Daggermouth, p.51
Daggermouth, page 51
Greyson’s stomach clenched, bile rising in his throat as his words sank in.
Movement below caught his attention. A figure emerging from the perimeter of the plaza, walking with confident strides toward the platform. Greyson’s gaze caught on the man, and his world tilted on its axis.
Brooker.
His brother. Alive and whole, a gun in his hand and a smile on his face that Greyson had never seen before—cold, cruel, triumphant. And beside him, stumbling as Brooker dragged him forward, a gun pressed to his temple—
“Callum,” Lira whispered, then louder, a scream and a sob tearing from her throat all at once. “Callum!”
Brooker laughed, the sound so familiar and yet so wrong that it made Greyson’s skin crawl.
“Grey,” he called up, his voice carrying across the plaza. “I missed you.”
Greyson’s stomach bottomed out, a hollow sensation spreading through his core, as if everything that had anchored him to the world had suddenly dissolved.
His brother.
His brother who had held him through nightmares as a child, who had taught him to fight, to survive their father’s cruelty.
“I killed him,” Shadera said beside him, her voice cracking with disbelief. “I killed him. He should be dead.”
“Unfortunately for you, you didn’t,” Brooker replied, his smile widening as he tightened his grip on Callum as he struggled against him, blood seeping from a cut above his eye, from his lips. “Though not for lack of trying. Your reputation is well earned, Shade.”
Brooker pulled down the collar of his shirt to show a thick scar at the base of his neck as he continued to move toward the platform. “I’m gonna have to repay you for this one day. Hurt like a bitch.”
They reached the base and Brooker forced Callum to ascend the steps ahead of him, the gun never wavering from his head. Up close, Greyson could see the changes in his brother—the harder set of his jaw, the coldness in his eyes that had never been there before. Or perhaps it had, and Greyson had simply been too blind to see it.
Lira reached for Callum, and he moved to run to her, but Brooker pulled him back quickly, pushing him to his knees and pressing the gun to his temple.
Lira gasped, tears streaming down her face now. “Please don’t. Brooker, please don’t hurt him.”
“You’ve been alive this whole time,” Greyson said, the words tasting like poison in his mouth as he met Callum’s eyes.
He had never seen fear there. But now, it was exploding in his irises. His eyes flickered to Lira then back to him. Then again.
“Very much so,” Brooker confirmed. “Dad and I came up with the plan years ago to plant me in the rings. We took a gamble with my life by buying that contract, but I was willing to die for the Heart.” His smile didn’t falter as he glanced to Shadera. “And I almost did thanks to that bitch. Thankfully, she was a little too drunk that night to realize she left me breathing.”
Dad.
Greyson forced the sickness back. His mind reeled, struggling to process the betrayal unfolding before him. His brother—the man he’d idolized, mourned, tried to emulate—had been working against them all along.
“The contract was the only way to make the rebels truly trust that I was a deserter,” Brooker continued, his tone too close to the sound of his father’s. “That my loyalties were with the rings. It took years of planning, of building my cover, of sleeping with Cardinal trash and helping the scum of the rings.” His smile deepened with something like pride. “But it was worth it because it all came to this moment.”
Each word was a knife, slicing through Greyson’s last illusions about his family, his brother, his place in the world. The man before him was a stranger wearing his brother’s face. A monster who had orchestrated suffering and death with the same casual cruelty of their father.
“We learned a lot about Shadera through the grapevine,” Brooker went on, his gaze sliding to her with a coldness that made Greyson’s hair stand on end. “Knew how important she was to Jaeger, to Vine. Knew they would do almost anything to get her back.”
Maximus stepped up beside him, the two of them forming a united front that made his stomach turn. Father and son, power and cunning combined.
“Dad and I had just planned to keep her prisoner after your death, but then you had to go and remove your mask in front of everyone. That’s when Elara suggested the Vow.” Brooker nodded toward their mother standing at the back of the platform, shoulders folded in on herself. “That’s when the real plan formed. Came together brilliantly, if I do say so myself.”
Brooker chuckled, squeezing Callum’s shoulder and shaking him.
“I whispered in Farrow’s ear that the ceremony would be the perfect time to strike,” Brooker continued, “and the information just trickled down. Dad and I didn’t have to do anything, really, but wait and let all the rebel leaders come to us.” He laughed again, the sound haunting. “And they did it so easily.”
Callum made a sound, a snarl, struggling against Brooker’s grip. “You won’t get away with this,” he spat, blood spraying from his split lip. “The people know now. They’ve seen—”
Brooker pressed the gun harder against his temple, cutting him off. “They’ve seen what we wanted them to see. A spectacle. A distraction. While we took care of the real threat.” His smile was razor sharp now. “And without leaders to oppose us, the rings will be easy to eliminate for a greater purpose.”
“A greater purpose?” Greyson echoed, unable to keep the disgust from his voice. “Mass murder is your greater purpose?”
“Progress,” Maximus interjected, his tone reasonable, almost paternal. “The expansion of the Heart. The preservation of civilization in a world still recovering from its collapse.”
