The click of the cuffs echoes in the room. Inessa tilts her chin up as the agents guide her forward, her gown trailing behind her like a dying comet’s tail.
The feathers on her mask tremble with pure fury. She twists her head just enough to find me, her pupils contracting as though I’m the light she wishes she could snuff out.
“Love makes fools of killers,” she hisses, her voice slicing through the thick hush, a blade coated in perfume and venom.
Her words hit with the precision of a sniper shot, but they don’t do anything to me. Where they would have gotten under my nerves some months ago, they feel like a breeze brushing my face.
I step close enough that only she and Damian can hear me, close enough that the agents rounding her up pause to make space.
“Then I’ll live with being a fool,” I whisper righteously.
Her nostrils flare. For a fraction of a second, her mask slips—not the physical one, but the one she’s worn for years. I see fatigue lurking in the corners of her eyes, the ghost of loss, the brittle ache of someone who built her entire spine out of ambition because she feared she didn’t have one otherwise.
And then it’s gone.
She turns away sharply as the agents lead her down the steps, her heels clicking like the last nails in her own coffin. The doors slam behind her.
Damian exhales and I turn to him, adrenaline still coursing, my pulse a drumbeat of victory and cost.
Kiro appears beside me, sweeping off the last of his mask so his face can breathe again. Sweat gathers at his temples; he wipes it with the back of his glove and mutters somethingin Russian that I’m ninety percent sure translates to “need a fucking vacation so bad.”
Iosif, stoic as ever, stands by the marble banister like a shadow with a heartbeat. A few stray bullet holes dot his jacket from the mercenaries that had gotten three shots off before Damian folded them into the floor like broken furniture.
His expression is unreadable marble, save for the slight tilt of his head toward me.
Damian’s mask hangs from one hand, the other hovering near my waist like he wants to pull me into him but won’t do it in front of ninety terrified strangers and two dozen agency officers.
“We need to move,” he murmurs. “Before the rest of her network realizes who sold her out.”
I nod. “We already sent the transmission.”
“Yes,” he says. “But this won’t end up cleanly, not with Markova.”
He touches my back lightly, guiding me toward the service corridor where we slipped in earlier. The guests part for us like we’re walking through fog.
It’s only once we’re in the quiet, dim hallway behind the ballroom that anyone speaks again.
“That went… well,” Kiro says, which means the opposite.
“You’re bleeding,” I tell him.
He glances down at the cut on his forearm.
“Tiny cosmetic imperfection. Women love a man with scars.”
Damian snorts. Even Iosif smiles, barely.
We move quickly, descending narrow stone stairs, exchanging masks for earpieces and slipping through anemployees-only door that spits us out onto the edge of the Bosphorus night.
The salty breeze sweeps through my hair, carrying scents of grilled fish from the waterfront, diesel from the ferries, crushed petals from the market stalls that are closing for the night.
The city glitters across the water. Mosques glow like constellations brought down to earth, bridges strung with lights like jeweled threads pulling Europe and Asia together.
We move as a unit toward the waterfront path, near our extraction point. There’s a strange reflective quiet settling over us all.
Is it all really over? After all the battles, the scars we bear.
Damian walks beside me, our shoulders brushing. When we reach the Bosphorus Bridge, its massive suspension lines slicing the night sky, Damian stops walking along with me.
