Rewrite That Witch
CH1111 · Rewrite
☕ Support

Chapter 1111: Until Death Do Us Part

Dust still hung in the air when Zooey found him.

Earl Lorenzo.

He was scrambling into his pants. The God’s Punishment Warriors at his bedside were faster — swords already drawn, already moving, already closing the distance to the door. They had no self-consciousness; they had instructions, and the instructions were kill.

“Betty!”

“Got it.”

Betty dropped to one knee just inside the threshold, cupped her hands, and waited. Years of shared work had burned the sequence into them — no glance needed. Zooey stepped back, jumped, and landed in Betty’s palms at the precise moment Betty’s arms drove upward. She rose into the air like something thrown on purpose. Her hands caught the chandelier. She swung.

The bedroom — vast, expensive, draped in fabric that cost more than most men earned in a year — became Betty’s stage, and Betty knew it. She struck a pose with her back to the bed, head turned slightly to watch the Warriors from the corner of her eye. Technically not the rule. Close enough to infuriate Zooey.

The Warriors wheeled. Too slow.

Zooey leveled the grapeshot gun.

The chandelier fell in a shower of candlelight.

She pulled the trigger.

The blast took Lorenzo in the chest. He sank into the shockwave and bounced — or rather, what had been Lorenzo did. By the time the bed received him it had stopped being the kind of problem that required a bed.

Then the Warriors froze.

All six of them. Still as furniture.

Betty released a low whistle. “Not a perfect landing. Everything else was brilliant.” A pause. “I really wish someone had sunglasses.”

Zooey rolled her eyes. “Shells. Let’s collect the shells.”

“Yes, yes…” Betty produced the small horn from her waist pocket and blew it — a specific song, a specific sequence of tones. The memory that had unmade these men. The activation code for empty vessels.

“New master,” Betty announced, enunciating each syllable with the exaggerated care of someone addressing a very slow student. “Me. You’ll be sent to Neverwinter, stored in our warehouse, possibly revived if you’re presentable.” She tilted her head. “Honestly, the odds aren’t in your favor.”

They clapped fists to chests.

Zooey opened the copper door.

Down the corridor, armor rattled and footsteps pattered from every direction — the castle coming awake, guards surging toward the master bedroom at a run. She studied the distance for a moment.

“See those armored ones?” Betty said.

The Warriors were already moving.

Hagrid knew the dungeon stairs. Joe followed him down.

What Joe saw when the soldiers broke the door — he would not describe it afterward, not to anyone, not even to himself in the quiet before sleep. He had built some image of what he would find, and the image had been wrong in every particular.

Farrina hung from the ceiling.

The whip marks crossed her shoulders, her chest, her back, her legs — dark stripes over older stripes. Pus had crusted at the edges. Lorenzo had not bothered with treatment. He had simply continued.

She was breathing. Barely. Alive but barely.

Joe walked toward her. Each step felt like wading through wet sand. The soldiers reached her first — they had seen this kind of thing before, had supplies for exactly this kind of thing — and they already had her down and on the straw mattress and were opening bottles from their knapsacks before Joe had closed half the distance.

Move, he told himself.

“Is this the girl? Hey — come help us.”

“Yes — ” He moved. He helped. His hands did not shake as badly as he thought they would.

Farrina’s breathing steadied as the solutions went on.

Then her eyes opened.

She looked at him and her brow moved — the ghost of a question.

“How come…” Her voice was almost nothing. “Is it a dream?”

“No.” He cupped her face in both hands. His thumbs were wet. “Everything’s over.”

Farrina was quiet for a moment. “Over,” she repeated, tasting the word. “I see. I’m dead. That’s why I see you in the dungeon…”

She raised her hand — slowly, at great cost — and touched his face. Lorenzo had denailed her fingers and snapped them; the hand bent wrong, stiff as a piece of warped wood. Her fingertips brushed his jaw.

“Sorry,” she said. “The church is gone. I failed you.”

“That’s not — ” His voice broke. He started again. “That’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.”

“You’re comforting me.” Faint surprise in her voice, as if cataloguing something unusual. “You’ve never done that before.”

He said nothing. There was nothing adequate.

“Don’t go,” she said. “Could you stay a little while?”

He pulled her carefully against his chest — careful of the wounds, careful of her hands, careful of everything — and held her.

“Wherever you go,” he said, “I’ll always be with you. Until death do us part.”

“Thank you,” Farrina said.

Then she was gone — not dead, only unconscious, her breathing slow and steady against him — but she had left the room before she left his arms.

Discussion

Suggest a change