Page 63 of A Chill in the Flame
Ophir was put out by his resolve. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why are you so ready to die? Is it because you committed both murder and treason, contributing to the loss of a woman’s life, but then didn’t benefit from her slaughter? Would you be as willing to stand down if you’d gotten…what would it have been? Riches? Titles? Tell me, Guryon.”
The gaunt man shook his head. “It wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like?” She took another step toward him.
“I wouldn’t have killed a monarch for money,” he promised, eyes searching hers. “I don’t expect you to understand. She was your sister.”
Ophir wanted to gag, but it came out as a cough. Rage rose within her. “Was! That’s right! She was!” Another step. “Tell me. Make me understand.”
To his credit, he hadn’t flinched. He hadn’t tried to run. He stared with deflated acceptance at the presence of the princess and her hellhound. “What does it matter?” he asked, his voice quiet.
Her volume surprised her as she shouted back, “Everything!” Ophir’s fists balled at her sides, glowing with the impending embers. “It means everything!”
The merchant shook his head, but she took the three remaining steps to close the space between them. Guryon was no fae. He was human, as the farmer had been. She grabbed him by the throat and forced him up. She allowed the barest edges of her flames to lick his throat. She was neither strong nor tall enough to bring him off of his toes, but she’d forced him to his feet, and he hadn’t fought.
“Just kill me,” he groaned against the blisters that were forming on his neck.
She released him with a sharp, cruel laugh. He fell to the ground, his body collapsing against the floor with the sound of potato sacks and dead meat. “Kill you!” Her eyes widened. She was growing wilder by the second, her emotions roilingwithin her. “Of course I’m going to kill you! There is no situation wherein you survive, Guryon. There is no future where in you walk out of this room. You get to decide one of two things. Are you ready to hear your options?”
He’d remained where he’d crumbled on the floor, pushed up by only one arm. Another hand came to his throat to feel the blisters she’d given him.
“The first is that we take hours, or days, or weeks to slowly maim and cauterize. I’ll call my flame each and every time you’re bitten or wounded or gored by my hound so that you don’t bleed out, ensuring you stay alive for all of it. You’ll feel every pain. You’ll beg for death, but it won’t come. You’ll wish your heart would stop coursing its blood through your body, but the fire won’t allow it. I’ll keep you alive until you tell me what I need to know. Does that sound like a good option?”
He turned his head away from her, eyes unseeing as he looked to the stones in the gloom of his room. His candle created deep, unforgiving shadows against the corners and furniture of his room. His face was half-illuminated, half-concealed by the flickering candle. The hollow spaces beneath his eyes meant nothing to her. His soul may have left him long ago, but it was time for his reckoning.
“The second is that you tell me quickly, and I will mark the pace of your information. However quickly you explain yourself is how fast I will permit your death. If you draw it out, I will match your pain step for step. If you answer with speed, so will I. Sedit can ensure you’re dead before you’ve had the chance to blink. He goes for the jugular. It’s a mercy. A kindness that you don’t deserve. A kindness that wasn’t given to Caris.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, still on the floor in his wormy cowardice.
“I don’t care!” She almost screamed. “I don’t give a fuck how sorry you are!” Her voice continued to rise until the words tore at her throat with the same angry, ragged exertionof her night terrors. “Cry for me, Guryon! Sob at my feet! Beat your chest! Tear your tunic! I feel nothing.” She bent on one knee, kneeling nearer to him. It was a move she wouldn’t have dared if Sedit hadn’t been waiting hungrily over her shoulder. “I don’t need your apologies, Guryon. I need your reasons.”
“Blood magic—”
“So, I’ve heard,” she bit. “The blood of a royal is particularly potent. Let’s pretend I know the basics. Get to it.”
He looked up at her. “It’s not just potency. It’s not money, or titles, or gifts. It’s…everything.”
Ophir’s fists flexed.
“It’s the gift of the divine, Princess Ophir. What we stood to gain from Caris was…godhood.”
She blinked, then controlled her emotions. “How?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t the leader—”
“Lord Berinth was,” she finished for him. “How did he recruit you? How did he find out that you’d be willing to sacrifice Farehold’s princess?” She raised a ball of fire, threatening the first of her blows.
“There’s a clan!” he said, raising his forearm in a cowardly flinch.
“A clan?” she demanded.
“Yes. Berinth didn’t find me, I found him! I knew there was a clan looking for how to ascend, to surpass mere humans and fae—deities, Princess Ophir. They seek to be like the old gods.”
She shook her head, uncomprehending.
“He wasn’t the first clan member.” The man babbled on. “They’ve existed all over the continent since the beginning of time. They’re in Raascot, in Farehold, in Sulgrave—it’s those who seek the power of gods.”
She lowered her fire and stared at the man beneath her. “It’s a cult?”
