CW/TW: Sexual assault

It had begun innocently enough. She was his Muse and it was only natural that Maestro Mulecio had fallen in love with her. Many songs were woven, sculptures crafted, and sonnets written that were inspired by her sublime beauty. Castalline Liera'thel was favored by Eryss for her devotion and purity, for her gentle, giving spirit. Of all the Muses, none inspired more vibrantly than Castalline. Only the most talented were given access to the virgin Muse, and there was talk of sainting the girl. Truly, her gift to sow the seeds of art and creativity in the minds of the men and women of the Artisan Quarter was a rare thing indeed.

It was under her loving inspiration that the Maestro had written his most brilliant symphony. It made him a very wealthy, very famous man. The Marquis Malviss of the Artisan Quarter was so awed by it that he commanded Castalline go to stay with the Maestro Mulecio and continue to bring his art to new heights. It was honoring the Quarter and the goddess too. How could Castalline refuse?

And her fate and fall were sealed.

For the first time in Castalline's long life, someone treated her like a woman. The Maestro took her out to fancy luncheons with dignitaries. He swept her into dress shops and instead of the pristine white robes, he dressed her in the height of fashion. She was a vision in silver silk and diamonds, velvet slippers and ivory lace at her throat and breasts. She was tall and slim like a reed and the form-fitting dresses with their long trains suited her figure. Her face was round and delicately featured, her eyes large and gray. Her hair was slick and shining silver-white that fell around her narrow shoulders. When she went about the Quarter with her Maestro, she wore it up in pin curls set with white roses and pearls.

Then the Maestro used her inspirational presence to garner ideas on how to seduce the wide eyed, innocent Castalline. Not that it was terribly difficult. It was such a taboo in the Artisan Quarter that none had dared before him.

Mulecio took her to the unveiling of a new temple sculpture. It had been commissioned and was to be a gift to the goddess Eryss. The gathering was huge; people from all over the Artisan Quarter showed. They dressed in dark velvets. Doublets and breeches, gowns of silk and satin that sparkled with gems. Castalline wore white and shone like a star in the dim light of evening. Mulecio took her hand and spun her and showed her off to the gathered crowd as the cloth over the statue was taken down. There, in white, gleaming marble, was the Muse herself.

It unsettled her somehow, though Castalline couldn't quite put a finger on why. It took away from what she was, to be the art herself and not merely just the inspiration. But as she was danced around the glorious work of art, she felt it was deeper than that. It went beyond poor taste.

It was blasphemy.

So the Maestro would find her that night, on her knees, in the room he'd given to her. She prayed to Eryss to forgive her, but the goddess was uncharacteristically silent and all she could hear was her quivering breath and gentle sobs. She'd found a strap of leather, one of the Maestro's belts, and if her cries and pleas would not rouse her goddess, then perhaps her pain would. After all, from suffering is born inspiration too.

The leather snapped against her bare back and she cried out, arching. It was such a good pain, such a good hurt that it gave her pleasure. Which brought her shame. Which made her hit herself harder. All the while, with hungry, glittering eyes, the Maestro watched.

He spoke from the darkness. “Allow me, Little Dove,” he said in a voice made rough and tremulous by desire. She looked over her shoulder with her wide, tear-filled eyes, her bare back raised in red welts and she nodded.

She feared the darkness that swam in his ravenous smile and his eyes. Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, she tried to prepare herself for the blow. But nothing would prepare her. He drove the lash hard across her back and his hand curled in her silvery locks. His fingers pulled into a fist and he drove her to her hands and knees and brought the strap of leather over her backside and her thighs. Castalline cried out for him in both pleasure and pain.

He didn't stop until she was dizzy and trembling and aching. His hand caressed over the welted skin and slid between her legs. The Maestro drank in her soft cries and kissed her throat and ear. Without any more ceremony, he plunged inside her and broke her and ruined her. The statue in the square of the Artisan Quarter cracked and tumbled. The goddess abandoned her most favored as she cried out in pain and desire.

