Chapter 62 Gods i live for her
Nyxara
The wind off the docks stabbed snow into my face like a thousand petty vendettas. I didn’t flinch. Cassain’s last drag on the cigarette flared orange before he flicked the butt into the black water. The vocoder at his scarred throat purred to life—flat, robotic, and somehow still dripping with that same old arrogance.
“You owe me.”
I let the words float there between us, heavy as wet rope. Then I gave him the laugh he deserved: low, rough, the kind that lives at the bottom of a grave.
“Owe you?” I echoed, cocking my head. “For the night I fucked you until your spine forgot how to work and you were whimpering please stop like I’d personally invented overstimulation? Or for the next six weeks when you couldn’t walk straight but still crawled back to my door with cash and puppy eyes? Pick a debt, tongueless wolf. I’ve got receipts for all of them.”
His golden eyes narrowed to slits. No flinch. No retreat. Just that patient, predatory stillness he’d perfected long before Vuk ripped out his tongue.
The device spoke again. Calm. Clinical.
“Kill Darius.”
I blinked once. Slowly.
“Are you actually fucking kidding me right now?”
Darius. The man who’d sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Cassain at every blood auction, every poison deal, every time they sold a screaming girl to the highest paddle. Partners in the truest, ugliest sense—two blades sharpened on the same whetstone. For Cassain to want him dead… that wasn’t a disagreement. That was tectonic plates shifting under the entire Dominion’s rotten foundation.
I stepped closer until our breath clouds touched.
“You’re serious,” I said. Soft. Not really asking.
“Deadly.”
Another slow breath fogged between us. I studied what was left of his face: the bandages gone gray at the edges, the shiny keloid creeping above the collar, the faint tremor in his jaw he thought he was hiding. Rage. Panic. The look of a man who’d finally realized the noose was around his neck.
“You and Darius,” I murmured. “You’ve shared more blood than most families share DNA. Secrets that could hang half the court. You were the hand, he was the glove. So enlighten me, Cassain—what did that silver-bearded prick do that was so unforgivable you’d rather saw off your own arm than let him keep breathing?”
Silence. Just those molten-gold eyes boring holes through me.
I smiled—small, sharp, the one I used to save for clients who thought they could lowball me.
“Or maybe it’s the reverse. Maybe he’s holding something over you now. Something uglier than what you’ve got on me. And you figure if I put a blade in his throat, your little skeletons stay buried. Poof. Clean slate. No more inconvenient files.”
The vocoder crackled. The synthetic voice came slower this time. Almost… embarrassed.
“He knows too much. Wolfbane routes. Auction ledgers. …You.”
My pulse gave one hard kick. Not fear. Math.
“Old payments,” the voice continued. “Names. Proof you were our shadow whisperer for years. Proof you fucked information out of me while I fucked you. Proof you helped smuggle those children—the ones you pretend to saint now. If those files reach Vuk… or Maureen… your shiny new redemption arc ends in a ditch.”
The cold tried to crawl under my skin. I refused to let it.
I closed the last inch between us until the tip of my nose brushed his.
“And you honestly believe putting Darius in the ground erases that?” I whispered. “You think I’m still the girl who’d open a vein for a balanced ledger? I quit being your convenient little shadow the day I realized the darkness pays shit wages.”
“You don’t get to quit.” The device buzzed. “Debts don’t expire.”
I laughed again—colder this time, edged with glass.
“Debts expire when the creditor becomes a neutered dog begging at the gate. Vuk took your tongue for calling Maureen a whore in open court, remember? You’re not the apex predator anymore, Cassain. You’re the one bleeding. Desperate. Cornered. Asking the woman you used to pay by the hour to do your killing for you.”
His hand twitched toward his coat pocket—old reflex, old poison vial or old blade.
I caught his wrist mid-motion. Twisted until cartilage popped. He hissed through his nose, silent and furious.
I leaned in, lips brushing the shell of his ear.
“Here’s the new ending,” I breathed. “You walk away. You keep your toy voice-box quiet. You pretend tonight never happened. And I pretend you’re still a person worth remembering. Because if you breathe one syllable to Vuk, to the court, to anyone about that night, about the information I milked out of you while you came apart under me—I will open you from navel to sternum and make sure the last thing your eyes see is my knife twisting. Slowly.”
I released him.
Stepped back.
He rubbed the bruised wrist, eyes blazing liquid hate, but he didn’t lunge. Didn’t speak. Just stared—promising a future debt collection without needing a single word translated.
I turned. Walked into the snow.
Behind me the vocoder buzzed once more, almost swallowed by the wind.
“You’ll regret this.”
I didn’t look back.
Regret is a luxury for people who still have pieces left to lose.
I’d already sold mine at a discount.
My phone buzzed against my thigh—sharp, demanding. Private number. Blocked ID. But I knew the exchange. The old line. The one only ghosts still dialed.
I answered.
“Hello…”
“Yes… Elder Darius speaking.” That velvet drawl, thick with liquor and entitlement. “Why don’t you come meet me at the club. I have… an interesting job for you.”
I stared at the screen while my heart counted three deliberate beats.
Cassain on the east docks. Darius on the west side.
Same frozen night.
Both reaching for me.
Both smelling blood.
Something was very, very wrong.
I flagged a different cab, different route. The city slid past in smears of orange sodium and swirling white. My mind ran faster than the tires.
Two old vipers suddenly trying to eat each other’s tails.
And both convinced I was dumb enough—or desperate enough—to be the fang.
The club crouched in the old merchant district: black door, no sign, two boarded warehouses for shoulders, bouncers built like siege engines. The bass leaked through the bricks like a bruise.
The doorman knew my face. One nod. I was through.
Inside: smoke, perfume, the copper tang of cash and desperation. I ignored the bar, the dancers, the velvet-rope booths. Straight down the back corridor, up the narrow stairs to private room seven.
Door ajar.
I pushed it open.
Red sconces bled light across leather, low tables, mirrored walls. Darius sprawled on the wide chaise like a bored emperor, shirt hanging open, silver beard glittering. A girl—young, dark-haired, eyes chemically distant—rode him slow and mechanical, hips rolling on autopilot. Neither looked up when I entered.
He took a lazy sip of amber from crystal, then finally lifted his gaze.
“Nyxara.” Smooth as old bourbon. “You came.”
I closed the door. Leaned against it. Arms crossed.
“You and Cassain must’ve synced your calendars tonight.”
“I know that tongueless fuck met with you.” He smirked. “How much did the mutilated dog offer? I’ll double it. Kill him.”
I let one brow lift.
“I’m not working for you anymore, Elder Darius.”
“You don’t have a choice, lady. You never did.”
“But I do.” I stepped forward. “And right now that choice is—”
He hurled the whiskey glass.
It cracked against my forehead, amber and shards raining down. Warm blood immediately trickled into my eyebrow.
I exhaled—long, slow, almost meditative.
Oh sweet merciful gods, my mind sighed, please grant me the strength not to pop this fat, arrogant, whiskey-soaked relic right here on his stupid velvet chaise while his paid entertainment watches with dead eyes.
I touched the cut. Looked at the red on my fingertips.
Then I smiled.
The kind of smile that makes smart men check for exits.
“Wrong answer, old man.”