Chapter 761: Executioner’s Armor
Ashlynn watched in fascination as Sybyll stripped off her red dress without a trace of modesty, revealing a sculpted, muscular, warrior’s body marked with old scars that, on any other knight, would have told stories of countless battles. On Sybyll’s body, however, only one of those scars, a mass of pebbled and rough skin covering one shoulder, looked like it had been inflicted by the flames of the Inquisition.
It was almost impossible for any human weapon to leave a scar on a vampire, and Sybyll hadn’t become a knight until she’d become one of Nyrielle’s progeny which meant that the scars on her body...
"It were rough work at times," Sybyll said as she followed Ashlynn’s gaze to the collection of scars along her ribs before she turned, pulling her long crimson hair over her shoulder to reveal the larger collection of scars that criss-crossed her back.
"An ’ore house sells what men want of a woman, be it pleasure or pain," she said, turning back around and shaking her long, crimson hair back over her shoulder to cover the scars. "Don’t go lookin’ at me like it were a shameful thing," she added with a fierce light burning in her crimson eyes. "I did what..."
"No, not shameful," Ashlynn interrupted as she looked deeply into Sybyll’s eye, forcing back the thoughts that flickered through her mind. On the night that she crawled out of her grave, she’d contemplated trying to return to the human world to make her way back and claim her vengeance.
When Ian Hanrahan killed Sybyll’s mother, Nyrielle hadn’t ridden up in a dark carriage to rescue her but she’d found a way to survive for herself, one that demanded everything from her that a woman could give. Seeing the marks left on her by that life, Ashlynn couldn’t help but wonder if she would have been strong enough to do the same...
"Nyri told me how you were living before she and Sir Thane found you," Ashlynn said. "She also told me what you did to the men who prayed on your sisters and took more from them than a man should. I, I can’t imagine that it was easy," she said softly.
"Me life forged me long before Mistress Nyrielle had me armor forged," Sybyll admitted as she pulled the dark crimson gambeson over her head and began adjusting the buckles, pulling the layered, quilted fabric tight against her body and ensuring that it was in place to bear the weight of her armor before her hands moved automatically to her long crimson hair, pulling it quickly into a tight braid that would be easier to tuck under her cloth hood.
"The hauberk next," Thane said, lifting one end of a chain shirt that seemed to flow like liquid shadow and made no sound even as the links rubbed against each other. "Lady Ashlynn, take the other side. On three, one, two, three, up!"
Even with both of them helping, the weight of the armor was enough for Ashlynn to feel the strain pulling at her arms and pressing down through her legs, as though she were trying to lift the trunk of one of the fallen trees before they settled the darksteel chain over Sybyll’s shoulders and the crimson-haired knight took up the weight of it.
Each darksteel link was no larger than Ashlynn’s fingernail, yet there must have been tens of thousands of individual links and added together, the chain garment felt several times heavier than her old falchion had been.