Chapter 40: Alexander [2]

"Are the runes planted?" he asked, before the boy could get a single word out.

Felt nodded, fast and frantic, his chest heaving from the pace he must have run at. Alexander nodded back, slow and satisfied. He raised one hand, mana already gathering faint and blue-white around his fingers, aimed loosely at the boy.

"I’ll spare your sister at least."

Behind him, the sister thrashed hard against her ropes at that, the chair legs scraping and jumping against the stone floor, a muffled, desperate sound tearing out from behind the gag. Alexander didn’t so much as glance her way. Her terror registered somewhere in the back of his mind the way weather might, present, noted, entirely beside the point. Felt, oddly, didn’t look afraid at all. ℴ

"Wait," he said. "There’s more."

Alexander let the mana fade, curious despite himself. "What?"

Felt’s mouth opened, then closed again. His eyes dropped to the floor for a second, and his hands, Alexander noticed, had gone still at his sides in a way they hadn’t been a moment ago.

"It’s about your girlfriend. About Raven."

Something lurched hard behind Alexander’s ribs, a full missed beat before his heart caught back up.

"What exactly do you mean by that?" he asked, his voice very even, very careful.

"She found me," Felt stammered. "Caught me clean, no warning. Put a knife to my throat and started pulling information out of me piece by piece."

Alexander actually shivered at that, a full-body thing he didn’t bother hiding, something that wasn’t quite fear and wasn’t quite pride. What a woman. What an absolutely perfect, terrifying woman.

"What happened next?" his voice went soft with something close to reverence.

"I was seconds from breaking," Felt said. "From telling her everything. She was that good, that frightening, no exaggeration."

Alexander nodded along. Of course she was. His opinion of Felt—pathetic, cowardly Felt—climbed a full notch.

Then Felt said, "Someone else stopped her."

Alexander’s eyes went narrow, all the warmth draining out of them at once.

"A man," Felt told him. "Dark-haired, angular face, handsome in that specific, punchable way some men just are. Taller than me, built like he actually trains and doesn’t just talk about it. He had this way of standing too close to her, like he already knew he was allowed to. He was flirting with her. Right there in the open. Touching her." He swallowed. "And Raven... Raven was letting him."

The room went completely silent.

"Say that again," Alexander said, his voice very quiet now, very calm.

Felt did, word for word, visibly less sure of himself the second time through. Alexander didn’t say anything for a long moment.

"A name," he asked, in that same flat, deadly-calm voice.

Felt hesitated, just a beat too long. "I don’t know. I never caught it."

Alexander crossed the room in four unhurried steps. He paused directly in front of him, and then his boot connected with the side of Felt’s face hard enough to send him crashing sideways off his feet.

Felt hit the floor hard, sliding a full foot across the stone before he stopped, one hand flying up to his jaw. Behind him, his sister had gone rigid in her chair, eyes fixed on her brother crumpled on the ground, the fight gone out of her thrashing entirely, replaced by something flatter and more frightened.

"Don’t lie to me," he said, his voice still perfectly level.

Felt scrambled, blood already running from his split lip. "I’m not! I swear I’m not lying!"

Alexander snarled, low in his throat. He didn’t hit him again, mostly because there was no clean way to confirm the truth through pain. Torture just taught a man to say whatever made the pain stop, not what actually happened, and Felt was still too useful to break past the point of usefulness over one name he genuinely might not have.

He could keep hitting him, certainly. He could make this boy scream for the better part of an hour if he wanted to. But pain only ever bought him what a man thought he wanted to hear, not what was actually true, and a name pulled out of Felt through fear alone was worthless the second it left his mouth. Worse, Felt was still the only asset he had planted anywhere near her. Breaking him now, past the point of use, would cost more than it returned.

"I’ll let you live," he said, flatly. "For now. But you will be expected to identify the man on sight the moment the opportunity presents itself."

"I’ll let you live," he said, flatly. "For now. But you will be expected to identify the man on sight the moment the opportunity presents itself."

Felt nodded, frantic, his head bobbing so hard it looked like it might come loose.

Alexander turned and walked out of the room without another word.

The second the door shut behind him, his fist drove straight into the corridor wall. Not hollow, but solid stone underneath the plaster, and it cracked clean through anyway, a spiderweb of fractures radiating out from his knuckles. How dare someone touch her. How dare anyone put their hands on his Raven, flirt with his Raven, stand close enough to her that she’d let it happen. Let some stranger’s fingers land where only Alexander’s ever had any right to. Whoever this was, wherever he was hiding, whatever name he was using.

He pictured it already, clear and vivid and almost soothing in its detail. Dragging the man out somewhere private, somewhere with no one left to interrupt. Making him kneel. Making him watch Alexander’s hand settle on her waist, her jaw, wherever he liked, and making him understand, in the last clear moments he’d ever have, exactly whose she’d always been. He wanted the man conscious for it. He wanted him to have just enough strength left to feel every second of losing her permanently before Alexander finished what he started.

Whoever he was. Wherever he was hiding. Whatever name he was using.

He was going to die. Slowly. Alexander was going to make absolutely sure of that.

And he’d find that bastard who dared touch her.

And he’d show him who Raven belonged to right then and there, and make him watch.

-

SPANK.

Cane smacked Raven’s fat ass the moment they met in the dark forest.

She glared at him, without any real malice.

"Is this going to be a pattern."

"Dunno. Do you want it to be?"

Raven gave him a cute pout, and a glare that looked more childish than angry.