Chapter 13 Daggermouths Don’t Cry #3
Frustration built in her chest, making her movements sharper, less careful.
She yanked open a drawer full of undergarments, tossing them aside to check the bottom.
Another drawer, this one containing documents that looked personal—birth certificate, education records, medical files.
She scanned them quickly, looking for anything that might be leverage, might be weakness.
A medical report from three years ago caught her attention.
Multiple fractures, internal bleeding, organ damage.
The injuries were extensive, brutal. The cause was listed as “training accident,” but she knew wounds like that.
Someone had nearly beaten him to death. Someone with strength and skill and intimate access.
She dug deeper, pulling out more files and walking back into the bedroom, spreading them across the floor as she searched for patterns, for secrets, for anything she could use to destroy him.
There had to be something. Some proof of corruption, some hidden shame, some vulnerability beyond the obvious damage his father had carved into him.
A picture slipped out from between the pages, small, crumpled, and fading. Two unmasked men, one she recognized as Greyson. She studied it, spotting the similarities in the features, the same crooked smile and large blue eyes. It had to be his brother.
She stared at it for a moment longer, something familiar about the second man scratching at the back of her mind.
She recognized him, knew that face from somewhere but couldn’t place it.
She’d never seen any of the Serels unmasked until Greyson, until yesterday when Maximus showed his face.
But she knew this man, she was sure of it.
She folded the picture, shoving it into the breast pocket of her T-shirt, and kept digging through the other papers. She would come back to it later, but at least it told her one thing. Greyson Serel was sentimental. Having a picture of an unmasked elite was a crime, and he’d stashed it away.
The sound of papers rustling filled the room as she worked, so absorbed in her search that she’d stopped listening for footsteps, stopped checking the door, stopped maintaining the vigilance that had kept her alive this long.
“Looking for something?” Greyson’s voice cut through the silence.
Shadera froze, her hand clutching documents, papers scattered around her. She didn’t turn immediately, didn’t scramble for excuses. Her mind calculated distances—to the door, to the window, to the vodka bottle that could become a weapon yet again with one sharp break against the desk’s edge.
Slowly she turned to face him.
He stood in the doorway, still in his Executioner’s blacks, though the mask was gone. Blood spotted his collar—not his own, she realized. From this morning’s execution. He hadn’t even bothered to change before coming home, hadn’t tried to wash the evidence of murder from his clothes.
Shadera grimaced at the word. Home.
This wasn’t her fucking home.
His blue eyes tracked over the chaos she’d created, the violated privacy spread across his floor, then settled on her face with an expression she couldn’t read. Not anger, exactly. Something so complex it felt dangerous.
She let the silence pulse between them, let him wonder what she’d found, what conclusions she’d drawn from the documents clutched in her hands.
“You need a better lock,” she finally said, voice flat.
“Clearly.” He stepped inside the room, closing the door behind him. The click of the latch made her muscles coil in preparation. “Though I’m curious how you managed the biometric scanner.”
“I have my ways,” Shadera answered, refusing to give him any of her secrets.
His gaze swept over the scattered papers again. “Just making yourself at home, I see.”
The mockery in his tone made her fingers twitch in annoyance. She rose from her crouch slowly, keeping her face neutral.
Never show your enemy what you’re thinking.
“Looking for something to kill you with, actually.” She answered honestly and watched how it landed on his features.
A muscle jumped in his jaw.
He moved farther into the room, stepping over the papers she’d strewn across the floor without looking at them. His focus remained entirely on her face, those blue eyes tracking the bruises, the swelling, the evidence of what he and his people had done.
He stopped near the desk, his body angled to keep both her and the door in his line of sight as he rolled his sleeves up his forearms. His skin stretched tight over the muscle, the veins pulsating underneath jutting out like ridges.
Shadera watched as his fingers perfected each roll of the fabric on both arms before they curled around the ledge of the desk.
He leaned back into it without once taking his eyes off her, studying her.
She hadn’t really looked at him until now, truly looked at him.
He had to be at least six four, maybe taller.
His features were hard—sculpted as if he’d never learned to smile.
