Текст книги "Daggermouth"

Автор книги: H. M. Wolfe

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

She wanted him dead. Needed him dead. But Jameson, the people in the Boundary, they didn’t deserve to die because she couldn’t look past revenge. She wouldn’t let anyone else die on her path to vengeance.

Slowly her eyes peeled open and she strode toward the island, crossing the living space into the soft light of the kitchen. She set her plate down on the counter and turned toward Greyson. Her fingers found the marble edge and she hoisted herself up onto its surface.

She didn’t meet his eyes, but let her gaze fall to the dried blood on her leg where the glass had cut her, to her bare thighs visible from underneath the oversized shirt, to her hands folded in her lap. To the numbers tattooed across her fingers. 9758.

“So,” she started after a few minutes of silence as Greyson leaned against the back of the couch, arms folding over his chest. “You want to kill me.”

Greyson nodded, answering though it wasn’t a question. “Yes.”

“And I’m going to kill you.” His head tilted at her words, a smirk forming as if to say ‘debatable’ as she continued. “But if we kill each other, everyone else dies.”

“That seems to be the predicament.”

Shadera blew out a breath.

“I’ll let you parade me around the Heart and sit at your father’s dinner table. I’ll play the part in public, for now. But the moment I see my way out, the moment I can safely leave here and the opportunity presents itself to kill you—I won’t hesitate to take it.”

She finally dragged her gaze from her hands to find his eyes already on her. They weren’t hard, they weren’t full of hate, but understanding, recognition. Respect almost.

“As long as you know I’ll do the same,” Greyson answered. His right hand slid over his chest, then wrapped around the left side of his neck as he stretched it, his fingers brushing over the cut of his jaw.

Shadera’s eyes followed the movement, watching as his thumb grazed the edge of his bottom lip. Heat burned over her skin, settling at the base of her spine.

“What’s it like?” he asked, snapping her out of her sudden trance.

She shook her head, clearing her throat. “What’s what like?”

“Living in the Boundary?”

She stilled, anger replacing whatever heat was just pumping through her veins. “You want a poverty tour? Poor little heir wants to know how the other half lives?”

“I want to understand—”

“No,” she snapped, cutting him off. “You want absolution. You want me to tell you it’s not that bad, that people manage, that there’s some kind of dignity in the suffering. So you can sleep at night in your silk sheets thinking you’re one of the good ones because you cared to ask.”

His eyes narrowed. “That’s not—”

“It’s exactly that.” She dropped from the counter, the remnants of vodka flaring back to life in her stomach as she grabbed the edge to stabilize herself. “You want to know what it’s like? It’s watching children fight over scraps. It’s choosing between medicine and food. It’s watching your family be shot on billboards for falling in love with someone in the Cardinal. It’s selling yourself in whatever way keeps you alive one more day. It’s—”

“Why?” The word exploded from him, sudden and fierce enough to make her pull back. “I’m trying to coexist with you. To find some middle ground where we can survive this arrangement without tearing each other apart. But you—” He pushed from the back of the couch and moved toward her. “Every word is a weapon. Every gesture is an attack. Is it physically impossible for you to have a conversation without turning it into an argument?”

“When the conversation is with you? Yes.” She squared her shoulders. “You don’t get to play tourist to my suffering.”

He moved closer now, close enough that her head tilted back as she maintained eye contact. Warmth flushed through her body—rage, she told herself, not the sudden awareness of how close he’d come, how his eyes had darkened with emotion, how his voice had dropped to a register that seemed to vibrate in her chest.

He took one last step toward her and his hands curled around the counter on either side of her waist, thumbs brushing against the curve of her hips.

“I may not know poverty, but don’t think for a second I do not know pain.” His words were a growl.

She could feel his breath against her face, slipping through her lashes. Her senses flared, hyperaware of every point where the space between them had collapsed.

They stood frozen, bodies touching, the air around them charged. Greyson’s eyes dropped to her mouth and she realized she was breathing too fast, that her lips had parted without permission. It was just the vodka. It made her notice things she shouldn’t—the heat radiating from his body, the way his chest rose and fell, the fact that if she tilted her head up just slightly . . .

She wondered what he tasted like. Whether the Executioner’s mouth would be soft or harsh. Whether he’d kiss with the same control and perfection he maintained. Her tongue swept across her lower lip without conscious thought, and she watched his pupils dilate.

The air between them went electric, the energy of it standing every hair on edge. He leaned closer, just a fraction, and even with every instinct screaming in her head, she wanted to feel his hand back around her throat.

He jerked back like he’d been burned, turning away from her so fast she nearly stumbled. His hands gripped the edge of the couch hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

“Go to your room,” he ordered, voice rough.

