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(I’ve been looking to kill two birds with one stone by creating solo backstory posts. Doing it for challenges seems perfect!)
Minor back story scene to A Throne of Blood and Shadows
Characters and World
The first scream came from the east wing.
I remember because I was holding a cup of blood wine and thought it to have been a humans scream.
My first thoughts were of how bold we were, already breaking the laws set by our High Lord, indulging in a way that brings agony to a mortal. Only a fool would have broken such laws when his father was alive. But, that was no longer the case.
The ancients had foiled the last High Lord’s plans, securing some woman, a human Queen, before he could get his hands on her. Then they backstabbed him in a recent battle, betraying his movements to our enemies.
His son was the High Lord now. The ancient ones weren’t afraid to test him.
Laughter sprung up from around the estate. It was a new era. The agonizing cries of that human were the first of many. We’d finally live like the predators we were.
We raised our glasses, cheers of encouragement came from around the room, as we heard the brutality of someone being torn apart.
The second scream came before I could take a drink.
It was shorter.
Closer.
I set the cup down.
No one else seemed concerned like I was. Humans had never been allowed in the west wing. The scream had come from the west wing.
My fellow soldiers continued their drinking. Several engrossed in a game of cards at a far table. A pair spoke of the new world near the entrance. A man and woman were nearly mating against the wall.
It was much of the same throughout the estate.
Then something struck the floor above us.
Hard.
There wasn’t a scream associated with it. Just the sound of gurgled choking and dust fluttering down from above in the aftermath of the impact.
Every man at the table was looking up. The couple against the wall pulled away from each other. The men at the door looked out into the halls with worry.
A third scream rose somewhere outdoors in the courtyard. This one rose and fell, again and again.
Someone, or something, was repeatedly inflicting pain. I’d been in enough battles to recognize the sound.
They were being hacked to death by a blade.
The sound of steel sliding from scabbards rang in the room. Calls to action were shouted from around the estate. Men were demanded to get to our noble lord’s, Lord Varyn’s, chamber doors.
Captain Merrow’s was the voice that anchored me. He’d served Lord Varyn for nearly a century. During the last war it was said he’d held a bridge against forty of the adversaries greatest warriors.
I knew if Merrow was alive, we were in good hands.
The sound of a blade cutting through flesh echoed through the hall. It was wet, gruesome, and followed by the sound of steel against steel. A fight had broken out within the estate.
Merrow shouted at the room to follow him.
No one hesitated. He was the man that settled the nerves of his warriors in the roughest of times.
I can only recall how ridiculous I felt in that moment. There was clearly no army. There was no beast known to us that could possibly threaten the entire guard of Lord Varyn. We weren’t common sell-swords. We were battle tested warriors.
Still, as I heard the sound of blades tearing through flesh somewhere behind us, and the quiet laugh of a woman—I felt my composure slowly unraveling.
The fighting was everywhere and nowhere.
The floor above us men were engaged in battle. We kept looking up as the sounds of bodies thudded with enough force to make the ceiling rattle.
Behind us, that woman’s voice, gleeful, killing men in various rooms.
Outside I could hear wounded men. Confused men. Men engaged in combat only to soon join the screams of the dying.
Then we found him.
My friend.
The man I’d enlisted with.
Hadrian.
Merrow reached him first.
Hadrian’s blood was streaked across the floor. He had pulled himself from where he was felled, propped himself against the wall. There was a hole in chest so wide that no blade could have caused it.
He was still alive. His eyes wide, frantic. I’d never seen him afraid.
His mouth murmured something unintelligible, and he raised a shaky finger, pointing to the open door to the estate.
The man to the left of me cried something in both disgust and heartbreak.
Lord Varyn’s family and at least seven warrior’s bodies were scattered across the lit courtyard. I don’t know the exact count. They were dismembered. Hacked to death.
I don’t know which one overtook the others, fear or anger.
But, when I heard the sound of someone else. Someone out of sight, outside, being slashed with a blade, fear took its hold on me.
Others began to move and head outside.
“No, we protect Lord Varyn. That’s our duty,” I heard Merrow say. They were furious, not at him, at whoever had done this. They still listened.
We reached the stairs. I man I couldn’t recognize was torn apart, we stepped over the pieces of him. Someone ahead of me slipped in his blood and startled us, but we continued.
I remember becoming aware that the battle we’d heard above us was no longer taking place. Yet, there were no calls to post battle actions that should be taking place.
My stomach twisted.
