#holding a candle for angsty gallirei
“No quarter,” Galliard says.
He squeezes the leather belt across the palms of his hands, a red burn on his skin. He bates his breath, and the dark room wavers, waits, watches. His grip tightens. The silence devours, and the walls weigh with something unspoken, the shadows shifting and sighing as they draw closer, heavier, as the leather squeezes through his hands and the ceiling threatens to come down on them.
He can see it, in his mind, clawed into the bedsheets, scratched into their skin. He can feel it, in fraying threads and jagged scars. But he holds his breath until he hears it loosen from the tongue.
His hands jerk back. The leather groans, the walls closing in- then he lets go. The belt from his grasp and he watches the red lines flame around Reiner’s throat as he gasps for an answer.
Reiner gives in, finally, whispering to the room: “No quarter.”
