Elegance. Beauty. Grace.

Three words to describe him.

Standing on that stage, with that white skirt fanning out around him, he reminded me of an angel.

Truly a pity I'd have to stain that crisp outfit with crimson before the night was over.

I checked my knives once more and pushed off the railing.

As a child, I had always dreamed of seeing a performance like this one. I had always had an appreciation for storytelling, even without words. Which was probably why I had this taut thread in my chest, making it hard to breathe, or move without tears coming to my eyes.

That voice like paradise hit my ears again, singing about a field of daises and a woman waiting for her lover.

I turned away and tucked my knife back into my suit. Then I pulled my mask over my face.

The rafters would give me a great view.

Backstage was also a good option.

I decided on rafters. It would be easier to make an escape.

I scaled the wall and made it to the rafter farthest from the stage. I needed to aim for the middle.

Zephyr held a long high note, piercing my eardrums. I hopped to the next rafter. One more and I'd be in the perfect position.

Zephyr spun, skirt flailing again.

I jumped again. I pulled my knife out and raised my arm.

One more job.

The knife trembled between my fingers, the polished steel catching the theatre lights like a sliver of moonlight.

Below me, Zephyr danced like the music had crawled inside his bones and hollowed him out until he became nothing but movement and sound. The audience sat utterly still beneath him, enchanted. Even the nobles in their velvet boxes had forgotten to whisper, and even I found myself breathless. His voice swept through the opera house again, softer now. His song had changed, mournful, slow, the haunting lament of a lover who had never returned home. The thread in my chest tightened painfully.

Do it.

The order echoed in my skull with my employer’s voice attached to it as I came to amidst Zephyr's song. One throw, one clean arc, one simple action, a strike to the throat to fell him centre stage. By the time the audience understood what happened, I’d already be gone. Easy.

So why wouldn’t my hand move?

Zephyr spun again, slower this time, white skirts blooming around him like flower petals drenched in silver light. His eyes lifted toward the ceiling, and for one impossible second, I thought he saw me hidden in the rafters. But his gaze drifted past, dreamy and distant, and the music swelled toward its finale.

I lowered the knife. “…Damn it.” The curse barely left my lips.

I sheathed the blade and stepped back into shadow just as the audience erupted into applause. The thunder of clapping shook dust loose from the rafters just before the curtains fell.

Intermission.

I exhaled slowly through the mask. Backstage would be easier now anyway, less dramatic, less risky. Less chance of seeing him like that again.

I moved silently across the rafters toward the backstage ladder. Below, workers scrambled across the stage preparing the next set, weaving between exhausted dancers and musicians who wiped sweat from their brows. I caught sight of Zephyr in his white skirts and jewelled bodice dip beneath the curtains to his room.

I descended into darkness behind him.

The backstage corridors smelled of powder paint, candle smoke, and roses. Performers hurried past me without noticing, too distracted by costume changes and cues. I slipped behind hanging costumes and into a narrow passage beside the dressing rooms.

Voices echoed nearby.

“…five minutes before second act--”

“…His Grace wants to meet Zephyr personally--”

“…did you hear about the threats?”

Threats? I stilled.

Then came another sound, soft, metallic, barely noticeable, like the click of a pen. I turned sharply toward Zephyr’s dressing room door. Attached to the handle...was a wire, delicate as silver spider silk, leading into the floorborards where I could see through the cracks, a black object, red light atop it blinking rapidly.

A bomb. Not my method. Not my employer’s style either. Someone else was here.

Then, the dressing room door opened from the inside. Zephyr stepped out laughing softly to himself, still glowing from the stage lights, entirely unaware as his hand remained on the handle.

The wire pulled taut.

I moved before thinking, lunging from the shadows and slammed him backward into the wall just as the explosive detonated, and the corridor behind us vanished in fire.

Heat rolled over us in a wave, and for a moment the world narrowed to the sound of wood splintering, plaster raining down, someone screaming three corridors over. I had Zephyr pinned beneath me against the wall, my body curled over his like a shield as smoke poured into the narrow passage. Somewhere behind us, fire began eating through the curtains.

"You--" Zephyr coughed, twisting beneath me. Up close, without the stage lights washing him out, his eyes were a startling shade of grey, like rain about to fall. There was soot already smudged along his jaw. "You pushed me."

"You're welcome," I said, voice rough behind my mask.

I hauled him up by the arm before he could ask anything else, dragging him through a side door I'd marked earlier out of habit: assassins always knew the exits, it was practically the first rule, and out into the cold night air behind the opera house. Alarm bells had started ringing somewhere inside. Distant shouting. The glow of fire licked at the windows we'd just escaped.

