Текст книги "Daggermouth"

Автор книги: H. M. Wolfe

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Текущая страница: 28 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

With those words hanging in the air, Maximus signaled to the guards. They fell into formation around him as he exited, the heavy door closing behind them with a final, echoing thud.

Silence descended over the cells, broken only by the ragged sound of Shadera’s breathing. Greyson sat motionless, staring at the concrete floor where his blood had pooled beneath his chair then dried. His mind was a hurricane, each emotion crashing against the others, leaving him numb in their wake.

His father had paid for Brooker’s contract and Shadera had been the one to carry it out. The knowledge sat in his chest like a stone, crushing his lungs, his heart.

“Greyson.” Shadera’s voice reached him through the glass. “Greyson, please—”

“Stop,” Greyson said, the word barely audible.

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t hear her voice. He couldn’t stand the sound of it. The pain it held, the lies it told.

“I need you to understand—”

“Please.” His voice was shattering now, that grenade Maximus had planted in his chest finally detonating. “Please just stop.”

Chapter thirtyThose Two Things

Lira sat across the table from her brother. Her dead brother. Her mind refused to process what her eyes were seeing.

Brooker. Alive. Breathing.

The world around her seemed to blur at the edges, the voices planning at the table becoming distant and muffled as if she were underwater. Her brother, whom she’d mourned, whose absence had torn a hole in her family, sat there with a slight smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. The same smile he’d worn when they were children and he’d successfully pulled a prank. Only this wasn’t a childish trick—this was an earthquake shattering the foundation of everything she thought she knew.

She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could barely breathe as he shifted in his chair, leaning back casually like he hadn’t just been resurrected. Callum’s hand tightened around hers beneath the table, his thumb stroking reassuringly across her knuckles, but even that familiar touch couldn’t anchor her to reality.

Brooker’s hair was longer now, dark strands falling to his shoulders, the length something their father would never have permitted. A thin scar bisected his right eye and brow, puckering the skin in a way that made his face seem sharper, more severe. But it was his eyes that had changed the most—those blue Serel eyes that now held shadows she couldn’t begin to fathom.

Lira watched Brooker reach beside him, his fingers intertwining with Farrow’s in an easy, intimate gesture that spoke of history, of trust. Farrow’s expression remained neutral, but her grip on Brooker’s hand tightened fractionally, a silent communication passing between them.

The clearing of Jaeger’s throat drew her attention back to the matter at hand. “. . . We need to be ready to strike in two days,” he continued, as if the return of a dead man was minor. “The night of the Vow ceremony provides our best opportunity. Security will be focused on keeping Shade and Greyson secure after the broadcast. They will be expecting a disturbance during the ceremony, so we wait until after.”

Jaeger spread the maps across the table, his finger tracing routes through the Heart. “Mikel and Brooker have Veyra officers on the inside, their teams will secure the plaza, monitoring and relaying any information back to the rebels that will be waiting with Ghost to flood the Heart when Farrow and my team fry the electricity powering the checkpoints. Lira will make sure the media drones are creating blind spots for us to navigate.”

Lira heard the words, saw Jaeger’s finger moving across the paper, but they made no sense. Nothing made sense.

Her brother was alive.

Her brother was alive and had been working with the rebellion all along. Her brother was alive and holding hands with a rebel leader while Greyson was being held prisoner by their father.

“What the fuck.”

Brooker laughed, the sound achingly familiar. “There she is.”

“How dare you.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, trembling with rage. “How dare you sit there and laugh.”

The smile faded from his face.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” She leaned forward, her body vibrating with fury. “Do you know what it did to us? What it did to me?” Her voice rose with each question. “To Greyson?”

She pulled her hand from Callum’s, needing to feel unanchored, untethered in her anger.

“What have you been doing all this time, Brooker? While we were trapped with him? While we were living with the monster day after day, knowing exactly what he’s capable of?” She swallowed back the tears threatening to spill. “Did you even think about us while you lived free?”

Brooker’s expression sobered, the playfulness evaporating from his eyes as he leaned forward. “I know.” He shook his head, swallowing hard. “I’ve thought about you every day, Li. Believe me, there has not been a second where I haven’t wished this could’ve been different.”

