A Promise of Steel (Delilah/Oziah)

Continued directly after the events of Bring Me That Horizon. Co-written with Delilah Daybreaker 🖤.

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“Let’s play a game. I learned it in the Feywild. You were there.”

Delilah swallows, nervous. “Yeah?”

“A question for a question.”

“When do we stop?”

“We’ll know.”

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Oziah strips off her splint mail with the same precision and deftness as the last time Delilah saw her do it, but the undercurrent of frustration is easy to read in her movements. She hangs it neatly on the frame next to the closet before opening a large chest at the foot of her bed and pulling out two bottles of red wine, and two glasses. She sets it all on the small table by the fire and sinks into one of the two armchairs next to it. She gestures at the other one, her eyes still cold and distant.


“Whenever you’re ready.”


Delilah follows suit, but only takes the cloak off, keeping everything else on. She is so focused on folding the constellation covered cloth that she almost doesn’t hear the impatient opening of one of the bottles from the occupied armchair. The daggers and shortsword are quicker to unbuckle from her side before she quickly and carefully sits opposite Oziah, avoiding the blue eyes regarding her over a glass filled with wine.


“I was told recently that, when sharing information, there should be a level of trust in those whom you’re conspiring with. This is slightly different… but, in essence, still the same.”


Dark eyes finally lift up. There is a slight hitch in her breath. Then, slowly, Delilah brings her hand up to the knot that secures the mask to her face and begins to undo it’s bonds. Oziah’s gaze doesn’t flicker, but her breathing becomes shallow and rapid and the hand holding the glass freezes mid-air.


To call it a scar would be wrong. That would imply the flesh on Delilah’s face has healed. It has not. This is worse. At first, it appears like a hand tried to cover her mouth but only just missed her lips. But looking it at where the fingers reach – up to her ear, splayed out to be down her chin and onto her neck – the true intention becomes clear. Whoever left this mark on the pale woman did so intentionally. The flesh is dead, looking like it has rotted, may even still be rotting, in a way only necromantic magic can do.


Oziah is perfectly still for a single, eternal moment, before exhaling slowly and shakily. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look away, but her face betrays a myriad of emotions; fascination, greed and curiosity quickly overshadowed by cold fury. Finally she blinks a little and takes a healthy sip of her wine. The only sound in the quiet room is the crackling of the fire and their own breathing. When Oziah speaks, it’s almost a whisper.


“Who goes first?”


“Ladies first,” Delilah says, inclining her head. It’s the first time Oziah sees her smirk as well. It twists and pulls at the horrible handprint, like it’s trying to break free. She picks up the second glass of wine, salutes to Oziah, then downs it all in one go. Oziah’s eyes track her every movement as she frowns, wondering which topic to broach first.


“Why did you run?”


Delilah pours herself another glass, head already spinning.


“It’s complicated-”


Oziah levels her with an unamused, deadpan stare.


“-but, it boils down to this: My mother found me and I could no longer stay here.” She sits back in the armchair, tucking her legs underneath her as she moves her jaw around. “It was the same night you left this at my door.”


There’s a slight musical tink as her nail taps the sapphire grasshopper tied to her wrist. This, surprisingly, makes Oziah lower her gaze. She closes her eyes briefly, almost as if bracing herself against embarrassment. She quickly raises her glass to her lips to cover it.


“Why did you say ‘I won’t be humiliated again’?” Delilah asks.


Oziah’s face shutters closed almost like a window against a gale. She clenches her jaw and when she looks at Delilah the other woman imagines she can see the walls being built around her, almost like actual stones layered.


“Because the last time I took a lover, not only was he paid to do it, he was also paid to report on me. To my father. And when I discovered it, he laughed at me. For having loved him. For believing that he ever could have loved me back.”


Oziah stiffly raises the glass to her lips and drains it, and then sets it back on the table. She refills the glass and shakes her head minutely as if to clear it.


“What does your mother want with you?”


Delilah swirls the wine in her glass, watching it spin round and round. She suddenly stops and sets the glass aside.


