Wasteland's Caress

II: A Game of Chess

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"We will be glad to keep you, my darling Renesmee."

The papery creature smirks from his throne; the shadows and shades fill with the fluting laughter of his slaves.

"Ren," she hisses, because her true name is the worst obscenity, the final, lethal insult that even the Volturi will not be permitted to throw into her eyes.

"No, my pet, you do not have the right to demand. Not in your present state," Aro coos.

She glances at her peeling boots, inhales the fetid stench of mud and blood stiffening her hair into ringlets and sneers her defiance, until she sees the faceless guards drag a human in by the throat.

"Drink, cara mia," Aro orders, and a woman falls into her hands.

Ren gazes into those glossed eyes, darting like mad marbles on a crystal floor. There would be begging, she's sure, but you can't find the breath to do that when claws are digging into your carotid. She sees resemblance in those nothing-features and thinks of featherbrained Grandma Renee, of that kindly, overbearing professor she endured during a lonely semester in the University of Fucking Nowhere.

With a mad grin, she licks the peppermint balm off her own cracked lips, and plunges blunt little teeth into the woman's throat. Glorious blood drips down her chin in delicious rivulets, and this, this, Ren realizes, is the taste of pleasure-drenched sin.

When there is no more struggling, she strips skin and shatters ribs until a salty, silent heart sits in her palm.

She lets it fall at the feet of the thrones.

"Brava, my dear!" Aro cries, and applause steals the laughter from the shadows as she stands a slender victor.


Author's Note: The chapter title is once again taken from the names of sections in T. S Eliot's The Waste Land.

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