The gentleness in his voice only fueled her rage. “No, you don’t know. You weren’t there. You didn’t have to see Father getting worse, becoming more paranoid, more cruel. You didn’t have to watch Greyson take your place on that platform, become the thing he never wanted to be.”

“There was no other way,” Brooker said, his voice low and urgent. “He needed to believe I was dead. The Heart needed to believe I was dead so I could continue my work.”

“Your work?” She spat the words. “What work could possibly be worth letting your family think you were murdered?”

His eyes hardened. “Saving thousands of lives. Building a resistance that could actually challenge Father’s power. Creating an escape route for people trapped in the Heart.” He squeezed Farrow’s hand. “Finding people I could trust with the truth.”

Lira gasped as the words tore like a bullet through flesh. He couldn’t trust her. Didn’t trust her.

“I see,” Lira answered, her own voice going hard.

Guilt flashed across Brooker’s face, a genuine emotion cracking behind his eyes. But before he could speak again her gaze shifted to Mikel, her fury finding a new target. “What do you mean Greyson is your son? How is that possible?”

The Veyra captain’s face remained impassive, his military bearing not faltering under her scrutiny. She’d known this man her entire life—had seen him standing at her father’s right hand at every official function, had watched him carry out her father’s orders without question.

“Your mother and I have known each other all our lives.” He paused, a shadow of sadness passing over his features. “We had planned to take the Vow together, but then she was betrothed to your father.”

He leaned forward, tipping back the rest of the liquid in his cup and clearing his throat.

“Elara is the only woman I have ever loved, and I had to watch while she was forced to marry the devil.” He took a long breath, forcing his voice to remain steady. “There is no love to be found in your father’s bed, only pain. It didn’t matter to us that we could be killed for it, we weren’t afraid of death knowing we would die together.”

He refilled his glass as Lira opened her mouth to snap back, but Jaeger’s fist found the table first, cutting her off.

“Enough,” he growled, his gaze pinning on her. “Your family drama can wait. We have—”

Lira moved, her hand snatching the gun from her thigh.

They saw her as a simple girl, a princess, a woman not capable of violence.

They were so wrong. That was their mistake.

That was the reason she was able to train the barrel of her gun on the center of Jaeger’s skull before being shot down in a room full of assassins.

In the next breath every Daggermouth in the room had their weapons trained on her back, readying to fire. Time seemed to tilt around her as she watched Brooker’s eyes widen, as she felt Callum slowly move his own hand to his gun, as she watched Jaeger’s back straighten.

“Tell your men to stand down,” Lira snarled, flicking off the safety in warning.

Jaeger didn’t hesitate as he signaled to them. She could feel the weight lift off her back as the guns lowered but remained ready.

“Now, Miss Serel,” Jaeger started slowly. “I believe it is your turn to stand down.”

Lira only raised her gun. “How dare you mock me when you’ve facilitated this. You accepted contracts on both of my brothers. What’s to stop you from accepting one on me next?”

Brooker stood slowly. “Lira, please. Put down the gun.”

“No.” Her eyes never left Jaeger. “I want the truth. All of it. And I want it from him.”

Jaeger’s eyes met Lira’s over the barrel of her gun, his expression unreadable. “You want the truth?” he asked, his voice low and even. “The truth is rarely a comfort.”

“I don’t want comfort,” Lira replied, her finger steady on the trigger. “I want answers.”

“Fine.” Jaeger leaned back in his chair, seemingly unconcerned by the weapon pointed at his head. “My partnership with Farrow didn’t start until after I accepted the contract on a man named Levi Pierce.”

Lira’s brow furrowed at the unfamiliar name, but she remained silent, letting Jaeger continue.

“I didn’t know back then that Brooker was working under that alias in the rings. The evidence supplied in the purchased contract was sufficient to show that Pierce was selling Cardinal secrets to the Heart.” Jaeger’s gaze flicked briefly to Brooker before returning to Lira. “I didn’t know what Brooker had really been doing for the rebellion, that he was working with Farrow.”

Lira’s mind raced, trying to piece together this new information with what she already knew. Her brother, living a double life under a false name, caught between two worlds.

