[That scar over his chest. Originally, it was a line made with the edge of a rondel dagger held by his Lord, done a day before his knighting ceremony. The boy, the black gloves lined with black fur, the glint of his dark eyes. His fingers spreading the wound further, as the knife cut through the red threads of his soon-to-be-vassal's muscle. The gasps, louder than Hell within his own skull. The pain, Gods, the pain. Never-ending, shooting from the wound upwards to the very crown of his head, all the way down, like fire set inside him, like a never-ending whip lash irradiating from the wound to the tips of his fingers, to the end of his feet, below and above, as if the pain occupied his whole body. The dryness of his mouth, kept agape, gasping, crying, moaning. The Lord biting the tips of the glove's fingers to pull it off with his teeth, and his fingers jamming into the wound. Severin's scream quickly muffled with his other hand, tasting his own blood again like he had done a thousand times before. The dizzying feeling of losing so much blood. All that bright red seeping into the stone ground. His blood over the Duke's tunic, turning the rich blue into black. "You bleed so well", the Lord would say. Vicenzo's voice, that tone he had when he was lost in the pleasure of inflicting pain. That pant, that smile, that animal-like excitement at seeing blood. "I should cut another hole in you. I should fuck it." Spreading the wound over the chest open, as if he was trying to see the heart, as if he was spreading the hole of some whore open. "You're mine, forever, you know that?" Yes, he was his. That wound, to mark him forever as a belonging of the little Duke. The Duke would discard him a month later, bored of him. But that ceremony. That feverish dream. The Duke lowering his precious mouth to the wound. Lord Vicenzo sticking his tongue into the wound. Severin choking on the scream again. He didn't know why, but his instinct was to grab the Lord's head, and push him closer to the wound. closer to his heart. No matter how many times he reopened it after, it never felt quite the same.]