Trigger warning: Blood, eye gore
Binta had never been so glad that someone was in custody.
After Petra had... 'shifted' back (rubbing her neck and grumbling how she'd cricked it), they'd herded Karen into a safe room and locked it, stationing Isa to keep an eye on her.
Now all of the barons and lords were sitting together in a quiet sitting room area, with a few guards keeping an eye on the guests and offering them places to sleep for the night (guarded and watched, just in case).
Cam was looking down at her nails, worry on her face.
She wasn't the fondest of Romeo (neither was Binta, for that matter), but when there wasn't any replacement for Fred yet...
Well, losing another lord would throw the political situations into pure chaos.
And considering the current political situation was already chaotic, that was exactly the last thing she needed.
"She must know something about the whole matter," Ivor was saying, "or else why would she have run?"
"If Jesse's kidnapping and Romeo's poisoning is linked, we need to get that information out of her," Mevia said sharply, the bubble floating around as Harper quietly nudged it to keep it from drifting too much, "before it's too late."
"Well, she's certainly not given in to anything," Xara muttered, looking irritated and like she just wanted to get back to Romeo. "Threatened to break her fingers and she just took it."
"So it wasn't a threat, because you acted on it," Hadrian pointed out.
Mevia looked at Isa.
Isa signed and flicked the side of Hadrian's head, ignoring his little hiss.
"Thank you, Isa."
Xara crossed her arms and frowned at her knees. "Wouldn't tell us anything except that the storm was coming."
Hadrian went stiff, frozen with his hand to the spot that had been flicked, but nobody asked.
Gill and Maya, for once not bickering or poking at each other, exchanged glances.
Only Binta caught this.
She followed them with her eyes as she turned to face Lukas and Aiden. The other two half-demons looked a little pale, but serious- Aiden dragging his nails along the sleeve of his jacket, leaving little white marks, and Lukas...
Well, Lukas's blindfold wasn't convenient for her to read the conversation, but the way his lips were turned downwards and he was staring at his hands made it pretty clear that he was in thought too.
The half-demons' eyes (sans Lukas, because of the blindfold) all locked.
Binta watched a whole conversation cross their faces, Lukas's brow furrowing quietly, as if he doesn't like a suggestion he's been given.
Finally, he tilted his head and stood.
"I'd like to try interrogating her."
Binta turned- so did everyone else- to fully face them.
"You sure?" Cassie sat up a little straighter, making several people jump- they'd forgotten she was there, with how quiet she'd been the whole time. "You're not exactly 'Intimidator Supreme' here."
Maya shot Cassie a glare, but there was no avoiding it- Lukas wasn't the most intimidating member of the October Children.
Hell, he wasn't really intimidating in general; probably why Jesse had been able to warm up to him so quickly.
Lukas shrugged. "Hey, maybe it'll catch her off guard and she'll slip, like earlier."
"That's true. Alright, get in there," Axel said, jokingly slapping him on the back.
It was lucky he didn't send Lukas plowing into the floor from the force of that, or there would've probably been a murder, courtesy of Aiden.
Karen sneered at Lukas as he closed the door behind him. Aiden was there for backup.
But knowing Lukas and the instructions he'd just given Aiden, he wasn't going to need it.
"Hello again, Miss Karen." Lukas gave her a disarming smile as he slid into the seat at the interrogation table; one that had made several succubi flirt with him and try to fluster him in the past.
Aiden grumbled something about 'perfect Lukas' under his breath.
Karen shot him a look- her perfectly curled hair had been knocked into disarray, some of the girls hanging lankly around her face. Aiden allowed himself to feel a little smug about it.
"The fuck you want?" she asked, an imperious tone still lingering in her voice.
The room being soundproof was both a bother and a blessing. A bother in that it was difficult to get any information or outside input from anyone who hadn't heard the conversation.
A blessing in that, if the conversation went the way Lukas thought it would, nobody would hear.
Lukas shrugged, as if they were playing a game. "Oh, same thing as the several other people that came before me."
"... oh. Information." She gave a derisive sniff. "Well, it's too bad, then, because I won't tell you anything about the Storm."
The Storm. She'd mentioned this earlier, but the emphasis made it sound like... it was an entity of some kind, wasn't it? Maybe a person or a group...
Lukas filed it away.
"Look, miss Karen, we can either do this the easy way, or the hard way." He gave her another charming smile, coaxing a sense of nervousness that he simply did not feel into the smile, goading her into taking her next move. "You don't have to tell us much else about the Storm. We just want to know where we can find Jesse."
Her move.
He could see the thought process behind her eyes.
They couldn't kill her, because she had information.
They wouldn't kill her, if it meant they had to get that information out of her, if they were desperate, or else they'd lose their only lead on what was happening.
Why else would they all be questioning her?
That meant that she had leverage over them, or so she thought.
Lukas could see the thought process in her eyes, and he knew full well what her next move was going to be.
He knew, and he had planned accordingly.
He knew.
But he still gave her the chance.
"Well, I won't tell you."
Aiden opened his mouth furiously; Lukas shot him a look that made Aiden subside, swallowing the bitter, fire-filled words on his tongue that he wanted to spit at this bitch of a demon.
