Chapter 11: Ashes of the Village
The corpse smoke clung to the ruins like a widow's shawl.
Leliana stood at the center of what had once been a trading post, her boots sinking into ash that still held the heat of yesterday's fires. The charred skeletons of market stalls surrounded her—iron hooks rusted into the ground, wooden beams reduced to blackened teeth pointing at a sky that refused to weep. The storm had been threatening for hours, but no rain came. Just wind. Wind that carried whispers.
She could hear them.
The dead didn't speak in words. Not exactly. They spoke in fragments—images, sensations, the residue of lives snuffed out too quickly. A merchant's last thought of his daughter. A guard's dying prayer to gods who weren't listening. A child's confusion as the blade came down.
Leliana inhaled deeply.
The whispers tasted like honey.
The Codex pulsed against her hip, a second heartbeat that had become as familiar as her own. She'd bound it to her flesh three months ago, in a cave beneath the mountains, using blood and words that had turned her tongue black for a week. The book had been worth it. The book had given her power.
The book had also given her Fox.
She felt him now—not his presence, but his absence. A splinter in her skull that throbbed with every beat of her heart. The bear had failed. The undead thing she'd sent through the cottage door, the creature she'd raised from a corpse she'd found in the forest three days prior, had been destroyed. She'd felt it die. Felt the witchfire gutter and fade. Felt the connection snap like a rotten rope.
Fox was still alive.
The splinter twisted.
She'd expected this. The archer had always been stubborn. Even as a boy, he'd survived things that should have killed him—the goblin raid, the burning village, the years of wandering that followed. He'd survived when everyone else had died. Their parents. Their neighbors. The other children.
Everyone except her.
Leliana closed her eyes.
She remembered the raid. Remembered the screams. Remembered hiding beneath the floorboards of her family's home while goblins tore her mother apart above her. She'd been seven years old. She'd listened to her mother die, and she'd done nothing.
Fox had been nine.
He'd been outside when the attack came. He'd watched his family burn. He'd run into the forest, alone, and he'd survived.
She'd crawled out from under the floorboards three days later, covered in her mother's blood, and she'd walked into the forest too.
She'd found him by the river.
He'd been sitting on a rock, staring at the water, his face blank. She'd sat down beside him without speaking. They'd stayed there for hours, two children in the wreckage of their lives, not touching, not talking, just breathing.
She'd loved him then.
She still loved him now.
That was the problem.
The Codex whispered something—a suggestion, a temptation—and Leliana opened her eyes. The whispers grew louder, more insistent. They wanted her to act. They wanted her to hunt. They wanted her to wrap her hands around Fox's throat and squeeze until the light left his eyes.
She wanted that too.
But first, she needed to make him suffer.
"Xander."
Her voice cut through the wind like a blade.
The fisherman emerged from the shadows of a collapsed warehouse, his broad shoulders silhouetted against the grey sky. He moved with the easy confidence of a man who'd spent his life on the water, his steps sure despite the uneven ground. His dark hair was plastered to his forehead, and his eyes—grey as the sea before a storm—held the same haunted look they'd carried since the day she'd found him.
He'd been standing on the shore, staring at the waves, when she'd approached him three weeks ago. His friends were dead. His boat was wrecked. His life was over.
She'd offered him purpose.
He'd taken it.
"The men are in position," he said.
"Good."
She turned to face him fully, studying him the way she might study a blade before purchase. He was handsome, in a rough-hewn way—strong jaw, weathered skin, hands that knew hard labor. He was also broken. She could see it in the way he held himself, the way his gaze flickered toward the horizon as if expecting something to emerge from the grey.
She could use that.
"I need you to do something for me," she said.
He waited.
"There's a mercenary among the dead. Kael. He was one of mine." She gestured toward the far end of the village, where a cluster of corpses lay tangled together. "His wife is here too. Mira. She was traveling with the caravan."
Xander's expression didn't change. "And?"
"Bring her to me. Strip Kael first—I want his armor, his weapons, anything of value. Then bring the widow."
He didn't ask why.
He simply nodded and walked toward the bodies.
Leliana watched him go, her fingers tracing the spine of the Codex through her robes. The whispers grew louder, hungry, eager. They knew what was coming. They always knew.
She smiled.
---
The widow was young.
Leliana hadn't expected that. The mercenaries who joined her army were usually older, hardened, their wives worn thin by years of worry and waiting. But Mira couldn't have been more than nineteen. Her hair was the color of wheat, her eyes wide and blue, her face still soft with the remnants of girlhood.
She was trembling.
Xander had dragged her through the ruins by her arm—not roughly, but not gently either. He'd stripped Kael's body first, as ordered, and the armor now hung from his shoulders like a second skin. The sword at his hip had belonged to the dead man. So had the dagger in his boot.
