Daggermouth (The Heart, #1) — Chapter no 9

CHAPTER NINE

Kill Me Instead

Shadera’s world narrowed to a coffin made of iron and rot.

Time was something that happened on the outside; inside the cell, it pooled and curdled like stagnant water, collecting in her lungs, her muscles, her skull.

Moisture wept down the metal walls and gathered around the cots’ legs, painting everything in filth. The other prisoners looked like they had been born there— skin mottled and thin, eyes gone sallow from lack of sun and food.

She sat on her cot against the wall, knees drawn up, forearms dangling over them, trying to breathe slow enough that the tremors surfacing in her chest every time she drew in oxygen didn’t betray her.

She’d definitely broken at least two ribs, and her collarbone was fucked. She was also sure she’d torn some vital muscle in her back by the pain that radiated there every time she moved. But she didn’t flinch. Not a single muscle on Shadera’s face twitched as she sat in silence.

It was never dark. The lights above flickered with the rhythm of a failing heart, and she counted the seconds between beats to keep herself awake. First rule in any lockup: never sleep unless you trust the person next to you.

Shadera trusted no one.

She wasn’t alone in the cell. Seven others—four women, three men—were crammed inside with her, huddled in various states of collapse. All of them wore the same red tunics, the numbers of their crimes stenciled in black on their sleeves. Shadera looked down at her left hand, at the new tattoo that sat across each of her knuckles. Four numbers, one for each finger: 9758. She’d woken with it when she finally came to in her cell.

Names didn’t matter in this hell hole, Shadera knew that. Knew that here, inside the system, she was prisoner 9758, crime number 00.

Double zero. The worst crime you can commit.

Murder of the Heart’s elite.

Those two numbers gave her comfort. At least if she was to die, she would die with one less Serel in the world. Would die knowing Maximus Serel had no more male heirs.

The woman next to her—prisoner 3421 according to her knuckles, crime 17 according to her sleeve—had been beaten so badly her left eye had swollen shut, the bruising spread down her cheek like spilled ink. Her breathing came in shallow gasps that suggested broken ribs, maybe worse. She couldn’t have been older than twenty, but the Heart’s cruelty had aged her into something haggard.

Across from them, an older man sat with his back pressed to the bars, arms wrapped around legs that ended in stumps below the knee. The cauterized flesh told Shadera everything she needed to know about Veyra interrogation

techniques.

His crime: number 23—unlawful assembly.

They’d taken his legs for gathering with friends.

These people were starving. Actually starving. Their cheekbones cut sharp angles in faces that’d been stripped of everything soft, everything human. The Heart fed them just enough to keep them breathing until their execution date, and never enough to give them strength. Even here, in their own fucking prison, they made sure the outer rings suffered.

Rage bloomed hot in Shadera’s chest as she watched a young man—barely eighteen by the look of him—try to distribute the thin gruel they’d been given.

His hands shook with the effort of holding the metal cup, but he made sure everyone got a spoonful before taking any for himself. Crime number 31: theft of food. He’d probably stolen bread for his family.

The fury built behind her shattered ribs like steam in a sealed pipe. These weren’t criminals. They were people who’d dared to be human in a city that

demanded they be livestock.

“What’s your story?”

The voice startled Shadera from her thoughts. The woman with the swollen eye was looking at her, curiosity flickering in the one good iris. The others turned their attention to her, waiting for an answer.

Shadera met each of their gazes in turn, seeing the hope they tried to hide.

Hope that maybe, just maybe, someone in there might have done something

that mattered.

“I tried to kill Greyson Serel,” she stated with no emotion.

A collective gasp rippled through the cell, followed by a stunned silence that seemed to suck all the air from the prison. Then it started. A murmur began to build—whispers at first, then rising to a fevered pitch as the prisoners processed what Shadera had just said.

“You tried to kill him?” The man with the missing legs leaned forward, eyes wide with a mix of awe and disbelief. “The Executioner himself?”

Shadera nodded once, jaw tight.

The man was yelling before she could stop him, spreading the word throughout the rest of the cells. “She tried to kill the Executioner!”

Voices began to grow throughout the prison in response. Inmates yelling out questions, some cheering, others praying that she’d succeeded.

The woman beside Shadera leaned closer, the shift in her position desperate.

“Is he dead?”

Shadera swallowed hard, the memory of Greyson’s unmasked face flashing behind her eyes. The way he’d looked at her in that final moment, resigned and almost… relieved.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I shot him but was taken before I could watch him die.”

The woman nodded, understanding passing over her bruised features. “Even if he lives, you hurt him. You made him bleed.” A small smile flickered over her lips. “That’s all that matters. That’s fuel to the rebellion.”

“I didn’t do this as an act of rebellion. I didn’t do this for the cause,” Shadera snapped back. She didn’t need them thinking she was some rebel savior. “I’m not a rebel, I’m a Daggermouth, and he was just another name on a contract.”

