NOVEL NEXT 7-5 - Possession
Lucius nearly killed Golden when he found Aria still unconscious. The old crow had smuggled her into the training camp, buried under tent fabric. It had gotten her past the footsoldiers, who still had questionable loyalty at best, and into the commander's manor, but he had left her buried so long she had nearly sweated to death in the process. The physician had arrived before Lucius, but mundane healing had no answer for a body integrating the remnants of another's soul.
"Why are you so worked up about her? She's not your girl," Golden said, his voice dry despite the cold steel shaving his throat.
"You know as well as I do," Lucius said, his voice low though the only serving staff in the manor could hardly be called maids. "Unlike you, I have only killed who I have had to kill. She was a victim."
"She betrayed you! She was just too stupid to run to someone who wasn't trying to kiss your feet for an alliance," Golden retorted, only to get the blade pressed through his skin. "You wouldn't dare."
"I'm not going to kill you, Golden. You and I both know you're too useful. But a little blood? How much has this set you back from opening the gate to the gods? A few hours? A day or more? I could cut your throat and set you back months. Amurabi would thank me. It would mean you'd have to spend more time being his attack dog."
The former angel snorted. "As if you aren't one yourself."
"I could leave," Lucius said, slowly twisting his blade out of Golden's throat. "Don't forget that. Any day I could walk out the door and never be seen again. A quick bath in flames and I'd have my old face back, and nobody knows that face. I could even leave this world entirely, could go be some other world's demon. Nothing keeps me here save for the fact that I like the people around me. You are a slave. I am free."
Golden snorted and sneered down at him. "You are as much a tool as I am."
"Are you sure about that? Didn't you ever wonder why he has no geas bond on me? Such a trifling thing. He did it to Kajsa. He did it to his first pupil. Not to me."
"You've changed since having a child."
Lucius laughed. "You would too. Maybe you should try it, if you can find somebody to love you," he said before a scream pierced the manor. Reluctantly, Lucius took the blade from Golden's throat and ascended to Aria's room. There was little doubt where the scream had come from. The door was thrown open to the hall and winter air blew in from the sickroom. What should have been a simple room for Aria to recuperate in was packed with people. Kassie stood over broken crockery that still steamed the air, pale and frozen. Sammy had his hand on her shoulder, blood pouring from his scalp as he tried to urge her out the door. Miss Lynnfield's hair was a blustering mess in the wind as she shouted, "Solhart, get in here before I hurt her!"
Aria was on her feet, hands raised between her and Lynnfield. Her stance was that of a warrior. She appraised Lucius and he saw that her sclera had turned to the black of night. She said, "Seems that I misjudged." The white returned to her eyes as strength failed her. A sick young woman once more, she sagged and fell.
He was there to catch her. "Get Lupa," he ordered, pressing his fingers to Aria's throat. Her pulse was strong and steady but she would have fallen to the floor boards if he let go.
"I'm sorry," Kassie mumbled. "I was just trying to get some broth in her."
"This had nothing to do with you," the apothecary said before his lover yanked him away and clamped a cloth to his head, the bleached linen turning red between her fingers.
Aria was up and confused by the time Lupa arrived. She was in training linens and drenched in sweat from experimenting with Ronin's new powers of flame. "What did the bird do now?" she asked, finding Lucius picking ceramic shards out of Aria's hand with a hairpin.
"I really don't know what happened," the girl said, wincing here and there as blood dripped to the sheets. Even a fool could deduce that she had tried to kill the apothecary.
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Lucius kept an iron grip on her wrist, holding her hand in place no matter how she flinched. "You made a very stupid decision. Golden did something to you, and I need to know what. It would have left a mark. If you're lucky, Lupa can remove it."
The wastelander girl grunted and folded her arms. "You want me to take a bite out of her?"
"Yes, Lupa. I do. If it will break whatever curse this is, then yes. I am asking you to take a bite out of her," Lucius said. Then he noticed the trembling of pain in Aria's arm. He extracted the pin and gently poured water over the little cuts. The apothecary had left a small unguent, which he began dabbing across the wounds.
