Maeve
I chew my lower lip as Soren’s eyes scan mine. He turns away, pacing to the far side of the room, and leans against the wall.
“I told her to get fucked, but a few days later, while I rotted in a holding cell deep beneath her lair, she’d sent her people to fetch Patton from Moonrise. She used him against me, threatening to kill him if I didn’t do her bidding. She put my brother's debt on my shoulders–a sum no one should have ever been able to pay off. I knew she’d kill Patton without hesitation so I… I gave in. I’d been trapped for several weeks at that point. Patton told me my trainers and comrades in the Ghosts thought I’d just walked out, changed my mind, and they moved on like I’d never existed. I started to think Tom was right. There wasn’t a place in the world for people like us, so I leaned in. I started as a thief, a pickpocket. I was good at it, kept getting better at it, all while she held Patton over my head. When I started doing bigger gigs on my own, outside of her command, to pay down my brother’s debt, she used Patton to keep me glued to her, telling me the debt had doubled because of Patton’s needs, his housing in her den, food, clothes. It didn’t matter. I was falling fast, drinking up the same darkness that took my brother’s life. I did bigger, and bigger, jobs. I worked fast and clean. I got the attention of Hannibal, a man I’d never met but apparently called all the shots, and just when I’d managed to pay off my brother’s debt, I turned twenty-one. All of the sudden I was… a liability again.” His eyes hold mine in the growing darkness as the storm rages. “During those years as a thief, she put Patton to work. His skillset was different from mine. She used his charm, grace, and good looks, turning him into a whore, a piece of meat she could dangle in front of people she wanted something from, or that Hannibal wanted something from, and Patton was dutiful because he knew if he ever said no, or refused, the Viper would punish me and vice versa.”
A strangled sob rises up my throat, but I choke it down.
“I rebelled when I found out what the Viper was using Patton for. He’d been…” Soren presses his fist against the stone, closing his eyes against what I can only describe as a wave of rage and agony. “One of his regular clients nearly killed him, beat him so badly he ended up unable to walk for weeks. In response, the Viper said Patton was even further in debt for all the medical visits and medicine she had to smuggle for him from Moonrise, and I lost my fucking mind. I killed several of her best guys–slaughtered them.” He swallows hard. “That was when she knew she couldn’t ever risk losing me. She put me in a silver band, put one on Patton, too, when he came into his shifting abilities. The jobs she lined up for me at that point were all violent going forward. Murders, punishments to our own people, and the like. She also started–started threatening to use Patton for her own pleasure. She’d been making passes at me for years, and I… I did what I had to do so she’d leave Patton alone. I did side gigs as much as I could. I bought that property in the middle of nowhere, put him there to keep him safe and out of her sight, and then kept her busy.” His eyes slide to mine. “If you know what I mean.”
I want to put the knife through my own heart.
Soren grits his teeth as he looks down at his shoes. “Four years ago, I was tasked with… with killing an Alpha in Tarsian. Normally my marks were smaller guys, random nobodies who owed debts that hadn't been paid and tried to go on the lam, but this was new. The Viper insisted I do it. She said I didn’t have a choice, that the order was directly from Hannibal. I was… clawing my way out by then, stealing and robbing to continue paying down my debt and Patton’s debt and was making progress, even though I knew I’d never get out, but maybe Patton could. I killed the Alpha, and she left me alone for months, which was new. That taste of freedom was enough to do it again when asked, but that second mark…”
I watch as he traces his fingers over the scar on his forearm. “That second mark was wrong. Something was off. It was an Alpha in Crescent Falls–a smaller one, someone without much rank within the kingdom. I watched him for days, watched his family, wondering why the Spider and the Viper needed him dead. News of the death of the Alpha in Tarsian was making waves at that point. Your Allied Kingdoms had been hunting for Hannibal for years already and tied him to the murder. But I… I had to do it. I killed an innocent man with a family and left him where they’d find him. I made it quick, painless. I let him see my face.” Soren turns from me so I can’t see the look passing behind his eyes. “And shortly after that, I met him.”
“Hannibal?”
“No, the Architect.”
He turns back to me, walking toward me with sudden purpose shining behind his eyes, but stops short of my legs before crouching down.
“He’s the one who wrote the note you found. I’ve never seen his face. I’ve only heard his voice once or twice. He’s–he’s not just a shifter, I know that much. He’s something else, something dark and twisted, and when I was given my third mark, one of the Patriarchs in the Deadlands, he found me there and offered me a deal I couldn’t refuse.”
“I don’t understand. You’re–you’re working with someone?”
He nods. “You have to go to the grave with this information, Maeve. Do you understand? There are dozens of lives at stake.”
I nod, but my mind reels.
He kneels, his knees resting against my boots. “He knew where to find me–somehow. He knew what I was going to do and stopped me. He was trying to undermine the Spider and had a way to do it. The money he offered to go along with the plan was immense, and I couldn’t say no. He gave me an out, and I took it. The Viper would give me a mark, and with the Architect’s guidance, I’d put them and their families into hiding, in a place no one would be able to find them, playing it off as an assassination. A year passed. We moved six Alphas into hiding. I only killed three that year, but they weren't marks from Hannibal.”