Had our men lost?
Merrow led from the front stepping into the top floors hallway, shoulders squared, sword raised.
I don’t know how he remained so composed.
Had I gone first I might have cowered away.
There were lifeless men everywhere.
The hallway was littered with soldiers, nobles who had come to celebrate, spilled flutes of wine, servants with trays lifeless.
“Eyes up,” Merrow growled at us.
I felt a strange relief in knowing I wasn’t the only one struggling with what I was witnessing.
We checked rooms as we moved, the aftermath of the carnage evident in each. About half we down the hallway corridor is when Merrow raised a fist halting us.
Footsteps in a room ahead of us.
Regardless of our fear, we formed up, just like we were trained for. Shoulder to shoulder, weapons raised, bodies alert. We’d all fought through fear. Merrow had fought through impossibilities.
There was nothing we weren’t prepared for.
I was wrong.
I wasn’t the only one who flinched back at seeing him.
He was dressed in black leather armor, a cloak clasped to a crimson ruby at his chest. There were splotches of blood all over his attire. Spots of it splatted across the stern expression on his face. His silver eyes with gold flecks seemed completely disgusted and unimpressed by us.
He just observed us, sword sheathed, like there wasn’t a squad of warriors who had caught him red handed. It felt quite the opposite.
Like it was us who had been found in the wrong, and he alone would deal whatever punishment he felt fit.
Merrow didn’t falter, I felt confidence creep back in when he spoke.
“You aren’t our High Lord, Dante,” Merrow spat at him, and we all steadied ourselves behind our captain. “There’s no escape for you.”
He was right, the stairs, a ways behind us, were the only way out.
Dante just looked at us as if he were calmly calculating how he would add our blood to the walls.
“I’m quite aware of where your loyalties lie.”
Dante said it so firmly, all restrained anger, yet his breathing was steady. He just towered in the hallway before us, like it was us who weren’t allowed to advance further and not the other way around. Were he not covered in the blood of our comrades, I might have felt we were making a mistake to contest him.
“Is this everyone?”
Nobody answered. It was one thing to turn our backs on our High Lord from afar. When he was ten feet away, however, I felt anxiety as if I might answer if no one else responded.
His eyes returned to Merrow.
“I asked you a question.”
There was authority and a threat of violence in his voice.
Merrow’s sword rose another inch.
“You’re trapped.”
Dante looked past him, down the corridor, as if considering the claim.
Then he smiled faintly.
That was what unsettled me most. There was no rage in it, no madness, no wild satisfaction at the sight of so many armed warriors.
Only amusement. I’d never seen someone outnumbered and make the situation seem to be in his favor. Not even Merrow.
“Am I?”
Steps came up the stairs behind us. The men in the back turned, weapons ready.
A man with silver hair, black armor, and two long daggers stepped into view.
Cyrus.
There were nine of us, yet for the first time in my long life, I felt like prey.
I think that’s what drove Merrow to call for us to charge. The anger at feeling fear. Decades of battle prowess made the man contest his fears. He’d face what unsettled him and see if it deserved to do so.
Merrow’s command split the silence.
Nine men surged in either direction, following our captains lead, feeding off his bravery.
I was among them.
I remember the sound of our boots against the stone, the weight of my sword in my hand, the man to my right shouting something I couldn’t make out.
I remember Dante looking at us, sword still sheathed. His hand flung out, an orb of darkness zipped through the air and tore through the man beside me.
The first of our men fell.
I paused, I looks down at the man. The hole in his chest made me think of Hadrian.
I couldn’t fight that. I stood no chance against a High Lord.
Fear overcame my bravery, I felt guilty at hearing steel meeting steel. Guilty that my first thought was of how they would delay Dante and give me time to get away.
Away.
Cyrus stood in my path. I swear I heard a low laugh as he pulled his dagger from one warriors throat, a wet noise accompanying it.
I took my chances, as he ducked and engaged another warrior. I tried to attack Cyrus’s blindside, my sword sang through the air, hitting nothing as he ducked my attack.
I never saw his dagger that left this slash across my face.
I was so caught off guard that my weapon was dropped and kicked somewhere behind me. I think it was my own foot that did it . I was in shock. Someone took my place as I fell back on my backside.
I scooted back, hands slipping in blood, both fresh, and from earlier in the evening.
I stumbled to my feet, nearly tripping over something, Dante was fighting two men. Both of them were wounded. I was moments away from becoming the next living thing within his reach.