She didn’t need to be told twice. Her legs carried her down the hallway on autopilot, her skin prickling, oversensitized. The door to her room had been repaired—Chapman’s work, she assumed—and she pushed through it, closing it behind her with a soft click that sounded like judgment.

Shadera pressed her back against it, chest heaving like she’d been running. Like she was running now, from whatever had almost happened.

“Fuck.” The word came out as a hiss between her teeth.

She pushed off the door, pacing the length of the bedroom like something caged. Which she was. Caged with him. She fucking hated him, hated everything he was, everything he represented.

But her body didn’t care about his crimes.

She stopped at the window, pressing her forehead against the cool glass. The city lights blurred below, and she could see her reflection laid over them—wild eyes, flushed cheeks, lips parted like she was still waiting for that kiss.

It was just biology. Simple fucking biology. She hadn’t been with anyone in days. Hadn’t felt Jameson’s hands on her like she was used to night after night, hadn’t tasted his mouth or felt him inside her. Her body was just responding to proximity.

That’s all this was.

Her fingers went to her collarbone, tracing the bruises he’d left there. They’d faded to yellow-green now, ugly but healing. She pressed into them, feeling the dull ache. Remembering his fingers squeezing, the way his eyes had gone dark with something that might have been desire.

She moved to the bed, falling back onto those obscene sheets as her body thrummed with need, with frustration that had nowhere to go. She could handle this. Deal with it clinically, efficiently. Get the craving out of her system so she could think clearly. So she could focus on what mattered—survival, escape, eventually finishing what she’d started and putting a bullet in Greyson Serel’s gorgeous fucking face.

Her hand slipped beneath the shirt, into the waistband of her underwear, finding herself already wet. The shame of it burned through her, but not enough to stop. She closed her eyes, summoning Jameson’s face. His scarred hands, his crooked smile, the way he always knew exactly how to touch her.

But the image kept shifting. Jameson’s green eyes becoming blue. His rough hands becoming those careful, precise fingers. The memory of Jameson’s weight became Greyson above her on the kitchen floor, his heart hammering against hers.

She pressed harder, fingers moving in familiar patterns, trying to force her mind back to safer territory. To Jameson’s apartment in the Boundary, to his bed that always smelled like sage and smoke. To the way he’d whisper her name against her throat when he was close.

A moan tore from her lungs as her treacherous mind supplied different images and she bit down on her fist to stifle the sound. Greyson’s mouth on hers, tasting like expensive whiskey and cruelty. Those hands that killed with no remorse learning her body with the same deadly focus. The way he might say her name—not with Jameson’s warmth, but with a lethal edge that fed into his control.

She thought of his hand around her throat. Not the violence of it, but the restraint. The way he could have crushed her windpipe but didn’t. The control that must have taken.

What would it be like if he lost that control? If she made him lose it?

He needed her out of his fucking apartment.

His bedroom door stood at the end of the hall, promising solitude. Sanctuary. He quickened his pace, desperate to put as many doors and walls between them as possible, as a sound froze him in place in front of her door.

She wasn’t—she wouldn’t.

He stood motionless, ears straining. He had imagined it, his mind playing tricks on him. But there it was again. A moan, louder this time, accompanied by the soft rustle of sheets.

Heat flooded his body, pooling low in his stomach. He was already half hard from their interaction, his self-control frayed to a thread. The image of her in that oversized shirt, his shirt, long, tattooed legs bare and tempting, flashed through his mind.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the sound. This was insanity. She was a fucking Daggermouth. He should be plotting her death, not imagining what she looked like tangled in his sheets.

Another moan drifted through the door, breathier than the last, and his control snapped.

Before he could second guess himself, Greyson had his hand on the doorknob. It turned easily—unlocked. One push and he could see her. See what was making her make those sounds. See if her face flushed with pleasure the way it did with rage.

He rested his forehead against the wood, his breath coming harsh and fast. This was a line he couldn’t uncross. A boundary he couldn’t return from. If he opened this door, if he saw her like that . . .

His hand tightened on the knob, knuckles going white. Every muscle in his body begged him to push forward, to find out if she fucked as brutally as she fought.

Greyson wrenched himself away from her door. He couldn’t and there was no world where she would even want him to. Where she would want him. He covered the remaining distance to his room in three strides and closed the door behind him, sliding the lock home with a shaking hand.

He pressed his back against it, head thumping against the wood as he tried to steady his breathing. This couldn’t happen. He couldn’t let himself feel this—this sick mix of lust and loathing for a woman who wanted him dead.

For a woman he wanted dead.

