Page 47 of Demure
This angered the woman, who quickly began yelling at her in old Gaelic and motioning for her to lay back down. Sierra shook her head. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
Aodhan’s father chuckled from where he stood off to the side. “My apologies. I forgot you don’t speak old Gaelic. Now lay down so we can perform the ritual.”
“I would feel better knowing what this ritual is,” Sierra insisted, remaining in her seated position.
“It’s nothing serious. We just have to take some of your blood to put on the altar for Gaia.”
Sierra cocked her head to the side. On the one hand, this appeared to be extremely ominous and dangerous, but at the same time, he didn’t say she would die. Or was he just omitting that fact?
Deciding to be on the safe side, she asked, “How much blood will you take?”
The king held up a small stone bowl. “Only enough to fill this bowl.”
Sierra looked at the bowl. It was bigger than the tubes at the doctor's office, but she would probably be fine. Deciding it was best not to start a fight with the father of the man she was falling for, despite her doubts about his odd ritual, she lay back on the table.
As soon as she was prone, the weird men in robes rushed forward, each one grabbing one of her limbs, and one man holding her head in place. Sierra regretted her decision to be complacent immediately and tried to sit up again, but it was too late, and the men were too strong.
The sixth man, who wasn’t holding one of her limbs, came to stand over her with a small knife, and the bowl Aodhan’s father had held, and Sierra realized her fatal mistake.
She hadn’t askedwherethey would take the blood from.
With a grimace, she decided it was best to face this with her eyes closed. So, she pressed them tightly shut, turning her head to the side, which the man holding it allowed.
Before she could think of anything else, a searing pain shot through her arm, so sharp that her back arched and her eyes flew open of their own accord.
Sierra immediately wished she hadn’t, as she saw the knife cutting the major vein on her arm, which she had learned during her studies could definitely kill a person.
The man doing the cutting must’ve had that same knowledge, however, as he only made about a one-inch incision before turning her arm so her blood could drip into the bowl.
Sierra felt sick. But as she looked away from the blood spurting from her arm, she noticed the other men observing the skin of the limb they held in place, their eyes clearly seeing her lesions.
Feeling incredibly self-conscious, Sierra decided squeezing her eyes shut once again was the only solution to the current situation. Although she hadn’t been religious for years, she began to pray, deciding to direct her prayers to this Gaia she didn’t know, as it was probably better that she prayed to a god in this world rather than one who had never answered her pleas in the world she had come from.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Once the bleeding procedure, or ritual, or whatever they called it, was finished, Sierra assumed she would be led somewhere to rest or relax until Aodhan figured out she was here and came home to give some answers.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
After they finished, two men came into the room, grabbing her roughly by her arms without seeming to notice her cut was still bleeding. They didn’t even offer her a bandage or anything, as she assumed they would. They simply grabbed her arms and began leading her through more of the stone structure.
They tossed her roughly into what she could only assume was a prison cell, judging by the iron that crisscrossed the window in the wooden door and the fact that it was locked tightly behind them.
“Great, just fucking great,” Sierra mumbled to herself as she stood in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips. Apparently, not only was she the answer to some backward prophecy, but she was also going to be held as a prisoner for the foreseeable future.
It was a small room, and the floor was made of dirt, so she was either underground, or on the bottom floor of thestone structure. There wasn’t any sort of bed, just a pile of blankets in the corner, which looked less than comfortable. The opposite corner held a bucket, which Sierra could only begin to imagine what it was used for.
Noticing the blood running down her arm from the still-open wound, Sierra pulled the gauze belt from around her waist, folding it a few times before tying it on her arm. For once, all the bandaging practice she had during her undergrad came in handy. Careful not to tie it too tightly, Sierra held her arm to her body while she used her other arm and teeth to tie the bow. At least now it would hopefully clot quickly.
With a sigh, Sierra began to rearrange the blankets to try to make something decent to sit on. But the more she thought about the events of the past 24 hours, the more panicked and anxious she became. So, at some point, she simply wrapped one of the blankets around her and the gauzy dress she was still wearing, and sat on the second blanket, leaning against the cold stone wall.
Now that she actually had a moment to herself, everything of the past 48 hours sunk in. How had she gone from the high of having sex with Aodhan for the first time, to here?
At some point, Sierra must’ve drifted off, as she awoke to the clinking of a key in the lock of the cell door. Thinking that Aodhan must’ve finally shown up, Sierra stood up from the blanket nest she had made, trying to brush the dirt from the white dress, but she quickly realized it was useless. This wasn’t the type of dress one re-wore after sitting on a dirt floor.
The door swung open to reveal the two men who had dumped her here, who knows how many hours before. At least Sierra assumed they were the same men; they were all dressed the same, so it was hard to know. Sierra’s heart fell, but she still held out a small sliver of hope that had taken root in her heart thatperhaps they would lead her to Aodhan, or maybe they were just keeping her here until her room was ready.
She knew that last thought was far-fetched, but she had to hold on to something or she was liable to fall over the edge into the pit of emotional self-pity, and she knew from past experience, once she sunk to those depths, she wouldn’t be motivated to do anything to help herself out of her current predicament.
