Behind his back, Damien flexed his fingers, noxscura swirling under his skin and crawling upward to where Cedric’s hand still gripped him. “Surely your future wife would be the best source of information for the details of her abduction. I wasn’t present for that.”
“No, of course not. I know you had nothing to do with her disappearance; otherwise, why in the realm would you have brought her back?” Again he chuckled, as if it were all a joke. Damien knew Amma’s abduction wasn’t true, but if Cedric thought it was, he certainly was being quite cavalier about it. “But her rescue, that was all you, good sir, and I must know if what took her was struck down or if we must seek out yet another evil in our realm to be destroyed.”
Damien searched Cedric’s eyes, their light brown so steady staring back into his own. “The evil that took Amma?” Damien had a brief flash of the moment he had discovered the talisman had burrowed inside her and how angry he had been, how he had blamed her, and his promise to kill her. “That evil has been destroyed.”
Cedric’s fingers tightened on Damien’s shoulder for just a moment, the noxscura inching toward them to wrap around and squeeze and sever, but then whatever god the marquis prayed to must have interceded because the man let him go. “Good.”
As the noxscura seeped back into Damien’s skin, there was an odd tickle, and he recognized something he hadn’t at first: Cedric Caldor was an arcane user, and the noxscura wasn’t trying to attack but to fend off whatever spell he’d been attempting to cast on Damien. It hadn’t been strong, but it had been well enough shrouded for Damien not to notice, and the possible origin of the magic…concerning.
Cedric, however, did not act as though he’d attempted and failed anything, he just took to thoughtfully pacing the room. “Now let me ask, as a traveling protector, are you aware of a sort of rumor plaguing the realm? One of darkness and lurking evil?”
Damien’s eyes narrowed, and he said nothing, instead stepping up to the desk and turning to watch the man pace.
“A bit nondescript, I know, but there has been talk of something darker. Something more chaotic and destructive out there.” Cedric said these things with a certain excitement, the kind that a man who has either never seen such things or has survived them quite by accident might.
Damien did not want to act too intrigued, but it was mostly because that seemed to be exactly what Cedric wanted out of him. He casually glanced at the records over the desk, an open ledger with neat but minuscule scribbles in it, and a letter signed with a massive signature and the seal of the crown. King Archibald—this was the closest Damien had gotten to him yet, and it made his hackles raise. “I thought Eiren was largely considered a…safe space?”
“Oh, surely it is, itis. His Majesty King Archibald and the Holy Order of Osurehm have seen to the protection of the realm for decades, but there are whispers of a deeper evil. Something lurking, biding its time, waiting to be free.”
Dad?Damien shook his head. “Does this evil have a name?”
“Oh, it likely has many.” Cedric crossed the room to stand behind the desk, dropping his gaze to thoughtlessly flip through a number of pages there. “Or perhaps none at all. But it is said if you encounter it, you know. I would think a man that has been to the corners of the realm may have stumbled upon such a thing, a festering evil, a rot waiting to be cut out.”
Damien’s head cocked, lucky Cedric just missed it before he looked back up. He pulled the recognition of the words from the prophecy—corners, rot—off his face. A coincidence, surely. “Nothing like that.”
“Well!” Cedric threw back on his smarmy grin. “Enough of that. Perhaps you could help me, though, as I am still trying to piece together my betrothed’s ordeal. When, exactly, did you rescue her from this still as-of-yet undefined abductor?”
“Half a moon or so ago,” Damien said carefully, watching to see if Cedric believed this were an inconsistency with whatever Amma had told him. Before the marquis could ask another question, Damien cut in, “But again, Amma would be a much better source for her tribulations. The two of you have surely spoken already, yes?”
The man sighed with a chuckle. “Oh, you know how women can be. Lady Ammalie’s experience has exhausted her, and she has fallen ill, so we have not had the chance to speak nor will we tonight.”
The fist that had been tightened around Damien’s stomach since he’d entered the chamber loosened, and he bit the inside of his cheek to keep the satisfied look off his face. So, there was the reason Amma and her friend had been scurrying so covertly around the keep. Though why sheneededto lie to avoid the marquis still vexed him.
“But, I assure you,” said Cedric as he leaned forward, placing hands on the desk, corner of his lip curling up, “after tomorrow night’s celebration, she and I will have a very long exchange regardless of her protests.”
Damien imagined then that nothing would give him more pleasure than the feeling of Cedric’s blood running down his arm, Damien’s dagger plunged deep in his gut, twisting ever so slowly as he watched the fearful recognition cross over the marquis’s face that he would die.
A metallic clang broke Damien of the fantastic vision of Cedric’s body splayed out on the floor at his feet. The regrettably still-breathing man had dropped a purse of coins on the desk between them.
“No man does good deeds for free. For your service.”
Damien cocked a brow; he could learn a thing or two about villainy from Cedric Caldor. He looked down at the sack of gold, but the parchment below it that had been shifted by the purse gripped his attention instead.
“Haven’t seen more than this all at once, eh?” Cedric laughed, pushing the coin forward and moving the papers to cover what Damien had been staring at.
There was almost no possibility, but the word there on Cedric Caldor’s personal notes, a name written by his own hand, had almost certainly been E’nloc, the evil the elves of the Gloomweald had spoken of, the so-called One True Darkness.
“I don’t want that,” Damien said, gesturing to the coin. “Seeing to Amma’s safety is enough.”
“There’s that familiarity again,” said Cedric, acid in his voice as his eyes found Damien’s, openly hostile for the first time. “I know the baroness can be quite talkative; you must have become friendly on the road. I’ll double the amount if you leave immediately and never return.”
Damien knew somewhere in his mind that this would have made an awful lot of sense. Yes, the talisman was inside Amma, and yes, Damien was technically a prisoner no matter what anyone said, in an estate on the crown’s land no less, and just because no one had pegged him as a blood mage yet—even a holy man—didn’t mean someone wouldn’t soon. Cedric, who had tried and failed to cast on him, might even figure it out, but for now, he was offering him freedom, and a shrewd villain should jump at that chance.
“Thank you,” he said, “but no.”
Damien turned and walked steadily to the chamber’s door. He opened it and stepped out without a look back, all he could do to stop himself from gutting the marquis right then and there.
CHAPTER 33
