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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 months

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Rue the Day

Bones in the Ocean Masterlist

CW: Creepy whumper, blood, restraints, magical whump, nonhuman whumpee, multiple whumpees, defiant whumpee, threats of death

“The rabbit is excellent tonight, wouldn’t you agree?”

Guilford Wentworth sipped from his wine glass. When Kira didn’t answer right away, he smiled, and his teeth seemed stained slightly red. Kira fought back the way her stomach flipped and bile seemed to rise in her throat, fighting to find its way out.

She had to stay calm.

“Miss Losna?” Wentworth’s smile widened, giving the lie to the carefully practiced false concern in his voice. “Are you quite all right?”

Kira cleared her throat, blinking rapidly and forcing herself to sip from the wine as well. She kept her eyes on Wentworth, because if she looked at the display behind him, she may not be able to hold the scream back any longer.

There as a whimper, half-suppressed, and Kira set her jaw and told herself to ignore it.

“I am fine,” She managed, and her voice was calm where her heart beat with frantic, frightened wings within her chest. “Rabbit is not my-... it is not a meat I often dine on, is all. The taste is… new to me.”

“Oh? My apologies. I would have chosen a different entree, but I had heard you come from… well, shall we say humble beginnings, and I thought rabbit may be familiar to you.”

His mockery strengthened her nerves. Kira stabbed a bite of rabbit viciously, trying not to think about how the meat had been coated in a bright red berry sauce that tasted too dark and rich. She chewed, and tried not to taste copper.

Because of course there was no copper.

There couldn’t be.

It was all in her mind, all because of-

“I was not raised on rabbit, Lord Wentworth,” She said coldly, and forced her eyes down to the pale ivory ceramic of her plate, painted with a beautifully oceanic blue. Images of mermaids and sea serpents cavorting in stylized waves, blocked in some spots by the rabbit. Just to the edge of the plate, she saw a handful of painted sirens, looking at the other creatures with… melancholy, perhaps.

The whimper came again.

Kira’s teeth worked the rabbit to nearly nothing before she swallowed. There was something to that soft sound of pain that struck her like a hammer to a gong, her despair ringing in the air so loudly she could nearly hear it.

“It is not the siren’s fault that your son spoke up,” She managed to say, if only so she could speak over the way the siren’s careful, determined silence had begun to break against the waves of pain. “You shouldn’t punish him for it.”

“So I should end our dinner early and go punish Ford in person?” Wentworth asked, unbothered by the scene behind him, by the sounds the siren could no longer hold back. “You have quite the cold soul, Miss Losna.” His smile widened. “Perhaps I chose you better than I realized.”

“I do not think you should do anything to your son but leave him alone," Kira bit back. "And you did not choose me." Her fork dropped with a clattering against the plate. “I answered an advertisement. You had no idea who I was before I walked up your front steps.”

“True.” Guilford Wentworth tipped his head forward in acknowledgement. "You answered my advertisement for a job."

“I wish to the gods I hadn’t.”

Guilford Wentworth laughed, a harsh, barking sound that nearly made Kira flinch. Somehow, though, she held steady. “I should be honest with you, Miss Losna. I’m not entirely convinced there are any gods at all.”

Kira sat back. Took another drink of wine, and let the room spin a little around her. It loosened her tongue and stiffened her spine, but it also set her cheeks aflame and left her unsteady. Strong, but dizzy, as if spun endlessly in a dance. “That’s blasphemy.”

“It is.” Wentworth nodded, picking up a heavy red fruit and biting into it, red juice on his chin, dripping onto his plate. Kira’s stomach threatened once again to heave itself empty, and she had to grip onto the edges of the table until they nearly cut into her palms to settle the twisting, flipping sensation. “And yet… well, Miss Losna. If there were gods, then you have to assume one of them would have noticed me, hm? I have one of their own. I live longer than men were meant to live. I haven’t aged a day since my siren was bound to me. They are supposedly a gods’ children, aren’t they?”

Kira was silent, then.

If he wanted to give a speech, let him. She would simply try to get through this meal, and try equally not to be furious with Guilford’s son Ford, whose dismissal from the table had left her alone with this monster masquerading as man.

From the window, the siren’s soft sounds of pain lengthened into a soft wail. Even that, Kira thought with a shiver, sounded like music.

Against her will, she looked at him.

The siren was strung up like a tormented saint, arms up over his head wrapped in rough sailor’s rope that scratched up his skin and smeared it red. His toes barely danced on the floor, barely able to hold even a little of his weight. To stand normally, he had to let his arms hold all his weight, and it tore the ropes in more deeply, bit by bit. Staying on his tiptoes stretched his leg muscles to what must have been screaming agony.

He was framed by the yellowing evening light coming through the window, nearly making him a silhouette, a suggestion of endless darkness ringed in awful light.

