Текст книги "Daggermouth"

Автор книги: H. M. Wolfe

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

Chapter thirteenDaggermouths Don’t Cry

The bathroom door clicked shut behind her, and Shadera stood in the marble silence, breathing through her teeth. Everything gleamed—obsidian tiles, porcelain fixtures, a tub deep enough to drown in. The kind of luxury that could feed a Boundary family for a decade.

Her reflection stared back from three different mirrors, each angle revealing new damage. Blood had dried in abstract patterns across her skin, some hers, most not. Veyra blood. The prisoners’ blood. All of it caking together into a second skin she needed to shed.

Her fingers found the hem of the prison tunic, and she pulled upward. The movement sent lightning through her ribs, sharp enough she stopped halfway, arms trapped above her head, fabric bunched around her shoulders. She breathed shallow, counting to three, then yanked it the rest of the way off. The shirt dropped to the pristine floor just like the prisoners had—crumpled, bloody, forgotten.

The pants were worse. Bending forward made her vision swim, made the fractured collarbone grind against itself. Made blood rush to the stab wound in her side. She worked them down her hips with trembling hands, leaving blood smeared down her legs. When she finally kicked free of them, she caught herself on the sink’s edge, knuckles white against the marble.

Every injury screamed at her from the mirrored glass. Purple-black bruises mapped her torso like territories of pain. The swelling around her left eye had spread down her cheek, turning half her face into something unrecognizable. Her collarbone sat wrong beneath the skin, a visible ridge where bone had separated. The places where shock batons had seared her flesh were already blistering, angry red circles that would scar.

She braced herself and pressed her nose. A crack, a knife stabbing through her skill—she groaned, riding the pain until it ebbed. The collarbone was next, a grueling shift of bone beneath her skin. She sucked in a deep breath, squeezing her eyes shut as she pushed the fracture back into place. This time she screamed, a guttural sound filling her ears. She breathed through it and waited for the agony to dull.

Blood dripped onto the counter from the split in her lip. She watched it for a moment, watched it spill over as another drop landed atop it and slid over the marble. Finally she pulled her eyes away, turning toward a black porcelain monstrosity that could have held three people. The shower hung above it, one of those rainfall heads that could only be found in luxury—water cascading from the ceiling like they owned the sky itself. In the Boundary, water came in rations. Here, it fell like it would never run out.

Shadera pushed the shower door to the side and twisted both handles to their limits. Steam erupted instantly, filling the bathroom with heat that made her shredded skin sting. She didn’t adjust the temperature, didn’t temper it with cold. She let it burn. Let it scald away everything she’d witnessed in that prison.

The tub began to fill as the shower pounded down. Wasteful. Excessive. She stepped over the rim, and her knees nearly buckled. The water was molten against her feet, climbing her ankles as she lowered herself by increments. Each inch down brought new protests from torn muscles, from broken bones, from flesh that had taken too much damage to heal properly without medical intervention she’d never accept from the Heart.

When she finally sat, when the water rose to her chest and the shower hammered against her skull, something inside her cracked. Not bone this time. Something deeper, something that had been clawing its way to the surface.

The first cry surprised her. It tore from her throat without permission, raw and broken. Her hands came up to cover her face, and that’s when the rest came—great heaving sobs that made her broken ribs scream, that sent fresh blood trickling from split skin.

She saw them behind her eyelids. Saw every single one of them. A silent choir of the dead. The woman with the swollen eye, voice raised in trembling song until that single shot turned everything to chaos. The man with no legs, spine straight against the floor, chin lifted in one last act of defiance. The young one, too young, handing away his gruel with a smile before they’d painted the walls with his blood.

They died because of her. Because of her failure. If she’d killed Greyson, if she’d pulled that trigger, she would’ve never been in that prison, would’ve never told them what she’d done. They would’ve never started singing.

She didn’t want this.

Didn’t want to be anyone’s symbol, to be anyone’s leader. But in that moment, when the first note rang out, she knew they’d made her one. With their voices raised in that forbidden anthem, with their blood spilled, they’d turned her into something she never wanted to be. Given her a responsibility she couldn’t carry.

The weight of that truth suffocated her.

