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 hispossibly 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.
Andmypower 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.
When foreign arcana entered the body, the natural aether of the victim had a tendency to activate, acting almost like an immune system, attempting to expel what didn’t belong. The effects were awful on a Resonant human, and crueler still on a well-trained Conduit such as Skielg. The stronger your connection to your aether, the harder it fought to defend its host.
The effect was akin to being boiled alive. It was rather unpleasant.
“You know, I just don’t believe you,” I mused quietly, setting the parchment back down.
Our little discussion break was over.
“No. Mercy.Please,mercy—” Skielg begged, bloodshot eyes growing wide again as my hand hovered over the hilt of a dagger. “I’m tellin’ yous, I’ve never seen ’er—she’s not even ’is type!”
I arched a brow.“Whose type?”
Skielg swallowed hard, his lips thinning into a straight line before glancing back to my bloodied blades. I watched the gears turn in his head as the flesh trader finally seemed to realize that he’d been wrong. He had no protections here.
I was not so honor bound as men like him were led to believe, allowing them to sleep at night. It was beginning to dawn on this pathetic excuse for a man that not only was he not leaving this cell any timesoon, but after the confessions that had spilled from his foul mouth tonight, the likelihood of him leaving alive was slim to none.
But there are worse fates than death, and men like Skielg knew that all too well.
“My…My primary employer, sir. Main buyer, an’ all that. Big boss man don’t go for the younger things like that, ’e likes ’em a bit older, of a proper age, Iswear?—”
I scoffed. As if that would save him now.
“That so? And what else does thebig boss manlike, Selwyn? Give me details, and perhaps I’ll go easy on you. Give me a name, and maybe I’ll grant you some of that mercy you’re begging for.”
“Bit of everything,” Skielg panted, the mop of straw-colored hair plastered to his sweat-slick brow. “So long as they’re of breedin’ range. But they pay me extra for certain girls, ya know? The ones for ’is personal collection. Folks say it’s ’coz of his dead wife er some shit, but he pays real good for the older ones with long brown hair ’n pretty brown eyes.”
Ice entered my veins as my fingers curled into fists.
“What.The fuck.Did you just say?”
“He likes…the ones with…” Skielg attempted to repeat himself, but the Shadows around his neck were writhing now, tendrils starting to force their way down his throat, taking my wrath and acting on their own accord. “Brown…hair…”
Flickers of imagery passed through my mind now, unbidden and entirely unwelcome in the desecrated darkness of this space. Visions ofherwere sickening to recall within these blood-stained walls. Memories of curls of chestnut and mahogany splayed against my sheets, of bare skin and freckles, of swooning sighs?—
“Name the fucking buyer,” I snarled. “Now,Skielg.”
“Errikson,” Skielg wailed, growing panicked when a jagged blade met my palm once more. “Arturo Errikson, head of the stonemasons’ guild. Covers ’is tracks well, but I swear to ya, Iswearit’s ’im.”