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Devilish Impulses	By : Arianawray Category: > Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji ???) Views: 13948 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Kuroshitsuji or any of its characters, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
- 1-Unwanted
- 2-Whim
- 3-Trust
- 4-Taste
- 5-Scheme
- 6-Command
- 7-Competition
- 8-Advice
- 9-Enlightenment
- 10-Sustenance
- 11-Caught
- 12-Breath
- 13-Arms
- 14-Inflammation
- 15-Imagination
- 16-Intent
- 17-Compromise
- 18-Sacrifice
- 19-Despair
- 20-Compassion
- 21-Interest
- 22-Equality
- 23-Mentor
- 24-History
- 25-Disorder
- 26-Reputation
- 27-Gifts
- 28-Admission
- 29-Watching
- 30-Bonds
- 31-Revelations
- 32-Confrontation
- 33-Struggle
- 34-Separation
- 35-Duty
- 36-Change
- 37-Together
- 38-Love
- 39-Epilogue: Heaven
- 11
- 12
- 13
Note: Thank you to those who have been reading and reviewing this. My stories do tend to be on the slow side, but thanks for your patience and feedback. I dare not promise instant or terrific lemons, but I’m aiming to get there as soon as the plot will allow!

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Breath

Lizzie does not know where she is. She is inside what feels like a box just large enough to sit up in, in a darkness so deep that she does not know if she has lost the power of sight. She feels ill. The men who dragged her out of the carriage, tearing her from Paula's arms, put something foul-smelling over her nose and mouth. Since awaking inside this box, she has felt dizzy. Her breakfast is threatening to come back out through her mouth if the sensation of sickness does not go away soon.

The sides of her prison are rough to the touch. A splinter pierces her thumb as her hands move over the unyielding surfaces. She gasps, but splinters are the least of her concerns at this time. She ignores the sharp discomfort in her thumb and tries to lift the part of the box above her head by attempting to stand up while jamming her shoulders against it. It does not shift at all, however hard she presses upwards. Then she tests the sides of the box, planting her feet against the surface opposite the one which she has her shoulders against.

Nothing gives. Nothing so much as creaks. She tries again, straining her little limbs harder. It is useless. Panting from the effort, she feels the air around her growing closer. For a few seconds, the heat coursing through her body is a relief from the cold. But a minute later, she shivers, for the sheen of perspiration on her skin is amplifying the chill.

Feeling sicker and much more frightened now, she pounds on the side of the box and screams. She listens intently, hoping for a response to her cry. Only silence comes. She calls out again, and kicks hard against the box. But there is still nothing. And it now feels harder to breathe.

***

A devil knows many things that humans do not, but he is not omniscient. Omniscience belongs to the realm of God, and devils have long been exiled from that world. Sebastian finds Elizabeth's scent at the place where her carriage was overturned, and tracks it a good two miles from that point within half a minute. But at an empty cottage that stands in a disused sheep farm on which shepherds, sheep and dogs have long ceased to live, he loses the scent. Something has been done here to make it hard for him to locate the girl-child.

He stands in the middle of the cramped stone structure and examines the fading evidence of her passage. The elements are broken up, as if someone had thrown over the aura of her being a sheet as solid as glass but soft as cloth, wrapped everything up, then bundled her off elsewhere, leaving only a few escaped particles to linger in the air.

He is hardly the only otherworldly creature that traffics with humankind. He and his master have encountered soul reapers, ghosts, angels, succubi and other spirits in the course of their association, and he knows some humans besides his master have access to the secrets of things beyond the physical plane. Mrs Easton's mercenaries came bearing spells against them one night – though they were so pathetically weak that trying to contain him with them was like attempting to hold back an elephant with a single spider's thread.

Such spells, however, could work effectively to hide a single small human girl from other humans, as well as from someone like him.

He will need more time to find the girl, to carry out this accursed command of his master's before he is permitted to return to his side. He does not know how much longer he has.

***

"Do you know, Lord Phantomhive, that I do not love my sons?" Sophia Easton asks, so casually that she could be asking what he wants for tea.

She is in a faded brown-velvet armchair in the uppermost room of an old mill house. The house stands on land that belongs to her, but has not been tenanted for a long time. The river still flows fast and deep, but the sluice gates before the waterwheel were closed years ago, and the wheel has not turned since. Everything is falling into disrepair, like her life, like the boy before her whose wounds she intends to make certain will never have the chance to heal.

"You have an interesting way of showing how little you care," the boy answers sardonically.