Greyson dragged a hand down his face, feeling the rasp of stubble against his palm. A second night hiding in his own home.

Chapter sixteenWith What Army?

Jameson slipped through the eastern checkpoint silently, nodding to the sentry whose fingers never left the trigger of her rifle. The camp had already changed in the twenty-four hours he’d been away from it. More gaunt faces, more haunted eyes, more makeshift graves marking the perimeter.

Four new mounds of dirt.

The rage that bubbled in his chest was an old companion by now, familiar as the hunger that gnawed at everyone’s belly. He swallowed it back. Rage without direction was just noise, and tonight he needed clarity.

“Ghost.” The sentry’s voice was a whisper, her eyes reflecting the distant barrel fires. “Your lieutenants are waiting for you.”

Of course they were. Six hours of silence from him made them nervous—twenty-four probably had them preparing for war.

“Tell me what’s happened in the last day,” he said, as the rebel guard kept stride beside him.

The sentry’s jaw tightened. “Four more gone to hunger. Medicine reserves are completely depleted in the south quarter. And they are saying the Heart’s cutting off the last of the food shipments.”

Jameson nodded once, absorbing the information without letting it show on his face. Leaders didn’t have the luxury of visible despair. “Get some rest, Talia. You’ve been on watch duty for two days. You look like shit.”

She huffed a wet laugh. “Says the man with blood on his boots.”

He glanced down. Not his blood. Never his own, somehow. Always someone else’s sacrifice staining his path. This time a Cardinal rebel that had accidentally stepped in the way of a Veyra patrol vehicle. They had not asked questions, didn’t even bother to stop when they shot him down for simply stepping into the road too early.

The mud sucked at Jameson’s boots with each step through the rebel camp, a wet resistance that felt like the Boundary itself was trying to hold him back from racing into the Heart and tearing it apart to find Shade. Twenty-four hours down, forty-eight more to go.

Two days of hell.

The rebel camp sprawled before him. What had begun as a handful of disgruntled Boundary residents had grown into a force nearly a thousand strong. They’d transformed the abandoned factory district into something resembling a military base, if military bases were built from salvage and determination.

His eyes watered as he squinted through the smoke from the barrel fires mixing with the acrid smell of burning plastic—whatever the rebels had found to keep warm tonight. The small fires cast long shadows across mud-packed pathways, the orange glow painting the rusted mental structures in false warmth.

Sentries stood at each strategic point, some armed with Heart rifles pilfered from dead guards, others with cruder weapons fashioned from scrap. Between the structures, tents created using tarps and old billboards housed those who’d lost everything to the Heart’s brutality. He moved between them without needing to look, his feet knowing every incline, every drainage ditch from night after night of pacing every inch of this joyless refuge.

Jameson pushed farther into the camp, acknowledging nods with slight inclines of his head. They parted for him without conscious thought, a sea of starving, hopeless people.

He was the Ghost to them. The smuggler who could slip between rings unseen. The man who’d given the rebellion a backbone.

He hated the reverence in their eyes. Hated even more that he hadn’t earned it.

Headquarters stood ahead against the smoggy sky—an abandoned administrative building that had once processed the factory workers. Its windows were blown out, replaced with metal sheets that kept out rain but trapped heat. The concrete walls were scarred with bullet holes from the last time the Veyra had ventured this deep into the Boundary.

Twenty-three dead that day. Twelve of them children.

Jameson paused at the entrance, letting the memory wash over him as his fingers brushed over one of the bullet’s scars. The screams. The blood. Shadera standing in the center of it all, knives flashing like extensions of her rage, taking down five Veyra officers before the rest retreated. He’d known then. Known as he watched her covered in the blood of revolution, eyes wild with protective fury, that she would become a symbol to the cause.

He just never imagined she would become it in captivity.

He pushed through the door, climbed the stairs that groaned under his weight, and entered what had once been an overseer’s office. Maps covered every surface—the Heart’s layout and distribution centers, Cardinal and Boundary rebel camps, the underground tunnels that connected them all. Reports stacked in careful piles, each one detailing food shortages, medical needs, weapons inventory. The rebellion’s nervous system.

Jameson sank into the chair behind the desk, his body suddenly leaden. Days without sleep caught up with him in a rush, blurring the edges of his vision. He rubbed his eyes, the grit beneath his lids feeling like ground glass.

The door opened without a knock. Lieutenant Rook entered first, followed by Sergeant Samuels, both pairs of eyes narrowing on him with worry.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Rook scolded, her fingers wrapping around the edge of her tactical vest. She tilted her shaved head as she waited for an answer, making the burn scars that crawled up her neck and over the side of her face catch the shadows.

