I didn’t think. That’s the most important part, really, because if I had thought, I would’ve remembered the last two dozen times I’d lunged headfirst into danger and gotten myself slapped, stabbed, or otherwise humiliated.
My body decided that this was my big heroic moment, the scene where the gutterslut turned gladiator proved his worth by doing something stupidly brave.
My hand shot down like lightning, fingers clamping around the hilt of the dagger at my feet, and before my brain could scream wait, idiot, maybe sharpen your will before you sharpen your steel, I was already sprinting at Malrick like some suicidal ballerina in too much eyeliner.
The ground blurred beneath me, air tearing past my ears, and for a second—a perfect, gleaming second—I believed it. Believed I could do it. That I could bury this blade into his smug ribcage, watch his grin break into panic, and stand triumphant over the bastard who dared dangle Dregan’s life in front of me like meat to a starving dog.
I felt the steel’s weight in my hand, solid and promising, like fate itself had decided to hand me a weapon and say: "Go on then, prove you’re not just pretty lips and sharper words."
But fate’s a bastard.
Malrick didn’t hesitate. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink. By the time I closed half the distance, he was already crouched low, his long dark hair swinging like a blade itself as his body coiled, predator-ready.
When I lunged in, arm cocked back, dagger gleaming in the dim light, he unleashed a roundhouse kick that snapped through the air so fast I barely saw it—only felt the crack of impact as his boot smashed into my wrist.
The dagger flew across the room.
Instantly, my hand went numb with shock, a bolt of white-hot pain shooting up to my shoulder. Before I could even scream ow in a suitably dramatic way, his fist followed, slamming into my stomach like a hammer swung by a blacksmith who’d just lost his lover.
The air whooshed out of me in one humiliating wheeze, my body folding over his knuckles as if I were nothing but laundry waiting to be wrung out.
Stars burst behind my eyes. My knees buckled. I gagged, half my dinner trying to crawl back up my throat in protest.
"Loona!" Freya’s voice cracked like thunder, sharp and furious, her boots slamming against stone as she surged forward. Brutus wasn’t far behind, his bellow like an avalanche, rattling the rafters.
I staggered back, clutching my belly, lungs spasming, but gods help me—I still grinned. Because that was the moment it shifted. It wasn’t just me against him anymore. It was us.
And gods above, we were terrifying.
Malrick barely had time to straighten before Brutus descended upon him like a landslide in human form. He charged low, shoulder first, aiming to ram Malrick into the crates behind him.
Malrick twisted, elegant as a dancer, sidestepping with just enough space to avoid being flattened. In the same breath his hand dipped, flashing low, and from the leather of his boot he drew another hidden dagger—slender, wicked, gleaming in the lantern light as though it had been waiting just for this moment. The blade hissed upward in a vicious arc, slashing straight for Brutus’s ribs.
Freya intercepted. She moved in a golden blur, her arm snapping up to catch his wrist mid-swing, muscles rippling as her grip locked around his slender bones. She wrenched, snarling, and for a moment I thought she’d snap it clean. Malrick countered, twisting with snake-like fluidity, using her own momentum to fling her sideways toward Brutus.
The two nearly collided, but Brutus braced, catching her weight against his chest before shoving her upright again. They barely had a breath before Malrick was upon them both, slashing, striking, his movements terrifying in their precision.
And then there was me.
Oh, I wish I could tell you I leapt back into the fray with grace, spinning daggers and lethal intent. But the truth is, I stumbled in like a drunkard crashing a bar fight, arms flailing, grabbing the first thing my hands found—a broken chain dangling from the rafters.
As Malrick ducked Brutus’s crushing punch, I swung that chain in a wild arc, catching him across the jaw with a meaty crack. His head snapped sideways, his hair whipping, and for the first time, I saw it—his smile faltering. Not breaking, no, but faltering.
"Ha!" I wheezed, doubling over and clutching my stomach again, but still managing a grin. "Bet you didn’t see that coming, pretty boy."
He spat blood, eyes narrowing, and then—he vanished.
I don’t mean he stepped back into the shadows. I don’t mean he ducked behind a crate. No. He fucking vanished.
