THE ASSASSIN BRIDE OF VALE COPORATION

3. THE HIDDEN KNIFE

"Go upstairs."

He didn't look at me when he said it. Just kept his eyes on the glass in his hand, swirling it slow, like I was something he'd already finished thinking about.

"Y-yes." I let the stutter sit there, let my hands twist together in front of me the way a nervous bride's would.

Inside, I wasn't nervous. I was still trying to figure out why my chest had done that thing when his eyes first found mine, and I didn't have time to figure it out with him standing three feet away watching.

I turned before he could see anything else on my face. Made my steps slow. Made my shoulders small.

Made the whole walk to that staircase look like it cost me something, because that's what she would do, the girl he thought he married.

I didn't look back. I never look back — looking back is how you get caught, how you let someone see the second version of your face, the one under the first.

I didn't see what happened once I did.

_

He watched her go.

The second her back was to him, something in Adrian's jaw let go, some tension he hadn't known he was carrying until it wasn't there anymore.

His eyes followed her all the way to the stairs, all the way up, tracking the white of her dress against the dark wood like it was the only thing in the room worth tracking.

He didn't move until the door clicked shut behind her.

Then he set the glass down, unfinished, and sat there a moment longer than he meant to, looking at nothing in particular, his face doing something he wouldn't have let anyone see either.

—

My room .. our room, though the word sat wrong even thinking it ... was too big and too quiet, cold marble under my heels, a window looking out over grounds I hadn't mapped yet.

I sat on the edge of the bed still in my dress, pins stabbing my scalp, and made myself go back to it.

That moment at the bar. His eyes on mine.

My heart had clenched. Actually clenched, like something had reached in and grabbed hold, and I still didn't have a name for it, sitting here running it back like an i***t with nothing better to do.

Nerves.I told myself that until it almost sounded true. That's all it was.

Long day. A wedding I never wanted, to a man I'd never seen, in a house I hadn't finished counting the exits in.

Of course my body did something strange the first time it saw his face. That wasn't attraction. That wasn't anything, and I refused to let it be anything.

I had exactly one reason for standing in this house in a dress that wasn't mine. His name was written on a hospital bracelet, not on the marriage certificate I'd just signed.

Mina didn't have room in her timeline for me to get stupid over a man with tired eyes and a drink he hadn't finished.

I was still telling myself that when my earpiece buzzed against my collarbone.

Two fingers pressed to it, voice dropped low even with the door shut. "Go."

"Boss. New request came in. High priority." Papers shuffled somewhere on the other end. "Target's listed as X. That's it. No name, no face, nothing on record. Client wants it clean and fast."

My jaw tightened. X. No background meant no leverage, no way to walk in already knowing more than the target did.

I hated jobs blind.

Any other day, I'd have been out that window already, halfway across the city, working the angles before the client finished talking.

Not today.

Today I was standing in a stranger's bedroom, married three hours to a man whose house I hadn't finished mapping, and the second I stepped past those gates without a reason good enough to survive Mrs. Liriel's questions, I'd be handing her every excuse she needed to start asking the ones I couldn't answer.

"Can't take it," I said, flat. "Send Kade. Tell him clean means clean. No loose ends. Nobody left standing who can talk."

"You sure, boss? This one's paying triple."

"I'm sure." My eyes flicked to the door, checking. Still shut. Still just me.

"Mina doesn't have time for me to be somewhere else. Neither does this house. I need eyes in, not out. Handle it, and don't call again unless something's wrong."

"Copy that."

The line went dead in my ear, and I let a breath out I hadn't realized I was holding, the tension in my shoulders unspooling the way it only ever does when I'm sure I'm—

The door opened.

I hadn't heard footsteps. Hadn't heard anything at all, and that alone told me something about the man I'd just married — that he could move through his own house like it wasn't even there.

Adrian stepped in, and I froze for exactly one second before my body remembered how to move normal again, how to sit like a girl who'd been caught doing nothing more interesting than staring out a window.

Did he hear that.

The thought landed and stayed, cold, spreading slow through my chest.

I hadn't spoken loud. I hadn't. But I didn't know how long he'd been standing on the other side of that door before it opened, and I couldn't exactly ask him outright — *sorry, did you happen to catch me ordering a hit* — without handing him the answer myself.

"You're up here already." I made my voice small, curious instead of afraid, head tilted like a girl trying to make conversation with a husband she didn't know yet.

"I didn't hear you come up. Were you — outside my door for long?"

He didn't answer that.

Didn't even acknowledge I'd asked, which meant either he hadn't heard anything worth mentioning, or he'd heard every word and simply wasn't going to hand me the satisfaction of knowing which.

He crossed the room instead, unhurried, the same unhurried way he'd crossed the church without me in it, and there was something small and dark caught between his fingers, catching the low light as he turned it once.

My mind went very, very still.

I knew that shape before I let myself admit I knew it. Knew the weight of it, the balance, the exact place it was supposed to be — folded flat in the seam of my sleeve, sewn in myself the night before with hands that didn't shake, because I never let them shake for something that mattered.

My knife, not a knife. But Mine.

I remembered sliding it into that seam like it was yesterday because it was yesterday, remembered checking it twice before the maids ever touched the dress, remembered thinking, smugly, that not one of them would think to look.

I had no idea when it had slipped free. No idea how long he'd had it. Worse — no idea what he'd already worked out about a bride who came stitched with weapons under white silk.

Every fast, clean way to take it back from him ran through my head in half a second — the reach, the angle, the two moves it would take to have it back in my palm before he understood what happened.

I let none of it show.

I let my face do the opposite instead, eyes going wide and glassy, hand coming up to my mouth like I didn't even know what I was looking at.

Adrian watched me do it. Watched close, the way you watch something you're not sure you believe yet.

He lifted the knife between us, slow, deliberate, letting the light run the length of the blade.

His voice, when it came, was calm. Cold. Nothing in it gave anything away.

"How did this get in your dress?"