“To use me — as a spy or a pawn or whatever she needs, in her never ending game.” She exhales a weak chuckle. “I was sent to Court as a peace offering, but it was really just being moved from one type of prison to another. I thought I would never have to see her again if I could prove that I wasn’t anything like her. I eventually saw this new place not as a prison but a playground, one where I did prove my worth time and time again. I should have known she was watching me, waiting for her opportunity…”


She trails off, gaze drifting to the fire and a thousand yards long. After a moment, Delilah blinks and comes back to the present, the glow of the firelight reflecting in her eyes as she studies Oziah.


“Your father… Why would he set you up like that? What did he have to gain from doing that to you?”


A vicious, bitter smile spreads slowly over the other woman’s face, as if recalling some sort of hard-won victory. She traces the rim of her glass with a finger before giving a low, almost menacing chuckle.


“Due to unfortunate circumstances, I one day found myself being the sole heir to my father’s estate. Very suddenly, demands were placed upon me that hadn’t been there before and I reacted… Badly. To retain his political control and to keep his fortune tied to the family name, he needed to arrange a very specific sort of marriage for me, and he needed me to be a compliant puppet to carry on the family legacy as champions of Torm.”


Her smile widens further as she recalls the events, her cobalt eyes glittering in the firelight.


“I refused several marriage proposals, and ruined many a political event — quite publicly I might add. Finally, my father had enough and sent me off to a mercenary company funded by our estate to… Beat it out of me? Instill some sort of discipline in me that would help me obey my father’s commands? Possibly to simply get me out of his sight? I’m honestly not sure. All I know is it didn’t have the intended effect.”


Her smile is like that of a predator, an unrepentant sinner.


“After a couple of years, my father decided to try a final time. He ordered the captain of the mercenaries to escort me back to Lesos for marriage or – should I refuse – to kill me. Unfortunately, the Blue Legion had trained me too well.”


She too drifts off in silent contemplation after giving her answer, slowly rubbing the callouses on the fingers of her sword hand with her thumb, her chin raised in permanent defiance. Eventually she glances back at Delilah again, her gaze slowly softening, ever so slightly.


“What happened to your face?”


She asks it plainly, with a small shrug, finally addressing the elephant in the room. The Pale Daughter takes a long deep breath, like a diver on the edge of a mile high cliff.


“The final test we are given to prove our loyalty is different for each of us,” she starts, her lips drawing a hard line across her face even as she speaks. “By this point, the Masters know what our greatest strengths and weaknesses are. I had, up until this point, passed every challenge thrown at us – saving my own life from deadly poisoning, finding a secret no one else had heard before, even besting the assured favourite in what should have been fatal combat.”


There is something in her pitch black eyes that Oziah recognises as an old yearning, but it is being overshadowed by something she didn’t even see earlier when Delilah showed up out of nowhere outside her room.


Guilt.


“Perhaps it was because I showed Ankaa mercy,” Delilah’s voice is low, almost like she is speaking to herself. “Or maybe it was their own biases to my family name. Either way, in that moment, I sealed her fate.”


She takes another deep breath, attempting to push against the hollow feeling in her stomach. But there is no turning back now, not with Oziah’s hungry eyes looking at her as she hurtles towards long buried memories ever faster.


“The Matron Head didn’t want to see me excommunicated, but it was not her call alone to make, not this time. It was put to a vote — her and the other Masters — and I was given a task, one I could not say no to. Not if I wanted to keep my life.

“Ankaa, was beautiful, strong, full of herself but also full of that something that drew others in, made you want to follow her. She came from a family of artists. There was nothing she wasn’t good at and she was good at so much-” Delilah stops, the smile that has been growing freezing as she suddenly remembers who she is talking to. Her eyes flick up to Oziah’s and a flush creeps across her face at what she sees there. “She was much like you, but nowhere near as angry,” she teases, though it comes out a bit hollow.


Oziah lowers her pointed eyebrow back down and after a moment of tension concedes, “Leomar was nothing like you. And unfortunately he’s still alive.”


Delilah’s shadow twitches even though she does not move, even though her dark gaze is elsewhere.


Oziah slows her drinking, the heady vintage settling in her veins and calming her. She swirls the liquid still in her glass, chewing her lower lip as she thinks.


“I have more questions,” she says, finally. “Are we still playing?”


