The fire had long since gone out. The underground workshop was now nothing but barren ash, full of broken bottles and blackened books, utterly destroyed. There was nothing left here but a charred husk of a body on the ground, almost unrecognizable had it not been for the brooch that was half melted into her chest.

The edges of the wound across her throat were peeled back, a gaping wound, and the only thing Caesar DeVille could think was ‘at least it was swift’. Some might call it a merciless killing, but Caesar knew what merciless really was. Quick, painless, letting someone feel as though they were falling asleep… Sure, there was the ‘evil’ lack of hesitation, but he knew better. Hesitation was cowardice, nothing more, nothing less.

Though this… this was also cowardice.

Slowly, he fell to his knees next to her, heedless of the ash and grime on the burnt floor, and reached out to barely touch the side of her charred face. Her teeth were so prominent, the lips completely burned off, and what little was left of her black hair crumbled at the brush of his fingers.

“The two guards on patrol,” he said softly, and there was a scramble to shove the two of them forward. There was nausea in his gut. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen a body before. He dealt in death. This was his business. But he still wanted to empty the contents of his stomach, push through the cold sweat breaking out under his collar, kill something to make himself feel better.

He could feel one trembling behind him. Their fear in the air was palpable. He could taste it on his tongue, but it was little consolation. The other was calm, still, unnaturally so, perhaps in shock, or already resigned to his fate, and that alone was enough to want him to make him suffer.

His body moved on its own. One second, he was knelt by her body, and the next, his hand was sailing through the air with the force of a whip, crunching through bone and tissue and sinew to curl wicked fingers around a heart and yank it free of the confines of the first guard’s chest. Not even truly processing what he was doing, Caesar took a bite out of it as the body crumpled. His teeth broke through hard muscle and sinew, blood spurting around his mouth, and his crazed violet eyes set on the second guard’s. He was young, but already resigned to his fate, bracing to be run through.

Slowly, Caesar dropped the heart carelessly on the ground, and seized his face with his bloody hand.

“You will remain alive until the killer of my daughter is served to me on a silver platter,” he hissed, and shoved him back. The guard went sprawling on the ground, and Caesar flicked the blood off of his hand. “Take him to the dungeons. And bring me Augustus.”

Augustus… Augustus would avenge his sister. Caesar was sure of it. Augustus had never once failed him.

Georgina…

Caesar’s eyes drifted back to the body on the floor, and then he turned aside.

Fifteen. She had never even been given the chance to fail, had she?