“You really are the devil,” Greyson whispered, but Brooker just laughed.
“You were always the weaker brother,” he said, shaking his head. “So emotional. It makes sense you would have a different father. Something so weak couldn’t come from Maximus.”
The words hit Greyson with astonishing force, driving the air from his lungs.
Different father?
He saw his mother straighten. Saw Mikel’s hand tighten on his gun.
“What is he talking about?” Greyson demanded, looking from face to face, searching for answers in their expressions as he raised his gun a little higher.
Maximus stepped closer to him, one hand coming to rest on his arm with false affection as Greyson’s gun pressed against his chest.
“That’s right,” he said, his voice dripping with contempt. “Your mother is a whore, spread her legs for Mikel, and weakness is the only thing that came out of it.”
The world stopped. Expanded. Contracted. Greyson felt as if he were standing outside himself, watching the scene unfold from a distance. Mikel. His father. Not Maximus. The revelation should have been earth-shattering, should have rewritten everything he knew about himself.
Instead, it felt like confirmation of something he’d always sensed—the wrongness of his place in the Serel family, the disconnect between himself and the man he’d called father.
Mikel finally pulled his helmet off, letting it fall to the platform with a clatter that echoed across the plaza. His face—a face Greyson had known his entire life without truly seeing—was contorted with rage, eyes fixed on Maximus with murderous intent.
“Get your hands off of him,” Mikel snarled, raising his gun higher.
Something in Greyson snapped. All the rage, all the pain, all the betrayal of the past days, years, lifetime, coalesced into a single, burning point of clarity.
This ended now.
He adjusted his aim, finger tightening on the trigger, ready to put a bullet through the golden mask that had haunted his nightmares since childhood.
But the Veyra were faster.
The first shot came from somewhere to his right—one of Maximus’s loyal officers firing at Mikel but missing. Then another, and another, until the air was thick with the sound of gunfire, the acrid smell of cordite burning Greyson’s nostrils.
Chaos erupted on the platform. Mikel’s men returned fire, bodies falling on both sides. Shadera dropped to one knee, firing and dropping Veyra after Veyra. Elara ducked behind the altar, clutching it with shaking hands.
Brooker’s grip on Callum must have slackened. Because in the next breath, Callum twisted away, lunging toward Lira with desperate speed.
He ran for her, reaching for her as bullets whizzed past them.
Greyson felt it in the air, felt it shift around him as a scream built on the tip of his tongue.
But he was too late.
The shot that took him came from Brooker’s gun.
A single bullet to the back of Callum’s head. His body jerked once, then crumpled to the platform, blood pooling beneath him in an expanding circle of crimson.
The world stilled, every sound muting except for the single horrifying scream that erupted from Lira’s throat.
It was a sound of pure anguish. A sound that seemed to tear through the entire city, echoing between its buildings.
To Greyson’s eyes it was slow, it was an eternity, as she ran to him, heedless of the bullets still flying around them. He watched Lira drop to her knees beside his body. Could see her lips moving and forming Callum’s name as tears fell onto his body, but he couldn’t hear anything now past the static.
A bullet caught her in the shoulder, spinning her sideways as every sense crashed back into Greyson’s body. He lunged for her, slipping over blood and bodies as he fought his way toward his wounded sister, his best friend.
His best friend.
A Veyra officer tackled him from behind, driving him to the platform floor with bone-jarring force. His gun skittered away across the polished surface, out of reach. He fought, twisting beneath the officer’s weight, but more hands joined, pinning him down.
Around him, Mikel’s loyal Veyra were falling, overwhelmed by superior numbers. One by one, they dropped, until only Mikel himself remained standing, back-to-back with Shadera as they fired in desperate defense.
But it wasn’t enough. Couldn’t be enough.
A bullet caught Shadera in the thigh, driving her to one knee with a strangled cry. Another grazed Mikel’s arm, leaving a smoking furrow in his flesh. They were losing. Had already fucking lost.
“Get my daughter out of here,” Maximus commanded, gesturing toward Lira, who still clutched Callum’s body. Her sobs transformed to a keening wail that tore something from Greyson’s soul. “And my son. Keep the heir safe.”
Veyra officers moved to obey, dragging Lira away from Callum. She fought like a wild animal, kicking, screaming, her fingers leaving bloody trails across the platform as they separated her from his body.
Other officers surrounded Brooker, forming a protective barrier as they escorted him from the platform, away from the violence.
“No!” Lira screamed, the word so raw and broken. “No! Callum! Let me go! Callum!”
Greyson struggled harder against the hands that held him, desperate to reach her, to help her, but they forced him down, a knee pressing between his shoulder blades until he could barely breathe. He watched as they dragged Lira away, her bare feet leaving bloody smears across the platform, her screams growing fainter as they pulled her down the stairs and out of the plaza.
Shadera snarled at the three officers holding her down, rage twisting onto her face as she thrashed against them.
Mikel stood still, arms pinioned behind his back, but he did not struggle at their hold.
