Trinket (Reverse Harem)

Slice N Dice

 "I... wish... you--" Korr tried to say. His whisper was so faint I had to lean close to hear it.

"Yes, yes, that I wouldn't do this," I said. "Too bad. We've got to get these things out of you. I wonder if you recovered as much as you did because you're as strong as you are. And when I left--"

And when I'd left, I'd caused him to start withering, and the infection had gained a foothold. I stroked his cheek with my other hand. Something about that sounded right, but it was all fragmented, like I was looking at reflections in broken pieces of glass. I shook my head once, but it didn't clear.

"It's not... your... fault."

"I'm doing this because I am your consort and I love you."

Ormiss returned with a thick cord used to tie back curtains, a small silver bowl, and one of the kitchen knives meant to cut through bone. Korr tracked the movement with his eyes, but otherwise did not move. His misery was something I could almost taste on my tongue, along with how exhausted he was, and maybe under that, fear.

It'd been a tough few days.

Ormiss, reluctantly, offered Asund the knife handle first. An unspoken look of don't fuck this up passed between them. Ormiss used one of the ribbons hanging behind the door (Korr had an assortment, apparently) to tie back his hair in a tight, severe braid and quickly knotted it at the base of his skull. Itek scooped back his hair with another ribbon.

"Very... dandy..." Korr said.

I did not tell Korr that he looked tragically beautiful like this. He probably already knew. He was the only person I'd ever met who could be poetically sick.

"Ready?" Itek asked me.

"I'm not," Asund muttered.

"Yes," I said. "Where should we cut me?"

Asund grimaced. "Outer thigh."

I shimmied to the edge of the bed. It was a bit awkward arranging my leg--Itek held it bent--so that the blood would run into the bowl slightly under it. Asund ran his fingers down the outside of my leg, studying it like a surgeon, then he counted under his breath, and made a deft, quick, curved slice a hand's length above my knee joint.

The pain made me hiss. It stung. Then it burned. My flesh pulled apart and blood instantly welled up out of the wound.

Ormiss blanched and looked away.

"Don't you dare faint," I told Itek as the blood fell into the bowl in a thin stream.

Asund had to put the knife down.

"And don't you dare throw up," I told the wolf as he went almost as gray as Korr.

"Tell me that's going to stop bleeding," Ormiss said, his back still turned.

Ormiss had turned Asund's back into ribbons and he couldn't handle me bleeding from a little cut?

"It looks worse than it is," Asund said, sounding strangled.

It sure stung like hell. Damn.

"That's enough," Itek said once there was a small puddle in the bowl. I didn't ask him what he thought enough was, but the trickle had slowed to a good-paced dripping. Itek made off with the bowl while Asund clamped a bandage over my leg and leaned onto it.

"Ow!" I tried to push him away.

"Need to stop the bleeding."

I caressed his cheek as he leaned on my leg with both hands. "I'm fine, Asund. It's not bad."