Talamayas stepped into the cell and the Song quivered, his fear filling the air with perspiration and rattling his chains. Shan had helped him shackle the man up on the wall, stripped bare down to his pants to remove layers of protective mage wear as well as anything identifying him as a Song. It demoralized prisoners to lose their identity as much as leaving them naked disarmed them emotionally. That, and it left the man's fully muscled chest bare for Tala's hands to sear agony through him. If the Song could spit on him, he would, but they had a cloth gag wedged between his teeth in case he tried to bite his tongue off.

Any Song would rather kill themselves than face Talamayas' wrath.

There was enough red hair for Tala to grip it and pull the man's face to his, but not so much as his mate's. "Care to share a name?" Talamayas whispered against his face, his lips so close they touched skin as he moved his mouth. Just the contact had the Song gasping for breath, and Tala trailed his fingers down the man's bare chest, bringing with them tepid heat as a promise of what was to come. "Come now, don't be shy." Tala ran the edges of his lips against the man's jaw bone before lifting his chin with the tips of his free fingers.

The Song growled something into his gag, but Tala couldn't make it out. It would also serve him little to try and torture information out of a man who couldn't speak, so he yanked the cloth out. The man had been biting so hard that his teeth clicked together once the resistance was gone, and a groan of pain escaped him.

"Rot in hell, Talamayas Sol." The man spit the words in his face, and the dead look in his grey eyes told Tala all he needed to know about him. This one would say nothing, not under threat nor torture, until he died screaming under the flames. Grief did that to a man, ruined any rational thought just as much as self-preservation. Without his son, this man had no reason to live, and he clearly assumed Cadence long since dead.

"If I was a fan of comeuppance, I'd have left Cadence to die in the castle as it collapsed in on us." Just the use of his son's name had the Song swallowing a growing lump in his throat as his eyes hollowed. "You would have spite for no one but yourself if you crushed him to death with your own stupidity. And here I was nice enough to keep him alive for you."

Tears filled the Song's eyes, overflowing down his cheeks in a heavy downpour that Tala felt no guilt for. This man had attacked his people and taken his mate, so he could suffer in any way Tala could inflict. It wasn't in Tala to physically harm him when it would tear Cadence apart, so this was the most he could do, though he certainly wouldn't tell his prisoner that.

"It's Harper," the man said into the ground. "Harper Song. What can I do to earn my son mercy?"

"Nothing," Talamayas growled low, tapping the side of Harper's face just hard enough that the man flinched. "If you answer everything I ask of you truthfully, I will take you to him, but that is all you'll get." Tala burned his crimson eyes into Harper's as he gripped his chin in steel fingers. "Why did you take my mate?"

"For the reason one might expect," Harper rasped, unable to wipe his own tears as they dripped into his lips. "We want him back. Wren Song was the most powerful infiltrator and Song in history, so he would have never betrayed his people. You warped his mind with years of torture and imprisonment and then declawed him before marking him with your blood, but Wren Song is still under all that. Riff wants to free our leader and destroy that which maimed us."

Even if this man had been hesitant to carry out these plans, as Talamayas expected from Cadence's words, his feelings were genuine. Harper believed he'd forced Wren to bow to him so he could use him for his own purposes. What would the man think if he knew it was just the opposite? That Wren had sunk his talons into him and controlled his soul even from the bowels of hell Talamayas had chained him in.

"Who helped you? The Songs must still be few enough in number and they cannot travel without notice." Steam hissed through Talamayas' fangs as he bared them, and Harper's chin trembled in his fingers.

"You will kill them," Harper said it like that would somehow change Tala's mind about asking.

"Every single fucking one, yes." Talamayas made sure to slow the words down so the Song felt the weight of his betrayal. The Songs of old would watch their children burn rather than give up their comrades, but not this one. There was a no meaning to his life without his blood, no thirst for the death of vampire kind just for the sake of it.

"The Cinders facilitated us, as you must know. Blaze led his men with Riff through the desert paths they'd learned in the past decades. We tried to lure a few nomads who did not seem content with your rule, but they were stiff in their loyalty even if they didn't care for you."