They’d given their lives for something greater, something bigger than her or Greyson. They’d given their lives for hope of a better future.

Shadera had no hope for New Found Haven.

She curled forward, her knees drawn to her chest despite the agony it caused, and let herself break completely. Her shoulders shook with the force of it, tears mixing with water and blood. Daggermouths don’t cry, but here, if only for a moment alone in this obscene luxury, she let herself be human.

Jameson would have held her through this. Even when she snarled at him not to touch her, even when she insisted she didn’t need anyone’s comfort, he would’ve wrapped those scarred arms around her and refused to let go. He knew her tells, knew when her anger was really grief wearing a mask. She could almost feel his presence, the way he’d press his forehead to the back of her neck and just breathe with her until the storm passed.

Now she’d dragged him into danger all because she couldn’t see past her need for revenge. Those drones following him were her fault. If Maximus decided to make an example, if he leveled the clinic where Jameson volunteered—

Another sob ripped through her. How many more would die because she’d hesitated? Because she’d wanted Greyson to see her face when she killed him? Her need for that moment of recognition, of making him understand why she was ending him, had cost everything.

The water turned pink around her, tinted with blood that kept seeping from various wounds. She watched it swirl, remembered how it’d pooled on the prison floor.

One wrong word, one act of defiance from her now, and Maximus would burn the Boundary to ash. He’d kill hundreds, maybe thousands, just to prove he was in control.

She pressed her forehead to her knees, water cascading over her curved spine. Some trauma carved itself so deep, it became part of your skeleton. She would carry those prisoners’ faces forever, would see them every time she closed her eyes. Their sacrifice was hers to carry now, and she would not let them down.

“I just wanted to kill him,” she whispered to the water, to the steam, to the void. “I just wanted to watch him die.”

Instead, the Executioner still breathed while those who’d sung for her were being shoveled into mass graves.

The sobs gradually faded, their ragged edges blurring to silent tears, then to nothing at all. She sat in the cooling water until her skin pruned, until the shower’s endless cascade numbed into white noise. When she stood, every muscle protested. And when she finally turned off the water, the silence felt like another kind of drowning.

The clothes Chapman left were nothing like her own—soft fabric that didn’t know what work felt like. Shadera dug through the pile, settling on an oversized T-shirt. She groaned as she pulled it over her head, the material ghosting over bruises as if it was afraid to touch them. No pants, just the shirt that fell past her thighs.

Her legs carried her over the threshold of the bathroom to the bedroom, her feet moving through muscle memory alone. The mattress was another obscenity—thick enough it could be sliced into ten separate sleeping pads to fill the rings’ clinics with a thread count that probably exceeded most Boundary credit accounts.

She fell onto it sideways, not bothering to pull back the covers, not bothering to find a pillow. Her body simply stopped working, stopped responding to any command except collapse.

The floor-to-ceiling window stretched beside the bed, offering a view of New Found Haven that she’d never seen before. The city sprawled below in concentric rings of light—brightest at the Heart, dimming as it spread outward until the Boundary was just a smudge of neon and dotted fires at the edges. From up here, you couldn’t see the suffering. Couldn’t smell the rot. It all looked clean, organized, controlled.

Her eyes grew heavy watching those lights, counting the levels between her and the ground.

Seventy-eight floors.

Even she couldn’t survive that fall. The thought should’ve disturbed her. Instead, it felt like comfort, knowing there was at least one exit they couldn’t lock.

Sleep took her quickly between one breath and the next, dragging her down into nightmares of singing voices and spreading blood.

Dawn came like violence through the window. Not gentle, not gradual—just sudden light striking her swollen eye and sending pain straight through her skull. Shadera jerked awake, body rigid with the expectation of attack.

Every injury announced itself in a symphony of agony. Her ribs had stiffened overnight, making each breath feel like swallowing glass. The fractured collarbone had swollen further, the entire left side of her torso now a singular territory of hurt.

She pushed herself upright, teeth clenched against the whimper that wanted to escape. Movement below caught her attention—shadows flowing through the plaza like water finding its level. Elites. Hundreds of them, gathering in the morning light, forming neat lines with the practice of those who’d done this before.