Something rolled into view. It was what I had almost tripped over.
I’m not proud of what I did next. I had no sword. I was wounded.
I was staring into Merrow's eyes.
They were open. Lifeless.
For a moment, I couldn't understand what I was seeing. Blood from my wound was burning my left eye. That was Captain Merrow. The man who had held a bridge against forty warriors. The man who had marched us into battle and brought most of us home.
His head lay in the blood, and I couldn't find the rest of him.
I forgot my sword.
I panicked.
I scrambled through a door, into a room, I found a closet.
I left a trail of blood, but with the state of the room, it would be hard to tell what blood led to what. There were a handful of lifeless vampires already littering the floor.
There were shutters on the closet. I could see through them, and prayed it veiled me from those looking from the other side.
A sword tore through flesh outside the room, it was the last sound of battle. I heard someone drop to the floor.
I knew better than to hope we’d won. I stayed in the closet, my face throbbed in pain, but I didn’t dare move to touch my wound, or wipe at the blood in my eye.
That’s when I saw Dante enter the room, Cyrus just behind him.
“He’s likely the last one.”
Dante seemed displeased by it.
“I only injured him,” I heard Cyrus say, but his tone confused me.
Like it was good that I wasn’t dead.
Another set of footsteps approached. Lighter than Dante's. Unhurried.
Then came a laugh.
My stomach turned.
I knew that laugh. I'd heard it somewhere below us, drifting through the corridors while men screamed and steel tore through flesh.
The woman from the west wing. I’d nearly forgotten.
She was here, too.
That’s when Cyrus pulled me out of the closet and threatened to give me a matching wound if I didn’t speak.
I thought Lord Varyn was in the estate, I didn’t know where he could possibly be.
I didn’t know anything about the Queen of Ashkara or Lord Varyn’s involvement in handing her to your enemies.
I thought this was about Dante’s father. We did pull back during a battle and leave him stranded to die. We planned it with the enemy, I thought that’s what he wanted to know.
After I said I knew nothing about any offspring of the Queen of Ashkara, he looked at you.
“He’s useless.”
I had betrayed Dante just as the others had. I had followed orders, trusted my lord, and convinced myself that loyalty made my actions honorable.
Now I wished I had something useful to tell him.
Anything.
Because the alternative was being the last man alive in an estate full of corpses, standing before the man who had put them there.
And I was beginning to understand that surviving him might be worse than dying with the others.
“Feel free to double check though, Raina.”
Raina looked at her captive, eyes dancing with amusement.
“Cute story.”
The smile was audible in her voice. It was a cruel thing, full of delight.
Her full lips turned to a pout.
“But, I already knew all of that.”
She flicked her silky raven black hair over her shoulder, sighing like a mild inconvenience had just made itself apparent.
Her violet eyes dropped to her captive’s hands, bound at the wrists to the armrests of the chair he was chain to.
“And you only have one finger left.”
The words reeked of disappointment, and she stepped forward, picking her knife back up from a bloody tray.
“Wait, wait. I told you everything I know,” the man pleaded, his face bruised, swollen where an open gash carved a jagged line from jaw to temple.
Raina pouted again, grabbing his single remaining finger and holding it steady.
“I know sweetheart,” she cooed. “But, I have a fussy High Lord who wants to know about a missing queen, human magic, and where your Lord Varyn ran off to.”
The knife came down.
His scream filled the room.
She loosed a pleasured, unsteady breath, enjoying the sound. Those violet eyes watching him intently, wanting to soak up every ounce of his suffering and commit it to memory.
“None of what you’ve told me helps with that,” she purred, wiping both sides of the blade against his tunic.
She returned to the tray and exchanged the knife for a small hand saw, turning it beneath the light as though inspecting a new purchase.
The man was panting in agony, sweating, body shaky as he stared at the floor, before him. All of his fingers lay scattered about.
“Hands with no fingers just doesn’t look good on you, sweetie.”
Raina brought her gaze back to him. What came next now clear.
“I don’t know anything. I—I was just a soldier,” he stuttered, frantic for her to understand. He’d tell her anything, if he knew. “I wasn’t kept in the know. I don’t know about a daughter named Amari, or Amery…I don’t know.”
He thrashed in his chair, though the restraints gave him little room to accomplish anything.
“Oh, I believe that you don’t know anything.”
She stepped closer again, leaning down, her lips by his ear.
“But I told Dante that I think you do. Just so this can continue.”
