Captured By her Alien Mate by Ava York

Kator

“Is that the best you could come up with?” Mofat leaned back into his chair, hacked into a handkerchief and studied me hard. My lifetime working along the fringes had gifted me with a face impervious to probing. Even so, this king had the kind of eyes that could make a stone sweat.

“Your majesty.” I eased up to the table. “Even though your soldiers did not retrieve the one known as Isabella, this newcomer has secrets and information of her own. I’m sure she has more information, but these things take time.” To my left, Hulat landed a savage kick at the leg of a chair.

“Too much time if you ask me.” He slicked a knife out from its scabbard. “It was a mistake to grab the wrong mammal. The damned D’Tali will be guarding the rest of them like jewels. There’s only one way to get the enemy to render up the kind of information we need. And it has nothing to do with honey, Kator.” At the sight of his blade, my heart clenched into a fist.

“That kind of hasty action gets us nothing but dead bodies.”

“Dead bodies are what I want.” Hulat’s gaze landed on me, that cruel grin smeared across his face, his tongue darting out to flick at his lips. “If it took capturing the entire D’Tali kingdom one by one, I’d be happy to stack the bodies up.”

“That’s enough, my son,” Mofat said with an indulgent chuckle. “There will be time for bloodletting.” And he meant it. That was the only thing those two could understand, and it increasingly curdled my insides. When Mofat looked at me again, the warm countenance he saved for his son was gone.

“I’m afraid what your pet has been offering isn’t sufficient for our needs. We know about where the storehouses are, and which chambers the council uses to meet.” He spread his hands. “What use is this to us? If we cannot reach these places, it does us no good to know where they are.”

“But once we are inside…”

“I tell you,” he silenced me. “We already know these things. The time for honey has turned to gall. What we need now is the kind of vinegar that gets results.”

“I am getting results.” The lie fell from my lips and hit the table before I could call it back. Something dark flickered across Mofat’s face, and I knew that I needed to come up with something. “There is more.”

“You’ve been holding out on us, Kator,” Hulat said, closing on me. The keen edge of his dagger flitted just beyond my nose. “Shame on you.” He stared at me as if he could smell the D’Tali blood in my veins, and hated every drop of it.

“Enough of that.” Mofat’s raised hand and cool tone eased Hulat back. With an unhappy grunt, he sheathed the knife again. “Tell me.” The king licked his lips. “What have you been keeping?”

“The most important part,” I improvised. “You know how this goes, my lord. We always save the tastiest morsel for the last mouthful.”

“We do,” he said, running a hand over his sickly stomach before beckoning me to go on.

“They have been scouring the Skarg ship for powerful weapons.”

“We have every weapon from the Skarg,” Hulat sneered. “Those filthy monsters worked alongside us. There are no secrets they held that we haven’t claimed.”

“But they have the sphere,” I said. It wasn’t something I had wanted to share, but I was running out of options. This kernel of truth might just protect Riley without endangering Tahkath. At least that was my hope.

“Worthless.” With a grumbling snort, Mofat heaved himself forward in his chair. “You have been too gentle with this creature. She’s offering you crumbs when we need the loaf. While I admire the diligence of your methods, it’s time to rely on our old ways. After all, this is why we have a Royal Inquisitor. He is skilled in these things.”

The blood froze in my veins. The Inquisitor’s intervention was the very thing I had been struggling to forestall. Those she questioned were left either dead, or begging for death. As much blood as was spilled in her steps, she always returned with sound intelligence.

“More than skilled,” Hulat said. “The woman is an artist. I’d love to study under her.”

“You are too impatient.” Mofat waved his son off. “And what Wyelia does requires infinite and genuine…” he landed his gaze on me “… patience.”

In that moment, the Aetam king wasn’t looking at me. He was looking into me. Searching into my body as if he meant to read the marrow in my bones. It was impossible to say exactly in what corner of my body our secrets were kept, but I stiffened the shell around them. Where his son was brutal, Mofat was cunning.

