Chapter 358: Standing Real Close To Her (I Have Eyes, Ryker)

Blair Drakencrest had been at this for a while and the bag was still on Marek’s head and the answers were still dogshit.

"Let’s try this again, Navarre. The corridor. You said ’half-blood’s mark.’ Whose mark? On whom?"

"I told you. I don’t recall the conversation you’re referring to."

"You don’t recall." Blair looked at Damon. Damon looked at Blair. The shared glance lasted one second and contained a full performance review of Marek’s intelligence. "You don’t recall a conversation you literally just had. In a corridor. Where you were caught. By me. The woman who just listed your sexual resume."

"I have nothing further to add, Princess."

Brennan gave a small shake of his head from the corner. The inhale had been held for a full second before Princess. Lying. Again. Still. Perpetually.

Blair clapped in front of the bag. Marek flinched. She was going to keep doing that until it stopped being funny and she was nowhere close.

"The phrase ’half-blood’s mark’ was very clear, Navarre. So was ’surviving an extraction.’ So was ’matebond severed.’ So was ’kill switch.’ Those are YOUR words. From YOUR mouth. Less than an hour ago. In MY Keep."

Marek’s head tilted under the sack with the energy of a man who was recalculating how much she had actually heard and arriving at a number that was making his palms sweat.

"The Princess has a vivid imagination."

"The Princess has a vivid memory. There’s a difference and it’s measured in buckets. Speaking of, how about another?"

Behind the one-way soundproof door that was cracked open by four inches, Sterling Emberfell stood with his arms crossed. Ryker was beside him. Griffin was behind both of them on his toes, neck craned, the human periscope.

Sterling’s eyes were tracking two things. First, Blair’s hand placement every time she leaned toward the prisoner. Second, Damon Tavian’s proximity to Blair every time she leaned toward the prisoner.

The Beta was too close. He was standing three feet behind the princess in a dimly lit dungeon interrogation chamber, occupying a radius that Sterling had unconsciously designated as his and the intrusion was registering somewhere between his professional judgment and his pulse rate.

"He’s good," Ryker observed quietly.

Sterling said nothing.

"Damon, I mean. Smart interrogation instincts."

Sterling said nothing louder.

"Also standing real close to her."

"I have eyes, Ryker."

"Just making sure they’re pointed at the right thing."

Sterling’s jaw shifted by a millimeter. The millimeter spoke volumes that his mouth refused to produce.

Inside the chamber, Marek’s fingers moved.

It was subtle. The kind of subtle that most people miss because most people watch faces during interrogations and faces are where liars perform. Hands are where they work. His index and middle fingers tapped the arm of the chair in a sequence that was too rhythmic to be nervous and too deliberate to be idle.

One. One-two. One. One-two-three.

Sterling was through the door before the third sequence finished.

His blade was out and the flat of it pressed against Marek’s throat so fast that Blair didn’t register the movement until the steel was already singing against skin. The sound of metal on flesh filled the room with the high, thin note of a man who had just been introduced to his own mortality at close range.

"If I see your fingers twitch again," Sterling said, his voice carrying all the warmth of a surgical table in winter, "you will lose the hand."

Marek went rigid. The tapping stopped. His breathing went shallow and rapid under the sack and the warded cuffs buzzed against his wrists as whatever he had been building fizzled and died in his tendons.

Blair blinked up at Sterling.

The surprise on her face was genuine. She had been watching Marek’s breathing, his posture, his vocal patterns. She had been watching for the inhale tell Brennan gave her. She had been watching everything above the wrists and Sterling had caught something below them that she had missed entirely.

"What was he doing?" she asked.

"Sequencing. Warded cuffs suppress full casting but they don’t block somatic patterning. Three more taps and he would have had a partial incantation loaded. It would have failed because of the wards, but the discharge could have cracked the chair bolts."

Blair looked at the chair bolts. Looked at Marek. Looked at Sterling. The look she gave the High Marshal contained something she would deny under oath, which was genuine, uncut, unperformable respect. She had missed it. He had caught it. The admission lived in her expression for half a second before the mask came back on.

Sterling didn’t see it. He was too busy staring at the bag over Marek’s head with the focus of a man who had just identified a threat to Blair and was now emotionally committed to standing within arm’s reach of the threat until the threat was deceased or departed.

He positioned himself to Blair’s right. Between her and the prisoner. The placement was professional. The motivation was absolutely fucking personal.

Damon watched.

Every interrogator worth a damn recognizes when another predator enters the room. Sterling had entered it with a blade and a protective instinct he was wearing like cologne. The Beta from Shadowfell clocked the positioning. Clocked the blade angle. Clocked the way Sterling’s shoulder squared between Blair and the chair like a wall that happened to have a rank and a pulse.

Damon decided he was done playing good cop.

He crossed the room in two strides, grabbed Marek’s right hand off the armrest, isolated the index finger that had been leading the sequence, and snapped it sideways.

The crack was wet and definitive. Marek screamed into the bag. The sound bounced off every stone wall and came back with interest.

"That’s one," Damon said, still holding the hand. His voice was conversational. Pleasant. The tone of a man ordering a drink while breaking bones. "The middle one was keeping rhythm. Do you want to keep it, or should I match the set?"

Sterling’s blade was still at Marek’s throat. Sterling’s eyes were on Damon’s hands. The wolf Beta had walked past a drawn blade, ignored it completely, and solved the problem Sterling had identified by removing the instrument instead of threatening it. No weapon. No steel. Just a grip and a rotation and a sound that made Griffin turn green in the doorway.