Page 16 of Forgotten Arcane

“We’ll have to see if we can arrange for you to go to the Draconian house and pack up the rest of your stuff,” Reed says.

“It shouldn’t be too much of an issue. After everything that has happened, Ty is firing them, and they’ll lose the house too. I should imagine that they will also be in for questioning about Kylen and all the shit he pulled,” Doc adds.

Coen shakes his head and shrugs, “It won’t be a problem either way. That’s all I own.”

Everyone stops and stares at Coen in silence.

“That’s everything?” Evander asks, and Coen nods, “What happened to all of your stuff from the dorm? You had more things than all of us.”

Shadows fill Coen’s eyes, “I don’t know. I guess they gave it all away?”

“You’re fucking joking,” River explodes. “That cunt didn’t even let you take your shit with you? I swear if you hadn’t killed him already, I would have loved to have taken him apart piece by fucking piece, in the most painful way, with some of my most inventive and painful torture methods.”

“That’s so fucking hot,” I mutter.

River’s eyes switch from murderous to heated, several of the other guys have a similar look, and Coen chuckles.

“Oh, yeah. You fit better than I ever could have imagined,” he grins.

“Trouble,” Doc smirks, shaking his head, his eyes briefly flashing gold.

I shrug, and then immediately frown, “What happened to what you get paid from SID, or your stuff at the Keep?”

“Kylen kept my wage, and I haven’t been back to the keep for a few years. Draith wouldn’t have thrown anything away though,” Coen replies, looking hopeful that he still has some things somewhere.

I shake my head, “No, you’re right, he wouldn’t have. He’s been missing you, too.”

“Fucking hell,” Evander fumes. “We’ll get this all straightened out, man. We’ll make sure that the rest of the Draconian team don’t get away with their parts in what happened.”

“I’m good with that, for everyone but Fetrick,” Coen replies. His reply doesn’t shock me as much as it probably should. Coen goes on to explain, “Fetrick was under a similar control to me, it was a ring for him . . .”

I interrupt, “That’s why you took Kylen’s hand off and crushed it.”

Coen’s eyes widen slightly, “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you caught that, even though you had been shot.”

“Nope,” I reply. “Sorry, I interrupted you.”

Coen smiles, “I don’t mind. Yeah, so as Neith noticed, I crushed the ring when I killed Kylen. His control was more orders and stuff, not like my orders were, and Kylen didn’t like to torture him.”

“Fuck man,” Ransom curses, anger and sadness swimming in his eyes.

Coen nods, but breezes past it, “I actually had no idea that he was being controlled in a similar way to me.”

“Wait, he was with Kylen on the first day of the academy, wasn’t he?” Raiden asks.

Coen nods, “Yep. He’s been stuck with Kylen for a long fucking time.”

“We can’t leave him to the same fate as Jamie and Rupert. I’m assuming that they weren’t controlled?” I ask.

Coen shakes his head, “No. Rupert and Jamie both had the same views and opinions that Kylen did. Rupert would occasionally go against him, but it was rare, and Jamie looked up to him and did everything he said without question.”

“I got that impression from him,” Doc agrees.

“I knew there was something about Fetrick that wasn’t sitting quite right. It didn’t feel like he was a threat to us, but like something else was going on,” I add.

Coen frowns slightly, “To be honest, out of all of them, he was the nicest to me. That’s not saying much, he avoided me as much as he could, but if I saved his life, he did say thank you, so that counted in my book.”

“Neith’s right,” Raiden adds. “Fetrick doesn’t deserve to lose his job as well.”

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