Shadera dragged herself to the window, one hand pressed to her ribs to hold them together. The plaza was directly below, that same stone expanse where her whole world had been ripped from her. Now it filled with bodies, all facing the same direction. All faces tilted up to their altar of murder.

The execution platform.

Her blood turned to ice, then immediately to fire.

There, at the center of it all, stood Greyson. Even from this height, she recognized his posture—that straight spine, those squared shoulders, the way he held his head like the weight of his mask was nothing. He wore his Executioner’s regalia, black fabric that ate the morning light, that obsidian mask catching the first rays of sun.

A figure was being dragged onto the platform. Young, based on the size. Male, based on the build. Boundary, based on the way he fought against his red restraints. The crowd had gone still now, that terrible calm that preceded state-sanctioned murder.

“No.” The word scraped from her throat as she pressed both palms against the glass.

Greyson moved, reading the charges, stating the law with no emotion present in his eyes projected through the live stream at his back. Playing his part to perfection. The prisoner was forced to his knees, head pushed forward to expose the neck. Greyson drew his gun—that ceremonial thing that had taken so many lives she’d lost count.

Her fist slammed against the window before she realized she’d moved. The impact sent shock waves through her fractured bones, but she hit it again. And again and again until she was beating it with all her strength.

She needed him to see her.

Needed him to know she was watching, to understand that she’d remember this, would carry it with every other death until she could pay him back in kind.

The bullet came and the crowd cheered as they always did. Greyson stood over the body for exactly three seconds—she’d counted—before turning and walking off the platform like he’d done nothing more than complete paperwork.

Shadera spun from the window, rage replacing every other sensation. She’d go down there. She’d find him. She’d wrap her hands around his throat and squeeze until his eyes saw nothing but the black hell waiting to eat his soul.

The doorknob turned but didn’t open. She pulled harder. Nothing.

He’d locked her in like an animal.

“Open this fucking door!” She slammed her palm against the wood, the sound echoing through the apartment. “You fucking cowards! Open it!”

Silence answered her.

She searched the room, yanking open drawers, looking for anything—a key, a tool, something to pick the lock. The drawers held nothing but more clothing, more evidence of their plan to domesticate her. She hurled them across the room, fabric floating down like surrender flags she’d never wave.

“I know you can hear me,” she screamed at the walls, at the hidden surveillance devices. “You want to lock me in here? You want to make me watch while you butcher children?”

Her foot connected with the door. Pain shot up her leg, but the wood splintered. She kicked again, channeling every ounce of fury into the impact. The doorframe groaned. Another kick. The wood cracked.

“You think this will hold me?” Another strike. The split widened. “You think I won’t tear this entire place apart?” Another blow from her heel. “I will fucking kill you!”

She backed up three steps, then drove forward with her shoulder—the good one. The impact jarred every injury, made her vision go white at the edges, but the door exploded outward, wood fragments scattering across the hallway floor.

Shadera stood in the ruin, chest heaving, blood trickling from where splinters had caught skin. The hallway stretched before her, silent and pristine except for the destruction she’d left in her wake. She rushed to the front door, yanking at the handle, eyes scanning the locks. Too many. Too secure. She slammed her fist against it, the sound like gunfire as a frustrated scream shot from her mouth. She wouldn’t be able to break this one down, it was too thick.

Her forehead fell against the wood. She couldn’t live like this. She wouldn’t live like this. Finally she pulled herself from the door, blood smearing against its surface as she limped to the kitchen. Each step sent fresh pain through her battered body. The refrigerator was stocked with food she didn’t recognize—delicate things that probably required preparation she’d never learned. Her stomach was empty, had been for days, but the thought of eating anything from the Heart while the rest of the city starved made bile rise in her throat.

The vodka was where she’d left it—or rather, where they’d replaced it after she’d shattered the last bottle. Same exact brand, same exact spot. Like they were encouraging her to drink herself to death.

She grabbed it by the neck, twisted off the cap, and took a long pull. The burn was clean, familiar. Something from her world, even if it wore Heart packaging. She took another drink, grabbed a knife from the block on the counter, then began to move through the apartment with the bottle in one hand, weapon in the other, her instincts overriding everything else.

