I lift my hand and press my claws against the vault wall—feel the vibration of the building above, the casino heartbeat, the life that continues.
Then I close my eyes and speak, not to Morazin, but to the dead.
“I swear,” I whisper. “The Nine won’t just be resisted.”
My throat tightens.
“They’ll be dismantled.”
When I open my eyes, Morazin is staring at me like he finally understands he’s not dealing with a criminal playing politics.
He’s dealing with a man who has decided to burn the whole structure down rather than kneel inside it.
CHAPTER 29
JORDAN
Idon’t remember taking my boots off.
One second I’m moving—always moving—hands shaking, compad clutched to my chest like it’s an organ, my head full of smoke and sirens and Morazin’s blood-slick grin. The next, I’m sitting on the edge of a bed in a back suite of the Defrocked Nun, staring at my own fingers like they belong to somebody else.
The room smells like clean linen and faint citrus, like it’s trying to convince me this is a normal place to sleep. Somewhere far above, the casino keeps humming—music muffled through layers of concrete, laughter with that bright, fake ring.
Down here, the air tastes like metal.
I keep seeing Venn.
Not his face—my brain doesn’t even have the courtesy of giving me a clear picture. Just the sound of the comm cutting out, the way Lonari’s jaw went rigid, the way everyone kept moving anyway because stopping doesn’t resurrect anybody.
I’m good at compartmentalizing. I’ve built my whole life out of neat little boxes: grief box, rage box, work box, “don’t think about your parents” box.
Tonight, all the boxes are spilling open.
My compad sits on the nightstand, screen dimmed, the biometric trace file and restraint codes locked behind layers of encryption. Clint has the draft language I wrote. The evidence vault is armed. The dead-drop is ready to detonate if I flatline.
If I die, the truth explodes.
And yet all I can think is:people are dying because I wouldn’t shut up.
I swallow, and my throat feels raw, like I’ve been screaming.
I wasn’t the one pulling the trigger.
But I’m the one who lit the flare.
My hands curl into fists without permission.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself. “Okay, Jordan. Get it together. You’re fine. You’re?—”
The door opens.
I don’t jump. I should. I don’t.
Because I know the shape of his presence now, the way the air changes when Lonari enters a room. Like the oxygen gets denser. Like gravity leans.
He steps inside and shuts the door behind him with a careful click that somehow feels more intimate than slamming it would.
He doesn’t look freshly washed. He looks like a man who’s been rinsing blood off his soul with cold water and losing. His shirt is clean but his eyes are not. His hair—scales, ridges, whatever you call it—sits slightly disordered, as if he ran fingers through it and realized that doesn’t fix anything.
