CHAPTER 115: CHAPTER 115: THE PURGE (3) (WIN-WIN)

The temple smelled of copper and incense, an unholy mix that clung to the stone and made the air taste old and wrong. It was the third location after dealing with the largest two the previous day.

Dax stood in the center of it, shirt cuffs rolled, sleeves spattered dark. The blood on his hands was drying in ragged lines. Priests lay slumped between the pews, bodies folded in impossible angles; their eyes were glassy, their faces slack. Whatever had moved through the sanctuary had taken their breath and left them with nothing but the memory of worship.

Not one had run. Not one had managed to kneel.

The violet in Dax’s eyes glowed like molten glass, cutting the silence that had come down after the last scream. His presence pressed against the survivors like a physical force, an invisible weight that pinned them to the flagstones while their chests heaved and their hands clawed at prayer book covers.

Killian leaned against a pillar, hands folded behind his back, expression carved from stone. His storm-grey gaze surveyed the ruin with the clinical patience of a man who had seen this sort of thing before and knew the pattern it left.

"Three more confessed," Killian said, voice flat. "The rest broke before they could answer. Your purge was thorough."

"There are more," Dax murmured, voice low and even, calm that carried farther than fury. He stepped over a fallen figure, boots whispering in the spreading dark, and glanced toward the altar as if it had personally betrayed him. "Not until the infection is burned out. They forgot who stands between them and their gods."

Men in Dax’s command moved with quiet efficiency around the edges of the chapel, separating the living from the dead, cataloguing names, and wiping surfaces where traces of ritual had been left. For all their prophecies, the priests hadn’t seen this.

The chapel doors had been barred hours earlier; still the smell of death seeped through cracks and stained the outer air like smoke.

Dax walked the aisle slowly, violet eyes taking every face. Survivors hugged their knees or lay exhausted, staring at the ceiling, with sweat and blood streaks running down their collar. Every breath sounded like a prayer that had been dismissed.

He knelt before a young priest who still mouthed fragments of psalms. Dax’s fingers closed lightly beneath the man’s chin and tipped his face up until their eyes met. The invisible pressure around them tightened; the priest’s breath became ragged, and his words were choked.

"Where," Dax asked softly, the quiet there making the question worse, "is your master hiding?"

The priest’s eyes rolled, tears blurring with blood at the edge of his lashes. He tried to speak, but the sound caught and vanished. Dax watched him with the same interest one might have for a cracked ceramic. When the man finally went still, nose bleeding where the pressure had ruptured it, Dax rose without a show of feeling.

"Useless," he said.

"Three said the same thing," Killian observed. "The Eminence fled Palatine the moment Fitzgeralt started pulling threads. Slipped out of his temple like any rat when the fire came. Thought distance would make him safe."

Dax flexed his jaw, but his expression remained composed. "He ran to buy time."

Killian’s mouth curved, a small, dry thing. "Perhaps we should send Trevor the news with a small gift: ’Your quarry slipped his leash again.’ He’d enjoy that."

Dax’s lips twitched into something that almost passed for a smile. "I’ll see Trevor hears. He’s waited long enough for an excuse to shatter Benedict."

A priest nearer the altar tried to crawl forward, nails scrabbling against stone as if the sanctuary itself might hold him. Dax remained motionless for a moment before allowing the pressure to build up until the man collapsed, gasping. Only when the twitching stopped did Dax step past him, measured and unhurried.

"Clean this place," he ordered. His voice cut through the incense haze like steel. "Every ledger. Each transaction in the ledger. Every transfer and scrap, destroy it. Leave no shadow to breathe on this city."

Killian inclined his head, storm-grey eyes narrowing with a hint of bitter amusement. "Shall I prepare incense for the next sermon, or will blood be adequate?"

"Blood carries a message the saints never could," Dax replied, voice flat.

A phone vibrated in his trouser pocket, a small, incongruous buzz against the heavy quiet. Killian offered Dax a towel, which he accepted without looking, wiping his hands and leaving red threads on the linen. The device buzzed again, persistent.

"Your messenger sings," Killian noted.

Dax pulled the screen free, his thumb smearing a streak across the glass. A short message lit the display, spare and anxious:

’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. — Mia’

Dax read the line twice, the rage in his chest subsiding to a blade of calculation. The towel hung from his hand, damp and useless.

"Useful," he said at last, the word like a verdict.

"A breadcrumb," Killian said. "She points and lets you dig. Clever of her."

Dax’s lip lifted the smallest fraction. "Clever only matters if it keeps her breathing."

He slipped the phone back into his pocket. Mia’s caution radiated from the message: enough to point, not enough to lead. It fit with everything he’d already suspected: the orders, the synthetic lines, and the way Benedict’s name had bled through channels.

"She found the lead in two days," Dax murmured, eyes on the crimson-streaked statue above the altar, its carved face frozen in an eternal benediction. "Only Christopher could have moved that quickly."

"Add security to the consort," he said, voice measured, each syllable a command. "Thicken it. And inform the jeweler that the collar must be completed by the end of the week."

Killian pushed off the pillar, strides deliberate. "At this rate," he observed, "the boy will suffocate from guards long before he will under you."

Dax’s smile was humorless. "He will breathe when I decide he can. For now, let him learn that absence is as binding as presence."

"And the collar?" Killian asked, a dry note in his tone.

"Diamonds choke more politely than chains," Dax said, "but they bind all the same."

"They bind louder," he corrected, eyes glinting as he stepped away from the altar. "When he wears it, no one will forget who tempered him."

The chapel still reeked of copper and smoke, but Dax’s attention had already moved beyond the cooling bodies, beyond Killian’s careful motions, and beyond the faint echo of Mia’s message. He felt the breadcrumb like a pulse against his plans, a direction to dig deeper.

"Christopher thinks he’s clever," Dax murmured, violet eyes bright and cold. "That arrogance will be instructive."

His omega told someone else in two days what he had asked him for weeks; Dax was envious, despite his better judgement.

He pocketed the phone and, with the same indifferent precision he used for darker work, let his men finish the rest. The city outside the chapel windows still burned under the summer sun; inside, the aftertaste of ritual and ruin lingered like a vow.