Chapter 23
Who knew that the one forcing me to stay would be the new king?
If anything, I assumed he’d want me to fuck off and be done with me.
The more distance, the better. Instead, I have a freshly crowned fucking king already spitting demands, so I can’t leave until he goes back on his word.
Unfortunately, the set of his face, the arch of his chin, and the sparkle in his blue eyes say otherwise.
He’s fucking in love with my hunt.
“Brother, let me kill her and end this,” I say.
“No,” Walkyer says stubbornly. “We don’t know if it’s her. You’re to bring her back unharmed and in for questioning. Understand?”
I want to strangle him. Wrap my hands around my foolish brother’s neck and watch it snap, but—I wince at the memory of him standing over me, arms stretched out on either side defensively. He stared daggers at the ones that crowded around me in an act of violence.
Muttering a swear, I step back and clench my hands into fists.
“Understand?” Walkyer presses.
“Clearly,” I say through clenched teeth.
Walkyer sags his shoulders in relief and eases back into the throne with discomfort. “Good. I will get Alad to write a contract for you.”
Fuck. He’s aware that I only agree to things through contracts. I step forward and say, “Let me kill her, regardless of whether she’s the killer. Ri and Alek informed me she was involved with a group of smugglers when they went to Oceanview Harbour.”
“And how do they know that?” Walkyer presses because he’s in love with a fucking girl he met once! Once! And in fucking passing! “They could have just been neighbours.”
“Ri,” I say.
Ri steps forward. She flicks her curly green hair away from her dark skin and declares, “The Old Wolf tried to discard her phone when we entered her home. Unfortunately for her, we salvaged what we could, and Pandora Averis’s number was a frequent caller on her recent list.” Ri eyes me when she says, “Mind you, it could be a neighbour checking in on another neighbour.” She looks at Walkyer again and grimaces.
“But the phone call ten minutes after King Ragan’s death was…
brief. Shortly after that, another brief conversation occurred.
Then, another phone call later that day. ”
“And?” my blinded brother persists.
Ri sighs. “Why not text? The three conversations were brief enough for them to communicate through messages. So, my conclusion is that they didn’t want their conversations logged and were good at it. There have been many phone calls between the two, but not a single text message. It’s strange.”
“Besides,” Alek says, “the neighbours all said they never got along, and this…Nancy…would often speak ill of her loud neighbour who brought her boyfriend home almost every evening.”
“Boyfriend?” Walkyer murmurs. The hint of light fades in his blue eyes at the thought of the girl he fucking met once in a relationship.
“Ex, perhaps,” Alad chimes in. “It seems the fire elemny tethered while exploring Flesh. Relationships often fade when a significant other tethers to someone else.”
I grunt my response.
“I also contacted the taxi company in case she travelled by car. He dropped her off at the Crimson Hotel the morning of King Ragan’s death at eleven twenty-five.”
“To think I would have missed her,” Walkyer speaks, more to himself than to us, so I ignore it.
“And where are her companions?” I drawl.
“Astin has him in the interrogation room now…with his friends. They wouldn’t leave his side,” Alad says with a bemused look.
I turn away from Walkyer and head to the doors.
“Where are you going?” Walkyer demands.
“Questioning them,” I say with a wave of my hand.
“Promise me you won’t harm them, Reen—no more bloodshed. You’ve spilled enough,” Walkyer calls.
I stop in my tracks, crane my head to look at him and say, “Is that an order?”
“I don’t want it to be,” Walkyer says. His voice breaks with exhaustion, but it’s his fault. If he had agreed to kill her a day ago, we wouldn’t be arguing about it now.
“I won’t harm any more innocents until I have my hands around Pandora’s throat and you give me the word to break it,” I declare.
Innocents is a keyword, for if these friends of Pandora had an inkling of knowledge that she was a smuggler, their heads would be on the ground, and I could quench this thirst simmering inside me.
“Thank you,” Walkyer says before I leave the Throne Room.
The castle has three different interrogation rooms.
We use the first few rooms on the left side of the foyer for interviews or light interrogations. Usually, these involve business deals of that sort, or whenever Emmerton or Walkyer brings a woman back home, either out of infatuation or to fuck with Walkyer.
Now I’m being fucking cock-blocked by the new king because of some strange obsession with an unawakened brat he hasn’t spoken to yet.
But orders are orders, and I will abide by them if he wants me to bring her back for interrogation.
However, I will salivate with my meal, instil fear into her, and play with my food for a bit before bringing her back to the doting arms of a brother who will probably believe her story, even if she held King Ragan’s head.
The difference between the two kings and their bloodlines is that King Ragan wants me to slaughter all who dare to kill him, while King Walkyer doesn’t wish for bloodshed, even when it is needed.
My dislike for King Ragan aside, I would already be on my way to hunt her if he were present.
Walkyer has too much heart to give; with it, his downfall will come if he keeps thinking with his heart more than his head.
I move down the stone steps into the central courtyard in the centre of the castle. Lifeless trees and twiggy shrubbery fill the yard. Old rose thorns twist against the sculpture of a woman with her hands outstretched, yearning for rain as her eyes bleed red and weep down her scaly cheeks.
King Ragan created this courtyard for my mother when he dragged us away from Eden Island and brought us to the Kingdom of Flesh.
At the start of their marriage, she played the happy family, and I envied her for letting him slaughter my dad, brothers and sister.
I would sit on the steps leading to this courtyard and watch as she grew rose bushes that butterflies yearned to kiss, tall weeping trees where birds nestled, and lizards slept in the cool shade.
Then she stopped after carrying Emmerton. She locked herself in her tower, and the courtyard died bit by bit. She took a piece of herself with it until we got what we have now—a barren place with no future life.
Broad iron doors lead into the Knights of Eraminia’s quarters on the other side of the courtyard.
They make no sound when they open, and the pale light from the thickening haze seeps into the darkness, illuminating bare stone walls and ashen tiles, sleek with crimson.
Eyeing the doors lining the corridor ahead, I turn right and open the door leading down into the depths of darkness.
A musky, smoke-stained scent lingers on the charred walls.
Brittle bones crumble over the thick layer of ash, clinging like fresh paint to smooth surfaces.
Flames lick at the torches as I descend, casting shadows dripping with nightmares onto the fallen bones.
Spiders spin their webs, some oozing down like vines from a hanging plant.
And slippery mice weave through skulls with broken teeth.
At the bottom of the stairs, the tunnel leads to the cellars, which no one uses anymore because King Ragan made a spectacle of the enemy before burning them. The enemies turned to dust, leaving nothing but whispers and ghostly remnants lurking in fear that haunt most cellars.
The more I walk, the more sounds I hear. Ignoring the whimpers of frightened elemny unknown in this place, there are voices of a calm conversation.
“Doesn’t it get lonely being down here for so long?” A familiar voice of that irritating woman who perched herself outside my mother’s door asks.
“Ziri comes down several times a week and cares for me. It’s not so bad,” Chloe speaks in a frail voice she doesn’t usually use.
Their voices simmer when I move past them. Uncaring, I can feel the petrified energy palpitating from them until I am out of sight. The flickering torches dim until they’re shrouded in darkness once more.
Near the staircase leading to the back tower, a door on the right of the cells connects to the long wall encasing the castle.
I shrug the door open and eye Astin. He leans against the wall with his arms folded across his chest and a bored look on his face.
I give him a swift nod, and he rises and leaves the room.
After he’s out, I turn my attention to the quivering young elemny and twitch a smirk.