Daggermouth

“My father doesn’t care what you want,” Greyson said, circling back toward the living area. He would inspect the bedrooms last. “Or what I want. The law is the law, and now that we’ve seen each other’s faces, there are only two options. Death or the Vow.”

“You’re all riding the law like it’s a dick,” she said, perching on one of the kitchen island stools like she already ran the place. Another pull from the bottle. “Your own dick, I might add, since you made them. How does it feel to get fucked by yourself?”

“I didn’t write any of these laws, my father did,” Greyson snapped back, his patience with her childish remarks growing exceedingly thin.

“Oh, so incest. That’s pleasant. Tell me, little heir, what’s Maximus packing? Seems like maybe two to four inch—”

“Do you ever shut the fuck up?” Greyson finally hissed, cutting her off. “We don’t have a choice, so either deal with it or prepare to be executed beside me.”

Greyson had no intention of dealing with it, or being executed in the square. He did, however, have every intention of finding an open window and shoving her from it. They couldn’t blame him if she died trying to escape.

A horrible accident, an unfortunate mistake.

She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “There’s always a choice. You could have kept your mask on. You could have let me kill you instead of whatever dramatic surrender that was.”

“Would you have?” he asked, turning to face her. “Killed me if I’d kept the mask on?”

Her green eyes met his over the bottle. “Without remorse.”

He believed her. There was something clean about that, something honest. She would have ended him and felt nothing but satisfaction. No guilt, no second thoughts. Just another Heart elite removed from the world.

“Then you shouldn’t have hesitated,” he said, returning to his search.

Ten devices. Another one behind the ventilation grate in the main room.

Shadera slid off the stool, bottle in one hand, and moved toward the small table near the entry where mail accumulated through the automated drop system. Her fingers reached for the stack of papers.

“Don’t touch my shit.” The words came out as a bark.

Greyson crossed the room in three strides, snatching the papers from her hand before she could examine them. Supply manifests from the Cardinal, coded but still dangerous if someone knew what to look for.

She smirked, that particularly infuriating expression that made her split lip pull tight. “Our stuff now, My sweet, spineless heir.” She took another drink, eyes never leaving his face.

The insult landed precisely where she’d aimed it.

Spineless.

It was the word he whispered in the dark, the word that festered beneath his skin, that fed on his cowardice. He was too weak to stand up to his father. Too weak to stop the abuse of his mother. He lived in both worlds, smuggling for the rebels while carrying out executions that tore at his soul. Each death a fracture, a silent scream, another piece of himself lost. But Shadera wasn’t an i

And Daggermouths deserved to die.

“Call me whatever you want,” he said, voice dropping low. “It won’t change the situation.”

“No?” She stepped closer, close enough that he could smell the vodka on her breath mixing with the copper scent of dried blood. “Then what will? Because I promise you, I’m not spending the rest of my life shackled to the Heart’s favorite murderer.”

The sca

“Eleven so far,” he said. “Everything we say, everything we do, is being recorded. So maybe think about that before you a

She tilted her head. “I think everyone already knows that’s my plan. Seeing as I’m the reason you can barely stand. That wound is bleeding through your uniform.”

He glanced down. She was right—a dark stain had spread across the fabric where the staples had torn. The pain had become background noise, static compared to the relentless screaming of his current reality.

“I’ve had worse,” Greyson retorted.

It wasn’t a lie.

Though he had never been shot or even stabbed, the scars his father had inflicted on his body had been much worse, and those came at a greater cost.

“Sure you have.” She took another drink. “Let me know how that works out when infection sets in. I’ll be sure to tell the President you died very bravely.” She turned toward the hallway to explore the rest of the apartment.

Greyson watched her go, noting the way she favored her left side, the careful way she held her shoulders to minimize pressure on what was likely a fractured collarbone.

“You know what your problem is?” Shadera started again, turning back to face him. The words carried a different weight now, something dangerous threading through them.

