Page 46 of The Maiden and Her Monster

“You may begin,” Sévren said to the bald man.

The man grinned, revealing his golden teeth, slick with saliva.

It clicked, then, who he was. Amnon’s brother had told her about them.

Revac. A group of people who traded assassinations for golden teeth and wore them as a symbol of their pride and status.

To join the Revac, a person was beaten close to death, until every one of their teeth had fallen out.

If they survived, they were trained as highly skilled torturers.

It was every Revac’s goal to fill their mouth with as many golden teeth as their gums would allow.

Older and highly revered Revac had two or three layers of teeth cresting their gums. Malka recalled a particular story Amnon’s brother had mentioned, of a Revac who underpaid for a golden tooth stitching, and the next day it fell from his gum and choked him to death.

Malka counted this man’s golden teeth. A full set, which he gladly showed off when he noticed Malka’s interest.

The Revac seized the guard’s naked thigh in his hand, and glided the blade along his skin, pressing deep with his thumb until the skin peeled back in a single layer, revealing the pink of the guard’s muscle, slick with blood and fat.

The knife slid easily through the flesh, softened from the boiling.

Malka tried to turn away, but Sévren’s hands gripped her head hard, keeping her eyes spread open wide with a tug of his fingers. She watched as the guard’s skin stripped away, first on his legs, then his abdomen, until they flipped him over and flayed the skin from his buttocks and back.

His screams were so loud, Malka desperately wished to put her hands to her ears, but they were blocked by Sévren’s arms. Her eyes burned as Sévren held them open, tears jerking their way down her cheeks and into her mouth. Their salty taste in the blood-soaked air made her stomach beg release.

Malka had thought Mavetéh’s terrors surpassed anything man could conjure, but they paled in comparison to this. Now, the guard was more monster than man as his throat swelled from overuse and his heart gave out in shock. He lolled in unconsciousness, yet the Revac continued.

When the gatekeeper’s body was all angry blood-soaked muscle and fatty tissue, the Revac handed his discarded skin to a guard who attached it to the courtyard flagpole and raised it until the wind stretched out his body like a bearskin rug.

Blood dripped from it, splattering onto the stone, and decorating the ground in flecks of red.

Sévren faced the crowd, whose faces paled from the spectacle.

“Great people of Ordobav,” he began. “Beware those who wish our great kingdom harm and take solace knowing how we treat those who betray us.”

When he finished his speech, Sévren shifted his focus upward, where Ev ? en watched from a balcony, his hands white around the railings. As much as this was a punishment for Malka, it was a taunt for Ev ? en, too. Command your power, he was saying. Or I will.

“What a show,” said a familiar smoky voice.

From the back of the crowd, a tall, cloaked figure emerged. But Malka needed no confirmation of who it was—her dizziness had subsided, the cloying heat returned.

One stone hand lifted the hood of the cloak.

Whispers trickled through the crowd as they stared at Nimrah, some in horror, some in shock. Some stepped backward, tripping each other as they scrambled away from her.

There was no hiding her return to Valón now.

Sévren released his hands from Malka’s face, and she blinked until the burning in her eyes subsided. She wiped at her tears and snot with her sleeve.

He inclined his chin, though surprise flickered in his eyes. “Back from the dead?”

“Turns out, I’m not so easily killed, Your Grace.

” Nimrah dug inside her cloak pocket, revealing a pale piece of folded parchment between her fingers.

“I have a note for you. I wrote it at the request of the Maharal, who would have written it himself had he not lost his hands under your… delicate care. He is healing well, and requests that King Valski give permission to the courts to reinstate his trial while he recovers at home, as per Ordobavian law.”

Sévren studied the crowd, who watched him expectantly. The Maharal was a legend to the Yahad, but he was also well-known to the Ozmins. Some feared him, some respected him, some hated him. But all were witnesses now to what the archbishop would do.

“Of course,” Sévren said, but his lips thinned.

As Nimrah approached, she did not acknowledge Malka, eyes trained only on the archbishop.

“Your Grace,” Nimrah began as Sévren snatched the letter from her.