Jameson leaned back, a smile ghosting across his lips. “Charming, Rook. It’s why I keep you around.”

“You keep me around because I’m the best sniper you have ever seen.” She didn’t smile back. “Where were you, Ghost? The camp was getting worried.”

“Jaeger’s place.” Jameson kept his voice light to mask the fear. “Learning exactly how fucked we might be.”

Samuels took the seat across from him, pulling his gun from his back and resting it between his legs. Samuels was shorter than Rook, stockier with the kind of dense muscle that came from hauling bodies.

“You’ve heard about the prison massacre then? The singing?” Samuels asked.

Jameson nodded.

“Well, the singing has spread,” Samuels started again. “Every quarter of the Boundary will know the anthem soon. They’re singing it in the streets at night.”

“Do they know it was Shade? Know that it was her they were singing for?” The words caught in Jameson’s throat.

“No,” Rook answered. “They don’t know a name. But they know it was a Daggermouth, a woman who tried to kill the Executioner. They know she stood with the prisoners and tried to stop it from the information that’s leaked into the Boundary already.”

Jameson closed his eyes briefly, resting his head on the back of his chair as he blew out a heavy breath toward the ceiling.

“She’s gonna hate that,” Samuels said with mild amusement. “If she makes it out of the Heart, she’s not going to be happy to find herself the face of a rebellion.”

“Not if, when,” Jameson corrected as he dragged his eyes back to the lieutenants in front of him.

Rook and Samuels exchanged a glance.

Jameson knew what they were thinking, knew the Heart never let anyone go. Especially not the woman who had tried to kill the heir. They knew as well as he did, that if they had not publicly executed her by now, the statement they planned to make with her was much larger than inciting fear. The silence lingering between the three of them was heavy, and he let it stretch, watching his commanders doubt him.

Rook broke it first. “Some of the younger rebels are talking about marching into the Heart.”

“With what army?” Jameson’s voice was sharp. “With what weapons? Shut down all talk of that from them immediately, we cannot have any rebels going rouge.”

“They’re desperate,” Rook said. “The food situation—” She stopped, jaw working.

“The food situation is critical,” Samuels finished for her. “We’ve got maybe a week of rations left for the camp, and that’s with cutting portions again. The Cardinals started refusing our credits. Word is the Heart put pressure on them. No trade or selling with the Boundary or they’ll cut the Cardinal’s shipments too.”

“They’re starving us out.” Rook’s voice had gone flat. “No need to waste bullets when hunger will do the job for them.”

Jameson stood abruptly, moving to the wall where the most detailed map of the city hung. His fingers traced the concentric circles—Heart at the center, Cardinal surrounding it, Boundary at the edges bleeding into the wastelands. Neat divisions that determined who lived and who died based on nothing but location.

“We have other options,” he said finally. “My contact in the Heart went silent after Shadera’s capture, like most Heart informants, but I’ve got a lead on reconnecting.”

“The one smuggling medicine on Veyra vehicles?” Rook asked.

Jameson nodded. “They’ve been reliable for months. If I can reestablish contact, I’m going to try to expand the operation. Not just medicine anymore. Food. Weapons.”

“Risky,” Samuels observed. “Medicine is one thing. Small packages, low weight. Food is bulky. Harder to hide, harder to move. And weapons? That’s execution on sight, no questions asked.”

“Got a better idea?” Jameson turned back to them. “Because I’m all ears. Otherwise, we work with what we have.”

Neither answered. There were no better options. Just varying degrees of desperation. Outside, someone coughed—the rattling kind that meant infection, that meant one more name on the list of people they couldn’t save.

“There’s something else.” Jameson hesitated, the words like lead on his tongue. “The Veyra had drones following me yesterday, that’s why I didn’t come back here till now to be safe.”

“Shit.” Rook straightened. “You think they know about the camp?”

“If they did, we’d already be dead.” Jameson ran a hand through his silver hair. “But they’re looking harder than before. They were surveillance class, but they’ve been upgraded. They can fit in small, confined spaces now, can see through dense structures. They have heat tracking, facial recognition, mapping systems. They followed me halfway to the north checkpoint before I shot them down.”

“What are they mapping?” Samuels leaned forward.

“From what I could gather off the chips I salvaged, population density. Structural weak points. The kind of intel you gather before—” Jameson’s throat went dry.

“Before you level everything,” Rook finished, her scarred face going pale.

Jameson nodded. “The Heart is preparing for something, something big.”

“War?” Samuels asked.

