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The Marque of Jasmine	By : Elfgirl2005 Category: G through L > Kushiel's Trilogy Views: 1541 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Kushiel s Trilogy, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-The Marque of Jasmine
- 2-Chapter 2
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- 2
Oh, how quickly a child’s delusion is broken! I remember exactly how that moment felt, how the dread made a knot in my stomach as the orange and red flames danced with glee. Each step felt like a great labor as I ran toward the house. The thickening cloud of smoke stung my eyes as I made my way through the front gate. Inside the beautifully tiled entryway, the frescoes of Elua and his companions were alight with flame, blazing like torches. The roof was beginning to fall in. The beautiful honey-stained oak beams that had been so carefully placed were scorched now. As I was about to run into the dining room, a beam crashed down in front of me, nearly smashing me. My way blocked, I ran out the side door to my mother’s garden path. I stood just outside the house, my back hunched over gasping for air and retching. As I stared at the ground at the proud dahlia’s my mother had planted, they began to wilt, bowing their blood-red petals to the ground. I found my parents in the garden.
My mother, horribly beaten, lying face down on her crushed white alyssums, dried blood stiffening her tangled curls.
My father, with a knife wound to the stomach, crumpled into a heap next to the two men he took down with him; one with his breeches still undone.
A cry of outrage and shock ripped through me, as the crackling fire behind me mocked my grief. Those who are not D’Angeline do not understand the blasphemy of rape. “Love as thou Wilt” Elua told us, and to rape is to violate that most central holy precept. My mother had given herself freely in her time in service to Naamah, it was not just that she should endure this at the last.
I ran to my father, whose bright gleaming hair stood out amid a sea of smoke, ash, and blood. I rolled him onto his back and gasped at the sight of his bloodied body. His entire front was awash with red. I ripped the soaked linen fabric of his shirt, exposing his torso to the cool air, and placed my hands over his still oozing wound.
“Elua, make it stop.” I whispered, as my tears threatened to obscure my vision. I blinked them away, and they ran instead down my amber cheeks. I focused on applying pressure to his wound, but I had no training in the healing arts, and my small hands were soon covered in my father’s blood.
He had tried so hard to make my mother happy. I remembered all the moments they had shared in this very garden. When I was a small child and my mother would bring me out to the garden to play as she read, he would sneak up behind her and grab her sides. She would scream and bolt out of her chair, chase him and swat him with the book she held. And then they would laugh together, and I would giggle too. Then their embrace would change, deepen before my eyes, and she would lead him away into the house. He followed behind her with a dazed look in his eyes that could only be described as love.
Then, perhaps in reaction to my whispered prayer, his bright blue eyes flickered open, slowly as though his lids were weighted with heavy stones. His milk-white face looked pale and sunken.
“Lilliane” he said in a choked whisper, as the blood began to stream from the side of his mouth.
There was nothing I could do; he had been bleeding for too long and lost too much blood. Whoever had done this had left him to suffer and die with agonizing slowness. I felt a sense of rightness looking at the corpses of the two men. They deserved every second of their pain. At this thought, my father stiffened and died, the light from his blue eyes fading while I sobbed on his ruined body. And it was suddenly not enough that the men had died, not nearly enough to right the wrongs that had been done.
And then, I got a sharp sensation of pain on the back of my head and the hellish scene before my eyes turned to black.
When I woke, my head ached terribly. I was in a dark room and I could not see anything. Was it night outside? I didn’t know. I stood shakily and heard the rustle of straw beneath my feet. I walked cautiously with my arms outstretched trying to find a wall or doorway. My hands met rough wooden walls, and I cried out as splinters punctured my blood-stained hands. I found one door with a metal handle. I shook with all of my strength and heard the clanging rattle of chains on the other side. That night, or day, was the hardest I had ever known until then. I cried and cried until I was sick with nausea. I vomited until there was nothing left and I gasped at the air like it was poison. There were cuts on my scalp. I felt them when I laid down on top of the rough straw hours and hours later, praying to disappear.
Where was I? Who had taken me? These thoughts drove me mad with fear and foreboding. I knew what had happened to my mother, and anyone capable of rape, especially in Terre D’Ange was a godless madman. The men that my father had killed were rough-featured foreigners, and I had no doubt that they cared nothing about Elua’s message.
Creak.
Piercing light stabbed my eyes as I lay still atop the straw. Repulsed, I rolled over, covered my face and cried. The door closed. Heavy, heavy footsteps on the crunching straw.
Thud.
“Eat.”
A deep voice. I cried harder. Creak. Slam. I was alone again. I would not eat from his hands. The bowl flew across the room and my arm shook with the effort of the throw. Carrots and snap beans littered the straw-covered ground. Vegetables. He had brought me vegetables. Why pretend? Why not just feed me the food out of the pig sty, for was there any doubt that I was a prisoner? It made me sick, in body and soul.
He came again that night. The door creaked on its rusty metal hinges as it opened, letting streams of ethereal light pour into my prison. And as he stood in the doorway the moonlight behind him illuminated his form like a god. This, no doubt, he would have wanted. I sat motionless on the straw, blinking against the sudden light, waiting.

“You did not eat” he said, in accented D’Angeline, looking at the barely discernible shapes of beans and summer carrots amid the straw.
I said nothing; only stared past him at the moonlight on the green hillside. It was a chill night meant for warm hearth-fires in tiled fireplaces, scented with sprigs of lavender and jasmine. For the comforts of home and family. And then my mother’s small frame flashed in my mind, her lean brown limbs patterned with bruises and contorted in a pose of agony on the hard cruel ground. Her sable curls, matted and bloody.

“Pick them up. I will not have this barn a mess.”
My father’s dying word echoed in my head. “Lilliane.”
I stood, smoothed my ripped, blood-stained lilac dress and spit at his boot-clad feet.
The change in him was terrifying.
“You will do as I command you to do D’Angeline!” he said, as he grabbed my upper arm, squeezing so tightly that I felt my heart jump in my chest in fear. I looked into his eyes, dark shadows beneath bushy eyebrows, and saw the madness there. “I burned your weak Elua” he said. “I am your God now.” He shoved me violently onto the straw and watched me as I picked up every last morsel of food.
“Get used to kneeling, girl, for you will be doing much of it in the future.” The smile in his voice sent shivers down my spine.
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The Marque of Jasmine