Sandy Williams - The Sharpest Blade

“It’ll get worse the longer he touches you,” I tell him calmly. “What’s killing the humans? How do we cure them?”

Glazunov’s body lurches and a sob escapes him. “Please!”

A bright bolt of lightning strikes up Aren’s arm.

“How do we cure them?” I demand.

“You can’t cure them!” Glazunov screams. His shoes slide across the smooth ground as he tries to embed himself in the stone wall.

“That’s the wrong answer,” Aren says, grabbing the vigilante’s other arm.

“No. Listen. You can’t fix it because it is fixed,” he wails. “The serum is already fixed!”

AREN RELEASES THE vigilante’s arm. I’m not sure if he’s just ready to stop touching Glazunov or if he believes him. I’m not sure if I believe him. It’s too easy an answer to a life-or-death problem.

“You’re sure?” I ask, making my voice icy.

Glazunov curls into a ball, his left cheek pressed against the stone wall. “We changed the formula three months ago.”

The knots in my stomach loosen a fraction. Paige has had the Sight for around two months. I’m not sure when Lee injected the serum, but I think it was relatively recent as well. They might both be okay.

“So, if someone injected the serum in the last couple of months, they’re going to live?”

Glazunov’s gaze flickers my direction. There’s the slightest hesitation before he answers, “Right.”

Aren hears the pause, too. He leans forward, staring into Glazunov’s eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

A muscle in Glazunov’s cheek twitches.

“Tell us the truth,” Aren says, reaching toward the vigilante’s neck.

“I am telling the truth,” Glazunov says too quickly.

Instead of strangling the vigilante, Aren merely draws his finger down the side of Glazunov’s neck. It’s not anything close to a caress or gentle touch, but Glazunov throws himself on the floor, trying to get away from him. Aren grabs his arm, flipping him to his back.

“Okay. Okay, okay, okay!” Glazunov shouts, fists swinging wildly. When Aren merely stands over him, Glazunov splutters out, “We still have the old formula. Had the formula.”

“Keep talking,” Aren says.

“Some of the vials are missing.” He sucks in a shallow breath. “We don’t know where they went or who injected them. Only a few of us knew of the serum’s side effect.”

“Death is a side effect?” Angry, I step to Aren’s side.

Glazunov looks at me. “They took a pledge to eradicate the fae. They’ve lost people they love to the heathens. They all knew this wouldn’t be an easy or bloodless fight. You know it, too. Think about what you’ve lost. Your family, your future, your freedom. You’re their slave, but you could be free again. We can help you.”

What the hell?

Aren looks at me, a small smile playing across his lips. “I think he’s trying to recruit you, nalkin-shom .”

I roll my eyes at him.

“Their magics have erased your good judgment,” Glazunov continues. “We can restore it. We can cleanse you.”

That sounds entirely unpleasant.

“The serum,” I say, returning the conversation to where it’s supposed to be. “Is there a way to tell which one someone injected?”

Cautiously, Glazunov sits up. “I don’t know.”

“Does anyone else know?” I ask. I haven’t checked my e-mail or voice mails in more than a day, but maybe Lee’s found Bowman or another vigilante and is trying to get in touch with me now.

“Maybe,” Glazunov says. “You’ll have to talk to them.”

“Next question,” Aren says. “Who is selling the serum?”

I glance at Aren, but he keeps his eyes locked on Glazunov. I keep quiet and look at the vigilante, too, holding my breath as I wait for his response. In terms of the fight against the false-blood and his elari , the answer doesn’t matter. They already believe Lena has something to do with the serum. But in terms of the fae’s status on Earth? If the vigilantes are selling the serum to any random human who will pay . . . That could be a problem.

Glazunov’s expression darkens. “With Nakano dead, we were running out of cash. Selling the serum was discussed as a new revenue channel.”

“Discussed?” I ask.

“I told them we weren’t going to sell it,” Glazunov says. “That should have been the end of the conversation.”

“But it wasn’t?”

He shakes his head. Lena is going to be so pissed.

“Who decided to sell it anyway?”

Glazunov shrugs. “Any of them. All of them. I don’t know.”

I believe him. He doesn’t know, and he’s pissed about that fact. He was Nakano’s second-in-command. He’s supposed to be in charge now, but he can’t keep his people in line.

Aren and I ask him a few more questions—where can we find the person selling the serum, how much was produced, where is the research stored and backed up—but his responses aren’t very useful. There’s a reason Lee decided to go after another vigilante: Glazunov is a dead end.

When we run out of questions, we start to leave, but Aren stops beside the open door, turning back to look at Glazunov.

“One last thing,” he says. “You’re going to start eating. If you don’t, I’ll come back and spoon-feed you myself. Do you understand?”

Glazunov doesn’t answer, but he goes still, indicating he does understand.

Aren steps out of the cell and closes the door. He stands there looking at me as the guard locks it. He’s tense—I’m not sure he knows what to say—and that’s when I suddenly become aware I haven’t showered in almost two days, and I’m wearing the same clothes I walked across the Realm in.

Well, isn’t this an awesome way to show him what he’s trying to push away.

He comes to some decision, and tension whooshes out of him in an almost visible cloud.

“That ended up being a surprisingly effective coercion technique,” he says.

His tone is light, and his movement as we walk down the row of cells is easy, languid. He’s always hid his troubles behind his devil-may-care smiles and his nonchalance, but I know him well enough to see through the façade now. He’s uncomfortable around me.

I tilt my head to the side. “You are very good at seducing people to your way of thinking.”

He laughs. “Too bad it doesn’t work on high nobles and elari .”

“You didn’t get anything else out of the fae captured in Tholm?”

“No,” he says. When his smile fades, I hate myself for asking the question. “We’ve captured other elari in the past few weeks. The false-blood doesn’t trust easily. None of them have known his name let alone his location.” A guard opens the door at the end of the corridor, and we leave the quiet cells behind us. “What made you think the vigilantes were selling the serum?”

“Nothing really,” I say. “It just bothered me that the elari knew a serum existed. I couldn’t get it off my mind and . . . Well, this doesn’t exactly disprove that Caelar is working with the false-blood, but the elari could have stumbled across the information somewhere else. Lorn, maybe.”

“Hmm,” Aren says. I’ve never heard a hmm so devoid of inflection.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

I step in front of him, blocking his path. He manages to stop before he touches me. He even takes a step back, putting more distance between us so that we don’t accidentally come in contact.

“Lena sent you down here, didn’t she?” I ask. Then, realizing how stupid the question is, I say, “Don’t answer that. Of course she did. You wouldn’t have come knowing I was there unless you were forced to.”