Castalline didn't know they were being watched by the jealous eyes of Mulecio's servant. Days passed in pleasure and bliss. If only she'd known. They came for her in the still watch of the night when the moon was high over the Quarter. They wore all black and judged her without her knowledge and yanked her from the Maestro's arms, not that he truly fought for her. She was a novelty and he'd tasted her and wanted something else. Such was the nature of men.

These men, these physicians and artists and sculptors that she'd inspired before bore down on her with rough, envious hands and took scissors to her lovely hair and dressed her in sack cloth. She wept and pleaded, but her company only gave them better ideas. New inspiration with which to torment her. They raped her and beat her and cast her out. Eryss demanded that she be sent away for her arrogance. She'd sullied her gift.

For weeks she wandered the Merchant's Quarter. She offered to polish wares. To be a crier for goods for sale. Anything. No one was interested. Her mere company gave them ideas and sent them rushing off. She lost weight and became a ghost. She haunted garbage bins and slept under shop awnings until they chased her off. The Industrial Quarter had no use for a weak, sickly girl who had never known hard labor in her life. But a fisherman took pity on her and fed her for a few days. But like everyone else, she inspired him and he sold his boat and opened a factory that sold gears and parts for motorcars for the Empire.

It was then that Castalline knew despair. She begged and prayed and wept by the mouth of the sea. Wouldn't anyone take pity on her? Her goddess wouldn't answer as she'd been forsaken. Passersby only scoffed. She was dirty and looked like any common beggar. The night was cold as she wandered listlessly. She found an office with a warm light from inside and a childish painting of a topless mermaid on the door. It was cracked open and she could smell whiskey and strong, cheap perfume. Laughter, rough and bawdy, floated across the salt-scented air and seduced her to come near. She stood like a white wraith outside this door. There were two women, one middle-aged with an impish, cute face and the other a stooped old woman with wild, curling gray hair.

The woman with freckled cheeks and eyes the color of the sea put her cards down and waved Castalline inside. “Don't gawk, girl. Get in here.”

She nodded, head lowered, and she scuffled into the small, sour smelling office.

The woman stood and ushered her over to the big, over stuffed leather chair and made her sit. “Name's Ryn Stormcrow.” She whistled low at Castalline. “You look a sight, girlie.” A small, rough finger tipped her chin up. Ryn Stormcrow had kind eyes lined by time and laughter. “Let's get you cleaned up and fed, huh?”

The old woman snorted and drank from the bottle of brown liquid on the desk. “Takin' in more strays, Rynny?”

But the woman never answered this. She only cleaned Castalline's face and fed her fried fish and chipped potatoes. She brushed her uneven hair and gave her new clothes that didn't fit her frail, lithe form, but would do. She gave her shoes and she was kind. Castalline hoped that her company gave the woman the inspiration she deserved.

Little did she know that, in its own way, it had.

“Yer a pretty little thing,” Ryn commented absently, eying her as she took a long drag from her cigar. The orange glow at the tip illuminated her sharp, fox-like face briefly in the cool dark. “You gotta use that, ya know? While you got it.” Ryn shrugged her narrow shoulders.

Castalline had read about the great and bloodthirsty Anryn Stormcrow, Captain of the dread Leviathan. But the short, busty woman with the freckles and kind eyes didn't seem to be a proper pirate. Castalline was fascinated with her even though she knew, like everyone else, her time with her would be short. She nodded. Use her beauty. Right.

“Take yerself down to the Flesh Quarter and seek an audience with Marquis Shadowglade. Tell her Highness that I sent ya.” Her tone was wry and despite the honorifics, Castalline didn't think that Ryn respected Marquis Shadowglade much.

She wanted to ask more questions, to hear the woman with the whiskey warm voice talk more. She wanted to beg to stay. Please... please... please, I'll be good, she thought. I'll be good and make you rich and powerful. Anything. Anything to stay and to have a place again.