When he began wrapping a bandage around her palm, Aria hung her head. "I just wanted to be able to take care of myself. He didn't explain anything."
"Pick your head up," he commanded. "This is my fault. I never explained to you why I trust him. You simply thought he was a comrade, a competent one at that. That's not entirely wrong, but it doesn't extend to you. He is not your friend, Aria. He owes nothing to you, and you can take nothing from him. I can kill him. That's the difference. I can strip him of what he desires, so he knows not to endanger what I desire. He should have known that included you."
Aria bit her lip and fought back tears. She couldn't look at him, still bearing the face of her own brother. Then she unlaced her blouse and pulled it down her chest. The mark could have been mistaken for a stigmata and it sat upon her breast just atop her beating heart where the relic had been stabbed into her.
"I can't bite that out," Lupa said, peering over his shoulder.
"You bit mine off when we first met."
She growled and poked the back of his head. "Men can have scars there. It's different for women. Besides, your stigmata is only skin-deep(1). Look at that!"
"It's deep?" Aria asked, wrapping an arm around her chest for dignity.
Lucius sighed and pulled her shoulder forward. A twin mark adorned her back. "It's deep. We need to figure out just what it is. I can drag Golden in here and make him speak," he said, putting a hand to the mark on her back. "Maybe Aisha can understand something of it. I don't know what she was taught."
Aria inhaled abruptly, pushing back against his hand as her sclera once more turned black. She took one look at Lucius and relaxed. "You must be kidding me. That's what made her heart race?" she spoke, before the transformation once more reversed.
"There's something in my head," Aria said, pulling her knees to her chest and hiding her face.
Lucius took his hand off of her and rose. "Keep an eye on her, would you? She might get violent again," he asked, putting his hand on Lupa's shoulder before departing the room. He found Aisha and Eri in the kitchen, alternating between holding the baby and prepping food as they talked just to fill the silence that permeated the rest of the manor. All had heard the shouts.
"What is it?" the redhead asked, stepping away from a bubbling pot of sea critters and spices.
"Something only your wisdom can help with," he said with an uncomfortable smile.
"Go, go, don't worry about the little one," Eri said as she propped the babe on her hip with one arm and worked the pot with her other.
Aisha held her thoughts of Aria to herself and returned to the sickroom, bringing with her the aroma of the night's dinner. She stood little chance of deducing what had happened, but it might not have been impossible. The magic had a certain similarity to the reshaping of bodies that her mentor excelled at. Had Aria been brought to me in the capital, I could have trivially removed the infusion and transplanted it to one of the wastelanders yet a thrall to their own creation, but Lucius did not desire to cross the rift between us and I underestimated its width after slaying Acheliah. As it was, the former temple girl of Giordana endeavored for several weeks to decipher enough of the magic to even grasp what Lucius had already surmised.
A second soul was within Aria's body, one capable of defending itself and more.
His hopes of wringing Golden's neck for the affront never came to pass. During his stop to see the good doctor's wound, one of the guards intruded to report, "I think the lion would wish to know, given the sorts of things he was saying, it is the opinion of my fellows and I –"
"Get to the point. What happened to you? Too much time in gambling halls?" Lucius ordered.
The guard cleared his throat. "Golden has taken your horse and we don't think he's coming back."
He was riding north to me, of course. Lucius was in no position to give chase however. For all his talk about his ability to leave, those women gripped his heart just as his heart had been taken as a child. The irony of Eri returning to him aside, he could not bring himself to abandon everything he had claimed from the struggles of this world. Even with an army to protect them, all he could do was swear an oath to make the former angel pay.
He had a war to prepare for, and soon realized that the only help for Aria would be found in Aillesterra, if he could persuade a priest to explain how to undo bodily possession by an emissary.
To clarify, the manifestation of his stigmata was skin-deep. The effect was quite integrated into the boy's soul.