"No… no, please—"
The plea tore from Gisela's throat, raw and childlike, dissolving into tears. The straps bit deeper as she strained—a frantic, useless struggle that only pressed her flesh into the unyielding leather. "Henry, I beg you. I don't want this. Don't let them—"
Her words were severed as the physician stepped into her line of sight. In his hand, the blade caught the low firelight, a sliver of frozen promise.
"Be still."
Henry's command was not loud, but it filled the chamber, colder than the steel. He did not move from his post at the foot of the bed, a sovereign observing a state ritual. His eyes traced the path of a single tear as it escaped the strap at her brow and carved through the grime on her temple.
The physician's touch was dry and impersonal. He positioned her arm, turning her wrist upward to expose the vulnerable blue tracery of veins.
Then—a sharp, precise rip of flesh.
The sound was wet, intimate. A line of fire opened across her wrist. For a heartbeat, there was only shocking, white-hot clarity. Then the blood welled, dark and immediate—a second, grotesque mouth speaking her pain.
A scream shattered from her, short and animal, before collapsing into ragged, hiccuping sobs. "Ah—! God—!"
"This will restore the balance of your humours, Your Grace," the physician murmured, his voice a monotone as he guided the blood into a pewter basin. "The corrupted fluids must be purged."
"Stop… please… mercy…" Her voice was a broken thing, lost to tremors and the weight of the bed.
The physician straightened. He turned his head slightly toward the king. "My lord."
Henry's gaze shifted from Gisela's ruined wrist to her pleading eyes. He gave a slow, deliberate nod.
"Now the cupping," the physician announced. "We must draw the deep sickness to the surface."
An assistant lifted an iron rod from the brazier. At its end, a glass cup glowed with a faint, terrible warmth. The air shimmered around it. This was not healing. It was branding—the promise of a pain that would not cut, but seal.
Henry watched, his expression unchanged. The lesson was just beginning.
"Henry…"
His name escaped as a breath, a final syllable lost to the tightening straps. Then the world dissolved into fire.
A searing, circular brand pressed into the flesh below her shoulder blade—not a touch, but a violation of the very air. A choked cry was forced from her lungs. Before it ended, another cup sealed itself lower on her spine, and another, each a hammer-strike of pure, concentrating agony. Her back arched against the restraints, a bowstring pulled to its breaking point.
Her screams were not human sounds. They were the raw materials of pain given voice. Tears no longer fell—they were shed in a continuous, silent stream, salting the linen beneath her cheek. Where the heated glass met her skin, perfect lurid circles bloomed—a grotesque bouquet of crimson and blistering pink upon the snow of her flesh.
"Stop! God, please, make it stop!" The plea was a shriek that scraped her throat raw, a prayer offered to the uncaring dark.
Time became the interval between one sob and the next. Finally, the physician's hands returned. With a brutal, twisting motion, he broke the suction of a cup. The sound was a sickening, wet gasp, as if her very flesh were sighing in defeat.
"The dry cupping is concluded," he announced, his tone flat as a grave slab. He placed the glass aside, where it gleamed with residual heat. "Now, we proceed to the wet. The corrupted blood must be drawn forth."
His assistant stepped forward, a lancet gleaming in the candlelight. The treatment was not over. It was merely descending to a deeper, more intimate circle of hell.
Gisela was a thing of pain and weakness, her consciousness a faint, receding tide. Then she saw it—the physician's hand, steady once more, raising a fresh blade. She jolted against the straps, a final spasm of instinct.
"Henry…" The name was a wet, broken thread of sound. "Will you just stand there? Will you just… watch?"
He did not look at her. His gaze was fixed on some middle distance, as if observing the principles of a theorem being proven.
The blade came down.
A sharp, precise incision over one of the lurid purple circles. A clean line of fire opened, and dark, viscous blood welled instantly. She did not scream. She forced the sound inward, swallowing it until her body shook with the effort. Her hands clutched the sodden fabric beneath her, knuckles bleaching to bone. She bit her lower lip until she tasted copper.
Again. And again. The blade traced over each raised, tortured welt, releasing the trapped bruise in a slow, deliberate ooze.
Then the cups returned.
One by one, they were placed over the fresh cuts. The seal was tighter this time, the suction immediate and deep. Now, she could not contain it. A raw, guttural scream was torn from her with each application—a brutal, rhythmic liturgy of agony. The cups darkened as they filled.
The physician reached for another. He did not see the shift in the shadows.
"Enough."
Henry's voice was not loud, but it cut through the chamber like a shard of ice, silencing everything. Even Gisela's sobs hitched in her throat.
The physician froze, the unused cup hovering in his hand. "But Your Majesty… the humours are not yet balanced. The process is not complete—"
"Leave."
The single word was final. The guards turned as one and filed out without a sound.
The physician trembled, the cup rattling against its tray. "Sire, I must protest, her condition requires—"
"I said leave."
The command was a crack of thunder in the closed space. The physician flinched as if struck, bowed so deeply he staggered, and scurried from the room, leaving his instruments behind.
In the sudden, ringing silence, Henry's gaze finally lowered to the ruined figure on the bed.
The lesson, it seemed, had taken an unexpected turn.