She needed to know this space. Every corner, every exit, every potential weapon. If she was going to be caged here, she would learn the cage completely. And when the opportunity came—and it would come—she’d be ready to break free.

The master bedroom door stood at the end of the hallway, black wood that seemed to absorb light. Shadera approached with the vodka bottle still in one hand, her bare feet silent on the polished floor. The lock was sophisticated—biometric scanner paired with traditional tumblers. High-end Heart technology that would’ve stopped most intruders.

But Shadera was from the Boundary and she’d been breaking into places since she was twelve, when hunger made morality negotiable.

She set the bottle down carefully, then lifted the knife—everything had a purpose, everything could be used as a tool. The biometric scanner was the real problem, but the Heart had its loopholes. The systems always reset when the power fluctuated, and there was a two second window when the electric lock would be disengaged.

Jameson had taught her this the first time they’d snuck into the Heart to rob a clinic. He’d taught her a lot of things. Her fingers found the hallway’s light switch, flipping it on and off in rapid succession.

The scanner flickered, went dark, then began its reboot sequence. In that gap, she worked the knife into the lock, feeling for the tumblers, applying pressure with the accuracy of someone who’d done this drunk, injured, and in complete darkness.

The lock clicked open just as the scanner came back online and Shadera grinned to herself.

Fucking idiots.

She grabbed the vodka and slipped inside, closing the door behind her with barely a whisper of sound. The room was exactly what she’d expected—immaculate, organized to the point of pathology. The bed was made with military precision, corners sharp enough to cut. A desk sat against one wall, papers stacked in perfect alignment. The closet door was closed, but she could see the edges of clothing through the glass, everything arranged by color and purpose.

This was a room of someone who needed control, who used order to hold back chaos.

A psychopath and a murderer, cute.

She started with the desk, setting the bottle and blade aside to free both hands. The drawers slid open on silent runners, revealing more organization—pens in one section, official documents in another, personal correspondence in a third. She rifled through them, fingers sliding under drawer bottoms to check for false panels, testing the weight distribution for hidden compartments.

Nothing. Just execution orders, supply requisitions, the bureaucracy of murder filed alphabetically.

The nightstand yielded even less—a watch, reading glasses he apparently needed but never wore in public, a knife that was more decoration than weapon. She checked behind the lamp, under the drawer’s bottom, inside the base of the table itself. Her fingers traced every surface, searching for irregularities, for the telltale seams of concealment.

Still nothing.

She moved to the closet, pushing aside the perfectly arranged clothes to check the walls behind them. Her hands ran along the baseboards, pressed against panels that might swing open to reveal secrets. The man who’d removed his mask for her, who’d practically begged for death, had to have something hidden. Some evidence of the conflict she’d seen in his eyes.

The clothing itself told her things—multiple Executioner’s uniforms, of course, but also casual clothes that had never been worn, their tags still attached. Gifts, probably, from someone who didn’t understand that Greyson Serel was not human.

Frustration built in her chest, making her movements sharper, less careful. She yanked open a drawer full of undergarments, tossing them aside to check the bottom. Another drawer, this one containing documents that looked personal—birth certificate, education records, medical files. She scanned them quickly, looking for anything that might be leverage, might be weakness.

A medical report from three years ago caught her attention. Multiple fractures, internal bleeding, organ damage. The injuries were extensive, brutal. The cause was listed as “training accident,” but she knew wounds like that. Someone had nearly beaten him to death. Someone with strength and skill and intimate access.

She dug deeper, pulling out more files and walking back into the bedroom, spreading them across the floor as she searched for patterns, for secrets, for anything she could use to destroy him. There had to be something. Some proof of corruption, some hidden shame, some vulnerability beyond the obvious damage his father had carved into him.

A picture slipped out from between the pages, small, crumpled, and fading. Two unmasked men, one she recognized as Greyson. She studied it, spotting the similarities in the features, the same crooked smile and large blue eyes. It had to be his brother.

She stared at it for a moment longer, something familiar about the second man scratching at the back of her mind. She recognized him, knew that face from somewhere but couldn’t place it. She’d never seen any of the Serels unmasked until Greyson, until yesterday when Maximus showed his face. But she knew this man, she was sure of it.

