Luce waited.

The man’s head twitched to one side, then froze. He was inexperienced, then, and hadn’t known that even a covert glance sideways could cause your whole head to move unless you forced it still. He knew now, though, and sat petrified, like a rabbit trying too late to escape the notice of a hawk.

Hunted prey.

Luce smiled.

They strode in front of the man. Their grin was lazy, amiable, calculated.

There was nothing amiable about their tone as they asked, “Where the fuck is Antoine?”

The man said nothing, simply staring into Luce’s eyes. Luce blinked slowly, and ambled back behind him. One moment of defiance meant nothing, in the long run. Besides, eye contact as a threat display only worked when you could back it up with your claws. Or knives, depending on one’s taste.

Luce hefted a dagger, absorbing the weight of it. This one was Navarian-made, if they recalled correctly. It had cost a pretty penny, especially for how rough-wrought it looked, and it made the messiest cuts they’d ever seen, ones that were near impossible to stitch or bandage and stung like seawater in an open wound. It was perfect.

They stepped to the left, forward, turned—and drove the dagger into the man’s left shoulder. He screamed.

“I asked you where the Prince is,” Luce said, twisting the knife for emphasis.

The man groaned in response. His face was scrunched up, as if by hiding the world from view he could somehow hide himself.

Luce pressed the dagger inward. “I don’t like to ask more than once,” they said. “Speak, or I’ll start flaying the arm.”

“I can tell,” the man gasped. “No sense of... patience.”

Luce cocked their head to the side. “I prefer to think of it as being proactive. Why wait when you can get results through action? For example.”

They drew the blade out roughly, eliciting another strangled moan, then sliced it diagonally down across the man’s collarbone. He hissed.

“Please,” he began, looking up at them.

Luce raised their eyebrows.

The man flicked his gaze downward.

Luce moved once more, positioning themself right between his knees.

“No, go on,” they said. “Please what?”

They raised their hand to the man’s cheek, stroked their thumb across it. He looked infuriated, torn between pulling away and pressing closer. There it was: his weakness, intimacy. Probably the first he’d gotten in some time. Heretic cults weren’t exactly hotbeds of physical affection, or so they presumed.

“Please what?” they said again, lower and deeper.

The man closed his eyes. A minor escape; one that they’d permit, for now.

“Please kill me quickly,” he murmured.

Luce withdrew their hand and stepped back, dragging their nails across his jaw as the went.

“Tell me what I want to know, and I won’t kill you at all,” they said.

“Yes, you will.”

Luce smiled, and knelt before him.

“Very well. Maybe I will. But maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll grant your request if you grant mine—answer my questions. You might have noticed, I’m not in the habit of asking nicely.”

“I have no reason to trust you.”

“No, you don’t. But maybe you should anyway.”

The man said nothing.

“Besides, what’s the alternative? I’ll keep you alive until I have what I want. I know people who can heal you, bring you back from even the edge of death. They’ve done it for me,” they said, gesturing to the dramatic burn scar that covered the right side of their face. “I’m not the only person angry that your cult stole our friend, after all; I just happen to be the one with the largest collection of knives.”

“I’m not telling you anything.”

Luce heaved a theatrical sigh. “I was hoping you wouldn’t say that. Still, this is going to hurt you a lot more than it will hurt me.” They grinned again, or maybe it was a baring of teeth. An elated expression, either way. If only Mother could see me now. She’d be glad I finally outgrew that overblown sense of compassion, at least.

It was almost methodical, almost like playing an instrument. Luce stabbed, and the man screamed. Luce sliced, and the man gasped. Pulling the flat of the blade across the tattered edges of the gashes elicited a stuttering one-two of  breath catching in his chest, while probing the tip into the depths of the incisions triggered a groan and a feeble attempt at recoil. Nothing was quite so pleasing as the desperate moans that resulted when they trailed their hands across his skin, slowly, gently, and then curled their fingers into the bloody troughs they’d carved into his body, relishing in the warmth and wetness. It was just like street magic, playing a crowd, managing their energy and expectations: a virtuoso’s performance for one.

They could tell he didn’t appreciate it, not properly.

The man didn’t tell them what they wanted to know, so they tuned out his begging and focused on their current act, the pattern they were carving across the back of his shoulders: three linked rings, the Lady’s symbol. The symbol of the goddess they had chosen to follow, to worship, whose divine Gift to the mortals had been stolen by these recreants, and for what? So they could use him, kill him, to incarnate a god of their own choosing?

No. Luce would not let it happen. They would find Antoine, rescue him, stop these heretics. It was their duty. And the Lady was clever, with the way she nudged her plans along; all outcomes were accounted for. While their failure to protect their Prince still stung, it was surely no mistake that they, who had run across Antoine unknowing of his true nature, seemingly by chance—the Lady’s domain—were also suited to the messy business of procuring information.

“Tell me,” they said, and realized they’d never gotten a name out of the captive, not that it mattered, “Will your god provide for you like mine does?”

The man did not respond. He was too busy choking back sobs, or as Luce liked to think of them, the indications of a job well-done.

I know it’s terribly cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason... They couldn’t resist. “Where is your god now? The Lady is always with me, in the toss of every coin and the tide of every battle. She guides my way. What has your god ever done for you, that you are so desperate to raise them? What do you even know of their nature?”

“Nothing, nothing,” the man sobbed. “Please, I know nothing. I don’t even know where the captives are—I don’t know. I can’t tell you because I don’t know.”

Luce closed their eyes and breathed. There will be others. There must be others. Someone will know.

“Well,” they said, when they opened their eyes. “I suppose now is a good time to inform you that I am a liar by trade. Or, as we call it in polite company, a magician. And I am going to make you disappear.”

The man’s sobbing picked up again, and Luce was sorely tempted to cut his throat simply to shut him up.

“But not before I get my money’s worth out of you,” they added. “Clearly, my technique needs improving, if it’s taken this long for you to admit to me that you know nothing. And you are already so nicely tied up for me.”