“Shadera’s part of the contract was to kill him,” Jaeger went on, his tone matter-of-fact. “I would handle the rest with my contacts to complete the contract, which was to display his body in the center of the Heart as a warning to others who might consider informing on the rings.”

Lira’s stomach turned at the thought, bile rising in her throat. The cold brutality of it, the callousness with which her brother’s life had been bargained away.

“Farrow watched Shadera’s attack on Brooker from their meeting place,” Jaeger said. “She found him barely alive and was able to stop the bleeding, get a medic to him in time to save his life.” He paused, his eyes meeting Farrow’s across the table. “That’s when she called me and told me the truth about what was really happening in the Cardinal rings. That’s when we decided we needed to start working together, to share information so things like this wouldn’t happen again.”

Lira’s arm began to tremble, the weight of the gun pulling at her muscles.

“We were able to save his life,” Jaeger continued, “and he told us the contract most likely came from your father. But we needed to complete the rest of it to make sure he believed he was dead.”

Every word he spoke was a hammer against Lira’s already fracturing reality.

“We found a body,” he said, his voice flat. “From the Cardinal clinic, similar to the build of your brother’s. We took it, tattooed Brooker’s mark on his chest, then we beat it. Badly. Until it was unrecognizable.”

Lira’s stomach lurched. She didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to know what came next. But Jaeger kept talking.

“We burned off the fingerprints. Pulled the teeth. Scalped it. Drained the blood, replaced it with Brooker’s. As close a match as they could make it to him.”

Each detail was a fresh horror, a new violation. Lira’s vision swam, nausea rising in her throat.

“I left the body in the Heart,” Jaeger finished. “The contract on top of it, and it was enough. Enough to convince your father it had been completed.”

Lira turned to Brooker, searching his face for a denial, for any sign that this was a lie. But his eyes met hers, solemn as he nodded once. Confirmation. Acknowledgment.

Finally, she lowered the gun as she turned back to Jaeger.

“And Greyson?” she asked, her voice sounding distant to her own ears. “What’s your excuse for accepting his contract?”

She needed to know. Needed to understand how the man who claimed to protect the rings, to fight for the people, could so easily trade her brother’s life for . . . for what? Money? Power?

Jaeger leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table, his scarred hands clasped before him. He met her gaze steadily, unflinching in the face of her anger, her devastation.

“A year after Brooker was presumed dead, he brought Mikel to me. Said he’d been acting as eyes and ears inside your father’s circles, feeding information to the rebellion. That he was willing to help us however he could.”

Jaeger paused, taking a coin out of his pocket and flipping it through his fingers as he sipped from his drink.

“Six months ago, Mikel presented us with an ultimatum. Said he’d only keep helping if we got Greyson out. Told us of his connection to Greyson, about the smuggling, that Maximus was beginning to get suspicious.”

Lira’s eyes flicked to Mikel as Jaeger continued. “We agreed to extract him, but we needed time to plan, to find a way that wouldn’t jeopardize the rebellion we were planning in the rings. We were still figuring out the logistics to get him out when the contract came. This time, there were no aliases, no smoke and mirrors. It was bought specifically for Greyson Serel, by an unknown Heart elite claiming they wanted change.”

Her stomach churned. Lira knew, with sickening certainty, where that contract had truly come from.

“But you knew it was from my father,” she said, her voice hollow.

Jaeger nodded grimly. “I took it to Brooker and Farrow immediately. We saw it for what it was—an opportunity. A way to get Greyson out without arousing suspicion.”

Her mind began to spiral as she tried to absorb it all. The secrets, the lies.

“The plan was to send Shadera in,” Jaeger continued, the coin dancing between his fingers. “I assigned it to her because she was the only one I trusted, the only one smart enough to have a chance at making it out of the Heart alive. Completing this contract would have to happen from inside.”

Jaeger glanced at Jameson, his expression hardening. “I had a choice to make—risk her life to get Greyson out, or lose our most important informant in the Heart. I chose the option that would save the most lives.”

She could feel the anger radiating from Jameson in waves, watching as the muscle twitched in his jaw. He seemed to be the only other person that was kept in the dark, the only other person that wasn’t trusted with the truth.

