Stolen by the Rebel King
Chapter 327: Ruins

Chapter 327: Ruins

Jonah hurried over. When he arrived, his stomach turned at the grotesque sight.

In front of him were several bodies of blonde women, clad in wet rags, splayed all around the grounds. He squinted; one of them was missing a head, another one a leg. All of them — or at least, all the dead bodies with their heads attached — had hair in varying shades of blonde, but they were around the same length.

Jonah gingerly used a gloved hand to flip the nearest body around, hissing as he examined it more closely. The body wasn’t bloated, which meant that it wasn’t submerged in water for long. The skin hadn’t gone gray with decay, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t killed a long time ago; Alistair could have easily used magic to prevent the body from rotting.

No, what caught his eyes was her face. Her eyes were wide with terror, as though she had been scared to death.

"Sir Jonah, this woman... Her face..." One of his soldiers gulped and he took a wary step back.

Jonah couldn’t blame him.

"What kind of sick fetish does Alistair have?" Jonah mumbled to himself.

The dead woman’s face had features that seemed eerily similar to Daphne’s, but they looked wrong somehow. It was as though someone tried to carve Daphne’s features on their own face, creating an uncanny effect. Jonah thought he was looking at a doll modeled after the queen, rather than a once-living person.

Alistair had also made Drusilla look like Daphne. Jonah let out a heavy sigh; surrounding him were the failures of Alistair’s earlier experiments, abandoned to rot. He carefully prodded her face, mentally praying for forgiveness as he looked for clues.

To his surprise, he detected a series of bumps under the skin of her jaw. He felt along her jawline, the tiny bumps were evenly spaced out, and they went all the way around her face.

Like stitches on a patchwork blanket. He doubled his efforts, and he found a spot where the stitch wasn’t firm. Holding his breath, Jonah tugged and watched in disbelief as a layer of skin came off the dead woman’s face, leaving behind another layer that revealed her real features.

Holy fuck. Good god. How on earth did Alistair create such a disguise? It was an ingenious creation. Jonah reluctantly pocketed that layer of skin for Atticus and Sirona to examine.

Since Alistair didn’t even bother honoring his failed experiments with a proper burial, Jonah might as well offer them up for research.

After that discovery, they continued to search the grounds for more clues, keeping their eyes peeled for any sign of Alistair. Jonah continued to pocket his finds and make mental notes while wishing that Alistair drowned so that they could simply present his dead body to Atticus.

Unfortunately, that was unlikely. Prince Alistair was as persistent as a cockroach and had all the appeal of one.

The rest of the estate was already empty of people to question, and he couldn’t find any decent clues in the room where Daphne must have fought Alistair.

The entire place was a waterlogged mess, and the window had been smashed open. Glass fragments, charred bricks, and stones floated in shallow pools of water. There was even a faint smell of blood lingering in the air.

Thankfully, there was still something for them to investigate. They found a secret tunnel that was caved in. Jonah would bet his own arm that Alistair was hiding all sorts of dirty secrets down there.

"I’m going down," Jonah said.

"Sir Jonah, are you sure this is wise?" His men clamored around him in worry. "The tunnels might collapse if you go in."

"I’ll be fine," Jonah insisted. He focused his powers on the stones, using them to shift the earth enough to make a tiny hole for him to squeeze through. "If anything happens to me, go straight back to the palace and report to Atticus."

"Yes Sir." His men reluctantly agreed, and Jonah lit up a makeshift torch and descended down the long flight of stairs. The stairs were surprisingly slippery, and Jonah looked up and saw trickles of water streaming down the walls.

How dangerous. This tunnel was less stable than he thought. Jonah hurried down quickly and was surprised at the multiple tunnels that greeted him. Was Alistair hiding in them like a naked mole rat?

There was only one way to find out. Jonah started down the first path, making sure to keep left the entire way so he wouldn’t get lost. As he made his way through the tunnel, he heard an ominous rumbling around him.

The smallest bit of dust fell over his head, like a sprinkle of snow before heralding winter. Before Jonah could brush it off, a tiny pebble followed.

Then many other pebbles joined him.

"Fuck!" Jonah cursed and activated his powers to keep part of the wall from collapsing, but there was only so much he could do. He dashed through the tunnel while strengthening the walls as much as he was able, but all it did was ensure that the ceiling didn’t collapse with him still under it.

In the end, there was no delaying the inevitable.

Huge rocks fell behind him in a cascade and they piled up quickly, easily blocking his future exit path. Jonah sighed.

At least the rocks didn’t cut short his life span. If Atticus had to pull his dead body from underneath the rubble after the disaster that befell Daphne, there was no telling what hell he might unleash.

Now, he might as well continue his investigations.

Jonah continued to explore. Most of the tunnel branches led to dead ends, but then he stumbled onto what must have been Alistair’s study room. There was a large table and shelves of books and a sofa, but more intriguing was the series of tiny empty bottles on his table.

They were numbered one to seven. They didn’t look like liquor bottles. A closer look showed that there was some reddish, amber residue lying at the bottom of the bottles, and when he sniffed it, it smelled vaguely medicinal.

It didn’t look like anything Reaweth’s own healers would prescribe. Jonah would know since Sirona often complained about their methods of storing medicine.

On the other side of the table were countless empty syringes lying all over the floor, as though Alistair simply chucked them aside after using them. Then again, he couldn’t have thrown them anywhere else. The rubbish bin was already full of the same empty bottles.

’Jean Nott must have supplied all of this to him to regrow his hand,’ Jonah thought, his eyes flicking over to the seven bottles. One for each day? No, it hadn’t been that long for him to accumulate so many bottles.

One dose for each mealtime would be more likely. Since he needed such frequent doses, Jonah doubted the medicine could remain stable in the body. He searched to find a sizable sample, but most of the bottles were depressingly empty.

No wonder Alistair had been getting desperate enough to resort to human experimentation to get his hands on Daphne. Or someone who looked like her. With Jean Nott’s obsession with Daphne, she was no doubt the item of trade for more medicine to regrow Alistair’s hand.

Well. He was out of luck. The real Daphne was sequestered in the palace, so Alistair would simply have to deal with the consequences of missing his dosage. Knowing Jean Nott’s slimy character, there would be painful side effects.

Jonah quickly pocketed the bottles with the most residue, along with the syringes, and continued to explore. He wasn’t going to be trapped for nothing; Atticus would fetch him soon enough.

And Jonah had so many things to report.

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