Zephyr collapsed against the brick wall of the alley, chest heaving, white skirts now streaked grey with ash. He stared at the burning building like he didn't quite believe it was real.

"That was meant for me," he said quietly.

I said nothing. My hand had drifted, without my permission, to the knife at my hip. One throw. He was right here, unguarded, gasping for breath, exactly the opportunity I'd wasted twice now.

I didn't move.

"Threats," he murmured, almost to himself. "They said there'd been threats. I thought it was just theatre gossip. Rival singers. I didn't think--" His voice cracked. Underneath the angel, underneath the voice that could fill an opera house and make hardened nobles forget how to breathe, there was just a man.

The feeling eating at me was one I should have gotten rid of years ago.

"Who are you?" he asked, finally looking at me properly. His gaze burned through the knives at my hip that he must have felt against him when I'd thrown him to the wall.

"Nobody," I said. "Someone who happened to be in the rafters."

"Rafters." A breath of disbelief, almost a laugh, though it shook on the way out. "You were watching the show."

"I was watching you." The words left me before I could stop them.

He studied me for a long moment, and I became suddenly, acutely aware of how close we were standing. Close enough that I could see the fire reflected in his eyes, close enough to hear how unsteady his breathing still was. He had every reason to be. Instead, something in his expression softened, like he was looking at a person.

"Thank you," he said.

The thread in my chest, the one that had been pulling tighter and tighter since the first note of his song, snapped taut and held. I thought of my employer's voice in my skull. One throw. One clean arc. Easy.

It had never felt less easy in my life.

"You should get somewhere safe," I said instead, stepping back into the dark before he could see whatever was happening on my face beneath the mask. Before I could see it myself, really, and have to give it a name.

"Wait--" Zephyr reached toward me, fingers brushing my sleeve before I pulled away. "Will I see you again?"

I didn't answer. I couldn't, not with my chest aching like this, not with the fire still crackling behind us and the distant sound of the city waking to chaos. But as I disappeared back into the rafters of the night, I already knew. I would be back tomorrow. And the knife would stay sheathed for one more day. The job was supposed to be easy.

I had never been so grateful, or so afraid, to fail at something in my life.

"You. . .didn't kill him?"

I sighed, exhausted. "No. I didn't have an opportunity."

My employer, who is known as Scarlet Wrath or just Scarlet, looked up from their paperwork. "There were plenty of opportunities. But, from what I've heard, you *saved* the target."

"There was another assassin. Not someone from our circle," I said. "I'm fairly certain they were from the Pit."

Scarlet stood and walked over to me with practiced calm. "The Pit hasn't been heard from in two years. So, unless they've decided to make a sudden reappearance, your story doesn't add up."

My hand drifted over the knives snug against my hip. "There was a bomb planted just outside Zeph---the target's room. Bombs are the Pit's signature style."

"The Pit also likes to storm the buildings they destroy," Scarlet said, ignoring my nearly detrimental slip.

In the assassin trade, one cannot afford to have *any* attachment to the target.

I struggled to find any memory of a storming of the opera house, but no matter how hard I tried, nothing surfaced.

"There was no further attack. The target is still at large," I replied, my voice monotone.

Scarlet looked me in the eyes. "Well, then. You won't rest until he's dead."

"But---"

They slammed me into the wall; their forearm pressed hard against my trachea. "No buts. Either he will be dead within the next forty-eight hours, or you will be."

Against my will, I gasped for air. A terrible show of weakness. My vision started to dim around the edges.

"Because, remember, Valentine, *I own you.*"

Tears sprouted in my eyes.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes," I whispered, unable to do anything else.

Stars were popping in my vision now.

Scarlet dropped their arm and I collapsed to my knees, gasping and gently pressing a hand to my throat. That was going to cause bruising.

"Good," Scarlet said. "Now go."

I stood on trembling legs, gingerly pulled my mask over my face, and hopped with practiced ease out the window.

There was absolutely no way I could kill Zephyr after yesterday.

I had to find him now.

We had to go.

I had never left Scarlet's office so fast, which was impressive, given the typical time sensitivity of my profession. I stumbled out onto the street, and into the market two streets over, quickly buying a scarf with the counterfeit money I had stashed away to hide the bruises I could feel forming at my throat. They were going to be watching me now, I thought, scanning the busy aisles and stalls for anyone who seemed to be watching me too closely.

And there was.

