“Fuck, Jeffro!” Taclo shouted.
My heart leapt to my throat.
Baylen screamed and writhed on the ground, his hands covering his face. Blood pooled beneath his head. “Shit! There’s glass in my fuckingface—”
“You don’t make the rules ‘round here, Baylen. You had your shot with her, you fucked it. Now it’s my turn. And I don’t feel likeasking.”
I ran forward, lunging out of the shadows while I was ignored and Jeffrith was turned around.
My hand whipped behind me fast as Jeffrith spun—
Too late—my dagger plunged into his back.
The same dagger Baylen had given me months back when we went vampire-hunting. His words rang out in my head from that night:“Stick someone with it if the job goes awry, Seph.”
I pushed past resistance, the sound agonizing and crunching. Jeffrith went rigid and toppled like a heavy coin-purse, crumpling to the ground on useless legs.
He didn’t move.
Taclo and Koylen yelled in alarm, backpedaling over broken glass shards and making bloody bootprints.
My dagger stayed stuck in Jeffrith’s side. I crouched, my hands shaking, and pulled it out. Blood pulsed from the wound in spurts, getting all over me.
“Fuck.” I heaved, rolling Jeffrith over.
His face was sweaty, his eyes wide. His lips didn’t move. He looked paralyzed . . . because he was. I had severed his spine. He was dying a slow, numb death.
“Truehearts save me,” I cursed, pounding a hand on the ground.
His lips kept moving so I leaned forward to try and listen . . . only to hear his breathing stop in my ear before he got his final words out.
Jeffrith was dead. The first boy from my list I’d started. No great comfort came from his passing, only sheer terror and rage.
I had killed my first man.
I was thirteen.
I hurried to my tent on wobbly legs, my head a blurry daze. My legs carried me past Baylen and I didn’t even stop to see if he was okay.
He had been ready to let Jeffrith do whatever he wanted to me. The same thing Baylen tried to do months ago. The same thing that got us in this fucking mess in the first place.
He didn’t deserve my sympathy. Not now.
My heart hammered and my hands trembled as I packed my sleeping roll and the only other tunic I had, plus four copper coins and a stash of hardtack I’d stolen from dinners when I hadn’t been hungry in the past.
Coming back to the tent to wrangle my things together was my first mistake, when I should have just ran off with nothing but my bloody dagger.
The House of the Broken taught me to live without material means. And now the material things I’ve come to cherish have damned me.
Because as I hurried out of my tent with the bundle in my arms, six Diplomats waited for me, stepping up onto the small hill of refuse where my dwelling lay.
Sweat poured down my face, despite the cold night. “G-Guys,” I croaked.
They advanced.
Taclo had a dour, severe look on his young face. “Master Dimmon wants to see you in his tent after what you just done, Sephania.”
“No,” I said.
