Page 51

“I cannot do that.” Water splashed around my heavy boots as I stepped forward. “The red door does not open for requests. It only opens for debts.”

“Malachi said⁠—”

“Malachi lied to you.” I closed the distance by two more strides and watched her weight shift. She was preparing to swing. Her balance was off, her left foot favoring a bruised heel, but the fury in her posture was real. “Malachi tells every woman what she wants to hear so she will climb onto the stage and sign his receipts. He’s been doing it since the theater had gaslights.”

“He told me I broke the rule.”

“You did. You touched him in the hall. That gave him permission to put you on the platform. But now the House wants the rest of you. It sent me to collect the confession.”

“I am not confessing shit to a monster in a dog collar.”

“Then you will die in this room.”

Her jaw tightened. “Better than ending up on a leash like you.”

The insult didn’t sting. It was simply the truth. I’d worn the leather so long the hide had grown into the skin behind my ears.

I stepped inside her guard faster than a man my size should have been able to move. She swung the iron pipe with everything she had, aiming straight for the side of my temple. My palm caught the jagged metal mid-swing without bothering to block with my forearm. The rusted edge bit into my hand, but the bone didn’t give. I gripped the pipe and twisted my wrist downward. The torque wrenched the weapon from her fingers.

She gasped as the iron clattered into the filthy water between our feet. Before she could scramble backward, my other hand closed around the front of her torn dress, lifting her clear off the wet floor and slamming her back against the wire mesh of the storage cage. Dust and dry rust flakes showered over her bare shoulders as the metal rattled violently.

Zinnia didn’t scream. Instead, her hands came up instantly, clawing at my wrists, her fingernails digging deep into the scar tissue along my tendons. She kicked out with both feet, her heels striking my shins, fighting with the frantic, vicious energy of a cornered badger.

“Name it,” I growled, leaning in until the iron teeth of my mask hovered an inch from her throat. “Tell me what you want, Zinnia.”

“Let go of me, you son of a bitch!”

“Tell me you want out. Tell me you want to leave the House. Say the words. Say Hound, let me go.”

“Fuck you!” She spat directly into the eyehole of my mask, warm saliva hitting the leather near my left cheek. “I am not asking you for anything!”

Her heart hammered against the wire mesh like a trapped bird as I held her there. The mark on her ribs flared bright violet in the shadows, reacting to the proximity of my weight. The House was pushing hard against the back of my skull, commanding my fingers to close around her windpipe, demanding that I force the plea out of her mouth. If she asked me for mercy, if she named her desire to escape, the contract would finalize. The Hound would grant her request by dragging her down to the holding cells behind the red door, and her agency would be erased forever.

She had to say it. The magic required the words.

Yet she kept her teeth clenched so hard I heard the enamel grind. Her breath blew hot and ragged against the rusted iron bars of my muzzle. Past my shoulder, her eyes drifted, catching on the row of rusted lockers half-sunken in the water behind me.

On the third locker door, bolted beneath a layer of green corrosion, sat a tarnished brass identification plate from the old municipal registry, back when the city transit crews used this sub-level before Evangeline bought the ground. The name stamped into the metal was still legible under the grime: HARKER, R. — FOUNDATION CREW 4.

Her gaze snapped back to my face. The defiance in her eyes shifted into something colder, sharper, and far more dangerous than simple anger.

“You used to work here,” she said, her voice dropping to a low, gravelly whisper. “Before they put the muzzle on you.”

I didn’t answer. The wire in my skull pulled tight, a sharp spike of pain drilling into my temples.

“You were a man. Your name is Harker. Rook Harker.”

My own name, hitting the stagnant air, was louder than the iron bell. A cold, sudden shockwave ripped through my chest, severing the tension in my shoulders. The House’s hold on my hands loosened like water slipping through an open fist. The command to break her throat dissolved into static, unable to function against a quarry who refused the title of the beast and spoke the name of the man buried underneath.

Slowly my fingers uncurled from the torn silk of her dress. She stumbled as her feet splashed into the shallow water, her knees buckling, but she caught herself on the wire cage and stayed upright. She didn’t run. She stood there in the dark, clutching her bruised ribs, watching me through the tangled mess of her hair.

“How did you know to look at the lockers?” I asked, my voice scraping against the leather mask.

“Khaos told me you were a hunter who forgot how to stop. My mother always said hunters are just cowards who need an excuse to carry a knife. But you are not a dog, Rook. You are just another idiot who let this building trick him into signing a bad deal.”

I wiped the spit from the leather near my eye. The silence between us stretched out, thick with the smell of wet rust and old mistakes.

“You should not have said my name,” I told her.