by J. D. Monroe
Not that she wanted to say it, but it felt much better. She had a high pain tolerance, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed it. And it had to be the adrenaline clouding her judgment, but there was something nice about him being so close. A patchwork of pleasant scents clung to him. There was the familiar smoky texture of the Kadirai, but also the more mundane scents of laundry detergent on his clothes, a faint, earthy musk, and the slightest hint of pizza.
When they’d first tangled, it was hardly the time to notice, but he was magnificent. He wasn’t body-builder huge like the guy who’d come in here with him, but tall and lean. From the base of his jaw to his wrists, every inch of exposed skin was covered in tattoos that resembled her own. Pale blue eyes gleamed against his coppery skin. Speckles of silver glinted in his well-groomed beard.
Her heart accelerated as she assessed the full view. Catrina had told her that the time might come that she would have to use her feminine wiles to serve the cause. Sex could be a tool. And there could be much worse things than sex with this man.
She slowly turned, glancing up at him. “Thank you,” she said meekly. As she withdrew her hand, she let her fingers trail over the back of his hand. His cool skin was surprisingly soft.
He frowned and pulled away. Shit. Seduction wasn’t part of her training. “You’re welcome,” he said as he righted the stool and sat down, putting space between them. “I’ll send for a proper bandage when I leave here. Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” she said. He reached for the large shopping bag he’d brought. After removing several colored file folders, he handed her the bag. “What’s this?” Inside, she found a a paper-wrapped bundle on top of folded clothing. She frowned and pulled the clothing out. The neatly folded jeans and black top were hers. There was even a large comb for her hair. “Where did you get this?”
“The facility,” he replied. “I thought you might want something clean.” His eyes drifted over her. “Especially now.”
Her cheeks flushed as she looked down at the blood-stained white shirt, now wet and clinging to her bra. Was this just a tactic to soften her up, or was he actually being nice? She set the clothing aside and unwrapped the paper bundle. There was a sub sandwich inside, bread baked golden and overflowing with meat and cheese. Her stomach lurched with a powerful pang of hunger. She held it without bringing it to her mouth. “Is it safe?”
“If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have already done it,” he said calmly. “I was hungry, and I figured you probably hadn’t eaten for at least as long as me.”
“What time is it?”
He checked his watch. “About seven,” he said. “You’ve been here for about thirty-six hours, if you’re wondering. Why don’t you eat while I talk?”
She took a big bite of the sandwich. “About what?”
“About the Chosen,” he said. The tiny bit of warmth she’d felt at his kind treatment evaporated. He took a large, glossy picture from one of the folders and handed it to her. It looked like a senior photo, showing a teenage boy in a polo shirt with the awkward smile and artificial head tilt that were the hallmark of school pictures. “This is Taran Edinas. He’s one of the people you had tied down in your basement.” He glanced down at the file, reading from the paper inside. “Taran is the full-blooded dragon child of two Wanderers, Nikita and Izhran, who work in real estate in New Jersey. Straight A’s in school, and a star member of the math team. Whatever that is.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“What crime did Taran commit?”
“Huh?”
“What crime did he commit?” Velati handed her a blue file folder. Inside was a copy of a school transcript, with a typed memo underneath. She skimmed it to see bullet points containing the details he’d just given her.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You told me all the people you captured and tortured—”
Guilt gripped her at the accusation. “I didn’t capture and torture them. I was guarding the house.”
“Why won’t you take credit? I thought this was justice,” Velati said. She was silent. “What crime did Taran commit?”
“I don’t know,” she said numbly. The food tasted like ash in her mouth. A hastily typed list of bullet points was hardly proof. Given a laptop and ten minutes, she could write anything she wanted about anyone.
“What about Kali Sinclair? Also known as Kahlana Cindersong,” he said. He passed her a picture of a beautiful woman with fiery red hair and brilliant green eyes. There was another memo inside the folder, but he spoke confidently without looking down. “Kali came to us from the Stormflight about two years ago. She was a model Wanderer. Very attentive in her lessons upon arriving, never raised any suspicion with the Skywatch. She figured she’d get the real American experience and moved to New York City to wait tables. Walking stereotype, but a nice girl. Her bank account shows that she barely has a penny but makes a monthly donation to a local animal shelter to feed foster kittens. Clearly she’s not abusing her power to make money, so what’s her crime?” As he spoke, he handed her the folder.
“I don’t know. No one told me,” she said. She hadn’t looked closely at the subjects, but she’d seen Kali’s fiery red hair, gleaming like a flame even though it was matted and concealed in darkness. There was no way this was true. The Chosen wouldn’t hurt innocent people.
“No one told you because it’s all bullshit,” Velati said. He held the third folder close to his body, preventing her from reading its label. “These are just normal people. They weren’t picked because they’re bad, but because they were easy targets.”
“No.”
“Yes,” he said sharply.
“You could have made all of this up,” she said, thrusting the files back at him. He didn’t lean forward to take them. “All you had to do was pull some pictures from the Internet and type up a bunch of nice-sounding notes.”