“But from the Architect,” I whisper.
He nods in confirmation. “Alphas who were known to be working with the underground, the crime lords, like the Viper. Alphas who ran illegal breeder auctions and the like–those were the ones that died, that made the news the most, and none of it was directed by Hannibal. He grew suspicious but was drinking in the notoriety. The Viper couldn’t do anything about it. They couldn’t pin it on me because I was still carrying out their marks, but they had no idea I wasn’t killing those Alphas, all while their allies were being slain. And then… then Hannibal got desperate, moved on to tormenting the royal family, your family, directly. He had his men try to kill the princess, your sister. I was supposed to be on that boat that day, by the Viper’s command.”
My eyes widen. “You were?”
He nods. “The Architect intercepted me in Veiled Valley and sent me to Tarsian instead, where I killed one of their rogue Alphas.”
I remember that. I remember seeing it on the news when I’d stood in the tea shop with Soren. Soren, who’d smiled when the news anchor referred to him as the Blade, and I’d called it a fucking stupid nickname.
“What’s going on?” I ask, my voice trembling. “Why all the deaths? Why–”
“I don’t know. All I know is the Viper has mentioned some grand plan. But I’ve never met Hannibal. Not once. And things went quiet after your sister disappeared then returned. No more marks, no more gigs, not with the royal family up in arms. We were all told to lay low, to fend for ourselves, and I did. I spent the last two years doing gigs again, stealing, like I stole from you, using this downtime as an opportunity to finally save the money I needed to pay off Patton’s debt–and mine. And I have enough now. The money you found is enough to get him out.”
The distance between us feels like too much, but the knife is still heavy in my hand.
“You stole from me because it would pay off Patton’s debt,” I say, already knowing the answer.
But his reply isn’t what I’m expecting.
“I stole from you because–because I spent two years… over two years wondering what the hell you were up to, why I hadn’t seen you again. I broke into the castle because I knew, admittedly, that I could take what I needed to secure my own freedom, but there was something about you, something about those two times we met, that kept your memory lodged in my head, and I couldn’t shake it,” he admits quietly.
My breath leaves my lungs in a whoosh, my body reacting to his proximity, to the memory of being beneath him, my hands gliding over his naked back.
He reaches toward my lap, his fingers grazing mine as he lifts my hand and presses the knife I’m gripping against his throat.
“You know everything now,” he says.
“I can’t kill you.”
“I need you to, Maeve. I’m actually asking it of you. I need you to do it.”
“I won’t. None of this was your fault.”
His eyes darken, every conflicting shade suddenly heightened. “I am not a good person.”
“You are–”
“I,” he cuts in darkly, “killed without remorse, without feeling. I don’t regret it. I don’t regret stealing. I don’t feel guilty about taking and ruining lives. I would do it all again–”
“You were protecting your friend,” I grit out through tears. “You were forced to be like this, Soren.”
“I was born like this,” he says. “I will never change. I can’t erase what I’ve done, what I’ve become. My death would be a blessing on Eastonia, and we both know it.”
“No–”
He leans in, gripping my hand hard so I can’t let go of the knife still pressed against his throat. “I hurt you. That is the only regret I have.”
My lower lip trembles as I search for something to say, anything that’ll change his irrational mind. How do I even begin to fix something, someone, so broken? Someone who never knew love, warmth, or protection? Soren was always on his own. Always.
I’ve never felt that way. I’ve never known what it feels like to have nothing to eat, nothing to wear. I was never enslaved and held against my will. I was never forced into someone’s bed–
The dam breaks. Tears slide down my cheeks in a torrential downpour I can’t stop. His grip on my hand loosens, the knife falling and clattering to the ground between my knees. Soren lunges, crushing me against his chest, his arms wrapping around me and clutching me close.
I bury my face in his neck, murmuring incoherent curses, promises, and pleas.
He’s immovable, this force of a man. Like a mountain–strong, tall, and forever proud. I can’t kill him even if I swore that one day, when I became queen, I’d hunt him down and end his life myself. I can’t. I can’t. Even before I knew the truth, I wouldn’t have been able to raise a single finger against him.
Because I love him.
The words burn through my head, igniting my powers, making them simmer beneath my skin. My magic calls to him, like it’s looking for a way inside his mind, to find the broken pieces and weld them back together again, making him whole.
But I already know it’s fruitless. I know the cold, hard, truth of it without him having to repeat it out loud.
This, whatever this was, ends here.
I’m a Firestone witch. I’m… I’m the queen.
Soren is tangled in a mess I can’t fix, and we both know it.
And even if I could… he won’t let me. He won’t drag another person into this.
But I still beg. My voice shatters as I turn to look up at him, my lips resting on his as I bite through sobs of agony. I can fix this. I can save you. Let me help you. Let me try.
He smooths my hair away from my face, resting his forehead against mine. “I’m close to ending the Viper’s reign, Maeve. Trust me. I can’t bring you into this.”
“But I’m me,” I cry out, and he kisses the words away, his cheeks wet with my tears.
“This is not your fight. You have to go home. I have to take you home.”