"What's my name?" He queries, his hand snaking its way down her body.
"Alpha King," She breathes, her voice becoming slightly hitched, "Caliban."
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IN THE IDES OF WINTER, when death reaps all that has been sown, Kore is chosen as an Althieme, on...
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IT IS A SADISTIC SYMPHONY
that plays as they are guided into the court, a cruel cacophony and Kore listens to it all; the chime of chains grazing flesh and floor, the desperate pleas of those deemed Althieme and the excitement shared by those who gather around them. And though Kore cannot see through the silk swathe that shrouds her sight, she is sure that Death dwells within the crowd, mingling with both the lords and their ladies.
The court is dark, foreboding. Faceless figures dance with what little light illuminates the colossal chancery, warm glows seen through sparse fabric and shadowed statures. Kore sees them only in her peripheral, shapeless silhouettes that peer at the gilded girls from the room's edge. They speak in their native tongue of the Althieme and though she does not understand what they say, she is sure they talk of the night and all it will bring.
'Please.'
It is an Althieme ahead of Kore who cries, a strangled sob that barely pierces the court's clamour.
'Please, I do not wish to die.'
Her words fall on deaf ears, unheard by the court and those it keeps. Please, please, please. The weeps of the Althieme are recurrent with each as pained as the last. The Marquis has kept his promise, has stripped them from their families and homes and taken them to a strange court led by stranger people. Kore knows he walks among them too, clad in garish robes and garnished in gold. It's a cruel joke, one without an end, a tradition that should have long since been abandoned upheld by the weakest of men. Kore loathes them; the old preacher and his gospel, the Marquis and his promise, the very man's chancery she walks within. It is a deep abhorrence, one which gnaws at her stomach like a starved animal.
'No. Please.'
No longer do the Althieme wander across the marble expanse of the chancery, but rather stand motionless at its epicentre. It is a silent reprieve and Kore relishes in it, the slacking of her fetters and the stillness of the others. But it is all too brief, disrupted by the touch of another.