He scowled, and the air in the room went cold. A chill prickled across her skin. “So these people tell you that a sixteen-year-old boy is some dangerous monster, and you believe that? Vazredakh,” he swore. “We’re going through your files. And if we find even one shred of evidence that these people are as guilty as you say, then I’ll gladly admit I’m wrong. There’s seventeen more people upstairs in the healing ward that haven’t woken up yet. I bet their stories are just like these. Normal people who happened to attract your attention. So how does that sit with you, Melissa?”
The blood ran out of her face. She hadn’t heard that name in years. Her stomach flip-flopped, and she worried that the sandwich might make a reappearance. Velati opened the yellow folder, but never broke eye contact. Those cold blue eyes could see into her soul, could read every thought going through her mind like they were written on a page.
“Where did you heard that name?” she said blankly.
He didn’t look down at the folder. “Melissa James, attended Stapleton High School in Denver, Colorado. No documented contact with local Kadirai communities. Mother is Felicia James, a full-blooded Wanderer who arrived about fifty years ago. Birth name Fileza Thunderlash. Married a human male approximately thirty years ago, who passed in 2006. Cancer is a bitch. Sorry about your loss.”
Her blood ran cold with anger at his flippant tone. Typical of the Kadirai. Her father, warm and generous and robbed of a full life, was reduced to a human male. “That’s none of your business.”
“When you torture my people to death, yeah it is,” he said.
“I didn’t—”
“Take credit for your work, Melissa,” he said, his tone mocking. “If your cause is so righteous, then you should be proud of what you’ve done. But I think you already know deep down that what you’re doing is wrong. And that’s why you didn’t push that button.”
Her cheeks flushed. “What?”
“I watched you punch in the code,” he said. “You could have hit the button to confirm, but you didn’t. It was going to blow the house, wasn’t it?”
“You hit me before I could finish,” s
he said, voice shaking.
A faint smile played across his lips. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “You stared at the button for a solid ten seconds until I hit you. Why didn’t you push it? Was it because you didn’t want to die? Or because you didn’t want to kill all of those people?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. He rose and walked across the room slowly until he was close enough that she could have touched him. Then he crouched, so he was on her eye level, invading her personal space and trapping her with his cold gaze.
Each breath shook in her chest. He slowly slid the yellow folder into her lap, then braced his hands on either side of the stone bench, caging her in. His presence chilled her skin, but she wasn’t sure if it was the threat of danger or his unsettling words that had her so uneasy.
“I want to know who you actually are,” he said. “If you really didn’t know what they were doing, you should have a chance to make things right. I’m not asking you to give up everything you believe in this instant. But pretend this cell is an island. No one will ever know what’s going on inside here.” He touched her temple lightly, sending a jolt of sensation through her. “Maybe the reason you don’t know what any of these people did wrong is that they didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t you think if there were real, truly evil people in there, that your boss would have told you exactly what they’d done? To make sure you knew how bad they were and how important it was for you to keep the work going?”
She could only stare at him blankly.
He chuckled, though his expression was bitter. “Hell, that’s what I’d do. That’s what I’m doing right now. Only I’m telling the truth,” he said. “So just consider it. Read those files. I’ll be back in the morning to talk to you one more time, and all you have to do is tell me whether you’re interested in opening up. I’ll help you. I’ll ask the questions and you answer them. But if you decide the answer is no, then I’m done, and my friend takes over.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“No, I don’t think you are,” Velati said. He gently took her hand and traced one of the inked whorls from the crook of her elbow down to her wrist. His touch sent a shiver down her spine. Somewhere in the whirlwind of her thoughts, she heard kiss him. Seduce him. That wasn’t helping. “I know how much these hurt, so I know you aren’t afraid of pain. You might be tough enough to take it without breaking, but it’s still going to be awful. The rest of your short life will be miserable. And I’m not sure they’ll care if you tell them anything or not. After seeing what your Chosen friends did to those people in the basement, there’s a lot of angry dragons who would like nothing better than a target for all their rage.” His eyes creased as he gently clasped her injured hand. Another wave of comforting cool washed over her, numbing the throbbing pain. “I don’t want that for you.”
“You make it sound like you care about me. You don’t know me.” His grip on her hand tightened slightly.
“Why don’t you tell me? What don’t I know?” His voice was gentle, but his eyes were sharp and incisive, hunting for an opening. She simply stared back at him. “Take the night and think about what I said. Your life is in your hands now.”
And with that, he got up and left, leaving her reeling. The door slammed behind him, followed by the ominous sound of the lock securing. Though silence loomed in his wake, she could hear his question echoing in her mind.
What was his crime?
As Velati left the dungeon, the guard who’d brought the keys had the gall to ask, “Are you all right, sir?”
“I’m fine,” he snapped. A blistered welt the size of his fist peeked through a burned hole in his shirt. And the back of his head ached from its unplanned meeting with a stone wall. So much for the legendary Arik’tazhan, ambushed by a twenty-something prisoner with half her power restrained.
“Should we tell Rosak?”
“Tell him nothing,” Velati said, pausing to stare at the wide-eyed young man. “This is my business. Don’t unlock her cell for anyone but me.”
“But—”
“No one!” he roared.
The guard staggered back, nodding frantically as he straightened his gray coat. “Yes, sir.”
