Reina ordered Captain Drautos summoned without being told why or by whom. Not that Cor could have said why even if he had wanted to. He did as he was told without question. By the time they reached the lower levels, though, he had his suspicions.
The Citadel basements had once been something like a dungeon. In the centuries since the building had been conceptualized, the space grew increasingly disused and it had eventually been divided into various other things—a garage, storage space, and so on. But a portion of the original setup had been preserved—more or less. And while they didn't lock people up down here anymore, it was the one place in the Citadel guaranteed to be unobserved.
She said there were traitors in Insomnia.
And then she summoned Titus Drautos to the basement.
The room she chose had once been—as evidenced by the two-way mirror and the single table with two metal chairs—an interrogation room. Most of that was now done in Crownsguard headquarters as necessary, but the room's existence suggested that law enforcement had once been run from the capitol. Or other less savory things, but he preferred the former explanation.
Reina sat in one chair, facing the door, and folded her hands on top of the table.
"Behind the door." She nodded to Cor. "So he doesn't see you from the outside."
That feeling of foreboding was becoming less of a smolder and more of a blaze. Cor took position behind the door, facing Reina with his back to the wall.
"You said there were traitors in Insomnia," Cor said.
"I did." She smiled, and it wasn't at all pleasant.
There went the last of his hopes that she would recruit Drautos to her cause of hunting the traitors. He could hardly process the alternative—Drautos; Captain Drautos, a traitor to the crown. They had stood together for twenty years. The empire had destroyed his home. How could he possibly work for Niflheim? No one could level an accusation against him that would sound reasonable.
Except.
Except Reina couldn't stand to be in the same room as him for more than a minute.
Reina, the little girl who felt ill before disaster struck time and time again. Reina, the child who had nightmares of Tenebrae burning every night for the week before it happened.
Reina had always hated him.
How had they all let themselves believe it was just some childish fear?
"I'm not certain what to expect from him. He may try to escape, he may try to kill me, or he may try to convince you that he is not what I say." She looked at Cor, appraising, and stared straight through his skin. She nodded, as if he had answered her. "He would be a fool to try, but only a fool would plan to stab my father in the back and walk away."
"What would you have me do?" Cor asked.
"Bar the door behind him. For the moment that is all; I will trust your judgement on whether or not to step in if matters get messy."
"Of course, Your Highness."
"And Cor?" She looked at him and something hardened behind her eyes. "If you have ever thought of me as a child, then I apologize for what you will witness. There is a reason I chose to do this while my father was otherwise occupied—I would prefer the specifics never reach his ears."
Regis: king, protector, the most powerful man in Lucis, and—above all else—a father. What did she have in mind that would be so disturbing for him?
"Drautos is working with the empire?" Cor asked.
"He is General Glauca."
Cor's eyebrows came together in the middle. Drautos? Glauca? "And he will stab Regis in the back?"
"In the most literal sense. Tomorrow night around eleven, after the treaty signing goes awry, his sword cuts through father's spine and sternum."
Cor's jaw tightened. "He won't pass me. And you have my vow that I will not breathe a word of what occurs behind this door."
"I thought as much."
They waited in silence. It was a few more minutes before Cor heard the clang of the outer door opening and falling shut again, then footsteps. They stopped outside the door.
"Your Highness," Drautos' voice said he was surprised. And wary. "I had no idea you were still in the city."
"You weren't meant to. Have a seat, Captain." She kicked the other chair out from under the table. "We have important business to discuss—my father is in danger."
A pause, long enough that Cor began to wonder if he wouldn't turn and flee. But he stepped into the room and took the seat without looking behind him.
"What have you discovered?" He asked.
Reina glanced at Cor. Cor slammed the door shut and stepped in front of it, meeting Drautos' gaze when he spun at the sound.
Murderer. Traitor. Treasoner.
Betrayer.
Reina rose from her seat. Drautos made a motion to stand, but she stopped him.
