Chapter 227 --227
Something that had set grief aside—not because it was finished with grief, but because grief would have to wait. There was work to do first.
His face was cold.
Not the warmth-underneath-cold that people who knew him had learned to read, the gentleness that showed through even when he was being formal.
Just... cold.
Empty.
Like looking into winter ice and seeing nothing alive beneath it.
The servants moved out of his way without being asked.
---
They heard it from the upper floors.
From the kitchens where the evening staff were preparing dinner they knew no one would eat.
From the garden courtyard where the night shift guards were gathering for their briefing.
The screaming from the dungeons carried through stone and corridor and closed door, and everyone who heard it went very still and did not ask questions.
Because some sounds communicated their own context clearly enough.
---
The man in the chair had been there for six hours.
He was not in good condition.
His face was a mass of bruises—purple and black and sick yellow where the older ones were starting to heal. One eye swollen completely shut. Lip split in three places. Nose clearly broken. Ribs cracked—you could tell from the way he breathed in short, shallow gasps, unable to take a full breath without agony.
But he was conscious.
’Very’ conscious.
That was the point.
Larus stood in front of him with a knife held loosely in one hand, his sleeves rolled to the elbow, his forearms spattered with blood that had dried to rust-brown in some places and was still wet and red in others. The torchlight made harsh shadows of his face, turning his features into something sharp and unfamiliar.
He said, calmly, like he was asking about the weather: "Why did you throw the poison at her?"
The man coughed—a wet, painful sound. Lifted his head with visible effort. His remaining good eye focused on Larus with hatred and pain and something that might have been defiance.
"That bitch," he said, his voice a rasp, "deserved it."
Larus moved.
Not toward the man’s hand. Not his shoulder or knee or any of the traditional cautionary locations that said ’this is a warning’.
Directly into his chest.
The knife went in clean and smooth and ’deep’—Larus knew exactly what he was doing, knew exactly where to place it, knew precisely how much damage to do.
The man’s scream was cut short by pure shock—the breath knocked entirely out of him, his body’s processing completely overwhelmed by the sudden, catastrophic violation.
Larus pulled the knife out.
The man’s scream resumed, properly this time. Long and high and absolutely ’broken’.
Larus pulled over a chair, sat down, crossed one leg over the other with absolute composure, and waited for the screaming to fade into sobbing.
It took a while.
When the man could hear again—when the pain had settled from ’everything is ending’ into merely ’everything hurts beyond description’—Larus spoke:
"Twenty minutes," he said conversationally. "That’s how long before that becomes immediately life-threatening. You won’t die from it. Not yet. I know exactly where I put it. I studied anatomy extensively as part of my prince’s education. Did you know that? No, of course you didn’t. You don’t know anything about me."
The man was shaking. Breathing in gasps. Tears and snot running down his ruined face.
"I," Larus continued, his voice still that same terrible calm, "have been sitting next to my wife’s bed for three days. Seventy-two hours. She hasn’t moved. She hasn’t woken. She breathes, but she doesn’t ’wake’."
He leaned forward slightly.
"I want you to understand something about what that’s like before we continue this conversation."
He snapped his fingers.
The dungeon door opened.
A woman was dragged in—young, maybe twenty, wearing the simple clothes of a merchant’s daughter. She was terrified, fighting against the guards holding her, her eyes wild with panic.
They threw her to her knees on the stone floor.
Larus stood, crossed the room in three strides, grabbed her by the hair and lifted her head so the man in the chair could see her face clearly.
"’No—’" the man started, his voice rising in pitch.
"You recognize her," Larus observed. Not a question.
"Let her go. She has nothing to do with this. She didn’t—"
"I had a wife," Larus interrupted, his voice still completely level, "who had nothing to do with you either. Who was just doing her job. Managing her empire. Trying to root out corruption. And you ’poisoned’ her."
His grip tightened in the woman’s hair. She whimpered.
"’Please—’"
"We’ve been married forty-seven days," Larus said. "One month and seventeen days. I counted. Do you want to know why I counted?"
He didn’t wait for an answer.
"Because every single day with her was precious. Every morning I woke up next to her was a gift I didn’t think I deserved. Every smile she gave me felt like winning something impossible."
He slammed the woman’s head against the floor.
Not hard enough to knock her unconscious. Just hard enough to hurt. To shock. To terrify.
She screamed—a sharp, piercing sound of pure terror and pain.
The man in the chair lurched forward against his restraints, the movement tearing at his injuries. "’LET HER GO—’"
"She doesn’t like pain," Larus continued, as if the man hadn’t spoken. His voice still hadn’t changed. Still that terrible, empty calm. "My wife, I mean. She hides it—she’d rather die before admitting something hurts—but I watched her. I paid attention."
He slammed the woman’s head down again.
"I watched and I ’know’."
Again.
"And your poison—"
Again.
"—is sitting in her blood right now—"
Again, harder this time. Blood beginning to seep from the woman’s hairline.
"—and I cannot watch it work because the physicians won’t let me in the room when they’re treating her and I don’t know if watching would be worse than not watching and ’either way I can’t do anything’—"
He stopped.
The woman had gone limp in his grip. Still breathing—he could see her chest moving—but unconscious. Gone somewhere past the pain into blankness.
The man was weeping openly now, no longer trying to hide it. "Please. ’Please’. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything, I swear on her life, I swear on my own life, ’please just let her go—’"
Larus looked at him for a long moment.
Set the woman down carefully on the floor. Almost gently.
Stood up.
Walked back to his chair.
Sat down.
"Then tell me," he said.
---
It came out in pieces.
Between gasps and weeping and the man’s periodic attempts to gather himself enough to speak coherently.
The Church. Someone high up in the ecclesiastical structure—not a name, never a name, the order had come through layers specifically designed to prevent names. Just a directive passed down through channels: ’The Empress has become a problem. Eliminate the problem.’
They hadn’t even said ’kill’—the man kept emphasizing this, like it mattered, like the distinction between ’kill her’ and ’remove her as an obstacle’ changed anything about what was currently happening to him.
Larus listened to all of it.
The meeting locations—a specific tavern in the merchant district, then a warehouse by the docks, then a chapel basement.