Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
KIERAN
If it weren’t for the fact that I had spent my entire morning buried in the sanctity of Arken Asher’s slick thighs, I probably would have told you this was one of the worst days I’d had in months.
My cock would beg to differ, but by the time I made my descent into the dark and dismal catacombs of Sophrosyne, my restless mind had nothing left to siphon from those morning memories.
I had already bled them dry, desperately returning to those moments in my mind all godsdamned day until I’d devoured all the peace and succor they could provide.
There was no more relief left for me. Not when another Conduit had been stolen.
Her name was Jocelyn Attwood. Fifteen. One of the Studium’s youngest Conduits, taken on route from Sophrosyne to her family home in Ithreac.
Last spotted having a meal at a tavern on the outskirts of Amaranthe—just two hours south from her destination—only to be gone without a trace come morning. She had never made it home.
Fifteen.
She was only fucking fifteen.
Yet again, we had failed to protect a child. This was inexcusable.
As I approached Jeremiah and Hans, awaiting my arrival in the corridor, I kept my tone clipped. It had been a long fucking day, and the veneer that disguised my fury was wearing paper-thin.
“Status?”
“Still not talking.”
I cracked my knuckles. “Yeah, well. He will be. Soon enough.”
I had received the summons from my lieutenants shortly after wrapping up the debriefing with Commander Ka.
We had reviewed the Ithreacean Guard’s reports in-depth, as well as everything my cadre had managed to gather thus far, so that Hanjae could run the information up to High General Demitrovic and, unfortunately, the Lord of Embers as soon as possible.
While my men were spread out and scouring the streets for the multiple suspects we’d identified, I had attempted to cross-reference the reports from Ithreac with all others we’d received.
I was looking for patterns, for context, for anything—fucking anything—we might have missed. Because we had to be missing something.
Something about these disappearances just didn’t make sense. It wasn’t adding up.
At first, I was pleased when Jer’s mail sprite arrived letting me know we had multiple suspects in hand and the others would be apprehended within an hour.
We already had eyes on them. That relief quickly faded when I read on, realizing this wasn’t just an update, but a request for backup.
They were calling me in for interrogation support against one of the accused.
Selwyn fucking Skielg.
I was familiar with this slippery bastard. I had been building a dossier on him for months now.
Lauded as one of the most respected dealers of jewelry and fine art in Atlas, Selwyn Skielg had friends in high places.
He was well known to the noblesse as their favorite rags-to-riches story—their token example to point and claim: “Surely, anyone could acquire the wealth and power we were born with. If only these poor peasants would just try hard enough!”
Because Skielg was said to be a self-made man, the second son of a lowly farmhand who had made his way to Sophrosyne to study Earth arcana.
In just a few short years of study, Selwyn had grown adept enough in his craft to set off on a new business venture, hunting down the rarest veins of ore and precious gemstones throughout the Red Valleys of Ithreac.
But in the Shadows, whispers suggested that his obscene wealth had been both built and bolstered by the Atlassian black markets. A flesh trader, if reports were to be believed.
When I took apart Alistair Corvus’ mind piece by piece last year, Skielg was amongst the accomplices named, which put him under our surveillance.
Unfortunately, the bastard was smarter than he looked, and we had yet to catch him in the act.
And like his friend Alistair, Skielg had been placed at the scene of the crime, confirmed by not one but two separate informants, yet he claimed to have no memory of the Conduit he stood accused of snatching from the streets.
Even under the skillful inquisition of my cadre, the wealthy tradesman had given up nothing, which was both atypical and concerning. They were very well-trained, after all. I’d made sure of it.
But on these very rare occasions where my men failed to produce the results needed to get the job done, that was where I came in.
As I rolled my neck and straightened my spine, I wished I could say I took no pleasure in what I was about to do.
I wished I could say I felt no sense of anticipation or purpose as I set my jaw, Jeremiah and Hans rattling off the details of everything they knew, everything they’d learned thus far—which, again, was a whole lot of nothing.
I wished I could tell you my skin wasn’t buzzing, that I wasn’t about to enjoy this.
