Page 8 of Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection #2)

Chapter Eight

M y head pounded with the dregs of nightmares.

It seemed to throb in time with my footsteps, casting an aura around the light spilling from the taverns and flesh houses, pulsing with the rhythm of a heartbeat. It was closer to morning than nightfall, but there were still people roaming the streets. Drunks and revellers, mostly, and those who preyed on them. Not the sort who would notice one lone man traipsing down a lane on his way to somewhere else.

I hadn’t slept much in the palace. The mattress was too soft, the sheets too expensive, reminding me of a time I didn’t want to remember. And the nightmares… it had been years since I’d had nightmares like that. This time, I’d dreamt I was in the hold at Salterre Castle, the damp of the sea constantly dripping to the cold stone around me, the approach of footsteps on the stairs. I always woke before they reached me. How much time that fucking place had stolen from me, and still it drained away more .

I'd used the same evacuation tunnel I'd once lead Rhiandra through to leave the palace grounds. She would still be asleep in her own bed now, and I wondered idly what it would be like to see her like that, unguarded and soft. Wondered when I'd see her like that. Sleeping alone made it easier to leave unnoticed, but it galled me all the same. Playing cat and mouse had its enticements, but they were wearing thin.

So my mood was already sour before I slipped down an alley and reached the meeting point. The fact that Lester was late curdled it further.

A loud, sloppy trio stumbled past and I pushed their minds away with barely a flick of thought. Their eyes would slip over me, their concentration stuttering until they forgot they’d noticed someone standing in the shadows. The instinct to deflect attention was so habitual that I did the same to a figure approaching down the alley a moment later before I recognised him. He stopped and shook himself like something had crawled up his spine as I drew the magic back.

‘Fine way to greet a man, fiddling with his mind,’ Lester grumbled as he drew nearer.

‘You should have been shielding.’

‘I was.’

‘Then do a better job of it. It’s more important than ever.’

‘Forgive me, Your Majesty ,’ he drawled as he presented me with a low bow, ‘if I don’t want to walk around with a constant splitting headache to maintain the sort of shield that would keep you out.’

‘You’re late,’ I said, ignoring the sarcasm as I brushed away the attention of a woman who’d opened a door opposite us. She paused on the threshold for a moment, blinking, then turned and walked back inside. ‘We need to get moving.’ I didn’t wait for him to reply, setting a fast pace across the cobblestones as he muttered under his breath and matched his stride to mine, his long legs coltish, his arms swinging.

‘What’s the hurry? It’s not like he’s going anywhere.’

‘Someone will notice I’m gone.’

‘So what? You’re a king. No one is going to question you if you decide to go for a wander in the middle of the night.’

I didn’t respond. We passed beneath lines of laundry hanging like the silhouettes of dismembered corpses above and turned to slip down a narrow passage between buildings, the ground littered with rotting scraps. A rat darted past, beady eyes glinting in the dark.

‘Unless there’s someone who would ask questions,’ Lester continued, his tone sly. ‘Maybe someone who would notice your empty bed.’

I gritted my teeth against a reply. He’d known me for too long. He thought it gave him the right to prod where others wouldn’t dare.

‘You know you’re not supposed to play with your food before you eat it,’ he added after a moment, like a boy picking at a scab, determined to see it bleed.

‘If you have something to say, say it.’

‘You’re not in the habit of listening to what I have to say anymore.’ His tone was petulant. ‘After all, you flipped a plan that was years in the making at the last minute without consulting anyone beforehand. So you have no one to blame but yourself if the whore is—’ He choked on the end of his sentence as I pivoted on the spot and slammed him against the stone wall. I could feel my curled lip, my bared teeth, but while his eyes widened, he met my rage with a steady gaze.

‘Don’t use that word,’ I snarled, tightening my grip on his shirt. He didn’t speak, and after a moment I let him go, thrusting him away in disgust.

I’d risen to his bait.

‘Well, aren’t you touchy?’ he said, adjusting his collar as he did. ‘It’s not exactly filling me with confidence.’

I scanned our surroundings, checking we hadn’t caught anyone’s attention. ‘I don’t need your confidence. I need you to shut your mouth and follow orders.’ We began to move again, and I didn’t need to tap against his mind to know he was feeling smug with himself. But as shrewd as he thought himself for the guess, he didn’t know the half of it. If I had my way, he never would. Whatever purpose Rhiandra had served before, she was my concern now, not his or anyone else’s in the alliance. And if the game of strike and parry between us was reckless, then I would dare anyone to challenge me on it.

We reached a heavy iron door that seemed like it wasn’t one. It was thick enough with grime that it almost blended into the wall. There wasn’t a handle or a knocker, but the sound of a heavy bolt being drawn back let us know that we’d been sensed.

The door swung open on silent hinges, revealing a tall, broad woman with hair curled tightly to her head. Orym. She peered around us, scanning the dark, but when she was satisfied we hadn’t been followed she offered us a gleaming smile, her teeth white against the pitch of her skin .

