Daggermouth

The bartender approached again, refilling their glasses without being asked. This time, he lingered a moment longer than necessary, his eyes flickering between Jameson and the broken drones before speaking. “Word from the Cardinal. The Veyra are doubling patrols along the main routes between rings. Something big is happening.”

Jaeger nodded once in acknowledgment, then turned back to Jameson. “We have people inside the Heart. Not many, but enough to get information. As soon as we know more about Shade’s situation, we’ll plan accordingly.”

Jameson took the fourth shot of whiskey, the alcohol doing nothing to dull the edge of his growing anger. Jaeger was playing a longer game—he always was—but Shadera didn’t have the luxury of time. Not if Maximus had his hands on her.

“How long?” Jameson asked. “How long before your informants get anything useful?”

“Days. Maybe a week,” Jaeger admitted. “The Heart is locked down tighter than usual. Something else is happening that we don’t fully understand yet.”

A week was too long. Far too long.

Jameson stood, gathering the broken drone parts and shoving them back into his bag. “Keep me informed. Anything you hear, I want to know immediately.”

Jaeger watched him, expression sliding back to unreadable. “Where are you going?”

“To find someone who might know more than your informants,” Jameson replied, already turning toward the door. “I have my own contacts.”

“Be careful,” Jaeger said, the warning clear in his tone. “The drones were just the begi

Jameson paused, looking back at the Wolf of the Boundary. “Then I’ll make sure it’s not what they expect.”

He strode to the exit, feeling the eyes of every Daggermouth tracking his movement. His mind was already five steps ahead, creating contingency plans, mapping routes into the Heart, cataloging the weapons he would need.

Jameson was halfway to the door when something inside him snapped. The accumulated pressure of days without sleep, the fear that’d been his constant companion since Shadera walked out of her warehouse, the casual way Jaeger spoke of waiting while she suffered—it all crystallized into a single, blinding point of rage.

He pivoted on his heel, strode back to the table, and slammed his fist down so hard the whiskey glasses jumped. One rolled across the table then shattered against the floor.

The sound echoed through the silent bar like a gunshot.

“You should’ve never given her this contract,” he shouted, his voice ricocheting off the walls. The words tore from his throat, exposing nerves he usually kept buried. “You knew how personal it was for her. You knew it would throw her off her game instead of taking the easy, calculated kill.”

Jaeger’s eyes darkened, the only indication he gave that Jameson had crossed a line. No one spoke to the Wolf this way, not in his own territory, not surrounded by his killers. The coin that had reappeared in his hand went still, caught between two fingers like a promise of violence.

“Mind yourself, Jay,” Jaeger said quietly, the sound more dangerous than a raised voice. “Remember where you are.”

Jameson leaned closer, past caring about the consequences. “Where I am, is in a room full of people who sent her to die because none of you understood what killing Greyson Serel actually meant to her.”

Around them, the Daggermouths moved in unity. The woman with the scarred face slid from her stool, a gun materializing in her hand as if conjured from air. The two men by the window turned fully toward the confrontation, shoulders squared and hands hovering over holstered weapons. Behind the bar, the bartender reached beneath the counter, pulling out a shotgun, and slowly rested it over his shoulder.

“She was never just taking out another Heart elite,” Jameson continued, ignoring the tension as his voice dropped without losing an ounce of intensity. “Greyson represents everything she lost. The man executes rebels in the same plaza where her parents were murdered by his father. You made it personal the moment you gave her that contract.”

A muscle in Jaeger’s jaw twitched. “She’s a professional, she knew the risks.”

“She’s a woman with a fucking vendetta,” Jameson countered. “One you encouraged and exploited. You may not have wanted to see it because she is your best, but knew she’d get sloppy with him. You knew she’d want to see his face, to make him understand why she was killing him. That’s why she got caught, the only way she would’ve ever been caught—because she made it personal.”

A man stepped forward, one hand twisting a silencer into his gun.

“That’s enough,” he growled.

“Stand down, Reeve,” Jaeger ordered without looking away from Jameson.

Jameson didn’t wait for Jaeger to respond to him. The dam had broken, and words poured out of him like blood from a severed artery.

“You know what she told me that night? She said she was doing this for her. Not because he was another name on a contract, not because you asked her to, but for her. That’s not a professional speaking—that’s someone blinded by emotion.”

Jameson’s hands splayed on the table, fingers pressing into the wood hard enough to leave marks. “And you let her go like that. Knowing. Fucking. Better.”

Jaeger’s expression didn’t change, but something shifted in his eyes—a flicker of what might have been remorse. Or guilt. It vanished as quickly as it appeared.