But Ryn was as flighty as the rest and Castalline walked along the edge of the deep green sea as oily rainbow slicks from the polluted runoff danced over the frothing waters. She watched the sun pink the sky and crest over the buildings that stabbed into the slate gray sky of morning. She hugged her arms around herself as she staggered her way to the Flesh Quarter. Even from the Industrial Quarter she could see the bright, glittering spire of the Marquis Shadowglade, a flagrant, gaudy display of wealth and power.

She would find no succor and no relief here either. The guards ignored her cries and pleas. She was too skinny, too pale. They eyed her over as all men did just the same, even as they judged her unfit. She spoke the name Stormcrow and was chased away. Soon, she learned what her fate would've been besides. A whore. Selling her flesh to men and women. Then a blood sacrifice for the Flesh God when it was no longer pleasing to have her legs splayed and to get her on her back.

She was a Muse of Eryss. She wasn't a filthy prostitute. Bitterness settled in her heart. Bitterness against the Maestro Mulecio. Against her goddess and fate and her own ignorance. It washed over her and she found herself despondent, sliding down a filthy wall in a dank, dark alley. A day passed. Then another. She was hungry. Cold. But she'd given up. Her chin sagged to her chest and when he approached she only saw the black glossy shine of his pointed shoes.

Hunger and desperation drove her to thrust her arm out, her hand open, palm out. “Please,” she whispered.

The smart and sharp clack of the heels of his shoes stopped. She could see the reflection of her dirty, pale face in the shine of his shoes. The man swatted her hand away and tipped her chin up with a gloved finger. And there Castalline saw her Muse.

He was a man with a sharply featured face. But he had large eyes fringed with sooty black lashes and a generous mouth. His skin was very pale and it was a sharp contrast to his soft, inky black hair. His hair fell to his shoulders, straight and shining, and he wore his beard neatly trimmed. His eyes... they were dark and full of infinite mystery.

The man wore a black, well-tailored suit that was impeccably clean. Bright white cuffs peeked out from the sleeves of his sharp, double-breasted jacket and were set with little silver moth cufflinks. He wore a large, almost gaudy moth ring as well. House Osterious, she thought, recognizing the sigil. The Moth. Merris the Moth.

She only knew of him because he'd been a patron of the arts so generously. They'd even met once before. He'd come to hear the Maestro conduct a symphony that she had inspired. With a sudden flush of color to her pale face she remembered too that he'd complimented her and not Mulecio. “Lord... Osterious,” she murmured in a soft, meek voice.

He arched an inky brow and then nodded. “You are a long way from home, little Muse. Did you get lost?” His voice was soft, mild. He seemed so precise, polite. Castalline felt, for the first time in her entire life, true desire for another person. He was a work of art. She wondered what god had been inspired when creating him. A silly, girlish smile pulled at her lips, but the reality of her situation stole it away soon after it arrived. She lowered her gaze in shame.

“They...” She swallowed thickly. “They've cast me out, Lord Osterious.” Tears stung her eyes and made clean tracks down her filthy face. “No one will help me.”

“Hmm.” He sounded bland and flippant and shifted on his feet. “What a waste.” His voice was the sighing of the wind through tall grass. “Whatever shall you do, little Muse?”

With great effort, Castalline pulled herself to her feet. “I don't know,” she confessed softly. “I've tried to find work... but my nature makes it hard. People don't tend to stick around.”

He was dissecting her with his gaze, picking apart everything she said until he stripped and flayed her to the bone. Castalline trembled under the weight of that lazy scrutiny. Awkward silence settled cold and raw between them. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, but she was certain the cold that had settled was inside her skin.

Merris Osterious said nothing, but merely tilted his head first one way, then another. He was deliberate and bird-like. It unsettled her and she turned to leave. She would be the one to walk away first this time.

“Well,” he said, his tone a little louder, a little brighter. “Come along then. You've work to do.”

Before she had time to acknowledge this properly, she heard his shining black shoes snap away on the cobbled street. She padded after him, head lowered, a hopeful smile curling her lips. She wasn't sure what work he had in mind, but to her? He was her savior. She would do anything asked of her out of sheer gratefulness. To her? He was an angel sent from the goddess of art and medicine herself. He was her cure. Her panacea.

Besides... what other choice did she have?