Surrendered To The Lord Of Sin-Chapter 41: Illusion

After a while, the healer emerged from the back room with the finished mixture cradled in her hands. It had been reduced to a dense paste, dark and glossy, steeped with the sharp scent of crushed herbs.

Lucrezia failed to hide the way her face scrunched in disgust. It smelled terrible.

The healer’s gaze dropped to her feet before lifting again. "I’ll need you to remove the blanket," she said softly. "I have to apply this to your feet."

She didn’t hesitate this time and nodded in compliance. Slowly and carefully, Lucrezia hooked her fingers to the edge of the fabric and pushed it downwards.

She sucked in a breath as the movement pulled her already stretched thin muscles, and the soreness radiated up her calves, into her knees. By the time the blanket slid clear, her feet were bare, and unmistakably injured.

The skin was mottled with dark bruising, slightly swollen in places. The arches scraped raw as though they had been dragged across rocks and roots alike. Faint ugly burns traced along her heels and toes as evidence of her previous ordeal, however, they appeared to be in the process of healing.

The healer did not react with shock.

She simply knelt beside the bed, setting the bowl down carefully. Her expression remained composed, but her eyes sharpened with focus. "This would sting a little," She warned.

Just as promised, the bite wasn’t calm. The paste burned cold at first, then flared with a sharp, needling heat that made Lucrezia’s toes curl despite herself. She clenched her jaw, fingers twisting into the blanket as the healer worked the mixture carefully into the bruised skin. It felt alive, seeping into every ache, and every hidden wound.

Lucrezia hissed through her teeth but did not pull away.

"Easy," the healer murmured, her voice steady. "It reacts strongest where the damage runs deepest. That means it’s doing its work."

Lucrezia nodded faintly, though her vision blurred at the edges. The sting peaked, then slowly began to change. The sharpness dulled into a deep, spreading warmth, heavy and almost numbing. The tightness in her arches eased by degrees, like a clenched fist finally relaxing.

"May I ask you something?" She said softly, staring at the woman whose attention was zeroed on anywhere else but her feet.

"Sure, Milady,"

Lucrezia swallowed the lump down her throat, as her heart pounded heavily in her chest. "W-What do you know... about dreams... becoming factual?"

At her words, the healer’s hands paused for a fleeting moment. Lucrezia didn’t fail to catch the stiffness in her shoulders, before it lessened back to normal.

"It depends on what dreams they are, Milady," She responded, casually returning to work. "Most people assume it to be signs, while others deem them of less importance. As we’re told, dreams are born from our mind’s play. They sometimes aren’t to be considered real,"

"Sometimes?" Lucrezia couldn’t help but ask, curiosity etched clearly in those eyes. "Whatever do you mean?"

"Imaginations, Milady," She said, meeting her eyes only for a brief moment. "When we wish for things, our minds create a haven for their reality, and that often contradicts what happens in the actual world. We think of them to be real, of things bound to happen, we force meaning onto them because we want certainty." Her fingers resumed their steady rhythm, pressing the paste into Lucrezia’s skin with careful precision. "But wanting does not make a thing true," she continued. "Nor does fear. Dreams borrow pieces from memory, emotion, and hope. They stitch them together until they feel convincing."

Lucrezia’s throat tightened. "And if they don’t feel like wishes?" she asked quietly, blinking ever so slightly. "If they feel like warnings?"

This time, the healer did not answer at once. She smoothed the last of the paste along Lucrezia’s heel, then reached for the linen wrappings, winding them slowly, and thoughtfully.

"Warnings," she said at last, "are easier to believe than coincidences. They give shape to unease, but believing a dream foretells reality can be dangerous, Milady. It can make you see patterns where there are none, or blind you to what truly stands before you."

Lucrezia let her head sink back against the pillow. The warmth from the paste had settled deep now, heavy and soothing, but her thoughts churned restlessly.

She recalled the moment in the woods. The Shadowers, the exact creatures from her dreams, emerge from nothingness. The dagger she saw, could it actually be real?

Lucrezia didn’t understand where the doubt and confusion were born from, but it pierced into her skin and drew blood. What were the odds? "What if the dream comes true anyway?" she whispered.

The healer tied off the bandage and finally straightened, meeting her gaze fully. Her eyes were calm, but there was something firm there, almost protective. She inhaled, weighing her next words carefully, "Then it was not the dream that caused it," she said. "Only a reflection of something already set in motion."

Lucrezia’s breath hitched. Then if it was real, trouble wasn’t far behind. It was close, closer than she’d ever imagined.

