II

II


SENECA’S POV

It was one thing to have Rebels trapped between the four walls of my estate. For me, it was exciting, exhilarating, it was arousing to even think about how I wanted to rip them apart from their flesh. How I wanted to pick out their bones and leave their meat in a shredded heap at my feet. But now that they'd gotten away, that dream was practically washed away, and all that was left in my veins were the hums of anger. I was practically shaking to the tip of my fingers. Part from the news, part from the fact that my body was in an adrenaline high from having my breeder be so close.

When I ripped the door open into the hallway, Ziarah’s tall figure was pacing in the narrow space. Back and forth, her fist to her mouth, her head bowed, her bare feet slapping against the tile sharply.

Her head shot up right as the door swung behind me.

"Dominus—"

"HOW?" The only question I wanted an answer to. The only thing I needed clarity on. I stepped up to her.

Shorter, but I caught the way Ziarah visibly flinched at the proximity.

"I had them..." she spewed. "All three of them."

"Okay?"

"The fire… the fire outbreak…"

"Guards?" I asked again.

Ziarah took another step back, falling into the rays of silver light filtering through the windows of the hallway. "When I returned to the office, they were all gone and the guards… they’d put them all to…" She was holding back from saying the next word, and it wasn’t until she said it that I realized why. "To… sleep."

I pulled back at the absurdity, "Sleep?"

"Y- yes, Dominus. I checked the doctors before I let them in…"

"And?" I wasn’t so patient right now.

Ziarah could see just that. "They didn’t have any weapons on them… which, I guess, made sense, rebels never carry weapons, but then…. They happened to have had some…." She stopped talking for a few seconds, raising her fisted hand slowly to my eyes. I leaned away from her, watching her and the pale fist in the first light of the breaking dawn. She looked ashamed. Her face was red. Her button-like nose twitched occasionally like whatever was in her fist was the most embarrassing thing she’d come across.

Seconds passed, she was still holding the fist up without opening it.

My eyes lifted to hers.

"Ziarah," I called calmly.

She took in a shuddering breath. "Yes, Dominus."

I stepped closer. She went back. She dodged bumping into the wall with a curve too smooth, taking a U-turn that allowed her to walk backwards down the hallway, still holding up the fist that my eyes were so glued to now.

"I take it you have something there."

"Yes, Dominus, I do."

"What do you have there?"

She fidgeted. "The weapons that were used on the guards."

"Weapons." I looked at her fist again. "Ziarah, I know how big you are… but to have weapons in your hands, I highly doubt that. So now, I need you to show me." I walked faster. "I do not have all the time in the world and you know that. What weapons did the Rebels use on the guards to put them to sleep. SHOW ME."

Her eyes were wide as I closed in on her. My hand shot out to grab her fist, and she didn’t fight it. It was so fast. One second, there were just my fingers wrapped around her skin, the next, I was pushing her against the wall hard enough to drag a grunt from her chest as her back rammed against the bricks. I looked up at her, holding her eyes for a second too late. "Don’t play the long game with me," I panted. "Show me." It was supposed to be a threat. This was supposed to be very threatening, but Ziarah’s eyes—wide—looked like she was a teenager having her first back to the wall experience by a crush. She was totally red in the face. Like a lobster crab was the only comparison I could give. Her cheeks, her nose, her lips, always pale, all reddened like she’d been dipped head-first into boiling hot water. Yet, she didn’t fight the proximity.

"Dominus," she whispered raggedly. "I–I —I—"

I pushed her harder into the bricks.

Her mouth parted. She was going to say something, give a reason why she was hiding this ridiculously small sized weapon in her hands, but I shut her up.

"I don’t have all the time in the world to waste. If there’s anything I should know or be seeing, it’s best you show it to me now."

"I’m so—"

"Now."

She visibly shuddered. Her eyes roaming my face. I pulled away just enough for her to bring her fist up between us. My eyes were trained onto her white knuckles as she gradually peeled open her palm. The light from a window on the side, the first rays of silver morning light and a touch of golden perched onto the redness of the supposed weapons before I could even get a proper look. And when I did, I was gobsmacked. It felt insulting. One, two, three, tens of small tiny weapons.

I looked up at Ziarah.

"DARTS?"

She pushed her shoulders up in a shrug.

"Yes sir... That’s what I found in the skin of the guards that had fallen asleep outside—"

"Eighteen men." My voice was stern. "Eighteen men were placed as their guards and two men took down eighteen with darts?"

"I don’t know sir…"

"Ziarah…"

"Dominus…"

"We had them… We fucking had them and you just let them—"

"I swear I didn’t let them.. I had to put out the fire…"

Now, now, that caught my attention again. Earlier I’d bursted into Riley’s room and there was just a roar of fire everywhere. I hadn’t questioned how the fire got there. My only instinct was to save Riley from the ruin, and now, the question stood out in my head. "What even caused the fire?"

Ziarah’s eyes flickered down the hallway for a brief second, in the direction of my room. I knew she could sense Riley’s presence just behind the door. I could, too. It was so hard to just turn off my sensitivity to her now that Kaelith had been so impatient to put a spiritual mark on her. But, Ziarah was looking at the door like she knew something I didn’t know. I followed her eyes to the door.

When she looked back at me, the look on her face told me she indeed did know I didn’t know. "I’m not sure what caused the fire yet…"

"How—"

"But," she rushed to say. "I’m going to get to the root of it, Dominus. Take my words for it. I’ll find out where the fire had come from. But, Dominus…" There was a pause which means there was something else I didn’t know that she was hiding. "You need to see your brother’s breeder."

I perked up immediately.

"The girl in the dungeon?"

Ziarah nodded speedily. "Guards sent for me."

"And…?" I was impatient, my heart racing. "What’d they say?"

Her eyes tracked down the hallway again. Only this time, it was down the route leading farther into the estate, and the look in her eyes told me it was anything but good. "You might want to see this for yourself."