Waking to a kick in my stomach, I coughed and tasted copper. A filament voice barked over me, rough with impatience. "Get up, roach. Ugh—you smell like death. Clean yourself up. We've got to go meet the boss."
I blinked through a fog of sleep and shock and realized I did, in fact, smell awful. I found the same bucket from yesterday, splashed lukewarm water over my face, scrubbed at grime that wouldn't come loose, and forced my old clothes back on. They fit the way ragged things fit—adequately, but not comfortably. My stomach twisted at the thought of the work ahead.
We headed upstairs to the boss's room. When I knocked, a gruff voice told me to come in. Inside, the same faces I'd seen the day before lounged in various states of menace—men who looked bored and dangerous. I took a knee in front of the boss, keeping my head low. He gave me only a cursory glance.
"Rise," he said, grinning like a man who believes in everything that is in his control. "Do a good job today and I'll set you free."
Freedom. The word landed in my chest with the weight of a joke. I smiled inwardly—no one here gave anyone freedom. I was supposed to be bait, a distraction while the gang snatched the Marquis's daughter. My plan, the grim thing I had to do, felt like a stone lodged somewhere behind my ribs. Still, freedom was a useful lie to dangle in front of desperate men.
Iskar, the boss, began to outline the plan. His amusement curled at the edges as he spoke. "We have an inside man. He knows the Marquis's daughter's schedule—she's coming out today to buy a new dress." He laughed, the sound ugly in the low-lit room. "I've got dirt on the shop owner, so he'll stall 'til evening. We'll have four guards—two at the front, two to knock out the maid and the other guards." He looked around, hungry for agreement.
Something in the way he described it shifted from what I'd been told yesterday. The details were different—more violent, more precise. Corven, one of the lieutenants, frowned and spoke up. "Uh… boss, this sounds different than yesterday's plan."
Iskar waved a hand. "We're doing decoys. Four of them—covered, running different directions. You'll be one of the decoys. Viper will guard the real girl at a safe house. You'll be in the same cell as the girl as the final decoy." His eyes dropped to me and held. Intense. Predatory.
My stomach plummeted. Being in the same cell as the girl meant what exactly? No escape route. No chance to slip a warning to any guard. Just me, bait, waiting for someone to come take my life for a while my role is finished. I could already feel the panic rising—hot, suffocating.
Iskar must have noticed. He leaned closer and asked, almost casually, "What's wrong? You don't like the plan?"
I dropped to my knees, palms flat against the floor, mind racing. "No, my lord. I wouldn't dare." The words tasted like bile. I forced a bowed head, swallowing the urge to spit my true thoughts into the dirt. I had to get out. I had to find a way. Mocking smiles and hollow promises weren't freedom.
"All right," Iskar said, clapping his hands. "Viper, take them to the safe house."
Viper, broad and mean-mouthed, stood and shouldered a heavy cloak. We were herded out like animals, pressed into a carriage that smelled of horses and sweat. The streets blurred past the small, barred window as the carriage rattled along cobbles. I watched the world go by—faces, stalls, a sky the color of old tin—and tried to plan something, anything. Escape. Warn the guards. Survive. The three commands looped in my head until they became a chant.
We passed a crowd gathered for some market-sale or public curiosity. I took a chance that felt like madness: when the carriage slowed, I moved. I vaulted for the door and jumped out, the impact stinging my shins. Pain and adrenaline flared; I ran.
I ran until my sides burned and my lungs begged for mercy, until the city became a maze of alleys and shadows. I slammed into things, cursed, and kept going. For a moment I allowed myself to think I might actually get away. Maybe I'd find a guardpost, maybe I'd find someone who still remembered justice.
Then a voice to my right cut through me—calm, amused. "You're fast."
Everything went black.
I came to on a cold, hard stone floor. Chains clinked in the dim light. I looked down and felt bile rise in my throat—my wrists and ankles were shackled to the wall. My muscles cramped against the metal. "Overkill," I muttered, teeth gritted.
"Probably," a voice replied nearby. "You get what you earn when you run from us."
I turned my head and saw Viper leaning against the wall, amusement curling his mouth. He strolled over and gave me a hard kick in the stomach that knocked the breath out of me. Pain flared like a brand.
"You were clever, I'll give you that," he said, voice flat. "Iskar thought it worth putting you here, in case you tried to warn the guards. We can't have that—and we can't have you living either."
He stepped back and began stomping on the floor, keeping time with his laugh. "Wait here until your time comes. Maybe in your next life you'll be a useful slave."
He walked away, the sound of his boots echoing down the corridor. I hunched over the chains, breath shallow, every rib a live thing beneath my skin. The echo of his words hammered at me—useful slave. The image of a future with no will, no name, crawled across my vision like smoke.
I pushed myself up, knees trembling, leaning against the cold wall until my head stopped spinning. Pain radiated from my midsection where Viper had landed his boot—stinging, insistent. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, but I swallowed them hard. They weren't for the pain. They were for home. For a world of bright, mundane things—corners of an apartment I knew by smell, the sound of rain on a car roof while driving to work, the taste of coffee. Those things felt impossibly far away.
I clenched my jaw until my teeth hurt. Anger coiled under my skin, hot and sharp. "You just wait," I whispered to the darkened corridor, to Viper's still-retreating silhouette, "I will survive this. I will get out. And I'll make you pay."
There was no fanfare in that vow—no cinematic swell of music, no sudden bright idea lighting my face. Just a quiet, grinding determination that settled into my bones. Pain was a teacher. So was fear. Both sharpened me. Back to meditation I began charging up those spark ready to be fuse and split again. Wait in this cold cell for the right moment.
The world beyond the bars felt distant, but it wasn't gone. Somewhere out there, Iskar's plan was unfolding. Somewhere out there, a girl who didn't even know how close she was to danger was choosing the color of a dress. And somewhere—if luck and strategy tipped their heads my way—someone would notice and come.
"Just you wait," I whispered again, to the walls, to the night, to myself. The words were small, but they were mine.