Chapter Thirteen Jace
The cottage sits at the end of a gravel road that winds up through pine forest for six kilometers. No streetlights. No signage. No indication that anything exists at the end except more trees. Supposedly Briar bought it after falling in love with the snowy mountains. I hate the snow. It’s too cold.
I park the rental car at the base of the drive and walk the rest of the way. Standard protocol for approaching a potential hostile. If Briar has set traps, I want to see them before they see me.
The night is cold, the kind of cold that seeps through layers and settles in the bones. Snow crunches under my boots. My breath comes out in white plumes that dissolve into darkness.
Four hundred and twelve steps from the car to the cottage.
The building is smaller than I expected. Stone walls, slate roof, smoke curling from a chimney. Warm light glows behind curtained windows. It looks like something from a postcard, not a safehouse for a Custodian fleeing assassination.
I stop at the edge of the treeline and wait.
Thirty seconds later, a voice comes from behind me.
"You're either very confident or very stupid, walking up a lit road with no cover."
I don't turn. "I wanted you to see me coming."
"Why?"
"Because if I wanted to kill you, you'd already be dead."
Silence. Then footsteps in the snow, circling around to face me.
Briar Harrington is exactly as his file described: dark hair, sharp features, the kind of face that gives nothing away.
He's dressed for the cold in a black coat and leather gloves, but the way he holds himself suggests the clothes are an afterthought.
His hands are empty, but I can see the outline of a weapon at his hip.
"Jace Harrison," he says. "The Reaper. I've heard stories."
"All true."
"Even the one about the diplomat in Prague?"
"Especially that one."
His mouth twitches. Not quite a smile. "Jagger said you wanted to talk. He didn't say why."
"Webb sent me to kill you."
No point in beating around the bush. Briar doesn't flinch.
"I assumed as much." He tilts his head, studying me. "So why are you standing here telling me about it instead of doing it?"
"Because Webb has someone I can't lose. And killing you won't get him back. Webb will kill him anyway."
"The asset." Briar nods slowly. "Elliot Rowe. I heard about that. The auction acquisition that wasn't supposed to happen."
"News travels fast for someone not in the circle anymore. Anyway. He has him in a facility somewhere in the city. Collar around his neck. Seventy-two hour deadline to produce your corpse or watch him die."
"And you came here to warn me instead of completing the mission."
"I came here to propose an alternative."
Briar is quiet for a moment. The wind picks up, swirling snow around our feet.
"Come inside," he says finally. "It's too cold for conspiracies."
The cottage interior is warm, simple, nothing like what I expected from a Custodian heir.
Disgraced and excommunicated heir.
A fire crackles in the hearth. Mismatched furniture clusters around a worn rug. Books are stacked on every surface, some open, some marked with scraps of paper. The air smells like wood smoke and coffee and something savory cooking in the kitchen.
A man emerges from the back room as we enter. Tall, lanky, with messy curls and glasses that sit slightly crooked on his nose. He's wearing a sweater two sizes too big and holding a wooden spoon like he forgot he was cooking.
Landon Thompson. The civilian Briar was supposed to eliminate. The reason we're both on Webb's list.
He sees me and freezes. His eyes go wide behind the lenses, darting between me and Briar.
"It's fine," Briar says. "He's not here to kill us."
"That's reassuring." Landon's voice is higher than I expected, tight with anxiety. "The giant murder machine in our living room is not here to kill us. Great. Fantastic. I'll just go back to the risotto."
He doesn't go back to the risotto. He stays rooted in the doorway, spoon clutched in both hands.
Briar crosses to him, places a hand on his shoulder. The gesture is casual, automatic, the kind of touch that comes from long practice. Landon leans into it without seeming to notice.
"Jace Harrison," Briar says. "He's the one Jagger mentioned. The Reaper who went off-script."
"Off-script." Landon laughs, but there's no humor in it. "That's one way to put it. I read the files you showed me. Two hundred and seventeen confirmed kills. The thing with the ambassador's wife. The incident in—"
"Landon." Briar's voice is soft but firm. "He knows his rap sheet. I won’t let anything happen to you, okay. Relax."
Landon subsides, still gripping the spoon. His knuckles are white.
I look at them. At the way Briar positions himself between Landon and me, protective without being obvious. At the way Landon's fear doesn't drive him away but keeps him close, unwilling to leave Briar's side.
