Chapter 16

“She denied any involvement vehemently, but my powers of persuasion brought her to her senses. She admitted to having conspired with Sir Vodin to have Lady Heather kidnapped. I’m sorry, Emperor, I know how much she meant to you.”

Meant to me? Past time? I narrowed my eyes. “What are you saying?”

“I’m sorry, but Lady Natoi admitted that Sir Vodin’s guards were supposed to kill Lady Heather and dump her body in the ocean,” Lady Madeema informed me with a contrite expression that was betrayed by a gleam in her eyes.

I stared at her. That couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.

Rage took over. “Out!”

I screamed, not watching her scurry away, before I smashed the first glass I found into the wall, followed by another.

“Nocc!” I screamed so loud I feared I broke my vocal cords. That was the last coherent thought I had, before everything went red.

For a long time.

When I slowly regained my senses, I stared at the utter destruction I had wrought. I was draped in the same blanket that Heather and I had used on my bed before my entire world had shattered. I still smelled her on it.

She couldn’t be dead, she just couldn’t.

I walked to the broken window. The floor was littered with shards of glass and broken pieces of rock from statues I had torn down in my rage. They crunched underneath my boots, but I didn’t hear anything.

I stood on the balcony and stared out over the ocean, visible in the distance. Right here, where Heather and I had stood not too long ago. Draped in the blanket we had made love on.

She was supposed to be out there?

Grief gripped me so hard, it nearly tore my heart from my chest, making it hard to breathe. Nocc! This just couldn’t be true.

Having spent most of my energy and anger by destroying my suite, I was finally able to think more clearly again. Sir Vodin had courted her, he had wanted to meet her again. I couldn’t believe that he would have harmed her. I saw the look on his face when he spoke to her, the male had been besotted.

I didn’t know him very well, but I knew his father and I had a hard time imagining Sir Naximus would have raised a male capable of killing an innocent merrily.

Abducting her was one thing, but I couldn’t believe he would have ordered her harmed. Lady Natoi might have, but not Sir Vodin.

I pondered that for a moment. Why would the two of them have been in cahoots in the first place? What was in it for Sir Vodin? Lady Natoi I understood, she wanted to rid herself of her perceived competition. If I hadn’t been in so much anguish, I might have laughed at the notion. One would have to be in the running to compete and Lady Natoi had never been in the running for the vied-over spot as my empress, not even been in consideration.

So what was in it for Sir Vodin? What would he have gained from killing Heather?

Nothing,I concluded.

Even if Lady Natoi had convinced Sir Vodin that she would become empress and would owe him a favor, he should have been wily enough to understand that a merrily like Lady Natoi would see him more as a liability than a favor she owed. Even if they had worked together—and that was a big if—Sir Vodin would have nothing to gain from a dead Heather. Heather being alive was much more to his advantage.

Which brought up another question. Vra, I was a cunning male, schooled in the art of deception and intelligence, just like Lady Madeema. But she was also as astute as they came. So why, in the name of the netherworld, had she not come to the same conclusion as I?

I would have been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt in any other situation, but this involved Heather and I wasn’t about to take any chances with her life, even if it meant distrusting an old friend.

“Commander Noctus,” I barked into my comm.

“Vra, Your Imperial Highness,” came the immediate reply.

“Do you have Sir Vodin in your custody?”

“Vra, Your Imperial Highness.”

“I’ll be right down. Don’t let Lady Madeema see or speak to him.”

I suspected Commander Noctus was more pleased than perplexed by my order as he only grunted in response to it. He and my friends Garth and Xandros were the only ones who could get away with something like this. Even though I wasn’t a stickler for protocol, image mattered, but these three males would never abuse the favors I bestowed upon them in public, which was why they got away with things like this.

I didn’t storm out of my suite the way I had this morning. Instead, my steps were measured, calmer. Ice water still ran through my veins, ready to be heated by my ever-present simmering anger. For now, it was still simmering though, as if even my temper knew that it needed to be contained for the time being, that I needed a clear head for this if I wanted any chance of revealing what had happened to Heather and to find her.

She wasn’t dead. I knew that with certainty. Even though my heart constricted painfully at the thought, I had to believe that I would know if she was dead. Because… because she was my mekarry.

That was the only explanation for the emotions she had awakened in me, for the way she soothed my temper in the short time I had known her.

I found it more puzzling that I hadn’t noticed this sooner than the actual realization itself. But there it was, and there was no denying it any longer.

My guards fell into step behind me. Heads turned, bows and curtsies were given as we marched through the halls down to the bowels of my palace, where Noctus loved to reign.

