Radiant's Honor (Founders Series Book 2)

by Mari Dietz

  “Yeah, he should put that on his list of qualifications: good at skinning humans,” Vic growled.

  Kai sighed. “Let’s get this over with. This will be one less reason for Landon to bother you.” So Kai was aware of some of Landon’s harassment.

  “Like it’s any of that jerk’s business.” Vic pulled back her hair. “Make it quick.”

  Since they’d lost GicCorp’s money, Nyx needed to pull in more mogs to do important things, like eat. However, in the last couple of days, they’d noticed a large drop in mogs in their territory. The reapers were getting restless. Fewer people changing into mogs was good, but Vic didn’t think that was the issue.

  Kai pushed the red-hot brand against Vic’s neck, and she hissed. Tears ran down her cheeks. He quickly pulled the brand back, and Bomrosy placed a bandage over the wound. The mark cooled instantly. Hopefully, in a few days, she could take it off.

  “Do we need to make a slight scar for her injury?” Bomrosy asked.

  Vic glared. “Do you want to torture me? Why do we have to go that far for Landon?”

  “He’s strangely interested in you,” Kai replied. Bomrosy had said something to that effect earlier. “He suspects something happened to Xiona.” Kai plunged the brand in the bucket of water next to the flames to cool it and hung it up on the wall. “Bomrosy, you’re keeping Xiona at my place? I’m thinking that isn’t safe.”

  Bomrosy helped snuff out the fire. “Where do you want to keep her? In the cells?” She folded her arms. “What she did was wrong, but she had good intentions.”

  “Yeah, killing others. Very good.” Vic understood having a blind spot for someone, but Bomrosy needed to wake up. If Kai knew Bomrosy had brought Xiona into the building, his head might explode. She hoped Bomrosy didn’t do something like that again. Kai had enough to worry about. Vic lightly felt her neck, and it throbbed.

  Kai waved his hand, tired of the argument. “Fine, just make sure she stays there.” Bomrosy and Vic exchanged a glance. He walked to her and lightly touched her arm. “If it’s too painful, you can stay in tonight.” He ran a finger along the edge of her bandage.

  Vic gripped his hand. “I’ll survive.”

  They stood there, and Vic didn’t feel the pain as much.

  “Should I leave so you two can make out?” Bomrosy arched her brow.

  Vic dropped his hand, and Bomrosy snickered. Kai glared at Bomrosy, and they all walked out of the room, only to find the reaper in question waiting: Landon.

  He had his usual air of self-importance. With his dirty blond hair slicked back, he must have come from the showers. He squinted at the three of them, frowning as usual. “What are you doing in there?”

  “Having a threesome,” Vic deadpanned.

  Landon’s eyebrows shot up, and Bomrosy burst into laughter.

  Kai stepped forward. “Did you need something, Landon? And do we need a repeat of our last meeting?”

  Landon paused but took a small shuffle back. “No. We’re ready to patrol. Do you want me to keep rotating among the other groups?”

  Kai shook his head. “No, stick with your normal group. I’ll keep the rotations this week.”

  Vic thought Kai should rest, but the change in leadership had made everyone restless, and he wanted to be there for the reapers to reassure them everything was fine.

  Landon’s eye flickered, but he said nothing. As they walked away, he eyed the door they’d come out of. Kai didn’t want Landon complaining to all the reapers. He’d gotten reports that Landon was questioning his leadership because he favored Vic. She didn’t want to make his leadership harder, so she tried to stay away from him, but she missed him and wished he would hunt with them tonight.

  At her shop, Bomrosy waved goodbye and went inside. They paused at the entrance of the Order to meet with their team.

  Around the corner, Ivy and Freddie waited with their backs to them, pointing at the board. Ivy turned around at that moment. Her light brown hair framed her face. Most might think Ivy’s short stature would not make her a good reaper. They’d quickly rethink that if they ever saw her take out a mog. Her black reaper clothing fit her like a second skin, and her plump lips and long lashes added to the cuteness of her round face. Her wide whiskey eyes took in everything around her. Freckles graced her rosy skin. When she cocked her hip, Vic prepared for a lecture.

