I nodded. “The Maestro gave me a small apartment because I had agreed to do jobs for him as a teenager. I wasn’t bound, but I still helped him hunt down things and people so I didn’t go cold and hungry, and I went back to that studio every chance I got. Until Madame Fourth had her hundred-year, end-of-life celebration and died. Then the theater closed, and I pressed to dance at Misery’s End because I missed the stage. That’s the burlesque theater. Or it was. He held off for a long time, assuming that stage was the last thing he could try to bind me with when I became of age. But when I fought back and stopped running jobs for him, he agreed to let me dance without a bargain.”
My eyes flashed to Thea, and she smiled, knowing where the story was headed. “Keep going.”
“I made friends with this spirited little red-head that was already bound to him. She built structures for his stage, making his shows grow in popularity, until the people weredoing nothing but collecting coin for a couple hours of raunchy entertainment. She brought me here, and I realized I already knew most of the Syndicate members. I’d been friends with Orin, Elowen’s son, for a long time already. I just fit here, mixed in with these people that were simply trying to help others. Exactly like the Fray. Then, I met a man.” My heart stopped, my whole world plummeting as I realized what I was saying. “Gods, I was so dumb. I never questioned a thing. This man shows up, claims he can’t remember his childhood, the Maestro has him bound within a day and bam, he was some project I had to fix. And fuck if I didn’t love him. I fell hard and fast and I never once looked back.”
I swallowed, the breaths harder to drag in now that I realized everything had been a lie. All of it. All my memories. Every feeling of being in love. I was so overwhelmed by the truth of it all, I forgot the point of the story. Forgot the important details as I looked back and realized my past was not real.
“We believed him to be a good man, too,” Elowen said, taking my hand. “Ezra had been a fierce man at your side since day one.”
I nodded, falling numb to avoid the anger that would fester. Anger I wasn’t ready to deal with yet. “There was an incident on stage. I was stabbed by a jealous dancer. Told I couldn’t have children.” Glancing at Quill, who sat silently on the floor beside Archer, she shared a smile and nodded. She’d heard this story enough times, though it was the version laced with the lies of hunting gods and not at all reality. It wasn’t love. “The Maestro tried to trade my freedom for Quill. He tried to bind me in a bargain, giving me this precious child, if I would simply becomehisHuntress. The hardest thing I ever had to do was look Ezra in the face before telling the Maestro no. Because as much as I wanted that little girl, I needed my freedom more. I’d learned to be stubborn from the streets and that never left me.”
“But I’m still yours,” Quill said, standing to come sit beside me. “I’m yours and you’re mine, and our story is still special. Tell him how we got to be family.”
“I think he’s had enough sob stories for one day.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Archer said, shoving the deck into his pocket. “I’ve known you for months and not known you at all. Keep going.”
“It took me years,” Thea said. “Paesha doesn’t talk about her past.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard the whole story,” Elowen agreed, setting her cup on the table. “I knew you and Madame Fourth were close, but I didn’t realize how long you’d been with her.”
“There’s not much else to tell. I wouldn’t bind myself for the kid. The boss got pissed and realized he’d have to do something with her in the meantime, so she became a job, a tease more than anything. Something that was never quite mine, but still very much mine to care for. He knew she was powerful, but he also knew he couldn’t haveheryet either, so he made me her weakness. He thought he could control me through Ezra and then ultimately control her through me. He played chess in a world of checkers, and we were all his pawns.”
“How’d you end up in Stirling? Aside from the deal, I know that part.”
“Hey, I don’t know that part,” Quill shot back, refusing to let me skip the most painful part.
I wrung my hands in my lap, wondering how I could get through it all. But I couldn’t. The words sat there.Hesat there, waiting for me to get to him. His eyebrow lifted, that fucking face he made when he had some point to make, and I just couldn’t move in his direction. I didn’t want to. I wanted to refuse to feel it, refuse to relive it. Those moments were nothing.
Thea was my saving grace, coming in to tell the bits she knew of the story. “Everyone here had one hundred years of immortality, unless Death’s Maiden bore your name on her palm. She killed for Death, as was her duty. She got Ezra’s name. Paesha saw her hunting Ezra and went to the boss. She bargained away her freedom for his life.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, hating the way it all laid out. Hating the way the truth hurt so fucking much. The way it rattled my power as if forcing it to wake up. To see what I couldn’t see back then. It nearly swallowed me whole as it grew within me. It was too much. It’d been too much since the day I took something that never belonged to me. But it was mine now. Mine to feel. Mine to protect.
Mine.
I took a steady breath. “I was devastated and desperate and didn’t see the loophole until it was too late. The boss promised me he could stop Death, and I’d seen him working with the bastard, so I knew he could. I believed it so strongly. But within the deal, after the terms were met, he slipped in the word ‘try’ instead of will. I missed it, agreed, and then it was over. Ezra died. And I was ruined by it. I didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, couldn’t dance. Couldn’t look at anyone and find happiness again. Not even Quill’s power could change my devastation.”
“I bet it could now,” she said with a grin.
Archer nodded. “You could melt the paint off the walls with that power now, kid. And that’s not at all creepy,” he said a bit quieter.
The pink that danced across her cheeks drew me back into the room. “Anyway, there was a way for me to see him again. Death’s Maiden needed to get to Death’s court and only I could take her. So I did, because I knew he’d be on the other end. And I always thought I’d find my way back here after I had just one more night with him. But then I got there, and he didn’t wantme to leave. He never acted like he was a god, never told me the truth at all. I don’t know why. But I couldn’t stay in Death’s Court. I knew Quill needed me and my soul didn’t feel right. I wasn’t supposed to be living in a realm of people touched by death. So, I made the bargain, and you know the rest. I broke the veil and here we are.”
“No thanks to Thorne,” Archer said, leaning back on his hands. “Still can’t believe all of that was a lie.”
It’s what he does.
He lies.
He loves and lies.
I pressed my hands to my temples as the whispers grew louder, a chorus of voices speaking truths I wasn’t ready to hear. My power recognized them, reached for them like they were pieces of itself finally coming home.
“Something’s wrong,” I whispered, and in that moment, I realized with terrifying clarity these weren’t memories breaking through.
They were warnings. And one voice cut through the others, clear as a bell, cold as the grave.You know he will come. They both will.
7