He is not at all afraid, she observes. He does not seem to have shed a single shred of his dignity despite the ignominious state she has put him in.

She has attempted to humiliate him by ordering her men to strip him bare before her and hang him up by his wrists from the roof beams of this small room at the top of the mill house. He has been made to feel pain, as she has had one of her favourites, Thomas, flog him hard enough to draw a few beads of blood from his thin back. She has noticed a strange mark on his flesh, like something branded by a hot iron, but it is of little interest to her. Old wounds are meaningless – it is the new ones she can inflict that she is keen to discover.

"I did not say that I didn't care," she says. "I said I didn't love them. They are stupid creatures, and have been a disappointment to me all their lives. But I care what happens to them, because they are all I have by way of heirs. I have no other children, no grandchildren, not even a blood-nephew or niece – no one to leave everything to. So I care very much that my sons may never return from where you have put them."

"Where they put themselves through their stupidity, you mean," the boy smirks.

She narrows her eyes. He genuinely seems to have no fear.

"You aren't afraid to die," she remarks curiously.

"Hmm," is all he says in answer. It is partly a huff of laughter, and partly a grunt of disdain.

"That makes two of us, Lord Phantomhive. I have worked hard since my husband's death only because my useless sons could do nothing that their father and I have always done as naturally as we drew breath. I have worked ruthlessly for no other reason than to build an empire for them to inherit when I die, an empire that I hope will be large enough and rich enough to sustain them at least as long as they live, even if they fritter the wealth away like water tossed into the gutter. That is my duty as a mother, regardless of the worthlessness of what has emerged from my womb. But if my sons are not to be returned alive to me, then my life means nothing. Why build an empire for strangers to seize? What use are wealth and power and fashion when nothing and no one will remain to carry on my bloodline when I depart from this decaying earth?"

"I could say what a shame it is that a woman of your wealth and talent is so incapable of looking beyond her bloodline that she cannot see all the good things that she could do for other people around her with everything that she has been blessed with," Ciel remarks evenly. "I could say it, but my words would be wasted on you."

"They are indeed wasted on me," she answers. "I care only for my blood. And at present, I also care somewhat for yours – as far as spilling it is concerned. You have taken from me the entire future of my family, stupid though it may be. So I will ask you one last time if you do or do not have the power to persuade the Prince of Wales to pardon my sons."

"Even if I had the power to persuade the prince to pardon your sons, I wouldn't," he says boldly, not a hint of weakness in his voice despite his nakedness. "They murdered a woman named Sally Miles purely for money. The prince may forgive the offence against his own person, but he cannot and will not forgive the murder of an innocent party. Neither will I."

"Nothing I do will persuade you to speak to the prince?" she asks.

"Nothing," he replies firmly.

At a nod from Mrs Easton, Thomas strikes the boy again with the switch he brandishes, and more beads of blood ooze out. But apart from the flinching of his body from the physical pain, the injury does not seem to reach his mind or soul. He locks eyes with her again; in his gaze is nothing but pride. The eye he normally keeps covered is a different shade from his left iris. It looks discoloured, and clouded. She did look closely at it earlier when the patch was removed by Thomas, and saw that its discoloration seemed strangely symmetrical. But once again, she has no interest in old deformities. Only the new ones she can inflict.

"In that case, I shall do to your family what you have done to mine. You are the last of the Phantomhive earls, and the earldom shall never rise again once you are gone, just as there will be no one remaining of my branch of the ancient royal bloodline descended from Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. The cousin to whom you are betrothed shall also die this day. I hear that she has a brother. Although he is no Phantomhive, his mother is, and I shall work at my leisure to arrange for his death, and his mother's too, after you and Elizabeth are gone. But you and the girl will go first."

"You can kill me if you like. But you won't touch the rest of them," he states confidently.

"Say what you please," she remarks. "You are now of little use to me except as an object whose pain can amuse me for a while – only a while, unfortunately, for I mean to kill you well before any souls who imagine themselves rescuers can come for you. I am not among the stupid creatures who hold their prisoners for days or even weeks, hoping to draw out their torture, only to find that they have held them too long when their fun is interrupted by the police, or other saviours. No, I'll hurt you for an hour or so – which will be long enough, believe me – then I'll end it, before anyone can save you."

Her eyes roam calculatively over his thin, undeveloped body. He barely shows the signs of adolescence. Her own sons were little men when they each turned thirteen, but this child seems younger than his years. He is small in stature, his shoulders narrow, muscles offering no sign that they will grow into strength, scarcely a single hair in his armpits or on his crotch, the scrotum tidy and smooth, the flaccid cock still small and neat, with none of the gross, vein-webbed swellings, redness or leakings of maturity. His arms and legs look as if they would snap with the greatest of ease if she were to pick up a stick and swing it at them.

