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He starts to argue, and the idea of whatever he’s about to say—to try to convince me of—is too much.
I open my mouth and, using my shadow dragon’s powers, breathe the fires of hell over his flesh.
He screams, his form morphing toward some kind of fur-coated shifter before his entire body is reduced to ash.
The sudden silence echoes around me.
“Ugh. I hate when you use the hellfire,” Pol mutters. “Smells terrible.”
I look at him, my insides churning with a wound that hasn’t broken open this wide in a long time. “Put together a hunting party. Tell them to assemble in the courtyard. I’ll brief them in an hour.”
Pol mutters something and motions for Marques to accompany him out.
They leave quickly. I don’t blame them. The smell isn’t great, and it’s only going to get worse the longer the prisoner’s remains sit.
But I don’t leave yet.
Instead, I begin carrying the tools back to their respective boxes on the counter. There are plenty of soldiers suited for a job like this one, but I crave the distraction of cleaning up. Even now, the darkness of my past presses in around the edges of my consciousness, whispering reminders of what I am. What I did to earn a prison like Tartarus.
“It smells like shit in here.”
I look up at the sound of Styx’s voice and note the fact that the door never opened again. Which means she’s been standing in the shadows for a while now.
She comes forward slowly. When she gets to the chair, she eyes the prisoner’s remains with mild interest then returns her attention to me as she approaches the counter where I stand.
“How long have you been here?” I ask.
She shrugs, but her expression is strained. “I caught the show.”
She rubs at her temple, wincing, and I snort.
“You too, huh?”
She scowls. “I blame you for my choices.”
“Oh no. I did not tell you to empty the bar of all its bourbon. That was all you.”
She glares at me. “Is someone beating on your skull from the inside?”
“Right behind my eyeballs,” I say.
“That makes me feel better.” She sniffs. “We’ll call it even.”
I shake my head.
A beat of silence passes, and then she says, “Is that why you went so hard on that asshole just now?”
I go back to straightening and putting away my tools. “It had to be done.”
“Right.”
“I have the name of the leader,” I say even though I know she already heard it earlier. “We’re sending out a hunting party to locate him and bring him in.”
“I thought Caius said to make it clean next time.”
I motion to the unused tools. “I did.”
“He gave you the name. We could have called the healer.”
