56. Chapter Fifty-Six
56
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
KAIUS
I was scratching at the bottom, I knew that. Whoever was actually responsible for getting that guard into the castle wasn’t going to be found hiding out in a Tihveit pub basement, but I needed to start somewhere.
I’d be starting with the cretin currently sat in front of me.
And sat he was, because there were no chains on the chair he was in. No containment spell, not a lick of power kept him there. Just sheer, delicious terror.
Heavy breaths echoed around me, bouncing off the concrete that made up the walls and floors. The stench of fear permeated the room, the remnants of its previous inhabitants had seeped into its very fabric—this newest occupant adding his own to the mix. It was clean though, the iron grates placed strategically throughout the floor and a decent anti-sticking charm saw to that. Any mess made— and mess would be made —would be simply washed away.
I shook off my coat, hanging it on a hook by the door. It was a nice one, lined with ruban bear fur. I didn’t want to get blood on it.
My newest quarry sat there, in only his unwashed pants, watery brown eyes following my every move. His skin was so pale that the rug of ginger hair that covered most of the exposed parts of his body seemed almost luminous.
A steel table had been set up for me. A shiny array of wickedly sharp knives had been laid out on it, along with a brown file that held all the information I needed. I had my own arsenal strapped across my body, but it was nice to have options.
Running my fingers across the blades, I relished the little shiver that ran through me as their edges teased at my skin. There was a small one I hadn’t seen before, and I plucked it from the side, turning it in my hands to study its beautifully honed edges.
It was kind of cute—as instruments of torture went. I couldn’t help the mental image that forced its way into my mind of it held carefully in Elodie’s hands as she straddled me and ran it over my skin. Her naked body pressed against mine the way it had been in the caves. My dick hardened as the blood that should have been in my brain rushed to it, and I decided I would make it a gift for her.
A wash of fresh fear coursed through the room, and my shadows writhed as I turned to the reason I was here. Reluctantly putting my happy little fantasy on the backburner for now, I replaced the little blade on the dull metal surface.
His eyes dipped down to the bulge pressing against my trousers, and I laughed at the added layer of fear that etched itself on his face.
“Don’t worry, this isn’t for you.” I winked as I adjusted myself before picking up the brown folder.
“Let’s see what we have here then…” I scanned the file for his name, laughing as my eyes landed on it—Brutus.
“You don’t mind if I call you something else, do you?” I said, as I casually flipped through the file before peering back at him. Face now a sickly shade of grey, his stubby hands twisted in his lap. If I was hard a second ago, I definitely wasn’t now. “You look more like an Egbert to me.”
He shook his head quickly, and strands of orange hair dropped over his forehead, wobbling in a way that shouldn’t annoy me, but somehow did.
“Anyway, enough of this. Let’s get you screaming, see if you have anything worth saying then.” At a flick of my fingers, vines wrapped over his creepily hairy wrists and bound them to the arms of this chair. Pointlessly— and predictably —Egbert struggled against them as if he had even the slightest chance of breaking out.
News flash; he did not.
“So, two counts of drunk and disorderly conduct.” I read out the charges presented to me in the file, directing shadows to whip at his arms with every count and leaving nice, tidy, red lines that had him squealing like a cut pig. “Threatening a witness, caught facilitating the illegal breeding of polypus worms, multiple public indecency charges. Damn, Eggy boy, this just gets worse and worse.”
Egbert’s screams were the only argument he offered, so I took them as a guilty plea. Dark shadows lashed down on him, his skin splitting in a satisfying slice across his forearm. A small stream of blood slid over his pasty skin before dripping onto his thighs and pooling on his dirty underwear. Clean-up was easier when there were less clothes, but it wasn’t easier on the eyes.
I felt sharp pricks of his magik against my skin as he attempted to fight back, but it was so weak, it was laughable.
“One count of ‘ breaking into Miss Truely’s stables to shear the mane from their prized stallion ‘Stardust Cosmic Serenade III’ and being found later that evening masturbating into said hair in an alleyway ’,” I continued, arching a brow at him as his current scream ended. Sweat slid down his face gathering on his top lip, and throwing the file to the side, I moved closer. “Now, I like some fucked up stuff, but that’s just weird.”
I slashed another line into his other arm, purely because I now had the unwanted mental image of him with horsehair wrapped around his little dick.
“Is it any hair, or just horses?” I wondered aloud. “Actually, I don’t think I want to know that answer.”
Rolling my shoulders, I loosened my muscles, itching to lay my hands on him, “Here’s where I’m going to need you to start talking. Someone—and believe me, I know it wasn’t you—sent a spy into the Palace, and they went after my girl. Big mistake on their part, because she wiped the floor with them. But that’s not the point, is it, Eggy? They still hurt her, and I need to know who’s responsible. Who’s the big boss in this?”
