Page 48 of Oracle of Ruin

From behind us, a soft grunt and the singing of a blade disturbs the stillness of the forest. Our fifth set of footsteps reappear, something dragging behind them.

Kya drops the man’s bound body at my feet, not so much as a stray hair out of place on her head. The man’s skin is littered with small, deliberate cuts and bruises—just enough to subdue, not enough to gravely injure or kill. He never stood a chance.

“Found him stumbling around behind us. He wears Mavis’s colors, but look.” She crouches down and pulls his head up by his hair. Torin winces at the man’s pained moans, but my gaze goes straight to his eyes. His pupils have shrunk to be nearly invisible.

“It’s dark,” Blaine notes and I nod. They should be dilated, even slightly.

“She’s gotten better control over her blinding. She didn’t burn his eyes out of his socket this time,” Kya notes offhandedly.

With a snarl, I bring the heel of my boot down on his hand and grind it into the dirt. Mavis’s soldier howls, the dismal sound mixing with the symphony of his snapping bones.

It has been nearly a month since Vera was taken and the man is in rough shape already. He shouldn’t be alive, but almost as if a sick gift from the gods, he is. Crusted blood around his mouth and fingertips tells me it was not so much gods that let him live and more so an unlucky rodent and a tad bit of fortune on his end.

“Bring him in for questioning.” My voice is cold and I can see the moment he recognizes it. The one voice you never want to hear while wearing Mavis’s colors.

Torin and Blaine shoulder his body and drag it towards our makeshift safehold.

“Kya?”

The assassin pulls a small dagger from her bodice and flicks the blade with a wicked smile. “With pleasure, boss.”

Chapter23

Rowan

By the time we reach the basement, Kya has made quick work of tying our prisoner to an old dining room chair. A thin sheen of sweat already coats his forehead, his face pale and bruised. He must have been wandering in circles since they took Vera, her gift of blindness prohibiting him from ever getting far enough to hope for a rescue.

Now he can die alone, gutted by my assassin like the pig he is.

“You’re a foot soldier, right? So you’ve encountered the Kijova and seen firsthand what happens to traitors in Mavis’s ranks. I can assure you, if you do not answer my questions, all that will seem like child’s play.”

“I don’t fear you.”

A dry laugh. “Fear me? No, darling, Iamfear. If you walk away from this—which you won’t—you’d spend your whole life dodging every shadow and sleeping with your eyes open, knowing I could be anywhere and you’d never know. Tell me where she is.” Her voice drops to a sultry timbre. “Or I’ll have you screaming, making sounds you didn’t even know you could make.”

The lines between pain and desire blur so seamlessly when the blade is in her hand. Those words could carry a different sort of weight coming from those painted lips at another time.

“You’ve taken someone I love, and you’re going to tell me where to find her.” Kya runs her finger across our prisoner’s jaw, scratching him lightly with her nail. “Your boss has been sending her back to us in pieces. Why don’t we take a note from her book? I believe she started with a finger.”

Her eyes narrow, and in an instant, a sickening snap resounds in the small room as she bends his finger back just too far. With serpentine precision, she strikes so quickly, all we can see is the flash of her blade as it slices clean through the joint.

The man isn’t finished screaming by the time Kya holds it up, the flesh still warm. She fakes a pout and taps the dagger against her lip. “You moved,” she whines. “Now it’s not nearly as pretty as Vera’s. Let’s try again.”

She takes another and immediately staunches the bleeding with an alcohol-soaked gauze. His screams rattle through the floorboards, the vibrations shooting up my legs from the soles of my feet.

He spits a bloody glob at her, just barely missing her pretty face. “You bitch!”

“Laei, at least try to be original. You’ve been calling us that for years now,” she purrs. “Still not ready to talk? Mavis sent us teeth and fingernails, but you’ll need your teeth to talk.”

Committing torture and watching it have always been two separate skill sets for me. When I’m holding the blade, Iamthe blade. I don’t think, I just cut until there is nothing between me and the cool metal in my hand. Watching is the personal part. Standing and waiting. How do I usually hold my hands? Where do I look? I settle for letting my eyes roam the room.

I can guess what type of person the innkeeper was just by looking at this basement, and suddenly, all guilt for ruining his rooms disappears from my conscience.

Kya’s cuts on the man are precise. They bleed little and cause enough pain that the man is writhing when he hears her approach. She flicks her braid over her shoulder and selects a small, curved blade. Personal and wicked.

Blaine and I stay confined to the shadows while Amír watches the door from outside. The little light in the room gravitates towards Kya. She shines along with her blades as she painstakingly slides her knife beneath the man’s fingernail. Just a bit more pressure and it pierces the sensitive skin beneath. He grits his teeth against a scream and I let out a low whistle.

Blaine’s jaw clicks as it sets and his teeth grind against the sound of metal slicing through flesh. The man’s fingernail comes clean off.

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