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Laudna watches the closeness between Imogen and Fresh - when had that happened? - and feels something terrible rise in her gut. Jealousy and worry mixing in a noxious sludge. And something worse.
'She's leaving you behind.'
Laudna hisses at the intruder. No one appears to have noticed the incursion—no, there, Orym is looking back at her, brow furrowed. She waves cheerily, which seems to soothe him. When his eyes refocus to the path ahead, Laudna lets Escargot fall back, a few paces and then a few more behind the group. She draws the hood of her cloak up and over her head.
'What do you want?'
'You've been chatty,' Delilah murmurs. 'I wanted to remind you of your agreement, dear. Not to say anything...untoward.'
'I haven't.'
Delilah hums, unconvinced. Laudna can feel her poking about in her mind; cold fingers drag over memories, pluck them like books from the shelves of her mind. She regards Orym—Delilah the Orym of her memory, Laudna the tense shoulders of her friend riding in the rain ahead of her—and clicks her tongue.
'You should count yourself lucky,' Delilah says. Humour twines a chilling tendril around her words. Nothing amused Delilah quite like a joke at someone else's expense. Better, someone else's demise. 'After all, not everyone gets such a generous last meal.'
Laudna tilts her head. Smacks it hard in an effort to dislodge Delilah but she digs her freezing claws into Laudna's skull—not because the hit would have done anything, just because she can. Bitch. With a disappointed sniff and a crack of bone as she corrects the angle of her head, Laudna says,
'The potatoes were under cooked.'
Delilah laughs, throaty and rich. To Laudna's dismay, she hears herself laugh the same way.
On the road ahead, Imogen turns in her saddle, eyes flashing white. She turns back.
'Don't worry. I'm sure the staff paid for that misstep in full. You could say they had a taste of my husband's displeasure.'
Laudna gags. A vampire joke? Tacky. 'You're really not at funny as you think you are.'
'And you are far too disrespectful for someone who owes me their life,' Delilah hisses. Quick as a striking snake, she shifts from that venemous anger back to her arch tone, all dark humour, all rising acrid pleasure that comes from causing pain. Laudna braces. After all, she is the only one present. 'In fact, I think you should thank me.'
Worse than pain, somehow.
Laudna growls, deep in her throat. 'No.'
Delilah speaks again with none of the gentleness of a joke. 'I said,' she hisses, and takes Laudna's heart in the palm of her hand, strings her nerves around cold fingers. 'Thank. Me.'
Laudna shivers. Twitches. She fights it but how to fight? They share a mind, a body. She is fighting only herself. Her jaw moves under Delilah's direction. Words muscle up her throat, spill out from between clenched teeth.
'Thank you.'
'Thank you, my Lady.'
A grey hall. A fine dinner. Her parents, her future, her life. Ended for a warning for someone else. For a joke. A treat, a trick, meant to unnerve and disturb. To sicken. Lives ended on a whim.
'Thank you,' Laudna rasps. 'My Lady.'
It does not seem to bother Delilah that the words are hollow, mechanical. That she is the one making Laudna speak them. Perhaps because she can feel Laudna's rising horror, feel the way she struggles to free herself from the strings she is caught in, a rat in a trap, and fails. Feels it occur to her what else Delilah could make her do.
Delilah drops the strings and Laudna falls - arms, ungainly, back to her reins; head drops, chin to chest. She holds herself very still against the urge to shiver, tremble.
Cold fingers stroke the back of her neck as one would scratch the scruff of a faithful hound. 'There. Good girl. Don't make me warn you again, please.'
Laudna expects Delilah to leave then, her point well and truly made. But she lingers.
'I lied before,' she admits, voice wrapping around Laudna, velvet soft. 'About why I'm here. I thought we could have a little chat, dead woman to dead woman, about the future. What you can do for me. What we can do for each other.'
'I don't want anything from you.'
Delilah clicks her tongue. 'We both know that isn't true. Why, only the other night, you seemed so...ill at ease talking about your past. The night you died.'
'The night you killed me,' Laudna bites.
'Yes, well.' Delilah shrugs. Laudna shrugs. 'There's so much you don't know. About yourself, about the powers I've granted you.'
'I know enough.'
'How could you possibly? The fact is, you don't know anything. You admitted it. Those troublesome blank spots, the holes in your memory? You don't know what happened between my guards taking you to the dungeon and waking up on that tree and that worries you, doesn't it? It's like -' Delilah hums thoughtfully. Strokes the shell of her ear. Despite the cuff, Laudna feels the touch on skin and scar. 'It's like a piece of you is missing,' she murmurs. 'But you have an inkling, don't you? Memories don't go missing for no reason. You want to know what could possibly have been so bad that you remember all those other terrible things but not that. You want to know what else I did to you.'
'No.'
'You've been thinking about it a lot, ever since your dear heart came back from the library. What's the word she used?' Delilah cannot feign concern, cannot feign thoughtfulness. She is brimming with putrid glee. 'Ah yes, I remember now. Experiments.'
'I don't believe you!' Laudna snaps. There is no doubt that she is talking loud enough to draw attention, enough for the others to hear and witness, but her surroundings are just blackness as she closes her eyes tight, her attention drawn ever inwards.
'Believe me? Darling, these are your thoughts, not mine.'
'That's not true. You're lying again -'
'You haven't gone nearly mad enough to make me up in that broken head of yours and you know it. Besides, your girl would be able to hear me if I were another one of your voices, wouldn't she?'
That is a question that had confounded Laudna and Imogen both. Two years they have wandered, searching for answers, and found nothing. It is something that unsettles Laudna as much as it frustrates Imogen.
'She's an interesting one, your girl. Being able to peel open minds like that... I can see why she could interest you. At first, you hoped she could answer your questions. And then you fell in love. It happens to the best of us,' she says, tone inviting her to laugh along. Laudna doesn't. She feels paralysed, pain and fear coursing through her. Delilah sighs. 'Oh dear. I've overwhelmed you. You must be so confused,' she coos. Curls a string of Laudna's hair about her finger and tugs, sharp, sending a painful twinge through her Laudna's scalp. Her head jerks to the side. 'All those questions you must have. What happened to me?' she asks, a trembling mockery of Laudna. 'What have I become? What did you do to me? Why am I like this?' Delilah pauses. The air grows cold, still. When she continues, her voice is a coiling hiss, wraps itself around her. Her promises, another noose for Laudna's neck. 'How do I make it stop?'
Laudna swallows. An old curiosity, that question. Passing. One that she has not shared with Imogen.
'I can answer all your questions and so much more, dear. You need only ask.'
The thought of Imogen sends a flash of lightning through her brain. A jolt - enough to cut through Delilah's numbing cold. She sneers. 'And you'll share your knowledge for free, of course.'
Delilah laughs. 'No, of course not. Why would I? When I know you could beg me for it and make any kind of promise I'd like.'
'That won't happen.'
'Are you so certain? Can you afford such disobedience?' Delilah touches cold fingers to Laudna's chin, turns her to face and focus on Imogen - so worried, so close, hand outstretched but not touching. 'I can help you, Laudna. I can answer all your questions. Grant you powers beyond your wildest dreams. Grant you knowledge only whispered of, the kind that can help your girl.' Laudna's breath catches. 'You may not believe me, dear, but I'd rather help you than hurt you.'
She's right. Laudna doesn't believe her.
'But if you won't ask and if you won't help me, if you struggle too hard, if you try to fight me,' she says with a dangerous snarl,' well.' Delilah drops cold fingers to Laudna's throat. 'Hurting you won't be a problem.'