“Shade was never supposed to actually harm Greyson,” Jaeger said, his voice growing softer as he flipped the coin over his knuckles one last time before catching it in his palm. “I went to her warehouse while she was out on contract. Replaced all her bullets with blanks soaked in a poison that would lower his heart rate, make his limbs seize so it would look like he was dead.”

The room spun around her, all these revelations piling atop one another until she could barely breathe under their weight.

“The Veyra officers that came to the scene of the assassination were Mikel and his men. They were supposed to pronounce him dead and take care of the body like they always did. That’s when they would smuggle him out of the Heart.”

“But something went wrong,” Lira said, the pieces clicking into place.

Jaeger nodded. “I didn’t know about the Veyra pistol she kept hidden. I didn’t replace those bullets.”

A chill crawled down Lira’s spine as she sank back into her chair. All those careful plans, all those manipulations—undone by a single hidden weapon.

“And then,” Jaeger sighed, “Greyson removed his mask. Those two things—the bullet and the unmasking—detonated our entire plan.”

Jameson surged to his feet, his chair clattering to the floor behind him. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time?” His eyes trained on Farrow. “I expected this from Jaeger, but you?”

Lira watched the blood drain from Farrow’s face as she rose to meet him. “That’s not what this is, Jay—”

“I came to you for help. Sharing all the information I had. I begged you to help me find a way to keep everyone safe. And you let me—you let me sit there in fear and you said nothing.”

The betrayal in his voice resonated in Lira’s chest, his pain reflecting her own.

“This is why we did not tell you first,” Jaeger hissed, and Jameson’s eyes snapped toward him. “We planned to tell you after Greyson was out, once the extraction was complete, because you are emotional. You are an idealist believing you can save everyone. But you can’t, Jameson. We cannot save everyone.”

Jameson opened his mouth to speak, but Jaeger raised a hand.

“We tried to get Shade out for you safely. We have not betrayed you, only kept you in the dark to the things you did not need to know until you were capable of focusing on something other than her. But that mission was not a failure. We learned valuable information through you, that the President plans to bomb us. That there are things he keeps even from Mikel.”

Callum finally spoke, his voice level, relaxed. “I think we can all agree that we should’ve trusted each other from the beginning, that unity in light of all we know now would have been the better route. But we’re here now, and we don’t have time to fight between ourselves. Greyson and Shadera don’t have time, the rings do not have time.” He tapped a ring against the table, the rap of it vibrating through Lira. “We have to get back to the Heart, so let’s stop fucking around and finish this.”

Lira clenched her jaw, forcing back the tide of questions that were trying to drown her. Callum was right.

The conversation continued around her, tactical details and contingency plans flowing in a current her ears refused to hear. Instead, her eyes remained fixed on her brother, studying the changes time and secrecy had carved into him. He was leaner, harder, his softness replaced by the sharp edges of a man who had lived in the shadows.

Her gaze drifted to Callum, watching his face as he discussed extraction routes with Jaeger. His expression was focused, determined. He had known. Somehow he had known all of it. He hadn’t flinched at a single revelation, hadn’t shown surprise to any of the truths shared tonight. He’d known Brooker was alive and he’d kept it from her.

“Li, did you hear me?”

Her eyes snapped to Brooker.

“I said we will need a distraction when the Daggermouths move on Maximus,” Brooker repeated.

“You’ll have one,” she promised, and something in her voice sent a chill down her own spine. “The Heart won’t know what hit it.”

Chapter thirty-onePast Tense

There had been no food. No water. Only the rhythmic sound of Greyson’s breathing at Shadera’s back from his cell. She couldn’t tell how long they had been there. The Veyra officers hadn’t returned since Maximus’s visit—no more beatings, but also no sustenance. A different kind of torture. Slower. More deliberate.

Her tongue was swollen in her mouth, dry as sand. Thirst clawed at her throat, a desperate animal scratching to be freed. She tried to shift in the chair, seeking any position that might ease the pressure on her broken body, but the cords bit deeper with each movement. A hiss of pain escaped through her cracked lips, echoing in the sterile cell.

