CHAPTER TWELVE
RAVEN
Snow crunches beneath my boots as I make my way through the village square, fresh powder clinging to the worn cobblestones and settling across the timber rooftops like the town has been dipped in white paint.
The market is already alive despite the cold.
Canvas awnings flap lazily in the winter breeze while traders call out prices to anyone willing to brave the weather this morning.
The smell of fresh baked bread, smoked meats and cinnamon drifts through the air, warm enough to momentarily overpower the bite of frost.
It’s peaceful. Exactly the way people here like it.
Most of them moved out here to escape the city.
To leave behind the noise and crowds. They wanted quiet, predictable lives.
A place where their children could play in the streets without learning what a gunshot sounded like before they learned the damn alphabet.
Instead, they got me. Conversations falter as I pass, their eyes lift over coffee cups before quickly dropping back to baskets of produce and half-finished conversations.
They know who I am. Most of them have known me since before I knew who I was myself.
What surprises me isn’t the village, it’s the job.
Of all the places Thomas Sterling could’ve sent me, my home isn’t what I’d expected.
He knows I live here, which is probably why he called me in the first place. Saves him a trip and all. I don’t bother questioning it. A job is a job.
I cut through the market square without breaking stride, ignoring the curious glances that follow me until I reach the old clock tower overlooking the village, its weathered stone standing sentinel over the people below, as though it has spent centuries watching lives far more innocent than my own.
The narrow timber staircase groans beneath my weight with every step as I climb, the sound swallowed by the thick stone walls as I climb higher until the sounds of bartering and idle conversation become nothing more than background noise.
The trapdoor opens onto the roof, and the cold wind immediately bites at my face, dragging the scent of chimney smoke up from the village below.
I shrug the rifle case from my shoulder, setting it carefully against the weathered stone before unfastening the clasps.
Every movement is a practiced one. Barrel, bolt, scope, bipod.
My hands never hesitate, each piece finding its place through years of repetition until the rifle rests complete across the rooftop, an extension of my own body rather than a weapon.
Within minutes, it’s assembled. I reach into my pocket to retrieve my phone, opening the message Thomas sent me the night before.
Coordinates. A time. A single instruction.
When it’s done, package the organs. They’ll be collected from this address.
There’s no other explanation, no photograph, no name or indication of who I’m about to kill or why someone wants them dead. But I don’t need one. Thomas called in a debt. I agreed to pay it. Everything else is just details.
I slip the phone into my pocket before lowering myself behind the rifle, adjusting the bipod against the uneven stone until the barrel settles exactly where Thomas’s coordinates told me the target would be.
The market fills the scope. People drift from stall to stall with canvas bags hanging from their arms, stopping to inspect each stall as they pass, not knowing that death is watching from above.
Not knowing of the destruction they’re no doubt about to witness.
I could have chosen a much more discreet location, but those weren’t the instructions and it’s not my job to question them, so I won’t.
Distance has a way of swallowing sound, so I have that in my favor.
By the time the crack reaches the square, gravity will have done the rest. Panic always arrives a heartbeat too late.
First comes silence, then the screaming.
I’ll be gone before either reaches the clock tower.
I settle deeper behind the rifle, my cheek resting against the stock as I peer through the scope, letting my breathing slow until every rise and fall of my chest becomes calm enough to steady the crosshairs.
The market ebbs and flows beneath me, their lives as unremarkable as my own and totally indifferent to the rifle trained on the empty stall below.
Minutes pass as I wait, my sights set as I watch the seconds bleed together.
Movement finally catches my eye. A woman steps into view.
She wears a white cloak, the fabric hanging loose around her frame, its hem dragging through the snow as she slips behind the stall and begins unpacking a weathered crate.
A woman. Thomas never said the target was female, and for a brief second, my finger eases away from the trigger as unease settles low in my gut.
Titan had raised us on a code that existed long before either of us came along.
Lines even men like us weren’t supposed to cross.
Women and children were one of them. There were exceptions, of course.
There always were. But exceptions were rare enough that they earned explanations. This hadn’t come with one.
I consider calling him, asking the question sitting at the tip of my tongue, but the thought dies as quickly as it came.
Thomas didn’t spend decades with Titan’s right hand by making careless decisions, and he sure as hell wouldn’t be cashing in a debt a decade in the making without good reason.
Our world survives because every man honors that truth.
I let the thought go. There’s no room for doubt once a trigger is involved.
Slowly, my finger settles back into place.
Below, the target works in complete silence, lifting polished apples from the weathered crate one by one, turning each in her hands as though searching for imperfections left behind by winter storage probably, before polishing them on her cloak and placing them into neat rows across the timber.
