“They all have their own pocket mirrors and are capable of escaping on their own,” Eddie assured me. “If not, trust me when I say that they are happy to lay down their lives for the monarchy, princess. The vampire key is more important than any of us.”
I didn’t want anyone else dying for us, but Charlie seemed unbothered by Eddie’s words as he asked, “Is the mobster here? The guy we need.”
“We got him, sire,” I heard Asa say as he came through the mirror. “He didn’t get away.”
Asa and Ares had entered. They were dragging a vampire with them, who’d been forced to kneel. He wore noxite cuffs and appeared ruthless.
Charlie strode in front of the mobster. “You know something about the vampire key. A piece of information Salvatore Bianchi entrusted only to you. Tell us what it is.”
“Or what?” The mobster laughed, then spat on the floor at Charlie’s shoes. “I’ve dealt with tougher bastards than you, kid. You ain’t getting jack outta me.”
Charlie grabbed one of the daggers holstered to Asa’s belt and stabbed it into the vampire’s side, between his ribs. The vampire cried out in pain, and our friends around the room froze. Nobody had been expecting that. Not even I was ready for it, because it’d happened so fast. At the action, Chancey and Danny shared a wary glance.
“There’s more to come if you don’t talk,” Charlie promised.
“Fuck… you,” the vampire seethed, speaking through the pain.
Charlie stopped trying to reason with him, and instead demanded, “Marcus, do you think you can cast the spell again and read this guy’s mind?”
Marcus looked even worse than he did when I’d gotten here. He was bent over his knees and breathing heavily. Kallie rubbed his back. She shook her head at me, which I took to mean he wasn’t doing well.
“I… can try,” Marcus said. “But if I’m being honest, I’m running out of juice. I don’t know if I can perform the spell again without passing out.”
“Fine. There are other ways to get it out of him,” Charlie said.
I was momentarily stunned, wondering if he was suggesting what I think he was, until Ares said, “We’re the specialists in this area, sire. You don’t need to participate in this. We promise we’ll get what you need out of him.”
“I have to oversee this,” Charlie insisted. “Marcus, I need you with me. Just in case you can get into his head.”
Marcus nodded. Asa and Ares began dragging the mobster out of the throne room… probably to some undisclosed torture area somewhere in the palace… and Charlie followed, Marcus in his wake. I went to trail behind, wanting to see how this would go down.
“Go back to our room, pidge,” Charlie told me. “You don’t need to be a part of it.”
By his tone, that was definitely an order and not a request. I hesitated, then told myself he was right. This wasn’t the job of a princess, but a prince’s work. I knew my role and what it entailed, and this wasn’t it.
Everyone else kind of… dispersed. We all went our separate ways without speaking, though Kallie sent me a glance that held all kinds of questions. Were we really going to let the boys do this?
Guess so. I gave a shrug in response. It’s what Emperor Cassiel would do, I was sure, and if Charlie was truly to follow in his footsteps, he had to get his hands dirty like a Majestica man. I couldn’t say I liked it, but I knew it was what had to be done.
Cassiel’s words from days ago came back to me. He believed someone always had to suffer for the greater good, and it pained me to admit that someonewouldsuffer for us to get to the vampire key. What bothered me more is that I was going to let it happen.
This mobster was one of the bad guys, though. He was going to get what was coming to him. It didn’t matter if he was the one suffering, because he was an awful person, so his suffering wasn’t one I cared about.
Kallie did what she was good at. She disassociated from the situation, and let it go. Oberi followed me out, dutifully shadowing my every move. He was acting as my bodyguard at the moment and didn’t want me to be farther than a stone’s throw away.
I tried to keep my mind off of what I knew had to be happening. I had dinner in the dining hall, then had the servants help me take a bath in the spa area of the Ladies’ Court before heading back to my room. My mind kept wandering back to the mobster, but I was pretty cold about it. I didn’t have any feelings or regrets about what I knew Charlie had to be doing right now.He’d shut his part of our bond off from Oberi and me so we didn’t experience any of it.
It was almost… easy. Too easy. I wondered what kind of people we’d become, and how far we’d fallen, to be okay with torturing people, and found that I didn’t care.
That was the scariest part.
When I was almost to Charlie’s quarters, I heard a concerned voice ask, “Ava? Can we talk to you?”
Chancey was leaning against a wall, along with Danny. Both of them had clearly been waiting for me to show.
“What about?” I asked, feeling a little cornered.
“Let’s go somewhere private,” Danny offered, and he led us to a parlor room that was wholly abandoned. He checked all the closets and locked the doors before he turned to me with a rough gaze.