The last part was a lie, but Shadera wouldn’t tell them that. Wouldn’t tell them that it was personal, that she would’ve tried to kill him one day with or without a contract.

“This will change everything,” the older man said, his shoulders squaring as his chin lifted. “Contract or not, when you pulled that trigger, you told the rings that the Serels aren’t untouchable.”

Shouts of agreement rose from the surrounding cells, a ripple of defiance passing through the broken bodies. For a heartbeat, Shadera saw a flicker of the spirit the Heart tried so hard to crush—the unbreakable will of those who’d suffered too much to ever fully submit.

Heavy boots thudded down the corridor, accompanied by the crackle of shock batons.

“Quiet!” a Veyra officer snarled, slamming his baton against the bars. Sparks flew, illuminating the mask suctioned to his face. “Or I’ll come in there and shut you up myself.”

But the prisoners only grew louder, their voices rising in a ragged chorus of rebellion. They pounded their fists against the bars, stomping their feet and screaming profanities at the guards until the very air seemed to tremble with the force of their rage.

Shadera opened her mouth to speak but the words died in her throat as a Veyra officer stopped in front of her cell.

“9758,” the guard barked. “On your feet.”

Shadera didn’t move, didn’t so much as blink, just stared back at him with a

defiant tilt to her chin.

“I said, on your feet!”

Still Shadera remained sitting as the chanting from the inmates grew louder.

The cell door swung open with a rusty shriek, and three guards entered batons and guns drawn.

The first guard lunged forward, swinging his baton at her head. Shadera ducked, the movement sending knives of pain through her broken ribs. The second guard jammed his shock baton into her side before she could recover and she could’ve sworn in that moment, her soul fled her body.

Electricity surged through her, muscles seizing, teeth clamping down on her tongue so hard she tasted blood. The current was liquid fire in her veins, burning through nerve endings down to the bone. She collapsed to the floor, body jerking involuntarily as she swallowed back a scream. Through watering eyes, she saw the third guard pointing his gun at the other prisoners, forcing them back against the wall.

“I said, get up,” the first guard snarled, striking her with the butt of his rifle.

The blow caught her temple, and her vision exploded into white stars, ears ringing as if someone had detonated a bomb inside her skull. Blood trickled warm down the side of her face. Shadera turned her head slowly, cheek scraping against the stone floor, and let her lips spread into a bloody grin.

She wouldn’t give them what they wanted, she would never obey Veyra orders.

Gloved hands grabbed her shoulders, dragging her upright and setting her on her feet as she jerked against their hold. Their grip on her body tightened as they began to haul her toward the door. Shadera kicked wildly, grunting against the pain. She wouldn’t go without a fight.

The guards shoved her through the doorway, her broken body slamming against the metal bars as they manhandled her into the corridor. The impact sent fresh agony through her collarbone, and a cry finally escaped from between her lips.

Shadera had trained for this, had trained to be tortured, to withstand beatings. She’d die before she gave any of her secrets to the Heart.

Behind her, the other prisoners began to scream, their voices growing louder as she snarled at the guards. Her knee met the groin of the first officer and he buckled over as a second round of electricity seized every muscle in her body, and this time, a scream tore from her lungs.

“Leave her alone!”

“Get your hands off her!”

The protests spread like wildfire. Every cell they dragged her past erupted in screams and shouts, hands reaching through bars, faces twisted in rage and desperation. The guards’ grasp on her arms deepened, fingers digging into flesh already mottled with bruises.

“Shut the fuck up,” one of the guards shouted, firing one bullet toward the ceiling as they halted and looked around the cells in warning.

For one second, the prison fell quiet, the bullet’s echo the only sound. Then, out of the silence, a woman’s voice, thin but determined, began to sing. The melody was old, but Shadera recognized it immediately and panic shot up to her throat.

No, no, she thought, her eyes frantically searching the cells for its origin. This would cause chaos, would cause a massacre. Her eyes locked on the woman. The same woman with the ruined eye who had sat next to her in her cell.

Prisoner 3421.

She did not stop singing as she held Shadera’s stare.

Did not stumble over the words.

She nodded once to Shadera, placing her hand over her heart, and began to sing louder.

“Silence!” the guard yelled, twisting toward her and aiming his rifle. Still, she sang, as a red dot found the center of her forehead.

Shadera saw it, the moment the woman accepted her fate. The moment her shoulders fell back and she took one last stand against the Heart, pushing her chin up in defiance.

“No!” Shadera screamed, lunging toward the gun. “Stop—”

The shot rang out as the other two guards yanked her back. For one terrifying moment, Shadera went wholly numb as she watched the woman’s body crumple to the ground. Blood poured from the bullet hole between her brows in three lines, and the prison seemed to hold its breath.

Shadera’s chest rose and fell in rapid succession as she dragged her eyes from the woman’s lifeless body to find all the prisoners’ eyes locked on her, hands over

their hearts, chins held high.

