Page 116 of Gift from the Wing

“Ah, of course. I have a solution for that, though,” I say as I let a devilish smirk cross my face.

“Bring Keeper to my torture room so he can remove this rune,”I tell the dragon, and his dark chuckle morphs my smirk into a full-fledged smile.

I don’t say anything else. I let my stare linger on Darstein, making him fidget uncomfortably in his chair. Only once I hear the knock at the door do I let a sinister chuckle bubble out of me.

“Gentlemen, thank you for joining us,” I say mockingly as I swing the door open wide.

“N-No. How?” Darstein stutters, his bravado completely falling apart as Draken walks in, then moves to the side for Keeper.

“Darstein. You’re looking…well, as you always do. The sniffling is more obvious without the Summum-Master around, though.”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Darstein murmurs, seemingly shell-shocked, and Keeper looks at him like he’s lost his mind.

“I see you’ve not moved up any further into his good graces if he didn’t even bother to tell you I was freed from the forest. What did you do this time to piss him off?”

Well, I must say, this entire exchange has piqued my interest. Keeper brings up a very valid point and I intend to get the answer to his question, but first things first, we have aPerfecta Animato save.

“We can play catch-up in a moment. We need to figure out what we can about the injection,” I say sternly.

Wordlessly, both Draken and Keeper step up to Darstein, not bothering to give him a heads-up about what’s going to happen. He knows by the way he’s already screaming and thrashing around like a beached fish.

As soon as Keeper removes the dagger from beneath his waistband and presses the tip of it to Darstein’s head, the entire rune reveals itself and I whistle low. The marking is massive. It stretches from the arch in one of his brows to the other. This scum must have unyielding loyalty to that piece of shit despite the disregard the Summum-Master has toward him.

I watch in silent fascination as Keeper repeats the same process he did on Layton, although way less gentle, and Draken isn’t attempting to flood him with happiness.

After the outline is complete and the rune begins to fade, Keeper finishes it off by adding his blood to the Reservoir gem. Darstein knows his time is now coming to an end, and when the hissing of the blood boiling stops, he chokes on a sob.

Pathetic.

“How you’ve had the stomach to do the things you do but can’t handle this is astonishing,” Keeper says, shaking his head.

“Anything I’ve ever done has been in the name of science.”

I chuff and roll my eyes at that ridiculous excuse. “I’ll explain why you’re wrong in a moment. First, explain to me what it was that you injected Oakly with and how we fix it.”

A smirk tips his lips upward and as I go to step toward him, quicker than I can follow, the dragon has his head snapping to the side from the force of his punch.

Gripping his most likely broken jaw, Draken forces his eyes to meet his. “Smile at the prospect of what you’ve done to my Primary’s sister and I’ll rip your lips from your fucking face.”

“I…I…there is no way to fix that,” Darstein bubblers.

There’s a fix for everything.

“The name of the injection. The ingredients. Its purpose. Everything. Now,” I bark, and command hundreds of small shadow needles to stab into his chest. He howls in pain, and I grab a handful of them, then snatch them out. “I’ll pull one out for every piece of information. The longer you take, the more I add and the bigger they’ll get. This is my one compromise. Pick your torture wisely.”

“Okay, okay,” he screams and I pull out another.

Just as he goes to open his mouth again, another knock at the door sounds, and Draken bounds over to get it. I sense Tillman’s heavy-ass booted steps without even turning around. The turbulence rolling through him is enough to shake the entire foundation below.

“Anything?” he asks.

“Doctor dickhead is about to tell us all about the injection now,” Draken growls, shooting Darstein a look of warning.

Tillman’s eyes take on their telling glow as he begins sifting through everything he can on his own. The longer he stares, though, the more his brows crease.

That can’t be good.

“Explain. Now,” he orders, pulling out of Darstein’s mind. On my left, Keeper pulls out his little black book that he likes to keep with him and a pencil, readying to make the list of everything. No doubt sensing we’re going to need that.

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