Instead, I start mixing paints for tomorrow. Warm colors this time. Something hopeful. Something stupid.
Because apparently, I paint truth even when truth is that I'm worried about a stranger who probably kills people for fun.
The portrait doesn't argue with my terrible life choices. Just watches me with eyes that got painted softer than theyprobably are. Which is either my magic being optimistic or me being an idiot.
Probably both.
Definitely both.
Chapter 2
The worst part about running a criminal empire isn't the murder. It's the meetings about murder.
"So we're all agreed Hendrik needs to die?" I massage my temple where pain has set up permanent residence. Twenty-seven years of shadow magic should come with better benefits than crippling migraines and probable early death.
"His operations in the Merchant's Ring are becoming problematic," Vance adds, as if we haven't been discussing this for an hour. "The canal routes between the Third and Fourth islands—"
"I'm aware of the geography." My shadows peel away from the walls, tasting the room's boredom. They've been doing that lately—moving without permission, announcing every irritation I'm too professional to voice. Right now they're making obscene gestures behind Councilman Vance's head while he drones about territory disputes.
The darkness under my skin pulses with each heartbeat. This morning's mirror showed black veins creeping up my neck again. By forty-one, most shadow users are dead. I'm on borrowed time, and my body never lets me forget.
"The question is timing—" Vance continues, because he's physically incapable of letting murder be simple. "His warehouse on the Second Island requires careful approach, and the tides—"
"Tonight." I don't raise my voice. Haven't needed to in years. When you can drag someone into living darkness and show them their worst fears made real, whispering works better than screaming. "Hendrik dies tonight. Next issue."
The assembled guild members shift. Four lieutenants, two enforcers, and one nervous accountant who's definitely skimming but not enough to matter. Yet.
My breakfast sits untouched—black coffee and whatever pastry Joss decided I'd eat. Pain au chocolat. The chocolate smells wrong. Or maybe that's the blood-taste that never leaves my mouth anymore. Another delightful side effect.
Someone's explaining why we can't just kill Hendrik. Politics, his mother, the weather, who knows. I run the calculations that keep me functional: Vance would take forty-two seconds—carotid compression, shadows down the throat. The accountant might last a full minute if he ran. The new enforcer has that neck scar from initiation, perfect entry point for—
"Boss." Grimm crashes through my door like subtlety shot his dog. In fifteen years, I've never seen him move that fast without someone bleeding. "We have a problem."
Everyone freezes. When your senior assassin—a man who once removed someone's spine while humming—says "problem," people listen.
"Define problem." I lean back. My shadows taste his anxiety.
"Someone painted you."
I'm having a stroke. That's it. Shadow magic finally fried my brain and now my most trusted killer is speaking nonsense.
"Someone," I repeat slowly, "painted me."
"Your face. In a painting. It's..." Grimm looks physically pained. "It's on display. In the market. Where people can see it."
The Drowned Quarter looks worse in daylight. Amazing how sunshine makes poverty more offensive—all those picturesque shadows gone, leaving just mold and desperation. The market crowds part for us. Smart. Nothing good comes from four Shadow Guild members walking with purpose.
"There." Grimm points to a stall that shouldn't exist.
Because it's selling truth.
Landscapes where the happy cottages have bars on windows. Portraits that show what people hide. And there, propped against a wall like it's nothing, like it's not a death sentence—
Me.
Not the Shadow King. Not the guild master who holds the Drowned Quarter in a stranglehold. Me. The exhausted man who forgot what sleep without nightmares feels like. Who measures time in bodies and betrayals.
The artist caught me buying bread, apparently. One transaction, maybe four seconds of visibility, and she saw everything. Painted the exact angle of exhaustion that lives in my spine. The specific weight that comes from twenty years of necessary murders. The calculation behind every breath—who to kill, who to spare, who to break just enough.
