All of them. I sent Hyacinth to be sure, and now I’ll pay the price.
It would have been easy to let the basilisk die. Without treatment, his odds of survival weren’t great.
If Celine had lost him, she would have been crushed. That was my objective, and it was within my grasp. There was only one problem: if Celine had lost him, she would have been crushed. And it would have been my fault.
My face warps, burning vibrations running from the top of my forehead to the base of my neck. The foxed mirror in front of mewould be classy anywhere else, but in this dull, lifeless box, it’s a reminder of how empty my life is. How empty it’s always been.
If my face oxidized like the mirror, would I catch a glimpse of who I am beneath the amber mask? I shake my head. I’ll never know who I could have been. All I have is who they’ve made me.
Luca hates me. He blames the veydran for imprisoning monsters, but we’re bound even more brutally than his kind. Forced to live as no one, we’re locked in a perpetual state of nothing. The ruling shifters made sure of that, securing generations of veydran beneath their heel.
Sometimes I dream of my true face. It’s different every time. A different nose, different eyes—blue, green, honey brown—cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, a dimpled chin.
I don’t care if I’m handsome or ugly, I just want to be.
I hurl my glass at the mirror, unable to stand my reflection a second longer. It breaks on impact, streaks of liquor trickling down the spiderweb fractures.
Dwelling does nothing. I thought I put these thoughts behind me years ago. Why has this job stirred them up again? I’m cracking faster than the mirror.
The crackling of an incoming portal drowns out my panting.
“You’ve failed me,” S’lach says, his voice tight with fury. His red beard is fuller than the last time he barged in, but the mania in his eyes is the same. I hold my breath and attempt to calm myself. Employer or not, I’m too angry to play nice with him.
“Did I fail, or is your daughter simply formidable?”
“You know nothing of my daughter.” S’lach advances on me, raising his arm. I tilt my head and narrow my eyes at him. If he hits me, he’ll break our contract. I wish he would. It would give me a reason to fight back, and I’ve been training as an assassin since I could walk. S’lach may be big, but he’s a bully, and a bully is no match for me.
“I hired you to break her,” he snarls. “Yet she remains unbroken.”
“I wasn’t aware there was a deadline,” I say smoothly, curling my lips into a mocking smile. “I did what you asked and forced the others to fight with her. Unless you want me to slit her throat in the night, which I’m more than happy to do, you’ll have to be patient.”
S’lach’s gaze crawls all over me. I can feel his rage. It’s coating the air like thick, sticky fog.
“Results,Riven,” he says my name as if it’s something disgusting he found on the floor. “Get me results, or you won’t live to take another job.”
The contract magic wobbles, sensing the implied threat. S’lach is close to breaking our deal. I want to tell him to get out of my rooms and never come back. Gods, I want to tell him to leave his daughter alone. Instead, I dip my chin and clench my jaw until it aches.
“I’ve never failed a job,” I say calmly. And it’s true. I’ve never even struggled to complete a job before. This current of doubt running through me is new—an infection I caught after interacting with Celine.
That night at the Vegas fight club, I toyed with her, yet she surprised me. With her skill, her toughness, and her intelligence. Fighting her was the most fun I’d had in a long time.Stop this.You’ll drive yourself mad.
Shame rolls over me, hot and heavy. My cheeks burn, and there’s a thickness in my throat when I swallow.
I can’t care. I can’t be curious. I can’t get myself killed for a woman who would never look twice at me except to cringe.She’s not like that.Except she is—of course she is—I onlywanther to be different. I’m living in a fantasy, entertaining a delusion of humiliating proportions.
S’lach’s brown eyes, identical to hers, rake over me, draggingacross my exposed nerves like shards of broken mirror. He makes a sound low in his throat, speculative and primal. “Kill her, Riven,” he says. “It’s time. My daughter can’t be allowed to disrupt my plans any more than she already has.”
He backs into the portal, and the magic fades.
His presence sits like an anvil on my chest long after he’s gone.
This indecision—I must move past it.
Celine is a weakness I can’t afford. I need to get rid of her before it’s too late. She will go back into the arena, and this time, she won’t make it out. I’ll make sure of it.
Outside her cabin, I can’t resist listening at the door.
Cold nips at my hands, but I’m so used to it that it barely registers. Brutal. Uninviting. The monster realm is the perfect fit for what the veydran have been forced to become.