No.

An explosion of song reverberated off the walls of the prison, every person singing. Every prisoner echoing her defiance. Every head dipping toward Shadera in recognition. Men and women, young and old, their voices blending into a chorus that filled every corner of their cages and spilled out into the corridor beyond.

It was the song of defiance, of hope in the midst of despair, of unity in the face of oppression. It was the national anthem of the old world. The song that had been outlawed when New Found Haven rose.

It was more than a song, it was a battle cry.

More guards flooded into the prison at the sound, guns drawn and circling around Shadera, barrels trained on the innocent.

“I said silence!” the guard snarled again as they spread down the narrow corridor.

The prisoners ignored him, their voices rising higher, the forbidden anthem pouring from their throats as their fists began to bang on the bars, their feet stomping in rhythm with their voices. Each defiant, each scared, each steady.

Shadera stood frozen in the center of the swarm of guards as the song flowed over her skin. Her heart swelled, guilt and fear filling the muscle. Tears began to prick at the corners of her eyes at the disturbing beauty of this moment.

She could feel the weight of their courage, the way they were choosing to defy the Heart knowing it would only bring them death. They were brave in a way she’d never been. She’d never fought for anything other than herself. But these people, these strangers were giving up any chance of survival, all for a doomed rebellion. All because Shadera had pulled a trigger. All because she’d dared to

execute the Heart’s heir.

She had never witnessed such bravery.

Something snapped in her then as she watched the guard next to her tighten his finger on the trigger. She shot forward despite the agony aching through every inch of her body, desperate to stop the slaughter she knew was coming. She grabbed the neck of the rifle just as he pressed fully down on the trigger, yanking

the gun upward. But she was too late.

She was too late.

The sound cracked in the confined space, and a prisoner in the cell in front of them fell, blood blooming across his chest like a macabre flower.

The singing faltered, a momentary hitch of horror, but then it resumed, louder and more defiant than before. The guard twisted toward Shadera as she wrenched the gun from his hands faster than she had ever moved. She fell to a knee, pushed the butt of it into her shoulder and opened fire on the guards.

Veyra dropped, one after another.

A baton crashed into her cheekbone and she felt it crack, her head snapping back. She forced her eyes to focus as she pointed the rifle upward and sent a bullet into the soft flesh under the guard’s chin and out of the top of his head.

Hands clasped around her neck as the guard’s body hit the ground, and she clawed to keep her grip on the gun as it was snatched from her fingers.

Bullets were flying from every officer’s gun into the cells, tearing through flesh and bone with sickening ease as she was dragged from the floor by her throat. Bodies crumpled around her, voices silenced forever, but still the anthem

rang out. A clarion call to the fallen.

Shadera would never forget them.

A scream, a wordless howl of anguish and rage unleashed itself from her lungs as she kicked and screamed against the Veyra’s hold.

“Kill me! Kill me instead,” she shrieked, the words tearing from the depths of her body. “I’m the one you want. Leave them alone!”

Shadera threw back her head, her skull crushing against the mask of the guard holding her, which fell from his face. He scrambled toward his mask, freeing her of his hold as her boots connected with the blood-slicked floor. She lunged for another guard.

She had to stop this, had to save someone—anyone.

Another blow landed across her face that sent her sprawling. She tasted blood, felt the crunch of her nose breaking, but the pain was nothing compared to the carnage and music unfolding around her.

A guard grabbed her by the arm, his grip bruising as the toe of his boot found her stomach. Shadera recoiled into herself as he threw her over his shoulder and turned toward the exit. Her nails broke and bled as she dug into his back, fists pounding against his armor.

“Kill me! Please. Kill me instead,” she screamed again and again as the prison door slammed shut at the guard’s back.

A sob lodged itself in her chest as she watched the massacre continue through the small square window of the prison entrance. The guard hauled her down the corridor, the song and the window growing smaller as tears spilled over her bloodied cheeks.

She would be the only survivor, she knew that.

Knew that this act of savagery would be buried, would be hidden from this city.

She would die before she let that happen.

She barely registered the doors they passed, the turns they took, the elevator they stepped into—her focus narrowed to the single, searing point of her hatred

for the man who held her. For the system that bred him. For the world that allowed such brutality to flourish.

The elevator crawled to a halt and the guard shoved Shadera with his shoulder as the doors slid open. She stumbled, her boots smearing blood across the polished marble floors as he dragged her toward double doors at the end of the hallway.

“You can’t silence us all,” Shadera spat, the words tasting of blood as the guard stopped in front of the doors. “You can’t kill everyone outside of the Heart and expect no one to rise up against it.”

The guard stared at her for a long moment, saying nothing, then raised his fist and knocked on the door. The answering voice that sounded from the other side sent dread coiling down her spine.

“Enter,” Maximus Serel said as the doors swept open.