Daggermouth

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 co

“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 sca

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 sca

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 sca

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 sca

The lock clicked open just as the sca

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 ru

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 sca

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.