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.