"The desert nomads and the Sols have lived together in harmony for generations, something you Song filth wouldn't understand. All you dream and crave is blood and death." Talamayas words were bitter when he knew that was what kept Wren from happiness. The Songs had never been savable, yet his mate dreamed of world where it might have been possible.

"All I wanted was a safe place for my son to live!" Harper cried back, his voice shrill with agony, but the man was smart enough not to yell at his captor. "Cadence spent his whole life underground, risking it each day when we basked in the sun so we did not wither. I did not want this, but you stole my son and forced Riff to act."

"I stole nothing, you imbecile." Talamayas growled back so fiercely that Harper shrank against the wall. "I found your son dehydrated, disoriented, and lost in the sands. The boy should have never been out with the sandstorms raging. Would you have preferred to stumble upon his dried out, emaciated corpse? That was the only alternative to taking him into my castle."

"But he is imprisoned here, nonetheless." Harper cast his voice into the floor. "I'm sure he enjoys the chains of imprisonment and the starvation to what he would have suffered in the heat, Talamayas Sol. How giving of you."

Harper's snide tone had Talamayas magic flaring up around him, and the mage jerked back as a steaming hand approached his throat. Every urge in Talamayas' body was to murder him, to boil off his blood until he shriveled into a pile of flesh, but he instead slammed his fist into the wall next to the man.

"Would you like to see just how generous I've been with your son?" Talamayas asked, his scowl filled with fang as he lowered the temperature inside his body enough that he could grab Harper's chin without damage. "I'll be more than happy to extend it to you if you can shove a fist in your mouth long enough to be silent." Every word rang as if he'd tortured the boy and was offering it to his father in exchange for silence, and Harper did just that. Steeling himself, Harper closed his mouth and accepted whatever Talamayas intended if it meant seeing his son.

All of the Songs were so damn stubborn, and Tala was out of energy for this interaction. He'd already gathered the information he needed, confirming that the Cinders had been the only ones helping the Songs and knowing that he had time to save Wren. They wanted him to side with them, which Wren would never do, but they respected his mate even after everything. Not a single one of the Songs had branded him a traitor. They all thought he was traumatized and broken, and if Wren was smart, he'd play to that to stay safe.

Talamayas unhooked the bar holding up Harper's constraints, and the man fell like a brick onto the damp ground of the cell floor. A whimper escaped Harper as he tried to lift himself off his damaged knees, but Tala cared little for his pain. Barefoot, and in nothing but his mage pants, Harper looked up to Talamayas for direction, his hands shackled together so he could not separate his arms.

"Follow and obey, or every one of your missteps will be taken out on Cadence." Talamayas growled, lying clearly, but the Song wouldn't know that. After all, Talamayas was a depraved torturer who murdered children and hadn't a decent bone in his body.

The trek up the stairs had Harper stumbling, partially from malnourishment after spending the day down here without food or water, but most of it was the concussion Talamayas had given him. Forest had made sure nothing had been life threatening or long lasting, but Talamayas had only allowed Forest to heal the man minimally before he roused. They didn't need a Song infiltrator revitalized and at full power roaming the halls, even if still shackled.

Uneven steps cut into Harper's feet, and he bit off a whine as he scathed one on something sharp. Blood wafted into the air, Song blood that reminded him of Wren, and Talamayas ground his teeth as he opened the door to the lowest floor of the secondary castle. Burning flesh made its way to Talamayas' nose, and he turned to Harper as he flinched back toward the dungeons, his feet having stepped on broiling stone. One look at Talamayas' displeasure had Harper taking another step, biting back the pain as he continued on.

Tala had forgotten the sun was at its peak now. The pieces of crap had attacked at dawn when he'd been his weakest.

With a grunt of aggravation, Tala shoved Harper back off the hot stones, and the man lost his grip on the upward direction. All it would have taken was a moment of pause to watch him tumble down those stone steps, but that might kill Harper, so Tala grabbed him by the hair before he went over the edge. A whine escaped Harper's lips from the force it took to stop his fall, and Talamayas steadied him on the cool landing beyond the door. Harper trembled with Talamayas' hand wound in his hair as he tried to figure out what his captor wanted.

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Word Count: 1850