One blink he was there, blood dripping down his lip, blade glinting. The next blink he was gone—air rippling faintly where his body had been, as if the world itself were confused.
I froze. Every hair on my body stood upright. My heart nearly crawled out of my throat.
"What—what the fuck—" I stammered, spinning, chain clutched in my hand.
And then pain bloomed hot across my shoulder as steel slashed shallow but sharp. I spun, too late, just in time to see him flicker back into existence behind me, dagger dripping with my blood.
In that instant, the realization dawned on me. He was a mage.
I couldn’t breathe. My thoughts fractured. Yes, a mage. Here, in the pits, in the gutters. It was unthinkable. Magic was rarer than clean sheets in the undernet of Prismillya—rarer still among the lesser slaves such as us. But this bastard—this smug, skeletal, drug-lord bastard—could vanish into thin air like some nightmare pulled from a child’s storybook.
"Oh gods," I croaked, clutching my shoulder, vision swimming. "He’s cheating. That’s cheating, right? Someone call the refs, throw the red card, this isn’t fair!"
Freya’s eyes blazed, Brutus growled low in his throat, but even they hesitated. Because this wasn’t just fists and blades anymore. This was something none of us had prepared for.
And Malrick knew it.
He prowled in a circle, blade dripping, grin sharpened by blood. "Didn’t expect that, did you, little rats?" he purred, vanishing again mid-step, only to reappear three paces to the left, then gone again, then back behind us, his voice echoing like silk through smoke. "Thought I was just another thug with a crown of dirt? No. I am more. I am the shadow between breaths. The ghost in your veins."
"Oh gods, he’s monologuing," I muttered, half-panicked, half-delighted despite myself. "We’re doomed."
Freya’s jaw clenched so hard I thought her teeth might break. Brutus, gods bless him, widened his stance and growled like he thought sheer intimidation might scare magic into behaving. Meanwhile me? I stood there holding the chain like a fool, trying to decide whether I should swing wildly or just collapse dramatically and let them think I’d died of sheer terror.
He flickered again. One second behind Freya, the next behind me. My whole body spasmed with panic. "Stop that!" I yelped. "No fair—pick a spot like a normal homicidal maniac!"
"Loona—shut up and move!" Freya snarled, swinging her fist in a wide arc where she thought he’d appear. For a heartbeat, it looked like she’d guessed wrong—until Malrick materialized right into the path of her strike. Her knuckles smashed across his cheek with such force his head snapped sideways. Blood sprayed, spattering the floor like red punctuation.
My heart leapt. "Ha! Yes! You see that?! I loosened him up for you!"
Then he vanished again, and my heart promptly crawled back into my boots.
The fight turned into madness. He flickered around us like a phantom, blade flashing in and out of existence, each strike just barely missing something vital. Freya kept him at bay with wild, punishing swings, her golden hair whipping around like molten fire. Brutus absorbed the brunt, arms up like shields, snarling through every cut and slice that grazed his skin.
I did what I do best—I panicked loudly and improvised harder. I swung that chain around like a lunatic, trying to catch him mid-vanish, whirling in circles until I nearly tripped over my own feet.
But there was a rhythm to it. At first I thought I was imagining it, some trick of adrenaline. But no. Each vanish wasn’t random. There was...a beat. A stutter in the air, a faint shimmer, like ripples on water before a stone breaks the surface.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed. From his perch near the vent, Atticus adjusted his cracked glasses, eyes narrowing. His lips twitched with something dangerously close to excitement. Then he called out—calm, measured, like he was conducting a lecture instead of watching us die.
"He displaces the air," Atticus said. "Each time he shifts. Half a second before he reappears, the pressure changes. Listen—don’t look. Listen."
Listen. Right. Easy for the bookworm perched safely on high. Not so easy for me, a bundle of nerves vibrating like a harp string, heart pounding so loud it drowned out every other sound.
But Freya heard it. Brutus heard it. And slowly—painfully slowly—I forced myself to hear it too. That faint hiss, that whisper of displaced air just before his body took shape again.