“You love her," Jaeger said, the words landing and cutting into Jameson.

“Don’t try to make this about me,” Jameson snarled. “This is about your failure to protect one of your own. This is about you sitting here, plotting how to use her capture to spark your rebellion, while she’s being tortured in Haven Tower.”

An mercenary near the bar—a woman with tattoos mapping half her bady—spoke up, her voice carrying in the tense silence. “Since when does a smuggler tell the Daggermouths how to handle their business? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Several others murmured agreement, hands tightening on weapons. The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees as killsights aligned on Jameson from multiple angles.

“He’s the Ghost Shade’s been fucking,” someone else said from the shadows. “Thinking with your cock clouds judgment a bit.”

A low ripple of laughter spread through the room, dark and mocking. Jameson’s shoulders tensed, but he kept his eyes locked on Jaeger.

“I know her,” he said, voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “I know how she thinks, how she plans, what drives her. I know she sleeps with a knife under her pillow and wakes up screaming five nights out of seven because she still sees her parents being executed. I know she drinks to numb the pain but never enough to dull her reflexes. I know she carries the names of every person she’s ever killed tattooed on her body so she never forgets the weight of what she does.”

The mockery in the room faded as he spoke, replaced by a different kind of tension—the recognition of loss, of the pain this city caused.

“And I know,” Jameson continued, “that she would tear this city apart brick by brick to save any one of you if you were in her position. So tell me, Jaeger, what the fuck are you doing to save her?”

Jaeger’s face remained impassive, but the coin began to move between his fingers again, dancing from knuckle to knuckle in hypnotic patterns. When he finally spoke, his voice was measured.

“Like I said, Kael is trained for this situation. She’s strong, smart, and she knows how to handle herself even in the Heart’s interrogation rooms. I trust her to make the right calls until we can extract her safely.”

“And if those ‘right calls’ include giving you up to save herself?” Jameson challenged. “If Maximus offers her freedom in exchange for the location of you, for the names of your guild, your operational tactics?”

“She would die first,” Jaeger stated with absolute certainty.

“That’s what I'm afraid of,” Jameson replied, his voice finally cracking. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

For the first time, something like genuine emotion crossed Jaeger’s weathered face—a glimmer of his own fear for Shadera’s safety that vanished almost immediately behind his customary mask of control. He set the coin down on the table softly.

“I have people working on it,” he said. “My best. I understand where you’re coming from, but like I’ve told you again and again, we need proper intelligence, a solid plan. We don’t even know for certain where in the Heart she is. I won’t sacrifice more of my people on a suicide mission because you ca

Jameson straightened, determination settling cold and heavy in his chest. “Then I’ll go alone.”

The words hung in the air, absurd in their audacity. Several assassins laughed outright, the sound sharp and dismissive.

“You?” Reeve sneered. “Against the entire Veyra guard? Against Haven Tower’s security systems? You wouldn’t make it past the first checkpoint.”

“I’ve been smuggling people and contraband between the rings for fifteen years,” Jameson replied without looking at him. “I know ways into the Heart that even your scouts haven’t mapped. Routes that bypass the checkpoints entirely.”

Jameson leaned in closer to Jaeger, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “You and your Daggermouths need to get her out,” he said, a threat layered into the words. “If you won’t do it, I’ll go into the Heart and do it myself.”

Jaeger scoffed. “You’d die trying.”

“Maybe,” Jameson acknowledged. “But I’d die knowing I didn’t abandon her like you.”

The conviction in his voice silenced the room. The assembled crowd exchanged glances, reassessing the man they’d dismissed as just another of Shade’s temporary distractions.

Jaeger leaned back in his chair, eyes never leaving Jameson’s face. “You really would, wouldn’t you? Walk straight into the Heart on some half-baked rescue mission. Die trying to save her.”

Jameson’s answer was immediate. “Without hesitation.”

“Even knowing she might already be broken? That the woman you find might not be the woman you lost?”

Jameson’s jaw tightened. “She’s stronger than that.”

“Everyone breaks eventually,” Jaeger said softly, the knowledge of personal experience edging his words. “The Heart has methods that can crack even the strongest minds. If they want information from her badly enough, they’ll get it. And what’s left afterward won’t be Kael anymore.”

“Then I’ll find whatever’s left of her and bring her home,” Jameson replied without having to think. “And love whoever she’s become.”

There had never been an easier answer. Jameson meant those words. He would never leave her to die. He would never abandon her. He would give everything, if it meant she had a chance at survival.