But if I could speak such pleasantries into truth, I wouldn’t be the man my cadre had to summon when interrogations went south.
I wouldn’t be the last-ditch effort before turning to the Aetherborne and requesting the assistance of the Overseer himself.
And I wouldn’t be known as the penultimate nightmare: the one called in to do what the others couldn’t stomach.
I nodded along with a touch of impatience as my men concluded their summaries, spinning one dagger between fingers before sliding it back into the holster at my hip.
“Alright. Thank you. That’s all I need to know,” I informed them, cracking my knuckles again as I spoke.
“Hans, I want you to monitor the other interrogations. Darcy is still a bit green and may need support. Jer, keep an eye on Quinn and wait for news from Ana?s on the last of these fuckers, but stay close. I’ll call you in if you’re needed. ”
It was vehemently against the protocol of the Elder Guard to conduct this sort of interrogation on your own.
In truth, it was against protocol to conduct this sort of interrogation at all: we were oath and honor bound to the Aetherborne and their stances of neutrality, peace, and due process.
The Elders did not approve the use of force or violence to mete out justice within their city-state… but High General Demitrovic did.
Still, even the general’s standards demanded a second body in the room any time a foreign prisoner was detained, for obvious reasons.
My lieutenants, knowing better, simply stood aside and let me go to work.
The damp air had grown thick and heavy with the scent of blood and Shadows. Over an hour deep into this interrogation, and Selwyn Skielg had not yet broken.
It had only taken a matter of minutes to get the leering, grotesque-looking bastard talking, at least. One look at me and the coward started rattling off names of co-conspirators so fast it was laughable—my reputation preceded me, especially among his ilk.
But most of the bullshit he’d spewed at the start was false—the sort of confessions that those as vile as he practiced and memorized to cover their asses, should they ever get caught.
And so, I got to work.
I had carved a great deal of useful information out of my pound of Skielg’s flesh thus far—details that would prove invaluable to my cadre’s private efforts.
But every time we returned to the subject matter at hand, my prisoner’s eyes went blank, acting as though he had no idea what I was talking about.
An hour was a very long time to spend in these catacombs, and even I had my limits. Skielg was pushing them.
Both of my daggers were still dripping with blackening blood as I set them down on the table beside me, flexing and cracking both wrists and my knuckles before reaching for the sheet of parchment that my lieutenants had left behind.
Let’s try this again, shall we?
“When did you last see this girl, Skielg?” I asked, shoving the illustration of the fifteen-year-old Earth Conduit beneath his possibly broken nose. Probably broken. Definitely broken. “This one in particular.”
It was either arrogance or delirium that left the prick smiling through broken teeth, and at this point, I didn’t care which one it was—it made my blood boil all the same.
“Aw, thas’ a pretty one right there,” the sick fuck replied.
Despite the macabre grin, his voice was a thin and ragged wheeze beneath the ever-tightening grips of my arcana. Shadows swirled around his neck like ropes of smoke, loose enough to let him speak.
“Woulda been a great mark fer certain buyers, thas’ for sure, but I already told yer lot: Ain’t never seen the bitch in my life. Wish I had, woulda made me some good coin, but I can’t help ya.”
This stubborn bastard had stamina, I’d give him that.
I let the Shadows around his throat tighten their grip, disguising my disgust and contempt with a much more effective display of casual, cruel disinterest. To draw the truth out of evil men, you had to meet them on common ground.
They spilled their secrets much faster if they thought you were one of their own: a soulless husk with no regard for life or death or any manner of morality—only power.
And my power left Selwyn Skielg choking on his own tongue.
My gaze flickered over his gaunt frame, now slumped forward as his bleeding chest heaved with haggard, shallow breaths.
Dark runes littered the skin across his bare arms, chest, and stomach, carved into his flesh by my own hand.
The cuts were shallow enough that only a modest amount of blood was pooling beneath him, but it wasn’t the lacerations themselves that did the most damage.
It was the forbidden spellwork that came after—the way those runes allowed me to force my Shadows into his blood, his ligaments, his bones.