Chapter 9
I wake up and immediately wish I hadn't.
Not because of pain—that's gone, which is Problem Number One. Years of shadow poisoning, gone. My bones don't ache. My blood doesn't taste like copper. The constant stabbing behind my left eye has vanished.
I've been healed. Without consent. By a civilian who makes soup.
The mess this creates makes me want to murder someone. Now I have to recalculate poison tolerance, adjust shadow exposure schedules, redo the entire death timeline I've been working with. I had charts. Detailed ones.
My room smells wrong. Lavender. Clean cotton. Someone changed my sheets while I was unconscious. Someone opened the curtains. There's actual sunlight contaminating my space, highlighting dust motes I've successfully ignored for years.
Water on the nightstand. In a clean glass. Not even the cracked mug I usually use.
Someone's going to die for this.
I dress. Everything responds correctly—hands steady, shadows obedient, body moving without the usual grinding protest. This is wrong. I'm supposed to be dying on a schedule. There were plans. Contingencies. Joss had already started interviewing replacements.
The hallway's been mopped. Actually mopped. I can see wood grain.
"Morning, boss." Ridge appears, carrying firewood. He looks healthy. Alert. Yesterday he was dying of pneumonia. "She says you need broth. Just broth. Stomach won't handle solids yet."
"She says."
My hand shoots out before the thought finishes. Shadows slam him against the wall hard enough to crack plaster. The firewood scatters.
"She says?" I let shadows crawl up his throat. Not squeezing. Yet. "Since when do my killers take dietary advice from civilians?"
His eyes bulge. Good. Fear still works.
"Boss—I didn't—she saved—"
I drop him. He crashes to his knees, gasping.
"Next person who mentions her dietary recommendations loses fingers. Clear?"
"Yes, boss." He scrambles for the scattered wood.
"Go."
He flees. At least some things remain intact.
The smell gets worse as I descend. Food. Real food. Not the stale bread and questionable meat we usually subsist on, but actual cooking. In my compound.
I find my torture chamber converted into a dining hall. Tables. Actual tables. Twenty of my killers sitting together. Eating. Conversing. Someone's laughing.
Laughing.
In my torture chamber.
She's in the middle of it all, handing out bowls. Flour in her hair. Paint under her fingernails. Same blood-stained dress from yesterday.
"Smaller bites, Tooth. Your stomach's still recovering." She ladles out what might be porridge. "And you—finish the tonic."
I take inventory. Finn actually taking notes—about food storage, from what I can see. Silent Syl signing enthusiastically, which is disturbing since she hasn't communicated in four years. Gray Streak looking content.
This is worse than a full guild war. At least those have established procedures.
"Olivia."
The room freezes. Finally.
She turns. Relief crosses her face, then concern. Her hands flutter at her sides before she catches them.
"You're up! Good. That's— How's the nausea? Any vertigo?" She's already moving toward me, then stops. Starts again. "Did you drink water? You should drink water. Lots of water. Or not lots. A normal amount."
"Stop."
She stops.
"You're in my compound."
"Yes, well, someone had to make sure you didn't die in your sleep." She pauses. "Your color's much better. How's your vision? Any spots?"
I cross the room in four strides. Grab her wrist. My shadows surge, and suddenly we're elsewhere. Roof. Cold morning air. The city spread below.
The shadow travel takes more out of me than it should. Black spots dance in my vision—funny, she just asked about that. My knees want to buckle but I lock them.
She stumbles as we materialize, gasping. Has to grab my arm to stay upright, then jerks back.
"That was—" Her voice cracks. She clears her throat. "That was unnecessary. I hadn't finished breakfast."
But her hands are shaking. Finally. A normal human reaction.
Something snaps.
The shadows explode outward. Not controlled, not directed—just raw fury given form. They tear across the roof, shredding morning air. Crack the stone beneath our feet. Form blades that could peel skin from bone, tentacles that have strangled grown men, walls of pure darkness.
They touch everything.
Except her.
Every shadow veers around her. They rage and thrash and destroy, but they won't—can't—actually reach her. She stands in the eye of my storm, watching my complete loss of control with clinical interest.
"You're upset." She says it like she's noting the weather.
"Upset?" The word comes out raw. I'm moving now, pacing, shadows trailing destruction. "You invaded my compound. Fed my killers. Changed my sheets."
I whirl on her, and she steps back. Good.
"Made them laugh. In my torture chamber. LAUGH." Another step forward. She retreats until her back hits the low wall at the roof's edge. "Do you know what I use that room for? What those drainage grates are designed to handle?"
"I—" Her voice comes out small. "I know what those drains are for. I cleaned them."
The admission stops me cold.