Egbert hunched into himself as the crimson stains spread further, his voice raspy from all the screaming. “I… I didn’t do it.”
Tipping my head back, I sighed to the rough-hewn ceiling. “Tieralla, give me strength. Did I not just say I know you didn’t do it?”
I didn’t give him time to reply before my fist snapped out. Colliding with his jaw in a satisfying crunch, Egbert’s head whipped back. I relished in the tickle of magik that soaked into my skin, at the dark core of me that snapped its eyes open and took note of the world.
“What I do know...” My next punch landed on his temple, a dark bruise instantly blooming under his eye. “Is that the dead man who thought he could lay hands on Goldie had something interesting in his pocket.” Again, I slammed my fist into his head, the silver ring on my finger slicing into his skin nicely. “Do you know that that was?”
His garbled “no” came just before shadows yanked his head up by a scruff of ginger hair, and he winced at its tight grip. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a small brown packet stamped with an image of a burning sunflower, and he couldn’t hide the way his eyes widened in recognition.
“I’m glad you recognise it. I thought you would try and deny it but looks like today you’re going with honesty. A wise choice, well done. Now, I know you’ve been giving this shit to the ladies over at Madame Velvetina’s so they’ll service that worm dick of yours. But how the fuck is someone like you getting hold of Flaming Sun, especially in Incaendium?”
The temperature here made it practically impossible to grow the strain of sunflowers they used, not to mention harvest the griffin shit that they mixed it with. Considering they only roosted in some far off mountain in Animalia, it wasn’t something we saw here.
The shit he’d got them to do as he plied them with the drugs had made my skin crawl. It had been one of the Madams catching onto his game and alerting someone in my team that put us on the path to him.
I didn’t think he could possibly get more terrified, yet it poured from him in thick waves, and his body shook as his busted mouth moved thickly over his next words. I doubted it would be long before he pissed himself.
“I… I can’t, they’ll kill me.”
Grabbing hold of his jaw, I dug my fingers into the disgusting sweaty skin, holding back a grimace as I calmly explained. “No, I’m going to kill you, Egbert.”
I shoved him away, straightening and wiping my hands on my trousers, before picking a blade from the selection laid out for me.
A symphony of screams reverberated through the room before they landed on me. Each shrill sound soaking into me like little drops of pure satisfaction as I slowly dragged the knife down his arm. Watching his skin split open under its sleek movements.
For a moment, the flesh beneath my blade glowed. The edges blackened as it burned, and magik rushed to flood me, flowing through the skin that no longer held the physical evidence of the pain it had been subjected to.
Stepping back and blinking the image away until it was nothing but a freshly sliced wound on an alarmingly pale body, I pressed a finger over one of my own blades strapped to my side, letting the sharp pain ground me as I breathed deeply, inhaling the tang of blood in the air.
I was here.
Not there.
As I rubbed my own warm blood between my fingers, the door behind me clicked open, and light footsteps padded my way. I didn’t miss the fraction of hope that lit Egg’s pain-addled eyes as he watched our visitor while shuddering from the ministrations of my blade.
Little did he know I was the kinder of the two of us.
Blair reached my side, eyes scanning Egbert with disinterest before they flicked down to my finger now creating its own—much smaller—scarlet pool on the floor.
“Come to join in?” I asked, looking down at her as Egbert whimpered.
“No. Has he said anything useful?”
I couldn’t help but laugh, knowing she would be more than happy to speed this along and get me the answers he was clutching to, but I preferred the hands-on approach in the beginning. And I was just getting started.
“Nothing yet, but we have time.”
“I doubt he has anything truly of use for us.”
“I don’t know that for certain. And this,” I gestured towards Eggy boy’s face. “Is just to warm him up.”
“Is he not the same one who was found in an alleyway with a fistful of horsehair?”
I couldn’t help the bark of laughter that escaped—nor did Egbert’s flinch go unnoticed. “The very same. Bet you didn’t know you were famous, ay Egg?”
“He’s the one who’s going to provide you with answers.” Blair raised her brow at me in an uncharacteristic gesture that had my grin widening.
“So, what do you suggest then? We let him go?” I scoffed.
“What… me?” he stammered, the eye not swollen shut flicking between us in confusion. The smidge of hope lighting it one I didn’t appreciate.
My annoyance ratcheted up a degree as I stared at him incredulously. “No, obviously not you.” I waved at his battered face before turning to Blair once more.
“But—”
“Quiet now,” I said, picking up a knife no wider than my little finger and plunging it into the wet, slimy tongue that my magik wrenched from his mouth. His answering scream was a little garbled, but at least he wouldn’t be interrupting again any time soon. With a sigh, I realised I had used the blade I had planned of gifting to Goldie, and there was no fucking way I’d be giving it to her now.
