I stumble away from the inn towards the vague outline of the well to my left. My world rocks and blurs and for a horrifying moment, I’m wading through a pool of blood (wine). Bile pokes at the back of my throat but I ignore it in favour of anchoring my hands on the ropes and closing my eyes until the world stops spinning.
Closed eyes don’t help. They just remind me of the acid metallic smell that’s latched onto my clothes, of the blood spatters that have etched themselves onto my skin like angry tattoos… I focus instead on the scratching sound of the rope in its metal hook, the echoing splash of water, and the slight burn of the rope as I pull up my bucket.
At least my vision is no longer shaky. But curse these Navians for coating everything in red at a time like this. Curse the innkeepers for not buying more expensive ones. Curse Matzaraska, for making us stay in a place like this.
(Curse me, for being here?)
The cool metal soothes and steadies me as I grab the bucket, release the ropes, and set it down on the floor in front of me.
“What the hell are you doing?”
He doesn’t speak again. Then again, I haven’t answered his question. What the hell am I doing? Do I even know? This should have been one of my greatest triumphs in this world and I’m sitting here, kneeling in front of a tiny bucket and furiously rubbing at my arms. Not much of a victory celebration. It's not much of anything, really.
“I’m… washing, sir,” I finally say, and I hate how reedy my voice sounds.
He actually chuckles, and now my neck hairs rise along with the bile in my throat. “I think you should be clean by now.”
His boots crunch abominably loudly on the gravel as he steps closer. How on earth I missed them the first time, I don’t know, but now they give me just enough warning not to flinch too hard when his hand suddenly touches my shoulder. “Come inside,” he orders quietly. “We’re waiting for you to celebrate with us.”
The queen’s blood still stings at my arms and every bit of blood on my clothes blisters at the skin underneath. Even with my arms submerged up to the elbows in icy cold well water, I’m burning up. I want nothing more than to kneel here, gravel in my knees, immobile, until the morning finally comes and covers me in dew. But somehow I pull together my last shreds of strength and nod, once, then uncurl my frozen burning fingers and push myself into a standing position. Matzaraska’s hand doesn’t move as I do, and suddenly his arm is around me.
“You did well,” he murmurs.
The hollow phrase patters across my brain and pokes at my eyes, but I don’t cry. I wish I was hollow too. Just a hollow little goblin, pasted over with blood and grime. Because I can scrape the blood off my hands, but I can’t scrape it out from inside me. I can’t scrape it from my eyes. Eyes that, incidentally, watched as the queen’s were gouged out of her face. How could I possibly have done something like that well?
“Thank you, sir,” I choke out over my brimming impression that this was wrong, that maybe I’ve gone too far this time. He nods and pats my shoulder. His eyes glint red.
It’s just the lighting, Cassandra.
He turns towards the inn, towards the warmth and the celebration and for one perverse moment I want to run, as if the past few years hadn’t happened. As if I was still a helpless captive. But run where? I wait for the urge to pass, but it just pounds on and crunches itself into the gravel with every step that I take towards the building.
Run.
Get out while you can.
There’s no future for you here.