Lithia knelt on the execution floor with a smile on her face.
From somewhere above, blood dripped, pooling in the grout beneath her knees. Two guards anchored her arms with bruising grips.
Everyone here knew she wasn't the kind of person to break under pressure.
Her beauty was a provocation, the kind of perfection that invited ruin and in this light, the world seemed ready to finally mar it.
She could feel her life draining, a slow leak of warmth into the cold stone, but that insolent, ridiculous grin never wavered. Lifting her chin, a gesture that in any other room, would be a death sentence, she met her attackers' eyes.
"Mmm..." she dragged her tongue across her bloodied lip, savoring the copper tang. "How sweet."
It was a lie, a final middle finger to the inevitable. Survival was secondary to spite; that was the game she played.
"Shut the fuck up!" the brute in front of her swung, his fist a heavy blur that cracked against her jaw.
"Tsk," she tilted her head, eyes narrowing into lethal slits. "Is that it? Honestly, I've slapped people better and they thanked me for it."
Behind the bars, the other inmates pressed close, their jeers and hungry cheers filling the hall. To them, she was an eyesore, a splinter in the thumb of their miserable world. Fine. If they wanted a show, she'd give them a masterpiece, but it would be on her terms.
"You're all talk," Daimon growled, his frame tensing with suppressed rage. "No wonder you're rotting in here with the rest of us."
"No," she spat, her voice a gravelly rasp that cut through the noise of the cell block. "I'm rotting here with you because you're a spineless coward who couldn't handle his job. You're like an infant, Daimon, whimpering for your mother to tell you how to breathe."
Daimon didn't roar, he went still, a far more dangerous reaction. His jaw tightened until the muscles bunched like knotted rope. He didn't look at her. Instead, he flicked a sharp, cold glance at the men pinning her shoulders.
"I'm sorry, Lithia," one of them whispered. His voice was thin, trembling against the back of her neck. "You should have been more careful."
Lithia craned her neck to look at him. She didn't see a traitor, she saw a vacuum.
This was James, her closest comrade, the man who had once stood at her back. Now, he looked like a shell of a man, collapsing under the weight of Daimon's gaze. He had always been a leaf in the wind, and today, the wind was blowing toward her throat.
"James, do it," the other man urged, his grip tightening in anticipation.
James swallowed hard, the sound of his gulp audible in the sudden, expectant hush of the prison. His hands shook where they held her.
Coward, she thought, the word coming through with more finality than the blow she knew was coming.
He used to complain about her cooking. Now he couldn't meet her eyes.
"What are you waiting for?!"
"Kill her!"
"Kill her!"
"Kill her!"
The chant caught like wildfire, leaping from cell to cell until the corridor vibrated with the rhythm. Faces pressed against the rusted bars, eyes gleaming with a feverish delight.
These weren't just disgruntled inmates. Half of them were the collateral damage of her career.
Names she had sold, lives she had traded, and jobs she had sabotaged for the highest bidder.
She was after all, a contract spy.
She hadn't served a flag or a cause. She served the ledger. That was the only rule that mattered, and the operation that landed them here in prison had been no exception.
They had offered her trust, she betrayed them.
Morality was a luxury she'd never been able to afford, not since the day she realized her brother's "normal life" had to be bought with blood.
Now, she was too far gone to ever see him again.
"Well," she paused, the copper tang of blood coated her teeth. "Shit."
A sharp, metallic snick cut through the haze, the sound of a hidden blade finding its touch.
There was a heartbeat of hesitation, a stutter in James's breath, and then the world exploded into white heat. The steel slid between her ribs, precise and deep, seeking the machinery of her heart.
Lithia's body bucked. The stone floor tilted, the ceiling spinning away into a grey world.
So, he finally found a spine, she thought, her lungs hitching.
Her knees buckled, the brick rising up to meet her. The shouting of the mob began to drift, sounding like it was underwater.
…
…
***
"Cordelia!"
A strange, phantom numbness washed through her, as if her soul were trying to fit into a suit two sizes too small. When Lithia finally forced her eyes open, the world was a smear of muted colors and hazy light.
She squinted, blinking against the blur, until a pair of wire-rimmed glasses was perched onto the bridge of her nose. The world was instantly snapped into terrifyingly high definition.
"Who's Cordelia?" she croaked. Her voice sounded wrong, it was too high and lacked the gravel of a woman who had spent years laughing over dead bodies.
"D-darling, don't be like that now," a voice scolded. It was unbearably soft. It had been a lifetime since Lithia had felt anything that didn't have an edge, let alone a voice that sounded like velvet.
"Don't call me 'darling' unless you're my mother," Lithia snapped, the old venom coming back in her chest.
"I am your mother!" The woman let out a heavy, practiced sigh.
Lithia bristled, her mind still clouded by the memory of the blade in her back. "I am not in the mood for kink pla—"
The words died in her throat as she sat up
In front of her stood a woman in her late forties, dressed in cheap, sensible fabrics, her face etched with genuine, maternal worry.
Lithia's gaze darted around the room. Her frustration curdled into a cold, sharp wariness.
This wasn't the damp stone of the ward. The bed was a mountain of down and silk, the walls were a nauseating explosion of pastel pinks and girlish decor.
She looked down at her hands. They were thin. Frail, even. The skin was unblemished, pale, and lacked the calluses of a killer.
"Argh," She pressed a hand to her forehead as a rhythmic pulsing began to throb behind her eyes.
"Dear, are you okay?"
"No," Lithia hissed.
Her eyes snagged on a floor-length mirror beside the bed.
The reflection staring back wasn't a scarred spy with blood on her teeth.
It was a cute, waifish girl with a bob of obsidian hair and wide, startled eyes the color of blooming peonies.
The glasses made her look painfully earnest, fragile and studious.
Lithia stared at the lithe, five-foot-tall stranger in the glass.
"Who the hell is this nerd?"