Chapter 19 #2
He gestured vaguely at the destruction around him. “It’s been exhausting, sorting through your family’s pretty little secrets, peeling back the layers of enchantment. Most of them don’t even hum anymore. Magic long since faded. Some were crafted well, I’ll admit. But everything breaks eventually.”
“As will you.” My voice dropped into a lethal rasp.
He grinned through the blood trailing down his chin. “You don’t have enough time left to break me.”
Veralt reached out and steadied one of the large glass lenses still rocking on the table.
“That was almost a disaster,” he muttered, then winced as he realized he’d stepped on a pile of scattered books.
“Sorry. He’s flung everything everywhere!
I can’t take a step without messing something up.
” Another spine split beneath his heel, the sound sharp in the tense silence.
Colm watched us like he was watching a comedy, not bleeding and pinned at swordpoint. That smug, patient calm chilled me deeper than any threat. He wasn’t worried at all.
There were no visible traps and no warning alarms activated. The door itself wasn’t especially secure, but it would take a few blows to bring it down. Still, that didn’t mean he didn’t have other means of protection. I narrowed my eyes. “Take off the claw tips and remove every weapon you have.”
Thalen moved through the mess of the observatory carefully, using his boots to nudge aside books without stepping on them directly. Pages rustled underfoot, whispering reminders of what had been lost.
Across from him, Colm removed the claw tips from his fingers, one at a time.
Each metallic click echoed too loudly. “You’re wasting your time.
None of this will play out the way you think.
At best, you’ll tie me up and go skittering off into the ruins of your former life, hoping to delay the inevitable. ”
“You keep talking like we can’t just kill you.” Thalen snapped the rope taut between his hands with a dry crack. Dust plumed upward. “Honestly, I’m still not clear on why we shouldn’t.”
“Veralt, search him,” I ordered, keeping my blade steady at Colm’s shoulder. “Make sure he doesn’t have any other weapons.”
Colm slid off the final claw tip and dropped it with a delicate clink. “Go ahead. Kill me or take me prisoner. Pretend you have control, but if I fail to give an order to a specific individual in a specified location within a specified time, things will unravel quickly.”
He shrugged off the black silk robe, revealing bare arms laced with scars.
Some were fine as spiderwebs, while others were thick and jagged, like shattered glass was hidden beneath the skin.
The raised lines crisscrossed his forearms and disappeared beneath the sleeves of a gray tunic riddled with reinforced seams and narrow pockets.
His trousers matched in utilitarian dullness, both shades able to vanish in shadow.
“Even without magic, pain is a remarkably easy thing to create. And poisons…” He smiled thinly. “Poisons do not discriminate, especially the choking kind.” He folded the robe with unsettling precision.”
Briar went rigid beside me.
Colm’s voice lowered, almost reverent. “Your dungeons were brimming with delightful relics such as war room blueprints and all sorts of torture implements. It didn’t take much effort to rig them up and establish crude mechanisms for their delivery into the water supply, and it doesn’t take much time to create that choking gas.
If I vanish or fail to check in, my men will release it. ”
My claws dug into my palms. The blade at his shoulder wavered ever so slightly.
After folding his robe, Colm set it aside.
“My men check on me every three hours. Let's be generous and say the last round was recent, so we'll pretend you have nearly three hours. If everything goes flawlessly, you might save some of the adults. But the children?” His smile curved wider, crueler.
“The infants? Even a small exposure can be fatal to bodies so small. Horribly. They will die. Can you live with that?”
Briar’s breath caught. Her fingers clenched tighter around her sword hilt until her knuckles bleached. Her fear pulsed through our bond, quiet and raw beneath the rage in her eyes. If it wasn’t for that, I never would’ve known and would've assumed it was only rage.
“What kind of poison?” she bit out.
Colm blinked slowly. “Now, why would I tell you that? You don’t have enough time to break me, sweetheart.”
Veralt moved in, silent and grim. He patted Colm down with calculated force, retrieving a dagger, two vials of viscous green liquid, a silk-wrapped sliver of a blade with no hilt, a set of bone-handled lockpicks, a pouch of black powder, and several tight packets of dried herbs that smelled faintly metallic.
He lined the items up on the closest table, beside the rubble of broken crystal and scorched metal. The display looked like an assassin’s kit.
The cold weight in my chest deepened. My instincts screamed this wasn’t a bluff. Every word he’d said had been delivered with the quiet, bone-deep confidence of someone who believed he’d already won.
“Bind him,” I ordered. My voice was low. Final. “To the chair. Now.”
I shoved Colm forward with a hand between his shoulder blades, and Thalen stepped in without hesitation. He bound Colm’s wrists behind him tightly, securing them with a series of rough, practiced knots. Then he dragged him toward the velvet black chair in the corner and forced him down into it.
With no back spindles to anchor to, Thalen looped the rope around the carved legs and tied off the slack with sharp jerks, making sure Colm couldn’t shift an inch.
