Eighty-seven days was an insult.
Mireia slammed the iron safe shut, replaced the false panel, and strode out of the study. She moved with measured steps. Panic was a luxury for people who expected the world to treat them fairly. Jovan had traded her into a meat grinder, and Davorin Cernak was keeping score with crimson ink.
She went straight down the stone spiral stairs toward the lower courtyard, where the sea spray tasted like zinc and diesel. Voices echoed through the salt fog—coarse laughter, the thud of heavy boot leather against wet cobbles, and the choked wheeze of a man drowning in his own phlegm.
Two sentries stood over a battered scout from the Grkovic Enclave. The captive was stripped to his grease-stained undershirt, chained to an iron mooring ring usually reserved for dories. One eye was swollen shut, purple as an eggplant; a butcher's hook swung idle in the sentry's right hand.
"Hold," Mireia said.
The men froze. The taller one, Branko, lowered the iron hook, blinking through the morning mist. "Lady Mireia. This isn't a place for your slippers. Head back to the terrace. Boss wants this dog cracked by noon."
"Put that down. Fetch iodine, clean gauze, and needle suture. Now."
The enforcer scoffed, showing stained incisors. "He's Grkovic scum. He was planting tripwires near the western sea gate."
"And now he is my patient," she replied, her voice as flat and unyielding as slate. "Do you want to see if your master values your insolence more than my request? Move."
Rostem trotted down the granite steps behind her, massive paws clicking on the stones. The mountain dog stopped at Mireia's heel, his scarred muzzle wrinkling as he let out a low, rumbling growl that vibrated through the flagstones. The beast bypassed the prisoner; his amber gaze pinned the tall man.
The sentry swallowed hard, spat on the stones, and signaled his partner. Two minutes later, a wooden box of field medical supplies was shoved into her hands.
Mireia knelt without hesitation in the grit. The hem of her slate-gray dress soaked up salty puddle water without slowing her. She snapped open the box, uncapped the iodine, and poured it directly into a jagged slash on the captive's collarbone. The boy—he couldn't have been more than nineteen—screamed, thrashing against his chains.
"Keep still," she said softly, threading nylon through a curved needle with steady hands. "If you convulse, I'll sew your skin crooked, and you'll look ridiculous when you finally go home."
"Lady... please..." the boy gasped, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on his cheeks.
Heavy footsteps crunched on the gravel above. The ambient chill deepened. She kept her focus low, recognizing the heavy cadence of Davorin's stride.
He came down the steps like an encroaching storm front, long charcoal coat swirling around his calves, leather gloves pristine. His gaze dropped to her knees in the mud, then locked onto her hands, which were gently holding the enemy soldier's jaw to inspect a puncture wound.
Something dark and wild flared in Davorin's features. The air between them dropped ten degrees. "Get your hands off him, Mireia."
"He's losing blood through his brachial artery," she said, not flinching. She drove the curved needle through split flesh and pulled the knot tight. "If you want information, dead men are notoriously quiet. Or does your reputation rely on corpses that can't speak?"
Davorin was at her side in two strides. He towered over her, his shadow swallowing her whole. His hand twitched toward the pistol holstered beneath his left arm. "You touch him as if he has value. He is dirt from the gutter, sent here to murder my household. To murder you."
"I decide who touches whom in my presence," Mireia said. She cut the thread with surgical shears, wiped scarlet smears from her palms on an alcohol swab, and finally tilted her head up to meet his dark, smoldering gaze. "Are you going to shoot me for saving your bait, Davorin? Or are you afraid he prefers my bedside manner to your hospitality?"
The sentries ceased breathing. Nobody spoke to Davorin Cernak like that and kept their tongue.
Tension lined Davorin's throat. His gaze raked across her skinned knuckles, the stubborn line of her chin, and the shivering boy pinned beneath her work. A terrible, suffocating silence stretched over the courtyard, broken only by the crashing surf below.
Then, Davorin exhaled. It was a shudder of absolute surrender.
"Take him to the dry cells," Davorin commanded without taking his eyes off her. His voice was low, laced with raw gravel. "Feed him. No more iron. If he dies, every man on duty takes his place on that ring."
The man blinked in disbelief. "Boss?"
"Move!" Davorin roared.
The men scrambled, practically dragging the Grkovic boy across the yard to clear the space. Rostem settled onto his haunches, watching with a calm, heavy dignity.
Mireia stood, smoothing her skirts. Before she could take a step, Davorin caught her wrist. His leather glove was warm, his grip iron-clad yet meticulously careful not to bruise. The pull was gentle, drawing her against his chest until cedar and cordite filled her lungs.
"Why do you push me?" he whispered, his thumb grazing the pulse jumping in the hollow of her wrist. "You deliberately soil your hands to see if I will strike you. You look at me like I am the butcher who built your cage."
"Aren't you?" she asked coldly, refusing to pull away. Her face was an unreadable mask. "A cage with eighty-seven days left on the lease?"
Davorin went entirely still. The fire in his gaze softened into something shockingly vulnerable—a raw, bleeding wound that stripped the syndicate boss down to marrow.
"You went into the lockbox," he said quietly.
"I did."
He stepped closer, closing every inch of space between them until his mouth hovered beside her ear. "Then you know nothing. You think I bought you from Jovan to kill you? You think you are another name on the ledger of blood-rites?"
"Your own hand wrote the number, Davorin."
"Because that is how long I have to keep you alive before the council invokes the ancient rites!" The intensity in his voice was a whip-crack. He lifted his other hand, cupping the side of her neck, his bare fingers burning against her skin. The muck beneath them and the watchers on the parapets ceased to exist to him. "I have watched you for four years, Mireia. In the assembly halls where your father paraded you like chattel. At the dockside auctions where you outmaneuvered every broker while he drank away the profits. You were the only clean, brilliant thing in this rotten cesspool of a city."
Her chest tightened. She tried to hold onto her suspicion, to wrap herself in ice, but his touch burned straight through it.
"I never bought you to destroy you," Davorin rasped, his forehead nearly touching hers, his breath hot against her mouth. "Jovan was going to sell you to the old men of the Tri-District as an offering. They would have skinned you to appease the sea pacts. I mortgaged half my docks and provoked three territorial wars just to put this ring on your finger so no one else could touch you. I don't want your obedience, moja mila. I want your survival."
She looked into his eyes and found no deception—only a staggering, violent devotion that terrified her far more than any executioner's block.
Before she could speak, before the fortress around her heart could crumble, the courtyard heavy oak door banged open with a deafening crash.
Ilya sprinted down the flagstones, his face pale, tactical vest unfastened. "Boss! We have a breach in protocol. The raven car just passed the perimeter gates."
Davorin snapped his mask of ruthless authority back into place, releasing her instantly as he stepped in front of her. "Whose car, Ilya?"
"The Syndicate Elders," Ilya gasped, chest heaving. "The High Tribunal is in the grand hall. They refused to wait the full term. They're demanding the bride appear before them tonight for the Rite of Cleansing—and they brought the executioners with them."
Davorin reached for his weapon. "I'll slaughter every one of them in their seats."
"You can't, Boss," Ilya said in a frantic rush. "The blood law is absolute. If she doesn't walk into the tribunal chamber on her own two feet within the hour, they declare us traitorous apostates. The entire city will descend on the manor by nightfall."