Kira’s eyes burned with what she resolutely denied could be tears as she saw him twisting his wrists a little, blood running in a rivulet down one arm now. The muscle in his arm twitched as the trail worked down to the crook of his elbow, heading towards his shoulder.

He was naked now, the markings that kept him in bondage to Wentworth’s wicked demands on full display. Kia’s heart beat faster than the rabbit whose remains were on her plate had ever been able to run.

Wentworth had given the order in between inane commentary about weather and what grew in the garden’s greenhouses. It had been tossed out like an aside, as if it didn’t matter at all. Areyto had - staring at Kira all the while - begun to tie himself up. He had climbed up himself into position, moved each arm and leg as Wentworth ordered. The butler Babbage, his eyes clouded and cheerfully convinced he was doing something with curtains, had finished stringing him up.

Once the weight had become to much, Areyto’s eyes had gone blank and empty. He had wiped himself from his own body with the pain.

Or… perhaps only by the work it took to survive it.

He had no ability to die.

Not unless Guilford Wentworth allowed him to.

Servants bustled around - Nadette and Babbage cheerfully refilled empty cups and whisked away each course and brought the next as though they saw nothing. Nadette had come back puzzled as to what she had even been doing upstairs when she was meant to be attending Kira at dinner, and Kira could only pray to gods that may or may not be real that the clarity in her had lasted long enough to find Kira a way out.

They didn’t see the siren for what he was, or even seem to hear his crying.

Kira did.

And she hated Ford, in the moment, for having been here but then getting himself dismissed so she had to be here alone.

“They are,” Kira said, voice trembling a little. “The moon goddess made the ocean’s creatures, sirens, the mer people, the-”

“And yet,” Wentworth interrupted, too committed to his monologue to allow her to cut him off before he was done. Kira stared at Areyto, watching salt tears running down his cheeks, even though his face was utterly blank. “And yet. Look at him, Miss Losna. Look. Does his goddess save him now?”

Kira swallowed, but her throat felt nearly closed and it took far too much effort to manage. “No,” She whispered. “No. His goddess does not save him.”

Lord Wentworth’s fork scraped in dissonance along his plate, dragging Kira’s gaze back to him. “Clearly she doesn’t,” He said, with confidence. “A century and a half, give or take a dozen years here and there, and my siren remains mine. And he will remain mine. There is no goddess of the moon and waters, Miss Losna. There is no god of the land, no mountain deities to worship, no demons hiding in the Maitsa. There is nothing but people, and two kinds of people at that.”

Kira tried to tear her eyes from the siren’s suffering, but all she could make herself look at was the bottom of her emptied wineglass. There wasn’t enough wine in the world to make this bearable.

“The first sort of person goes on living the life prescribed. Does all the right things, says the right words, gets married and bears a few children and then dies. It’s all for nothing. It means nothing. The second sort of person is far more rare.”

Guilford Wentworth stood, and Kira’s breath caught as he picked up the sharpened blade of the knife that had been beside his plate. He turned away from her, walking over to the siren. Kira should have stood, then - stood and run - but she felt frozen.

“The second sort of person,” Guilford said, voice lower now, “Is one who controls his own fate. Who refuses to live the prescribed life. Who takes control.”

The edge of the knife cut into the unmarked side of the siren’s body, a slow slice echoing the line of his ribs.

“Hold still for me,” Guilford said, voice low and thick with some sickening emotion Kira didn’t dare name. The siren turned to look at him, and something in his empty face flickered back to life. There was a pleading there. A scream, but a silent one. “Hold, Areyto.”

The siren’s lips trembled as the knife left him and cut again. Blood ran down to his hip, maneuvered around and over it, ran down the inside of one muscled thigh. Kira’s heart beat so hard she had trouble breathing around it now, as if her lungs refused to expand. She took shallow gasps instead.

Her fingers closed around her own fork, unconsciously, and she pushed herself to her feet. “Stop,” She whispered.

“Areyto is mine.” A third slice had the siren weeping openly, unable to fight the pain everywhere within him any longer. Guilford raised his free hand and wiped a tear away with his thumb, licking it off the tip and humming, as if he’d tasted the finest wine. “As you will be. I could cut you just like this, and if he commanded it, you would hold perfectly still.”

“I said-” Her voice cracked. She moved, though, without thinking, coming around the edge of the table and heading towards him. The fork seemed to come to life in her hand, silvered metal twisting and heating up until her palm felt like it was burning. But somehow the burn did not hurt at all. “I said for you to stop. He does whatever you want, leave him be. I don’t require this showcase of your power, Lord Wentworth, you already have me held here against my will!”

“Oh, Miss Losna.” Guilford sighed, happily. “You find yourself terribly mistaken. This isn’t about you at all. I’m not doing this to show you my power over him.”