Colm exhaled, unbothered. “Hope you have a plan, Vad. Because the clock is ticking.”
“We’re just going to tie him up and leave?” Veralt spread his arms wide.
Colm answered before I could. “Unless you’d prefer to be the reason a few dozen children die choking on their own blood, then yes.” He grinned, a wild glint in his eyes as he turned toward Thalen. “Go on and pull it tighter. I don’t mind pain.”
“Tell us how to deactivate the traps in the prison.” I struck him across the cheek with the hilt of my sword. His head snapped to the side, blood spraying from a split in his lip, but when the bastard recovered, he just smirked.
How much time did we really have?
Briar stepped forward with fury flickering in her eyes. She stopped beside me, her hand flexing at her thigh like she wanted to reach for something sharp.
“We already have Calla Lily,” she whispered with each word honed with venom.
She leaned down so that she was near his face, her hand pressed against her thigh, and her fingers tensed.
“You either tell Vad what he needs to know, or… when we get back, we’ll kill her.
And if we don’t make it back, we left instructions for someone else to finish the job. So. Your move, Douchewaffle.”
Colm’s grin faltered. “No… You’re bluffing. I know you, Briar. You wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t I?” Her voice dropped to a dangerous whisper as she set her hand on her hip and pointed her sword at his chest. “You think you know me? You tortured me. You almost broke me. But even then, you knew one thing—there’s nothing I won’t do for the people I love.”
Her voice cracked, but she didn’t waver.
“Calla Lily is responsible for so many deaths. Yuki. Thalira. She cut Rhielle’s throat, didn’t she? She threatened Vad. My grandfather. She helped you kill King Merrick.” Her blade trembled, not with fear but with restraint. “She’s a monster. And I’ll end her myself.”
Desire grew deep within me, but I fought it off. I’d take care of that problem later. Right now, Briar didn’t need saving. She was the reckoning.
Colm’s throat bobbed. A breath caught in his chest. “You can’t kill her. She’s only in this because she loves me.”
Briar’s jaw clenched. “Then she can die with you.”
His mask cracked. An angry hiss tore from his throat. “You fecking brat—”
Briar grabbed him by the collar and yanked him forward. “Tell us now—”
A thunderous boom cut through her words, shaking the observatory door in its frame.
My blood turned to ice, and I spun, sword raised.
“Colm!” Calla Lily’s voice rang out, high and shrill. “I saw the light shift! Are you all right?”
Thalen blinked. “Well… that’s bad timing.”
Colm stiffened beneath Briar’s grip. The fear in his face vanished, replaced by a slow, triumphant smile. “Oh, well played, Briar. You almost had me. I’m impressed.” He tilted his head mockingly. “What a vindictive little bitch you’ve become.”
Briar paled. Her lips mashed into a tight line.
I struck him hard across the face with the back of my hand. “Back to the passage! Now!”
Another crash splintered the thick wood of the door. They were using something heavy. Probably one of the axes we’d seen in the armory. Based on the speed, two were chopping at once.
“Go!” I pushed Briar toward the hidden door.
Veralt grabbed a chair and hurled it toward the entrance. The frame cracked as it slammed against the wood, buying us a second at best.
“You’re too late,” Colm choked out, laughing through bloodied teeth. “You’ve lost, Vad! Hurry, Calla Lily! The former king is here!”
Briar snarled, and her gaze flicked to the door, then back to Colm. Her sword trembled in her grip.
“Come on, Chaos!” Thalen yelled, already at the table. He ripped an oil lamp from its wall sconce, securing the casing so it could be carried.
I grabbed Briar’s arm. She didn’t resist as I dragged her toward the hidden entrance. We’d been so close.
Veralt vanished into the tunnel, Thalen right behind him. Briar darted in after, her hair whipping behind her. The main door to the observatory burst open with a final, bone-shaking crash.
“Colm!” Calla Lily’s voice rang out. “Hold on. I’m here!” Her gaze snapped to me then, and she shouted, "Guards, get them!"
I turned just long enough to see her rush in first with a dagger already in her hand and several guards at her back. She fell to her knees beside Colm and began slicing through his bonds.
I slammed the hidden door shut and yanked out the key. With one quick turn, I locked the mechanism. Something struck the door from the other side and shattered.
Thalen was halfway down the passage with his lamp held high. Its glow cast long shadows and warped them against the narrow stone walls.
Briar pressed a hand to her temple, her voice raw. “We can’t let them kill those children… all those people.”
“He won’t succeed.” I forced certainty into every syllable and shoved my sword into its sheath. “We’ll regroup. Stick to the plan. Hit them fast, hit them hard.”
Veralt gave a sharp nod and turned toward the exit. “Then let’s move.”
But before we took more than a few steps, a deep grinding sound echoed through the stone.
The wall at the far end of the passage shifted, then slammed down like a guillotine.
Veralt bellowed and punched the door. “It’s sealed! Feck—we’re trapped!”
I locked in place, gripping my sword as Colm’s laughter rang out from the other side of the door. We were trapped.