Delilah blinks. “Yes. Yes of course.” She reaches for her wine glass and takes a sip. “Sorry, I got…” She vaguely gestures with the glass, shaking her head.


“Happens to the best of us.”


“Ha, that it does,” Delilah agrees, taking another hearty sip of wine. When she comes up again, holding a bit of it in her mouth, her look is long and distant as she swirls the drink around once in her mouth, then swallows.


“I had to go back to the one place I hated most and find the proof they needed to finally imprison my mother. But she knew I was coming and prepared a welcome as only she could.”


Her knuckles turn white as she grips the wine glass tighter.


“She made me watch as she broke Ankaa down, peeled away her flesh, shattered her bones, and finally her spirit. And then… she made me fight her and I… killed her. I killed Ankaa.” Delilah’s hands shake, the rage and fear swirling together in her ears through the sound of her pounding heart. “And then, when she thought I had been broken from killing the monster the woman I loved had become, I stabbed that bitch in the back, right through her fucking heart.”


Oziah leans forward in her chair, resting her weight on her knees with her elbows, bending forward to catch Delilah’s eyes. She doesn’t flinch at the secrets revealed, doesn’t cower from the brutal past she’s presented with – only looks at Delilah with those bright blue eyes, breathing slowly until Delilah’s own breath is in sync with hers.


“But she didn’t die?”


“No,” is the short, taught response. “It wasn’t enough.”


Delilah moves to reach out to Oziah but feels the fear overtake her and she pulls her hand back. She turns her head away, lifting the glass of wine up to her lips to drain it.


“Now do you understand?” she asks, setting the empty glass down so it does not make a noise against the wooden side table. “It wasn’t fear for my life, it’s for you, Oziah. I cannot… I will not see her destroy something beautiful ever again.” Delilah looks back and there are hard tears in her eyes. “Never again.”


Oziah, never looking away, cocks her head ever so slightly to the side. A brief, calculating look passes over her face; Delilah recognizes it from that night when she told her about Jack and Langston. A hunter presented with prey. After a short moment she seems to come to some sort of decision, draining her own glass and setting it down before rising to her feet. Her movements are – as always – graceful and economical at the same time, assured and clean.

She steps forward and grabs the back of Delilah’s chair, settling one knee next to Delilah’s thigh, almost straddling her lap. She leans in and grabs the hand that reached for her, tugging it around her own waist. She pulls it in under the grey gambeson, under all the protective layers, until Delilah can feel bare skin against her fingertips.

She nudges those fingers further up under her clothes, across her ribs, up towards her shoulder blades. As Delilah’s fingers find the raised edges of what must be a horrific scar across her back, a ghost of a smile passes over Oziah’s face. Suddenly the shadows grow in the room, gathering around them both and solidifying into a set of large, spectral wings sprouting from her back – one of them from right underneath Delilah’s hand. It passes through her fingers like a cold wind, ghastly and torn. Oziah pulls her own hand back to caress the other woman’s temple, still not looking away, never looking away.


“Do you see, Delilah? I’ve already been destroyed,” she whispers, conviction dripping from every word. “Let her come.”


Breathing ragged, Delilah is still as stone, drinking in everything Oziah is giving her like a parched man would consume water. Then, slowly, she begins to press her fingers onto the scar.

“You do not understand…” She increases the pressure. “Yet how could you?”

Her fingers begin to feel like spikes as she draws herself closer as she pulls Oziah in. A hungry void looks back at Oziah from the depths of the pale woman’s eyes. The sweet burned smell of her scarred face coils around their heads, a mere breath between them. Delilah’s voice pitches low as she asks, “How can you claim to already be destroyed?”


Oziah lifts her free hand and reaches up to Delilah’s face, slowly, like the first time. Her hand is perfectly steady as it covers the scar, fitting her hand to the print, grasping the other woman’s chin gently. Delilah stops breathing.


“I was destroyed. And then I rose from the ashes.”


A sliver of warm light seeps from her palm, doing nothing for the scar but filling it with heat for a brief moment.


“You are already steel. So am I. Let her come.”