Greyson set the sca

“You have no respect for life. Not even your own, since you practically begged me to kill you.” She moved closer, her gait still uneven but predatory now. “Day after day you murder i

The rage that surfaced was immediate and volcanic. “I am better than you,” he growled, his hands curling into fists. “You’re a Daggermouth. You kill for credits. I kill for order, to keep this fucked-up city from falling into chaos. How many people have you killed to fill your pockets?”

The proximity of her body sent warning signals firing through Greyson’s nervous system. She was dangerous, injured but still lethal.

“The difference is I don’t pretend it makes me righteous.” She was close enough now that he could see the individual bruises on her throat, purple-black fingerprints where the Veyra had grabbed her. “I kill because I’m good at it. Because every contract I fulfill keeps medicine in the clinics, keeps families in the Boundary from starving even for just a few more days. You kill because Daddy tells you to.”

The words barely left her mouth before he moved. Not a conscious decision, just his body reacting to the insult, to the truth of it. His hand shot out to grab her wrist, to force her back, to make her stop fucking talking.

She twisted away faster than he’d expected, using his momentum against him. Her elbow caught him in the ribs—not hard, but enough to make pain burst from the center of his wound. He turned toward Shadera just as she swung the vodka bottle, aiming for his head. He ducked under the blow, his shoulder slamming into her midsection and knocking her to the floor, the bottle shattering beside them.

Shadera’s knee co

Greyson surged to his feet, his eyes blazing. “You fucking bitch,” he snarled, spitting blood onto the floor.

Shadera gri

Greyson charged her again. This time, he caught her around the waist, lifting her off her feet and slamming her back against the refrigerator. Magnets scattered, clattering to the floor like metallic rain.

Shadera drove her fist into his kidney once, twice, three times, but Greyson clenched his jaw through the pain and tightened his grip, one hand digging into her hip as the other closed around her throat.

Her hand slid between their straining bodies, finding the bandage on his stomach, and dug her fingers into the wound.

The pain was exquisite, white hot, obliterating. Greyson’s grip on her throat loosened as he gasped in agony, vision going dark at the edges, and Shadera used the moment of weakness to shove him backward. He stumbled, his back slamming into the island, and she was on him in an instant, her forearm pressing down on his windpipe.

For a moment, they just stared at each other, both of them panting, their faces inches apart. Her green eyes were wild, her pupils blown wide with adrenaline and rage.

Greyson’s hand shot up, his fingers closing around her fractured collarbone and squeezing. She didn’t bite back the scream that tore from her throat as her knees buckled and Greyson kicked her back against the counter opposite of them. He pi

“Not so tough now, are you Daggermouth?” he growled, his lips brushing her ear. “Without your knives and your guns, you’re nothing. Just a scared little girl playing at being a killer.”

Shadera snarled wordlessly, bucking against him, trying to throw him off. But Greyson was bigger than her, stronger, and he had the advantage of leverage. He ground her down into the marble, his hips fitting perfectly against hers.

“Is this what you want?” he asked, locking her in place with his body weight as her eyes co

“Is that what gets you off, little heir?” she breathed, taunting him as he pushed his chest closer to hers. “Do you like it rough? Like inflicting pain?”

He fucking loved it rough.

Greyson shook the traitorous thought from his head as a charged silence grew, both refusing to be the first to break.

“Mr. Serel?”

Chapman’s voice from the doorway shattered the moment like a bullet through glass. Greyson shoved away from Shadera so violently he nearly fell, keeping his back to Chapman so he wouldn’t see his face.

“What?” The word came out as a snarl.

Chapman stood perfectly still in the doorway. His mask on, hands clasped behind his back in his typical pose as he took in the destroyed kitchen—broken glass, scattered papers, blood on the counter.

“I apologize for the intrusion,” Chapman said, his tone professionally calm. “I rang a few times, but the President ordered I enter to help Ms. Kael settle into her rooms.”

Greyson’s jaw worked, fury and a

“Fine,” he bit out. The word was insufficient, too small for everything boiling in his chest, but it was all he could manage.

He needed distance. Space. A locked door between him and that fucking animal. Without looking at either of them, he strode toward his bedroom, his gait slightly uneven from the reopened wounds.

“Mr. Serel,” Chapman called after him. “Should I send for medical—”