She lifts a knife from a dusty table and tosses it to Thomas.

"The switch bores me. Use that instead."

"What shall I do first, Ma'am? Cut off his ears? His balls? Put out his eyes?" the man asks.

"What? And have him bleed to death immediately? With that pale flesh, he's anaemic, if you ask me. Probably haemophiliac too, like so many inbred aristocrats. Just cut him a little, all over, slowly, enough to make him scream. But not so deep that you strike any large veins. Bleeding to death is not what I have in mind for him."

"Yes, Ma'am," Thomas answers, and gets to work on the earl's left arm.

***

Lizzie feels drowsy. She fights the grogginess. Although it is tempting to sleep and escape the consciousness of her terrifying situation for a while, she dares not waste time in slumber. There must be a way out. Once more, her tiny fingers explore the edges and corners of her prison, hoping to discover a crack that may lead to an escape.

"Ciel," she half-whispers and half-sobs as her fingers pry the edges. "You must be wondering why I never reached your home – you must be looking for me? Mother must know by now? Father's away... he won't know what's happened to me..."

She had been so happy to receive the note this morning, and Mother had been in a good mood. So she had set off, only for their carriage to be stopped along the quiet stretch of country road running through the forest. Poor old Jones – his head must have been cracked open by the wicked man who struck him with that club. And Paula – poor Paula, shrieking hysterically and trying to cling to her, while that other wicked man rained punches on her pretty face with his fist.

Lizzie is crying hard now. She hopes with all her heart that Jones the coachman and Paula are alive. She couldn't bear it if they were to die... or if they were already dead...

No! she thinks. They can't be dead! And I can't die here!

She screams and pounds hard on the side of the box again. Still, no one answers, and no one comes.

***

Sebastian cannot find traces of Elizabeth in the air. He needs another strategy for locating her. He resorts to simple leg-work – although for one like him, covering miles of land and making dozens of enquiries takes little more than a quarter of an hour.

He learns that the abandoned sheep farm belongs in name to someone of no account, but that person ultimately belongs to Sophia Easton. And he turns up several other pieces of land that are effectively owned by Mrs Easton although legal documents would never draw a connection between such property and the woman who has his master.

He sets off to those pieces of land, one after the other.

***

Rivulets of blood run down Ciel's arms, which remain bound above his head. His wrists are numb, almost dead to sensation from bearing his weight for some twenty minutes now, and he thinks his shoulders will soon be twisted out of joint. The bright red threads travel down his sides, where they merge with the film of sweat breaking out over his body, pooling into pinkish liquid that creeps over his torso and inches towards his hips. Droplets of mingled sweat and blood have already seeped past the rope that lashes his ankles together, and dripped off his toes onto the floor.

It hurts. It hurts each time the blade drags over his skin with deliberate slowness, to draw out the pain.

The man called Thomas is starting on his back now, scoring it a fraction of an inch at a time with the tip of the knife. All the while, Mrs Easton sits in her armchair and watches him.

He refuses to give her the satisfaction of hearing him cry out. He closes his thoughts to the pain and lifts his head a fraction to look into her eyes. He forces himself to smile at her, and has the satisfaction of seeing her dark pupils shrink to pinpoints of naked rage.

***

Elizabeth tries to call out again, but has no strength. It is so hard to pull the air into her lungs. She wants to draw great, deep gulps of it, but feels as if she will choke each time she tries, for it is as if nothing is entering her body. She panics briefly, then stills herself the best she can, and pulls in shallow breaths, though it runs counter to her instincts. The light breathing calms her a little, but it is getting harder, and she is sorely tempted to sleep.

She closes her eyes.

***

Sophia Easton slaps Ciel hard across the face. There is some small satisfaction in this – this direct contact between her hand and his flesh. It makes his pain more personal to her. As she hits him again and again, she senses something of interest: he takes the pain like a man, but if her hand lingers on his face between slaps while she turns his head this way and that to look at the welts forming on his cheeks, he shrinks from the contact like a shy boy. It is not a response that she can see with her eyes, but something she feels under her fingers, a sense of his skin crawling at her touch.

So he does not like to be touched, she realises with a thrill of triumph.

With a smile, Mrs Easton says to Thomas: "Tom, bring Langton up here, and have him carry up a pail of water."

