CHAPTER 273: CHAPTER 273: BLOODIED FAITH

The chapel smelled of copper and incense, an unholy mix clinging to the stone walls.

Dax stood in the center of it, shirt cuffs rolled high and spattered dark, the blood on his hands drying in patterns that looked almost intentional. The bodies of priests sagged where they had collapsed against pews, their eyes glassy, their throats torn raw by the suffocating weight of pheromones that had frozen them in place until their lungs forgot how to draw air.

Not one of them had been able to run. Not one of them had even managed to kneel.

The violet of Dax’s eyes glowed like molten glass, sharp enough to cut through the thick, heavy silence that hung after screams. His presence still pressed down, invisible iron shackles pinning the last survivors to the floor where they shook and choked and prayed, though no god was listening.

Killian leaned against a pillar, hands folded neatly behind his back, expression carved from stone. His storm-grey eyes tracked the ruin with the clinical patience of a man who had seen this before and knew it would happen again.

"Three more confessed," Killian said, voice smooth and dry. "The rest broke before they even opened their mouths. Your purge is thorough."

"There are more," Dax murmured, his voice low and even, the kind of calm that carried far more threat than rage. He stepped past a body, boots sinking into the edge of a crimson pool, and glanced toward the altar like it had personally offended him. "Not until the infection is burned out. They forgot who is between them and God."

He stopped, his men already cleaning and killing all those that weren’t directly under Dax’s command. "For all their prophecies, you’d think they would have seen this coming."

The chapel doors had been barred hours ago, but the stench of death had already seeped through the cracks, clinging to the air outside like smoke.

Dax moved slowly down the aisle, violet eyes trailing over the last survivors, half-dead men sprawled against marble, their skin grey with exhaustion, sweat and blood streaking down their collars. Every breath they drew rattled like a prayer dismissed.

He knelt before one of them, a young priest whose lips still formed fragments of psalms. Dax’s hand closed over his chin, forcing his trembling face upward until their eyes locked. The weight of pheromones pressed heavier, sharper, an invisible fist tightening around his chest until his words cut off in a strangled cough.

"Where," Dax asked softly, the quiet tone all the more terrifying for its restraint, "is your master hiding?"

The priest’s eyes rolled, tears mingling with blood. His tongue scraped against his teeth, no words forming. Dax tilted his head, studying him like one might a cracked vase. Then, with the barest flare of scent, the man’s body seized, nose, ears, and eyes bleeding in unison before his head lolled forward.

Dax rose, shaking blood from his fingers with a flick as if it were water. "Useless."

"Three said the same thing," Killian remarked from his pillar, his tone bone-dry. "The Eminence fled Palatine the moment Fitzgeralt started pulling at threads. Slipped his own temple like a rat abandoning a burning ship. Seems he believes distance is holier than faith."

Dax’s jaw ticked, though his expression stayed coldly composed. "He runs to buy time. Nothing more."

Killian’s mouth curved faintly. "Then perhaps we should send Trevor the news. A gift. ’Your quarry slipped his leash, again.’ It would make the next interrogation sting deeper."

Dax’s lips twitched into something that wasn’t quite a smile. "Oh, I will make sure Trevor hears of it. The man has waited too long for an excuse to break Benedict. Now he has one."

Another priest convulsed near the altar, trying to crawl forward, his nails clawing at the stone as if the sanctuary itself might save him. Dax didn’t move at first, only let the suffocating wall of his pheromones deepen until the man collapsed flat, gasping like a fish. Then, at last, he stepped forward, boots steady and merciless.

"Clean this place," he ordered, his voice carrying like steel through smoke. "Every name, every whisper, every coin they touched, burn it. I want no shadow left behind."

Killian inclined his head, storm-grey eyes narrowing with faint, sardonic amusement. "Shall I arrange incense for the next sermon? Or will blood be sufficient?"

Dax’s violet gaze slid toward him, sharp and unblinking. "Blood always preaches louder."

It was then, as the silence settled thick again, that his phone buzzed once in his pocket, vibrating against the blood-slick fabric.

Only one person had reason to send him something through that particular channel.

Mia.

Killian offered a warm, wet towel to his king. Dax took it without looking, dragging it over his palms, streaking red into the linen until it bled darker than the cloth itself. The buzz came again, insistent this time, against the pocket of his trousers.

Killian’s brow arched faintly. "Your pet bird sings?"

Dax pulled the phone free, thumb smearing a streak of crimson across the glass before the screen lit. A short message glowed against the silence:

’There was only one clinic far enough from home for Chris not to be noticed. I don’t know the name, just the town. Maybe start there.’

For a long moment, Dax didn’t move. His violet eyes traced the words, the still-fresh fury in the chapel sharpening into something colder, more exact. The towel dangled useless from his other hand, dripping faintly onto the stone floor.

"Useful," he murmured at last, though the word landed like a sentence rather than praise.

Killian tilted his head, storm-grey eyes flicking toward the corpses. "A breadcrumb. She gives you the direction and lets you dig the rest. Clever, that one."

Dax’s lip curled, not in amusement, but in the faintest shadow of a smile. "Clever is only valuable if it keeps her alive."

He slid the phone back into his pocket, the message burned into his mind, the echo of Mia’s fear threaded between every careful word. He could taste her hesitation in the brevity, the way she’d chosen just enough to be useful without offering too much.

"She found the information in two days," Dax said softly, turning back toward the altar. "Only Christopher could have told her so fast." His violet gaze lifted to the bloodied god statue, carved lips frozen mid-blessing, streaked red where a priest had fallen against it. Dax regarded it with the same detachment one gave a child’s toy left broken in the dirt.

"Add more security to the consort," he murmured, his voice as even as if he were dictating a letter. "And make sure the jeweler finishes the collar by next week."

Killian pushed off the pillar, steps unhurried, his storm-grey eyes narrowing faintly. "Security thicker than it already is? At this rate, the boy will suffocate under the weight of guards before he suffocates under you."

Dax’s mouth twitched, a humorless curve. "He can breathe when I decide he can. Until then, let him remember he is mine by absence as much as presence."

Killian inclined his head, though the edge of sarcasm slipped into his tone like steel into velvet. "And the collar? Diamonds choke more politely than chains, but they choke all the same."

"They bind louder," Dax corrected, his eyes glinting as he finally stepped away from the altar. "And when he wears it, there will be no mistaking who tempered him. Not to himself, not to anyone."

The chapel air still stank of copper and smoke, but Dax’s attention was already elsewhere, far from the corpses cooling in the pews, fixed instead on a single message, a single breadcrumb, and the omega who had dared give it.

"Christopher thinks he’s clever," Dax murmured, violet eyes burning faintly brighter, "but I won’t let him escape from his fate."