"You cleaned them."
"The buildup was concerning. Probably decades of— of whatever." Her breathing's gone shallow. "Very unsanitary."
"You—" I slam my hands on either side of her, caging her against the stone. My shadows writhe between us, desperate to touch but unable. "I was dying. I had accepted it. Made peace with it."
"That's terrible peace."
"It was MY peace." My voice cracks. "My death. My choice. You had no right—"
"To save your life?"
"To SEE me." The words tear out. "Broken on the floor. Weak. Human. To let them see—"
My hands are shaking. She notices.
"They already knew you were dying." Her voice stays calm. "The tremors. How you favor your left side. How you haven't taken a meeting in person for months."
Each observation hits. They knew. Of course they knew.
"Knowing and seeing are different things."
"Yes." She agrees simply. "Seeing is harder to deny."
"You made me weak in front of them."
"I made you alive." She steps forward. The shadow spear dissolves rather than pierce her. "Alive is not weak."
"It is in my world."
"Then your world needs better rules."
I laugh. It sounds broken. "Better rules. She wants better rules for the murder business."
"Dead leaders make everything messy. People fighting over who's in charge. Very chaotic."
My shadows slow. Still writhing but less violent. More confused. Like me.
"You're insane."
"Probably. But I'm also right." She faces me fully. Morning light catches the bruise forming on her throat from where I grabbed her. My stomach twists.
"I'll be back tomorrow."
"No."
"Yes." Simple. Certain.
"If you come back—"
"You'll what? Have another shadow tantrum?" She gestures at the ravaged roof. "This was very dramatic but ultimately unproductive."
Shadow tantrum. She called my complete loss of control a tantrum.
The worst part is she's not wrong.
"My guild thinks I'm up here murdering you."
"Good. Maintains your reputation while we discuss meal planning." She pulls out a folded paper. Of course she has lists. "I've organized by nutritional priority—"
"Stop." The word comes out exhausted. "Just... stop."
She does. Tilts her head. Waits.
I sit on the destroyed roof. Right there on the cracked stone. My shadows pool around me, no longer violent. Just tired.
"I was supposed to die." The words fall out. "Shadow users don't make it past thirty-five. I'm forty-one. Every day is borrowed time."
"Not anymore."
"You don't understand. I built everything knowing I had an expiration date. Made plans. Trained replacements. Accepted it." I stare at the city below. "You took that certainty away."
"I'm sorry." She sits next to me. Not close enough to touch but present. "Would you prefer to be dying?"
The question hangs there. Would I? The constant pain, the blood-taste, the spreading numbness—all gone. Replaced by this terrible wellness.
"I don't know how to be healthy." Another admission. "I don't know how to run things if I'm not dying."
"The same way but with vegetables."
I look at her. She's serious.
"It can't be that simple."
"Most things are simpler than they appear." She stands, brushes off her skirts. "Should we go back?"
"I just had a breakdown on my roof."
"Yes. Very dramatic. But your guild's probably worried."
"They're assassins. Everything they do is dramatic."
"Then we should return before they do something dramatically inconvenient."
She's right. Again.
I stand without her help. Gather my shadows. They respond sluggishly. The trip back down will probably hurt. Good. Pain makes sense.
"Tomorrow," I tell her. "You come in the back entrance. No audience. No converting torture chambers. Just... vegetables. And then you leave."
"Deal." Too easy. She's planning something. "Although the mold really does need immediate attention."
"One crisis at a time."
"Mold doesn't wait for convenient scheduling."
We shadow-travel back. I deposit her outside the kitchen and materialize in my office. Collapse into my chair just as my knees give out. Perfect timing.
Through the walls, I hear her voice. Shaky now. Playing the part.
"—very scary. Very threatening. I understand completely now." A pause. The clink of bowls. She drops something. "Sorry. Still a bit— Anyway, lunch will be simple. Just soup."
Good. She gets it. My reputation stays intact while she does whatever it is she does.
Joss appears in my doorway. Studies me.
"Productive meeting?"
"Shut up."
"She's implementing a cleaning rotation."
"I said shut up."
"Just thought you should know." She vanishes again.
A cleaning rotation. In my compound. For my assassins.
I need to update those charts. Add a new column: "Days Since Complete Operational Breakdown."
Current count: Zero.
Tomorrow she'll bring vegetables and I'll pretend this is sustainable. That she hasn't fundamentally compromised everything I built. That my shadows didn't refuse to hurt her.
That I don't want them to.
Bodies to dispose of. A guild to terrorize into submission.
But first, apparently, I need breakfast.
The broth is still on my desk. Still perfect temperature somehow. I drink it and taste defeat.
It's delicious.