Page 37 of The Mercy of Dawn

But she sipped her tea quietly, and Lars continued down the line.

The rest of the men at the table were all captains or commanders of some division or another of the royal forces, and had all been involved with these murders. Either responding to the scenes, handling interrogations, or sourcing information from the streets.

Something they all found little success in, but a bit of time would tell if that was a skill issue or not.

“I assume,” Dion said, “you left the specifics of the murders out of your correspondence for a reason?”

“You are correct.” Lars nodded and turned to his general. “I’ll leave this to you?”

“There is a ritualistic pattern happening that we’ve never seen before, and therefore could not take any risk of that information falling into unintended hands,” General Ezra said, his voice flat. Cold. “The state of mutilation each victim’s body was found in, and the markings left behind at each scene are not coincidental.”

“And by markings, you mean…?” Dion asked.

“Runes of the old language.”

General Ezra shuffled through the only neat stack of papers on the table, handing one with a rough sketch on it to Dion. He set it down so Cyril and the others could take a look.

“These four along the top here suggest the representation of the core elements—fire, water, earth, and air. Those”—leaning across the table, General Ezra pointed to the ones drawn along the bottom of the paper—“translate roughly into dawn, tribulation, estate, and thorn, though there is some debate on the alternate interpretations of them.”

Dion rubbed his jaw.

“Knowledge of the old language is scarce, isn’t it?”

“Exceedingly. Outside of a handful of temples still devoted to the old faith, we have not used it with any regularity in centuries.”

“The temples, have they—”

“Questioned and searched thoroughly. No tangible connections.”

“I see.”

Dion sat back in his chair, fingers steepled in front of his face. His eyes scanned the paper laid out before them, and Cyril knew the inner workings of his mind were moving at a breakneck speed. She turned her attention to the piece of paper and tried to ignore the set of icy blue eyes that had been observing her from across the table for the entire briefing so far.

Arrogant prick of a prince. She would not let him get to her again.

“No connections between the victims, no jilted lovers or bad business. All carved up and defiled the same, missing the same organs…” Dion said, more to himself than anyone else. He had conveniently failed to mention missing organs to her… “Outside of the…brutal nature of the killings, there was nothing else unusual? Nothing noteworthy from your street sweeps?”

“We believe the victims were each killed elsewhere, then transported to where their bodies were found. But we’ve yet to find that other place, or places,” one captain added.

Dion nodded, lost in thought.

Another man sat up straighter. “It also seems that anyone living or working in close quarters with the victims may have been drugged on the nights they went missing.”

Dion’s head tipped.

“Each victim went missing at night?” he asked.

General Ezra nodded. “Correct, and found up to four days later.”

He picked up the stack of papers set in the middle of the table again, squaring them off before passing them to Dion.

“I recommend reading these. Reports for each of the murders, in addition to everything uncovered through our investigations.”

“The royal archives. Do you have records on the old language?” Dion asked no one in particular, thumbing through the documents.

Lars huffed a dry laugh.

“An unfathomable number of them. All our scribes have some fluency as well. They assisted Ezra with our initial translations.”