Her mind drifted in and out of clarity, memories surfacing and submerging like debris in murky water. Contract 205. The words repeated in her mind, a mantra that had once meant nothing more than another job, another target. Another mark to eliminate for the good of the Boundary.

Levi Pierce. Heart informant.

The details of the contract swam before her eyes. High priority. A traitor selling Cardinal secrets.

The photograph flashed in her mind. It all made sense now, the nagging of recognition that she couldn’t place. The man that her mind knew, but the context was wrong. Greyson and Levi Pierce. Greyson and Brooker.

Her mind had refused to connect the dots, the very idea was impossible. Heart elite didn’t remove their masks. They didn’t venture into Cardinal without guards, without protection, without the trappings of their status.

Shadera’s stomach twisted. She’d been jealous of the Daggermouth that got that contract, and wished it’d been hers. All this time it was, and she had no idea. She’d been used. Manipulated. And she’d killed someone who was rising up against the Heart, against Maximus.

She’d killed Greyson’s brother.

For the first time in her life, she found herself questioning everything she’d done as a Daggermouth, everything she’d stood for. Every contract she’d fulfilled, every life she’d ended in the name of justice, of vengeance, of the greater good.

How many had been based on lies? How many had been innocent people sacrificed to maintain political fictions? How many times had she been a pawn in a game she didn’t even know she was playing?

She’d become a Daggermouth as a child with nothing left but rage and a promise to make the Heart pay for what it’d taken from her. Jaeger had seen her potential, had molded her into a weapon, had given her purpose when she had none.

But what purpose? To kill on command? To eliminate targets without question, without hesitation, without ever considering that the lines between enemy and ally, between guilty and innocent, might be blurred beyond recognition?

She’d told herself she was fighting for the Boundary, for justice, for a better future. But maybe she’d been nothing more than another cog in the machine of oppression—just serving a different master.

The tears came without warning, silent trails cutting through the dried blood on her face. She didn’t bother trying to stop them. What was the point of pride now?

“Greyson.” Her voice was raw and barely audible. The quiet between them had become its own kind of prison, more isolating than the glass walls surrounding her. “Please talk to me.”

No response came. Just the sound of his breathing, steady and controlled. Too controlled. She knew that rhythm—the deliberate inhale and exhale of someone fighting to maintain composure.

The silence from his cell was worse than any beating. She’d been prepared for physical pain, for torture, for death. But this—this emptiness where his voice should be—it hollowed her out from the inside.

“I know you hate me,” she tried again, each word scraping her parched throat. “I would hate me too. But please . . . I need to know what you’re thinking. I need you to talk to me.”

“What do you want me to say?”

His voice cut through the silence, hard and cold as the concrete beneath her feet. There was something in it she’d never heard before—not just anger, but a void. An emptiness where emotion should be.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, relief and dread mingling at finally hearing his voice. “Anything. Scream at me. Tell me you hate me. Threaten me. Tell me you’re going to kill me. Just . . . something.”

He didn’t speak.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the words woefully inadequate against the magnitude of what lay between them. “I didn’t know, Greyson. I swear to you, I didn’t know who he was.”

The silence resumed. Minutes stretched into what felt like hours, the quiet growing heavier with each passing moment, the ache in her chest expanding until it threatened to consume her. She wanted his rage, his hatred, even disgust—anything but this.

Some part of her, deep down, felt the sharp threat of fear, as if somehow she could lose him without ever having him in the first place.

“Please,” she finally said again. The desperation leaking into her voice.

“You lied to me,” Greyson answered, anger finally breaking through the emptiness. “You looked me in the eye and fucking lied to me.”

“No, Greyson. I didn’t know.” Her words were frantic. “You heard your father, he was using an alias. I’d never seen his face. I didn’t know it was him.”

“I thought I could trust you.” Greyson’s voice cracked, emotion finally bleeding into his words. “You were just another tool, like me. Like all of us.”

Shadera’s tears flowed freely now at the truth in his words, the salt stinging where they met open wounds. She’d become exactly what she’d sworn to destroy—a weapon wielded by the powerful against the innocent. Her entire identity, everything she’d built herself to be, crumbled around her.

