The Crown Prince In Hiding

Chapter 25

Tampa Bay

The vessel pushed away from Dock 12 and moved out into waters Rafinya could not name.

From the moment she had stepped off that other ship — after witnessing those images — her mind had gone completely blank.

Now, all she could do was watch Fury's five soldiers, himself included, as the boat wound swiftly through the islands of Tampa.

Since leaving Dock 12, every face wore the same taut expression. The air was thick with a tension that pressed down on all of them.

She didn't know where they were headed. She didn't know what they knew. She didn't know what the man had confessed. She didn't know what lay ahead.

She didn't know a single thing.

Rafinya had been thrown into a world of crime she couldn't begin to comprehend.

And then the boat glided through a wall of heavy fog.

She saw a rotting wooden sign, brown and weathered, bearing the name of a Tampa Bay island.

It sat deep within Tampa, angled toward the east — a scattering of small, forgotten isles.

And the state of the island that emerged from behind that curtain of mist... was one of crumbling waterfront structures, decayed and sinking.

The moment the boat crossed beneath the sign—

Rafinya caught the stench drifting through the fog. She raised her hand to cover her nose immediately.

It smelled of putrid water — of water laced with something that had once been human. Her stomach lurched. She nearly retched.

The boat moved through the canal. Totti held the helm while the others scanned every direction, watching for threats that might drop on them from the shadows above.

Rafinya, with what awareness she could muster, kept watch over the stern, staying close to the white-haired young man.

Until the boat slid beneath a bridge connecting the islands—

Rafinya caught the reflection of something in the water below, a shape from above. She looked up.

Her eyes went wide.

Her mouth fell open.

Dan, standing in the middle of the boat, lifted his gaze to what hung from the bridge. His expression didn't shift. Neither did any of the other soldiers'.

"Hasn't changed at all," he said quietly.

What lay before them were human corpses, suspended from the underside of the bridge.

Bodies — dismembered by Tampa's drug cartels.

A woman's corpse, headless. Her breasts had been sliced away. Her left leg was severed at the joint. Her remaining limbs dangled loosely beneath the bridge while seagulls perched above, craning their necks down to pick at the flesh.

A man's corpse, clothing torn from his body. Naked from the waist down. One hand was nailed directly into the bridge's structure. His limbs were twisted and rigid. No head either.

Two more bodies alongside them — four in total. Each in equally wretched condition.

This was savagery laid bare before the eyes of a girl born into nobility, without a single concession to mercy.

This was not the Shadow's way of killing. The Shadows didn't waste time with something like this. When they killed humans, they killed and moved on — or, if they had use for a body, they took it for experimentation, which served a practical purpose at least.

That left only one possibility.

This was the work of humans.

This is what humans are capable of doing to one another?

Benfiga leaned in close to Rafinya.

"They're geniuses, aren't they," he continued. "Mutilated them and hang them up where everyone can see. Makes you feel like you are a part of it, like you deserved it."

"Enough."

Totti's voice cut across him in warning. The white-haired young man turned his face away from Rafinya.

Even as the boat passed beneath the bridge, she couldn't pull her gaze from the bodies swaying overhead.

"Don't be too quick to pity them."

Dan's voice, directed at her.

"Don't forget where we are. This is Tampa Bay. We don't know the story behind why they ended up like that. They may have deserved it — or they may have simply been unlucky."

"Your Highness, we're getting close," someone said.

Dan raised a hand, signaling everyone to keep quiet.

Rafinya pulled herself back to the present.

The houses lining the banks were rotted, like a ghost village reclaimed by decay.

The damp smell of stagnant water drifted through the air. Rafinya swept her gaze across the shore — and met the eyes of many pairs staring back at her.

When the boat docked, they found people sprawled everywhere. Bodies filthy, skin darkened and cracked, homeless and without shelter.

Scattered like debris.

Her foot touched the ground and sank slightly into the wet earth. Through the sole of her boot she felt something — as though the land itself had been built from fine, viscous tissue, soft and clinging. Like stepping on the remains of something. It was... revolting. This entire island.

"These people... are they homeless?"

"People whose lives have been destroyed."

The one who answered that best was Casca, who materialized from her invisibility spell.

She replied to Rafinya without softening anything, her gaze passing over the hollow, lifeless figures who barely registered one another's existence. They had been left here on this island — or perhaps some of them had chosen it themselves.

Casca pointed toward the dock.

"Expired narcotics from Tampa get collected and dumped here. These people are like parasites. They gather here for one thing alone — to consume what's left behind. And to... run from reality."

As they came ashore, Rafinya passed a man with bloodshot eyes, clutching a vial of arsenic compounds, who turned to stare at them — then lost interest and slumped back into his stupor.

Others stood frozen in strange contorted positions — mid-hallucination, gone from this world entirely. Some were missing limbs. Others lay motionless, and there was no way to know whether they were alive or dead.

"We can't make everyone equal. This is reality."

"These people have thrown away every last shred of their dignity."

Dan spoke to Rafinya as he walked, kicking a vial of arsenic that skittered across the ground.

A short, ugly old man with skin like cracked leather scrambled after his vial on hands and knees — a sight too pitiful to look at for long.

"Some of these people may once have been honorable soldiers. Brilliant inventors. Merchants who one day lost everything. When they gave up on life and abandoned their dignity — this is where they all converge."