"Langton, Ma'am?" the man asks in surprise. "But he's no use in this sort of–"

"I know. Bring him up."

The man obeys, and returns in a few minutes with one of his fellow mercenaries, armed with a bucket of water from the river that used to turn the mill wheel. This new man is sleekly dressed and wiry, the kind of thug who would be quick and accurate with a gun, but not much suited to torturing prisoners. Indeed, he glances with distaste at the cuts, blood and welts on the boy's flesh even as he says briskly to his mistress: "You wanted some water, Ma'am?"

"I saw that look on your face, Langton," Mrs Easton says lightly. "Too much blood for your liking?"

"Ma'am...?"

"You think you hide your secrets well, but I know what your tastes run to. Thomas, empty that bucket of water over the earl, so it washes the blood away."

Thomas takes the pail from Langton and does as he is told, throwing the cold water over Ciel, who cannot quite stop himself from gasping as the icy liquid hits him.

"Better now, Langton?" Mrs Easton asks. "Why don't you get started on him? How often do you have the opportunity to get your hands on a high-bred child? Don't pass over this one."

"I'm not sure I..." Langton begins.

"Tom, you may leave," Mrs Easton says to her favourite, who withdraws without further comment – that is why he is her right-hand man.

This other one now, Langton, is far from being among those she prefers to depend on, but he will be most useful here. Once Thomas is out of the room, leaving them alone with the earl, she tells him: "I know you, Langton. You like them very young, don't you? Here's a golden opportunity for you – do whatever you please with him while he remains strung up there. Anything you like. My only condition is that I will watch as you do it."

The man hesitates, but irresistibly, his eyes flick towards the boy, stripped bare, tied up, helpless. Once he really looks, and ignores the knife-marks all over his arms, he cannot look away.

The child is strikingly beautiful. So delicate. Barely adolescent. High-born at that, not the grubby, half-starved street children he buys to do what he desires.

"Go on, you want to," Mrs Easton urges him in a persuasive voice that is very different from her usual coldness.

Of course he does not like knowing that he will have an audience as he trifles with the child. And with the boy strung up like that, Langton is not likely to do everything that he really wants to do – which Mrs Easton suspects runs more along the lines of thrusting his dick into that little bottom or that sulky little mouth. She wouldn't mind, but she doesn't intend to give him that much time to play, for she wants the boy dead sooner rather than later. Despite all the restrictions, she knows Langton will conclude that it is a small price to pay for such a chance. True enough, he hesitates only a few moments more before approaching the prisoner and stroking his pale body with his fingertips.

Mrs Easton settles back down in her armchair. The boy will remain stoic, of course – he has too much pride to cry in front of his enemies – that much she has learnt. But she has also learnt a little about how to crack the surface of that stoicism, and she sits and observes contentedly the distinct discomfort in his unevenly coloured eyes at Langton's touch. For the first time, he is squirming inwardly, she thinks.

She smiles as a definite shudder runs through him when Langton, with little further preamble, kneels down before him and takes his childlike cock into his mouth.

***

Lizzie opens her eyes for a moment, only to close them again. It is terribly hard to breathe now. The air her lungs crave seems to reach only to the back of her throat, and no further down.

She has no strength left to do anything more.

She sleeps.

***

Sebastian rules out the next place he goes to. It is a working farm, with cows and horses, and people who probably have nothing directly to do with Mrs Easton going about their routine work. Three old bodies are buried very deep in the grazing fields in an unmarked spot, secret victims of a long-ago power struggle within the gang. But that has nothing to do with the present case. If anything else were amiss here, he would sense it. To be safe, he scans the place quickly for evidence of spells and magic that would hide someone living – or just dead – from him. He detects nothing.

He moves on to the next place on his list, a row of filthy tenements packed with the lowest of the low. It is only morning, but already, harsh voices, the smell of drink, the smell of blood, the staleness of ill-health, the wailing of infants, and the shrieks of unwashed children fill the place. He listens, looks, smells and extends his devil's senses to each corner of the property. Chaos can hide much. But Elizabeth is not among the things hidden here.

He has four more places to cover. The next location he intends to go to is a large house out in the countryside, which seems like the next-best place to search. But as he sprints away, something as fast as himself emerges and keeps pace with him. At once, he stops along the unpaved road and eyes the other individual.

"You should go to the Westwood farm just outside London," the person says to him.

