The Jaws of the Wolf
Benjamin Tolsby was dead.
What was left of his body was somewhere in the Arova.
The suspended officer had meticulously erased evidence first from the warehouse where the galdor had been beaten, tortured, and shot in the face and then from himself—burning whatever could be consumed by the fires of Saunder's Forge and letting the dancing flames sear into his retinas as he watched his vengeance consumed in the heat. He didn't feel fear. Or remorse. He didn't taste the bitterness of regret. In fact, he wasn't sure he felt much of anything, moving through the motions of a well-trained professional who knew what to destroy because he knew exactly what he would have looked for had he been on the case.
His ears were ringing from so much magic use, tinnitus having haunted him regularly since the riots of Yaris 2718, but it was the only thing that he could really hear in his own head, strangely empty and numb as he felt.
Changed. Washed. But not made clean.
The walk home wasn't a long one, really, but Rhys made it more by muscle memory than by conscious thought, body moving mechanically through the dark streets, sticking to the longest shadows and the least-traveled side roads because the Sergeant knew patrol routes, because the tall blond knew what sorts of characters would be out and about in the wee hours before the sun rose above the smog of the Soot District to cast its bright rays into the bitter Intas chill of the Dives. He didn't want to be seen. He didn't want to be heard.
He wasn't sure he wanted to be anything.
What had he done?
Justice hadn't tasted the way he thought it would. Vengeance hadn't settled in his stomach the way it should have.
No matter what Benjamin Tolsby deserved—was it really his burden to bear? Had it even been his? Gale had done the beating. Gale had done the shooting. Had his sister taken what belonged to him or had his permission been enough? Had his consent in the end of the bastard that had attempted gods only knew how many times over the past decade to rape Charity Valentin, née D'Arthe, made him totally complicit? Was he satisfied? Had some hunger been fed? Had it been enough?
No. There would be more.
So much more.
Benjamin was kindling. His death was the lighting of a fire. Rhys felt like the spent match, blackened, twisted, but purposeful. He was serving a purpose: there was much left to burn until even Damen was left as a smear of ashes in the Seventen roster. No one else would do it. No one else knew the truth like he did. No one else saw a need for justice to be served the right way.
The fucking right way?
He hissed a cloud of breath through cold, scarred lips, turning the corner onto the street of crowded row houses in various states of dilapidated, half-hearted repair. His was, of course, far better off than the rest by now, considering he'd worked hard and spent good coin to fix up the place, considering he'd made it a home so far from Uptown on purpose.
His body felt as numb as the rest of him, Intas icy and snow-covered and steal-your-breath frigid in temperatures. He fumbled for keys with aching hands, shoulder pressed against the threshold, feeling all the willpower that somehow got him up the stairs draining out of him as if he'd been the one shot, as if he'd bleed through the streets all the way home.
Inside, the warmth rushed through him, familiar scents of the life he'd made here filling his senses and making him dizzy, vertigo a cruel trick played on a half-bred sorcerer who'd pushed his weaker genetic heritage so far, so hard, so fast. Too far. The heat from the hearth washed over him even from two rooms away and he gasped, immediately filled with everything he'd not felt for the entire night.
Oh gods.
He closed the door and stood there in the foyer, heavy satchel weighed down by a metal mask and all of his other prodigium equipment, by whatever evidence of tonight's bloodied, ritualized revenge that couldn't be destroyed slamming to the floor. He struggled to slip out of his coat, to kick off his boots, to shed the last vestiges of who he had to become to do what he'd done ... only to find all of it clung tightly, threatened to drag him to the old rug before he even made it past the front door,
"Charity!"
It was a groan more than her name. A gurgled noise that surprised him because he hadn't heard his own voice in almost half a house. He dropped his coat with a sob, tightness in his chest sinking claws right into mended bones, and he made it to the stairs to lean against the bannister, gripping it tightly, resting his forehead against the peeling paint of the post.