Chapter 161 Shadows and Deceptions Part 1
The world had shrunk. It barely fit under an oak's bent spine. Daisy pressed into the mud. The trunk hid her from Ironclaw lanterns. The air buzzed, thick with wet stone and still-warm blood. The chain in her veins made her shudder; each beat drove the black lines higher. It had been forced into her during the raid on Bracken Gate. A relic collar broken open, twisted until it seeped inside. Now it marked her as the Emperor's prize, curse, and leash in one. She half-expected to see the black lines pulsing across her face like poisoned branches.
Oliver crouched to Daisy’s left, body tense and eyes alert. He leaned toward her, silently urging her on. His hand hovered, uncertain. Beside her, Cornelius wiped his blade, cleaning the blood, then readied it again, the metal stained brown from the last sentry.
The Ironclaw patrol passed so close that Daisy could hear the grating of bone against metal. They flexed their hands. Each knuckle was wrapped in string and the half-scorched teeth of old enemies. Their armor, once a patchwork of chain and scavenged leather, now bore a deliberate artistry. On every soldier's left breastplate, a perfect ceramic daisy. White petals. A black heart. Each one pulsed with a captive shimmer of magic. The symbol was not just a threat. She felt the echo between the flowers and her own name. Every enemy wore a fragment of her fate pressed to their chest. When they moved, the light spilled in perfect rhythm with the convulsions in Daisy’s arms.
The patrol did not pause at the base of the tree, but Daisy saw the trailing soldier hesitate, nose to the air like a rat who’d caught a whiff of something off. His eyes, milk-gray and rimmed with bruises, flicked once to the shadow where Cornelius lay. The soldier never even got to shout—Cornelius rose in a single fluid motion, hooked the blade under his jaw, and let him down so gently Daisy barely heard the body hit the moss. The others walked on, oblivious.
Cornelius pressed two fingers to his lips and gestured: “Move.”
Daisy tried to move, but her knees barely responded. She clenched her teeth and pressed her palms into the ground, forcing herself upright. The black veins tightened—a python coiling around her ribs. She tried to curse, but the words caught in her throat and came out as a whimper.
Oliver saw Daisy falter and lunged, catching her before she hit the ground. His wrists flared with red pain as he supported her, but he kept steady, shifting her onto his shoulder. A jolt of shared pain passed through them—their chains recognized each other.
Their eyes met, inches apart, and Daisy saw the old, impossible glint in Oliver’s: he’d never leave her behind, even if it killed him, which it would, sooner or later.
Cornelius’s eyes flicked between them, and Daisy read the question in his face: Could she even make it another mile? Or was she just a dead weight slowing them down? He said nothing, only motioned again, more urgently this time.
They moved parallel to the patrol, each step a calculation. Daisy tasted bile and copper as the world blurred—bright, then dark. The veins in her neck pulsed. If they reached her brain, she wondered, would she fall or burn through the world, leaving only a smudge?
They found cover among colossal bones and dove in. Oliver gently lowered Daisy onto packed earth, handling her carefully, though hope was scarce.
Cornelius watched the backtrail, knife ready.
Daisy tried to catch her breath, but it rasped in her chest. “How many?” she whispered.
Cornelius didn’t turn. “Ten, maybe twelve. More coming from the ridgeline. They’re leapfrogging the perimeter, but they’re not after us. Not yet.”
Oliver brushed a slick of hair from Daisy’s face. “They will be, soon as they figure out who they’re really hunting.”
Daisy grinned, showing the black on her teeth. “Good thing we’re not real.”
He smiled, but the edges trembled.
Cornelius turned now, eyes hard. “We can’t keep this up. She’ll burn through before we reach the next checkpoint.”
Daisy wanted to hit him, but he wasn’t wrong.
Cornelius crouched close, voice low as wind. "They're not patrolling for sport. They're corralling. Pushing everyone south, toward the old city." He looked at Daisy. "Your chain is screaming. I can hear it from here. They'll hear it, too. If they catch us, the Emperor gets you back and rips everything you know out of your head. That chain means you'll be his, body and soul. The rest of us—anyone who helps—will hang with the other traitors."