I turned back to Blair with a plan to get a new one made, maybe with a nice golden hilt.
“We need the name of whoever supplied him with Flaming Sun, because it's more than likely they also supplied the asshole who broke into the palace. I seriously doubt there are many dealers who have the connections to get hold of it, I just need a name.”
The hilt may have been a little heavy—which I realised too late—as a high-pitch squeal sounded from behind me. I turned in time to see its weight tip to one side, slicing open half his tongue before it clanged onto the floor. Blood splashed down his hairy chest, chin coated in red as his tongue flapped around like a fish that had flung itself onto the shore.
“Really,” I muttered as I stepped forward, squinting at the fleshy pink appendage. Egg’s eyes rolled back, head tipping and he gurgled as blood filled his mouth.
That wouldn’t do. I yanked his head forward by his hair so he wouldn’t drown in his own blood—not yet at least. I’d have to reattach his tongue; he’d need it when it was time to spill his guts of his nasty little secrets.
Energy floated towards the flapping flesh, and I allowed it to piece itself back together.
It was a shit excuse for a heal, definitely not my best work, but it wouldn’t matter much when his remains were being hosed down the drain. As long as he could still form words and scream, it was enough.
They were handy skills to have, though I’d never be as competent as a healer. I didn’t want to be, if I was honest. It hadn’t been a choice to learn how to knit together a fractured bone or force a body to expel the toxins it had been poisoned with. It had been a necessity.
A do or die situation.
Ok, maybe Eero wouldn’t have let me die, but suffering— horrifically so —had been more than ok.
Thinking back to those early days when there was no one to heal me, to teach me how to fix the parts that were broken, was easier than I liked.
How many mistakes I had made, on both myself and Blair, as I tried and tried to put us back together? One of my finger joints still didn’t bend in quite the right way after I had to try and reattach the digit after he had slammed?—
Enough. Now wasn’t the time.
The memories, the flashbacks, the dreams. They had all gotten worse recently.
A distraction from what I was supposed to be doing.
Right now, I had shit to do—for Goldie—and I couldn’t afford any distractions from this task.
I didn’t understand this pull, this need , to be around her. Why every thought circled back to Elodie, and why I constantly found myself in her orbit; I found I didn’t care for reasons. Not when she tasted so sweet on my tongue and felt so soft pressed against me. When the sound of her coming undone with my mouth on her pussy was better than any symphony I had ever heard, one that played on repeat in my mind.
The heady memory of our magik colliding was one I was desperate to relive, and the quicker Egbert talked, the quicker I could be back with her.
With that thought spurring me on, I slapped my captive’s face a few times until he came to, only a little harder than was necessary. “Wake up.”
Blinking up at me his eyes flicked around the room, the fear shining in them fed the shadows that were playing along my skin as he remembered where he was.
“Where were we?” I asked, flicking a finger and raking shadows down his blood-stained chest, only cringing slightly at the way his orange chest hair parted under their touch while he attempted to buck against the restraints still holding him.
“Oh, yeah,” I continued, stepping forward until I was directly in his line of sight. “I was asking for a name, and you were about to give me one. Isn’t that right?”
“Please, little girl, let me go,” he begged, voice thick around his fucked-up tongue as he peered around me as best he could. Blair just stared back at him, her vaguely bored face indicating she would do no such thing.
“Yeah… she’s not the one to ask for help here. As fun as this is.” I gestured at his bloodstained form. “I do have better things planned for my day, so I’d like to wrap this up. Save yourself some pain, Egbert, and tell me who it is you’ve been buying Flaming Sun from.”
“He’ll kill me if I tell.” A mixture of blood and spit foamed at the corner of his mouth.
I sighed heavily at his idiocy, running my hand over my face as I ran through the quickest ways I had of getting him to spill the secrets I needed.
Blair shifted at my side, crossing her arms over her chest. “Your reasoning makes no sense. You are fully aware you won’t be leaving this room alive, right?”
Eggy boy must have found an ounce of defiance under his clammy skin, because he sent the tiniest flicker of magik Blair’s way. The pathetic ember landed on her sleeve, not even burning all the way through the fabric before it fizzled out.
“Now that was the wrong move,” I snarled, my annoyance sharpening into a fury as wicked as the blade I slammed down into his arm. The force driving it deep enough to lodge into the chair. I soaked in the scream that left his throat, the shrill note driving me on as I prepared to force the answers from him, along with the extra pain he had earned by his woeful attack on Blair.
In the end, it had been quick—maybe too quick. The part of me that craved the blood and screaming, the look in their faces as I shattered any illusions of escape they so stupidly clung to, as I broke them piece by piece, collecting what I needed—was still restless.