8. Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Magic, especially powerful magic, changes a person. There are few times in history that we see this happen other than the changing of Conduits. Every time, the influx of that much more power alters the bearer forever. My own experiences were far more drastic than any other Conduit for obvious reasons.
~Maeve Arden, The Future of Magic and Dragons
Maeve
Jasper Wren is a gangly male High Fae. He’s nothing like what I’d thought Steel soldiers should be. They’re supposed to be built like mountains, like Rhion. Instead, he looks like someone stuck toothpicks on a pea pod. His arms and legs are so thin that I question how he can hold a spear or sword, much less wield it. His dark eyes hold so much anger in them.
For any other Immortal, Darian and Lee would have put a steel collar around his neck. It would have siphoned off any attempt to use his magic. The House of Steel is different, though, and collars do not work on them. Instead, Jasper is being controlled through fear—fear of the Shade and fear of the Painted Crown.
“You’re in charge of watching Casimir Cyrus?” Lee asks.
We’re in a simple guard’s quarters of the Keep of Steel. Rather than the crimson marble that makes up the Keep of Flames, the Keep of Steel was created from gray granite. Blacks and whites crisscross through the stone, creating a nearly colorless background, and it’s hard not to compare it to the human castle at Stormhaven. It’s so much less grand than the Keep of Flames.
The guard’s quarters are tiny. I’m not entirely sure that Cole’s bath would fit. It’s just a bed, dresser, and table and chair. The four of us and Jasper barely fit inside it.
Jasper’s voice is low, something the Shade has emphasized is important. “I’m the sergeant in charge of night duty for the section of the prison that houses Casimir, but I’m not personally in charge of watching him. I’ve never even talked to him.”
He spits the name Casimir like it’s venom, and I stay silent as Darian, Lee, and the Shade interrogate the High Fae. I’ve never had to do this. He knows that we’re the enemy. He doesn’t want to say anything to us from loyalty to his own House and hatred for us.
But the Shade owns him. We just don’t know exactly what he’ll need to ask. If I still had my full-strength Shadow powers, I could force him to do most things, but I don’t have them anymore. Thinking about the Shade allows me some use of the inky black tendrils, but not enough to control a High Fae like I did before.
Now, I don’t even know if I could restrain someone.
“Shade, please cover the walls in shadow?” I say softly.
He doesn’t question me, his hands splaying out, and darkness covers the floor. It climbs the walls and moves across the ceiling. “We’re too close to the rest of the guards,” I say. “The last thing anyone wants is for other people to hear him screaming.”
Jasper looks from the Shade to me, a grimace crossing his face at my comment. Unlike King Aric, Jasper knows what the Painted Crown means. He may not understand what I’m capable of, but he knows the power differential between me and him.
I know I should be nervous. This is the first time I’ve ever interrogated anyone, but it feels obvious what we need and how to go about dealing with Jasper. I’d felt conflicted talking to the Shade moments ago in his safe house, but I’m completely calm now.
“I’m only going to ask these questions once,” I say as I draw the knife from my belt. “If you lie, I’ll hurt you. If you refuse to answer, I’ll hurt you. If none of that works, I’ll have the Shade call in his debt.”
Peace flows through me like a meandering river during summer, slow and unworried. I take Jasper’s hand in mine, and I can feel every ounce of terror in him. He’s not restrained, but he doesn’t need to be. That’d just complicate the process. As soon as my fingers wrap around his, there’s nothing he can do to escape my grip.
My Earth magic enhances my strength a dozen times. Far more than any House of Steel Immortal. I press the blade of Vesta’s knife against Jasper’s arm almost parallel to the skin. The angle is just enough that the knife will dig in if I press very hard. “Where is Casimir’s cell at?” I ask.
My eyes follow his, waiting for his response—waiting for the lie. This is all a trap, and that’s why we’re doing things differently. “It’s at the bottom of the Keep of Steel. The very bottom floor.”
It’s the first lie. His heartbeat changes ever so slightly. A practiced lie, but I’ve been judging people’s truths since I was young. Vesta always told me to trust my instincts, but in reality, it was a mix of information that I was processing better than any human could. It was magic.
