CHAPTER 266: CHAPTER 266: THE START OF A PURGE

Alan’s body finally sagged in the chair, veins standing out on his temples, chest heaving like a broken bellows. His last words hung in the sterile room, thick as poison.

Trevor’s expression didn’t move, but the violet of his eyes deepened until it looked like the light itself bent away from him. He straightened slowly, a man not rising from a chair but unfolding like judgment itself.

"Put him in a cell," Trevor ordered, his voice clipped and final. "He doesn’t eat or sleep until every word comes out of his rotten mouth. If he so much as breathes in silence, break him."

The agent nodded sharply, two guards stepping forward to drag Alan’s limp form away. The scrape of steel cuffs against tile echoed until the door shut, sealing the room back into its heavy stillness.

Windstone remained, clipboard hugged close to his chest, pale green eyes fixed on Trevor. He didn’t dare to break the silence. The words were already written in the twist of his jaw, the faint tick at his temple.

Trevor stood motionless for a long moment, every line of his posture carved in iron. Then, slowly, he lowered himself back into the chair, elbows braced on the table. His head fell into his hands, fingers pressing hard against his skull as if he could hold it all inside.

"Not the second," he muttered, voice ragged where it should have been steel. "The third. Gods help us... they knew."

Windstone shifted at last, drawing one step closer, careful as though approaching a wounded predator. "My lord..."

Trevor’s breath left him in a harsh exhale, somewhere between a growl and a laugh with no humor in it. "There was a time, Windstone. A time when maybe it was from the start. When Lucas was mine before any of this—before Benedict, before debts and contracts and poisons." His hands curled tighter, nails biting into his scalp. "If they know that... if they’ve seen that thread..."

The silence pressed down, heavier than his pheromones had been. Windstone, ever precise, didn’t offer comfort. He only inclined his head once, the smallest gesture of loyalty anchoring Trevor against the weight of what was discovered.

Trevor finally dropped his hands, violet eyes burning with the kind of fury that consumed others until there was nothing left. "He won’t touch him. Not in this life, not in any life left to come. I’ll make sure of it."

He rose, the chair legs scraping back across tile, the sound sharp enough to cut. His disgust rolled off him in waves; even the sterile white walls seemed tainted, steeped in the stink of lies and false piety. He needed to burn the room down, to scrub it from stone and memory, but a bath would do for now, hot enough to peel away the rot clinging to his skin.

"Send a message to Dax," Trevor ordered, his voice low, a command that vibrated with restrained violence. "Report what we’ve uncovered. Tell him that this time I won’t hold back... and he can at last do the same."

He paused, lips curving in a chuckle so dark it wasn’t laughter at all but the sound of something breaking. Windstone, who had stood through storms that could topple dynasties, felt the tremor run through him despite himself.

Trevor’s gaze slid toward the door, his shadow stretching long across the wall as he turned. "He can deal with the Church in Saha." His words were quiet, but they carried the weight of a verdict. "I will do my part in Palatine."

The final vow left his tongue like a curse, violet eyes glinting with merciless promise.

"Benedict is mine."

—

The study was silent save for the scrape of pen on vellum, a heavy line of ink crossing the last curve of a jeweler’s sketch. Dax sat at his broad desk, silver-blonde hair catching in the light of the desk lamp, violet eyes fixed on the spread of designs before him. The necklace was finished, an unbroken collar of cut diamonds linked by tempered platinum. A symbol. He had been ready to sign the approval when the secure channel hummed alive.

Only one man had that frequency.

Dax’s eyes narrowed. He set the pen down with care, not on the sketch but off to the side, as if refusing to stain the vision before him with what he was about to hear. With a flick of his wrist, the console on the edge of the desk lit up, a single encrypted line spilling Trevor’s words into the room.

The longer he read, the stiller he became.

Ten years of betrayal. Compulsion buried in faith. The priest’s leash coiled around Palatine’s halls. And at the center of it... Lucas. Not as prey this time, but as obsession, prophecy, and threat. A third life. A third chance.

By the time the message ended, the room felt colder. Dax leaned back, exhaling once through his nose, his lips curving into the kind of smile that sent even generals into silence.

"Finally," he murmured.

He reached forward, this time not for the sketch, but for the seal he reserved for declarations of war. He pressed it against the approval sheet anyway, diamond collar and campaign indistinguishable, two weapons crafted for different throats.

The channel blinked green as his reply pulsed back across the distance, simple and absolute:

’Burn them. I’ll salt the ashes in Saha. The priest is yours.’

Dax closed the line, his hand returning to the jeweled sketch. He turned it once, studying it as though already seeing it resting against pale skin, catching light in a way no crown ever could. His violet eyes glinted with something between hunger and certainty.

Dax set the sketch aside at last, rising from the chair with the grace of someone who never needed to rush to be obeyed. His footsteps carried him across the marble floor, every step measured. At the far wall, he pressed his palm to a black-iron symbol to summon his men.

"Killian."

The doors opened on a whisper of hinges, and Killian stepped in as though the palace itself had bent to make space for him. Tall, broad-shouldered, clad in black tailored so precisely it looked sewn onto his bones, with a purple shawl over his right hand. A loyal man of Dax, his tongue and hands had buried more enemies than blades ever had.

"My king," he said, voice low, as smooth and dry as old brandy. His storm-grey eyes flicked once to the sketches on the desk, the sharp curve of a diamond collar. "Another gift for your future mate? Or an execution in disguise?"

Dax’s lips twitched. "Both."

"Ah." Killian inclined his head, the faintest edge of sarcasm brushing the single syllable. "Then I should cancel the jeweler’s funeral. Pity, I was looking forward to the flowers."

The secure console still glowed faintly, Trevor’s words hanging in the air like smoke. Dax tapped it once, letting the message replay, each line a thread of betrayal and blood. Killian’s expression didn’t change, though the corner of his mouth sharpened into something humorless.

"Ten years," he drawled. "Priests do have remarkable patience. Shame their god doesn’t share it."

"Purge the Church," Dax said, his tone even, his command absolute.

Killian raised one brow, as if Dax had just asked him to set the tea. "How thorough? Hymn-singers, bell-ringers, or just the ones who bleed too much piety onto their cassocks?"

"All of them," Dax replied. His violet eyes glinted like amethyst catching fire. "Benedict’s leash in Saha ends tonight. Make it... silently. I want him to realize the scope of his loss only when Trevor is at his throat."

Killian tapped the corner of his clipboard against his palm, a faint rhythm of amusement. "A quiet extinction, then. Six months, perhaps less. And when the hymns stop, Benedict will hear the silence as his own requiem."

He paused, his storm-grey gaze sliding back to the sketch of the collar gleaming beneath the lamp. "In the meantime..." His tone shifted, the faintest shade of mockery threading through the dryness. "I confess, I wanted to see Christopher’s reaction to your gift for him. Few men would know whether to thank you or fear you for such a chain."

Dax’s lips curved, his smirk a quiet confirmation. "That’s the point."