Treachery Queen (The Callistra Chronicles #1)

TEN

Chapter Ten

"Volume!" Seth hissed, throwing himself over the control panel. "Turn down the volume!"

"I can't!" Pasiphae hit buttons at random, hoping to find the correct one. "I don't know which one it is!"

The noise muted suddenly. Seth was panting, his hand rested over a sliding switch. "Found it."

The screeching audio had cut off, but the visual kept moving.

It didn't take long for Pasiphae to confirm it was a video recording of torture. She had seen enough to recognise it, but couldn't fathom why the fae would keep it on record to be discovered by anyone who decided to snoop.

She leaned into the screen, peering at the footage.

A faery boy was chained to a pole, his arms above his head. Deep, dark gashes decorated his arms, crawling through his skin like cracks in his china-doll skin. His wings were torn beyond repair, as golden as his hair and as bloodied as his hands.

Opposite him, a faery girl was tied down to the floor, her hands roped to her ankles. Her wings, unlike the boy's, were silver like steel, whole and unharmed as she threw herself left and right, her face contorting as she screamed.

"Turn it up a little," Pasiphae said quietly.

Seth slid the switch up a notch, and the words became audible.

"Ready to talk?" a voice off-screen demanded.

The guards took a step back, allowing the Seelie faery on the pole to wheeze in tightly.

"Lauha," he barely managed, blood spittle dripping down his chin. "They'll kill me either way."

On cue, one of the guards stepped forward and dragged a knife down the boy's side, taking out a whole half of his left wing.

Pasiphae winced from the other side of the screen.

"No!" the other faery, Lauha, shrieked, buckling in her frenzy. "No, no, no!"

"Don't," the boy rasped. He seemed to be losing control of his tongue. The time ticking at the bottom of the video dated this incident to almost a year ago.

"Last chance to talk, Lady Lauha," the trilling off-screen voice said. "Kader is on the verge of all Deaths."

Kader roared, seizing as they sliced off his wings completely in one arc. What almost looked to be white smoke curled through the room, bursting from the lines of his wings.

"Don't!" Kader begged.

But Lauha was already talking—frantically screaming—about every detail of a plan to infiltrate the Unseelie palace.

Seth gently pressed down on a button, and the recording minimised, the quiet screams of agony rendered silent. The screen changed into words, beeping happily as it drew up information.

Pasiphae was unmoving, the vivid images on the screen imprinted onto her eyes. She wondered if Kader was still alive. She wondered if Lauha's desperate attempt to save him had worked.

"What was that?" she finally asked when Seth didn't speak, even though she knew perfectly well.

Seth was busy clicking through files, opening rows of text that he skimmed quickly and closed, searching. He hesitated before answering.

"Information extraction." He grimaced, like such footage wasn't unusual. "The Unseelie Court won't torture you for information. They'll torture the people you care about."

Pasiphae followed along the symbols he was tearing through, lines and circles and twists that didn't resemble any alphabet she knew.

They simmered into quiet again, Seth growing more agitated as the border control logs stayed hidden. Pasiphae broke the silence.