Page 37 of A Queen and HER Bad Boy (Spies and Royals #4)
He reached the prison entrance, and his stomach turned at the sight. What kind of archaic place was this? The stark contrast between the golden palace above and this nightmarish dungeon below made him sick. They were cavemen masquerading as civilized rulers, nothing more.
“I will interrogate this prisoner,” Achilles said, “or I will remove the princess from this country permanently and ensure nothing ever threatens her again. Your choice, Phoenix.”
He’d make sure that they’d found the right culprit, and not some political enemy that posed some inconvenience to his father-in-law’s power.
Collecting war prizes wouldn’t keep Bris safe.
He reached the iron-barred entrance where torches once flickered against stone walls that had probably witnessed centuries of human suffering.
Now bare bulbs hung from crude fixtures, their sickly light creating dancing shadows that made the ancient stonework seem alive.
He glanced at the burly security chief whose keys jangled like chains. “Take me to O Skia.”
“Your Royal Highness shouldn’t be in this place,” the guard muttered nervously, though his protest died when Phoenix’s sharp glare silenced him.
“I will personally escort him.” Apparently the threat of removing Bris from the country was sufficient motivation to change Phoenix’s tune.
Saluting with remembered duty, the guard followed the order, though Achilles couldn’t help noticing that Phoenix was at the root of it.
Peder stayed behind to monitor the entrance while the chancellor shadowed Achilles’s every step. The security chief led them to a thick metal door with multiple deadbolts and a sliding security panel. A single bare bulb swayed slightly overhead, casting shifting shadows over their prisoner.
So this was the fearful Shadow?
Achilles’s stomach knotted when he noticed the man chained to the stone wall like a medieval torture victim.
Shackles? Were they truly trapped in the dark ages?
This world was a bizarre contradiction—modern steel doors with electronic locks, yet here were iron manacles biting cruelly into their prisoner’s wrists, the metal darkened with age and—he didn’t want to think about what else.
Broad shoulders strained against the cruel restraints.
O Skia was unmistakably Tirrojan—dark hair streaked with premature silver framed a weathered face carved by suffering and pure grit.
But it was his eyes that arrested him: they burned with banked fires of rage and loss, holding an intensity that spoke of a man who’d seen too much and lost everything.
Yet the imposing Shadow seemed to steel himself at the sight of Achilles, as if preparing for battle. Was it because he was guilty of the crimes they’d accused him of?
Achilles turned sharply to Phoenix, his voice cutting through the dungeon’s oppressive atmosphere. “Leave us alone. Now.”
Phoenix’s nostrils flared, his careful composure cracking for the first time tonight. “I hardly think that’s advisable—”
Achilles’s voice dropped to a lethal whisper. “Get out.”
Instead of his usual smugness, the chancellor’s jaw worked silently before he managed to force out: “I’ll be stationed outside if you require assistance.”
With his ear pressed to the door, no doubt.
Achilles slammed the heavy metal door shut behind him, the sound echoing ominously through stone corridors that had imprisoned countless souls over the centuries.
His gaze found the prisoner again, taking in every detail of the man’s defiant posture. “They call you O Skia?”
The man’s lips twisted into a bitter smile, his penetrating eyes studying Achilles so intently that a chill shot down his spine.
This was exactly how he’d imagined someone who was behind the political chaos would appear—dangerous, intelligent, utterly unbreakable.
“Ah, they’ve sent the queen’s lapdog to intimidate me into confession? ”
Achilles wasn’t in the mood to be insulted. “Did you order the attack on my wife?”
The older man’s laughter echoed harshly off the stone walls, mocking and contemptuous. “She’s nothing but a puppet. Why would I waste resources on her?”
Clearly, rumors spread like wildfire. “And that makes you angry?” He’d get real answers out of this rebel. “Angry enough to send assassins after her?”
Once again, the Shadow’s dark eyes flashed with pure contempt. “I won’t waste my time with that child.”
That was a pretty important child. “Yet you continue fighting against Chises Mnon’s authority.”
“Until my dying breath,” O Skia paused, his penetrating gaze studying Achilles with unnerving intensity—that look again, as if he could see straight through to his soul. “He will never sink his greedy claws into Aeaea, and neither will his Myrdon allies!”
Achilles stiffened in genuine surprise. Of course, the Shadow must have been briefed about his past involvement with those rebels, before Achilles had discovered their cause was just as hollow as everyone else’s. “I was told you work with Myrdons.”
“You think if I worked with those parasites there’d be anything left of that island worth protecting?
I’d never be so stupid,” the man’s conviction carried a weight that made Achilles’s chest tighten, before he fixed on him a judgmental glare.
“Your father would never recognize the man his son has become.”
The scathing words nearly knocked Achilles off his feet, and he clenched his fists until his knuckles went white. Insults should mean nothing coming from a terrorist, yet his ears burned with what he’d just told him: “You knew my father?”
