The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1203: Earned Their Freedom

The heavy door swung open, and Owain emerged from the cell, his hot breath producing small clouds of mist in the frigid air of the dungeon corridor. His tunic, the fine linen one he’d worn to breakfast that morning, was no longer fine at all. Dark crimson stains spread across the fabric in abstract patterns, some still wet enough to gleam in the torchlight, others already drying to a rust-brown crust.

More blood speckled his face and throat, a fine spray of droplets that he hadn’t bothered to avoid, and his hands were painted red from knuckles to wrists where the brass rings had turned what would have been a simple beating into an exceptionally bloody affair.

Sweat plastered his chestnut hair to his forehead and temples despite the bone-deep cold that pervaded the dungeon levels. The exertion of the past hours had left him flushed and breathing harder than usual, though his expression remained calm, almost serene, as if he’d just completed a satisfying day’s work rather than systematically destroying two human beings.

The guard stationed outside the cell door straightened at Owain’s approach, his eyes widening as he took in the state of his lord. The young Marquis-to-be looked like he’d just walked off a battlefield, or perhaps out of a butcher’s shop after slaughtering the prize of his hunt. The metallic scent of blood hung heavy around him, mixing with the dungeon’s perpetual smell of damp stone and torch smoke.

"My lord," the guard managed, though his voice came out strangled, higher-pitched than he’d intended. His gaze kept trying to slip past Owain to the open doorway behind him, morbid curiosity warring with the instinct to look away from whatever horrors lay within.

"The prisoners have earned their lives," Owain said calmly, working his jaw as if loosening tight muscles. His voice was steady, conversational, completely at odds with his appearance. He’d done what needed doing, and now he was moving on. "And they’ve earned their freedom, such as it is."

"My lord?" the guard asked, blinking in surprise and certain that he’d misheard.

"At first light, have them taken outside the city gates." Owain began working the brass rings off his fingers one by one, the metal clicking softly as he dropped them into the guard’s trembling palm. The rings were warm from his body heat and slick with blood. "They can do with their freedom as they please. Assuming that they survive the night."

"I..." The guard started to say before his voice faltered. He couldn’t help himself; his gaze slipped past Owain to peer into the cell beyond.

What he saw made the blood drain from his face.

The two figures hanging from the ceiling chains were so thoroughly destroyed that it took him a moment to recognize them as human. Their bodies were masses of bruises, the skin mottled purple and black and yellow where it wasn’t split open to reveal the raw meat beneath. Blood dripped steadily from multiple wounds, forming dark pools on the stone floor beneath their feet. Their faces, what he could see of them, were unrecognizable, contorted in masks of pain and fear that seemed frozen on their features.

But it was their eyes, or rather, the ruined sockets where their eyes had been, that made the guard’s stomach lurch. Dark, glistening hollows stared back at him, blood streaming down their cheeks like crimson tears. And yet, impossibly, the men were still breathing. He could see the shallow, agonized rise and fall of their chests, could hear the wet, rattling gasps that suggested punctured lungs or broken ribs grinding against vital organs.

They were alive.

Somehow, after all of that, they were still alive.

"They earned their freedom," Owain repeated, his tone suggesting the guard was being deliberately slow. "See that they receive it."

"Yes, my lord," the guard said as he tore his gaze away from the cell’s interior, fighting down the urge to vomit. "At first light. Outside the gates."

"Good man." Owain’s hand came down on the guard’s shoulder in what might have been a friendly gesture if his palm hadn’t left a bloody handprint on the man’s tunic. "Oh, and see that they’re given a blanket tonight. They’ll need something to keep warm through the night, and they told me that one blanket is enough for two people," Owain said, thinking of the way they’d spoken of taking Jocelynn’s blanket and giving it to Eleanor in order to break both women down.

"Just give it to whichever of them seems the most grateful when you let them down," Owain suggested. "That should be reasonable enough."

"Yes, my lord," the guard repeated, his voice barely a whisper.

He’d served the Marquis, Marquis Bors Lothian, for years, and in all that time, these dungeons had rarely seen any use at all. Mostly, it was household staff who had committed some form of offense who would be imprisoned here for a few days at a time as an alternative to receiving a public flogging.

The choice was always the guilty party’s. Five lashes or a day in the dungeons, ten lashes or two... Some took the lash to get it over with, and some took their punishment here instead, but Marquis Bors always let people choose for themselves, no matter how bad their transgressions were.

The old Marquis might only have sent someone to the dungeons to be tortured once or twice in all the years the guardsman had served here... and the Marquis had never done the work himself. If a man had plotted against his fellows or the lords of the March, Bors sent for an Inquisitor to root out what the man knew and if he had allies who might still pose a threat. Marquis Owain, however, didn’t just seem willing to get his own hands dirty. He seemed to enjoy it.

Owain studied him for a moment, and the guard had the uncomfortable sensation of being assessed, measured, and found just barely adequate. Then the young lord nodded and turned away, striding down the corridor with the same confident gait he’d carried when descending into the dungeons hours ago, as if the blood coating his hands and clothes was no more remarkable than morning dew.

The guard watched him go, then made himself look back into the cell one more time. The two acolytes hung there in the torchlight, breathing their shallow, agonized breaths, blind and broken and somehow, impossibly, still alive.

With a single blanket to share between them, in the state they were in, the guard thought that they’d be lucky to survive the night. Or perhaps, they’d consider themselves luckier if they didn’t.

"Oh, one more thing," Owain’s voice called, almost absent-mindedly as he walked away. "When you take them out of the city tomorrow morning, you should take them through Market Square on your way to the South Gate," he said, reaching into the coin purse at his waist to retrieve a few silver pennies that he dropped casually on the floor.

"Take them around the market," Owain encouraged in a tone that made it clear that this wasn’t merely a suggestion. "Just in case there’s anything they need in order to enjoy their freedom..."