Raina pulled back, smiling sweetly at his terrified face. Then she positioned the saw against his wrist.
Minor back story scene to A Throne of Blood and Shadows
Characters and World
The first scream came from the east wing.
I remember because I was holding a cup of blood wine and thought it to have been a humans scream.
My first thoughts were of how bold we were, already breaking the laws set by our High Lord, indulging in a way that brings agony to a mortal. Only a fool would have broken such laws when his father was alive. But, that was no longer the case.
The ancients had foiled the last High Lord’s plans, securing some woman, a human Queen, before he could get his hands on her. Then they backstabbed him in a recent battle, betraying his movements to our enemies.
His son was the High Lord now. The ancient ones weren’t afraid to test him.
Laughter sprung up from around the estate. It was a new era. The agonizing cries of that human were the first of many. We’d finally live like the predators we were.
We raised our glasses, cheers of encouragement came from around the room, as we heard the brutality of someone being torn apart.
The second scream came before I could take a drink.
It was shorter.
Closer.
I set the cup down.
No one else seemed concerned like I was. Humans had never been allowed in the west wing. The scream had come from the west wing.
My fellow soldiers continued their drinking. Several engrossed in a game of cards at a far table. A pair spoke of the new world near the entrance. A man and woman were nearly mating against the wall.
It was much of the same throughout the estate.
Then something struck the floor above us.
Hard.
There wasn’t a scream associated with it. Just the sound of gurgled choking and dust fluttering down from above in the aftermath of the impact.
Every man at the table was looking up. The couple against the wall pulled away from each other. The men at the door looked out into the halls with worry.
A third scream rose somewhere outdoors in the courtyard. This one rose and fell, again and again.
Someone, or something, was repeatedly inflicting pain. I’d been in enough battles to recognize the sound.
They were being hacked to death by a blade.
The sound of steel sliding from scabbards rang in the room. Calls to action were shouted from around the estate. Men were demanded to get to our noble lord’s, Lord Varyn’s, chamber doors.
Captain Merrow’s was the voice that anchored me. He’d served Lord Varyn for nearly a century. During the last war it was said he’d held a bridge against forty of the adversaries greatest warriors.
I knew if Merrow was alive, we were in good hands.
The sound of a blade cutting through flesh echoed through the hall. It was wet, gruesome, and followed by the sound of steel against steel. A fight had broken out within the estate.
Merrow shouted at the room to follow him.
No one hesitated. He was the man that settled the nerves of his warriors in the roughest of times.
I can only recall how ridiculous I felt in that moment. There was clearly no army. There was no beast known to us that could possibly threaten the entire guard of Lord Varyn. We weren’t common sell-swords. We were battle tested warriors.
Still, as I heard the sound of blades tearing through flesh somewhere behind us, and the quiet laugh of a woman—I felt my composure slowly unraveling.
The fighting was everywhere and nowhere.
The floor above us men were engaged in battle. We kept looking up as the sounds of bodies thudded with enough force to make the ceiling rattle.
Behind us, that woman’s voice, gleeful, killing men in various rooms.
Outside I could hear wounded men. Confused men. Men engaged in combat only to soon join the screams of the dying.
Then we found him.
My friend.
The man I’d enlisted with.
Hadrian.
Merrow reached him first.
Hadrian’s blood was streaked across the floor. He had pulled himself from where he was felled, propped himself against the wall. There was a hole in chest so wide that no blade could have caused it.
He was still alive. His eyes wide, frantic. I’d never seen him afraid.
His mouth murmured something unintelligible, and he raised a shaky finger, pointing to the open door to the estate.
The man to the left of me cried something in both disgust and heartbreak.
Lord Varyn’s family and at least seven warrior’s bodies were scattered across the lit courtyard. I don’t know the exact count. They were dismembered. Hacked to death.
I don’t know which one overtook the others, fear or anger.
But, when I heard the sound of someone else. Someone out of sight, outside, being slashed with a blade, fear took its hold on me.
Others began to move and head outside.
“No, we protect Lord Varyn. That’s our duty,” I heard Merrow say. They were furious, not at him, at whoever had done this. They still listened.
We reached the stairs. I man I couldn’t recognize was torn apart, we stepped over the pieces of him. Someone ahead of me slipped in his blood and startled us, but we continued.
I remember becoming aware that the battle we’d heard above us was no longer taking place. Yet, there were no calls to post battle actions that should be taking place.
My stomach twisted.
Had our men lost?
