Chapter 257 Rubbing Alcohol
ADRIANA
After I left Damien’s, I went to the dungeons next.
I’d been postponing this conversation for reasons I didn’t fully examine. Partly because walking into a cell to question a man I’d already sentenced to death required a mental reset, and because asking Damon for anything felt like a concession I hadn’t been ready to make. But the investigation had reached the point where information mattered more than principle, and Damon, despite everything, had been inside this operation longer than anyone else I had access to.
He was at the far end of the cell block. The same cell that had previously housed the man arrested for the first assassination attempt, which had a symmetry to it that I noted without finding it particularly satisfying.
“Bring him out,” I told the guard. “I need him sitting upright and conscious.”
They got him to the floor of the outer area and I looked at him properly for the first time since the sentencing. His hair had grown out and matted, the Alpha’s composure completely stripped away, nothing left of the managed performance of the courtroom. He was breathing loudly and not attempting to move.
“When did he last eat?”
The guard hesitated.
“Get water and food.” I looked at the bucket near the guard station. “Water first. He needs to be alert.”
The bucket hit him and the response was immediate — coughing, sputtering, one hand going to the floor to push himself upright. He managed to get his back against the wall and looked at me through wet hair with eyes that still had anger in them, which told me there was enough of him left to be useful.
I pulled a chair from the guard station and positioned it in front of him at a reasonable distance and sat down.
“You’re going to answer some questions,” I said. “Every answer I find genuinely useful, you eat. Every answer that wastes my time, the food goes on the floor.” I paused. “I’d like this to go well for both of us.”
His eyes moved to the plate the guard was holding. He was hungrier than he wanted me to see.
“Damien gave you the Alpha position because Nancy was sick,” I said. “Her blood condition. You were the golden one who could save her. A witch pointed him to you and you made him pay for your help with the one thing Elijah had given him.” I watched his face. “That’s what happened.”
He said nothing, which was confirmation enough.
“Who else knew about that arrangement? Who did you tell?”
“Nobody.” He said it flatly. “It was leverage. You don’t give away leverage.”
“Someone used it to construct the frame against Damien. They knew he had a personal grievance with you and they built the conspiracy narrative around that. If you didn’t tell anyone—” I paused. “The witch. The one who pointed Damien to you. Did you know her before he came to you, or did she appear specifically in relation to that situation?”
Something moved behind his eyes. “She came to me first. Told me Damien’s wife was sick and that he would be coming to ask for my help and I could use it to get the position.” He paused. “At the time, I thought she was just a useful contact.”
“She was sent,” I said. “Someone sent her to create the situation and then used it against both of you.” I let that settle. “The man behind the red crown, have you had any contact with him? Directly or indirectly?”
“I received a letter. Here, in this cell.” He watched my face for a reaction. “One of your guards brought it.”
I kept my expression level. “Describe the guard.”
“He was covered and he kept his face down. He walked through here like he had every right to be and handed me the envelope through the bars. Then he left.” He paused. “Your people on duty that night didn’t stop him. Didn’t question him. Which means either he looked like someone they recognized, or someone had cleared his access.”
Someone had cleared his access. Someone with enough authority in this building to move a person through a secured area without triggering scrutiny. That was not a low-level operative. That was someone with position, with history in this building, with enough established presence that a guard on duty wouldn’t think twice about waving them through.
“The letter,” I said. “What did it say?”
“That you were going to kill me and he wasn’t going to intervene because I was no longer useful to him.” He said it without particular emotion. “He’d already moved on from me.”
“Did anything stand out about him? Even something small — his build, the way he moved, any smell?”
Damon was quiet for long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. I saw the moment something clicked. His eyes widened just slightly. “Rubbing alcohol. It was really strong and underneath it—” He stopped.
“What?”
He looked at me with something strange in his expression. “He smelled like the King.” He paused. “Not identical. Like someone who had been very close to him. Close enough to carry it on their clothes.”
I didn’t move.
“Or administering something to him,” I said carefully.
“That would do it.”
The chair felt different under me than it had a moment ago. The person poisoning Elijah and the person who had walked into the dungeon and handed Damon a letter were potentially the same person. He had been in Elijah’s room, regularly, close enough to carry his scent.
“When did the letter arrive?” I asked. “What day?”
He swallowed before answering. “The night of your party.”
The party. The one night in the past several weeks when the normal patterns of the house had been disrupted and the staff had been redistributed, when guards had been redeployed, when someone who knew the building’s rhythms could have moved through it at a time when no one was watching the things they usually watched.
He’d been in the building that night. Possibly in Elijah’s room. Possibly carrying the scent of it into the dungeon corridor afterward.
I stood up. The guard moved to hand Damon the plate and I nodded to let him.
“Thank you,” I said to Damon. It came out genuine, which surprised me slightly. “Eat something.”
I walked back through the dungeon corridor and up through the building and found Hazel and said four words.
“It’s someone inside.”
She looked at me and understood immediately that I wasn’t speculating.
“The watch is set at the gate,” she said.
“Good.” I looked toward the upper floor, where Elijah’s room was. “Pull the access logs for the night of the party. Everyone who went above the second floor. I want the list in an hour.”
“You think it’s someone on staff.”
“I think it’s someone we see every day and don’t look at twice.” I started toward the stairs. “And I think they were in Elijah’s room that night while we were all downstairs celebrating. I want to know why.“