Sévren examined it closely. “Are you sure the Maharal is well enough to begin his trial again? If he is not even able to deliver his request to me himself, perhaps he is a liar. Perhaps we should add that to his list of crimes, as well.”

“He’s only following the law, Your Grace, as he is confined to the Yahadi Quarter until his trial.”

Sévren’s jaw tightened.

Nimrah shrugged. “If you do not believe in the state of his health, you are more than welcome to come to the Yahadi Quarter for the wedding he will officiate tomorrow.”

“A wedding,” Sévren raised his hand and placed it on Malka’s shoulder, the same way he had done with Ev ? en before. She resisted the urge to turn and see if the prince still lingered on the balustrade. “How lovely.”

“Yes,” Nimrah said, and her eyes betrayed her, slipping to the injury on Malka’s cheek. She could only imagine how horrible it appeared, swollen and flushed like the bleeding woolflower plant Chaia’s mother squeezed for dye.

Knowing flickered across Sévren’s face. “Ah, I understand now, what you truly want. What you left behind.”

Nimrah had revealed herself to Sévren and Valón for Malka’s sake. Anyone could’ve brought that letter, but it was Nimrah who stood there. Nimrah who stared at the archbishop, unflinching despite her lapse of vulnerability.

Nimrah motioned to the crowd. “You are well-known for your generosity.”

Sévren’s grip on Malka tightened. The tense smile he wore left deep folds around his mouth.

Though his face held neutrality well, Malka knew his control was fading.

Abba’s abuse had always intensified when control slipped through his fingers.

It worsened when Mavetéh became a haunted place, sweeping away his ability to hunt and making their income more reliant on the money Imma made from healing.

When he could no longer make his nightly trips to the river to suck on a manta joint until the high lulled him to sleep, he became rough with Malka, tossing her around to show he had control of one thing left—his daughters.

Sévren had not expected Nimrah to come back from the dead and rescue the Maharal. He had not expected someone to rescue Malka, either. Witnessing the flaying was not the archbishop’s only intended punishment for her.

Malka swallowed hard.

“Unless there is a reason why she cannot return with me?” Nimrah asked innocently.

It was a smart play. In front of the crowd, Sévren could not address Malka’s crimes without admitting the condition in which he had kept the Maharal.

But Sévren could still pin another crime on her, like he had done with the Maharal in the first place.

He could claim he had found a bottle of Ozmini blood in her pocket, or something close to the truth, that she had killed an Ordobavian knight.

Nimrah must have known it was a risk, yet played it anyway.

To her shock, Sévren accused her of nothing.

Instead, he gave Malka’s shoulders a firm squeeze, digging his nails in deep enough to clip her skin.

When she winced, his grip only tightened, until at last, small welts of blood began to stain her white blouse.

She bit back a cry, the sting of the cuts fierce against her already bruised skin.

She wanted to shrug him off, wanted to yell at him to stop.

But one look into Sévren’s cold eyes kept her mouth screwed shut.

Malka marveled at how well he could school his features, twist them each into different puppets to master. His eyes for Malka, sharp as Abba’s dagger, and just as dangerous. His smile for the crowd, warm and charismatic.

In Malka’s peripheral vision, Nimrah was completely rigid, save for the sharp rise and fall of her chest.

Only when Malka bit down so hard that her lips split open and gushed red, too, did Sévren finally release his hold on her.

He would not forget this. And he made sure she wouldn’t, either. Each time she stared at the red cuts on her shoulder, each time she stared at the scabs which would take their place.

“There is no reason,” he said finally. “Of course.”

In an instant, Nimrah was by her side, wrapping a defensive arm around her before Sévren could change his mind.

It took forever to exit the courtyard and spill back onto the street outside of the castle complex, the eyes of the crowd like darts on her back.

Her shoulder pulsed, blood already coagulating and sticky under her blouse.

The air was tense, and the sickening tang of the guard’s flayed body still deluged her senses.

Or maybe it was now the scent of her own blood.

In her mind flashed an image of the Tannin. Its bladed scales had been replaced with the sharp ovals of Sévren’s fingernails. Its slit pupils with Sévren’s stern knife points. Destruction was indeed coming, and Malka feared its advent.