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  Thus, he bent forward, wrapped his hand around her hair and yanked it back, enjoying very much the noise of pain she emitted when he pulled her from her forearms up to her hands.

  “Who is my whore?” he demanded.

  “I am, milord,” she panted, her body now moving to meet his thrusts.

  “Yes, you are,” he gritted, driving more forcefully into her, fancying she’d never had it that good. “Say it.”

  “I am your whore.”

  “Say it,” he demanded.

  She gave him what he liked.

  “I am naught but a whore, your whore, Lord Johan.”

  Oh yes.

  Yes.

  “Say it,” he gritted.

  “I am a whore,” she whimpered.

  “Say it,” he bit.

  “I am a whore,” she whispered.

  And he burst, slamming inside her, spilling his seed.

  He again yanked back on her hair, enjoying the noise she made, before he fell forward, his forehead resting on her spine.

  “You are…you are…”

  His eyes had closed in his climax, but hearing these stammered words come from the direction of the door, they shot open.

  “Vile.”

  He shot straight and turned his head, feeling his eyes widen as he saw his wife standing there, her face ashen, her expression filled with hurt, staring at him in shocked agony.

  “What on—?” he began, quickly pulling out of Pegeen to turn to his spouse.

  “Vile!” Vanka cried.

  Snatching at the bedsheets, Johan tugged them around his hips.

  “Vanka—” he started again but was unable to say more.

  “This one, this one you pay,” she said, throwing a hand toward Pegeen, who was scuttling away. “You installed her in your daughter’s home.”

  “Vanka,” he said, struggling with the sheets to find his feet beside the bed.

  “The others, they work here too. They take you too!”

  “Wife, get a handle on yourself,” Johan snapped, having found his feet, and thus his equilibrium in this ridiculous turn of events.

  “You’ve been unfaithful to me,” she returned, then shrieked, “Repeatedly!”

  “Vanka,” he approached her, “quiet down.”

  “No!” she snapped, shuffling to the side to escape him, but not the room. To his astonishment, she stood her ground. “You…you…you made her say she was your—”

  She’d heard.

  “Stop speaking,” he commanded.

  “You do not get to tell me what to do anymore, Johan,” she returned, her pale face now turning red. “It is not simply that you took prostitutes. It is not simply that you hired prostitutes to attend your daughter’s home. It is that you hired your prostitutes that you use to be unfaithful to me to attend your daughter’s home.”

  “She is not my daughter,” he retorted.

  “She is,” Vanka spat, and Johan saw, and ignored it, as Pegeen scurried out of the room. “You commissioned her, you do not get to renounce her.”

  Johan decided a change of subject was in order.

  “How did you now I was here? Are you following me?”

  “You have made an enemy you should not have made, Johan. But you could not help it for you are…” she shook her head in short angry shakes, concluding, “you.”

  “An enemy? What enemy?” he demanded to know.

  “Only you,” she said, her voice breaking.

  “Make sense, woman,” he bit.

  “Only you,” she repeated. “Only you would make an enemy of not only your daughter’s husband, but the bloody Fire King.”

  Johan’s insides seized.

  That animal.

  That gods-damned animal!

  That fucking swine had instigated this.

  He would pay.

  Oh, he would…

  “You will not,” Vanka declared.

  Johan focused on her and saw she’d noted the direction of his thoughts.

  “You will not tell me what to do,” he spat.

  “No,” she said. “He will.”

  And with not another word, but he did hear her swallowed sob, his wife swept from the room.

  She was gone nary a second before a tall, straight, good-looking young man in Dellish constabulary greens walked into the room.

  Johan pulled the bedclothes tighter about him and announced, “I will have privacy.”

  “You will have notice, sir,” the man returned, “that there is irrefutable evidence, as witnessed by me, your wife, and another member of the constabulary.” He tipped his head to the opened doorframe, in which stood another man, less tall, less good-looking, but also wearing constabulary greens. “Of committing adultery.”

  Johan’s blood ran cold.

  It was not strictly against the law to commit adultery.

  However, it was significantly looked down upon.

  And if the betrayal was repeated, or longstanding, and a spouse wished to press matters, and had proof, the law there was could make it financially inconvenient.

  “Your wife can press dissolution of the household,” the constable told him something Johan knew. “Which she has already charged us with doing. And if you do not understand what that means, it means, with the extent of your infidelity, which management and workers of this establishment alike have shared has lasted years, your wife can petition as her wont for restitution.”

  As her wont.

  This meant, if his adultery was proved, the length and the extent of it especially, which had been witnessed, and discussed, thus it would be proved, Vanka could make the wildest demand.

  And he would be forced to grant it.

  This did not happen very often.

  Mostly because it was difficult to prove and that was mostly because establishments such as this did not often share about their clienteles’ penchants. If they did, they would find themselves without a clientele.

  Something this particular establishment might not have to worry about, if those in it were compensated by the wealthiest bloody king on the gods-damned continent.

  Johan fought seething and opened his mouth to try speaking, “I—”

  “This, however, is the least of your worries,” the man carried on.

