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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?”
