Page 17 of Omission

Myself, I’ve tried to keep my people at ease and the bloodshed to a minimum, until you touch someone I love. That’s when the magic beneath my skin—the Moore blood in my veins heats—and I can no longer control the impulse to kill. Because it’s there, just under control at all times. As king, I lead by example, more so as many of the surviving members of my coven have lived through the horrors of a massacre or the subjugation by those they trusted until my sisters saved them.

Moreover, those scars remain.

A century is nothing when compared to the memories ingrained into their beings.

What all witches and warlocks have endured to regain the sense of peace stolen by those led by greed and perverse needs. I made promises to rule fairly and stand by them. To protect my people, and that includes their mental health.

To end every and any threat that stands in my way, and right now, as I walk into the detention center where the two warlocks are being kept—cloaked by my powers—I find myself giving into those baser needs.

Earlier today, I found myself being tested.

I’ve also made peace with the fact I’m not so righteous after all, and have more in common with a bloodthirsty beast than I’d realized. Because I can taste it. I want their screams and agony. Their desperate pleas for the forgiveness I will never grant, and nothing else will suffice as I listen to their whispers from my place just a few feet from them. From where they sit completely unaware of my presence.

“We need to get out of here? This isn’t what I agreed to,” the blond, a warlock with ancient markings on his right arm—something akin to tattoos on his skin—whispers while the other man nods. He’s older than he appears, more than my hundred and fourteen years, and it’s in those lines embedded in his skin by charcoal ink that I’m able to decipher his possible age. The ritualistic symbols give away his origin.

The lines begin at just above the inside of his wrist and stop at the crook of his elbow, from thin to thickest, yet at the very center there’s an all-seeing eye with long, well-pronounced lashes. This is the old marking for seers, though he’s not one himself—of that, I’m sure.

Maybe it’s an homage being paid. Or the wish for protection. However, what I’m most intrigued about is the iris, or lack of definition of one; the entire eye is black as midnight with not a single hint of a highlight or the white of a cornea to be found. Like a demon or shifted being, this is the eye of someone giving control to their other side.

It’s also done to be feminine: maybe a deity’s eye?

The entire piece holds a delicate touch. As if it’s done with love.

How peculiar.

He’s easily over two hundred years old, that much is clear to me, and from the Genoa region—a city not far from the French border and with an easy access point for the fae ruler. There are no covens there, all having moved away under threat of persecution and none ever returned, having settled closer to the San Lucido coast or these royal lands.

“I agree. Something isn’t right.” His companion is younger and looks rougher around the edges, too—a wanderer. And while there’s nothing wrong with that—I respect the nomad lifestyle and the need to explore—there’s something about him, the warlock, that rubs me wrong. “We should’ve been picked up by now. She said it’d be four days max…”

He trails off when the sound of glass shattering splinters the calm they’d falsely believed in, the loud crash reverberating against each wall on this floor. It’s coming from another unit, much like this one, that we use for questioning. Of the two, this one is the most restrictive with only one exit.

For a few minutes after, both men look shaken, quiet and pensive, but then there’s a shift in the older witch's expression. Anger now. His breathing is labored. “Are you sure we weren’t screwed over by a pretty fae, Flavio? That this wasn’t part of the plan?” It’s a low hiss grit out from between clenched teeth while he runs a tired hand down his face. In a normal setting, he’d appear about forty, but the dirt and lack of proper nutrition are making him appear gaunt. A weak warlock. “When are we getting paid again? Have you seen any of the money promised?”

“Don’t start, Angelo. The instructions were simple when you agreed.” An exasperated sigh comes from who I now know as Flavio. His head tilts back then and he stares at the ceiling for a minute or two, almost leisurely, but then his head snaps down and he leans forward. Closer to his mate. “Don’t pin this on me—you knew the risk involved, cousin, when you agreed, balls deep inside her warm cunt while I took her ass. No sense in panicking now. We need to find a way out unscathed and then find that saucy fae.”

“How? They have us under lock and key.”

“Do they?” Flavio raises his arms and smirks. Where they are now is more of an interrogation space, just a table and a few chairs inside and they’re sitting opposite each other. No restraints. The doors aren’t closed. “Seems we are free to go if we’re careful about it.”

Angelo’s shaking his head, hands clenching atop the table. “It can’t be that easy.”

“Sometimes things in life are.”

Since their capture, Flavio acted as the most drugged lunatic out of the two, someone completely outside of his faculties and consumed—afraid of his own shadow as if they were hallucinations until earlier today. That’s when the game changed; my guards still believed them to be under some sort of unexplained influence when they caught him snorting a powdery substance.

The werewolf king was right: too many coincidences become intentional.

It wasn’t a human drug they confiscated—we have no idea how they manage to conceal it under our noses either—but this drug isn’t one I’m familiar with. Aware of. It’s the color of dirt and smells of rotted fruit, yet when they brought the small bag containing the substance to me shortly after I’d hung up with Xadiel, I understood both him and Theodore like never before.

Both men miraculously are awake and aware after days of pretending, found talking before being moved, and now they sit opposite each other on metal chairs with a table between them made of the same material. It also reeks in there, the stench of fear hitting my nose while I pass the two guards on duty.

Both men came here willingly. Too complacent, and they were imbecilic to do so.

To talk freely where anyone could hear them. With today’s technological advances, I could be watching and listening from anywhere.

“Fucking dumbass.” They couldn’t hear me when I was invisible, nor could they sense me. Flavio and Angelo had been in neighboring cells until a short while ago, sleeping side by side in rooms with bars instead of walls. No glass. Not much in the name of separation. Just like now, I’ve given them no reason to believe there’s more to this than my concern.

Because the Wiccan king must take care of his people without question, and it’s my honor to do so.

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