She gave me my vengeance.
The question is: what is she giving me now?
My left leg taps once against the floor. Twice. The reduced sensation from hip to knee makes the motion feel muted,as though the limb belongs to someone else and I’m merely borrowing it for the purpose of expressing an anxiety I won’t acknowledge through any other channel.
“What if I said you only have to hide one last time to be free from the shackles of this place, Victoria?”
The words land in the dim backstage air with the weight of a blade being placed on a table—not yet used, but its purpose unmistakable.
“Would you take the opportunity?”
I stare at her.
The void offers no guidance. It rarely does in moments that matter—it’s effective at suppressing the small emotions, the daily irritations and fleeting joys that most people navigate without assistance, but when confronted with a decision of genuine magnitude, it simply retreats, leaving me alone with the raw, unfiltered processing power of a mind that has been shaped by five years of survival into something that approaches every proposition as a potential threat until proven otherwise.
Would I take the opportunity?
The first time she offered me a path, it led to vengeance.
The vengeance was real. Delivered. Complete.
She kept her word.
Which means she is either trustworthy or exceptionally patient in her deceptions.
And this offer—hide one last time, be free—could be exactly what she’s emphasizing: a final performance, a last mask, a concluding chapter in a story that has been running for five years longer than it was supposed to.
Or it could be a trap worse than death.
Which, given my current relationship with death, might not be the deterrent she imagines.
I consider the variables the way I consider every decision in Savage Knot—with the cold, methodical analysis of someonewho has learned that trust is a luxury purchased with information rather than feeling. Violet Martinez has the power, the connections, the network to deliver what she’s promising. The Forgotten Omegas organization has proven its efficacy through Elizabeth’s outcome, through Jessica’s, through Seraphine’s. The precedent exists.
But precedent doesn’t guarantee repetition.
And my case is different.
Elizabeth was hiding from rapists. Jessica from murderers. Seraphine from a system that misunderstood her.
I’m hiding from the consequences of being a murderer.
Not the same equation.
That’s the thing with life. It’s a gamble. A roll of dice on a table you didn’t choose to sit at, with stakes you didn’t agree to wager, in a game whose rules are written by people who benefit from keeping you in the dark about the odds. You can calculate. You can strategize. You can spend five years watching from the shadows and learning every play in every sector of an Academy built on manipulation and violence.
And at the end of all that calculation, the decision still comes down to a moment.
A question asked in a dim backstage corridor by a woman with violet eyes and dark red lips.
And a choice.
“I would,” I dare to whisper.
The words emerge from my throat with a fragility that surprises me—not broken, not weak, but delicate in the way that genuine truth is delicate. Vulnerable in the way that dropping your guard in a building full of predators is vulnerable. I straighten to my full height, squaring my shoulders beneath the oversized sweater that smells like wild pine, and face her fully.
“A pleasure to meet you again, Miss Martinez.”
She grins.
