Chapter 60: His Hunting Dog

The practice steel vibrated with the impact.

Aerion blocked the downward strike from Sir Gainard, his muscles burning from the effort of two continuous hours of combat.

Sweat stung his eyes, but physical pain was the only thing keeping the noise in his head at bay.

“Highness!” The scream broke his concentration.

A messenger burst into the dirt courtyard, slipping in his own hurry and falling to his knees.

Dust rose in a choking cloud.

The man stayed there, with his forehead glued to the ground, shaking like a leaf in the middle of a gale.

The silence that followed was heavy. The instructors went quiet. The recruits lowered their weapons.

Aerion took off his helm and let it drop.

“Speak,” he ordered.

“Prince Ayres…” The messenger raised his head. His face was pale, drained of blood. “He has disappeared, my lord.”

Aerion’s world stopped.

Raziel’s vision flashed in his mind: ’Ayres on the throne. A crown of black iron. Phaedra burning under the whim of a mad tyrant.’

“Disappeared?” Aerion moved forward, ignoring Sir Gainard.

He crouched in front of the messenger, invading his space, smelling the man’s stale fear. “He was at the Palace with the Royal Guard. How the hell does a Prince ’disappear’ inside a fortress?”

“He went out… last night, Highness. He sneaked out with the guard down.” The messenger swallowed saliva, his eyes moving nervously. “He went to the Red Lantern District.”

A murmur ran through the training yard.

’The Red Lanterns.’

The capital’s sinkhole.

Where the Church’s morality went to die between opium, illegal prostitution, and underground betting.

Aerion gritted his teeth so hard his jaw hurt.

’Damn you, Ayres. Damn you and your vices.’

“Who saw him last?”

“His personal escort, Cassian. He said that… that he entered ’The Silk Veil’ and never came out the back door. They searched for hours and Nothing. As if the earth had swallowed him.”

Aerion stood up abruptly.

His strategist mind, sharpened by the warnings of the strange novice, started connecting dots that maybe didn’t exist.

If Ayres disappeared now… Was it the beginning of the corruption? Or was someone accelerating the process?

He looked at Sir Gainard. The veteran knight had his hand on his sword hilt, waiting for orders.

“Do I mobilize the City Guard, Highness?” Gainard asked. “We can close the district in an hour.”

“No!” Aerion barked. He closed his eyes for a second, forcing calm. “If we send the Guard, tomorrow all the nobility will know the Second Prince was in a brothel. The scandal will weaken the Crown and if my father’s enemies have him… we will only speed up his execution.”

He needed a scalpel, not a hammer.

He needed someone who could walk among the filth without getting stained.

Someone whom the Church feared and respected in equal parts.

“Gainard, keep this quiet. If anyone asks, Ayres is sick in his chambers. Kill anyone who says otherwise.”

“Where are you going, sir?”

Aerion was already walking toward the exit, his boots resonating with lethal purpose.

“To find a hunting dog.”

The Paladin Headquarters was a place of absolute order, a brutal contrast to the chaos in Aerion’s mind.

He found Odessa in the strategy room.

She was alone, surrounded by maps and heresy reports.

She didn’t look up when he entered.

“If you come to ask me to reassign patrols for your parades, Aerion, save your breath,” she said.

Aerion closed the door behind him.

The dry thud made Odessa finally look up.

Her emerald eyes evaluated him with boredom and disdain.

“Ayres has disappeared,” Aerion blurted out without preamble.

Odessa blinked.

She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her armor’s breastplate.

“And?” Her tone distilled indifference. “He is probably drunk in some noble’s cellar or in some duchess’s bed. Send his servants, it’s not the Paladin Order’s business.”

“He is in the Red Lantern District.”

A grimace of disgust crossed the Paladin’s face.

“Typical,” she snorted, returning to her papers. “The ’Royal Blood’ wallowing in the mud while we clean up their mess, I am not a babysitter, Aerion. If your brother wants to get lost in vice, let him get lost, I have real heretics to hunt.”

Aerion felt anger bubble up, but he crushed it. Anger wouldn’t work with Odessa.

She respected strength, conviction… and sacred duty.

He approached the table and hit the map with both hands, leaning over her until their faces were inches apart.

“I am not asking you to look for a drunkard, Odessa.”

He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, injecting every word with calculated gravity.

“His escort found traces in the room where he disappeared, but there was no smell of wine or cheap perfume.”

Odessa stopped her quill.

“What was there then?”

Aerion held her gaze, without blinking.

“Residues of rotten mana and symbols that do not belong to the Church.”

The change in the room was instant.

Odessa’s indifference evaporated, replaced by the lethal tension of a predator that just smelled blood.

She stood up slowly.

“Are you suggesting…?”

“I suggest nothing,” Aerion cut in, straightening up. “I am telling you that Ayres didn’t escape, he was taken, and I think they are Necromancers.”

Odessa’s hand went instinctively to the hilt of her sword.

Her knuckles turned white.

“If you are lying to me to clear your brother’s name, Aerion…” she warned.

“If I lie to you, you can judge me yourself,” he replied.

“But if I am right, there are heretics operating under the Church’s nose, using royal blood for their rituals. Are you going to stay here signing papers while that happens?”

Odessa looked at him a second longer, looking for the deception. Then, she took her helm from the table.

“Give me five minutes to gather my squad.”

Aerion nodded, hiding the relief trembling in his hands.

“No. No squad. Just you and me, because if this is what I think it is, we cannot alert them.”

“Fine,” she said, passing by him like a storm of steel. “Let’s hunt.”

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