Page 20 of Daggermouth

The boots that came into view were black, not regulation, but moved with the surety of someone skilled. Of someone military trained. The boots paused beside him, and every ounce of oxygen fled his body.

For a few heartbeats total silence filled the garage, then the boots pivoted, vanishing behind another row of cars.

Greyson stayed put, refusing to trust luck. Sweat slicked his palms as he waited for the security alarm, for the snarl of patrol hounds, for the bullet through his skull.

But nothing happened.

He counted to ten. Then to thirty. Then to one hundred and twenty before he rolled out from under the car. Somewhere in the near distance, he heard the hiss of an elevator, the pressurized pop of a security door. He knew the routine. Every cycle, the Veyra sent down a two-man team to check for sabotage, then logged the vehicle’s weight and GPS telemetry before it left for patrol.

He was behind schedule. He had maybe two minutes before the next rotation.

Greyson checked the garage one last time, then dusted himself off, tugged his mask into alignment, and did his best to look like he belonged here at this hour.

As he walked toward the exit, the boots flashed behind his eyes. He would need to reroute the next shipment, maybe even scrub the entire operation if he thought someone was catching on. It could have just been a coincidence, but it felt like too close of a call for comfort. The last thing he wanted was to be the cause of another purge, another round of executions in the plaza.

He reached the personnel corridor, scanned his badge, and stepped through, forcing himself to slow down, to walk with the unhurried entitlement of a man who had nothing to fear. To anyone else, heshouldn’thave anything to fear. He was the President’s son, a high-ranking Veyra officer, the Heart’s Executioner—but he knew better.

The echo of his boots in the corridor reverberated against his nerves, but he kept his movements tight and his eyes forward. The hallway was two hundred feet of white marble tile, illuminated by overhead LEDs that made every flaw in his appearance feel like a confession. Greyson counted his steps, every one bringing him closer to the safety of his own home.

He nearly collided with the first Veyra officer at the intersection outside the security hub. The man was tall, shoulders squared, the helmet a gleaming reflection of the Heart’s iconography, blackened polycarbonate, incised with the city’s blood red crest. He was flanked by another, shorter and broader, hands folded behind his back.

They didn’t need to ask for his identification, Greyson’s mask told everyone exactly who he was.

The guards straightened at his presence.

He recognized the taller one by gait alone.

Captain Mikel.

“Evening, sir,” Mikel said, voice a breath away from insolence as his head cocked.

Greyson nodded once, quick, then sidestepped, forcing Mikel to give ground in the corridor. A lesson in primacy, for anyone watching. He caught the faintest flex of the captain’s fist before Mikel composed himself.

“Unusual hour, sir. All units are on lockdown per protocol. Is there—” The hesitation was a hairline crack in the performance. “—a concern?”

Greyson’s mouthfelt vacuum-sealed behind his mask. He let the pause hang just long enough to make Mikel unsure if he would be reprimanded or ignored.

“Are you worried I found something concerning?” he asked, adjusting his stance to something more predatory.

The captain studied him a fraction too long. Already, Greyson could see him filing away these details, the reshuffling of his loyalty in some private ledger. He wondered if this was how his father amassed such control—a million such moments, each turning the gears of paranoia.

“No. We will carry on,” Mikel answered, dipping his head.

Both guards peeled away, a twinned ripple as Greyson strode the rest of the way to the elevator without incident. Stepping inside, he keyed in his floor as the glass scanned his biometrics, and let his breath out in a slow, controlled hiss.

His apartment was a cave of order. Every surface wiped sterile, every angle constructed for maximum concealment. He closed the door, checked the manual deadbolt—an antique flourish, but one he trusted more than the building’s system—and stripped out of his mask. He set it on the stand and looked at it, half expecting it to move with a life of its own.

He strode into the large open kitchen, all white marble surfaces and black cupboards, and snatched the bottle of gin from the corner. He did not bother with a glass, just brought the neck to his mouth and drank.

The heat of it burned away the adrenaline of what he’d just accomplished for the tenth time, numbing the edges where his fury and hate festered in the dark. He took another swig, then set the bottle down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Methodically, he unbuttoned his shirt, peeling the black fabric away from his skin and folding it into a neat square. His hands fell to the marble countertop, fingers splaying across the surface, palms pressing deep into its chill.

Slowly, he let that fury, that loathing, seep to the surface as he thought about the Vow ceremony in eighteen hours, thought about the executions scheduled in the morning, thought about how his father had not lifted a single fucking finger to find Brooker’s killer.

All of the Heart’s Executioners were given a mark, a tattoo that signified their role. Brooker had a heart tattooed over his left pectoral with a bullet tearing through it. For being someone who caused so much pain, Brooker did not have a high threshold for it. So his tattoo was small, something he did not have to sit long for.

Greyson, on the other hand, enjoyed pain. Enjoyed the feeling of his flesh splitting, of his body being pushed to the limits. It was something he could control, how he reacted to the pain, how he let it affect him.