"I have this... dreams," She whispered, staring in daze, causing the woman’s hands to pause. "They are... constant. Everyday I rest, and every night I elude into slumber. It doesn’t feel like my emotions birth the imaginary picture, rather, the other way round," She said. "Could it truly mean something?"

Her question came out barely a whisper, as silence stretched between them. Realizing she’d spoken more than she should, she quickly cleared her throat and said, "Forgive me," and she chuckled nervously. "I did not mean to trouble you with my hysterics," She added another forced laughter at the end to lighten the damage.

"If it’s okay, Milady," Lucrezia heard her speak after a while, and her eyes met hers. "Could you tell me what these... dreams are?"

She hesitated, wondering whether or not to trust her. It is a vital piece of information she hadn’t told anyone but herself and Madelyn, who believed her dreams were simply... well... dreams.

Apart from that, Lucrezia didn’t consider telling anyone about them, and rather, kept it all to herself.

The room felt smaller all of a sudden as the quietness pressed in on her ears. The healer waited patiently without urging, and her gaze was steady as an invitation rather than a demand. That, more than anything, loosened something in Lucrezia’s chest.

"They’re... strange," She began at last. "Always the same, though never exactly alike," Her fingers curled into the sheet, not from pain this time, but from memory as she began to recall. "I’m alone in the woods. There’s no path, just an... esoteric sky I can see, with trees, endless trees, watching, waiting," She listed, reflecting upon the horror of it.

She could still envision the memory like the back of her hands. She could still feel the bite of the wind as she tore through endless alleys, and twisted routes, only to return to them. Only to be caught, picked back right where she’d run from.

The healer did not interrupt, allowing the young lady to gather her strength to proceed.

"There’s a raven," Lucrezia continued, her voice thin, skipping the part where she always returned to them. "It follows me at first, only watching. Then it cries out, and that’s when I know I’m being hunted." Her breath faltered, but she pressed on. "Creatures come after me. I never see them clearly, only feel them too close, too fast. I run, but it never matters. I’m always caught."

The healer’s hands had gone still now, resting lightly in her lap. Lucrezia felt a string of comfort in that action, and she forced the unshed tears back. It reminded her so much of her mama.

"And then," She said, swallowing hard, "there is a man. He has the same eyes as the raven. He holds me still and raises a dagger to my chest," She laughed softly then, but it came out as a hollow sound. "I thought that was the worst part. Until I looked closer and realised it isn’t him who drives the blade forward, but me."

A deep unbroken silence followed after she concluded, and fire from the hearth burst out in motion. The crackles from the logs suddenly became the only sound alive in the room.

Finally, the healer exhaled slowly, as if absorbing the weight of what had been shared. She did not recoil, nor did she look alarmed, but her eyes held something vague that was unable to decipher. "Dreams have a habit of speaking in symbols," she said at last. "They rarely say what they mean outright," 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

Lucrezia lifted her eyes. "Then what does that mean?"

"It could mean many things," She replied carefully. "Fear of choice. Fear of fate. Or the sense that no matter how much you run, you believe the end is already decided." She paused. "But belief is not truth," Then she leaned forward slightly, "The mind is powerful, Milady. When it senses danger - true danger - it reaches for familiar shapes to understand it."

Lucrezia didn’t respond.

The healer’s hands returned to work on her feet once more. It was sure and practiced as she moved from heel to toe, pressing gently, never lingering too long in one place.

As the paste darkened further against Lucrezia’s skin, it gave off a stronger scent—bitter, yes, but threaded now with something grounding, almost clean. When she finished, she wrapped her feet in clean linen, securing the bandages with care. "You’ll want to keep these on through the night," she said. "By morning, the swelling should lessen. Walking will still hurt, but not like before."

Lucrezia exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. The pain was still there, but it felt distant now.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

Then she gathered her things, lifting the empty bowl and wiping her hands on a cloth. "Rest now," she instructed gently. "Sleep will come easier once the mixture settles,"

Lucrezia nodded, though uncertainty still clung to her like mist. Unending questions swirled in her mind, but she forced them away.

As she dimmed the lamp and withdrew into the adjoining room, the door clicked shut. The room settled into silence at her absence.

Lucrezia lay back against the pillows, staring up at the shadowed ceiling. Her feet throbbed softly beneath the bandages in a distant, almost manageable ache. Yet her thoughts refused to be soothed.

If dreams were only illusions, she wondered why some feel so much like memories of things that had not yet happened. Why did the ones she feared most linger, even after waking?