"Mr. Fury..."

"Once you throw away your dignity, nothing remains. Let me show you."

Dan crouched down. He held up a syringe of narcotics in front of a younger homeless man, whose eyes immediately lit up at the sight. Then he turned the same syringe toward the old man still crawling after his vial — who saw it too, and whose eyes went just as bright.

"Mr. Fury... what are you doing?"

Both homeless men began drifting toward Dan. More specifically — toward the syringe in his hand.

"Gi... give it here—"

"No — give it to me! Please!"

"It's mine! I saw it first, you bastard!"

"It's mine!!!"

And then everything stopped.

Clang!

A crowbar dropped between the two men.

Dan said simply: "Whoever wins gets the syringe."

! ! ! ! !

What followed was a scene of pure degradation — played out directly before Rafinya's eyes.

The younger man let out a bellowing scream that rang across the island, grabbed the crowbar, and brought it down on the old man's skull.

Then he brought it down again. And again. The sound of cracking bone filled the air. The old man, blood pooling around his eye socket, scrabbled for a rock from the ground and drove it back into the younger man's orbital bone until it caved.

They were killing each other.

For a single syringe.

Rafinya stepped back. Her knees buckled. She nearly went down.

Around them, the people on the island began turning toward the violence — drawn to it, more and more, a slow gathering of hollow attention.

Some didn't bother. They sat with their own vials, indifferent.

It was Dan's distraction. A way to pull everyone's eyes away from a particular crumbling warehouse nearby.

"Rafinya, stay here with Casca."

Dan said it without looking back.

"I don't want Casca's hands getting dirty."

"My, how gentlemanly," Casca replied flatly.

He and his four soldiers walked into the darkened warehouse without a moment's hesitation, as though nothing in the world could give them pause.

Rafinya's eyes followed them.

Silence.

A long silence.

And then—

She heard the sound of transformation from inside.

Followed by a shattering, thunderous roar.

The cry of more than one beast.

She couldn't be sure whether those were the voices of Fury's men — or the voices of something else that had just been exposed inside.

The ground trembled. Then came sounds like tearing tissue. The crack of bone being wrenched from its socket. Wet, viscous impacts — or masses of flesh bursting against walls.

The smell of putrid blood drifted on the wind.

No way to know what was happening in there.

One by one, the roars died out.

Casca, standing outside, placed a hand on the girl's shoulder.

"Should all be dead by now."

She led Rafinya inside. The girl followed.

As they entered the warehouse, Casca and another conjured basic light spells and amplified them to illuminate the interior.

Spider webs covered everything. The smell was rancid and damp, like cloth left unwashed for weeks — nauseating. Black stains coated the walls, fresh and dark. Torn old books. Shattered light bulbs. The remains of rope strung in every direction.

And the Diablo soldiers, all returned to their original forms.

Dan turned around.

"Look at this."

He stepped aside. Casca and Rafinya moved in — and looked down into the pit before them.

When the light was aimed into it—

They found hundreds of human bodies, hanging in rows on hooks like pigs in a slaughterhouse.

The organs — brains, hearts, livers — had been removed and piled in a separate heap at the center. The source of the overpowering stench.

The sight of it unraveled something inside Rafinya that could never be put back together.

"This is..." Casca began.

"Creating human vessels," Dan said.

"You need an empty body — all organs removed — the same process we ourselves use. They turned to humans instead. These people were abducted, killed, and processed as base vessels. They didn't discriminate. It didn't matter where the person came from, as long as they were a complete human body — all thirty-two intact."

Totti added this as he shone his light downward.

A pressure settled in Rafinya's chest — as though something were squeezing her heart. A heat spread through her ribs, not from anger or hatred, but from the trembling that seized her at cruelty this raw, this unfiltered, this completely unmasked.

"The Shadows..."

"This isn't the Shadows' work."

Dan moved his light toward the group of humans lying dead across the floor — dealt with by Freya.

"This is the work of humans."

The work of Tampa's pirates — who had been supplying the Shadows with human vessels.

Rafinya's eyes went wide.

"How... how was this even possible—"

"Money. I told you — with enough money, Tampa provides everything."

The proof of it lay in stacks of bags filled with gold found in the pirates' stores.

Emptied out, it spilled across the floor — gold formed into small triangular pieces, and Casca went still at the sight of them.

Gold cast in three-sided pellets like this — it was Shadow gold. The same currency the Shadows had used during the war.

The shock hit Rafinya like a physical blow.

If all the Shadows had done was pay in gold—

Then every act of horror that had taken place here—

"Was... the work... of humans... against each other..."

Every understanding she had built collapsed in that instant.

Greed had never chosen sides. It chose individuals. It didn't care whether they were the same race, the same kind, the same blood.

Sheep had slaughtered sheep and handed the meat to wolves — in exchange for gold.

This is the world we live in.

This was a lesson Rafinya would carry until the day she died. One that would change the way she saw everything — permanently, irrevocably — in a way that Artheris never could. Never.

"Your Highness."

Roma returned to Fury's side, something in his hand.

"Found mana crystals in the next room. Just remnants, but—"

He held them out for Fury to examine.

The prince studied the crystal fragments for a long moment. Then he nodded.

"Understood. Take care of it."

"Yes, sir."