But underneath the harshness of the sharp edges, underneath the dark brows and deep set eyes, she could see a torrent of emotion raging there.
She wondered if anyone else had ever seen it, if anyone had ever seen what turmoil he hid behind the mask.
She swallowed, tearing her eyes away from him.
“You should be resting,” he said. “You need to look presentable for the family din—”
“I couldn’t give less of a fuck how I look for your sick family dinner,” she cut him off, striding toward the desk and snatching the vodka bottle from beside him before walking to the window at his back.
She took a long pull as she looked down at the Executioner’s platform.
“You killed someone this morning. A child.”
“He wasn’t a child.” The response was automatic, defensive. “He was nineteen. Old enough to know the consequences of theft in the Heart.”
“Theft,” she said quietly, taking another drink. “What did he steal? Bread? Medicine? Something to keep his family alive while you feast up here in your tower?”
Greyson’s expression hardened. “He stole from a Heart clinic. Medical supplies meant for citizens who contribute to society.”
The rage that flooded through her was volcanic, obliterating.
Before she could think, before she could stop herself, she was moving.
Not for the door, not for his throat—just moving, needing to move the fury in her body before it exploded.
His back straightened slightly as she took a step in front of him and looked up into his face.
“Contributing to society?” Her voice cracked on the words. “You mean being born in the right ring? Having the right last name? The boy probably had siblings dying of infection while you hoard antibiotics for people who have never known a day of real sickness.”
Shadera was close enough now to see the flecks of darker blue in his irises, close enough to smell the leather of his gloves and the gunpowder that lingered there.
“The law is clear,” he said, but something in his voice wavered. Exhaustion, maybe, something close to resignation. The bone deep weariness of someone who’d repeated the same words so many times they’d lost meaning.
“Your law.” She jabbed a finger at his chest, connecting with a solid wall of muscle. “Your father’s law. Written by murderers to protect murderers.”
His hand shot up, catching her wrist before she could pull back. His grip was firm but not painful, his thumb pressing against her pulse point where her heart hammered its rage.
“Careful,” he said, voice dropping low. “The walls have ears.”
She knew they were listening. Every word they spoke recorded, analyzed, judged. But the anger burning through her didn’t care about consequences anymore.
These people had taken everything—her parents, her freedom, her hope. Now they wanted to parade her around like a prized animal, use her to break the spirits of those still fighting.
“Let them listen.” She stood there, letting him feel her pulse race with hatred. “Let your father hear exactly what I think of his empire built on the bones of the people you killed.”
She pulled her wrist free, shoving a step away from him. Still he didn’t move. Only watched her, watched the emotions break through her composure.
“How many people have you killed, Greyson? Hundreds? Thousands? Do you even keep count anymore, or do they all just blur together?”
He straightened at her words, pushing off the desk and taking a step away from her as if to ground himself from the question.
“Every one,” he said, his nostrils flaring as he sucked in a sharp breath. “I remember every one.”
She hadn’t expected that answer, hadn’t expected vulnerability. The raw truth. She studied his face, looking for the lie, the manipulation.
“Then you’re more of a monster than I thought.” The words came out softer than she’d intended. “You remember them, and you keep killing.”
“Yes.” Simple. Final.
No justification, no excuse.
The honesty of it knocked something loose in her chest. She’d expected denial, rationalization, the usual Heart propaganda about necessary evils and greater goods. Not flat out acknowledgment of what he was.
She moved without thinking, drawn by the ache screaming beneath her sternum. Her hand reached for his collar, fingers finding the dried blood. Greyson went stiff but didn’t stop her as she traced the stain.
“This boy,” she started, her voice a whisper. “What was his name?”
“Marcus Chen.” No hesitation. “From Cardinal South. Three younger siblings. Mother works in the processing plants. Father executed three years ago for smuggling.”
Each detail was a knife precisely placed. He knew exactly who he’d killed, knew the life he’d ended and the lives he’d destroyed in the process.
And still he’d pulled the trigger.
“You’re sick.” She pulled back, the blood ghosting over the pad of her finger making her skin crawl. “You know what you are doing is evil and you do it anyway.”