She folded the picture, shoving it into the breast pocket of her T-shirt, and kept digging through the other papers. She would come back to it later, but at least it told her one thing. Greyson Serel was sentimental. Having a picture of an unmasked elite was a crime, and he’d stashed it away.

The sound of papers rustling filled the room as she worked, so absorbed in her search that she’d stopped listening for footsteps, stopped checking the door, stopped maintaining the vigilance that had kept her alive this long.

“Looking for something?” Greyson’s voice cut through the silence.

Shadera froze, her hand clutching documents, papers scattered around her. She didn’t turn immediately, didn’t scramble for excuses. Her mind calculated distances—to the door, to the window, to the vodka bottle that could become a weapon yet again with one sharp break against the desk’s edge.

Slowly she turned to face him.

He stood in the doorway, still in his Executioner’s blacks, though the mask was gone. Blood spotted his collar—not his own, she realized. From this morning’s execution. He hadn’t even bothered to change before coming home, hadn’t tried to wash the evidence of murder from his clothes.

Shadera grimaced at the word. Home.

This wasn’t her fucking home.

His blue eyes tracked over the chaos she’d created, the violated privacy spread across his floor, then settled on her face with an expression she couldn’t read. Not anger, exactly. Something so complex it felt dangerous.

She let the silence pulse between them, let him wonder what she’d found, what conclusions she’d drawn from the documents clutched in her hands.

“You need a better lock,” she finally said, voice flat.

“Clearly.” He stepped inside the room, closing the door behind him. The click of the latch made her muscles coil in preparation. “Though I’m curious how you managed the biometric scanner.”

“I have my ways,” Shadera answered, refusing to give him any of her secrets.

His gaze swept over the scattered papers again. “Just making yourself at home, I see.”

The mockery in his tone made her fingers twitch in annoyance. She rose from her crouch slowly, keeping her face neutral.

Never show your enemy what you’re thinking.

“Looking for something to kill you with, actually.” She answered honestly and watched how it landed on his features.

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

He moved farther into the room, stepping over the papers she’d strewn across the floor without looking at them. His focus remained entirely on her face, those blue eyes tracking the bruises, the swelling, the evidence of what he and his people had done.

He stopped near the desk, his body angled to keep both her and the door in his line of sight as he rolled his sleeves up his forearms. His skin stretched tight over the muscle, the veins pulsating underneath jutting out like ridges.

Shadera watched as his fingers perfected each roll of the fabric on both arms before they curled around the ledge of the desk. He leaned back into it without once taking his eyes off her, studying her. She hadn’t really looked at him until now, truly looked at him. He had to be at least six four, maybe taller. His features were hard—sculpted as if he’d never learned to smile. But underneath the harshness of the sharp edges, underneath the dark brows and deep set eyes, she could see a torrent of emotion raging there. She wondered if anyone else had ever seen it, if anyone had ever seen what turmoil he hid behind the mask.

She swallowed, tearing her eyes away from him.

“You should be resting,” he said. “You need to look presentable for the family din—”

“I couldn’t give less of a fuck how I look for your sick family dinner,” she cut him off, striding toward the desk and snatching the vodka bottle from beside him before walking to the window at his back. She took a long pull as she looked down at the Executioner’s platform. “You killed someone this morning. A child.”

“He wasn’t a child.” The response was automatic, defensive. “He was nineteen. Old enough to know the consequences of theft in the Heart.”

“Theft,” she said quietly, taking another drink. “What did he steal? Bread? Medicine? Something to keep his family alive while you feast up here in your tower?”

Greyson’s expression hardened. “He stole from a Heart clinic. Medical supplies meant for citizens who contribute to society.”

The rage that flooded through her was volcanic, obliterating. Before she could think, before she could stop herself, she was moving. Not for the door, not for his throat—just moving, needing to move the fury in her body before it exploded. His back straightened slightly as she took a step in front of him and looked up into his face.

“Contributing to society?” Her voice cracked on the words. “You mean being born in the right ring? Having the right last name? The boy probably had siblings dying of infection while you hoard antibiotics for people who have never known a day of real sickness.”