“Knew him?” The Shadow’s laughter was dark and bitter. “Ah, young wolf!” The odd nickname sounded strangely like a term of endearment the way he said it. “What exactly do you want from me? You want me to tell you how your father betrayed his closest friend, his family, his own wife?”
Would Achilles stand here and allow this terrorist to destroy his father’s reputation further?
Everything they discussed was under surveillance, but he no longer cared.
His father had been betrayed by Chises Mnon—his mother had been taken captive because of that man’s negligence.
How could that possibly mean his father had betrayed them?
The logic made no sense, yet doubt crept into his thoughts like poison.
He shook his head violently to clear away these dangerous suspicions. “What are you implying?”
“I told you already—I don’t waste my breath on puppets.”
Achilles stepped closer, studying the prisoner’s scarred hands, the way he held his head with unbroken pride despite the chains.
The same madness that had driven this man to guard his island from all outside threats had also made him menacing in a different way.
He held in him secrets. No wonder the High Consortium had him locked away from all outside contact.
“Tell me about the Earl of Alexopoulos,” Achilles demanded. “What’s his connection to all this?”
O Skia’s expression remained stubbornly blank, offering no response.
“What will it take to get you to talk?”
“Give me your complete loyalty, and I’ll tear apart every lie they’ve been feeding you since childhood.”
His loyalty? Impossible. Phoenix and the rest of the world already viewed Achilles with deep suspicion.
Even if they didn’t? He studied this ruthless man more carefully, seeing the barely contained violence in every line of his powerful body, the way anger had been forged into something harder than steel by years of suffering.
If this rage was unleashed, this shadow would find the revenge he’d been plotting for years.
“Ah, now you begin to see the real danger, young wolf! You fear the truth far more than you fear me.”
Everything this revolutionary said was calculated to play Achilles like a fiddle, just as the Myrdons had done, just like his father-in-law had, even Bris. Letting out a sound of pure frustration, Achilles turned away from this fiery instigator and stormed for the unyielding prison door.
O Skia’s next words froze him in place. “Watch your back! You think your father didn’t love a woman the way you love yours? Just like him, you dance too close to the fire that burned him up.”
What did he just say? Achilles spun on his heel, his heart hammering against his ribs as he strode back to face the glaring prisoner.
This Shadow was wrong—Achilles had relentlessly chased the truth for years, and he’d unravel these mysteries before Phoenix burst through that door with an army to stop him. “Who killed my father?” he hissed.
“Killed?” O Skia scoffed with genuine amusement. “Who told you he was dead?”
His mother! The man who’d raised him after the supposed tragedy! All the people his father had supposedly betrayed! Was this the real reason Phoenix had forbidden him to question this prisoner? Was O Skia mad, or was he telling a truth that would shatter everything Achilles believed in—maybe both?
“You don’t think he’s—he’s actually dead?” Like a fool, he found himself stammering. Could his father have actually survived those assassination attempts?
“Ah, it seems the young wolf has ears in that thick skull after all.”
More like his brain had exploded. These had to be more desperate lies from a cornered man. Achilles’s lips twisted into a sneer. “If he’s alive, then why haven’t we heard anything from him in all these years?”
O Skia glared. “Nice try! You refuse to give me what I want, and you’ll get nothing from me.”
The two men held each other’s gaze across the dank cell, the weight of the unspoken shadows heavy between them, until the metal door scraped open behind them.
“Have you finished conspiring with our prisoner?” Phoenix’s sarcastic voice cut through the tension like a blade, sharp with barely controlled fury.
The chamberlain was done pretending the prince held even an ounce of authority in this place, proving O Skia’s accusation that he was nothing but a powerless puppet.
Achilles brushed past Phoenix without a word, though he glanced back at the Shadow who continued watching him with those burning black eyes, as if he could see straight through to every secret Achilles carried, every doubt that gnawed at him during his darkest hours.
Idiot. He was an idiot for believing this seasoned terrorist for even a moment.
But as he climbed the stone steps back toward the golden palace above, O Skia’s words echoed relentlessly in his mind: “Who told you he was dead?” The question burrowed into his thoughts like a parasite, and no matter how desperately he tried to banish it, the terrible possibility refused to release its grip.
What if everything he’d been told about his father was an elaborate lie? The Myrdons had perpetuated the rumor of his death, used it to make him hate Chises Mnon, all while Bris’s father pretended Peleus never existed. Even his own mother evaded his questions.
The rain still lashed against the windows when he reached the upper levels, and somewhere above, Bris was waiting for him in their suite, probably wondering where he’d disappeared to in the late hours of the night.
She needed him to be her anchor, her protector—not a man chasing ghosts and conspiracy theories.
But the seed of doubt had been planted deep, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.