“Then-” Kira came to a stop, a few feet away. The fork in her hand no longer felt like a fork at all. She looked slowly down at it. “Then why are you-”

“Because he is beautiful,” Guilford breathed, looking back to the siren with shining eyes. “Like this. Because there is nothing I cannot do now.”

Kira had no ready rejoinder, and after a heartbeat of trying - and failing - to think of one she gave up. Standing here watching her captor torture a siren who had done nothing but run into him hurt more than it should. Sirens, after all, were monsters who sang men to their deaths, who took sailors to the depths. But Areyto was also a man, if not a human one. One worn down like river rocks, and soon enough he would be fine as sand, and then he would be nothing at all.

The air felt heavier and heavier around her, as if any moment now she would cease to be able to breathe it. The inside of her head, by contrast, felt too light, floating away from her.

Torn in two, she decided to hell with false politeness.

“Why not just get it over with?” She asked, without looking away. The siren seemed to feel her eyes on him and managed to - briefly - meet her gaze. There was something pleading, there, in the darkness of his eyes.

“It?” Guilford cut him again, and Kira watched skin twitching beneath his knife and wondered if she could simply vomit all over Wentworth to make this awfulness end. In her hand, the for had become long, straightened out. A sort of tiny spear of silver, and it burned hot enough that she knew if she hadn’t been the one to create it, her hand would be blistered and bubbling.

She raised her chin. “It, Lord Wentworth. Whatever it is you plan to do to me. Destroying my mind, marrying me off to your son, whatever it is you’ve got tucked away to ruin lives for your own amusement. Why not just do it and cease forcing me to… wait?”

“Ah.” Wentworth smiled. “Well, that’s quite simple, Miss Losna.”

“It… it is?”

“It is indeed. Areyto? Would you care to explain?”

The siren cut his eyes back to Guilford, staring at him with such open, baleful loathing that the sheer force of the expression took Kira’s breath away. Then the pain overtook his ability to hold the expression and he slumped into sullen silence, seconds ticking past.

“Areyto.” Guilford Wentworth’s eyes narrowed. “Tell. Her.”

Areyto’s mouth opened without his say-so. Kira watched him as he spoke, rote and lifeless, voice thin and rough with pain. “The magic-... must be written with free will, or… or it is too weak to hold me.”

Kira blinked. “But-... wait. You-... you enthralled your first magician-”

“I had the thrall lifted,” Guilford said, voice going a little softer. He looked away, then, over towards the grand floor-to-ceiling windows. “Every ten years. For two days, I had it lifted. And she strengthened the spell.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Guilford said, almost gently, lifting his own knife just under the siren’s chin, nicking his throat just to watch the blood run from there, too. “If she didn’t, I would ensure my wife would throw herself off the roof.”

Kira took in a breath.

There was only one monster in this room.

She moved all at once, pushed by a swell of emotion that felt like being sucked under by the riptide, and reached up as high as she could. The burning-hot silver in her hand sliced through the ropes that held the siren as if they were made of butter, not heavy hemp, and the siren dropped to the floor all at once with a cry.

She turned, stepping between Guilford and the siren, lifting her chin.

“You have no such way to force me, Lord Wentworth.”

To her shock, though he did step back from her, Guilford Wentworth did not react with fear or anger.

Instead… he laughed. “Of course I do.”

“Oh?” Kira shifted, unconsciously moving closer to Areyto, who had not moved from the floor. She could hear him growling, a sound somehow utterly animal and deeply musical, a bass note held unending. Blood smeared under his hands, soaking into the shining wood under him. It was a deep, oxygen-rich burgundy, darker than Kira’s own - a reminder that despite his appearance, he wasn’t human.

Not that being inhuman meant he deserved any bit of this.

She faced Wentworth head on, chin high, with every ounce of courage she had in her. The wine had gone entirely to her head, but her voice stayed steady and strong. “And what, exactly, will you do to make me obey you and help you make an empire for yourself when I would happily tear out your throat with my own damn teeth if they weren’t so blunt?”

Behind her, the siren made a new sound.

It wasn’t quite open laughter - he was in far too much pain. But the soft sound, the huff of breath with the barest edge of volume to it, set stronger steel in Kira’s spine just the same. Warmed something in her that had frozen over before.

“I won't lift a finger to stop you, Miss Losna.” Wentworth moved away, picking up his wine glass and taking another sip.

Her lip lifted in a snarl at the smug lie he told so easily. “You speak like a man who hasn’t barred all the bedroom windows to keep me inside,” She responded, voice tight.

Wentworth’s smile did not waver or fade, but something in it tightened. “I will not stop you,” He repeated. “But everyone else here will.”

“You will have them… attack me? Do me harm?”

“No. I will have them do themselves harm.”

