Ashes to Dust
Episode 6: The Kill
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Also, all the trigger warnings! All of them.
The clamor of the ballroom was gone. No violins, no laughter, no chorus of moans echoing against gilded walls. Only the steady drip of water in the dark, the slow groan of iron when I tried to move.
He’d come, as I knew he would. The gleam of his smile, the easy words from full lips, eyes that drowned you before you could take a breath. He skirted the feast of flesh, candles guttering out as the bodies fell to blissful, broken sleep, and then he was there, the royal gaze capturing my tease, leaning closer, his eyes daring me to offer a taste. The silver pearl hung there on my tongue, inviting, then withdrawing inside as his own mouth sought mine, his tongue diving in like a fearless boy seeking briny treasures.
My hand lay on his chest as he pressed into me. I felt the crown beating beneath his tunic. The royal blood flowing across lines, intertwining, leaving us as one yet a whisper apart. The heat from his body, the steel of his cock, threatened to melt away all my resolve, but I leaned back, breaking the spell, letting the dust settle in his eyes, just as it settled into mine. And then I turned, brushing aside his fingers clamboring for mine, and climbed down to the tangle of bodies to find my own treasure.
Thorn lay among them, cradled by ruin, her skin slick with other men’s dreams. She blinked when I touched her chin, and I wiped the boy’s seed from her cheek before pulling her out into the gray light.
Or had I?
I’d walked away — hadn’t I? My own voice hissed in my skull: You left him. You crossed the floor. Took Thorn home.
Then, why was the iron biting me like it had before? I raised my head, vision swimming, and the truth coiled out of the dark: the crown had followed.
The shadows stirred. A shape uncoiled from the dark, slow and deliberate, and my heart dropped into my stomach. Tall and powerful, a figure that commanded the gaze, male and female, shifted in the chair, a throne by any other name when the future king sat in it. My heartbeat thundered in my head as another figure came into view. Thorn knelt at the foot of the throne and pressed her forehead to the stone next to mine. Her face in shadow, all I could hear was the slow wheeze of ragged breathing, watch as her shoulders rose and fell with each breath.
A voice cut through the darkness. Not hurried, not clumsy, but the measured cadence of a man who has never needed to rush a single thing in his life. His face like a cruel mask came into the half-light, catching the glimmer of moonlight from the narrow window high above. His gloved hand brushed the collar at my throat, not unkindly, not kind either — as though he were confirming that what he had once owned, he owned again. He gripped my hair and pulled, lifting my face up until the chain at my neck snapped taut.
“My little Ash,” he said, voice low, rich with satisfaction. “The years have been cruel to you. But not cruel enough.”
The chains rattled when I tried to rise, but they dragged me back to stone. My pulse thundered against my ribs, every memory of that night clawing to the surface. His face, his hands, his dark, tortured words. His cock.
“It’s over then,” I whispered, my own voice betraying me with its tremor.
“No,” he said, crouching so his eyes were level with mine, his musk heavy in the air. And then I glimpsed his cock, thick and heavy and slick. “It’s just beginning.”
A glint of metal flashed, and he pulled the sapphire vial into the light, pulled the stopper free and trailed a line of silver along the length of his cock. “I believe you want this, don’t you, Ash? I licked my lips, unable to stop myself, my gaze fixed on the ichor, the long, veiny shaft, the strong hands that ran the length of it, stroking, rubbing the toxin in. “She, too — your toy. How she loves it. Broken things, both of you. Not fit for the line except as prizes.” He pulled my head up, and all I could do was whimper as he slipped to his knees and pulled my mouth down around him.
I gagged, taking the length of him, my tongue begging for the sweet elixir, my cunt screaming for his cock. My mind — how it cried for release, but from what? From the chains? His grasp? The dust? I’d laid this trap and put myself in it. And now I was surely as caught as any mouse, lying helpless between the paws of the cat.
He was relentless, his hands around my throat as he fucked my mouth. Then, he was gone. I gasped, coughing, clawing for breath before his cock pressed into my darkness, dragging a low moan from my mouth like the tolling of a bell. My time had come. I’d played my hand, and I would be the Prince’s plaything now. I could see in my mind as he drove his cock deep. Me kneeling across from Thorn, a loose pile of silver moons between us. Another lines up to take me, and all I can do is lean in and kiss the woman I destroyed, the creature I created, my soul and cellmate in the backrooms of the tavern
I glanced up at the throne and down at the floor where I’ve rested my cheek, the spot Thorn had kissed. It would be my spot now, and I would kiss the stone as easily as she did. Kiss away the tears until they stained the stone no more, and I’d become the thing I’d never asked to be.
When he pulled out, a groan searing his lips, I relaxed into the cool stone, my knees raw, breasts burning, my face flush with heat. His seed dripped from the hollow he’d carved, the warmth curdling against the cold stone between my thighs. I shuddered as the cold of the room crept like a lover over my body, released from the Prince’s ruin and left to the elements again. For the first time, praise for my Prince formed on my lips. Not a word. Not a whisper. A shadow of acceptance. The least of things for the Prince was a prize among the lowly, and even if he kept me chained in darkness all my days without the hint of word from another, besides Thorn, at least I would be the Prince’s thing.