Sebastian does not answer at once, but scrutinises the being before him. He is tall, with hair of a very dark golden-brown, and oddly passive hazel eyes. He finds the creature strange, because he is a devil like himself – he can easily tell that much – and devils are vicious things even when they hide their nature beneath a veneer of sweetness. This individual's mildness, however, is no veneer but an affliction that has overtaken his entire self. He does not understand his condition, but before he can assess him more thoroughly, he speaks again:

"You may find what you are looking for at that farm, rather than the country house."

"How do you know, and why are you helping me?" Sebastian asks.

"I have been watching your enemies while you have been watching your master. I am doing this under orders from my own master."

"What is wrong with you?" Sebastian asks sharply, for something is wrong with this devil.

But the other only says: "I have delivered my message. I must return to my master now."

"Are you permitted to tell me your name?" Sebastian inquires.

"My master calls me Carsten."

With that, he leaves in a direction that takes him away from the place he is pointing Sebastian to. Sebastian hesitates for a second. The house, or the farm first? To follow his list or take the other devil's hint?

That second of internal debate over, he speeds towards the farm.

***

Ciel refuses to make a sound. He will not speak a word. He will not squirm, or kick out uselessly against the man – his feet are lashed at the ankles, anyway, the rope secured to a ring set in the floor.

But inside him, every sense and every nerve recoils from this nightmare. He does not want to inhabit this body that is feeling the most disgusting sensations. He tries to shut it out, but it is piercing him in a way that the knife and switch could not, hurting him the way the beating failed to.

The man's fingers are digging hard into his buttocks, groping and kneading him painfully, as his rough mouth sucks and pulls at his cock, and once even enclosed his balls entirely. All the time, Mrs Easton watches, coolly. He blanks his eyes and stares at her, but he knows she can tell that this is different from before. It hurts him.

That long month, when he was held prisoner, chained and slashed with knives, some of his abusers touched him all over, and others leered at him, but nothing quite like this happened.

He hates the skin-crawling ugliness of this, hates the back-and-forthing of the man's head, the repetitive in-and-out motion of it all. Suddenly, the man pulls back a little, his tongue probes and circles the head of his cock, then his lips wrap tightly around him again and glide down hard.

Ciel trembles with fury and disgust both at the man and at himself, for an atavistic part of his body is responding to the act with something other than revulsion. That purely physical instinct is demanding a budding interest in what is going on despite his mind and heart desperately commanding his whole being to offer no reaction whatsoever to anything that happens to him.

Mrs Easton notices the trembling, and smiles.

***

Sebastian reaches the deserted farm the other devil pointed him towards. The moment he scans the place, he knows he has made the right decision. For he can tell that a spell has been worked here – a cheap spell by a practitioner of magic, certainly, but effective nonetheless for concealing one small human.

In the middle of an empty paddock is a spot of very freshly turned earth. The spell is disguising the physical appearance of the disturbed ground, but his eyes can make out the fact of that disguise being attempted.

At once, Sebastian dives towards that spot of ground, pulls off his gloves, and thrusts his arm deep into the soil. Grass and tightly-packed earth part under the blow from his demonic hand, which quickly makes contact with what feels like a crate, its top buried a good three feet under the surface. Elizabeth's scent finally breaks through the barrier of the spell to him. Sebastian digs furiously with his hands and exposes the crate enough to rip its lid off without letting too much soil fall into the cavity.

She lies curled up at the bottom of the container, very pale, a faint bluish tinge about her lips. Clearly, Sophia Easton never intended to return her alive to her family.

"Lady Elizabeth!" he calls as he scoops her out of the crate and lays her on the ground. She is barely breathing.

Gunshots ring out, and bullets hit Sebastian squarely in the back and head. Shielding Elizabeth with his body, he turns to face the aggressors, spits the bullets out of his mouth, and fires them right back out of his hand. The men – two of those whose lives he had previously spared – drop to the ground, dead.

He turns to the business of reviving the girl. Fortunately, she has not completely stopped breathing. All he needs is to apply gentle pressure twice to the spot directly under her ribcage to encourage her to draw deeper breaths of the fresh air around her.

"Lady Elizabeth?" he speaks again.

Her eyelids flutter a little, although they do not fully open.

"Open your eyes just a crack," he says, as he bends over her and holds his hand two inches above her face to keep her eyes shaded from the daylight.

She recognises his voice, for despite her bright green eyes opening only a slit, and with his hand shielding her face, she whispers: "Sebastian?"

"Good. You are awake. Now listen to me, my lady. You are safe now. I shall take you to your mother immediately, but I must cover your eyes so that you will not be frightened by what we must go through to get you to Lady Francis. Also, you have been in complete darkness for some time, and I do not want your eyes to be damaged by the light."

