CHAPTER 25 WHEN YOU KNOW
1004 Words
POV Cillian
The cellar was freezing, but the air felt like it had dropped another five degrees before I even heard the boots on the stairs.
They'd finally unstrapped me from the chair and left me to rot on the damp straw in the corner of the cell. The twins' invasion of my mind had been brutal. Painful, sure, but mostly it was just wildly invasive.
They had dragged up memories I'd long forgotten, Miri, in particular. I thought of her every time I saw or touched the gold coin, but over the years, I'd lost the real details. I had kept this pristine, untouchable image of her as a healthy, happy child. I was pissed off that they had dragged her back to the surface looking her worst, but it wasn't like they had fabricated anything. The truth just hurt.
Still, look on the bright side: it was one hell of a way to meet the family. There's really no better greeting than seeing your future in-laws at their absolute worst. And of course, I knew they wouldn't kill me. So what's a little light torture among family, right? No one's perfect.
In all honesty, I just really hoped I'd get to see Mercy again.
I had fallen in love with her the exact moment I saw her. She was the one. No doubt in my mind. Most blokes get angry when a girl cuts their purse, but she'd had me grinning all day. I'd only been truly upset when I followed the pull of the coin and found it tossed into the refinery slag, absolutely filthy.
I had wanted a serious word with Mercy about property damage, so I just followed the tether to see where she'd run off to. The wire felt a little more intense this time around than it had with any contract participants, but it was trackable, just like all the others.
That coin had saved me from a mountain of trouble over the years. I thanked Miri every single day for it.
I leaned my head back against the weeping stone wall and clutched my chest. The gold tether buried behind my navel wasn't just an itch anymore; it was pulling taut, vibrating with a freezing, violent frequency that made my teeth chatter.
Then came the footsteps. Steady, measured, and entirely unhurried. Only my grim little angel could make a march into a dungeon sound that melodious.
The heavy iron door didn't just open; the shadows themselves seemed to part for her, retreating into the dark corners of the cell as if they feared her touch.
Mercy looked completely different from the way she had last night. The lifeless coldness was still there, but there was a sharp, jagged edge to her stillness now, like a piano wire pulled so tight it was humming on the edge of snapping.
Her jaw was locked, her posture so rigid it looked physically painful, and she held the heavy silver tray with a white-knuckled grip that looked less like a maid serving dinner and more like a soldier carrying a live mortar shell.
She stepped into the low torchlight, and my breath caught in my throat for an entirely different reason.
She was devastating. Not in the way the barmaids or the high-society dolls in the Upper Circle were. She was like a winter morning in a graveyard, beautiful, silent, and potentially lethal. My heart didn't just thrum because of the contract thethering us; it ached with a sudden, desperate need to see her look at me with something, anything, other than that clinical indifference.
She set the tray down on the stone ledge with a sharp, echoing clack that made me flinch.
"Eat," she commanded. Her voice was a flat, dead blade.
Before I could even look at the food, she began to list the items on the tray with the mechanical precision of a military quartermaster.
"Oat cakes with a vitality-weave. Spiced tea with a tincture for mending flesh. An apple tart with cinnamon and a flaky crust. I peeled the apples. I folded the dough. It is an intentional act of provision."
On she went, her tone completely devoid of human warmth, but I barely heard the words. I was too busy feasting my eyes on her, trying to figure out why the golden wire in my chest was screaming that she wanted to tear me to pieces.
The food smelled like heaven, actual, honest-to-gods paradise, but I'd lived in the gutters long enough to know that the sweetest baits always hide the sharpest hooks.
"It's likely poisoned," I rasped, my voice cracking from the dry cellar air. I forced a weak, reckless grin to my lips.
"Take a bite first. Prove you aren't just looking for an efficient way to bury us both six feet deep."
Something shifted in her eyes. For a fraction of a second, that lifeless gray hinted at an absolute tempest. It wasn't just a look; the tether in my chest spiked with a cold, localized fury so intense it made my ribs ache. It was a flash of something terrifyingly human. A spark in a dark room.
"I will not," she said, her voice dropping an octave, vibrating with a repressed violence that made the hair on my arms stand up.
"You can eat, or you can starve for all I care. The coin requires that I provide something to balance the scale; it does not require that I force the fuel down your throat or mine."
Was that a little fire behind the ice I heard?
And this was definitely a tactic I loved that they had tried next. Beats the torture.
She turned to walk away, and a sudden surge of panic and an irrational desire to keep her in the room hit me harder than the hunger in my belly.
"Wait—"
But she didn't stop. She reached the iron gate, only to find the exit blocked. Two shadows stepped into the torchlight, cutting off her escape.
- Writer