The place wasn’t exactly a dungeon. It had been modified and modernized centuries ago, but its function was still the same: to keep prisoners confined and to strike terror into people who needed to be interrogated.

Instead of torture devices, we now had computers and serums, electroshocks and visual stimulation to make prisoners talk. But no matter how the names for the instruments had changed, they were still instruments of torture.

One of Noctus’s lieutenants awaited me and lead me straight to where Sir Vodin was held inside a white, box-like room with no furnishings or windows. Commander Noctus stood leaning against a wall, while Vodin paced the center, mumbling to himself.

He didn’t look worse for the wear. Noctus hadn’t roughed him up in any manner, unlike he would have been had I ordered Lady Madeema to arrest him.

“Your Imperial High—”

Vodin’s greeting or complaint or whatever he was about to utter was cut short as my hand seized his throat and I backed him against the nearest wall. “Where is she? What have you done to her?”

“I— uh— ahhh,” Vodin grunted, clutching at my hand holding his throat. He was aware that touching my body was punishable by death, but at the moment I was squeezing his windpipe, and I supposed any reason he might have held on to was being literally choked out of him.

I relaxed my grip somewhat, satisfied myself by knocking him into the wall a few times. “Where?”

“I don’t know who you are talking about… Please…” Furtively, he slapped at my arm, which held him pinned to the wall like a bar of steel.

“Lady Heather,” I spelled it out for him.

His eyes bulged. “Lady Heather?”

I wasn’t choking him right now, still my hold on him was uncomfortable. I flexed my fingers to prove that I would squeeze again if he gave me cause to.

“Please. I haven’t seen her since… the park… please. I didn’t know she caught your eye… I didn’t…” He coughed. “I would have never pursued her had I known…”

I let go of his throat, but pinned him in place with my eyes. “You pursued her.”

Something like outrage flickered in his gaze. “You can’t fault a male for trying to get a beautiful merrily’s attention, to try and figure out if she is the ONE.”

I shook my head. “Nocc, but I can fault you for having something to do with her abduction.”

His eyes widened. “Abduction? Lady Heather was abdu—” He broke off when I turned my head to Commander Noctus and waved my hand.

One of the walls turned into a screen. A still shot of the holovid taken by the security cameras. Noctus had already anticipated exactly what I would need.

On the hologram the three males, wearing Vodin’s colors, carried a struggling Heather. The hologram still managed to sour my stomach. Acid rose and flames kindled, just waiting to ignite my fury anew.

“By Staphor… nocc! Nocc, those are not my guards.” Vodin exhaled loudly.

I watched him closely. He looked horrified, stricken. Some people had the gift of masking their guilt, their desires, Lady Madeema was one of them, her features were always schooled, she could change masks in the span of a click, but I didn’t think Vodin was one of them. His horror was genuine.

“Please, Your Imperial Highness. Those are not my males. I swear by Staphor’s living soul.”

“They’re wearing your colors,” Noctus grunted from behind me. I crossed my arms over my chest, still scowling at Vodin who stepped closer to the hologram. I kept studying him just as hard as he was studying the males, their uniforms.

“They must have stolen them from my guards,” he concluded. “I swear I had nothing to do with this. I would never harm a merrily like this or any other way. Especially not Lady Heather. She’s special.”

“Vra, she is,” I agreed, and threw a glance at Noctus who shrugged imperceptibly, coming to the same conclusion as I. Unless I had lost my edge in reading others, this male was innocent in Heather’s abduction. A pawn, a decoy.

A decoy for what? Or better yet, for whom? I wondered.

I hit my fist into the hologram, embedding it into the unforgiving wall. I did not care about the pain in my knuckles, other than welcoming it, because it overshadowed the pain in my heart for just a few clicks.

The only thing I knew without a doubt was that Lady Natoi was involved in Heather’s abduction. She had lied, had even ordered evidence to be cleaned up. But she couldn’t possibly be the mastermind behind this. This was too elaborate for her. Too clever.

So that bore the question again as to who had something to gain from taking Heather. If they were going to blackmail me with her, they would have done so already, wouldn’t they?

“Is there any way the Cryons could have bribed Pandraxians to do this?” I asked Commander Noctus, who gave my suggestions a few clicks to think it over.

“Everything is possible for the right amount of credits, I suppose,” he finally said.

“But you don’t think it a consideration?” I pushed.

“I didn’t say that.” Thoughtfully, he stared at Vodin without seeing him. “I suppose it’s a route we need to consider,” he finally said, making it obvious he felt as uneasy about the conclusion as I did. It made sense though. Because as far as I could see, the Cryons were the only ones who could gain from this by blackmailing me into backing off them and Earth. It actually made some sense. More than any other option I could come up with.