Now I know, and it’s not trust anymore. It’s fact. I was manipulated for months by Cole, Darian, and Lee, but I always knew something was wrong, and they never explicitly lied to me. The difference between hiding the truth and telling a direct lie is small in effect, but when it comes to my powers, that difference is enormous.
And I’m sure Jasper is lying.
The knife cuts into Jasper’s arm, slicing through flesh as easily as a hot knife through butter. He immediately begins screaming and tries to pull away, but my grip is stronger than steel manacles.
When he tries to stop me, no one moves. His hand wraps around my wrist, and I smile at him. “Jasper Wren, do you really think you’re stronger than me?”
He looks down at the strip of flesh that’s fallen to the ground, exposing muscle, and then up at the shining gold and brown crown across my brows. “No,” he whispers and releases my wrist.
“Good, now let’s try this again. Where is Casimir Cyrus being kept?” Jasper doesn’t even try to lie. He tells us exactly where Casimir is being kept in short and simple statements. I’m not sure if he does it because he’s afraid of me or because it’s part of the trap, though.
“Good. When are you supposed to be on guard duty next?”
He frowns from a lack of understanding, and I’m not surprised. All the Houses have become so completely twisted from their original forms that the only things they value are the skills that allow them to fight better. There are so many better uses for Steel powers.
“In two hours.”
I smile at him and turn to Darian. “Do you think you can pretend to be Jasper long enough that we can get in and get out?”
Darian nods and I turn to the Shade. “And you’re positive that you can get us behind him? Even in a steel room?”
He hesitates. “I can get us in, but I’m not sure I can get us out.”
“That’s all we need. We just need to get behind Casimir before he can see us. Leave the rest to me.”
I turn back to Jasper. “Now, one last question, Jasper. Where’s the trap?”
He blinks, and his eyes dance down to the blade pressed against his arm. “What do you mean?”
There’s hesitation there. He understood what I was asking, and he didn’t give an answer. He’s hiding something. The blade that’s never needed to be sharpened cuts further into Jasper’s arm, and he screams again.
I’m not kind as I flay the skin from our prisoner, but I’ve seen what High Fae can heal from. There’s no doubt that Jasper would make a full recovery without even a scar if I let him go right now.
“Fine, stop!” he screams.
I don’t. I just keep cutting, slowly stripping another two-inch long strip from his arm. The river of crimson runs down his hand to drip onto the gray granite at our feet. It had started with soft splashes, but now that it’s a steady stream, it’s almost quiet.
Jasper Wren’s pain doesn’t matter to me. Something inside me feels… wrong, but it disappears as quickly as the desire I felt for the Shade earlier. I savor the feeling of his struggle. His pain is something that I can latch onto. It’s something real and undeniable.
When the strip of flesh falls to the ground with a meaty flopping sound, I look at him and smile again. “Where’s the trap for us, Jasper?”
He shakes for a moment, and I press the knife tip against his bicep hard enough that a single drop of blood wells up around the steel. “Fine. Prince Rhion checks my wrist every morning for my debt. If I tell you anything, the mark will be gone. It’s not a mark that can be fabricated with House of Steel magic.”
I remove the knife from his arm, and the pinprick heals almost immediately. I wipe the steel against his guard’s uniform and slide the blade back into its sheath. “And what happens if that mark is gone?”
Jasper’s face scrunches up, but before I’ve even moved my hand, he says, “Then he knows you’re trying something. I’m just the alarm system.”
I nod and release him before sitting down in a chair. That’s when I see Lee staring at the two pieces of Jasper’s flesh and the puddle of blood on the floor. “Darian and Lee, figure out what you need to know.”
My head is swimming, and I have a hard time concentrating. There’s something about that image that pulls at me. Memories of someone screaming. Missing flesh along someone’s arm. A puddle of blood. Dark lines. Shadows.
I get lost in the image, and instead of seeing Jasper’s face, I see Cole in a cave.
Darian asks questions, and I only give them enough attention to tell whether Jasper’s lying. The rest of my attention goes to this strange feeling that’s flooding my body—to this strange confusion that’s taking over my mind.