  “Next time, let me fight Landon. Maybe we’ll get out of the sewers.” Ivy nudged Freddie.

  Freddie scratched his shaved head, and his eyes softened when he looked down at Ivy as she bounced around. Where she was small and curvy, he was a solid giant. In one battle last week, he’d thrown Ivy at a mog, helping her take it out from above. The man was taller than Kai’s six feet. Vic had run into him once and thought she’d broken her nose. His thick muscles flexed under his ebony skin. Freddie loved to cut the sleeves off his reaper shirts to show off his muscles to Ivy. Vic felt her spirits lift at their cuteness. On the outside, they were perfect opposites.

  They worked well together, and Vic loved being on the same team. They weren’t part of Landon’s agenda. It reminded her that she wasn’t as alone as she thought. They stayed positive, even though they’d gotten stuck with her. Maybe she wasn’t part of the community because of her own lack of effort?

  “I’ll leave you here. Stay safe and dry,” Kai said.

  Vic nudged him. “Are you sure you don’t want to join in on the fun?”

  Kai backed away to another group of four reapers in the entrance. “Sorry, commander duties and all that. You know how it is.”

  Ivy stayed in her lecture stance. “You can’t avoid the sewers forever, boss.”

  Kai laughed and saluted Ivy. He had to keep monitoring them all for morale. He trusted them the most, so he didn’t hunt with them as often.

  They joined the other teams on sewer duty. The entire purpose was to track humans who went down into the dark to change into a mog. If they were lucky, they caught them in time, but most of the time, at the end of the tracks, a mog waited for them.

  The blight swirled in the night sky. Tonight, it faded from blood red to yellow as it drifted in the sky. Vic took a deep breath, enjoying the fresh air while she could. They reached the entrance of the sewer, and one by one they covered their noses and mouths with masks and placed their eyepieces over their eyes. The blight would glow brighter in the dim light of the sewers. The eyepiece also helped them see mogs before they jumped out of the sewage.

  Ivy nudged Vic and jumped down after Freddie. The smell already seeped through her mask. Vic swallowed and followed them into the dark sewer.

  2

  Vic

  Vic didn’t want to become used to the sewer, but in the last couple of weeks, they’d grown familiar. Verrin’s sewers remained the oldest structures in the city. She still worried about losing her way in the cavernous, maze-like tunnels. The more modern piping in the city above carried the waste down here and then to the swamp. On scorching days, the smell from the massive sewers rose up, and people would complain about how the city needed to restructure the sewers. Imbs would go down to clean the stone and push the waste through, but nothing permanent ever happened.

  Greenish slime coated the stone, and some paths crumbled into the lazy river of waste headed to the treatment area. Apparently, everything remained on an incline to keep things moving. Water mixed in with the waste, but it didn’t help the smell.

  Even though the reapers sanitized and cleaned themselves after every trip, Vic swore she could smell the putrid stench coming from her skin for hours. As the reapers entered, the ticking sound of rat claws skittered away from them in the dark.

  She paced herself behind her team. The shuffling steps of reapers and drips of—hopefully—water echoed in the tunnels. Team by team, they branched off from one another. Most sewer mogs were freshly turned, so reapers could handle one by themselves, but they never stayed more than shouting distance from their teammates.

  Vic breathed through her mouth and waved at her te
am. She went first, so for this tunnel, she would run the farthest while Freddie and Ivy kept pace behind her a shout away. Once they finished their segments, they could get out of here. Since there were only three of them, it would take longer if they searched together. It saved energy by having only one of them run the full tunnel at once. They traded off after each tunnel.

  She held her scythe to the side, still folded up. She scanned the water for any reddish glow of blight. Her heartbeat remained steady as she ran through the glow of the tunnel light. The rats the mogs had left alive stayed out of her path. The team’s footsteps faded away, and she smiled behind her mask. These days, only running made sense to her. The tension in the Order had everyone feeling stifled and on edge.