She nods, saying in a small voice: "I can accept a little more darkness for a while."

"You are very brave, my lady," the butler says, knowing he must be gentle with her though every part of him is straining to go to his master at once.

He pulls his gloves on before wrapping a large handkerchief around her eyes and securing it in a knot behind her head. He lifts her into his arms – she is as delicate as Ciel – and speeds through the quiet country roads and empty lanes he took to get here. He passes very few people, moving so fast that most of them do not really see him; those who do cannot tell what has dashed past them like a streak of black wind.

In moments, he reaches the manor and strides past Baldroy and Finnian into the morning room, to the cries and exclamations of Mey-Rin and Lady Francis. Elizabeth starts to sob when she hears her mother's voice.

"Lady Francis," Sebastian says quickly. "I had to cover the Lady Elizabeth's eyes because she had been locked in darkness for some time – sudden bright sunlight will hurt her vision – so please close the curtains before you remove the handkerchief."

Mey-Rin rushes to draw the curtains, dimming the room enough for Lady Francis to slip the handkerchief off her daughter's face.

"Oh, Elizabeth!" she cries, holding the girl tightly. She does not often hug her children, but she now feels that she will never dare let this child go again.

"Mother!" the girl says, between sobs, clinging to her. "I was so afraid... I couldn't breathe... but Sebastian found me."

"Thank you," Aunt Francis' lips form the words as she looks up at the butler. No sounds come from her throat, which has tightened with emotion and tears.

"I must go my young master now, before it is too late," the butler says, disappearing from the house as he did before.

She knows that something is very unusual about him, but Lady Francis does not care, for he has returned her daughter to her alive and well, and she can bend all her hopes and prayers towards the safety of her nephew, Ciel.

***

"Had enough fun, Langton?" Mrs Easton asks, getting up from her armchair.

The man has almost forgotten her presence, so wrapped up is he in molesting the child. He starts and turns to her with some embarrassment, wiping the saliva off his mouth with his sleeve as he stands up. He says nothing, but steps aside to give her access to the boy, who is still determinedly presenting an emotionless facade, although it seems a thinner, more fragile veneer now.

"If you've had enough, it's time to end this game," she states. "Have Thomas prepare the cage as I instructed him earlier."

"Yes, Ma'am," Langton mumbles before leaving the room, giving the delicious child one last glance, knowing he will not see him alive again.

***

His master has not summoned him – he certainly will not call Sebastian to his side when he does not know if Elizabeth is safe. But even without being summoned, he can find him wherever he is.

That mark in his eye means that he can never escape him, even if he tries.

***

"Not long after you die, I am very likely to die myself, if my attempts to break my sons out of the Tower fail," Mrs Easton says to Ciel. "But to give myself a chance of success, I must have you dead, so that you will not interfere with my plans. And if I fail, then it means that both our bloodlines end – so it is fair, what I am doing to you. If I succeed, and leave with my sons for places where England cannot touch us, then I shall have survived while taking a thorough revenge on the one who turned the Prince of Wales against my family."

Ciel does not answer her, but she has seen enough telltale signs of his internal distress at Langton's acts to be content with his silence. She calls for two other men. They cut the ropes suspending him from the beam and securing his feet to the floor, and take him downstairs. His wrists remain tied together; his ankles also.

Near the stalled mill wheel, an iron-barred cage waits for him. Already shaken by Langton's abuse, he begins to struggle against his captors for the first time, because that contraption is like the blood-filled cage from his dreams; like the cage he was held in during his month-long nightmare. It frightens him in a visceral way.

It is useless. He is put into the enclosure. The cage is positioned over the portion of the river that still flows freely, but secured to the wheel by a long rope so that the current will not sweep it away. It is then half-lowered into the water. He grips a bar weakly with his bound, aching hands to stay upright, and the sight of his fingers clinging feebly to the iron seems to please Mrs Easton.

The rope is let out. The cage sinks a little more, until the water is up to his neck. Sophia Easton's last words to him emerge in a strangely detached way, as if she is no longer interested in what is going on, but merely wishes to mock him one last time: "The magical practitioners I hired failed to help me penetrate the defences of your manor. But they did tell me that it would be most fitting if I were to end your life by drowning, in a cage. It seems you do not like cages?"

She does not wait to see if he will answer. She gestures casually, almost gracefully, with her left hand to her men, who release more of the rope until the cage drops below the surface, fully submerging Ciel in the cold waters of the rushing river.
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Devilish Impulses