My eyelids fluttered as exhaustion draped me like a blanket, the dust like a fog over my thoughts as the body of my new god slumped into his throne with a satisfied grunt.
We slept the day away, the door creaking, footsteps soft. He set a tin plate before me, dust shimmering like dreams over a tender venison stew. I lapped at it like a dog until I drifted in a fever of rapture and ruin, the royal cock breaking my will with every thrust.
When the sun peeked over the horizon, bathing the room in pinks and grays, I found Thorn’s forehead still pressed to the stone next to me. I traced the tear-streaked cheeks, the black and blue marks on her wrists, her throat, the welts that crisscrossed her thighs where I watched him whip her again and again before bending her over my shackled body and taking her until she wept.
Silent sobs and shuddering breaths. A broken thing that I’d destroyed, so delicate now. I gazed on my creation with a sudden tenderness, a desire to hold her, to caress her flayed skin, to kiss her pain away, wash away her suffering -- all my doing again, and so I realized, my eyes finding the prince lounging quietly on his throne, perhaps it was fate that put me by her side. Penance for my own cruelty.
He stirred, the prince, in that half-sleep of satiation, cock twitching against his thigh. His breath rasped, a low animal sound I’d come to know. I felt the twitch between my legs, the sudden flush of need, like a wave crashing against the cliffs. I shuddered and licked my lips, eager for his cock, even his cruelty, if it only meant the touch of another. If it meant a taste of the dust, sending me over the cliff into the swirling surf of lust, I would suffer it all.
He clicked his tongue, the kind that draws a hound to heel, and Thorn stirred. Barely. A tremor first, then a sound like a whimper, or a prayer, as if she was coming out of a fever dream. “Up, whore, before my breakfast. I want to relieve my need, and your mouth will do.”
Beside me, Thorn shifted, pushing herself up to her knees. Her hand slid forward, finding the hem of the prince’s robe where it had fallen open. She moved like a creature acting on instinct — slow, reverent. Her mind was wiped by the dust; I knew the look now. Eyes glazed, lips slack, her body moving as if she were seeing the world through fog.
“Thorn,” I muttered, my mouth dry, my voice less than a breath of air. “I’m sorry.”
Her lips parted, her tongue tracing the line of his inner thigh. The prince sighed, eyes still closed. His head rolled back against the high back, feeling the warmth of his newest creature pressing between his legs. Her mouth kissed his royal ruin, tongue lapping against the stiffening shaft as it grew long and full.
“Mistress,” she whispered, so soft I almost thought I’d dreamed it.
Then her mouth descended, and I closed my eyes, suddenly aching to be in her place. To feel his cock hard against the back of my throat, to rise and impale myself, give myself to him, if only to be freed from my prison of metal and stone. Would he put us in cages? Would he parade us across the city? Would he shear me as I’d sheared Thorn, stripping her of her old beauty and giving her a new face for the world to see and loathe? Or would they see us and worship, desire, solicit even? Would our chains be base iron manacles or gilded silver strands?
I took a deep breath, listening to the sounds of her mouth, the quickened breathing of our new god. And then a sound followed — wet, strange, then sharp. The prince’s breath caught. My eyes snapped open when he screamed. Pure and wordless like a great cat pierced by a hunter’s true arrow. The prince lurched forward, shoving and slamming Thorn to the ground next to me. He screamed again, and for the first time I saw fear in his eyes — and blood, hands clutching his groin, a fountain of crimson spraying across the flagstones in great, ragged arcs.
Thorn hit the floor next to me, spitting crimson. The light caught her face — blood on her chin, her neck, her breasts. Not the face of a woman, but of something new.
The prince staggered once, twice, heavy footfalls behind me as he slammed into the iron door, then a childlike whimper and the slump of a body gone still.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Chains clinked softly at my wrists and ankles as I stared, heart hammering, at the empty, bloodied throne. The room smelled of iron and dust and death, and for the first time in an age, I heard the waves crash against the cliffs far below us, screaming, “The royal prince is dead. Dead in this tower. In this home. The Duchess of Esteria has murdered the heir to the throne.”
The rest of the world went still, as if holding its breath as it gazed down on the ruined body behind me.
Then, a sob broke free from the Thorn’s lips as she rose to her knees, swaying. She turned to me, her eyes taking in the situation, and I felt my heart fall. Not the prince’s prisoner now; hers.
She wiped the blood from her chin, her eyes cutting through me. Her chest rose, streaked in royal crimson. She swallowed, then knelt to unfasten my chains. When the chains fell away, heavy and final, she sat back on her knees and uttered a single word before she hung her head.
“Mistress.”
Author’s Notes: And here we are — the deed is done, the revenge complete — or is it? There’s one more chapter left, and Ash’s list is long. One night in the back rooms of the Thorn, her beautiful stepmother’s introducing her to society in the most tragic way has left its scar, and that scar must be repaid. Ella, now Ash, has just murdered the prince of the realm, and now there’s only one thing left to do.
Stay tuned for Saturday’s final episode of Ashes to Dust, and please leave a comment, share and subscribe if you’re loving this story.