Heart of Ash (The Dark Arcane Series: Book 1)

Chapter Twenty

"Kade, did you hear?" Nala came running into his room.

He looked up, a question marked across his face, although he would be lying if he said he was surprised at the sight of her racing in with the wind at her heels.

"The deathstalker killed a man in Wimsley." Her eyes were wide. Serious.

Abandoning his previous thoughts, he stood up, his chair screeching across the floor.

"Wimsley?" He frowned. "That far north?"

She nodded. "Exactly, the news crier said it was the furthest north the deathstalker had ever gone in Brialdia. This means something, right?"

Trying to ignore the hopefulness in her ice blue eyes, Kade scrambled to find a particular paper in the drawers, but found a flicker of the same feeling in himself as he slammed the drawer shut.

He placed it in the centre of the table, smoothing out its curled edges, and Nala moved closer. It was a map of the bloody city, from the city walls to the castle walls. He traced the distinct crosses marked on the map, the marks of the previous victims. His scarred finger paused as he found Wimsley and tapped it. "Something's changed."

He shook his head as he muttered to himself, half-forgetting about Nala's presence. "The deathstalker has never broken his pattern before. So why now?"

Kade looked up at her. "He's always killed in even intervals, just over several weeks give or take, but this, this is only two weeks after his last one. And"—he moved his finger across the map—"the deathstalker's movements have always been in a line, like-like he was travelling and just killed along the way. But this kill in Wimsley—" his finger jumped to a point a fair distance from the cluster of crosses"—is out of the blue, completely random."

"What do you think it means?" Nala eyed the map in interest.

"It could be personal," he speculated, "maybe this particular victim was someone specific to the deathstalker, and worth the break in his pattern. Who was it?"

"A man named Teri Stolk, but not much else was known, I don't think. It already took a day for the news to get here, it could be a while before any more is known," she stopped suddenly, and then spoke in quick succession as she recalled, "but Darius might have more information, his friend, that Harlan someone, has just gotten back from there. You could ask him—"

"No. No I can do it, I can figure it out," he insisted. "I just, I just have to find out about this Teri Stolk, they must be important somehow, I need to know where they worked, their family, I need to go north to speak with them myself—"

He broke off abruptly and caught her eye.

"Oh mothers tits," Nala followed his train of thought, and grinned.

He broke a rare—albeit grim—smile. It was a wonder the earth didn't crack open. "Oh gods indeed, I guess I will come with you to the north."

"What about the Ca—"

He cut her off. "He has to let me leave. After all, as far as everyone in court knows, he wants the deathstalker to be caught, so he has his image to uphold. It will be fine."

Kade spoke with far more confidence than he felt—in that it looked like he had any—not wanting Nala to know just how unsure he was that the Captain would let him leave the bloody city. The bruise on his cheek suddenly weighed a thousand tonnes.