Chapter 58 If Danger Could Smirk
He didn’t confirm, but the little shift in his jaw was answer enough.
“Do you have a name,” she asked, “or should I just keep calling you Ominous and Tall?”
One corner of his mouth tugged upward, reluctant. “Maverick.”
She blinked. “You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“Your actual, legal name is Maverick?”
“That a problem?”
She shrugged. “No. It’s just aggressively on brand.”
He huffed something that was almost a laugh. It made the space between them feel less like a vacuum and more like something with air in it.
Maverick’s attention dropped to her wrists again. “They said you’d be restrained.”
“They say that about all the women they kidnap, or am I special?”
“There’s a file on you thick enough to use as a doorstop.”
“Flattered.”
He didn’t seem particularly amused now. “They say you can heal anything you touch.”
Lyra kept her expression light. “Sounds like an exaggeration.”
“And that your… condition,” he added, eyes flicking to her arm again, “makes you extremely valuable. Or extremely dangerous, depending who’s talking.”
“Let me guess. You’re on Team ‘Dangerous.’”
“I’m on Team ‘Don’t Let the Asset Die Before Delivery.’”
There it was again. Asset. She smiled, small and sharp.
“Question,” she said.
“What.”
“Do your team manuals have an actual section titled ‘How Not to Dehumanize Your Kidnappee,’ or is that just an elective course you skipped?”
Something flickered in his eyes at that—guilt, maybe. Or just annoyance.
He shifted back half a step, bracing, and pulled a keycard from his pocket. It wasn’t the kind you saw at hotels; this one was matte black with pulsing blue lines, like a heartbeat monitor frozen mid-spike.
He tapped it to the cuff lock on her right wrist. The metal slightly warmed. A tiny rune—if you could call a glowing sigil that looked suspiciously like a circuit pattern a rune—flickered, then flashed green.
The cuff beeped and released.
Lyra felt the weight drop and resisted the urge to rub her wrist. The mark under her skin pulsed in response to the freed pressure—silver again, then something warmer under it.
He repeated the process on the left cuff, then on the chain anchor at the floor. The whole thing came away with a final heavy clink.
She was still technically trapped—the only exit blocked by a six-foot-something dragon of a man—but somehow the room felt bigger.
“Why bother unchaining me?” she asked. “Afraid I’ll trip on the way to my cell and bruise the merchandise?”
“Because,” he said evenly, “if this goes sideways out there, I’d rather you be able to move.”
She stared at him. “You’re expecting it to go sideways?”
“It always does.”
Something about the way he said it—flat, factual, not dramatic—made her skin prickle.
The mark answered again.
The silver switched to something deeper, a flush of warmth like molten metal sliding under her skin.
Lyra glanced down, startled. The lines on her forearm were still thin and delicate, but the glow had shifted gold around the edges—barely there, but there.
No. No, no, no. That color was wrong. That wasn’t about nearby magic. That was something else. Something older.
She yanked her sleeve down, heart tripping.
Maverick saw the movement. His gaze sharpened. “What was that?”
“Dry skin,” she said. “I’m thinking of suing your employers for lack of moisturizer.”
“Cute.”
“I try.”
He didn’t push. Not yet. He just watched her for another long, assessing beat. She watched him back, cataloguing details: the faint scar along his right jaw, the muscle ticking in his cheek when he was annoyed, the way his hand hovered near her but didn’t touch.
He wasn’t afraid of her. But he wasn’t unworried, either.
“Here’s how this works,” he said finally. “We’re going to walk into that building. You’re going to cooperate. Nobody gets hurt. Including you.”
She arched a brow. “And if I don’t cooperate?”
His amber eyes darkened a shade. “Then more people get hurt. Still including you.”
“Wow,” she said lightly. “Inspiring speech. I feel so reassured.”
He jerked his chin toward the door. “Move, Lyra.”
She could have fought. She could’ve thrown herself at the opposite wall, screamed, lashed out with her light until somebody shot her with another sedative.
But the mark on her arm was humming now, a constant low thrumming heat, and somewhere beyond the open van door she felt something answer that hum—a presence like heat mirroring heat.
Going inside might kill her.
Staying out here, unarmed, definitely would.
She slid past him toward the open doors, jumping down onto wet pavement. Night slammed into her senses: rain-slick asphalt, the glow of streetlights, the distant wash of traffic on the freeway. They’d parked in an underground loading bay beneath a building of glass and steel and arrogance.
No signage. No company name. Just a sleek, mirrored facade that reflected the city back at itself and pretended not to be a prison.
Two more operatives waited near a security door—black jackets, weapons, faces already forgetting she was a person and not a line item. One of them lifted a tablet, the screen glowing with her image and a series of biometric lines.
“Asset confirmed,” he said. “The Director’s waiting upstairs.”
“Lucky me,” Lyra murmured.
Maverick stepped to her side, just close enough that his shoulder almost brushed hers. “Eyes ahead,” he said under his breath.
“Why?” she said. “Afraid I’ll glare someone to death?”
“Afraid you’ll see something you can’t unsee.”
He flashed his card at the scanner. The security door beeped, then slid open.
Cold, conditioned air washed over her, smelling like antiseptic and something sharp and metallic underneath.
The mark on her arm burned. Silver. Gold at the edges.
Lyra swallowed.
“Maverick,” she said quietly, as the door started to close behind them, sealing off the street.
“What.”
“If this goes sideways, don’t let them cut me open to see how I work.”
He didn’t look at her. But his jaw clenched.
“They’re not cutting you open,” he said.
“That a promise?”
“Yes.”
For the first time since she’d woken up in the back of the van, she believed someone.
The hallway ahead of them stretched in clean white lines. Lights glowed in the ceiling like interrogation spots. Somewhere deep in the building, something moved—an echo of power, hot and ancient and wrong.
Her mark pulsed once more, bright and insistent.
There was something in this place that recognized her.
And something here that she recognized, whether she wanted to or not.
Lyra lifted her chin, squared her shoulders, and walked forward.
After all, cages were built for monsters.
They never considered what would happen if the monster walked in willingly.