  There were many footprints left in the muck on the pathway. Either it had been a while since the steps had washed away, or a lot of traffic had happened recently. It would be impossible to track any individual human from the mass of footprints. She rubbed her neck, already tired from looking down. It was easier to track mogs or corrupted humans after a fresh rain. They might not find any people tonight using their usual methods.

  As the thought crossed Vic’s mind, a loud plop sounded in the distance. Something larger than a rat. Her gaze shot right, across the lovely river of sewage. In the shadows, a tall figure froze. Dressed and masked all in black, they didn’t glow, so Vic hadn’t noticed them in the dim light. They might be a reaper in the wrong territory or a freelancer. Either way, they shouldn’t be here. They stared at each other, then the figure darted down the tunnel.

  “That isn’t suspicious at all.” Vic gritted her teeth and chased them from the other side of the sewage river. “If I need to cross the feces river, I will kill someone,” she huffed. If she got lucky, she’d find a bridge to cross, but there weren’t many.

  A crossroads appeared ahead, and she groaned as they ran left, veering farther away from her. They would soon be out of sight. Vic stopped and bit her tongue. She took one step into the river. With no rain, it wasn’t deep, and her sealed boots would keep the waste out as long as it didn’t go over the top. She navigated over the flowing sewage as fast as possible, but she didn’t want it to splash up on her pants. She dry-heaved as something solid touched her ankle and continued down the river. With a quick thanks that it hadn’t rained in a while, she crawled over the edge on the other side. She ran down the tunnel. Her boots dripped excess water from the surface. The figure disappeared down the tunnel, and Vic pumped her legs to catch up with them.

  This side tunnel only had a small stream, making it easy to hop over. Reapers rarely went this deep into side tunnels. There weren’t enough reapers to cover all this ground. Her mind raced with who this could be. Imbs were off duty. And why would another reaper run away if they weren’t doing something bad?

  Too well, she remembered those days of trying to get by without an Order’s support.

  She peered ahead to catch a glimpse in the darkness. Then, from the shadows, something plowed into her side. She swore as she sprawled on the ground and her folded scythe clattered away. Her exposed skin scraped against the muck and stone. She rolled to face her attacker, and a wooden staff clanked on the ground where her head had been. She flinched and struggled to regain her footing as the hooded figure approached. Her back hit the wall, and the silent figure swung again. She dove around their legs and jumped back to her feet. Before they could turn around, she slapped the side of their head, causing them to stumble.

  Vick kicked out the back of their knees, and they hit the ground. She didn’t have time to get her weapon. As she went to knee them in their side, they raised their elbow, blocking her. Her knee smarted from the contact.

  The hooded figure swept their legs under her as they swung around to face her. She jumped over their legs. Their movements were clunky, even robotic. To her right, she saw something long and grabbed it. The slime made it slippery, but she had some reach now. She shoved forward to keep them down. They raised their arms, blocking the blows aimed from their head. She reached too far back, leaving an opening, and they punched up, hitting the side of her knee.

  She scrambled to block the next hit. They pushed up to their feet, and with their longer staff, the hooded figure shoved her back. Vic stepped back to steady herself, but only found air as she fell back into the muck. Her back hit the stone wall, and she gasped for air. The figure froze, then ran off.

  “Yeah, you better run!” Vic groaned as her back twinged. She used her unfamiliar weapon to push out of the sludge. Careful not to further hurt her back, she bent side to side, testing the damage. It hurt, but she could function. She shivered as the air hit her wet clothing. The raw sewage smell snuck under her masked face, and she avoided looking down at her coated body. In her hand, she held a long object. It was a bone. She dropped it and went to wipe off her hand, but she didn’t have any clean place left.

  “I hope that wasn’t human.”

  Mogs hungered for fresh meat, and they sometimes ate those in transition.

  She took in the stone walls. Spiders skittered across the lamps, casting strange shadows.

  “Where did I end up?”

  In the fight, she’d gotten turned around. Vic checked the ground, but there were multiple footprints down this path. Everything looked the same.

  “I came from that way, maybe?” She groaned and started walking. Her back throbbed with each step. It didn’t take her long to come across another branch in the sewer, but it wasn’t the major line. “Blight, I went the wrong way.”