Mira had seen.
She'd watched him desecrate her husband's corpse, and she hadn't screamed. Hadn't cried. Just stared with those big blue eyes, her face pale as milk, her hands shaking at her sides.
Now she knelt in the ash before Leliana.
"Do you know who I am?" Leliana asked.
Mira shook her head.
"I'm the reason your husband is dead."
The words hung in the air like smoke.
Mira's lip trembled, but she didn't speak. Didn't look away. There was something in her eyes—not defiance, not quite. Something closer to resignation. She'd known, somehow. She'd known the moment they were attacked that her life was over.
"Kael owed me money," Leliana continued. "He owed me loyalty. Instead, he tried to run. He tried to take you and flee in the night, thinking I wouldn't notice." She smiled, and it didn't reach her eyes. "I always notice."
Mira's breath hitched.
"I don't blame you," Leliana said. "You're just a girl. You probably didn’t even want him to join my army."
"I didn’t."
The words were barely a whisper.
Leliana tilted her head. "My army of freaks scare you.”
Mira's voice was stronger now. "Yes. Most of your soldiers are abominations. They shouldn’t exist.”
"And yet you let your husband fight for me."
"Where else was I supposed to go?"
The question hung between them, raw and honest and utterly pathetic. Leliana felt something stir in her chest—not sympathy, but recognition. She knew what it was to have nowhere to go. She knew what it was to cling to someone because the alternative was worse.
She pushed the feeling aside.
"You're going to do something for me," she said. "And if you do it well, I'll let you live."
Mira's eyes flickered with something—hope, maybe. Or desperation.
"What do you want?"
Leliana turned to Xander.
He'd been standing behind Mira, silent and watchful, his grey eyes unreadable. He looked like a man carved from stone—hard, weathered, impossible to break. But she'd seen the cracks. She knew where to apply pressure.
"I want you to fuck her."
Xander blinked.
"What?"
"You heard me." Leliana's voice was calm, almost bored. "I want you to fuck the widow. Right here. Right now. While I watch."
The wind howled through the ruins.
Xander's jaw tightened. "That's not—"
"It's not a request."
He stared at her for a long moment, his hands curling into fists at his sides. She could see the conflict in his eyes—the part of him that wanted to refuse, that still believed in things like decency and honor. She could also see the other part. The part that had lost everything. The part that had nothing left to lose.
"You said you wanted purpose," Leliana said softly. "This is purpose. This is what I need from you. This is what you agreed to when you joined me."
Xander's breath came out slow and controlled.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you're useless to me." She shrugged. "I don't keep useless people."
The threat was clear.
Xander looked at Mira—at her trembling hands, her tear-streaked face, her wide, terrified eyes. Something flickered across his expression. Pity, maybe. Or regret.
Then it was gone.
"Fine," he said.
Mira made a sound—a small, broken thing that was half-gasp, half-whimper. She tried to scramble backward, but Xander's hand closed around her arm before she could move.
"Don't," he said quietly. "It'll be worse if you fight."
She didn't stop trembling, but she stopped trying to run.
Leliana watched as Xander pulled her to her feet. He was gentle, surprisingly—his hands careful as he turned her to face him, his eyes avoiding hers. He looked like a man performing a duty, not a man taking pleasure.
That would come later.
"Take off your clothes," Leliana ordered.
Mira's hands shook as she fumbled with the laces of her dress. The fabric was rough, practical—the kind of clothing a merchant's wife would wear on the road. It fell away from her shoulders, revealing skin that was pale and unblemished, save for a bruise on her collarbone that was already turning purple.
Kael's handiwork, probably.
Xander stripped without ceremony. His body was lean and hard, tanned from years in the sun, marked with scars that told stories she didn't care to hear. His cock was already stiff—not from desire, she suspected, but from the sheer animal response of a body being used.
He didn't want this.
But he would do it anyway.
"Lie down," Leliana said to Mira.
The girl obeyed.
She lay on her back in the ash, her pale hair spreading around her like a halo, her blue eyes fixed on the sky. She looked like a sacrifice—which, in a way, she was.
Xander knelt between her legs.
"Look at me," he said.
Mira's gaze shifted to his face.
"This isn't about you," he said. "Or me. It's just something that's happening. Do you understand?"
She nodded.
He positioned himself at her entrance.
She was dry—Leliana could see that from where she stood, could see the way Mira's body resisted, the way her muscles clenched against the intrusion. But Xander didn't stop. He pushed forward, slow and steady, until he was buried to the hilt.
Mira gasped.
Xander closed his eyes.
Leliana watched.