Daisy looked at her hands, the way the veins swelled and throbbed, every daisy-shaped whorl a warning. “Options?”
Cornelius’s jaw clenched. “We split. I take a decoy trail west, draw off the hunters. Oliver gets you into Brightwater through the tunnels. The river will hide the signature, at least for a while.”
Oliver cut him off. “No way she makes it alone.”
Cornelius’s eyes glinted. “She’s not alone, idiot. You’re with her.”
Oliver snorted. “She can’t even walk.”
Cornelius stepped closer, meeting Daisy's eyes and speaking with emphasis. “Then carry her. Or drag her, or crawl with her if you have to—whatever it takes. Your only chance is to reach the city. There’s nothing for you in the wild. Brightwater is the last place with healers who might be able to break the chain, and if that fails, it’s where the rebellion shelters people the Emperor hunts. It’s the only chance you have for sanctuary or survival.”
Daisy looked to Oliver, then Cornelius, and then the bloodied moss. Every possible choice pressed on her conscience—guilt for abandoning Cornelius, fear for Oliver, certainty that every path demanded sacrifice. Each felt like another knife in the heart.
Oliver said, “If we leave you, you’ll die.”
Cornelius shrugged. “Better me than all three. The Emperor wants her in one piece, or not at all.”
Daisy let the silence stretch. She watched the wind move the grass outside their hollow. She saw the way the light bent around the shards of ceramic in the dirt. Her chain hummed with something like anticipation.
She closed her eyes, forced the words out. “He’s right.”
Oliver spat. “Fuck that.”
Cornelius grinned, teeth bared. “I’ll make a mess. Buy you time. If I live, I’ll meet you at the aqueduct.”
Daisy reached out, grabbed Cornelius’s sleeve, and held tight despite the pain from the chain. "If you see them—Delia, Mira, anyone—tell them to run. Don’t try to find me." These two had slipped her food and hope when she was imprisoned; now they needed to stay hidden, or risk the chain drawing them into danger as well.
He nodded, all business.
Cornelius slipped from the hollow, vanished into the dark. Already, the night echoed with distant shouts, the clang of armor, the wet snap of magic unleashed.
Oliver slumped beside Daisy. He looked so tired, she thought he might just lie down and die right there.
She touched his hand. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said.
He grinned. “Define ‘stupid.’”
She managed a laugh, then coughed up a thread of black. The world spun.
Oliver tucked her against his side, cradling her with the gentleness of someone who had spent a lifetime being too rough.
The night stretched. Once, Daisy thought she heard Cornelius’s war cry, but it could have been the chain or her heart. She drifted, caught between fever dreams and the slap of rain on leaf.
At some point, Oliver shook her awake. “Time to go,” he whispered.
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
They moved slowly along watercourses, mud caking their boots as rain soaked them. Each time Oliver half-carried Daisy, his grip tightened with her flinches of pain, but he pressed on. When he faltered, Daisy snapped at him, voice sharp with desperation. He bit back a retort and continued. Pain burned in her chest, but she forced herself onward, refusing to surrender control.
By dawn, the forest thinned, revealing the ruined city—walls blackened by fire, daisy symbols layered on every façade. Each flower, with white petals and a black center, marked the city as both possession and warning, the motif giving the ruins an aspect of contagion, as if the city itself accused Daisy with every painted name.
Daisy shivered, not from cold, but from the certainty that every step toward Brightwater was a step toward dying.
Oliver set her down in the shadow of an old market stall. He wiped her face with the edge of his coat, his hands trembling.
“Ready?” he said.
She nodded, then reached out, grasped his hand, and pulled him closer to ensure he heard her. Her gesture was urgent, signaling she needed his attention.
“No more running,” she whispered.
He kissed her—quick, fierce, tasting of blood and regret.
They stood and walked into the city, two shadows among a thousand others, the world already shrinking behind them.