  The least of his worries?

  The constable continued, “For we are here not only on that errand, as charged by your wife, but on the report that you hired three women, who did not wish to take on this task, but had no choice due to life circumstances, and pressure from you with your title in your position, to spy on the king and queen of a nation allied with Wodell. And that, sir, is an act of treason.”

  Johan’s entire frame froze.

  “Now, it would be good of you to get dressed and come with us,” the man finished.

  “I…they…I…” He pulled himself together. “They, the whores, had no issue taking my money.”

  “You can share your version at the tribunal,” the man said. “Now, please, dress.”

  “I cannot stand tribunal,” Johan whispered.

  The shame alone…

  “If King True is feeling charitable, he could simply demand restitution in return for a guilty plea. Though, with a charge as serious as this, it could mean the relinquishing of the Arbor, after, of course, you make other restitution to your wife.”

  “The Arbor has been my family’s seat for nine generations,” he whispered.

  “Again, please dress, sir.”

  “I cannot lose my seat,” Johan told him.

  “We can haul you out of here in that sheet,” the constable at the door entered the conversation. “Your choice, milord. But you got about a minute to make it before I do.”

  It was no choice.

  Johan hurried to dress, feeling anger and shame burning equally as neither member of the constabulary showed the slightest respect by even averting their eyes as he did it.

  He had a handle on himself as, fully garbed, he walked their way.

  “I demand a messa
ge sent immediately to my solicitor,” he declared.

  “Sure,” the man in the door stated, shifting out of his way.

  Johan stopped before he moved through it. “I also demand a word with my wife.”

  He would talk some sense into the stupid woman.

  “We can make the request, but she’s free not to grant it.”

  He tipped his head back. “She’ll grant it.”

  “To save you a burning disappointment,” the man in the door began, and Johan decided he did not like him very much, “she watched your performance through the window.”

  “The window?”

  The man pointed across the room.

  Johan looked there to see the mussed bed overhung with the new looking glass at the wall at the head.

  “You can see yourself on this side, we can see you on the other,” the man said.

  Johan’s throat closed.

  “And she could too,” the constable finished.

  Vanka had…

  Watched?

  He felt his skin start itching.

  He ignored this sensation and snapped, “Is this magic?”

  “Nah, just a certain kind of silver.”

  “This cannot be legal,” he bit out.

  “I know no laws against it,” the constable that had entered the room tired of the conversation and shared this by coming to Johan and taking his elbow in his hand. “Though there are laws against spying on a visiting monarch for any reason not condoned by the king. That’s frowned on rather seriously,” he stated, leading Johan forcibly from the room.

  “I can walk on my own,” Johan sniped. “And I wasn’t spying on Mars. I was keeping watch on my daughter.”

  “Isn’t she the queen of an allied realm?” the first constable asked the second.

  “Yup, heard she visited orphanages and rode in the royal wedding procession and everything,” the second constable answered. “I’d say that constitutes a ‘visiting monarch.’”

  “I do not find this amusing,” Johan stated, trying to jerk his arm free.

  He did not succeed.

  Instead, the fingers around it tightened painfully and he was jerked to face the first constable. The one who had entered the room.

  “We do not find this amusing either. And it is known wide our king particularly favors his cousin, Queen Silence. And thus, I also don’t think he will find it amusing. My advice, I would start being smart, and I would start being that right about now, milord.”

  Johan gulped.

  The man resumed guiding him down the hall, but it could be more described as dragging him.

  His humiliation, he would find, was not yet complete.

  This, when he was not taken out a back way, or similar.

  But instead, he was paraded through the social parlor of the brothel.

  And it was a busy night.

  He kept his head held high even in the silence that descended when he entered the room, and through the attention he received as he was pulled through it.

  However, before he was drawn through the front door, he saw a large, dark man in sandstone leathers, a black mantle edged in red falling from his shoulders, his black eyes homed in on Johan.

  He was leaning against a wall with his arms crossed on his chest. And he was clearly not there to look over the girls and find one to use.

  One side of that Firenz animal’s lips ticked before he pushed from his spot and then he walked through a door Johan had never used, but he knew it led to a back hall that would lead out a back door.

  By the time he’d stepped up into the constabulary’s carriage, Johan was shaken.

  Thus, he looked down at the officers and stated, “I believe there’s been a terrible mistake.”

  “And his plight dawns on him,” one muttered.

  “How about we let your solicitor sort that out, hmm?” the other one suggested.

  And without another word, or allowing Johan to have one, they shut the carriage door right in his face.

  And Johan Mattson’s blood turned to ice as he heard the bolt turn.

  130

  The Report

  Sir Alfie Henriksson

  The King’s Informal Study, Birchlire Castle, Notting Thicket

  WODELL

  Alfie did not like sitting behind True’s desk, though when he received reports like this one, both Tor and Apollo (Tor being a king himself, Apollo being head of a House in his land, that being titled gentry, with command of his queen’s army) advised him he should.

  And True told him to make his study Alfie’s own when True was gone and Alfie was acting in his stead.