Kira froze. “What?” Her voice was a whisper.

Wentworth shrugged. “Every single one of them will die, by their own hand, as soon as you step off of my property. Their deaths will not be quick or clean, and they will be because of you.”

Kira’s jaw worked, her eyes moving to where Nadette and Babbage still stood by the kitchen door, both of them smiling politely and seemingly unaware of the confrontation by the window. “You lie.”

“No, my dear, I do not. The order has already been given.” Wentworth sighed, voice gentling. “It was given as soon as I knew you had already met my siren. If you leave, they will die. You will consign three dozen servants to their deaths, including my butler and of course your own sweet maidservant… even the stable boy will hang himself in the barn. Every one of them will die in some way, and they will know why they do it but be unable to stop. So.” He lifted one hand, twirling his finger in pointed down. “I suggest, Miss Losna, that you drop your weapon, or I will command the first death. Which of course will be the lovely young Nadette.”

Kira hitched in a breath, fear washing cold across her. She stared at Nadette’s smiling face, where she stood across the room, and thought of the terror in the girl when she had grabbed her arm and said I don't want to be here. “I-... You wouldn't. How would your life ever continue-”

“I will. If you refuse me, and I lose my siren’s power, then my life will be short and brutish regardless. I have little to lose, if the creature is lost. So leave and know your selfishness will be their cause of death. And know, also, that I will ensure you are charged by the king with every single murder. After all, I have no magic. But you do. Or so the king will believe. Drop the weapon, Miss Losna. Now.”

“Lord Wentworth-”

“Drop the weapon,” Guilford said, voice lower than ever. “And say, yes, my lord. Or Nadette will drink the vial she carries in her pocket, and you will watch her die in agony.”

Kira stood still for a long moment.

The bit of silver clattered from her numb fingers to the floor.

When Wentworth's eyebrows raised and he leaned forward, one hand cupped behind his ear as he waited, she swallowed and managed, in a trembling voice, “Y-... Yes, m-my lord.”

“Good girl.” Wentworth's voice was sickly sweet and low. His smile widened once more - too wide, grotesquely stretched. “Sit back down, we still have to enjoy our dessert.”

Kira felt her feet moving without her, drifting back to her chair. Her mind raced and the world around her felt suddenly unreal as she settled, staring down at her plate until Babbage whisked it away and disappeared back into the kitchen again.

Kira looked over at the siren, where he still knelt on the floor.

“You, too,” Wentworth said, beckoning the siren with a single crook of his finger. Areyto pushed himself uncertainly to his feet, struggling to stay upright. His ribs were still bleeding, the smell of it overwhelming and making Kira’s stomach flip again. Or maybe it had never stopped.

Areyto sat back in his chair, still naked - the servants didn’t seem to notice. Kira couldn’t see anything past his bright eyes and the red of his blood. The sight of him felt real in a way nothing else in this house of horrors did.

“You will not leave your room again unless summoned,” Wentworth said, imperious now. “If you are found anywhere else, even once, I will begin ordering deaths. If you care about the lives of anyone but yourself, Miss Losna, you will go where you are bid and do what I tell you. And you will bind my siren back to me with all the magic you can use.”

Kira kept her eyes on the siren.

She had no idea what was served for dessert. She heard nothing Wentworth said after that. At some point, she was given leave to return to her rooms and she fled to the stairs, feeling a stab of guilt at leaving the siren once again alone with this monstrous man. But it was not enough guilt to stop her.

Once she had closed the door behind her, she flung herself on her bed, screaming into the heavy soft pillow.

How had she already begun to think of this as her room? This bed as her bed? How could she have been so well encircled and not realized he would use the servants against her?

She screamed again.

This time, she kept it up until her throat burned with it and her voice began to give, going hoarse and rough. She held the pillow against her face until sparks danced behind her closed eyes as she fought for air. Finally, she threw the pillow away, watching it thump onto the floor.

Then she turned to where it had been and saw the crumpled paper there. Kira swallowed, picking the folded piece of paper up and slowly opening it.

Young Master Ford, Young Miss Nathalie, and the twins all have rooms without bars on the windows.

Master Ford will come to you at midnight with the siren.

Miss Nathalie will, too.

Nathalie. Kira felt something in her settle. That would be the eldest daughter from the painting, Ford’s younger sister. Clearly she and Ford felt similarly, if they were going to help Kira and Areyto, or even just Kira…

No.

She wouldn’t leave here without the siren beside her. Areyto needed rescue more than she did, in the end, and it wasn’t his singing that made her believe it. It was her own conviction. Her own certainty.

Kira pushed herself off the bed, then, setting her shoulders with resolution and heading into the bathing room, hoping against hope she could somehow manage to get this dress off all by herself.

She was sorely in need of a bath.

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