Merrow led from the front stepping into the top floors hallway, shoulders squared, sword raised.
I don’t know how he remained so composed.
Had I gone first I might have cowered away.
There were lifeless men everywhere.
The hallway was littered with soldiers, nobles who had come to celebrate, spilled flutes of wine, servants with trays lifeless.
“Eyes up,” Merrow growled at us.
I felt a strange relief in knowing I wasn’t the only one struggling with what I was witnessing.
We checked rooms as we moved, the aftermath of the carnage evident in each. About half we down the hallway corridor is when Merrow raised a fist halting us.
Footsteps in a room ahead of us.
Regardless of our fear, we formed up, just like we were trained for. Shoulder to shoulder, weapons raised, bodies alert. We’d all fought through fear. Merrow had fought through impossibilities.
There was nothing we weren’t prepared for.
I was wrong.
I wasn’t the only one who flinched back at seeing him.
He was dressed in black leather armor, a cloak clasped to a crimson ruby at his chest. There were splotches of blood all over his attire. Spots of it splatted across the stern expression on his face. His silver eyes with gold flecks seemed completely disgusted and unimpressed by us.
He just observed us, sword sheathed, like there wasn’t a squad of warriors who had caught him red handed. It felt quite the opposite.
Like it was us who had been found in the wrong, and he alone would deal whatever punishment he felt fit.
Merrow didn’t falter, I felt confidence creep back in when he spoke.
“You aren’t our High Lord, Dante,” Merrow spat at him, and we all steadied ourselves behind our captain. “There’s no escape for you.”
He was right, the stairs, a ways behind us, were the only way out.
Dante just looked at us as if he were calmly calculating how he would add our blood to the walls.
“I’m quite aware of where your loyalties lie.”
Dante said it so firmly, all restrained anger, yet his breathing was steady. He just towered in the hallway before us, like it was us who weren’t allowed to advance further and not the other way around. Were he not covered in the blood of our comrades, I might have felt we were making a mistake to contest him.
“Is this everyone?”
Nobody answered. It was one thing to turn our backs on our High Lord from afar. When he was ten feet away, however, I felt anxiety as if I might answer if no one else responded.
His eyes returned to Merrow.
“I asked you a question.”
There was authority and a threat of violence in his voice.
Merrow’s sword rose another inch.
“You’re trapped.”
Dante looked past him, down the corridor, as if considering the claim.
Then he smiled faintly.
That was what unsettled me most. There was no rage in it, no madness, no wild satisfaction at the sight of so many armed warriors.
Only amusement. I’d never seen someone outnumbered and make the situation seem to be in his favor. Not even Merrow.
“Am I?”
Steps came up the stairs behind us. The men in the back turned, weapons ready.
A man with silver hair, black armor, and two long daggers stepped into view.
Cyrus.
There were nine of us, yet for the first time in my long life, I felt like prey.
I think that’s what drove Merrow to call for us to charge. The anger at feeling fear. Decades of battle prowess made the man contest his fears. He’d face what unsettled him and see if it deserved to do so.
Merrow’s command split the silence.
Nine men surged in either direction, following our captains lead, feeding off his bravery.
I was among them.
I remember the sound of our boots against the stone, the weight of my sword in my hand, the man to my right shouting something I couldn’t make out.
I remember Dante looking at us, sword still sheathed. His hand flung out, an orb of darkness zipped through the air and tore through the man beside me.
The first of our men fell.
I paused, I looks down at the man. The hole in his chest made me think of Hadrian.
I couldn’t fight that. I stood no chance against a High Lord.
Fear overcame my bravery, I felt guilty at hearing steel meeting steel. Guilty that my first thought was of how they would delay Dante and give me time to get away.
Away.
Cyrus stood in my path. I swear I heard a low laugh as he pulled his dagger from one warriors throat, a wet noise accompanying it.
I took my chances, as he ducked and engaged another warrior. I tried to attack Cyrus’s blindside, my sword sang through the air, hitting nothing as he ducked my attack.
I never saw his dagger that left this slash across my face.
I was so caught off guard that my weapon was dropped and kicked somewhere behind me. I think it was my own foot that did it . I was in shock. Someone took my place as I fell back on my backside.
I scooted back, hands slipping in blood, both fresh, and from earlier in the evening.
I stumbled to my feet, nearly tripping over something, Dante was fighting two men. Both of them were wounded. I was moments away from becoming the next living thing within his reach.
Something rolled into view. It was what I had almost tripped over.