A woman, slight and tall, with her arms propped up against the cheese stall, steely gaze fixed on me like glue. I recognised her stance almost immediately. She was Pit. Her flowing black cloak and hair, no doubt styled in such a way to hide the company's tattoo behind her ear, screamed it. Her gaze didn’t waver. Not even when a cart rolled between us, blocking her view for a heartbeat. When it passed, she was still there, line of sight unbroken.

I tightened the scarf around my throat.

The Pit didn’t send scouts. They sent executioners.

She pushed off the cheese stall with casual grace, like she was simply stretching her legs after a long day. But her hand drifted toward her cloak, and I knew that movement. Knives.

I turned sharply into a side alley, weaving through crates and hanging lanterns, walking with my head high, slipping between shadows like they were old friends. The market noise dimmed behind me. And then footsteps followed me, light and practiced. I ducked behind a stack of barrels, pulling my mask down just enough to breathe properly. My throat throbbed where Scarlet’s arm had crushed it. Every swallow felt like sandpaper.

The footsteps stopped.

“Valentine,” a woman’s voice called softly, almost as if she was trying not to disturb a sleeping animal.

My blood froze.

I stepped out from behind the barrels, knife already in hand. “You’re far from home.”

She smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes. “So are you.”

Her cloak shifted, revealing the faintest glint of metal beneath. It was too small to be a bomb. The I saw the flash of the barrel. It was a dart launcher, a low-level Pit specialty, loaded with a potent paralytic.

“I saw you at the opera,” she said. “You saved the singer.”

“Not intentionally.”

“Does Scarlet know that?”

My jaw clenched. “Scarlet knows enough.”

She laughed once, a sharp exhale. “The Pit has been watching Zephyr for weeks. You think you were the only one hired?”

“What do you want?” I asked.

“To warn you.” She stepped closer, boots silent on the cobblestone. “The Pit doesn’t care about your employer’s timeline. They want Zephyr dead tonight.”

Scarlet’s deadline was forty‑eight hours. The Pit’s was now.

“And you’re telling me this because…?”

“Because you got in the way of our bomb.” Her expression hardened. “And because you’re about to get in the way again.”

I didn’t deny it.

She sighed, almost disappointed. “Valentine, you’re good. One of the best. But you’re not good enough to fight the Pit and Scarlet at the same time.” She raised her hand, revealing a small silver token, etched with a serpent coiled around a dagger. The Pit’s mark. “Leave the city,” she said. “Tonight. If you stay, you die. If you try to save him, you die faster.”

I stared at the token, at the warning, at the woman who should have already slit my throat but hadn’t. “Why tell me?” I asked.

“Because,” she said, stepping back into the shadows, “the Pit doesn’t kill people who are already dead.”

Before I could react, she flicked her wrist. Something whistled past my cheek, embedding itself in the wall behind me, a dart, its tip glistening with paralytic. I spun, knife raised, but she was already gone.

Zephyr was in danger. Scarlet wanted him dead. The Pit wanted him dead.

And now I had less than a night to get to him before one of them succeeded.

My heart was lodged in my throat, which was throbbing already from the bruises, from the moment I stepped through Zephyr's window.

He was at his vanity, brushing out his long blond hair and singing softly to himself.

Watching that, I couldn't breathe.

Until I remembered I had maybe ten minutes to pack him up and leave before Scarlet or Pit got here.

"Zephyr," I said, loud enough for him to hear me, but not to alert any guards that might be present.

He turned sharply, the brush clattering to the floor when he saw me.

I held a finger over my masked lips and stepped fully into his room.

He stood and carefully walked up to me, his purple robe swishing around his legs. "What are you doing here?"

"I have little time to explain and even less time to get you out of here," I said. "Pack any necessities but keep it light."

He frowned. "Wh---why? What's going on?"

I met his rainy gaze. "They are coming to kill you, and I am trying my damndest to prevent that."

Then I opened his armoire and pulled the clothes out, sparing little attention to anything but the window.

He grabbed my arm. "Stop! Tell me who you are and who's trying to kill me!"

I sighed in irritation. "Scarlet Wrath and the Pit are both after you. My name is. . ."

A moment of silence passed between us as I hesitated.

But in the end, if I wanted him to trust me, I would have to trust him in return.

". . .Valentine. My name is Valentine."

He inhaled and brought his chin up. "I'm Zephyr. You already seem to know that, though."

I couldn't reply, however, because a faint tink reached my ears.

Before I could think, I pulled Zephyr into the armoire and closed the doors.

Through the crack in the doors, I saw a shadow hop through the window.

