On The Bound

021. Birth of the Chapel's Executioner

A bleeding owl.

𓂀

It's a palpable grief in Shauna's nose when she emerges from the darkness. Crinkling. Red. Her baby boy is crying is there's no help. No one else hears it. Days later again, her baby is crying—guttural, underwater sounds, echoing through the marrow of her bones—yet no one else hears it. She still cradles her stomach like it's full, as if absence can stretch flesh. She stares through the others like glass, her pupils vast and lunar. Lottie is sad she couldn't save him.

Sade is out in the cold, praying to It, hoping for mercy. Or running away. Her forehead wound aches whenever her lover is in trouble, but Lottie knows that the Thorne girl's can handle herself. There's fire in her, stubborn and untamed. But still, It howls, and Lottie can't stop listening.

She glances towards Travis. The boy sits with shoulders too high, fingers twitching. His eyes are dinner plates, white-rimmed and hopeful, fixed on the entrance of the cabin.

Misty starts humming. Lottie doesn't recognize the song—if it is a song at all—so she shrugs it off. Maybe it's something Misty picked up from the wind, or the way snow burns when it falls on hot skin.

"Why are you singing that?" Shauna snaps from across the room. With no answer from the Quigley girl, she stalks forward, her boots heavy. Misty flinches like the floor's on fire. "Where did you hear that song?" Shauna hisses, eyes flickering—animal, ember, mother.

Lottie steps forward too, crown of antlers invisible but felt. The air bends around her. Time holds its breath.

"I don't know. . ." Misty's tongue slips, voice splintering. "I—I think Crystal was singing it—"

Shauna doesn't wait. Her fist swings like thunder—no warning. All thunder. It cracks against Misty's face, and her glasses scatter like fallen teeth. A constellation of broken things.

"You fucking killed my baby!" Shauna howls, but it's not her voice anymore—it's grief incarnate. It burns in the shape of her son's name. It tastes like ash. Misty's on the ground for a brief moment before Nat helps her up. Cheek blooming red like a war flag, eyes swimming with tears. Lottie watches as all of it unfolds.

"Shauna, stop!" Natalie lunges forward, arms like a shield forged in smoke. "Misty did everything she could!"

"No, shut up!" She trashes wildly in Van's and Akilah's restraints. "I saw you! You were covered in blood!"

"Shauna, stop it!" Taissa retaliates. Her voice cracks like an old branch in winter, her pupils blown wide with desperation, as if the world is collapsing into her eyes. "You're acting insane."

Shauna's teeth find their way into Van's arm—skin splits like citrus rind, the taste of iron and panic, and Van cries out, pulling back. The redhead's breath leaves her in a stuttered scream, like wind forced through a broken flute. "Ow, god, she fucking bit me!"

Akilah gasps as Shauna slips loose. Her hair is a wildfire spilling behind her, tendrils of scorched umber and cinnamon, heat radiating from her skin. Like she's been touched by something divine or demonic—no one can tell the difference anymore.

Lottie doesn't feel herself moving, but she's in front of Shauna now. Blood dribbles down Van's arm. She stares at the wound. Thick and glossy, like a slick of pomegranate syrup. Almost beautiful in its violence.

Shauna punches her.

It isn't just skin and fist. It's knuckle against meaning.

A sharp, wet crack echoes like a firework gone off in a church. Lottie's head jerks sideways, her body folding into itself. She steadies her footing so she doesn't fall.