Arthalia took a steadying breath. In through her nose. Out through her mouth. She wiped her sweaty hands on a mottled brown cloth she was sure had once been white. Once dry, she held her hands up to eye level to check for shakiness and didn’t like what she found. She balled her hands into fists.
A whimper called her attention back to the man chained to the dungeon wall behind her.
She turned sharply, eyes as grey as the steel daggers on the table beside her and just as sharp.
She forced herself to smile. A vicious, sharp toothed smile.
“Ah, Quincy. You’re awake.”
Thr man stirred, rattling his chains. He was older than she remembered, his dark hair now flecked with streaks of silver. The lines around his eyes deeper. Still handsome, still charismatic, but her stomach turned at the sight of him. A chill seized her that had nothing to do with the short silk dress she wore, nor the drafty dungeon they were in.
“A-amanda? Amelia? A…Artemis?” The bastard didn’t even remember her name. Years she spent devoted to him, years under his spell, under his sweaty lean body—
Arthalia felt sick. She shoved it down. Too deep now.
“Arthalia. My name is Arthalia, you maggot.”
He looked at her wide eyed, as though just now realizing this was not a mistake and she was not here to help.
“I— i don’t understand?” He put on his best sympathetic face. It had the opposite effect. “I thought we were friends, Arte-thalia.”
Arthalia laughed hollowly. A hysterical sound that strangled with sobs. “You don’t understand, no. You hurt me. Over and over and over. You took advantage of me, mind and body. You raped me, and then when you tired of using me, you cast me out. You isolated me and manipulated me and Light knows how many others before and after me, but you’re done. You are done hurting people, Quincy Adams.”
At first, the man called Quincy looked confused; in denial. But when her tone only hardened…he crumpled.
“Arthalia, you have to believe me. I didn’t know you didn’t like it. I thought you were into it! You always came for me.”
Arthalia’s eyes flashed gold. “NO. No, I didn’t, and even if I did, that didn’t make it okay. I couldn’t— fuck you. I’m wasting my breath.” she turned.
Evidently he thought she was leaving him there, as if this were a real prison. As if he were to serve his time and leave.
“No, no, no— Arthalia, please, let me go. I have a wife, a son now, they need me —“
When the dragon turned back around, she held a dagger in her hand. Her heart beat so loud she thought he must hear it.
Q looked momentarily relieved, as though that dagger might pick his locks— but the expression on her freckled face changed his mind. He began to beg.
An old book, bound with skin, sat upon that table. Arthalia flipped it open— she had bookmarks. Several.
Arthalia clicked her tongue, looking up from the foul tome.
“Still clothed. Mm.” She strode over to Q, doing her best to hide her shaking hands by clutching that dagger. The dragon sliced her captive’s shirt open, nicking the flesh beneath, and yanked his pants down. They were soiled— at some point, he had pissed himself. The pants fell around his ankles, which were chained to the ground. He shivered, exposed to the chill air of the dungeon.
“Arthalia, please, let me go, you’re not like this…”
Her eyes snapped up to his. She just pressed her dagger to his throat. “Shut up.”
This elicited another whimper from the man.
Arthalia hardened her heart.
She withdrew the dagger from his throat, leaving a line of blood in its stead.
The flesh tome told her where to cut. How deep, how long, to prolong his suffering. The first few cuts were sloppy, they varied in depth— it was difficult, cutting an unarmed man. More difficult than she anticipated. Especially when he screamed and jerked around. Arthalia hid her winces from him as best as she could, trying to replace them with a scowl, but she knew she couldn’t take much more of this. Ironic, that torture was painful for the torturer too. Or maybe Archelaos was right and she simply wasn’t built for this.
She abandoned the methods of the book and resolved to finish what she’d started. She wasn’t trying to get information out of him, so keeping him alive for a long time wasn’t a concern to her. Surely by now the dinner guests had heard his desperate cries, anyway. Not that any of them would save him, she knew, but she’d rather not be observed anyway.
She seized Q’s cock in her fist — too hard for pleasure — and extended her talons into his soft flesh. His scream was lost under her own as she brought the dagger down on that hateful part, severing the organ from his body.
Arthalia held it up for the rapist to see, his blood pouring down her arm, giving the appearance of a red evening glove to match her dress.
She mashed his severed penis in his tear-streaked face, then threw it on the ground at his chained feet.
She turned from him, shaking drops of blood from her talons. Exchanging her dagger for a sword, she gave him the mercy she’d often wished for herself, if it could be called mercy at this point.
The blood sprayed across her new dress, creating bloody freckles overtop of her normal ones. A parody of her beauty.
She didn’t make it to the bucket before she retched, but her night wasn’t over. She waved a hand crackling with arcane over her body and cleared away the mess. A glass of water waited for her beside the torturer’s guide. She drank the water and tucked the evil book under her arm and rearranged her face into that mask of confidence.
She was almost to the door of the chamber before she paused. How could she forget!
Quincy’s head lay bloody on the stone floor. She seized it by the hair, matted with blood and gore.
“Goodbye, Q,” she sighed.
When it was all said and done…she thought she’d have more to say.
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