  So he sat behind the desk and listened to the reports of the swiftly waning power of The Rising.

  “Thus, there are only two priests still at large,” the sergeant sitting in front of him stated. His name was Holder Mikaelsson. He was a capable man, all business. So much so he reminded Alfie of himself, when he was whole. “We’ve concentrated our efforts on them and sent our best trackers after them. We’re confident they’ll be in Crittich Keep very shortly.”

  Alfie nodded.

  Mikaelsson shifted in his seat in a manner so unlike him, Alfie went alert, along with Tor and Apollo, both of whom were sitting opposite him, across from Mikaelsson, their attention on the sergeant.

  “Is there more?” Alfie prompted.

  “There has been…a massacre.”

  Alfie straightened in his chair, Apollo leaned forward, Tor sat back.

  “A massacre?” Alfie asked quietly.

  “Women, thirty-two of them to be exact,” Mikaelsson stated.

  “Bloody hell,” Tor swore.

  “They had been debased, and then stabbed and finally had their throats slit. This in a remote area at the base of the Lesser Thicket Forest. There was another, found farther away from the area. She was discovered not wearing any clothes, stakes tied to her wrists and ankles. She perished of exposure, we’re assuming, during an attempt at escape. We, um…”

  When Mikaelsson hesitated, Alfie impatiently rolled his hand at him to continue.

  “We have had a message from the local constabulary. An irate one,” Mikaelsson shared. “Apparently, they sent repeated notices to the king over the years that women had gone missing with regularity, never to be found, and asked for investigators from the Keep to be dispatched. These notices were either downplayed or ignored by the crown.”

  “Corporal!” Alfie bellowed the instant the man ceased speaking.

  One of the soldiers standing outside the door opened it and stuck his head in.

  “Request King Wilmer grant me an audience at his earliest possible convenience,” Alfie ordered tersely. “This being, please impress upon him, now.”

  “Right away, sir,” the man said, then disappeared behind the closed door.

  Alfie cast his gaze through Tor and Apollo, both of whom appeared incensed, before he returned his attention to Mikaelsson.

  “I wish to see this message from the constabulary in Lesser Thicket immediately,” he demanded.

  “I will have it couriered to you the moment I get back to my desk,” Mikaelsson stated.

  “And I wish every notice sent to the king found and delivered to me,” Alfie continued.

  “It will be done,” Mikaelsson told him.

  “Is aught more known about this situation?”

  “Only that, over time, it was one girl here or there, within what is now understood is about a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile radius around this area where the recent bodies were found. Not knowing what this area was, for it is nothing but a clearing, though it would appear from the marks on the bodies, and the girl who was found, that all the women were staked to the ground in it with, perhaps, some ritual being held, and with that large of an area that covered several districts in two counties, it took some time for the local constabularies to realize that they all had a similar problem. However, it was only upon a great number of women going missing at once very recently that the locals established large search pa
rties and came upon the pile of bodies.”

  Alfie felt his jaw would crack, he was clenching his teeth so tightly.

  He forced them to loosen in order to query, “Were all the women who had recently gone missing killed?”

  “They are uncertain if they have all the information, but as of now, at least five more women who had gone missing were not found with the bodies at the clearing. Though, their whereabouts are still unknown.”

  Fucking hell.

  “There were also the bodies of two men,” Mikaelsson went on, shifted in his seat again, alarmingly having trouble meeting Alfie’s gaze, before he pulled himself together, looked right at Alfie, and stated, “One had had his head crushed by what appeared to be a great force, but it was caved in on both sides, not a weapon or a rock striking him in one. And there are no markings a weapon or a rock were used at all. The other was mauled, astonishingly brutally, indeed, his head was severed from his body by what appears to be the swipe of a claw, as if by an animal. A very large one.”

  “A bear?” Alfie queried.

  “Bear do roam the Lesser Thicket, especially in unpopulated areas, but I have not seen the body, so I do not know.”

  “Are these men known?”

  Mikaelsson shook his head. “They have not yet been identified, no.”

  Alfie drew in breath and sat back.

  “Although there was much confusion and other reaction after the bodies were found,” Mikaelsson went on, “thus tracks and footprints in the dirt were disturbed, it is thought that a number of people fled the area in all directions, men, and some women, one of the women barefoot, which, in tracking, was how they found the last victim. And there did seem to be some animal tracks. Hooves, like a horse. But they were odd. They were only found in a small area of the clearing, no horse tracks leading to or from that area, and there were only hind hoofprints. However, it could be other tracks were destroyed in the commotion of finding the bodies.”

  “I’m assuming none of those who might have fled have been found,” Alfie guessed.

  “Not yet, though they are searching.”

  “Is there some indication this is of The Rising?”

  He shook his head again. “It seems unrelated, sir. Though we’ve sent a variety of investigators to that area with due haste. Those who would aid in the search if some had escaped whatever happened. Those who would aid the locals in investigating what happened. And last, those who would determine if this atrocity happening in this time is a coincidence, or part of the larger issues we face.”