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Their silence was all the answer she needed.

“That’s a bunch of crap!” she exclaimed. “We were in Yveswich forme.For my treatments, that’s all, you can ask Doctor Atlas?—”

“Doctor Atlas is facing the prospect of losing her job,” Glen interrupted. “You want to know why, Miss Calla?” Every word rose in volume, until he was shouting. “For failing to report to her superiors when she made the decision to remove a patient from intensive care. Losing her job, Miss Calla, is the least that could happen. Worst is jail time, along with your boyfriend and his little pals—” He jabbed another photograph with his pen. “—if we find out they hadanythingto do with what’s happening in Yveswich.”

Loren could scarcely breathe. “I want to speak to a lawyer,” she whispered.

“You know what I find odd, Miss Calla?” Glen clipped, completely ignoring her.

Firmer, she repeated, “I want to speak to a lawyer.”

“Is why a human like yourself would go for a treatment at amagicalfacility,” he snapped.

Loren stopped breathing, the hair on her scalp prickling.

“Either you’re all lying,” Glen continued, “or you—” He pointed his pen at her. “Are not human.” He gave a cold smirk of disbelief. “And I think we all know the answer to that,” he concluded around a humorless chuckle.

His smile faded. He stared at her, his eyes hard and unblinking.

Loren stared back, fingernails biting into her perspiring palms.

“So let’s try this again,” Glen growled.“What were you doing in Yveswich?”

Darien sat perfectly still,the black chains of his brynstan cuffs dangling between his muscled thighs. He stared at the wall straight ahead with a black onyx gaze, watching as the varicolored runes of the security spells covering the interrogation room shifted about in rows and columns, like millions of restless bees in a hive.

He didn’t even blink as the door buzzed opened, and eight armed officers and two detectives filed in. The officers formed a line in front of the wall he was staring at, guns at the ready, while the two detectives—Glen was one of them—took their seats across from him at the metal table in the center of the room.

Darien continued to stare at that same spot. Not blinking, not moving, hardly breathing. If it weren’t for the cuffs rendering him as powerless as a mortal—apart from the Sight they couldn’t take away, not even with brynstan—he’d have killed them all. Brutally.

He would’ve saved Glen for last—a bloody and well-earned dessert after a nine-course meal. Once this was over, and he got out of here, it would be Loren who decided the fate of this clown. If Glen had made her feel uncomfortable in any way—if he’d even dared tolookat her wrong—Darien would kill him. Tear him limb from limb. Peel the flesh off his back, his scalp, his face. His eyelids would go, too. And then, for even daring to look at herat all,Darien would take his eyes as well. He’d carve them out slowly. Painfully.

His mouth watered.

“You look like shit,” Glen spat. “You always sweat like that?”

Slowly, Darien blinked the black away and slid his gaze to Glen’s scowling face.

The other detective said, “Must be drugs.”

“You on any drugs?” Glen spoke slowly, as if he were too stupid to understand. When Darien didn’t deign to reply, Glen smirked and muttered, “Of course you are.” He folded his hands on the table, fingers interlocking. “Your girlfriend’s quite the darling. Not sure why she’s with someone like you.”

Darien’s chair creaked as he leaned forward and rested his cuffed hands on the table. Every movement he made was slow. Deadly. He laced his fingers. Looked Glen right in the eyes with a dead stare.

“The thing about brynstan cuffs,” Darien began in a low and lethal voice. “They still have chains.” He snapped those chains taut in illustration, his eyes flicking to the grisly pink scar across Glen’s throat.

Sweat—more than just Darien’s—permeated the room.

Glen’s bobbing throat was the only indication that he was disturbed. “I’d watch what you say,” he warned.

“Or what?” Darien challenged. “You’ll find there’s not a lot that scares me,Glen.”

A moment of tense quiet.

And then Glen flipped open the file on the table and slid three photographs into a neat row. “Care to explain what you were doing at Caliginous on Silverway the night of the explosion?”

Darien’s attention dipped to the photos—just for a sec. He kept his mouth shut, one edge tipped up with a hint of a cold I-dare-you-to-fuck-with-me smile.

“No?” Glen prompted through clenched teeth. “Then how about this?” He showed him another photo. An aerial view of the destruction of Yveswich. According to the time stamp, it wastaken yesterday. By that time, black clouds had already engulfed over half of the city.