Page 84 of Fragile Oath

My soldiers dragged him to a chair in the center of the room, and I waited for them to strap him in before continuing.

“So, let me go ahead and lay this out for you. You are going to suffer, oh, but you are going to suffer.” I met his dark-brown eyes, fury and desperation mingling inside of me. “And afterward, when you’re gasping for breath and bleeding out on my stone floors, I will ask you some questions. And you will give me the answers, because you know exactly what I am capable of.”

Edgar swallowed, his gaze darting back and forth between me and my cousins, but they wouldn’t help him. No one would. Not when lives were on the line and we were running out of time.

Leaning over him, I spoke in a lower tone than before.

“Let’s begin.”

* * *

He brokebefore the skin on my knuckles did.

First with the location of his safe house. The soldiers had found him hiding in a tavern, but the barkeep said he hadn’t been there for long. With a location, we could potentially find others, maybe even catch some correspondence with the Viper.

It felt like the first step forward we had taken since all of this began.

“So you never personally met the Viper?” Gallagher asked.

Edgar’s eyes screwed shut, his jaw clenching tightly.

Finally, he shook his head. “No.”

“No, you never met them, or no, you refuse to answer?” I pressed, and he grimaced.

“No,” he said again, more firmly this time.

“Dammit.” Gwyn hissed the word, throwing her hands behind her head and resting them on her neck. “We are going to need you to give us something a little more substantial Edgar.”

“I don’t — I don’t know anything else,” he stammered, a far cry from the confident soldier he had been when we first walked into this room.

“You’re lying.” Gallagher’s voice was like ice. “We will give you one more chance before we call the Captain of the Guard down to finish this interrogation.”

He stepped forward, his voice far more deadly than I had ever heard it before.

“How can you live with yourself knowing that your people are responsible for the deaths of children? Of villagers who have done nothing to deserve it?” Gal took a breath, seething as he exhaled. He glanced down at his hands before meeting Edgar’s eyes again. “I am tired of wearing the blood of the innocents that your Uprising has slaughtered. You claim you want change, but there will be no kingdom left to rule if you murder all of your people.”

The man blinked, but there was a shadow of uncertainty behind his eyes, so I pressed the advantage.

“You think your family is safe just because you serve the Viper?” I prodded. “What happens when their village is next? When you aren’t there to protect them and the Viper decides they’re collateral damage, too?”

Edgar hung his head. He swallowed hard, defeat flashing across his features. Still, he stayed silent.

“Give us something,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “One thing, and we’ll give you a break. I’ll even send down something for you to eat.”

There was a long, stilted silence where I wasn’t sure if he was going to speak, until finally, he shook his head, the words so quiet I could barely make them out.

“Riverwell,” he said. “Last Tuesday, just after sunset.”

I stared at him, every muscle still, trying to process what he was saying.

“That’s the last place I met the Viper’s contact,” he added before hanging his head once again.

True to my word, I gave him a break, using the time to send word to every contact I had near there. I should have expected what came next, a crushing blow on the heels of our only real victory in weeks.

Instead, we walked out of his cell as promised. And even with Gwyn standing guard outside and Gallagher just down the hall, half an hour after we left, Edgar was dead.

* * *

---