"Are you sure, ma'am? Please, reconsider," Lukas said, and he chose to play that slightly desperate note in his voice from before, amp it up just enough that it didn't seem cheesy or overdone, but enough for her to hear it and for her to show her hand.
She took the bait.
(She'd be very, very bad at poker.)
Karen gave Lukas the smuggest look of her entire life; Aiden had to resist the urge to kick her in the face. "Well, I'm not going to tell you anything," she said, still smug, "and you can't make me."
She thought he'd lost.
Really, it was disappointing how correct the outcome had been. He'd been hoping for a surprise, like Jesse.
Lukas just stared back at her impassively, the blindfold covering his face and making him look completely blank.
Then he smiled.
This smile wasn't that charming one he'd begun with, nor was it the predatory one he'd had when ripping her lie to shreds in front of the audience, nor was there any hint of the fake nervousness from before.
No, it was worse than that, somehow- like staring at a cute bunny and cooing over it, only for it to suddenly open its mouth and smile with shark's teeth.
Lukas wasn't a bunny.
But his teeth may as well have been shark teeth in that moment.
He reached up and casually tugged at the knot on his blindfold- the signal.
Aiden turned to face the wall, as Lukas had previously instructed him to do. He could feel his heart thudding in his throat, in his ears, knowing what move Lukas had picked.
He hadn't seen it used in years.
He wouldn't really see it now, he supposed.
That was probably for the best.
Thump, thump, thump went Aiden's heart.
It was almost loud enough to drown out what Lukas said next.
"The hard way it is, then."
The blindfold fell away to reveal two black eyes, a red spark of light drowning in a black sclera, the void of his eyes deep and so far that it was lost. Lukas pressed his palms into the table and looked at Karen, lips curling into a satisfied grin.
Karen's eyes locked on his.
The room filled with screams; screams that only two people would emerge from the room hearing.
Checkmate.
The door opened, startling everyone outside.
Ivor stood, eyes hard. "Are you alright? Did you find anything out?" he asked, voice a little strained with urgency.
"Jesse's being held in a cavern to the southwest of Enchantra, in the middle of the Wilds. Let's go," Lukas said curtly, blindfold securely back over his eyes, brushing past the waiting lords to make his way to the exit. The other October Children scrambled to stand up and follow him.
"Oh– she told you? I didn't realize–" Isa turned to look back into the room, where Karen still was, oddly quiet considering she'd been screeching about 'false accusations' every time the door opened for the past three hours until Isa would slam it shut and they'd all bask in that moment of "ah, there's not a banshee screaming her head off".
Her lungs immediately froze in her chest- probably for the best, or she might've given a startled shriek.
Karen's body lay on the table, her fingers coated in a slick layer of blood that was slowly seeping across the metal table. Some of the blood had spilled so far that it was dripping into a steadily-growing puddle.
There were scrapes on her face, blood soaking her curls and making them even lanker than before.
What was really the source of all the blood were her two eyes.
Both looked as if they'd filled with blood, her scleras red, her irises twisted(somehow) into strange glyphs that were steadily growing darker, like embers dying in a fire, blood leaking from her eyes like tears and spilling on the table, steadily spreading into the puddle that was painting the table with her blood. Blood dribbled from her mouth, parted open in a permanent scream.
Nobody had to go near her to realize she was dead.
They were all used to seeing blood, but the burning glyphs in her dead eyes made it clear that this... this wasn't normal magic, or normal bloody gore- no, this was something so old that maybe only Ivor really knew what it was.
"Aiden, what–?" she began, twisting to look at him, but he shook his head and put a hand up with a shake of his head.
"Not me."
Everyone slowly turned to stare at Lukas.
Lukas glanced back at them, a little impatient. "Well? Come on. We need to help Jesse."
"Ah- yes." Ivor cleared his throat, frowning. "Let's decide who's staying and who's going before we leave- in case this is a trap."
Lukas considered this, then gave a pleasant smile. "Alright. That's fine."
The way his fingers twitched though... he was still antsy. Still anxious to get to Jesse.
Aiden glanced at Gill, Maya, and Petra.
Petra was fiddling with her sleeve, while Maya looked grim and Gill frowned at the floor, deep in thought.
Lukas could tell what they were thinking of- the one training exercise, when they were still new, still learning to use magic and weapons.
The one where Lukas had almost looked at himself in the mirror for too long before Ivor had smashed it to bits and begun making Lukas wear the blindfold.
Eyes were the window to the soul.
In Karen's case, she'd looked too deep.
A/N: Annnnd that's why Lukas wears a blindfold.
I'm working on a MCSM fan-made dating sim! I'm also starting to branch into personal projects, so I'm sorry the updates are a lot less frequent.
Responses to reviews!
Darkbeast Dend: Thank you! I'm glad you liked the chapter.
TheAmberShadow: Just a grunt, really. / :3c
jessicanightmarewolf: Chapter 14. / she's also really bad at poker haha
Happygoluckymegami: Yay :D
Toni42: :3c / Karen is so 'pleasant' haha.
That's all for now! See ya, so long, and g'bye!
x.X. A.L. X.x