A Chill in the Flame (Villains #1)

Thirty

Thirty

“Are you sure you’ll recognize him?” Dwyn asked in a whisper. The air was colder in the first hours of night. The bushes that concealed them had browned for the season, ruffling slightly against the wind. The night was clear, but moonless. Only the silver sting of stars burned the sky, allowing them the coverage of shadow and darkness.

Memories assaulted Ophir. She tasted the copper tang of blood in the back of her mouth as if drowning in the thought of Caris’s blood. The thick scent of roses wove its way from her memory directly into her nose, nearly causing her to gag. She shoved down the waves of visuals that splashed through her mind, flooding her from within. She forced herself to focus on only the faces and their masks. They’d been burned into her thoughts, both waking and sleeping. The princess had been shaken awake and doused in water, surrounded by ember and ash from her angry flame as the men from that night had pursued her even in her nightmares. She’d seen the cruel shapes of their jaws, their noses, their eyes, their teeth, their shoulders, their hair behind her closed eyelids for months.

“I’ll recognize him,” she promised.

Tyr had been at the fated party long enough to learn the names and identities of several partygoers. He continued to prove himself extensively useful. Lord Berinth may have fled, but he had not been a lone actor in the unspeakable pursuits of that night.

Tyr slid his hand onto Ophir’s arm, completely ignoring the way Dwyn’s face scrunched in disgust. “You don’t have to do this,” he said. His voice was strangely calm.

Ophir began to object, but he went on.

“Don’t mistake me, princess. They’ll get their vengeance, and you’ll be the one to give it to them. They deserve to die, and they will. Let me go in and secure him. I can have him in ropes and on his knees before you so much as set your foot in the door.”

Ophir swallowed at the seriousness in his voice. He wasn’t telling her to be forgiving, or to be ladylike, or to let it go. He wasn’t telling her to let him handle it. He was offering to neutralize the immediate threat so her avenging spirit might be swift and easy.

“No.” Ophir shook her head. “I want to do this. I want to do it all.”

“She can handle herself,” Dwyn said, shooting him a glare. He returned the narrowed eyes.

“Sedit will come in with me. And if things go south…”

“We’ll be right behind you.” Dwyn nodded in agreement. Perhaps she hadn’t meant to use the plural of the word, but as much as she hated Tyr, some part of Ophir suspected that Dwyn knew it was better to present a united front.

“Guryon?” Ophir asked, looking at Tyr.

“Guryon.” He dipped his chin in agreement. He told Ophir that he’d met the merchant at the party in the hour preceding the fateful events. The man was no lord, knight, or duke. He held no titles. He was a man of little importance, save for his crumbling empire as the baron of spices for the southern kingdom. The merchant Guryon was once a man who had mattered. His trips across, up, and down the continent’s coast and its seaside ports had come to a screeching halt as storms had brutalized his ships, dashing his empire of peppers and cinnamons and salts.

Tonight, the three knelt with little dignity in the once-manicured bushes at the edges of the merchant’s garden. It was clear that his estate had fallen into something of disrepair over the past few years. Though late fall had made the grasses die after the season’s first frost and the trees turn into shades of oranges and browns, it was clear that his lawn had been filled with weeds and brambles long before autumn’s onset.

It wasn’t hard to imagine what the man might want with blood magic. Guryon would want his fortune returned. He’d want ships, and wealth, and power. He’d seek a way back into the life in which he’d grown so comfortable before it had been snatched from him.

One question that had plagued their minds was why there would be multiple actors in Caris’s mutilation. Whatever the late princess could offer, Berinth should have wanted for himself.

It had been a matter of debate what the team of malicious intent may have hoped to accomplish, unless they’d planned to divide Caris’s blood and sweetmeats among one another, each taking what they’d needed. As their ritual had been woefully interrupted, it had seemed as though few had profited from her death. The fact remained: they had killed her. Whether or not they achieved what they’d set out to find was of little consequence.

“You’re sure this is him?” she asked again.

His gaze was steadying. There was no condemnation in his repetition as he asked once again, “I am. Are you certain you want to do this?”

Ophir wet her lips once as she straightened from where they’d crouched behind the bushes, leaving her Sulgrave companions behind. Sedit trotted beside her as she walked with specter-like grace down the once-lovely path that led from the road to the estate. There was no sign of gardeners, servants, or groundskeepers as she moved forward. Her chin stayed high with regal control as if she floated rather than walked.

She didn’t glance over her shoulder as she reached the door, even if a swelling urge begged her to look to ensure that they were there. She knew that Tyr and Dwyn would enter at the first sign of trouble. As it stood, she hadn’t been deceived in a long, long time. She knew that neither of them had come into her life by accident. It was no coincidence that the same night other men had taken her sister, others had entered her own. Why they’d traversed the Frozen Straits, battled through the crowds of Lord Berinth’s party, or swum through the waves seemed unimportant. It was their story to lead, not hers. If they planned her no harm, she could only benefit from their presence.

Before leaving the castle in Aubade, Ophir had asked Dwyn in no uncertain terms whether the siren had planned to kill her, and when the girl had said no, she’d believed her. The rest didn’t matter.

