Carys pursed her lips. “Yes.”

Bri took a step backward, leaning against the far wall and letting Carys take the lead. People like Yaest responded better to someone who looked like Carys rather than Bri. The Captain’s eyes roved Carys’s curves and she smirked at him. Bri bit the corner of her lip, trying not to smile at how easily Captain Yaest was pulled in by Carys’s beauty. He mindlessly took another step toward her. For an esteemed soldier, he should have known she was wielding her most powerful weapon.

“What makes the brother of the witch hunter king a suitable candidate for Captain of the Guard?” She cocked her head in a way that made her long braid slip over her shoulder.

Yaest’s eyes trailed down to the tip of her braid and then back up to her eyes. “My brother is over a decade older than me,” he said, lifting his shoulders. “I barely knew him growing up. He went a bad way—an embarrassment to my whole family.”

Carys popped her hip to the side. “When’s the last time you spoke with him?”

“I was a teenager, I think.” Yaest shook his head. “Our mother still sends letters to him sometimes. She could never fully let him go.” He folded his arms, his giant biceps proudly displayed from his sleeveless tunic. “I can give you her address if you’d like to speak with her?”

“That would be very kind, thank you,” Carys said with a half dip of her head.

Bri lifted the silver and amethyst dagger from its sheath, holding it up to the filtered sunlight. “Do you know who this belongs to?”

“A purple dagger?” Yaest huffed, narrowing his eyes at the curving steel. “I can’t say that I do. Not a very practical weapon.” He took a step closer, inspecting it. “Those are Mhenbic symbols on the side. It’s probably a witch relic stolen from some temple.”

Bri frowned at the whorls of purple stones on the hilt, patterned in symbols she couldn’t read. She’d need to ask Cole if he knew what it said.

“Do you think it was your brother?” Carys asked, directing Yaest back to task. “Did he kill the Queen?”

Yaest’s frown deepened, the menace growing in his eyes. “If I told you I didn’t think it was him, that’d make you even more suspicious of me.”

“If you told me you didn’t think it was him, I’d listen to your reasons why,” Carys countered.

“My brother was an idiot,” he growled, his eyes lifting to Bri. “And a killer of witches. But he wasn’t a traitor to the fae crown. He never wanted riches and fine things, like some of his crew. He believed in Hennen Vostemur’s cause—that the red witches must be washed from this realm. When they were all gone, my brother was ready to lay down his sword, and there was a lot of infighting within the witch hunters after that.”

“Did your mother tell you all this?” Bri asked, her eyebrows raising.