“That may be so, my lord.” As dry as my mouth was, I managed to make my voice sound careless. “But what good will all her patience do? She could carve this human woman to pieces, and might even be able to extract the information you seek. It will be worthless if she cannot understand it.”

“Convenient that you’re the one who understands her.” Hulat shifted his weight forward over his toes. Between the two of them, I was beginning to feel as though I was the one being interrogated. For a moment, I was relieved that Jalon wasn’t on hand to lend his weight to the proceedings.

“Learning the D’Tali language has been an invaluable asset in my profession,” I said, punctuated with a small shrug. “Luckily I had a talent for the mammal language as well. If there were another way, I would offer it. But I’m certain of my work.”

“I’m not,” Mofat said with finality. “Besides, the difficulty with language is irrelevant. You will still be on hand for the effort. Our Inquisitor will do the breaking, and you will ask the questions.”

My head swum. All at once, a thousand unwelcome images flooded my mind of Riley’s blood flowing in rivers. Her perfect, pale skin being scored with hooks and blades. Even if I shut my eyes against the sights, the sound of her bones cracking assaulted my ears. To this point, her voice had only been music to me, but I knew it well enough to torture myself with it breaking into screams.

For all the courage I had shown so far in maintaining my composure, this was the severest trial. Swallowing hard, I forced a careless smile to my lips.

“It will never work.”

“No?” The king sat, implacable, his son coming to roost over his shoulder. “Then it won’t change things, really. Nothing has worked so far, so why not exhaust every avenue at our disposal?”

“I’ve barely had time to work, my lord.”

“You’ve had time enough, and returned with nothing of any worth.” With a sudden lunge, he lurched forward and pushed himself up to standing. Mofat on his feet was a rare thing, and I almost let the peasant inside me drop to my knees.

As old and infirm as he was, there was a feral regality about him that was undeniable. As a young and vigorous man, he must have been a terror. Every bit as brutal as his son, as patient as Wyelia, and as cunning as Aefir. When flashes of his former self bristled up, I thanked the Ancestors that I had never crossed him in his prime.

“As an assassin of the court, you are something of a diplomat, Kator. You work with reason. But these filthy mammals allied with the D’Tali are below reason. They are animals, and there is only one truth that animals respond to—pain. Give them pain and they give you truth. It’s the oldest transaction there is.”

“My lord…”

“There will be no more discussion. It’s too late to waste our time in theories anyway.” Something in his tone crackled through the air. A cold realization dropped into my stomach, nearly buckling my knees.

There was a reason Mofat and his son had indulged me as long as they had. Moreover, the absence of Jalon was suddenly very keenly felt.

“Why is it too late?”

“Because,” he said. “Wyelia is already on her way.”

The news tore into my body, shattering everything along the way. While I had been here offering trifles as a means of gaining time, I hadn’t known that the time was already lost. My heart tied itself into a knot at the base of my throat, and threatened to choke me. Those imagined screams which had tormented me mere moments before might be breaking forth in earnest at that moment.

It was too much.

“King Mofat,” I said. “If the Royal Inquisitor is already on her way to see the prisoner, then I must be past my time. What good will any confessions do if I’m not there to hear them?”

“Oh.” He dismissed the notion and sank back down into his seat. “I’ve found that once a secret is out, it becomes cheap. The moment a thing is said, it becomes easy to say again. And, if not,” he snapped his knotty fingers, “our specialist will wring it forth again. Won’t you have some wine?”

“I’ve been dying for some,” Hulat crowed. “All this talk of torture and blood was making my throat ache for something rich. Pity it’s not warmer.” He scooped up a decanter and spilled a gout of dark, red wine into his chalice. The sight of it only made the fact of what was impending more immediate.

If this was something the two had orchestrated, it was a brilliant piece of theatre. If not, then it just spoke to how keenly I was attuned to every livid detail.

Two more crisp, red glasses were poured and one was proffered to me. To have refused it would have betrayed every treason they may have suspected of me, but how could I stay? What kind of man would I be, drinking in the royal chambers while the woman of my heart was being broken?

The worst kind, I decided. The kind that wasn’t fit to live.