Page 158 of Hidden Kingdoms

I shook off my coat, hanging it on a hook by the door. It was a nice one, lined with ruban bear fur. I didn’t want to get blood on it.

My newest quarry sat there, in only his unwashed pants, watery brown eyes following my every move. His skin was sopale that the rug of ginger hair that covered most of the exposed parts of his body seemed almost luminous.

A steel table had been set up for me. A shiny array of wickedly sharp knives had been laid out on it, along with a brown file that held all the information I needed. I had my own arsenal strapped across my body, but it was nice to have options.

Running my fingers across the blades, I relished the little shiver that ran through me as their edges teased at my skin. There was a small one I hadn’t seen before, and I plucked it from the side, turning it in my hands to study its beautifully honed edges.

It was kind of cute—as instruments of torture went. I couldn’t help the mental image that forced its way into my mind of it held carefully in Elodie’s hands as she straddled me and ran it over my skin. Her naked body pressed against mine the way it had been in the caves. My dick hardened as the blood that should have been in my brain rushed to it, and I decided I would make it a gift for her.

A wash of fresh fear coursed through the room, and my shadows writhed as I turned to the reason I was here. Reluctantly putting my happy little fantasy on the backburner for now, I replaced the little blade on the dull metal surface.

His eyes dipped down to the bulge pressing against my trousers, and I laughed at the added layer of fear that etched itself on his face.

“Don’t worry, this isn’t for you.” I winked as I adjusted myself before picking up the brown folder.

“Let’s see what we have here then…” I scanned the file for his name, laughing as my eyes landed on it—Brutus.

“You don’t mind if I call you something else, do you?” I said, as I casually flipped through the file before peering back at him. Face now a sickly shade of grey, his stubby hands twisted in hislap. If I was hard a second ago, I definitely wasn’t now. “You look more like an Egbert to me.”

He shook his head quickly, and strands of orange hair dropped over his forehead, wobbling in a way that shouldn’t annoy me, but somehow did.

“Anyway, enough of this. Let’s get you screaming, see if you have anything worth saying then.” At a flick of my fingers, vines wrapped over his creepily hairy wrists and bound them to the arms of this chair. Pointlessly—and predictably—Egbert struggled against them as if he had even the slightest chance of breaking out.

News flash; he did not.

“So, two counts of drunk and disorderly conduct.” I read out the charges presented to me in the file, directing shadows to whip at his arms with every count and leaving nice, tidy, red lines that had him squealing like a cut pig. “Threatening a witness, caught facilitating the illegal breeding of polypus worms, multiple public indecency charges. Damn, Eggy boy, this just gets worse and worse.”

Egbert’s screams were the only argument he offered, so I took them as a guilty plea. Dark shadows lashed down on him, his skin splitting in a satisfying slice across his forearm. A small stream of blood slid over his pasty skin before dripping onto his thighs and pooling on his dirty underwear. Clean-up was easier when there were less clothes, but it wasn’t easier on the eyes.

I felt sharp pricks of his magik against my skin as he attempted to fight back, but it was so weak, it was laughable.

“One count of ‘breaking into Miss Truely’s stables to shear the mane from their prized stallion ‘Stardust Cosmic Serenade III’ and being found later that evening masturbating into said hair in an alleyway’,” I continued, arching a brow at him as his current scream ended. Sweat slid down his face gathering on histop lip, and throwing the file to the side, I moved closer. “Now, I like some fucked up stuff, but that’s just weird.”

I slashed another line into his other arm, purely because I now had the unwanted mental image of him with horsehair wrapped around his little dick.

“Is it any hair, or just horses?” I wondered aloud. “Actually, I don’t think I want to know that answer.”

Rolling my shoulders, I loosened my muscles, itching to lay my hands on him, “Here’s where I’m going to need you to start talking. Someone—and believe me, I know it wasn’t you—sent a spy into the Palace, and they went after my girl. Big mistake on their part, because she wiped the floor with them. But that’s not the point, is it, Eggy? They still hurt her, and I need to know who’s responsible. Who’s the big boss in this?”

Egbert hunched into himself as the crimson stains spread further, his voice raspy from all the screaming. “I… I didn’t do it.”

Tipping my head back, I sighed to the rough-hewn ceiling. “Tieralla, give me strength. Did I not just say I knowyoudidn’t do it?”

I didn’t give him time to reply before my fist snapped out. Colliding with his jaw in a satisfying crunch, Egbert’s head whipped back. I relished in the tickle of magik that soaked into my skin, at the dark core of me that snapped its eyes open and took note of the world.

“What I do know...” My next punch landed on his temple, a dark bruise instantly blooming under his eye. “Is that the dead man who thought he could lay hands on Goldie had something interesting in his pocket.” Again, I slammed my fist into his head, the silver ring on my finger slicing into his skin nicely. “Do you know that that was?”

His garbled “no” came just before shadows yanked his head up by a scruff of ginger hair, and he winced at its tight grip.Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a small brown packet stamped with an image of a burning sunflower, and he couldn’t hide the way his eyes widened in recognition.

“I’m glad you recognise it. I thought you would try and deny it but looks like today you’re going with honesty. A wise choice, well done. Now, I know you’ve been giving this shit to the ladies over at Madame Velvetina’s so they’ll service that worm dick of yours. But how the fuck is someone like you getting hold of Flaming Sun, especially in Incaendium?”

The temperature here made it practically impossible to grow the strain of sunflowers they used, not to mention harvest the griffin shit that they mixed it with. Considering they only roosted in some far off mountain in Animalia, it wasn’t something we saw here.

The shit he’d got them to do as he plied them with the drugs had made my skin crawl. It had been one of the Madams catching onto his game and alerting someone in my team that put us on the path to him.

I didn’t think he could possibly get more terrified, yet it poured from him in thick waves, and his body shook as his busted mouth moved thickly over his next words. I doubted it would be long before he pissed himself.

“I… I can’t, they’ll kill me.”

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