Chapter 89 Choices
The western tower was the last part of the castle to burn during the final siege, and its stones still held a faint aroma of soot, like a wound that refused to scar over. The new council had transformed it into their “strategy room,” though the place looked more like a scavenger’s nest than any war chamber Daisy had ever seen. Maps, some stolen, some hand-drawn, many patched with scraps of old linen, coated the walls in a patchwork of ambition and desperation. The table in the center bore the scars of a dozen arguments, every groove and stain a ledger entry in the city’s unfinished future.
Daisy hunched over the table, eyes tracing the lines of the perimeter. Her mind felt like wool left out in the rain: heavy, tangled, impossible to card into order. Xeris stood to her right, arms crossed over his chest and radiating impatience. He’d spent the morning in council, watching the city’s best minds gnaw at each other’s throats for want of a consensus.
At the far end of the room, Oliver leaned against the window, arms folded, boots tapping a silent rhythm on the flagstone. He’d reported at dawn that Thorne’s people had left the city, no violence, no grand gestures, just a quiet exodus. Daisy had expected them to leave a gift behind, maybe a bomb or a spell. She supposed they had.
Cornelius Blackwood arrived without ceremony, his limp pronounced today, face stitched with two fresh scars that drew the eye like punctuation marks on a warning sign. He looked at Daisy, then at Xeris, then at the table, as if trying to decide which would give him the most honest answer.
“We have a problem,” he said. He always started this way, as if the city had ever enjoyed the luxury of being problem-free.
Daisy gestured for him to continue. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”
He pointed to a cluster of tokens on the map, little painted stones, each representing one of the Ironclaw delegation’s “bodyguards.” “Three of these didn’t leave with the rest.”
“Deserters?” Xeris asked, his tone flat.
Cornelius shook his head. “No. I know their type. These weren’t guards. They were knives, dressed up to look dull.”
He pulled a folded sheet from his pocket and set it on the table. The paper was cheap, the handwriting precise and almost too neat. Daisy read it once, then twice, then handed it to Xeris. The message was clear: Ironclaw hadn’t sent an envoy. They’d sent a team to case the city and leave a few poisons in its veins, ready to kill the moment a new regime showed weakness.
“Assassins,” Daisy said, her voice more tired than afraid.
“Shadowblade Corps,” Cornelius replied. “They specialize in making sure revolutions end as quickly as they start.”
Xeris’s eyes flared, the gold in them catching the light from the storm beyond the window. “We should have let me burn them out when they crossed the bridge.”
“You’d have burned the whole city,” Daisy shot back.
He looked at her, then away. “Sometimes that’s the only way to cauterize a wound.”
Oliver spoke up, soft and careful. “If they’re here, they’re lying low until they get the signal. Or until someone pays them more to switch sides.”
Daisy reached for the map, stabbed a finger at the market district. “If I were them, I’d wait here. Too many bodies, too much chaos. Easy to disappear if you’re clever.”
Cornelius nodded. “My men are already sweeping. But they won’t take risks unless we’re certain.”
Daisy stared at the map, then at her hands. The skin was pale, cracked at the knuckles, nails bitten to the quick. She clenched them, once to make sure she still could.
“Let’s not give them a reason,” she said. “The city’s expecting a celebration tonight. We’ll put on a show.”
Xeris smirked. “Bait?”
Daisy shrugged. “Better to see who comes for the cheese than wait for the trap to snap.”
The rain started slowly, a few fat drops tapping the window in a stuttering Morse. By the time the meeting ended, the city outside was swallowed in fog, the rooftops melting into a single gray smear.
Daisy walked the long corridor back to her rooms, every step echoing on stone. She’d chosen quarters in the old servant’s wing, a space barely large enough for a bed and a battered trunk, but she liked the humility of it. The rich lived high and died higher; Daisy preferred ground level.
