This man—if he can even be considered a man anymore—is looking right at me where he’s lying on his side in the middle of the dirt floor. Even with the low lighting, I can see that his body is swollen beneath shucked up pant legs and sleeves. His skin has browned and peeled back, his hair nothing but tufts of rotten strands clinging to a molded scalp. There’s curdled blood on his lips, and his teeth...
“Great Divine...”
Slade’s arm wraps around me and tugs, and this time, I let him pull me away, my steps unsteady as he leads me further down the tunnel. When I feel a breeze of air, I turn my head in that direction, taking in great gulping breaths.
“I didn’t want you to see that,” he says as I brace a hand against the wall of the cave.
I look up at him. “Whoisthat?”
“Didn’t you recognize the clothing?”
“I was too busy noticing his fingers rotting off his hand.”
Slade’s lips press together, and he looks away, his sharp-jawed profile bathed in warring shadow.
Breathing out, I take a second to think past the shocking parts, to remember the rucked up clothing, and my eyes go wide. “His coat was gilded.”
He turns back to look at me, his face grim as he gives me a nod. “Yes. He was a spy for Midas. Sent here to get information after we made the Deadwell deal,” he explains. “They tried to flee when I arrived, but Ryatt tracked them all down.”
I swallow hard. “They found Drollard.”
“They did,” he confirms. “Ryatt took care of the others, but he saved this one for questioning.”
Everything he’s saying makes sense. I know this is the real world, where people have to be ruthless to protect their own. But to see it...
“Did you get whatever information out of him that you needed?” I ask, though my voice doesn’t quite sound like my own.
His head tips down. “I did.”
“And the village is protected?”
“It is.”
“So…it’s finished.”
Slade’s brows pull together. “What do you mean?”
I gesture toward the cell door. “Your questioning. It’s finished. So you can put the man out of his misery.”
There’s a pause. A pause that’s far too long.
My hand snags out and I grip his arm. “Slade. You can’t keep him like that.”
“Why not?” he asks, shoulders stiffening. “He’s a spy. He was going to report everything back to Midas. All of my carefully kept secrets would’ve beendestroyed.”
I see the anger in his face, the way the skin around his eyes tightens. “I know. But you and Ryatt stopped all of that. So you need to stop this too. He’s obviously unable to talk anymore. What you’re doing is cruel.”
His eyes flicker. “I’ve done things far crueler.”
Instantly, all the memories of putrid corpses and rotted land spring back to my mind, and nausea crawls up my throat. “I know that too.”
“Do you?” he challenges, the fierce glint in his eye flashing. “Because I’m not sure you do.”
My hand drops, like his words have weighed down my limbs. “I’d like to go back to the Grotto now.”
His gaze sweeps over me, but my own keeps drifting back to that door, back to the buzzing noise I can still hear. The noise of tiny flies infesting the flesh of a rotting man.
“I’ll walk you,” Slade rumbles.
