For Whumper's Monthly Issue no 30 - Scars
The chilled mead is refreshing, the taste pleasant, velvety, a little sweetish, but not too sweet, leaving the faint aroma of fruit and caramel and a nice prickle of alcohol behind on his tongue. It would have been very enjoyable if Cahir was not so anxious about the drink containing some unknown magical additives. For why would Sabrina insist on him drinking it if it was just plain mead? To his great relief, though, he can still move after having downed the content of the glass, and, with the exception of a comfortable warmth beginning to spread throughout his body, he does not detect any other side effects. Not yet, at least.
"See, this wasn't so difficult, was it?" Smiling at her prisoner, Sabrina sits down next to him, pours more mead into his glass and, to his very surprise, takes a sip from it herself. She would not do that if there was something dangerous in it, would she?
"Mmh, my favourite," Sabrina sighs. Her lips glisten from the slightly sticky fluid and, slowly and with relish, her eyes half closed, she licks them with the tip of her tongue. Cahir cannot help himself but stare at her. Again.
"Now," she continues, opening her big eyes once more and smiling at the man next to her, well aware of the effect she is having on him, "let's start our little game, shall we? With an easy question. About you, Cahir."
Turquoise. Now he is almost sure her eyes are turquoise, like the lakes high up in the Tyr Tochair Mountains in the east of Vicovaro after the snowmelt. Mysterious, deep and beautiful.
"Are you some kind of lord?"
"What?" he asks, startled out of his revery. Shit, he better concentrate on her words, not her eyes or lips or scent, or on how near she is to him.
"Are you, Cahir, a lord?" she repeats, raising an eyebrow and emphasising every word. "A simple yes-no question."
It is a simple question indeed. But why would Sabrina want to know this? It is not a military secret, or any secret at all. Nor is it a useful piece of information. He expected her inquiries to be about Nilfgaardian war strategy, the strength of the empire's army, about the Emperor's secret plans, not about him. However, this is just the start of the interrogation, right?
"Yes," Cahir finally says when Sabrina keeps looking at him expectantly. "I'm a count, or rather, I was one."
"Tell me more," the sorceress nudges when he does not elaborate. "What happened?"
She takes another sip from the one glass, then passes it to him. Their fingers just so touch when he takes it. There are traces of her lipstick on the rim of the glass. It feels strangely intimate to sit so close next to each other, secluded in this cave from the rest of the world through the silvery wall of water formed by the heavy rainfall, sharing a drink. Cahir is not a chatty person by nature, on the contrary, but somehow, the words suddenly start to pour out of him like the rain is pouring from the sky. Has he ever told anybody about it before? About his childhood in Darn Dyffra, his grandfather's castle in Vicovaro, the most beautiful place in the world, and about the harsh times of living in the streets as a kid after the Usurper destroyed his family? No, not really. And nobody has ever asked. She is the very first one and a good listener. Is it just the peculiar atmosphere, Cahir wonders briefly, or has Sabrina mixed something into the mead after all, something to loosen his tongue? Yet, even if she has, he somehow does not care.
"You still miss your family and your home, don't you?" Sabrina asks eventually, when there is no mead left and Cahir has fallen silent.
"I don't know. It was a long time ago." Twenty years. It almost feels like it all happened in another lifetime. Or in a dream. A wonderful dream that turned into a nightmare.
"Then perhaps we should move on and discuss more recent events?" Sabrina suggests. "However," the blonde sorceress goes on, leaning closer toward Cahir with a mysterious smile, "let's make things a bit - spicier." She brings her hand up to his face and, with a feathery touch of her index finger, slowly follows the thin, red line of his scar from where it starts on his right temple down to Cahir's cheek bone. He sucks in a sharp breath.
"What— what are you doing?" he stammers, dumbfounded by Sabrina's unexpected action. An action that makes him freeze and gives him goosebumps all over. Is it a hidden threat to hurt him if he does not provide the answers she seeks? Will she torture him like Tissaia did? She has promised not to, that she is different, and the lightness of her fingertip on his skin feels more like a caress. But it cannot possibly be one, can it?
"I like scars," she purrs. "Not on me, of course, but scars are kind of - intriguing."
She moves even closer, then sticks out her tongue and, with its very tip, traces along the scar in a slow, upward licking movement that makes cold shivers run up and down Cahir's spine. At the same time, he feels hot all of a sudden, much too hot. What the fuck does the witch want of him?
"I bet, there are more scars on you, aren't there?" Sabrina breathes into his ear seductively. Then she stands up. "Take off your shirt, Nilfgaardian!" she commands, towering above him. It is an order that does not tolerate any objections.
Cahir does as demanded, what else could he do? The sorceress is clearly the one in power here and resistance futile. It is not easy with only one hand as his left is still bandaged and of little use and his right hand is trembling slightly from nervousness, but he manages eventually. Sabrina watches his every move, her turquoise eyes inscrutable.
"I know about the scar on your temple, you got it on Sodden Hill when we captured you. But tell me about your other scars. Let's start with—," she points at one, but without touching it, "this one here."
Damn, why must the sorceress pick this scar of all things? The one on his left side, the one he is least proud of. The one the doppler gave him in that bakery in Brugge, the scar that reminds him of the innocent people he slaughtered there in what must have been some kind of crazed frenzy. In his nightmares he can still see their bloodied, limp and crumpled bodies, their dead eyes staring at him accusingly. He deserves to be haunted by those dreams, he is aware of it. Yet Cahir definitely does not wish to tell his captor about his war crimes. Warily he shakes his head.
"No?" Sabrina asks, arching her brow in surprise.
"It's none of your bloody business," Cahir mutters, averting his eyes.
"But this is against the rules, don't you remember?" She looks at her recalcitrant prisoner meaningfully, then bends a little forward, pulls the dagger from her bootleg and holds its slender, shiny blade up for Cahir to see. His eyes grow wide. What the fuck is the crazy witch intending to do now?
He does not have to wait long for the answer. Within less than a second, Cahir can feel the knife's cold steel against his throat. Shit!
"Maybe, if you don't want to tell me about your old scars, I'll have to give you some new ones?" the sorceress says in a dangerously low voice, pushing him backward onto the bedroll. Pressing his body firmly onto the ground with her weight, she straddles him, then slides the dagger down his torso, just so touching his skin with its pointy tip. It does not hurt or draw blood, but she could easily change that, very easily. Staring at the slowly moving blade like mesmerised, Cahir hardly dares to breathe.
"Or, perhaps, you prefer to tell me about Emhyr's invasion plans for the north instead?"
The sharp blade meanders further down toward Cahir's belly button and the waistband of his pants, scary as hell, yet, at the same time, strangely arousing, making it hard for him to collect his thoughts, or to think at all. Or to speak.
"So, what will it be, Cahir?" Sabrina takes his right hand in her free left one, bends toward him and places it on her ample bosom beneath her turquoise diamond necklace where he can see quite a bit of her tits now courtesy of her dress's plunging neckline.
"What will it be?" she repeats, once more pointing her dagger at his throat. "Pleasure? Or pain?"