Page 90 of A Courage of the Chosen

There’s a large table off to one side . . . with someone strapped to it . . . and a tool station full of things I couldn’t even begin to name.

What steals my focus are the three Dorche that Brodie is fighting with his usual brawn. He’s faced worse odds, so I leave him to it as the guards with us dive in to aid him.

Scanning my surroundings, there’s a disturbance of the air in the shadows at my back, and the senses that have helped me survive the last century kick into high alert as Hume attempts to stalk me.

Twirling round to parry Hume’s dagger aiming for the same spot he killed the last guard with, I growl in the face that barely reaches past my nose. “I’m much quicker, Renfrow. That won’t work on me.”

Hume seems to take that as an invitation to attack. It’s laughable that he thinks he stands a chance in this fight, and each blow he tries to land is pathetic. It’s no effort for me to ward off every one of them.

He comes at me again, agile on his feet, but too obvious. He feints right, and I duck into the space, pretending the move worked. When he points his dagger at my ribs, I grab his wrist with my free hand, snapping the bones between my fingers.

The knife clatters to the floor as Hume bleats in pain.

“You treasonous scum!” he spits, trying to wrestle away.

The fight is over before it even really began, and he’s subdued by the light that I craft into shackles, securing him to one of the wooden posts littered around.

Brodie and the guards down the last Dorche soldier. Brollachan might be nearly impossible to kill, but regular Dorche bleed and die just like the rest of us.

“Thanks for your help, Cal,” Brodie deadpans, wiping the blood off his face. “Really appreciate it.”

“You had it covered,” I shrug.

“General Knox,” a soldier interrupts. Elsie has shared the news about our titles as well as her own, and now the units have taken to referring to me the way they do Hector. He gags. “You need to see this.”

Brodie and I move over to the far side of the room, where the body of a Seelie is strapped to a table.

“Fuck.” Brodie turns away from the sight.

It’s Kerr.

The flaps of skin covering his chest are peeled away, exposing his organs and ribcage. Thick tubes pierce his muscles, Dorche magic being fed in through the clear pipes that run to a machine behind his head, which whirs in time with his wheezing.

“What in Dhia’s name?” someone gasps.

Kerr is breathing, but barely living.

He rolls his head, groaning as a cloth lined with datura seed keeps his flesh from stitching back together. His eyes flicker open, and my stomach sinks as a faint ring of black encases the brown.

It’s too late for him.

“This is what happens when you send your cronies to follow me,” Hume scoffs from the other side of the room where he’s restrained.

“I can’t make more, like our king can, but fill a Seelie’s veins with enough Dorche magic, and they’ll succumb eventually.”

I send a band of light to shut the fucker up as I move toward Hume’s desk. Atop it lies one of our flame creeper devices—grenades, Elsie calls them—in parts. Next to it is a sketch book, with the inner workings outlined in detail: how the flame creeper reacts to Aotrom magic, and the explosive qualities of the metal we’ve encased it in to detonate on impact.

Our latest weapon has been stripped apart, analyzed, and inspected thoroughly, and is likely in the hands of the enemy now. A map is pinned on the wall above the worktop, each of the old supply routes blotted in red, and one of the new ones we told the council about not even twenty-four hours ago.

Copies of Hume’s letters litter the desk, too. His elegant handwriting all the proof we require to fucking end him.

“Take what we need,” I instruct. “Burn the rest. I want nothing of this house standing when you’re through.”

Brodie is already striding in Hume’s direction. “You’re going to pay for every second of pain you caused him.” He jabs a finger in Kerr’s direction.

Hume laughs around the binding covering his mouth, absolutely no remorse in his beady eyes. Brodie’s words are wasted on him. He doesn’t care, Kerr was expendable to him.

Now the bastard has been dealt with, my simmering wrath turns to the next person we need to confront. Thanks to the report my uncle gave me a few hours ago, and the glaring red on Hume’s map, I know exactly who else has been feeding information into the hands of the Dorche.