“Or its aftermath. It wouldn’t be war for us, it would be systematic euthanasia. It would be mass murder.” Jameson turned back to the map, his eyes tracing the boundary between their district and the toxic wasteland beyond. “I want the bomb shelters prepared. All of them. The ones from before the partition still have their lead lining. Priority for children and medical staff.”

Rook’s sharp intake of breath was the only sound in the room. The bomb shelters were a relic of the time before New Found Haven, concrete bunkers buried deep enough to survive whatever had destroyed the old world. They’d been maintaining them as a last resort, a final sanctuary if the Heart ever decided the Boundary was more trouble than it was worth.

“You think they’d actually do it?” Rook asked quietly. “Sacrifice an entire ring?”

“I think Maximus Serel has never let human life stand in the way of control.” Jameson’s voice had gone cold. “And I think we need to be ready for anything.”

Rook nodded once, already calculating logistics in her head. “I’ll get teams working on the shelters. Water, filters, whatever medical supplies we can spare.”

“We can’t spare any,” Samuels interjected.

“We’ll make it work.” Rook’s tone left no room for argument. “What else?”

“Double the patrols along the northern edge. If they come on foot or in vehicles, that’s where they’ll hit first.” Jameson pointed to the map. “And I want a meeting with the Cardinal rebel leaders. I want to speak with Farrow about the credit situation. If food stops flowing from the Heart completely, we need to know immediately.”

They continued for another hour, working through contingencies, allocating their dwindling resources. As they spoke, Jameson felt the weight settling heavier on his shoulders. So many lives depending on him making the right calls. So many ways to fail them.

Rook and Samuels finally moved to the door, readying to carry out orders when Jameson stopped them.

“There is one more thing.” He paused, tapping his knuckle on the desk’s scarred surface. They would not like this. “In two days, I will be going into the Heart with Jaeger and his men to get Shade out.”

“You can’t,” Rook blurted, her brow creasing as she shook her head. “We need you here, Ghost. We can’t risk losing you. Let the Daggermouths take care of their people. You need to take care of yours.”

Jameson stared at her for a long moment, letting her words settle—the divide in them. Their people. Her words held no malicious intent, but they scratched at his mind wrong. “There is no them or us. Not here, not in the Boundary,” he said, his voice stern. “It doesn’t matter if you choose to call yourself a rebel or a Daggermouth, the reality of our situation doesn’t change. We all want the same thing, to live.”

“Jay . . .” Samuels started, but he held up his hand to stop him.

“I’m not asking permission. We need her—I . . . I need her home. I won’t abandon her, just like I wouldn’t abandon you. I have to at least try. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try.”

The room stayed silent as they both stared back at him, their concerned expressions softening into understanding.

“If, for some reason, I do not come back—Rook, you will take my place until the rebels elect a new leader. But believe me, I have no intention of dying in the Heart.”

He watched as the possibility of that responsibility settled on Rook’s shoulders, watched her throat work, her eyes dart to Samuels before she gave one curt nod. They filed out of the room silently, shutting the door behind them as Jameson’s hands splayed out on the desk.

He leaned his weight onto them, letting his head hang for only a moment before blowing out a long breath and straitening. His hand scrubbed down his face as he moved to the window, pushing aside the metal sheet with the other to look out over the camp.

Fires burned lower now, the night growing colder. Shadows moved between structures—guards changing shifts, medics making rounds, parents walking crying children who couldn’t sleep from hunger.

His fingers found the deep scar that ran from collarbone to rib cage, tracing its familiar path over the tattered fabric of his shirt. His first lesson in Heart savagery, delivered by a Veyra officer who’d caught him stealing medicine for his dying sister. The officer had smiled while cutting him, explaining the anatomy lesson as blood soaked through Jameson’s shirt. His sister had died anyway, the medicine he’d finally stolen arriving too late.

The memory lingered in the front of his mind, often resurfacing even fifteen years later. The image of her perfectly still on her cot when he entered their makeshift home with the antibiotics, the coldness of her skin when he had tried to wake her. He’d stayed with her for days holding her lifeless hand, tears streaming down his face as the last of his family left him alone in this city.

He had chosen then to become a smuggler, sworn it to her. He couldn’t save her, but he could save others. At the very least, he would try.

Jameson closed his eyes, listening to the distant sound of someone singing, voice cracking with emotion over the words of that anthem but never faltering. He let the sounds wash over him, let himself feel the fear he couldn’t show the others. Let himself feel the absence of her.

He would find her. Or she would find her way back to him. Those were the only possibilities he would allow himself to consider. Anything else was unthinkable.

The song outside grew louder as more voices joined in, a ragged chorus of defiance floating over the Boundary like a prayer. Or maybe, it was a promise.