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Hunter
I smell the blood before I see it.
Blood dried in rust-colored streaks along his temple, cracking where his skin has split open. Newer rivulets cut through it, wet and dark, slipping down his jaw and dripping from his chin to the hard floor in steady, patient taps.
The door shuts behind me with a heavy click that echoes loudly in the small space. It unleashes something I’ve been carrying—something tight and volatile that I’ve been holding onto until right now. I stand there for a second longer than I should, absorbing the room around me as my eyes adjust.
Tile, concrete, and windowless.
It’s sterile, but not clean. Not really. There’s a difference. This place isn’t meant for comfort; it’s for containment. A place to strip everything down to pain and truth and whatever comes spilling out when a man runs out of lies.
They blindfolded me before bringing me here, wherever “here” is. That was part of the deal, one I had no choice but to accept. No one outside of PNZ knows where the Dungeon is located. Not exactly. Not enough to find it again on their own.
I catalogue everything as I step forward—the iron chains bolted into the walls, thick and dark with age. The drain is set dead center in the floor, and there’s a faint metallic tang in the air.
And the table–long and stainless steel. Lined with instruments laid out in careful, organized rows. Each one is placed with purpose.
My boots echo as I move closer, the sound sharp and hollow, bouncing off tile and concrete until it feels like it’s coming from everywhere at once.
He doesn’t look up at first.
Head hanging forward with long dark hair falling in matted strands that hide most of his face. His shoulders are slack, and restraints bite into his wrists, bound to the arms of the chair. There’s dried blood there, too, and torn skin.
“Mateo.” My voice sounds different in here. Or maybe it’s just the room, or maybe it’s permanent–like the last forty-eight hours wrung something out of it. His head shifts, slow and heavy. One eye cracks open through the swelling, red-rimmed and unfocused for half a second before it finds me and locks on.
Recognition hits. And then—
He smiles. It’s small and crooked. Bloody. But it’s there.
“Guess Billy’s dead,” he rasps, the comment sealing the fact that only one of us was coming out of that tunnel alive. “Memento Mori.”
I stalk forward, my hands snapping around his throat. “You don’t get to utter those words.”
“He deserves it more than you.” He’s awfully smug for someone who barely made it out of those underground tunnels alive. Billy didn’t. Liam is hanging on by a thread.
A wheezing laugh drags out of him, wet and broken, catching in his chest before it spills free. It should sound weak. It doesn’t.
He looks at me like he’s in control.
I release him, hands curling at my sides, fingers tightening into fists as something hot and sharp coils in my gut. The betrayal by Billy and Liam doesn’t hurt as much. It fucking sucks, especially for the King, but I didn’t know them. But the man in front of me? I considered him a friend, or I thought I did. We gave our rites together, celebrated and pledged our fealty to the King. We brought Arianette back to us with ritual and blood. We carried the dead, and trusted each other with things men don’t give up easily. We were more than Shadows. We were brothers.
All of it meant something, or at least I thought it did.
My jaw tightens as the memory shifts, darkens—
Arianette. He was the one who lured her out of the party, using her trust against her. The way she looked in that tunnel, the palpable fear. A sickening feeling moves through me like a pulse, dragging everything else with it. The image that follows is worse. What could have happened if we didn’t get to her? What almost did.
What he tried to take.
Mine.
I don’t question it. I step in close, close enough that he has to tilt his head back to keep looking at me.
“Unlike the Princes, I don’t like to play with my food,” I say quietly, my voice controlled in a way that feels too thin. “So let’s get this over with. Who else in BRN is a traitor?”
I’m met with silence. Defiant, enraging silence. Mateo just watches me.
