His jaw trembled, and tears spilled out of his eyes. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know anyone would get hurt! I didn’t know where the path lead!”
“Bullshit!” I pulled out my dagger and slammed it into the chair between his legs, then gripped his bloody throat so tightly that his wound opened and trickled blood across my fingers. “Wraithhusks are some of the most dangerous monsters. One scrape of their claw and you’re paralysed, which is what happened to one of my knights. And you think you can sit there with your pathetic apology? Do you think that’ll cut it?”
“I-I—” He choked against my grip.
I brought my face close to his, clenching my fingers. “Tell me who hired you. Now.”
He opened his mouth, fear shining in his eyes. The very moment his resolve wavered flickered in his gaze, and just when I thought he was going to tell me, his body convulsed. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, showing the whites, and blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth.
He went limp.
He was dead.
“You bastard,” I said, stepping back from his body. “What happened there?”
Sir Chester opened the door and handed me a towel. “Did he have poison in his mouth, maybe?”
“He was about to speak, and I clearly saw his tongue. He couldn’t have broken a capsule.” I wiped his blood from my hands and looked back at his body, pausing when a shadow appeared on his neck. “What’s that under his ear?”
“What’s what, Your Highness?”
I walked back over to Roderick and pushed his head to the side. “A magic circle, maybe? See that?”
“Hmm.” Hayes joined me inside the cell and peered at where I was pointing. “You’re right, sir. It does look like a magic circle.”
“Get Aerwyna and Duke Trelawney here to check and record it,” I ordered him. “Sir Chester, wait outside and make sure nobody else comes down here until his body has been disposed of in case of residual mana.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“I’ll be in my room washing up.” I tossed the towel I’d used to wipe my hands on the floor outside the cell. “Send the duke to me with a report when they’re done here.”
I stalked out of the underground prison and quickly left the main villa to return to ours. I was used to the scent and feeling of blood, but something about that man’s on my hands felt dirty and made my insides twist.
That magic circle.
It wasn’t right.
I’d seen hundreds, if not thousands, of magic circles in my life, but that one held a pattern I’d never seen before. My skin crawled at the mere thought of it, and if the spell the circle had contained was what I thought it was, this problem was a whole lot bigger than a wraithhusk.
***
“It was a death spell encased within the circle,” Duke Trelawney said, handing me a sheet of paper. “I could practically feel it oozing from him the moment I walked in there.”
“A death spell? They’re illegal.” I read the notes he’d just passed me, rubbing my wet hair with a towel.
“They were outlawed one hundred and fifty years ago when Emperor Viddar outlawed black magic,” he explained. “We don’t even keep this kind of information in publicly accessible areas of the Magic Tower. The books on this sort of spell are locked within the Head Mage’s private study.”
“Can anyone access your study?”
“Nobody except me. The password changes every time the Head Mage does.”
“Can you find out if anyone other than you has accessed it?”
He nodded. “I’ll check as soon as I return. When did the spell trigger?”
“He was about to tell me who hired him, so I’m assuming it was related to the name of his contractor.”
“That’s quite possible,” Duke Trelawney said, concern flashing through his eyes. “It was a common use for this kind of spell even when they were legal. Assassins would often use it in place of poison—they would be branded with the spell and use it as a method of suicide before they could even be questioned.”