Her attempt to swallow stuck in her throat like dry bread. No matter how hard she struggled, the anxiety wouldn’t leave her airway. Her feet remained glued to the landing as she examined her options. She raised her knuckles to rap against the front door but hesitated. Ophir took a step backward and looked at the house. In her concentrated forward motion, she’d failed to truly consider the space before her.

The lower levels were dark with the early hours of night. Only one light flickered in the upper right corner of the estate, suggesting that Guryon was home alone. She quietly tried the front door but was unsurprised to find it bolted. Ophir abandoned the path and began to move along the home’s perimeter, Sedit at her side. She brushed her fingers against the stones and mortar of his home as she passed by the windows, over the bushes, and rounded the corner. The handle to a back door opened easily under her twist as she stepped into the home’s kitchen.

It was cold.

There was no scent of bread, stew, or nice things on the air. There was no sign that a cook had been on the premises in a long while.

“In, Sedit,” she whispered, opening the door for her hound. His talons clicked against the stones with more noise than she would have liked, but seeing as how the man within was about to perish whether or not he heard them, she figured her silence wasn’t particularly important. Sedit wriggled his amphibious hindquarters the way a bloodhound fresh from the kill might’ve, blinking his many black eyes at his master.

“Shh,” she hushed her creature. He stilled to the best of his abilities, though his talons continued to clack noisily with every step. It was a relief when they left the kitchen and his paws could sink into the fibers of a rug’s carpeting rather than cold stones.

Ophir navigated through the rapidly darkening house as she crept down the hall. The last glimpses of evening light filtered through grimy windows, but no candles or fireplaces had been lit on the lower levels of the home. Shadows filled the space, their looming presence almost a separate entity entirely.

She began to mount the stairs and flinched when the first step creaked under her weight. After a pause, she relaxed her face from its responsive flinch and began to walk upward toward the lone candle light she’d seen in the windows. The corridor wasn’t particularly long, and the silence of the home suggested that no one else was present to thwart her mission. She would soon be alone with the merchant.

There were roughly three rooms on either side of the hall, but she knew with some certainty that they’d all been empty for a long time. This man lived alone. After several muted steps on the plush, dusty rug that stretched throughout the hall, her hand wrapped around the brass knob that would lead her into the only room that had shown evidence of life. Ophir breathed in through her nose, closing her eyes for final moments of courage. Then, she opened the door.

A man turned from where he’d been sitting at his desk, hunched over ledgers, quill in hand.

She froze studiously as she searched his face for recognition. Visions of the men and their hair, their jaws, their noses and exposed features against the man appeared before her as she recognized the man behind the mask. Guryon had hovered in the back corner as she’d thrown open the door. He hadn’t fought. He’d stood behind the man holding the sword that had been plunged into August’s torso, antagonizing her sister’s personal guard in his final moments of life. This man was no warrior—he was a coward.

“Guryon.” She said his name.

He blinked at her. “Are you…?” His question drifted off as he released the quill in his hands. The man stood from where he’d been sitting at his desk. Somehow, he hadn’t looked surprised at her entrance. His face looked deeply haunted, as though the ghosts of his soul had not allotted him rest in a long time. Perhaps he’d been expecting a phantom to claim him.

She pushed open the door further to reveal the presence of her hound. “Sit, Sedit,” she commanded. The vageth obeyed.

The man was clean, but his clothes were not new. He looked like he’d kept himself tidy, while allowing the world around him to fall into disarray. When his eyes settled on Sedit, he appeared to know that she’d come to collect a life debt.

“You’re Ophir.”

Her lips twitched with the ghost of a smile. “You know why I’m here, then.”

He closed his eyes slowly. “I didn’t…”

She took a step into the room, his hint at a denial emboldening her. “You didn’t what? You didn’t…mean to kill her? You didn’t…profit from her death, as you thought you might? Go ahead, Guryon. What didn’t you do?”

He opened his eyes again, but there was no fight behind them. His words may have been a question, but his tone did not retain the essential upward tilt of inquiry. He spoke with flat acceptance. “You’re here to kill me, aren’t you?”

Ophir was put out by his resolve. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why are you so ready to die? Is it because you committed both murder and treason, contributing to the loss of a woman’s life, but then didn’t benefit from her slaughter? Would you be as willing to stand down if you’d gotten…what would it have been? Riches? Titles? Tell me, Guryon.”

The gaunt man shook his head. “It wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like?” She took another step toward him.

“I wouldn’t have killed a monarch for money,” he promised, eyes searching hers. “I don’t expect you to understand. She was your sister.”

Ophir wanted to gag, but it came out as a cough. Rage rose within her. “Was! That’s right! She was!” Another step. “Tell me. Make me understand.”

To his credit, he hadn’t flinched. He hadn’t tried to run. He stared with deflated acceptance at the presence of the princess and her hellhound. “What does it matter?” he asked, his voice quiet.

Her volume surprised her as she shouted back, “Everything!” Ophir’s fists balled at her sides, glowing with the impending embers. “It means everything!”