She holds her hand there for a breathless eternity, never blinking, never looking away. Delilah does not move, does not breathe. She is held, trapped in the blue of the other woman’s eyes. Then the light fades from her palm and Oziah slowly pulls back, rising to stand. Delilah’s fingers trail along skin as she pulls away, her touch getting lighter and lighter. Oziah is about to step away when Delilah’s pale hand suddenly grips her wrist, holding her where she stands.


“How? How did you fall…and how did you rise again?”


Oziah freezes, standing above Delilah like a looming statue.


“They wanted to kill me. So instead I killed to survive. They wanted servitude and when I broke the chains, Torm took his hand from me. That night, when Leomar was meant to bring me to my father or leave me dead in a ditch somewhere, I used every bit of magic they taught me, every spell and every ounce of power granted to me, to kill. And then I lost it all. Including the wings I was born with. And since then I have built myself up. There is nothing I have now, that I haven’t taught myself. I owe no debts, uphold no oaths. They have no power to hold over me. My turn,” she says suddenly. “The Masters. The Matron Head. Your mother. Are they the same people? Are you still in their employ?”


Delilah let’s go, a short, sharp shake of her head as she stands up.

“They are not the same people, and I am not still in the Master’s employ. Even with all that happened I brought back the evidence they wanted. I brought back what remained of Ankaa, my task complete.”


She has gone over to where her things sit in the corner of Oziah’s room. Rummaging in her pack, Delilah pulls out a familiar red-tinged bottle from her pack. Deftly uncorking it, she pours a generous portion into Oziah’s wine stained glass and then her own. She holds out the glass to Oziah, eyes flickering to the now fading shadow wings.


“My mother’s name is Demona, also known as the Dark Lady of the House Neremorte.”


Still standing, Oziah takes the glass.


“I have a list. Lord Archon Hadir. High Hand Amaury Jehanel. Leomar Maihl. Langston Farstep was added to it not too long ago. Should you wish, I can add your mother to it.”


She throws back the drink, still not flinching and sets the glass back on the table with a soft clink, the rich liquor shining on her lips.


“She is mine to kill,” Delilah says vehemently. “But… your help would not be unwanted,” she adds, voice becoming uncharacteristically soft.


With a single nod, Oziah accepts the offer. She stands in front of the fireplace, a dark silhouette outlined against the flames.


“Delilah. One day, I’ll be powerful enough. One day, I’ll get my wings back. And when that day comes, I’m going to murder several people in cold blood.”


Her blue eyes are almost glowing in the dim light. She’s a dark figure wreathed in shadow and flame, righteousness and controlled fury made flesh, but her voice betrays her for a moment. She doesn’t waver in her conviction that she will one day end the lives of the people who wronged her – but she isn’t sure that Delilah would approve. And she desperately wants her to.


“How would you feel about that?”


She doesn’t hear Delilah come up behind her, but rather, feels her presence a moment before the silent woman rests her hand on Oziah’s back over the scar on her left side.


“Blood, steel, and shadows are my life. I have chosen this path – and I know where it ends.”


There is a tug on Oziah’s arm, a question. She turns around and sees the faintest hint of what Delilah’s mother must have seen when her daughter plunged her sword into her heart.


“But you do not have to walk it alone.”


For another moment, the two stand in silence, reveling in the understanding they’ve come to. Oziah trails her hand down the arm grasping hers and tangles their fingers together.


“I don’t have any more questions. Are we done playing?”


There’s a beat of silence where Delilah does not move, doesn’t even breathe. This is it. Her last chance to stop. To turn back. But won’t.


Never flinch. Never fear.


Delilah steps closer, her own calloused fingers gripping tighter to Oziah’s, bringing her face right up close. Her eyes have fallen down to the lips that have haunted her for weeks now and she shivers with hunger. At the last moment she stops, looks up and grins.


“I thought you’d never ask.”


Oziah’s answering grin spreads across her face like a promise. She leans in, her lips blazing a careful trail from Delilah’s lips to her chin, to her jaw, to her neck, to her collarbone, before she crouches low and, without hesitation, lifts Delilah off her feet. Her whisper gets lost in Delilah’s hair as she carries her off to bed.


“They’ll never see us coming.”