Ice crystals formed along his fingers, slowly creeping up his arm along the lines of his tattoos. Temper, an’kadi, he heard in his mother’s lilting voice. He shook his hand violently, flinging shards of ice to the floor.
Upstairs, the open halls of Skyward Rest were lit with a pleasant glow. Despite the cozy warmth, he was still seething. Why was he so angry? The guard was only being respectful. Not everyone here was looking for their opportunity to make a jab at him.
He was furious with himself. First, he’d been cocky, thinking some quickly assembled files and his charm would sway her. And she’d hurt him. He wouldn’t be surprised if his ribs were cracked, though he deserved it for not anticipating a move like that. If he had reacted a split second slower, she’d probably be halfway to South Carolina by now.
With a heavy sigh, he tried to release his anger, to clear it from muddling his thoughts. He’d seen this kind of thing before, and he knew it would be difficult, if not impossible to sway someone who was in this deep.
But despite her annoying insistence that he’d fabricated his files, her mask slipped when she saw Taran Edinas’s school picture. Their beliefs were diametrically opposed, but she still had a moral line that was in danger of being crossed. If he could prove the Chosen were on the wrong side of that line, maybe her whole world would come crashing down.
Unfortunately, the truth was a malleable thing in the skilled hands of the Raspolin, who sculpted it into exactly what their followers needed to hear. Velati hadn’t truly understood it until the High Empress was assassinated in the early years of the war. He wasn’t in the city then but had joined the hunt to find her killer as the city of Farath fell into chaos. Within a week, they’d discovered a cabal of once-loyal servants who had been turned against the Empress.
Velati had been tasked with interrogating Evraul, a human tailor whose family had resided in Adamantine Rise for generations. He was practically part of the royal family, with lavish suites and a generous salary to pay for the exquisite gowns he created for the Empress. He lived better than the ranking officers of the Adamant Guard.
And yet, Evraul had clothed the assassins in soldiers’ uniforms, allowing them to get close enough to the Empress to brutally murder her. He had never lifted a weapon, but her blood stained his hands as much as those who wielded the blades.
When Velati asked why he’d done it, Evraul was eerily calm. He held Velati’s gaze, unashamed of his deeds. The Empress had twisted his mind, Evraul claimed. His family should have been one of the noble houses of Farath, and Empress Rezharani had stolen that from him to make him sew for her.
Evraul would be punished regardless, but Velati was curious about his claim. He’d sought out Evraul’s family, and they’d been baffled by his story. The family had never owned land except for their humble estate in a modest district of Farath. Evraul insisted this was only further evidence of the Empress’s interference. Of course they didn’t remember. She’d taken the memory from all of them so they couldn’t even protest the theft.
Velati’s fellow soldiers had scoffed. How could Evraul believe such a ridiculous thing? But he soon discovered that this was how the Raspolin worked. They painted a veneer of beautiful lies over enough truth that one could believe them. The Empress and her predecessors had waged war in the past. They had taken some lands by force. Dragons could influence human minds, though not so much that they would forget a lifetime’s worth of memories. The fact that they were capable was enough for Evraul to believe that they had stolen everything from him.
Evraul held onto his beliefs until the very end, when his head was lopped from his shoulders before a crowd of solemn Kadirai. Velati hated Evraul for what he’d done. Rezharani’s death transformed a burgeoning conflict with the Raspolin into a bloody war that swept across the entire
continent and changed the very face of Ascavar. More than a hundred years after her death, Rezharani’s successor had still never been named, and instead, the dragonflights fractured into separate flights under headstrong queens who bickered and fought with one another. The assassination would reverberate into eternity.
But Velati pitied him too. Until the Raspolin got their claws into him, he’d been content. To serve their own violent ends, they had tainted his peaceful life and destroyed his future. It seemed they had done the same to Marlena. Perhaps there was hope to recover her before she did something so earth-shattering that it could never be redeemed.
And lest he think himself some noble savior of wayward young women, there was cold logic in his quest to lead her into the light. Marlena was an insider, and one with significant power. Turning her would add a useful weapon to their arsenal.
With his icy temper rapidly dissipating, Velati headed for the Obsidian Wing, a large barracks for those who served at Skyward Rest. Like the queens of old, Queen Valella had preserved the tradition of thivedh ofh-kadi, which roughly translated to “home for the family”. The queen’s staff were provided room and board. Velati had easily provided for his own needs during his decades of banishment, but there was still something reassuring about returning home and knowing there was a place to lay his head and a warm meal when he woke.
Built from unembellished gray stone and huge plate glass windows, the Obsidian Wing was simpler than the central palace, but still beautiful in its modest way. Sohan had acquired an apartment on the fourth floor for him. Years ago, he would have had his pick of the larger chambers on the bottom floor, but it was clear where his place was now.
In his room, he took a quick shower and changed into a clean, unburnt shirt. He groaned at the sight of his destroyed clothing. He was going to have to borrow clothes from Sohan if this kept happening. With a towel wrapped around his waist, he plopped onto the bed to check his messages. He’d left Portland in a hurry and had only glanced at his phone in passing since then.