It’s meticulous. The kind of care most people reserve for things they love.
I watch her through the scope, waiting for the moment every silencer waits for.
A clean shot. She reaches for another crate, bending to lift it onto the stall before the winter wind sweeps through the square, slipping beneath the loose fabric of her cloak before catching on the single black pin nestled at the nape of her neck.
It holds for the briefest of moments, stubborn against the breeze, before finally surrendering, disappearing somewhere beneath the fresh snow at her feet.
Time fractures.
Her hair spills free in a torrent of inky black, cascading over her shoulders and down her back until it brushes the small of her spine, moving with the wind in slow, hypnotic waves as she absently gathers it over one shoulder without ever looking up from the apples resting beneath her hands.
The rifle shifts beneath my cheek as my pulse slams violently against my ribs.
Every instinct I’ve spent a lifetime sharpening deserts me all at once.
My finger eases away from the trigger as my eyes remain focused on the woman standing below, searching desperately for something.
Anything to prove that what I’m looking at isn’t real.
The way she tucks the loose strand behind her ear, the slight tilt of her head as she studies the apples before rearranging them for no reason other than they aren’t quite right. I know those movements. No.
The word never leaves my mouth. It detonates somewhere deep inside my chest. My lungs refuse to draw another breath as I tighten my grip on my rifle, the leather beneath my gloves creaking in protest while every beat of my heart rattles behind my bones.
It can’t be.
I’ve watched her. Spent years watching her.
Intrigued by the anomaly, a paradox that has been like a plague to my mind.
The question I could never answer. The more I thought I understood her, the little wraith who has haunted me, my home, my thoughts, the less I understood about her with every passing day.
She’d always been a conundrum, a puzzle missing half its pieces, the kind of mystery that refused to loosen its grip no matter how hard I tried to bury it.
Even after she disappeared, she’d lingered at the edges of every quiet moment, slipping into my thoughts uninvited until I could no longer tell if she was nothing more than a figment of my imagination, or real.
Was she ever real? I’d convinced myself she wasn’t.
That somewhere between the bloodshed, the sleepless nights, and the souls I’d collected over the years, I’d simply made her up. And yet, there she stands.
Every instinct that has ever been beaten into me screams the same command.
Pull the trigger. Finish the job. Climb down from this tower, unzip my kit, carve her open, package whatever Thomas asked for and walk away before the blood has time to freeze.
I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again. I’ve never hesitated before, because that sort of thing only gets you and the people you care about hurt.
They’ll burn your home to the ground, bleed your family dry, and make sure everyone unfortunate enough to matter pays for your mistake.
It’s why I’ve spent my life making certain that almost nobody does.
Caring is a weakness. It always has been.
I have to do it.
The words echo through my skull with every violent beat of my heart until they become indistinguishable from the pulse rattling behind my bones.
One squeeze. That’s all it takes. Less than a pound of pressure and she’s gone forever.
Another body. Another grave left behind for somebody else to mourn.
The rifle grows heavier beneath my hands, my finger curling tighter around the trigger as I force myself to settle into the familiar rhythm I’ve relied on since I was a kid.
The rhythm that separates man from a weapon, because weapons don’t hesitate and they sure as fuck don’t question the orders placed in front of them.
She’s just another body, it should be simple. So why does it feel like I’m about to bury a part of myself with her? She moves another apple, tilting her head in quiet satisfaction when everything finally sits exactly where she wants it. If I kill her now, the answers to my questions die with her.
Who is she? Why did she leave? What did she take that night two years ago without ever laying a hand on me?
And why is Thomas Sterling of all people willing to see her carved into pieces?
Rage simmers through my veins, hot enough to burn through years of conditioning, because somewhere out there is someone arrogant enough to believe they get to decide whether this woman lives or dies.
That they get to close a chapter I’ve spent years trying to read.
And by my hands, of all people. The fucking irony isn’t lost on me.
Years.
Watching from a distance, trying to understand the contradiction that was my little ghost. Holding onto the fragments of a woman who never gave me enough of herself away to be known, convincing myself that if I watched just a bit longer, if I paid just a little more attention, eventually what I’d missed would come to light.
Instead, she disappeared like the ghost she’s always been in my life.
And now, someone else thinks they get to decide how her story ends, and it twists something ugly in my head.
Fury. Hot, possessive, irrational fucking fury at the idea that someone out there thinks they have the right to take what’s mine.
That they get to decide when she breathes her last breath.
Slowly, the pressure leaves my finger until it rests against the guard instead, my rifle never leaving her chest even as the decision in my head changes.
I’ll do it.
Eventually.
Death can wait. But not before I know why she’s haunted me all these years.