The Root

“Come, Pietro,” Cosimo said. “I have fodder for your jests.”

Pietro cast aside his wineskin and eyed his master with as much contempt as he thought wise.

“Oh, don’t pout, Pietro,” Cosimo said softly. “It was all in fun. Isn’t that what I pay you for?”

“You humiliated me.”

“Are you to tell me that’s the first time a woman has laughed at your deformity? Seen that stub between your stunted legs?”

“Lady Eleanora didn’t laugh,” Pietro replied meekly. Cosimo bristled his black mustache.

“No, quite right,” he said. “But as it turned out she wasn’t very particular, was she? She’d mount just about anyone…”

Pietro sputtered.

“I never—“

“Of course you didn’t,” Cosimo spat. “You’re far too cowardly. Now follow. I am not asking.”

Cosimo turned and strode from Pietro’s chamber, and Pietro—though he hesitated just long enough to consider how cowardly he truly was—followed close behind.

The house was eerily silent, though the sun was still hours from setting; it streamed through the windows in the hall, carrying the bloody hue of the dust from the fields and the green-gold silhouettes of diaphanous leaves.

“I have sent the servants home…” Cosimo muttered as he began plodding up the stairs. He hummed, off-tune and off-time, as they made their ascent.

By the time they stopped outside Cosimo’s chamber, Pietro already knew what he would find through the door. Heartsick, he hesitated.

“In,” Cosimo commanded, and Pietro obeyed.

In the chamber, in the corrupted light that struggled through the velvet curtains, Lady Eleanor lay on her back, naked, with her eyes half open and her mouth gaping. Her legs were spread.

“Does her body arouse you now?” Cosimo asked.

Pietro shut his eyes, determined not to see the lady’s nakedness. But he felt something turn within him, then, a twisted darkness—as if by some wicked alchemy his heart had suddenly calcified, like a dead root in an icy stream.

“Yes,” he admitted, and his hatred was everything.

This, my response to the Trifecta Writing Challenge (Alchemy), is arguably the darkest in my Pietro Barbino series—which is a pretty dark series as it is. (Photo credit, fittingly enough, goes to “The Dark Thing” on Flickr).

To protect myself from the darkness (and to make sure I come up with some new ideas for these prompts) I think this will be the last Pietro story I do for a while, but here’s the whole thing if you’ve got a few minutes to read on!

A Curious Woman // The Root // Pietro Barbino // The Black Fool // Original Sin