She didn’t know who she was anymore. Couldn’t separate one regret from another as they all crashed together in her mind, a kaleidoscope of shame and horror.

“I believed in what I was doing,” she whispered. “I thought I was protecting the Boundary, fighting back against the Heart. I was so fucking blind.”

The silence that followed felt like a chasm opening between them, widening with each ragged breath she took. Still she continued, unable to stop the words pouring from her.

“For years I’ve been so certain. So righteous. So fucking sure I was on the right side.” A bitter laugh escaped her, turning into a painful cough that rattled her broken ribs as she gasped. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t know who I am.”

Saying the words out loud, giving them power, collapsed something in her mind. The restraints bit deeper as her body shook with silent sobs. Blood seeped from where the cords had rubbed her skin raw, but she barely felt it. The physical pain was nothing compared to the agony tearing through her heart, her soul, her very being.

She’d spent her entire life fighting against the Heart, against the system that had taken everything from her. And in doing so, she’d become the very thing she hated—cruel, merciless, blind to the humanity of those she deemed enemies.

“Please,” she gasped, not even sure what she was begging for. Forgiveness? Understanding? Death?

She’d never felt so weak before, never allowed herself to question, to doubt, to break. But here, bound and bleeding, with everything stripped away, there was nowhere left to hide. No mask to wear. No role to play.

“I think I was falling in—” He cut himself off and for one breath, he was silent before he finished. “I think I was starting to care about you.”

Greyson’s words cut through her, precise and devastating.

Past tense. Not anymore. Not after this.

Shadera’s breath caught in her throat, a small, wounded sound escaping before she could stop it. It was an admission delivered as a death sentence.

“I don’t know if I will ever look at you again and not see my brother’s blood on your hands.”

Each word drove deeper than any torture Maximus could devise. She would have preferred more beatings, more broken bones, more physical agony to this—this decimation of something that hadn’t even begun between them.

She hadn’t allowed herself to think about it. To acknowledge or name the emotion that swelled in her chest when she thought of him, when she looked at him. When she imagined him caring for anybody else.

She didn’t know what love felt like. Didn’t know how to separate it from lust. But this feeling, this bone deep fear of losing him, made her question it.

Something inside Shadera broke. It wasn’t forceful, it wasn’t explosive, but a quiet, delicate, irreversible snap.

Greyson heard Shadera’s cry like a knife between his ribs. Sharp. Persistent. The sound was so alien coming from her—the assassin who never flinched, who had stood before his father’s threats with steel in her spine.

Her cries were quiet, restrained even in her breaking. Not the loud, dramatic weeping he’d heard from Heart nobles when they were denied some luxury, but the muffled sounds of someone who had learned early that vulnerability was dangerous, that pain was best endured in silence.

He wanted to reach for her, to comfort her. To pull her against his chest and tell her that somehow it would be all right. The impulse disgusted him almost as much as it consumed him.

She murdered your fucking brother.

Another sob reached him, this one weaker, more ragged. He imagined her bound to that chair as he was, body broken by his father’s men, face streaked with tears and blood. The image made something primal and protective rise in his chest, straining against the cold logic of his anger.

He remembered the first time he’d seen her vulnerable—truly vulnerable, not the calculated moments designed to earn his trust. The night of his father’s dinner, when she saw what he truly was. What Maximus had done to him.

Greyson remembered how her fingers had trembled when they’d cupped his face. When she looked in his eyes and told him that he deserved better. That he was a better man than his father.

He’d wanted to wrap himself around her then, to shield her from whatever demons pursued her, from whatever pain she’d endured to understand the violence that was in him. The feeling had been so strong, so unexpected that it’d frightened him.

Now that same instinct surged through him, demanding action, demanding he break his silence, reach out to her across the void that separated them. His jaw clenched as he fought against it, refusing to speak.

She wasn’t what he’d thought. Wasn’t who he’d thought. The woman he’d begun to care for, to trust, to—She didn’t exist. She was a fabrication, a tactical approach, a mission objective. And he was a fool for forgetting, even for a moment, the fundamental truth of the Heart: love outside your ring is a death sentence.