She opened her door to find Oliver already inside, perched on the windowsill, one leg dangling out over the alley. He looked up, eyes shadowed and wary.
“You shouldn’t leave your door unlocked,” he said.
“If they want me dead, the lock’s not going to help.”
He made a noise that might have been a laugh, but wasn’t.
Daisy sat on the edge of the bed, kicking off her boots. She peeled off her shirt and pulled a fresh one from the trunk, clean, but the wrong size, probably Delia’s. She let it hang loose and looked at Oliver, who was still staring at the city instead of her.
“You going to tell me what’s wrong?” she asked.
He swung his leg back inside, feet landing softly. “There’s something off about this job.”
“Which one?” Daisy asked, too tired for games.
Oliver paced the tiny room, hands in pockets. “I know what assassins look like. But these, Thorne’s knives, they weren’t here to kill you. Not yet. They were here to watch. To learn.”
Daisy frowned. “Learn what?”
He hesitated. “How do you do it. The blood thing.”
For a second, Daisy’s heart stopped cold. She hadn’t used the magic in public, not since the last time, which had ended with a crater in the street and six men who would never walk again. She had sworn to keep it hidden, for her own sake and for the city’s.
“I haven’t,” she started, but Oliver raised a hand.
“They saw the aftermath. They know you’re different.”
He stood close, too close. Daisy felt the heat off his skin, smelled the sweet rot of his last drink. He reached out, and this time she didn’t pull away when his hand brushed her cheek, tracing the shadow beneath her eye.
“You’re burning up,” he whispered.
Daisy forced a laugh. “Haven’t slept. Haven’t eaten.”
“That’s not it,” Oliver said. “You’re scared. And you never get scared.”
She wanted to protest, but couldn’t find the words.
He pulled his hand away, awkward now. “I should go. There’s…there’s a lot to do before the celebration.”
Daisy nodded, unable to look at him. “Be safe.”
He paused at the door, then left without another word. The latch clicked behind him like a coffin lid.
Alone, Daisy stared at her bed. She didn’t want to sleep. She didn’t want to dream.
The thunder cracked overhead, rattling the shutters. In the flash of lightning, Daisy saw a shape on her pillow she hadn’t noticed before: a daisy, perfect and white, but made of glazed ceramic, no bigger than a coin. She picked it up, turned it in her fingers. It was beautiful, and completely wrong.
There was a symbol etched on the underside, a circle within a circle, lines intersecting at cardinal points—the mark of Ironclaw’s secret orders.
She dropped the flower. It didn’t shatter, just bounced once on the blanket and rolled to a stop near her hand.
A shadow filled the doorway. Xeris stood there, his hair dark with rain, the white of his teeth bared in something between a smile and a warning.
“May I come in?” he asked.
“Does it matter?” Daisy replied, but her voice was softer than she intended.
He stepped inside, leaving wet footprints on the stone. He looked at the daisy on the bed, then at her, then at the open window.
“They know what you are,” he said.
“Not everything,” Daisy replied.
He nodded. “Soon, they will.”
She studied his face: the predatory angles, the eyes that never blinked when the subject was blood. For the first time, she saw fear there, not for himself, but for her. It made her want to laugh, or cry, or both.
“Will you protect me?” she asked, trying to sound flippant.
He shrugged. “I’d burn the world for you, if you asked.”
Daisy stared out into the rain, the city drowning in it, the tower bells smothered by the storm.
“Then we wait,” she said.
They sat in silence, the storm battering the glass, neither willing to name what came next.
As the lightning flashed, Daisy thought she saw Oliver below, darting from shadow to shadow, cloak pulled tight and hood up against the rain. She wondered if he was running to her, or from her, or if he even knew the difference anymore.
The daisy on the bed glowed faintly, the ceramic humming with hidden power.
Outside, the city braced for another round of blood.
Inside, Daisy, Xeris, and the empty place left by Oliver prepared for what they would become, together or alone, when the storm finally broke.