Page 1 of Daggermouth

Chapter one

Mercy Is Dead

Thefirstthingyou’lllearn in New Found Haven is mercy no longer exists. Showing mercy is a weakness, and weakness will get you killed.

The second thing is this—the Veyra are always watching. From the highest glass atrium in the Heart to the windowless slum dens of the Boundary, no movement goes unseen.

The last lesson is the hardest. You must remember it, as Greyson Serel did now, standing in the center of the plaza’s monolithic platform behind two bound and kneeling rebels.

Love outside of your ring was a death sentence.

The Heart was home to the elite of New Found Haven, the one percent. The rich, and they wore masks to hide their faces.

The square slowly filled with those who resided in the Heart, coming not for belief in justice, but for proximity—proximity topower. To witness the suffering, the result of enforcing that power upon those they claimed as less than. They came for the satisfaction of seeing blood spilled at someone else’s expense.

The elite pressed shoulder to shoulder, obediently silent beneath the evening sky, as the live stream flickered to life against the mirrored surface of the twin towers erected at Greyson’s back. The towers stood in the middle of the Heart, the very center point of New Found Haven, where all corruption spilled from.

A buzz of energy filled the air, saturating through every ring of the city as billboards—usually spewing endless streams of propaganda—switched to the live feed. It was law in New Found Haven, that any person who betrays the Heart is executed publicly.

The raised platform where Greyson stood had been constructed in the absolute center of the plaza, where the veins of the city’s four main boulevards crossed. The two condemned rebels knelt, with their hands bound in red cord and beside them, in a tight formation, the Veyra enforcers stood in ceremonial red, boots shining, helmets on, their batons held at precise right angles, with guns strapped to their backs.

Greyson stayed unmoving, his mask covering his face, gloved hands folded over his militant, onyx garb. He looked neither left nor right, nor at the condemned, only straight ahead—watching, observing.

The platform was illuminated not just by the Heart’s orbital lamps, but by the harsh blue spotlight of the media drones as they circled, their lenses feeding every gesture, every tremor of the rebels, to the rest of New Found Haven.

On monitors across the Cardinal and Boundary rings, the event was broadcast live, in high-definition clarity.

The crowd’s attention was absolute. The masked elite looked up toward the rebels, like deadly flowers soaking in a poisonous sun, and waited for the carnage to begin.

Greyson let the silence ferment.

He waited until he felt the nervous pulse of the crowd sync with his own breathing, until the two on their knees began to twitch from the weight of attention. Only then did he step forward, moving his arms behind his back as the thud of his boots echoed against the marble dais.

He did not read from the script; he didn’t need to.

His father had beaten thelines into him.

“For crimes against the motherland,” Greyson started, his voice perfectly modulated, “and for violation of the sacred laws of New Found Haven, these criminals stand judged by the Heart.”

Greyson glanced at the crowd. The mask hid the micro-twitches of his jaw, the bloodlessness of his lips, but not the flatness of his gaze.

“By order of President Maximus Serel, justice will be enacted in the manner most befitting the crime.Death. The charges are as follows: conspiracy against the Heart, illegal communication between the rings, fornication, and love across faction lines.”

A ripple of approval sounded from the masked crowd, as if a liturgy had been completed.

Greyson raised a hand, silencing them.

The man was from the Boundary, the outer ring of the city. A nobody, with a face scarred by acid runoff from the industrial plants and poor nutrition. His clothing had been stripped of all rebel markings. He stared at Greyson with the intensity of someone who had nothing left to lose.

The woman kneeling next to him was a teacher from the Cardinal, the middle ring of New Found Haven. She was small and trembling, her hands mottled with burn scars from just proximity to the Cardinal ring’s chemical plants that turned even the air into poison. Even kneeling, she attempted to maintain her dignity, lips pressed tight.

Greyson regarded the couple, and allowed himself to feel nothing. He didn’t believe in the necessity of this act, but as he stood there, words from his childhood scraped at the back of his mind. A lesson in biology, an anecdote about wolves and culling, taught not in the classroom, but in the den at night by his father’s voice.‘Mercy is weakness, Grey. Weakness is the end of all things.’

Greyson shook the thoughtoff.

“In accordance with tradition,” he started again, “the condemned are allowed a final statement and to choose the method by which they will be executed.”

His attention turned to the man and woman kneeling before him.