Click. Click.

My muscles clenched. No, not her.

"Valentine. . ."

Barely a whisper, and it still sent shivers down my spine.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are."

I slid a knife from the strap around my thigh.

Just a step closer.

My fingers trembled, but I tightened them around the handle of my blade.

The doors of the armoire were thrown open and my knife swung to the right in a beautiful arc.

The steel plunged straight into her jugular, spraying red everywhere.

My hand clamped over Zephyr's mouth before he screamed, and he whimpered against it.

Something about that squeezed my heart harder than it should've.

Donna fell to the floor, limp. That wouldn't last long.

I noticed now just how close to me Zephyr was. His body was flush with mine, and I could feel his thighs pressed to me. I could even smell him. He smelled of chocolate and vanilla.

That should not have taken my breath, but it did.

"You understand now how important it is that we leave?" I asked as soon as I recovered, looking at him. His eyes were trained on Donna.

He nodded slowly and I helped him out of the armoire. Wordlessly, he picked up a single duffle bag.

"Is that all?"

Another nod.

I offered my arms to him. "Come on, then."

He walked up to me and held out the duffle bag, but I ignored him and picked him up.

Zephyr didn't even make a sound as we left the room, and I found a nice stallion in the stables.

I cupped my hands for him, and he stepped up onto the horse. I hauled myself up behind him and took hold of the reins.

Just before I flicked the reins, something grazed my cheek, drawing the thinnest line of red.

I paid no mind to whoever wanted to kill us now and spurred the stallion.

They would give chase, but I would be faster.

I always was.

The stallion's hooves ate up the cobblestones, sparks kicking off the shoes with every stride. Behind us, the city was waking to alarm bells and shouting, but ahead there was only road, only dark, only the warmth of Zephyr's back pressed against my chest.

He hadn't said a word since the stable.

I didn't push him. Shock had a way of stealing speech, and he'd earned the silence twice over now. We rode until the city lights thinned to nothing behind us, until the road turned to packed dirt and the trees crowded close on either side. I finally slowed the horse to a walk when my own pulse stopped hammering quite so hard in my ears.

"You can breathe now," I said quietly. "No one's behind us."

"How do you know?"

"I'd hear them."

He turned his head slightly, just enough that I caught the edge of his profile, pale in the moonlight. "You're very sure of yourself."

"It's kept me alive this long."

"That woman," he said finally. His voice had lost its stage-polish, gone thin and unsteady. "You killed her."

"Yes."

"Just like that."

"Yes."

He was quiet again, and I braced myself for the horror I expected to hear next, the recoiling, the what are you. Instead, when he spoke, his voice only shook harder.

"Thank you," he whispered. "I know that's -- I know it's a strange thing to be grateful for. But thank you."

Something in my chest twisted. I'd killed for money more times than I could count, without a flicker of feeling, clean and tidy. I had never once been thanked for it like this, like it mattered, like I mattered for doing it.

"Don't thank me yet," I said. "We're not safe. Not by a long way."

"Where are we going?"

That was a question I had no answer to. Scarlet's reach extended through every city I knew well enough to hide in. The Pit's reach, apparently, extended just as far. And I had maybe forty-some hours left on a clock that had started the moment Scarlet's arm left my throat.

"There's a place," I said, because I couldn't afford to give him uncertainty right now. "A safehouse, it belongs to an old friend, a few hours out. We'll be able to think there."

"Think about what?"

"About what comes next," I said.

He didn't ask anything further, but I felt him shift, settling back slightly, letting some of the tension bleed out of his spine. Trusting me. It was foolish of him, dangerously foolish, considering what I was, considering the knives still strapped against my thighs, still slick with Donna's blood. I found myself grateful for it anyway.

We rode in silence a while longer before he spoke again, softer this time.

"Valentine."

My name in his voice did something unfair to the thread still pulled taut in my chest. "What?"

"Why didn't you kill me? Back at the opera. You said you were watching me."

I kept my eyes on the road ahead, grateful the mask hid my face. "I don't know," I admitted. "I've never not known before tonight."

He didn't answer that. But he leaned forwards, just slightly, just enough that his head rested against my back. The cut on my cheek had stopped bleeding by the time the trees gave way to a narrow valley road, and I let the reins guide us both deeper into the dark, away from a war I had, somehow, without meaning to, picked a side in.

I only hoped that wouldn't get us both killed.

Zephyr had fallen asleep on the ride; his body rested comfortably against mine. It was scary how comfortable it was.