"Don't. I want you looking up at me when I tear your eyes out. Traitor."
A few days ago it would have been ridiculous to hear Reina say those words. Today, Cor believed she would follow through on them. Every second he spent in her presence made it harder to see the little girl behind the ice.
"I have no idea what you're talking about, Your Highness," said Drautos.
Reina's magic flared. She moved so rapidly that Cor wasn't certain what had happened afterward. The wet sound of a blunt collision echoed around the room, Drautos' head snapped back, and blood spattered the wall beside Cor. Reina held her naginata, blunt side down and marked with red.
She stepped forward and grabbed the front of his shirt. "I have spent the last ten years fantasizing about what I would do if I had the impossible opportunity to see you alive. Do you think I brought you down here to get information from you? I know everything. You're here because I want you to suffer."
The information settled uneasily into Cor's mind, though it took another moment for him to sort out why. For now it sat in the pit of his stomach: a cold lump that refused to dissolve.
Drautos grabbed her arm with both hands. "You know nothing, you little bitch."
Fire crawled down Reina's skin and caught in Drautos' clothes. They burst, as if doused in gasoline. He released her arm and swatted at the flames. She dragged him to his feet and swung her naginata to crack across his shins. When he stumbled she spun and kicked him in the chest.
Drautos slammed against the wall and tumbled to the ground. His clothes were still ablaze—the flames had spread and were eating at his skin, by now, while he twisted about, trying to put them out. He struggled to tear off his cape and pat out the flames. She might have been feeding them magic, keeping them alive in spite of his best efforts. Cor couldn't tell. By the time she lifted her hands again, his clothes were in tatters—great holes eaten straight through to show red and black blistered skin smoldering beneath.
The little room was starting to smell like cooked meat. The uncomfortable sensation in Cor's stomach solidified into something concrete. He must have known from the start that Reina hadn't brought Drautos here to question him; if she had Dreamed this then she already knew anything he could tell them. By extension, he had known what she really wanted with Drautos, as well. He could easily have been arrested quietly; the only reason to summon him to the dungeons was this. Revenge. Torture.
He deserved it.
No, that wasn't what bothered Cor.
What bothered him was the same reason she wanted Regis never to know what had happened in this room. For all he had seen what she was capable of upstairs, he had still thought of her as a child. Knowing that she had lived through ten years of darkness without him were different than witnessing what that darkness did to a person. It was under her skin. She wasn't the same Reina Lucis Caelum she had been two days ago.
That Reina would never have been able to save Insomnia.
Reina held up her hand and ice crept across the ground, freezing Drautos' charred skin and smothering the flames. When the ice sublimated, he lay in the corner, breathing heavily, but seething up at her with a soulless hatred Cor had never imagined from him.
She stepped forward and put the heel of her boot against his windpipe. Drautos choked when she applied pressure. He grabbed her leg. Lightning flashed. His hands leapt away. The yelp he made was muted when she pressed down harder.
"If you know everything… you might as well kill me," he choked out.
Perhaps he meant to call her bluff.
Cor could have saved him the trouble.
Reina stared at him for a moment. From where she stood, with her back to him, Cor couldn't see what her face looked like. But he watched as her shoulders began to shake.
It took another moment before he realized she was laughing.
Of every last breath, of every scream, of every sickening crunch of bone he had ever heard…
This was the most unsettling sound.
She lifted her heel off his neck and slammed it back down. Drautos' head jerked to the side. The way he lifted his hand to his face said she had hit his jaw. The misalignment said it was broken.
"I never said I was going to kill you." She crouched down beside him, leaning forward so her face was right over his. "Aw. Poor. Little. Traitor. So naive."
She grabbed his jaw in one hand and twisted until he cried out.
"This is day one. Only three thousand, six hundred and forty nine to go."
AN: My desire to write Rei torturing Drautos may have been a driving motivator behind the writing of this whole story...