The merchant shook his head, but she took the three remaining steps to close the space between them. Guryon was no fae. He was human, as the farmer had been. She grabbed him by the throat and forced him up. She allowed the barest edges of her flames to lick his throat. She was neither strong nor tall enough to bring him off of his toes, but she’d forced him to his feet, and he hadn’t fought.

“Just kill me,” he groaned against the blisters that were forming on his neck.

She released him with a sharp, cruel laugh. He fell to the ground, his body collapsing against the floor with the sound of potato sacks and dead meat. “Kill you!” Her eyes widened. She was growing wilder by the second, her emotions roiling within her. “Of course I’m going to kill you! There is no situation wherein you survive, Guryon. There is no future where in you walk out of this room. You get to decide one of two things. Are you ready to hear your options?”

He’d remained where he’d crumbled on the floor, pushed up by only one arm. Another hand came to his throat to feel the blisters she’d given him.

“The first is that we take hours, or days, or weeks to slowly maim and cauterize. I’ll call my flame each and every time you’re bitten or wounded or gored by my hound so that you don’t bleed out, ensuring you stay alive for all of it. You’ll feel every pain. You’ll beg for death, but it won’t come. You’ll wish your heart would stop coursing its blood through your body, but the fire won’t allow it. I’ll keep you alive until you tell me what I need to know. Does that sound like a good option?”

He turned his head away from her, eyes unseeing as he looked to the stones in the gloom of his room. His candle created deep, unforgiving shadows against the corners and furniture of his room. His face was half-illuminated, half-concealed by the flickering candle. The hollow spaces beneath his eyes meant nothing to her. His soul may have left him long ago, but it was time for his reckoning.

“The second is that you tell me quickly, and I will mark the pace of your information. However quickly you explain yourself is how fast I will permit your death. If you draw it out, I will match your pain step for step. If you answer with speed, so will I. Sedit can ensure you’re dead before you’ve had the chance to blink. He goes for the jugular. It’s a mercy. A kindness that you don’t deserve. A kindness that wasn’t given to Caris.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, still on the floor in his wormy cowardice.

“I don’t care!” She almost screamed. “I don’t give a fuck how sorry you are!” Her voice continued to rise until the words tore at her throat with the same angry, ragged exertion of her night terrors. “Cry for me, Guryon! Sob at my feet! Beat your chest! Tear your tunic! I feel nothing.” She bent on one knee, kneeling nearer to him. It was a move she wouldn’t have dared if Sedit hadn’t been waiting hungrily over her shoulder. “I don’t need your apologies, Guryon. I need your reasons.”

“Blood magic—”

“So, I’ve heard,” she bit. “The blood of a royal is particularly potent. Let’s pretend I know the basics. Get to it.”

He looked up at her. “It’s not just potency. It’s not money, or titles, or gifts. It’s…everything.”

Ophir’s fists flexed.

“It’s the gift of the divine, Princess Ophir. What we stood to gain from Caris was…godhood.”

She blinked, then controlled her emotions. “How?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t the leader—”

“Lord Berinth was,” she finished for him. “How did he recruit you? How did he find out that you’d be willing to sacrifice Farehold’s princess?” She raised a ball of fire, threatening the first of her blows.

“There’s a clan!” he said, raising his forearm in a cowardly flinch.

“A clan?” she demanded.

“Yes. Berinth didn’t find me, I found him! I knew there was a clan looking for how to ascend, to surpass mere humans and fae—deities, Princess Ophir. They seek to be like the old gods.”

She shook her head, uncomprehending.

“He wasn’t the first clan member.” The man babbled on. “They’ve existed all over the continent since the beginning of time. They’re in Raascot, in Farehold, in Sulgrave—it’s those who seek the power of gods.”

She lowered her fire and stared at the man beneath her. “It’s a cult?”

“It’s not a cult,” he defended. “Their powers are real. They’ve been wielding blood magics to access new and unnatural powers without it hurting themselves or drawing from their own blood. We’ve seen others do it. Berinth brought…”

“Berinth brought what?”

Guryon sounded like he might cry, but his whimpering only annoyed her. “He would bring people in sometimes—usually women. Peasants, women from the pleasure houses, women who didn’t know why they’d come to his home… He’d show us a new power he’d accessed without it harming him. He’d drain them instead, leaving him whole.”

Dizziness made it hard for Ophir to focus, but the anger brought her back.

Women.

Vulnerable women who worked in brothels, who were impoverished, who trusted too much, who were princesses and heirs to the throne. It didn’t matter. Women. No one woman was safe from those who took and took and took. She swallowed again, still feeling dry bread in her throat. “And Caris?”

“Royal blood…royal organs, a royal heart…it’s the power of gods, Princess. There’s no other way for me to say it. This was no simple blood magic. This was not the borrowed power of some peasant. We thought we’d be accessing abilities as great as the All Mother’s.”

Her mouth was in a hard line as she brought her fire to her fist once again. “And what power is that?”

He shook his head, looking at the floor. He was prepared to die. “Everything.”