CHAPTER 37
DAVINA
Now
“IS THIS THE PART WHERE YOU FINALLY REVEAL HOW YOU SNEAKED OUT OF YOUR ROOM?” Zephyr asks, holding my gaze. From the corner of my eye, I notice the truth-teller’s gaze travelling between us.
My head cocks to the side. “Security in your precious headquarters is not as good as you believe. It was child’s play to walk out of my room and through the building.” Not a lie. “Not a soul saw me as I made my way to the registry.”
Suspicion shines in the captain’s eyes, but when the sentient doesn’t call bullshit on my words, he doesn’t comment, and I don’t elaborate.
“Getting inside was even easier. The Mahogany powder used to build it didn’t let me phase through, and the lock on the door was complex,” I concede, “but child’s play for anyone who has a pick, and years of experience using vibrokinesis to unravel far more convoluted ones.”
Zephyr’s nostrils flare, but I swear that’s appreciation lining his stoic mask.
“It didn’t take long for me to find the folders about Sircelen that has been kept from us.
I started to go through them quickly, not wanting to tempt my luck.
” Fury rises to my cheeks as I recall what I found there.
“Imagine my surprise when one of the first things I found was evidence of the King’s Army knowing of Sircelen’s involvement with the Sapless. ”
I’d suspected as much at the lack of reaction from Tetteh, but seeing it with my own eyes . . . Just thinking about it makes my blood boil, even now.
“They’d been tracking him for months, a list of a lot of his exchanges with the rebels carefully recorded.” I huff a bitter laugh. “Why hadn’t we been given such information? I wondered. Why make us lose the time to go through the whole investigation?”
It’d have saved us so much fucking time. I felt so stupid. And angry. So much so, that I almost lost sight of the bigger picture.
“It took me a second to understand what I was seeing, but then it clicked.”
Zephyr’s face is unreadable, not giving a single clue to his knowledge of this, or lack thereof.
I continued. “The High General evidently knew of Sircelen’s stash, and they—you,” I say, posing the accusation that has been burning on my tongue for almost a week, “hoped that one of the doctor’s exchanges would finally lead us to it.”
Nothing. Not even a twitch in his jaw.
Very well. “The files listed all of the locations we’d explored, along with a few others. There were even names of rebels he’d been known to interact with, but no trace of prosecution of any of these.
“I followed the deductive process of whoever had put together the file, almost a mirror of our own, only longer and more convoluted. I guess I should have known where it’d lead—after all, we had just spent an entire week scouring its every inch.
“Before I could reach the end, the door at the entrance of the archives rattled. It was all I could do to snuff the single candle I’d lit, submerging myself and everything around me in the most absolute darkness.”