I, however, stayed fully alert, ears listening for the slightest dip in the air, eyes watching for a shadow, nose waiting for a smell that wasn't Zephyr's vanilla scent that kept tickling my nostrils.

It never came, and I arrived upon the "safehouse" before dawn.

I slid off of the pure white stallion and took Zephyr into my arms. His head lolled against my chest; his calves rested on my forearms.

Once I reached the doors of Maria's inn, I knocked with my knee.

She answered, glasses at the tip of her nose.

"Hello?"

Her eyes widened in surprise and the hand gripping the doorframe tightened, knuckles white. "Valentine?"

I grimaced. "Hello, Maria."

Her eyes fell to Zephyr. "Bring him inside. I'll make us some tea."

I did as she said, and she had me put him in a room in the back. Then I wandered to her for tea.

She shoved a teacup into my hand and sat heavily in her chair. "I told you to never come here again."

I sat with her, gentler than she did. "I had hoped to avoid that subject."

"I know you, Valentine. You never avoid anything."

I took a sip of the tea. It was bitter, as though thrown together rather than properly brewed and sweetened. "I find that I've been changing as of late."

Her gaze flicked to the room Zephyr lay in. "Yes, I see that."

There was an accusatory undercurrent to her voice.

"I'll lay it out flat for you. That man has done something to me," I said and pulled my mask down. "Something I find myself liking more and more every moment, despite my strongest logic telling me not to."

Maria sighed. "They'll know you're here."

"How did you---" I started.

She looked up at me. "Because, Valentine, I know you. And I know if it wasn't life-threatening, you wouldn't be here. Donna won't be able to pass through the borders, but her brother will."

I couldn't stand the thought of Zephyr being hurt by Donnie. If Donnie were to lay a finger on him, I would slit his throat without hesitation. And that scared me.

"Scarlet is after me too. And the rest of the Pit, besides Donna and Donnie," I said. "And they want Zephyr, too."

Maria's eyes narrowed for half a second. "You two are on a first name basis, hmm?"

I blinked. She had me there. "Yes."

Out of the blue, Maria reached forward and pulled the neck of my suit lower. A gasp slipped from her.

"Valentine! Who did this?"

I covered the bruises and my eyes shifted to the ground. "Scarlet. They---"

"Hurt you," she finished, her face settling into something akin to hatred. "And they will pay."

I heard a rustle and Zephyr sat next to me. His scent assaulted my nose, and I found myself breathing it like air. There was something most certainly wrong with me.

He rubbed his eyes and moved his long hair behind his shoulders, tucked it behind his ears. "What's going on?"

Before I could answer, his gaze caught on my neck. His eyes widened and he reached out, as if by instinct.

"Valentine, that needs tending to," he said, his fingertips brushing the bare skin of my neck.

I shivered and pulled away ever so slightly. "I will be fine. We need to discuss what we're doing next."

Maria stood in a sweep of black robe and strode away into another room, which left me alone with Zephyr. That was not good.

"I'll get a rag and some ice," Zephyr said quietly, eyes downcast.

He stood as well and left.

I swallowed. I had done something wrong. I had upset him. That was something I couldn't live with.

So, I followed him to the inn kitchen, where he was elbow-deep in the freezer and on his tiptoes.

Watching him struggle to reach the ice caused a strange reaction. I smiled.

"Do you need help?" I asked and grabbed a handful of ice before he replied.

His expression softened from the scowl it was in. "Thank you."

My heart lurched and I gave a weak hum in response.

Then I watched those pale, slender hands wrap the ice in a rag.

He looked up at me. "Tilt your head back."

I hesitated a moment but did as he told me to in the end.

One would think, after everything I had done in my life, ice would not bother me.

And they would be wrong.

Maria and Zephyr had to hold me down to apply the rag-wrapped ice to my throat.

"This will keep it from swelling," Zephyr said to me, though that did nothing to help my scriggling.

When they had finished with their torture method, the three of us had a conversation about safe places within the next fifty miles.

Maria had a map spread across her desk, with metal pins scattered in the paper.

She pointed a finger to a pin thirteen miles from our current location. "I would suggest going there. Ride through a river and throw Donnie's scent tracking, then continue to San Tijuana. They'll hide you from authorities for a while, but Donna will catch up within two and a half days."

Zephyr nodded. "I think I've performed there."

I scolded myself internally when I realized my eyes were resting on his face and not the map.

"Then we'll follow Maria's route," I said. "And after San Tijuana, we'll plan our own route until they've lost our trail."

Zephyr's gaze locked with mine. "Sounds like a plan."

And that was when the first blast came.