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Good.
“How do you ensure the recipient of the first message doesn’t read your message to Galon?” Demos asked.
“Fae-trained hawks are not only magically enhanced, but they are incredibly brutal. Aquilus is also resistant to other magic—a natural ward bred into the birds.”
Aquilus launched from my shoulder, and we began walking once more. Galon, Rythos, and Marth would have left Quorith days ago. Hopefully, they had already made it back into Eprotha.
I would have to tell them about Cavis.
Cavis.
If Demos and Asinia hadn’t witnessed it with their own eyes, I would have been convinced I was seeing things. But it was true.
Regner must have gotten to him when he was a child, before we took him in. If Cavis had known, he would have put himself down. He never would have started a family.
The agony in his eyes when he’d realized what was happening to him…
It was as if he’d been a puppet, each of his movements out of his control.
Prisca would fight for him. No matter what. She couldn’t see that Cavis was no longer the friend she knew. But Cavis had known it. It was why he’d begged me to kill him. Bile burned up my throat. I’d failed.
And I’d failed to protect Prisca too.
Eventually, we stopped near a river, refilling our waterskins. Demos removed his shirt, dunked it in water, and pressed it to Asinia’s head as she sat by the river, her face deathly pale.
“They’ll torture Prisca,” she said.
“She has the disk,” Demos said, his expression darker than I’d ever seen it. “She’ll never allow herself to divulge hybrid secrets.”
The disk. A fae creation that allowed a prisoner to take their own lives, perfectly suiting exactly this situation. They’d each hidden one on their bodies.
“No, she doesn’t,” I ground out. I’d taken Prisca’s disk from her the moment I’d noticed it.
Asinia made it to her feet. “You selfish bastard.”
“I will find her.”
She opened her mouth, snapping it closed at whatever she saw on my face.
I made my vow to her, to Demos, to the gods themselves. “I will search every inch of this continent if that is what it takes. I will slaughter anyone who stands in my way. Prisca will live. I will make sure of it.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The torture continued for hours. When Soltor cut through Cavis’s pointed ear, I came shamefully close to telling him anything he wanted to know. Instead, I gritted my teeth, well aware of what would happen if I broke. We would die anyway. And so would all our friends. Our family.
I barely suppressed my tears when Cavis lost that spark in his eyes, turning blank once more. I could take anything, any pain, but not this. Not the loss of Cavis while he was still standing in front of me.
When Cavis shut down, Eadric let out a string of curses. Cavis didn’t seem to recognize pain in this form, which made that part easier.
I wouldn’t tell Eadric a fucking thing.
Soltor’s nose had begun bleeding as Eadric forced him to continue past the limit of his own power. I knew what that headache felt like. I hoped it thundered through him.
Finally, Eadric stalked out, followed by a stumbling Soltor.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Eadric said over his shoulder. “We’ll be back.”
That was the true torture. Knowing, at any moment, it would begin again. Eadric smiled. He knew.