I’m not proud of what I did next. I had no sword. I was wounded.
I was staring into Merrow's eyes.
They were open. Lifeless.
For a moment, I couldn't understand what I was seeing. Blood from my wound was burning my left eye. That was Captain Merrow. The man who had held a bridge against forty warriors. The man who had marched us into battle and brought most of us home.
His head lay in the blood, and I couldn't find the rest of him.
I forgot my sword.
I panicked.
I scrambled through a door, into a room, I found a closet.
I left a trail of blood, but with the state of the room, it would be hard to tell what blood led to what. There were a handful of lifeless vampires already littering the floor.
There were shutters on the closet. I could see through them, and prayed it veiled me from those looking from the other side.
A sword tore through flesh outside the room, it was the last sound of battle. I heard someone drop to the floor.
I knew better than to hope we’d won. I stayed in the closet, my face throbbed in pain, but I didn’t dare move to touch my wound, or wipe at the blood in my eye.
That’s when I saw Dante enter the room, Cyrus just behind him.
“He’s likely the last one.”
Dante seemed displeased by it.
“I only injured him,” I heard Cyrus say, but his tone confused me.
Like it was good that I wasn’t dead.
Another set of footsteps approached. Lighter than Dante's. Unhurried.
Then came a laugh.
My stomach turned.
I knew that laugh. I'd heard it somewhere below us, drifting through the corridors while men screamed and steel tore through flesh.
The woman from the west wing. I’d nearly forgotten.
She was here, too.
That’s when Cyrus pulled me out of the closet and threatened to give me a matching wound if I didn’t speak.
I thought Lord Varyn was in the estate, I didn’t know where he could possibly be.
I didn’t know anything about the Queen of Ashkara or Lord Varyn’s involvement in handing her to your enemies.
I thought this was about Dante’s father. We did pull back during a battle and leave him stranded to die. We planned it with the enemy, I thought that’s what he wanted to know.
After I said I knew nothing about any offspring of the Queen of Ashkara, he looked at you.
“He’s useless.”
I had betrayed Dante just as the others had. I had followed orders, trusted my lord, and convinced myself that loyalty made my actions honorable.
Now I wished I had something useful to tell him.
Anything.
Because the alternative was being the last man alive in an estate full of corpses, standing before the man who had put them there.
And I was beginning to understand that surviving him might be worse than dying with the others.
“Feel free to double check though, Raina.”
Raina looked at her captive, eyes dancing with amusement.
“Cute story.”
The smile was audible in her voice. It was a cruel thing, full of delight.
Her full lips turned to a pout.
“But, I already knew all of that.”
She flicked her silky raven black hair over her shoulder, sighing like a mild inconvenience had just made itself apparent.
Her violet eyes dropped to her captive’s hands, bound at the wrists to the armrests of the chair he was chain to.
“And you only have one finger left.”
The words reeked of disappointment, and she stepped forward, picking her knife back up from a bloody tray.
“Wait, wait. I told you everything I know,” the man pleaded, his face bruised, swollen where an open gash carved a jagged line from jaw to temple.
Raina pouted again, grabbing his single remaining finger and holding it steady.
“I know sweetheart,” she cooed. “But, I have a fussy High Lord who wants to know about a missing queen, human magic, and where your Lord Varyn ran off to.”
The knife came down.
His scream filled the room.
She loosed a pleasured, unsteady breath, enjoying the sound. Those violet eyes watching him intently, wanting to soak up every ounce of his suffering and commit it to memory.
“None of what you’ve told me helps with that,” she purred, wiping both sides of the blade against his tunic.
She returned to the tray and exchanged the knife for a small hand saw, turning it beneath the light as though inspecting a new purchase.
The man was panting in agony, sweating, body shaky as he stared at the floor, before him. All of his fingers lay scattered about.
“Hands with no fingers just doesn’t look good on you, sweetie.”
Raina brought her gaze back to him. What came next now clear.
“I don’t know anything. I—I was just a soldier,” he stuttered, frantic for her to understand. He’d tell her anything, if he knew. “I wasn’t kept in the know. I don’t know about a daughter named Amari, or Amery…I don’t know.”
He thrashed in his chair, though the restraints gave him little room to accomplish anything.
“Oh, I believe that you don’t know anything.”
She stepped closer again, leaning down, her lips by his ear.
“But I told Dante that I think you do. Just so this can continue.”
Raina pulled back, smiling sweetly at his terrified face. Then she positioned the saw against his wrist.