Maximus approached Greyson slowly, drawing a sleek pistol from inside his jacket. He stood over him, the golden mask betraying nothing of the expression beneath, but Greyson could feel the triumph radiating from him like heat.
“Put him on his knees,” Maximus ordered, and Greyson could feel the air rush back to his lungs as they pulled him upright.
“You might as well kill me now,” Greyson spat, tasting blood where his lip had split against the platform. His eyes fell to Callum’s body only feet from him and his heart convulsed. His voice hardened into something sharper than any blade. “Because I will never stop fighting you. I will never stop coming for you until you are fucking dead.”
Maximus tilted his head, considering him for a long moment. “You have served your purpose. I have no use for you now. No reason to keep the captain’s bastard alive.”
He raised the gun, aiming it at Greyson’s head. “You should have stayed in line, Greyson. Should have accepted your place, and you could have stood tall beside your brother and me.” His finger tightened on the trigger. “But you chose the wrong side. This rebellion was doomed from the start.”
Greyson didn’t close his eyes. Didn’t flinch. Instead he drifted out of his body. If this was his end, he would face it with the same defiance that had defined his life.
He would die as himself, not as Maximus’s creation.
Shadera’s guttural scream came only a breath before the shot rang out.
CHAPTER FORTY JUST NOT FOR YOU
ELARA WATCHED AS MIKEL moved, jumping in front of Greyson. His body hit the platform, Maximus’s bullet finding his heart. He’d sworn to her when she became pregnant with Greyson that he would protect him with his life.
Today, she’d let him fulfill that promise so she could complete what she’d come here to do.
There was guilt packed into that truth, but he’d known she had a job to do. A mission to fulfill, and he’d accepted that in the end this would be his fate.
She felt her heart convulse as she stared into open, empty eyes. Blood pooled beneath him, spreading in a dark stain that seemed to reach for her across the polished surface of the platform. But she couldn’t truly feel the pain of his loss. She had lost so much over the years that death felt like a relief, a blessing for those who were called away from their bodies.
Elara knew she would feel the grief later, knew it would rise up as it always did and she would mourn in silence.
She looked past Mikel to Callum’s body, to the space where Lira had knelt before they dragged her away. Elara had failed Lira in too many ways to count, had stood by while Maximus corrupted Brooker, had watched in silence as her family fractured and broke beneath the weight of power and cruelty.
The only pain she could still feel after all these years living with the devil was her children’s.
Her fingers slipped around the grip of a dead man’s gun. The weight in her hand was familiar, comforting. No one looked at her.
No one ever looked at her.
In thirty-five years of marriage to Maximus Serel, she had perfected the art of invisibility—the silent wife, the submissive mother, the ornamental fixture.
But today, that invisibility became her weapon.
Elara moved.
She was on her feet in one breath, in the next, the three Veyra securing Shadera were crumpling to the platform, crimson lakes pooling under their bodies from the perfectly placed bullets.
The rest of the Veyra looked at her as if time had slowed.
Their hesitation was their undoing—they still saw the President’s wife, not the predator beneath.
Years of rage coursed through her veins. It was sharper than any drug, clearer than any purpose she’d ever known as she placed bullets in the heads of the remaining officers then spun toward her husband.
Maximus stood utterly still, the mask concealing his shock. But she knew his body, knew the subtle signs of his surprise—the slight shift in his posture, the way his right hand twitched at his side. For the first time in their marriage, she had truly surprised him.
“Elara,” he said, her name a question and a command all at once.
She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she reached up with her free hand and removed her mask, letting it fall to the platform with a clatter that echoed across the plaza.
“Kneel,” she said, pointing the gun at his head.
Maximus didn’t move. “Have you lost your mind? I am the President of—”
“I said kneel.” The words were quiet, but they carried a weight that seemed to press him downward.
To her right, Greyson rose to his feet. His face—his beautiful, bare face—was streaked with blood and grime, his eyes wide with disbelief as he looked at her. Across the platform, Shadera stood slowly, limping from the bullet wound in her thigh, but her gun was raised and steady.
Her children. Standing tall. Standing free.
Reluctantly, with a deliberation that suggested he was still in control, Maximus lowered himself to one knee. He kept his head high, his golden face gleaming in the sunlight that bathed the platform, as if this were some sort of ceremony rather than his downfall.
Elara stepped closer, close enough that she could see her own reflection distorted in his mask, then pulled it from his face and tossed it onto the ground below the platform.
“You were never the strong one,” she said, her voice carrying to every corner of the silent plaza. “You think strength is about dominance, about control, about making others fear you. But true strength?” She shook her head. “True strength is patience. It’s endurance. It’s waiting for the right moment when every instinct screams for immediate action.”
She took another step closer, the gun never wavering.
“You never broke me, Maximus. You never took my strength from me. You never stripped me of my fight.” Each word had been collected over the years, strung together for this moment. “While you were reveling in your power, in your illusion of control, I was watching. Learning. Planning.”
Maximus’s lip curled. “Planning what, exactly? This pathetic display? You’ve killed a few Veyra. The Heart still stands. My son—my true son—still lives to carry on my legacy.”
