Mikel stared at him, confused.
“Now.”
Mikel turned toward the nurse, dipping his head in feigned sincerity. “Please, forgive my manners, it will not happen again.”
Greyson pushed from the bed on the tail of Mikel’s words. His legs felt strange beneath him, disconnected somehow, as if they belonged to someone else. Three days of immobility had left his muscles weak, his balance uncertain.
He turned to the nurse, clasping his hands behind his back to hide the tremors. “Can you please retrieve my clothing?”
She hesitated, then moved to the small closet in the corner. She pulled out the black Executioner’s uniform, pressed and clean, no sign of the bullet hole or blood that had soaked through it.
“Sir, please,” she tried one more time as she walked the small distance between them and placed the clothing on the bed. “Your wound could reopen.”
“Thank you,” Greyson said in answer, his tone final as he gave her one last nod. “Both of you, please excuse me while I dress.”
She stepped back, eyes dropping to the floor as Mikel exited the room. She hurried out behind him, closing the door at her back and scurrying away down the hall.
Greyson waited three heartbeats before allowing himself a single, shuddering exhale. The effort of sitting up had torn something, fresh blood warming the bandage. He pressed his palm against it, feeling the hot liquid seep between his fingers. His eyes darted around the room, looking for more gauze, anything to hide this bleeding from prying eyes.
The last thing he needed was his father seeing evidence of his injury. Greyson dragged himself toward the supply cabinet above the counter, pulling open drawers and leaving smears of blood on the handles until he found what he needed. Medical tape, a skin stapler, and thick white pads of gauze.
His eyes shot to the window in the door, making sure he was out of Mikel’s sight before he turned his back toward it. He ripped the bloody dressing from his stomach, and pushed out a readying breath.His fingers pinched the wound together as a deep groan fled his lungs, and pressed the stapler to his skin. He didn’t count, didn’t give himself time to think about the pain that would follow as he squeezed the mechanism and felt the first staple burrow into his skin.
For a split second the oxygen caught in his throat as he rapidly stapled six more into place, then dropped the instrument to the ground and grabbed onto the counter’s ledge to stabilize himself. Greyson ground his teeth together, and breathed through the pain until it had faded enough to straighten.
This kind of pain was clarifying, was welcome, and he would take it ten times over if it meant saving him from aximus’s mental warfare. Physical pain drowned out the gnawing in his chest, the parts of his soul that’d been chipped away by the Heart, by his father.
Slowly, he pressed a fresh piece of gauze to his abdomen and wrapped the medical tape around his middle to hold it into place as he walked back to the clothing folded perfectly at the end of the bed.
Getting dressed was an exercise in controlled agony. Each movement pulled at the staples and sent fresh waves of nausea climbing his throat. By the time he fastened the last button, sweat beaded his forehead and upper lip behind the mask.
The door opened without a knock. Captain Mikel stood in the threshold, his own mask betraying nothing of the man beneath.
“Mr. Serel,” Mikel said, inclining his head. “The President is waiting.”
Greyson noted the earlier use of his first name, and now “Mr.” instead of “sir,” the subtle shift in Mikel’s posture. News traveled fast within the Veyra. Already, he was diminished in their eyes—the heir who ‘d removed his mask, who’d shown weakness before an enemy.
The weakest son of New Found Haven.
“Then we shouldn’t keep him waiting,” Greyson replied, voice steady despite the fire eating through his gut. He strode to thedoor, forcing his limbs to move without proof of pain. Greyson paused two paces ahead of the captain. “And, Mikel,” he said over his shoulder. “I am still the Executioner, don’teveraddress me informally again.”
“Yes, sir.” Mikel’s answer was immediate, his back straightening as he nodded.
The hospital corridor stretched before him, impossibly long. Each step was a battle against gravity, against his body’s desperate plea to lie down and surrender. Greyson focused on his breathing, on placing one foot in front of the other without faltering.
He would not show weakness.
Not again.
Theydidn’tbothertoremove the blood from her face. They didn’t care about the split across her brow or the caked red that matted her hair. Shadera wasn’t even sure if it was her blood, or the blood of the Veyra officers she’d killed that left her skin sticky as they dragged her into the President’s office in Haven Tower.
Her ribs felt as if they’d been pulped to jelly, each breath a saw blade dragged through her chest, but she stayed upright as they shoved her forward.
The office was a monument to power, walls paneled in obsidian and glass, the far windows opening onto the city’s decaying rings. The air buzzed with the faint static charge of technology, the filtered air making the coppery scent of violence that clung to her body more pronounced.
Her heart stuttered in her chest at the sight of the man responsible for every tragedy that plagued her life. Rage ignited underneath herfrantic heart, but she bit it back. She was still alive, and there was a reason for that. She’d learn that reason before making any rash decisions.
President Maximus Serel sat behind a desk the size of a grave plot, his head bent low over an arrangement of documents and holo-screens. He wore the golden mask, polished to a shine so bright she could see the ruin of her own face reflected in its curve.
