over my closed eyelids like a mother's kiss, blessing the nights sleep that lay ahead. "Do not open your eyes, no matter what happens."
Wet finger tips traced the highs of my cheekbones, down the centre of my forehead and along the slope of my nose, down my lips and over my eyes. The bitter scent of copper blood invaded my senses, drowning out the aroma of incense and smoke. She had marked my face with her blood.
"Sanguis ruber, et conteram filum." She droned.
Her blood dropped down my lips.
"Sanguis ruber, et conteram filum."
The metallic taste barged its way into my senses without bothering to wipe its feet first.
"Sanguis ruber, et conteram filum."
A strange feeling began in my finger tips, a tingling numbness that soon turned to an inferno of unscorched fury. I hissed, clenching my hands into tight fists.
"Sanguis ruber, et conteram filum."
The burning began to travel up my arms, beginning in my toes and snaking its way up my thighs. Headed for my heart.
"Sanguis ruber, et conteram filum."
I hissed our in pain as the fire grew stronger, bigger, brighter. Orange flames licking at my shoulders and navel. Still darkness was all that met my eyes.
"Sanguis ruber, et conteram filum." Her voice grew louder with ever word she spoke.
Soon all I felt as though I was choking on her blood, it crawled down my throat like a hand trying to clench my heart and all I could hear was he voice, unmoved and unwavering.
"Sanguis ruber, et conteram filum."
I tried not to scream. I was being burned alive. I was on fire. I was dying. Yet still I clenched my eyes closed, not daring to disobey the witch that moved silently around me.
An orange hue grew behind my eyes, almost akin to a light behind closed doors. The flames had found my heart, licking at the vile organ until it too wept tears of scarlet sadness.
"Sanguis ruber, et conteram filum." She yelled, a broken, guttural morbidity echoing within the sound. Her voice was gravely and almost sounded as though it had some sort of emotion behind it. Almost...
I screamed, raw and primal. The sound of one in the face of death. I clutched my chest, it felt as though my heart had died and all that remained was the fragments of was once something beautiful. The shards were glass, cutting into its cage of bone.
"Sanguis ruber, et conteram filum!" She boomed.
She was thunder, she was rain, she was the lightning that we feared.
I cried tears of blood, thick and salty, they ran down my cheeks and into my palms. Blood filled my lungs, it was in my eyes and my throat and under my tongue.
"Open your eyes."
Red was the first colour that I saw. I blinked it away until the haze of the world began to appear. Everything was a blur at first, blues merging to greens, yellows to orange and red to black.
"I...I can see you.." My chest heaved with the tears that wouldn't fall. "I can see you!"