Chapter 2 #2
Her pulse jumped—I heard it, bright and quick at the base of her throat, a rhythm meant to tempt teeth. But she didn’t look away. Her fingers carved her answer, unflinching as Fate: “Try it. See what happens.” A dare. A promise. A challenge that dragged me closer when I should have turned away.
For one maddening heartbeat, I almost did. But compulsion was blunt force, and I wanted more than obedience. Obedience breaks. Leverage lasts.
My smile curled darker. I signed slow, deliberate: “No. Too easy. I prefer good, old-fashioned blackmail.”
Her brows pinched—just the faintest fracture in that iron composure—before she caught it and masked it with steel.
I tapped the bar with one finger, slow, deliberate, letting the sound echo in the silence.
“Word on the street is you owe the pack a tithe for this land. The Divide isn’t as free as you all like to pretend.
Your sanctuary—this bar—stands because they allow it.
They could come tomorrow and burn this place to the ground, and no magistrate would stop them. ”
Her hands froze mid-motion, then tore through the air, furious. “How do you know about that?”
“Because it’s my job to know what people owe.
And because debt makes for useful leverage.
” I leaned closer, my voice lowering into something cold as my fingers sliced through the bitter tension coiling in the air.
“You think tonight was chance? That knife you threw? You and I both know you didn’t just get lucky. You saw it before it happened.”
Her fingers clenched against the wood as she took a stuttered step backward, but she didn’t deny it.
“That’s what I need,” I said, signing the words as I spoke them aloud. “Someone who can see before the strike falls. I have traitors in my Court, moving pieces I can’t catch. If you are what the whispers claim, you’ll help me root them out.”
Her jaw tightened, eyes like glass catching light. “And if I say no?”
“Then the pack remembers their tithe,” I said smoothly, signing methodically.
“They decide your debt isn’t worth the trouble of collecting, and when that happens, the Lock & Key burns.
” I let the pause stretch, then added, “But if you serve me until the traitors are gone, the pack never comes. Your bar stands. And when my enemies fall, you walk away. Debt cleared. Free.”
Her throat bobbed once against the velvet ribbon. Her hands slashed the air, clear and precise. “That’s extortion.”
“Semantics,” I said, signing, lips curving in a humorless smile. “I could compel you, take your will with a word. But compulsion breaks people. I prefer bargains. Blackmail, if you like the uglier word. Trust me, it lasts longer.”
She stared at me, jaw tight. Her hands moved, fast and sharp enough to sting the air. “You threaten my home. You threaten my people. I won’t be bartered or sold.” The signs were clipped, practical—anger with a seam of calculation beneath it.
She stepped forward until the space between us was a knife-blade.
Close up, I could see the way her throat worked against velvet, the flare of her nostrils, the steady thump of a pulse that had no intention of quitting.
She did not reel, did not shout. She signed again, the motion hard and clear: “I won’t go with you. ”
Defiant. Bare. Useful.
I let the silence sit a breath, then forced the civility I needed. I rested my hands on the counter for a moment to steady myself and then signed, “There is a cancer in my Court. Men who move like shadows. My life”—The word caught on something I didn’t soften—“is at risk.”
I did not dress it as mercy. It was simply the truth, and I had learned the Court respected that more than pleading. She watched me. No pity showed in the planes of her face, only calculation.
The thing I wanted was not ownership of her person.
It was sight. It was the one advantage I no longer possessed: the ability to know a strike before it hit.
“You saw tonight. Twice.” I kept my voice spare.
“Saved my life. Twice. If you are what the whispers claim, you can help me find the ones who send steel into my rooms and poison my tables. I need someone who sees before it happens. I need an advisor who can anticipate a move I cannot.”
Before Merrit could move again, I flipped the dagger in my grip. One clean thrust under the assassin’s ribs, angled to the heart. His body jolted once, then slumped. Final. The kind of death that couldn’t be undone.
Wiping the blade on his cloak, I let him fall into silence.
Only then did I look back at her. She hadn’t flinched, hadn’t looked away.
She’d watched me kill a man in her bar as though it bound us in blood.
That same unyielding fire in her eyes didn’t dim—it burned hotter.
Gods, she intrigued me. A lure I knew would ruin me, but one I couldn’t stop feeding on.
I let the dagger rest between us, hilt toward me, steel toward her, a promise and a threat in one. My hands shaped the words slow, deliberate: “This is what waits in my Court. Shadows with knives. Poisoners in my hall. I can’t see them coming. But you can.”
Her fingers flexed, sharp and incredulous. “You want me as your spy.”
“Advisor,” I corrected, sliding the blade back into its sheath. “My eyes where mine cannot reach. You tell me what you see before it strikes. You stand at my side until the traitors are found. Then you’re free. Done.”
She tilted her chin, unimpressed, but there was the smallest pause before her next sign. “No chains?”
I shook my head. “No chains. No leash. Just survival—for both of us.”
Silence stretched. Her gaze flicked to the ruined bar, then back to me. Finally, she signed one word, clipped and brutal: “Fine.”
The word was enough. More than enough.
I inclined my head, satisfaction curling low. “Dawn,” I signed, precise as a contract. “You come with me. You advise. You stay until the work is finished. Then you walk.”
She echoed the sign back—“Dawn”—expression unreadable.
The bargain was struck. Temporary, yes. Necessary, absolutely. And when the sun rose, Merrit Locke would step into my world not as a curiosity in a gutter bar, but as my newest—and most dangerous—advocate.
The rest I’d worry about later.
If there was a later.