She watched the way his hips began to move—slow at first, then faster, finding a rhythm that was mechanical and efficient. She watched the way Mira's face contorted—not with pleasure, but with something closer to endurance. She watched the way their bodies connected, flesh against flesh, the oldest act in the world reduced to something cold and transactional.
The Codex whispered.
She felt her own arousal building—not from the scene itself, but from the power. The control. The knowledge that she could make people do things, terrible things, and they would obey because the alternative was worse.
Her hand slipped beneath her robes.
Her fingers found her clit.
She was already wet—had been since the moment she'd given the order. The sight of Xander's body moving against Mira's, the sound of their breathing, the smell of sex rising in the cold air—it all fed something inside her, something hungry and dark.
She thought of Fox.
She imagined him on his knees, bound and helpless, his grey eyes filled with pain. She imagined the way he'd look at her—not with love, not anymore, but with hatred. With betrayal.
She imagined killing him.
The thought sent a jolt of pleasure through her.
Her fingers moved faster.
Xander's rhythm increased. He was fucking Mira harder now—not out of passion, but out of desperation to finish. His breath came in grunts, his muscles straining, his face twisted with something that might have been disgust.
Mira had stopped looking at the sky.
She was staring at Leliana.
There was something in her eyes—not fear, not anger. Something older. Something that looked almost like understanding.
The girl knew.
She knew what Leliana was. What she had become.
And she pitied her.
The realization hit Leliana like a slap. She snarled, her fingers pressing harder against her clit, her hips bucking against her own hand. She wouldn't be pitied. Not by this girl, not by anyone. She was powerful. She was in control. She was—
She came.
The orgasm ripped through her without warning—sharp and brutal and utterly unsatisfying. Her body convulsed, her cunt clenching around nothing, her breath escaping in a ragged snarl. She rode it out with her teeth clenched, her eyes fixed on Mira's face, refusing to look away.
Xander came a moment later.
He pulled out before he finished—a small mercy, perhaps—and spilled his seed onto the ash beside her. Then he stood, his breathing heavy, his body slick with sweat.
"Get dressed," Leliana said.
He obeyed.
Mira remained on her back, unmoving.
Leliana approached her slowly.
The girl looked up at her with those too-knowing eyes, and for a moment, Leliana felt something twist in her chest. Something that might have been regret.
She crushed it.
"You did well," she said. "I'll keep my promise."
Mira's lips curved in a bitter smile. "You'll let me live?"
"I said I would."
"And then what?"
Leliana didn't answer.
She drew her knife.
Mira's eyes widened—not with fear, but with something closer to relief. She didn't try to run. Didn't try to fight. She just closed her eyes and waited.
Leliana slit her throat.
The blood came fast and hot, spilling over the ash in a dark tide. Mira's body jerked once, twice, then went still. Her eyes remained open, staring at nothing.
Leliana knelt beside her.
She dipped her fingers in the blood and began to draw.
The symbols came easily—the same symbols she'd used to bind the Codex, the same symbols she'd used to raise the bear. They glowed faintly as she worked, pulsing with a light that was not quite green, not quite black.
Xander watched from a distance.
His face was pale. His hands were shaking.
"You said you'd let her live," he said.
"I lied."
The words hung between them like a blade.
Leliana finished the spell and stood. The corpse twitched. Then it sat up.
Mira's eyes—empty now, all the pity gone—fixed on Leliana. Waiting.
"Follow," Leliana commanded.
The undead thing rose to its feet.
Xander made a sound—something between a retch and a prayer. He'd seen her raise the bear. He'd helped her gather the corpses she'd used for other spells. But this was different. This was a person. A woman he'd just fucked.
"This is what I am," Leliana said. "This is what I do. If you can't handle it, leave. But if you stay, you're mine. Body and soul."
Xander stared at her.
His grey eyes were dark with something she couldn't name—horror, maybe. Or hate. Or both.
He didn't leave.
Leliana smiled.
She crossed to him, her movements fluid, and wrapped her arms around his neck. He didn't resist as she pulled him close. Didn't react when her lips brushed against his ear.
"You're mine," she whispered. "Body and soul. And tomorrow, we hunt."
She felt him shudder.
She felt him nod.
The storm broke.
Rain began to fall—cold and heavy and relentless—washing the blood from the ash, washing the whispers from the air, washing everything clean. But Leliana knew better.
Nothing was ever clean.
Not anymore.
She released Xander and turned to face the west, where the cliffs rose against the sky like teeth. Somewhere beyond them, Fox was alive. Fox was breathing. Fox was probably fucking that half-elf girl he'd picked up, or the mage, or both.
The thought made her want to kill something.
"Tomorrow," she repeated.
The Codex pulsed.
The undead woman waited.
And the rain fell, and fell, and fell.