Shadera was close enough now to see the flecks of darker blue in his irises, close enough to smell the leather of his gloves and the gunpowder that lingered there.

“The law is clear,” he said, but something in his voice wavered. Exhaustion, maybe, something close to resignation. The bone deep weariness of someone who’d repeated the same words so many times they’d lost meaning.

“Your law.” She jabbed a finger at his chest, connecting with a solid wall of muscle. “Your father’s law. Written by murderers to protect murderers.”

His hand shot up, catching her wrist before she could pull back. His grip was firm but not painful, his thumb pressing against her pulse point where her heart hammered its rage.

“Careful,” he said, voice dropping low. “The walls have ears.”

She knew they were listening. Every word they spoke recorded, analyzed, judged. But the anger burning through her didn’t care about consequences anymore.

These people had taken everything—her parents, her freedom, her hope. Now they wanted to parade her around like a prized animal, use her to break the spirits of those still fighting.

“Let them listen.” She stood there, letting him feel her pulse race with hatred. “Let your father hear exactly what I think of his empire built on the bones of the people you killed.”

She pulled her wrist free, shoving a step away from him. Still he didn’t move. Only watched her, watched the emotions break through her composure.

“How many people have you killed, Greyson? Hundreds? Thousands? Do you even keep count anymore, or do they all just blur together?”

He straightened at her words, pushing off the desk and taking a step away from her as if to ground himself from the question.

“Every one,” he said, his nostrils flaring as he sucked in a sharp breath. “I remember every one.”

She hadn’t expected that answer, hadn’t expected vulnerability. The raw truth. She studied his face, looking for the lie, the manipulation.

“Then you’re more of a monster than I thought.” The words came out softer than she’d intended. “You remember them, and you keep killing.”

“Yes.” Simple. Final.

No justification, no excuse.

The honesty of it knocked something loose in her chest. She’d expected denial, rationalization, the usual Heart propaganda about necessary evils and greater goods. Not flat out acknowledgment of what he was.

She moved without thinking, drawn by the ache screaming beneath her sternum. Her hand reached for his collar, fingers finding the dried blood. Greyson went stiff but didn’t stop her as she traced the stain.

“This boy,” she started, her voice a whisper. “What was his name?”

“Marcus Chen.” No hesitation. “From Cardinal South. Three younger siblings. Mother works in the processing plants. Father executed three years ago for smuggling.”

Each detail was a knife precisely placed. He knew exactly who he’d killed, knew the life he’d ended and the lives he’d destroyed in the process.

And still he’d pulled the trigger.

“You’re sick.” She pulled back, the blood ghosting over the pad of her finger making her skin crawl. “You know what you are doing is evil and you do it anyway.”

“Evil.” Greyson seemed to taste the word, roll it around in his mouth like a fine wine. “Is that what you call it when you slit someone’s throat for credits? When you poison a Cardinal merchant who skimmed from the wrong shipment? Or is it only evil when I do it?”

“I never pretended to be anything other than what I am. I kill people who help the Heart, not those oppressed by it. And I’m not ashamed of that. Not ashamed to be a killer if it means making the Heart suffer.”

He pulled the bottle from her fingers and took a large drink. “The only difference is you get to choose your contracts. I don’t. We’re both murderers. We just pay a different price for those deaths.”

“What price do you pay?” Shadera spat back at him.

His eyes flickered to the papers on the floor behind her so quickly she almost missed it. A shadow fell over his eyes, something haunted filling his irises.

“You wanted me to kill you, didn’t you? You wanted to die. I saw it in your eyes when you took off your mask. You wanted me to end it.”

He went still.

“You don’t know what you saw,” he said quietly, his eyes not meeting hers.

“I know exactly what I saw. I’ve seen that look before. In the mirror.”

Shadera blamed the honesty on the vodka, or maybe it was exhaustion. She watched him, his eyes still locked on the papers behind her, and her mind drifted back to the medical report, how he’d kept it. The evidence of abuse hidden behind clinical language.

“Your father nearly killed you three years ago.”

His expression didn’t change, but she caught the minute flinch in his shoulders, the way his breathing hitched for just a moment. Her guess had been correct.