THE BLASTED CONTRACT COIN BOOK 1

CHAPTER 29 FORCED PROXIMITY

POV Alistair

The heavy double doors of my office didn't stay closed for long. Though Mercy had departed to think on the Forced Proximity plan, the rest of the vanguard remained behind, eager to discuss the changes with Mercy that we had all witnessed.

They were all restless, their rhythmic, anxious footsteps or finger-tapping grating against surfaces filled the silence. I placed my fountain pen neatly back into its brass cradle.

"So," I began, my voice a level, commanding baritone.

"What happened?"

Lucian didn't answer right away. He took a slow, rattling breath, and as he did, his grip on his weave failed entirely. The ink-black shadows that he usually kept tucked under his cloak began to act like a predatory fluid. They swarmed upward, climbing his torso, swallowing his jaw, and blanking out his features until he disappeared from existence.

He had lost the fight to contain them. Keeping his shadows suppressed in a room with such low light must have taken an exhausting toll on his reserves. We couldn't see him, we couldn't smell him, and the dense shadows now blending with the environment choked out his voice or any sound he tried to make from reaching us. He was all but invisible now, though I knew he could still hear every word we uttered.

With Lucian forcefully muted by his own rogue weave, the burden of the report fell to the twins.

"Lucian lost his mind down in the cellar. He threw the grifter against the wall and choked the life out of him. He wanted to watch him die," Caspian spoke up, his voice cracking slightly as he stepped out of the periphery and toward the desk lamp.

"But the exact millisecond the rat's heart faltered, Mercy dropped," Sterling cut in, his fingers twisting together frantically. His native sensory threads were sparking erratically around his knuckles.

"She fell completely unconscious, hitting the stone floor without trying to catch herself. The physical trauma itself doesn't transfer; we checked her neck, and there is no bruising or swelling, but the level of consciousness does. If his mind goes dark, hers is forcibly dragged along with his, it seems."

The twins were twenty-four, widely recognized as two of the most cold-blooded interrogators our city had ever trained. But looking at them now, the lethal veneer had completely melted away. They looked like terrified, frantic children. To the world, Mercy was our unyielding, clinical executioner. To them, she was the steady anchor who had practically raised them. Seeing the machine break had completely unhinged their reality.

"There is more, Dad—Alistair," Caspian corrected himself in a hurried panic, leaning both hands heavily on the edge of my desk. "She is receiving sensory input and has had feelings. It's happened all morning. There was an anomaly in Poppy's lab, and apparently, Gideon was beside himself."

Poppy shifted forward, sitting right at the edge of her seat. Her fingers were raw from where she had been biting at her nails in sheer anxiety.

"It was my fault," Poppy whispered, her voice trembling as the eyes of the room turned to her.

"I was running a baseline diagnostic in the lab. I exposed her to a low-potency joy weave, just a routine light sensory addition to test her like I always do. But the reaction was entirely volatile, Alistair. It triggered a massive panic attack."

She paused, swallowing hard, her knuckles turning white.

"She claimed her head felt as though it were fracturing from the inside out. Gideon tried to intervene instantly with a heart weave to soothe her nervous system and stop the cascade. When he touched her, Mercy looked at him and said it felt... nice. And then her system completely flatlined. Her heart stopped for three full seconds."

Sterling stopped pacing, his chest heaving as he looked from Poppy back to my desk. They'd both come to a realization.

"Wait. When her heart stopped... what happened in the cellar? Did the grifter collapse too?" Poppy asked me.

"No, the prisoner was fine all morning. I had Dante keep an eye on him, and he would have told us otherwise," I answered bitterly.

Sterling slammed his palm against the stone molding of the doorway.

"So it truly just runs one way. She's bound to his vitals, but he doesn't inherit a damn thing from hers."

I remained silent for a long moment, letting the data assemble itself within my mind.

That was an immense volume of critical information to digest in such a brief window, but in our line of work, raw data was a currency that mattered. The picture was grim, but it was clear.

I allowed my Authority to expand slightly, blanking the room in a heavy, grounding pressure to force the twins' erratic breathing to artificially match my own calmer baseline.

"We have more definitive parameters of this contract now," I said, my voice cutting through their panic like a tolling bell.

Rule One: If the grifter dies, Mercy dies with him.

Rule Two: If he loses consciousness, so does she.

Rule Three: The link is entirely asymmetrical. Anything suffered by Mercy leaves the prisoner completely untouched.

"This blasted contract coin has forged a parasitic contract between his soul and hers," I concluded, tapping a single finger against the desk.

I did not like this.

What we thought was her normal baseline was actually armor, and now it was cracking under the chaotic weight of a street thief's life. I did not like seeing my Mercy in this state at all.

The heavy oak doors clicked open once more, cutting through the dense tension of the room.

Jasmine stepped into the office. She didn't offer a greeting; her arms were piled high with ancient, leather-bound registries retrieved from the deepest vaults, her face pale and smudged with old ink. She dropped the heavy texts onto my desk with a thunderous thud, scattering my loose parchments.

"You can't break it," Jasmine said without preamble, her breathing shallow as she looked between the twins, Poppy, and me.

"I've crawled through every ledger on Soul Weaving and high-tier Blood Contracts, and I've asked some of my contacts. It is fundamentally impossible to sever the tether by force. If we try to cut their bond by force, it will likely cause the collapse of both souls."

The empty space near the curtains shifted slightly, a subtle ripple in the ambient light proving Lucian was listening, even if he remained entirely locked away in his silent void.

"Ah, nice to have you here, Lucian," Jasmine added. She liked to make sure he was acknowledged and felt part of the group, even if he couldn't participate all the time.

The curtains rippled again in silent acknowledgment.

"Then what is the strategy?" Caspian demanded, looking at the ancient books.

"Satisfaction of the contract," Jasmine stated firmly, slamming her palm onto an open page covered in geometric crimson seals.

"A Soul-Contract is a cosmic ledger. It operates entirely on balance. The grifter's coin is actively linking Cillian and Mercy to it, and in turn to each other, albeit it's rather one-sided. The contract must be satisfied on its terms. Every term of agreement, every underlying emotional or physical transaction the coin demands, must occur."

She looked directly into my eyes, her expression grim.

"We don't know the terms, though. Finding out what they are may prove difficult and time-consuming. If we want our sister back, we have to let the contract run its course."

I leaned back in my chair, the pieces of our grand strategy shifting instantly to accommodate the cosmic law.

"So the Forced Proximity plan can still work," I murmured, the full scope of the operational shift locking into place.

"We keep him alive. Mercy befriends him, learns more about him, and finds ways to help him, protect him, save him, provide for him, or anything of the sort. Things will have to balance out eventually."

I looked across the room, letting my gaze linger on the twins, Poppy, Jasmine, and the empty space where Lucian stood hidden.

"Any objections?"

Silence met my inquiry. Even the shadows near the curtain remained perfectly still.

"Alright then," I stated, pulling a fresh ledger toward me.

"He goes back to his life, and Mercy goes with him. We will fulfill this contract as soon as possible. And if anyone gets a better idea along the way, I would love to hear it."