They remind me of something. Someone.
"Webb gave me seventy-two hours to kill both of you," I say. "Produce your bodies, and he releases my asset and wipes my record. Refuse, and he executes Elliot and takes me apart for reconditioning."
"Standard coercion protocol," Briar says. "Use the attachment as leverage. Force the target to choose between someone they love and their own survival."
"I won't make that choice."
"Then what will you do?"
"Find a third option." I meet his eyes. "That's why I'm here."
Briar considers. I watch him calculate, the same way I calculate. Weighing risks. Assessing outcomes. Determining whether I'm an asset or a threat.
"Sit," he says finally. "Tell me what you're proposing."
We sit at a rough wooden table by the fire. Landon brings coffee, hands shaking slightly as he sets the cups down. He takes a seat beside Briar, close enough that their shoulders touch.
I lay out the situation. Webb's ultimatum. The collar around Elliot's neck. The facility where he's being held. The time remaining before the deadline expires.
"The problem isn't Webb," I say. "Webb is a symptom. The problem is the Custodians. They're the ones who authorized this. They're the ones who decided that attachment is a malfunction that needs to be corrected."
"Or eliminated," Briar adds.
"Yes."
"So what's your proposal? Storm the facility, rescue your asset, disappear into the wind?" Briar shakes his head. "Even if you succeeded, they'd hunt you forever. Both of you. There's nowhere in the world they can't reach."
"I know." I wrap my hands around the coffee cup, feeling the heat seep into my palms. "That's why I'm not proposing a rescue. I'm proposing a coup."
Landon chokes on his coffee. Briar's expression doesn't change, but I see the flicker of interest in his eyes.
"Explain."
"The Custodians aren't unified. They never have been.
Ten houses, ten agendas, ten different visions of what The Silent should be.
" I lean forward. "Webb represents one faction.
The hardliners who believe the Foundry protocols are sacred, that conditioning should be absolute, that any deviation is a threat to the entire system. "
"And the other factions?"
"Some are neutral. Some are sympathetic to change. And some..." I pause. "Some have been waiting for an excuse to move against Webb for years."
Briar is quiet for a moment. I can see him processing, connecting dots the way I connected them.
"You want to turn the Custodians against each other," he says. "Use Webb's overreach as a catalyst for a power shift."
"I want to burn down the part of The Silent that treats people like property. The auctions. The conditioning. The collars." I hold his gaze. "I want to make it so that what happened to Elliot can never happen to anyone else."
"That's not a rescue mission. That's a revolution."
"Yes."
"And you think the two of us can accomplish that in forty-one hours?"
"No." I set down the cup. "I think the four of us can start it. The rest will take longer."
Briar looks at Landon. Something passes between them, a silent communication I can't read.
"Why should we trust you?" Landon asks. His voice is steadier now, the fear giving way to something sharper. "You came here to kill us. You said so yourself."
"I did."
"So what changed?"
"I found something I can't lose," I say. "Something that matters more than the mission. More than survival. More than anything they trained me to value."
"Love?" Landon's voice is skeptical. "You expect us to believe a Reaper fell in love?"
"I don't know what to call it." The admission costs me something, but I make it anyway.
"I don't have the vocabulary. All I know is that when I think about a world without him in it, every calculation I run returns the same result: unacceptable. I would rather burn The Silent to the ground than let them take him from me. Besides, Briar wasn’t supposed to be capable of it either, and yet here you are.
Hiding yourselves. Is that the life you want? "
The silence stretches. The fire crackles. Outside, wind rattles the windows.
Then Briar laughs. A real laugh, warm and unexpected.
"My God," he says. "You really are broken."
"Probably."
"Good." He leans back in his chair, crosses his arms. "Because it takes one to know one. And I've been looking for someone broken enough to free us."
He extends his hand across the table.
I take it.
"So," Briar says. "Where do we start?"
We talk for three hours.
Briar knows things about the Custodian power structure that I don’t. Alliances and rivalries. Old grudges and older debts. The pressure points that could fracture the system if pressed in the right places at the right times.
"The ten houses have never been unified," he explains, pulling out a tablet and drawing connections on a digital map.
"Harrington and Rose have been rivals for three generations.
Webb and Cross align on most issues, but she's never forgiven him for what happened to her nephew at Westpoint.
Abernathy plays neutral, but he's been building his own power base for years. "