Instead of Jasper wearing his Steel uniform, I see Cole on the top of a mountain looking out at the clouds. The room is gone, and my eyes are focused on those two bloody lines. Twin revulsion shadows wrap around Cole’s arm, cutting deep swathes into his skin. Part of me wants to scream, to call for help, to do something to save him. But that’s not me. That’s Maeve. That’s the Wyrdling, not the Queen of Earth. The Queen of Earth can’t care about that.
She can’t care about anything, even as the shadows climb Cole’s arm. He lied to me. He’s the reason Hazel is dead. Shouldn’t he die? Shouldn’t he…
Then it’s all gone again as the wounds heal, the blood drying on his arm under fresh pink skin.
“I think that’s all we need,” Darian says.
I try to pull myself out of the memories of that vision. I have to be present. We’re trying to steal Casimir away from Gethin, and I can’t let memories of my past get in the way. I shake my head to clear the vision and focus on Lee as she argues with Darian.
“Now we just need a place to put him until we’re done. Can we tie him up in here?” Lee’s voice is low and reminds me of the day I walked in on her and Cole arguing about secrets in Aerwyn.
“No, we need to take him somewhere else. There’s no tying up a member of the House of Steel.”
They bicker, and I ignore them, my eyes moving to Jasper. His wounds aren’t bleeding any longer, and I know that his pain never mattered.
Which only reinforces the idea that I need to trust myself. I stand up, and no one notices. Even Jasper is paying attention to what Darian and Lee are arguing about. The Shade turns as I approach Jasper from behind.
The knife is out of its sheath and in my hand in the blink of an eye. Then there’s a wet, hissing sound as the knife pierces Jasper’s back. The air in his lungs sprays out in a pinky froth as the knife continues to slip past rib bones and ends up in his heart.
I leave the knife in his heart for a few moments as the life leaves him. I saw Rhion heal a severed spine in seconds, and only a steel knife prevented it. A pierced heart will end in death quickly, but I don’t know how fast Jasper can heal.
When Jasper’s final breath leaves his body, I let him slump to the ground, and I finally notice Darian, Lee, and the Shade staring at me. “What? This is simpler.”
“But he hadn’t done anything wrong?” Lee says.
“He was just a guard. He wasn’t even a soldier,” Darian says.
The Shade just stares at me, silently judging my decision. I smile at all three of them. “And you’re telling me he wouldn’t have stabbed me in the back? He wouldn’t have brought me to Gethin or Rhion as a prized captive if he’d been strong enough? Anyone that would kill one of us is the enemy, and I won’t spend an extra moment trying to prevent their death. If we’d left Jasper alive, he probably would have made our lives more difficult somehow.”
They’re quiet, and I shrug before bending over to wipe my blade on his uniform again. “Darian, it’s time to move. Find another one of his uniforms and get changed into it. We need to be ready to go.”
You could hear a pin drop as all three of them stare at me. “Now,” I say, my voice growing colder, and Darian and Lee immediately leave the room to look for Jasper’s uniforms, leaving me and the Shade together again.
“You wouldn’t have done that before you received the Painted Crown.” His voice is a soft wind blowing from nowhere and everywhere at once. “When you were a Wyrdling, you made sure that as few people were hurt as possible.”
“I’m neither a Wyrdling nor am I na?ve any longer. I will not put us at risk to save someone who will only ever do us harm. Jasper Wren would have sold us out to the House of Steel in an instant.”
“I could have used his debt to force him out of the city.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’d be the one to spring the trap, Shade. Maybe our desire to prevent bloodshed is the real trigger for Gethin’s trap. Regardless, I will not feel bad for the life that I took. He certainly wouldn’t have saved us if our roles had been reversed.”
The Shade doesn’t say anything as we stand in the room that had once been pristine and is now covered in a pool of blood. I slide my knife into its sheath and realize just how covered in gore I am. I’ll need a bath when we get back to Stormhaven before I can be seen in court again.
Right now, that little inconvenience is far more important than the dead Immortal at my feet.