‘Koschei,’ she said, her tone warm as she inclined her head and stepped away from the doorway, allowing us room to step past her into the dank hallway beyond.

‘Any progress?’ I asked as she closed the door and plunged us into near complete darkness.

‘Very little.’ There was some strain to her voice. She had no doubt hoped to prevent what would come next.

She led the way down the hall, passing beneath a ceiling that whispered faintly with music and voices, or the rhythmic thud of someone enjoying the pleasures offered by the business above. We rarely kept a premise for long, but we always hid in the crooked streets of the Trough, where the dregs of the city washed around in a froth of gambling, fucking, fighting and drinking. It was an easy place to go unnoticed if you weren’t threatening the territory of the gangs that fought tooth and nail for their share of the money being spent here.

As Orym paused to open another door, Lester leaned close to me. ‘Tell me again why we’re bothering with this?’ he asked under his breath.

‘I didn’t tell you the first time.’

My answer didn’t seem to deter him. ‘Is it to do with setting up your scapegoat for execution?’

‘You’ll have to wait and see.’

I could feel the resentment rolling off of him. He hated to be kept in the dark. But he knew the importance of all the pieces remaining separate, of no one having full knowledge of the plans in place. What I needed was for everyone to just do as they were told and trust that it was necessary. Even if they didn’t all like my methods, I got results .

Though this particular job was more personal than political for me.

The opening door offered the shifting, smoky light of wall sconces and a flagstone floor whose colour suggested we weren’t the first who had used the room in the way we were about to.

‘I’ll find Khatar,’ Orym said, ducking back into the hallway.

I scanned the room’s only occupant; a weak-chinned and curly-haired youth who cringed into his chair at the sight of us. His red druthi robes were disarrayed, marked with grime that was echoed on his skin, and he fixed us with the gaze of a cornered rabbit as we slunk into the room, keeping to the shadows. Vines wound around his entire body, holding him hostage, their leaves the deep, dark green of things that live where the light doesn’t reach. They would be growing tighter with every minute, sprouting from the wood of the chair as they fed on Orym’s energy.

‘So, come on, tell me,’ Lester said, leaning against the wall. ‘Your pretty queen. Have you bitten off more than you can chew?’

‘Why don’t you focus on doing what you’re good at and leave the strategy to me?’

‘You should have stuck with the little princess,’ he said, ignoring my reply. ‘She looked like she’d bend over in a breeze. Not like that iron-spined…’ My expression darkened, and his next word fizzled in his mouth. ‘ Woman ,’ he continued deliberately, ‘you’ve wound up with who trusts no one, especially not you.’

‘Enough, Lez,’ I warned, my voice low. ‘Your nose is crooked enough. You don’t need me to break it again.’

His expression remained sceptical, but he didn’t say any more, turning his attention to watching the druthi as we waited for Orym to return .

I weighed his words, there in the dark. Who trusts no one, least of all you . That was true enough. Rhiandra watched me like I was some sort of animal she was going to have to fight, always tense and suspicious and ready to exploit a weakness if she saw one. But I thought over our match in the gardens, lingering on the things she’d told me about her past, on the memory of her sliding her stocking down her leg, on her laughing in the maze and daring me to catch her. Wringing little drops of intimacy out of her was like taking hits of a drug. Maybe she was more of a distraction than I’d meant her to be.

However, I couldn’t leave her to her own devices, either. She was overly eager to insinuate herself in things she should stay out of. Keeping her close, winning her trust, dismantling her defences, served my purposes more than keeping my distance would. The fact that I enjoyed it was irrelevant.

The door opened again and Orym emerged, towing three others along in her wake, including the broad, stumpy figure of Khatar. He was short for a Morwarian chieftain—they favoured brawn in their leaders—but he made up for his height with ferocity, and even heavily glamoured, he had the telltale weathering of a life spent being struck by sun and sea. He nodded in my direction, before folding his meaty arms and positioning himself across the room to bear witness, a stalwart reminder of the mistrust beginning to spawn like bacteria in our alliance. Everyone needed representatives.

The other two were a white-haired, bent-spined goblin called Grimen who barely passed as human under glamour, and Jole, one of Khatar’s men who looked just as bronze and weathered as his commander, though quite a bit taller, and currently dressed in druthi robes. He’d brought the sorry captive in himself.

‘Now that we’re all here,’ I drawled, ‘shall we begin?’ I paired the question with an eyebrow raised in Khatar’s direction. He answered with a curt nod, and the corner of my mouth twitched as I suppressed the urge to sneer at him. The time of asking for fucking permission was going to come to an abrupt end, but not today.

Grimen approached the druthi captive, who cowered even lower. ‘He knows what information we seek,’ he said peering into the face of the captive. ‘I have interrogated him at length and he has not responded.’

‘Of course not,’ I muttered, moving closer. The druthi’s gaze flickered to me, and in his fear, he seemed more animal than human. I felt my mouth curling with disgust; even the sight of their red robes was enough to make me want to spill blood. ‘This one is involved in coordinating the blood trade?’

‘He has confirmed as much. We are confident he can give us the specifics of the strong house locations.’