  She needed to get back before her team started to worry about her. She already made their lives harder by being down in the sewers every night.

  The tunnel marker had a different number, followed by two waves. She’d ended up in Boreus territory. She turned to go back, but a shallow voice stopped her.

  “It’s you.”

  Vic poked her head back out into Boreus’s tunnel and blinked. “Tristan?”

  Her fingernails bit into her palms as she clenched her fists. Tristan leaned against the sewer walls. His arm covered his waist, and he sat in the sewer tunnel as if nothing was wrong. His normally sleek light brown was a disheveled mess. A ghost had more color than he did, but the stark ice-blue eyes still held their fierceness.

  Vic stared at the GicCorp founder heir who had helped take her sister away. Her attacker had a smaller build than him. Tristan also had more injuries than she’d inflicted on the masked person. She couldn’t tell if blood or muck stained his expensive black suit. Whatever it was, it was his problem now. She turned to leave.

  “Wait.”

  Her back stiffened. “I have nothing to say to you.”

  A quiet laugh echoed in the silent sewers. “I find myself in a position where I may need help out of here.”

  “You got down here. Get yourself out,” Vic spat. She faced him, and her arms shook as she held them at her sides. The future leader of GicCorp looked weak. “I won’t cry if a mog eats you.”

  He blinked with unnerving calmness. “I didn’t take you for a murderer.”

  Vic flicked her scythe open. It would be easy to slit his throat and leave him in the sewers. The mogs would cover up her crime. His eyes widened, taking in her blade. Her hand hurt from gripping her relic. Killing him wouldn’t bring her sister back, but he had answers. He might call her bluff. Could she kill him? Probably not. As much as she wanted her sister back, she didn’t know what had happened to her or if she was hurt.

  He wanted help? Fine. She would find out how much help he wanted.

  Vic kept her voice steady as she asked, “What happens to the vitals?”

  A slow smile spread on Tristan’s face. His stance maintained the same calmness as a member of GicCorp. A well-trained corporate gear. “They purify the magic so we can charge and not get corrupted.”

  Vic slammed the staff of her relic down on the stone. The clatter bounced off the walls, and Tristan leaned away. “I know the company line and what they tell us, and I’m not buying it. I
’m tired of looking away when it involves my family. No one says how. How, Tristan? How do they purify the magic? Why are they connected to it? What happens to them?” Her heart raced. “Why do we accept this as normal?”

  Down here provided them with a certain equality. She didn’t want to waste this chance. She might not be able to kill him, but he knew something.

  “You’re acting like I’m the one who decided all this. It isn’t easy to explain the relic they connect to, so that’s the best way we can explain. This is how our world is, and maybe there’s a better one out there, but we chose this way.” As he held his side, he stayed calm.

  He hid answers, always on the edge of truth. Did she not believe him because she missed her sister? Did she want something to be wrong? Maybe, but she would push until she got her sister back. “This isn’t the time to toe the company line. It’s only you and me, company boy, and you need me.”

  He tilted his head. “Otherwise you’ll leave me here to die?”

  Would she? She took in the crumpled founder. Even in this situation, she didn’t hold the power. He knew she wouldn’t kill him. “Is my sister alive?”

  His smiles never reached his eyes. “We take excellent care of the vitals. Even though I can’t personally go and see to them, every need is met.”

  Vic took a deep breath, and the rotten air consumed her. “Is my sister alive, Tristan?”

  The pause lasted too long. His face became a mask he wore. The lighting in his eyes changed. It almost felt like she wasn’t talking to Tristan anymore. Something shifted in the still air. Somehow, she knew she was finally talking to the right person. His voice came out slightly lower, asking, “Why won’t you fall in line, Victoria?”

  The corners of his mouth stretched too far up to be comfortable. The skin of his face molded to his teeth.

  Ice crawled in Vic’s veins, and she stepped back. Her throat closed when she tried to speak. What did he mean? What had happened to her sister? This person had changed from prey to predator. The sewer tunnels were too small. This man didn’t need her help. Her heart throbbed, telling her to escape now.