‘Though why we are going to all this trouble for a few binders is beyond me,’ Lez muttered from his position by the wall. ‘I don’t see why we need them.’

I ignored him. The deep-seated hatred of binders was enough for everyone else in the room. His lack of personal connection to the blood trade was the only reason he was asking questions. For Khatar and Orym, locating one of the covert strong houses where binders were trained and lodged was reason enough in and of itself .

I cocked my head as I examined the druthi, controlling the revulsion enough to reach for the magic thrumming in my blood. His forehead was beaded with sweat.

‘You will talk before the night it through one way or another,’ Grimen told him. ‘You’ll avoid a lot of pain if you cooperate now.’

‘Filthy fall spawn,’ he spat in a brief fit of nerve.

I laughed. ‘Not just that, parasite.’ I leaned over the chair, placing a hand on either arm. ‘I suppose you’ve heard that your queen has remarried? You’re looking at your new king.’

I watched the blood draining out of his face, savouring the moment, before I bored my way into his mind.

The druthi recoiled, his jaw locking, his hands balling into white-knuckled fists. Shadows coiled around his face as the torch flickered and popped, consuming his features one moment only to spit them back out again the next.

Compelling him to talk was demanding, like picking a series of locks. The concentration inflamed my headache, making my eyes blur as he flinched and twitched away from the intrusion, shaking his head and straining against the chair as though he could dislodge me. His desperation to keep quiet was stoked with fear. The Guild was skilled at instilling fear to stem the trade in secrets, and fear was a difficult emotion to work with. It was primal, fed by a survival instinct that hung on for all it was worth. It made his mind hostile and frantic, difficult to coerce.

Sharp pain lanced behind my right eye, and I gritted my teeth. Reaching out, I grabbed at his hair and yanked his head back until I was leaning over him, looking down into his face.

‘You think your guild masters deserve your fear more than we do? We’re only getting started.’ With a subtle shift in attention, I turned from the volt of his mind to the tide of his fear and intensified it, like pumping bellows at an ember, and only released his hair when a dark stain soaked his crutch and he began to whimper and blubber. He rocked back and forth against his bonds, and I took a breath to calm my frustration as I massaged my forehead.

‘Tell us what we need to know,’ Orym cooed, frowning at me as she moved towards the druthi. ‘Then we can let you go. It’ll be our secret. We’ll wipe your memory for you at the end so even you won’t know you betrayed the Guild.’

‘Just start cutting him. We don’t have time for this,’ I said when the pain in my head had subsided.

Orym turned to me, her face creased with concern. ‘Don’t we?’ she asked in a low voice. Her pointed ears may have been hidden behind a glamour, but she was still Yoxvese to the core. No stomach for violence. She’d have me fever struck trying to break his mind before she resorted to torture.

‘No,’ I hissed, ‘we don’t.’

She bent her head and lowered her eyes. ‘Forgive me. I should not question you.’

‘Don’t you know he’s got to return to the palace before his queen notices he’s missing?’ Lester tossed the remark in casually from his position against the wall. ‘He’s a married man now. He has a wife to answer to.’ In the corner of my sight, Khatar shifted his weight and Orym shot him a look. I was going to skin Lester alive.

‘The sooner we return him, the lesser chance he’ll be missed,’ I snarled.

‘Leaving damage on him might lead to questions.’ Orym offered the words carefully, trying to find a legitimate reason to avoid physical torture. As though it was any worse than what I would do to his mind.

‘You can clean up the damage.’

She pressed her lips into a thin line, her brow buckling. ‘He’s barely more than a child. I don’t—’

‘Jole, tell us what you saw in the dungeons of Misarnee Keep.’ I kept my eyes fixed on her as I gave the order, and she cast her gaze to the ground.

‘That’s not necessary,’ she said. ‘I know—’

‘Tell us about the youngest one.’ My tone was unflinching.

‘Young rusalka. Tiny thing,’ he muttered. ‘Barely a scrap of flesh on the ground when I saw her.’

‘And what were they doing to that scrap of flesh?’ I pressed.

He hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘They were squeezing her.’

‘Want to describe that for us? Some of us seem to have forgotten why we’re here.’

Clearing his throat, he took a breath, seeming to steady himself as he reached for the memory. ‘Crushing her chest to push the last of the blood—’

‘Alright, enough,’ Orym croaked, her expression a picture of suffering. ‘Do what you must. I’ll hide the damage.’

I nodded at Lester and he pushed away from the wall, cracking his neck as he stood beside me.

‘How do you want to do this?’ he asked.

‘Just hold him still. Start with the hands.’

The druthi’s eyes widened at the sight of the wicked blade I drew and he began to rapidly shake his head, stammering and pleading as we drew closer.

‘You know how to put a stop to this, and it’s not with begging. Which hand do you favour?’ I asked, but he only started to cry. The sight struck a memory that rang through me, echoing like the tolling of a bell. I shut it down, clenched my jaw. ‘Your pick then, Lez.’

The sound of his screams split the night.