Freya lunged first, pivoting on her heel, swinging a backfist right into thin air. Malrick reappeared—exactly where her strike landed. He staggered, teeth bared, blood spraying again. Brutus followed with a hammer-fist to the gut, folding him in half.
I whooped, half-hysterical, twirling my chain in triumph. "Oh gods—it works! It actually works! I’m a genius by association!"
Malrick vanished again, but this time Brutus was ready, swinging blind toward the hiss of displaced air. His fist smashed into Malrick’s jaw before the bastard even had time to fully form. Malrick crumpled, then flickered out again, snarling like a cornered beast.
We had him. For the first time—we actually had him.
It became a rhythm, a deadly dance. He’d vanish, hiss, reappear. One of us would strike, the others would follow.
But Malrick wasn’t finished. Oh no. Eventually, he adapted. He started chaining vanishes, reappearing only half-solid, slashing through us in bursts of flickering steel. My shoulder burned from another shallow cut, Brutus bled from his arm, and Freya’s golden skin was streaked with crimson.
Still—we pressed him. Step by step. Blow by blow.
Then came the moment. The turning point.
Freya drove him back with a flurry of strikes, each one smashing into him faster than he could vanish. Brutus came barreling forward, pinning him against a stack of crates. I came in from the side, swinging my chain around his wrist. It caught.
Malrick staggered, bound. For the first time, real panic flashed across his sharp features.
I grinned, teeth bared. "Gotcha."
My grin barely had time to stretch into full-blown smug before Malrick proved, once again, that fate doesn’t let me have nice things.
Pinned against the crates, chain biting into his wrist, Brutus’s massive shoulder crushing him in place, it looked like victory. For a heartbeat, I could see it—his sharp face contorted, that smug grin twisted into something ugly.
And then, with the kind of infuriating elegance only men like him seem born with, he jerked his free arm up, and from the folds of his ragged sleeve another dagger slid out like it had been waiting its whole miserable life for me.
Steel gleamed, arcing quick as lightning. Brutus snarled, bracing against the slash, but Malrick’s aim was wicked. The blade scraped along Brutus’s ribs, making him stagger back. And before the mountain could retaliate, Malrick twisted that same blade toward me.
I swear, my life flashed before my eyes—except it wasn’t my whole life, just the humiliating parts. Every slap, every insult, every time I was caught masturbating in public. All of it compressed into one divine moment of: oh gods, not like this.
The dagger swept at my gut. I yelped before jerking back just enough to avoid a disembowelment. But the swipe forced me to let go of the chain. My precious victory unravelled in an instant. Malrick wrenched his wrist free with a serpent’s hiss, twisting out from Brutus’s lunge and spinning into the open.
And here’s the part that lodged in my brain like a splinter: he didn’t vanish. He could’ve. Should’ve. His little flicker-trick would’ve gotten him out without breaking a sweat. But he didn’t.
Odd. Very odd indeed.
"Why didn’t he just—" I started to shout, but Atticus’s voice cut across the chamber like a bell tolling judgment.
"He can’t vanish while bound!" Atticus bellowed from his perch, his cracked glasses glinting, his voice uncharacteristically sharp. "The displacement won’t let him—it anchors him to the physical plane!"
My jaw nearly unhinged. "You knew this the whole time?!"
"I hypothesized," Atticus replied primly, as though this wasn’t a life-or-death brawl with a teleporting drug lord. "Now we have proof. So keep him bound you idiots!"
"On it," Freya snarled, already a blur of golden fury charging in.
Malrick slashed at her, but she was faster. Her arms caught his wrist, muscles taut, and with a violent twist she wrenched the dagger clean out of his hand, flinging it to the ground. He hissed, but Brutus was already back in, seizing his other arm like an iron clamp.
It was chaos—pure, violent, glorious chaos. Freya snarling, Brutus growling, Malrick writhing like a trapped animal, his dark hair whipping as he fought against them both. The air shook with the sound of fists colliding with flesh, boots scraping stone, bones threatening to crack.
And me? Oh, I saw it. I saw my opening.
The world slowed. My heart pounded in my ears. My lungs burned. And some deep, primal part of me whispered: Do it. Make it hurt.
I surged forward with a scream that was equal parts battle cry and drunken cabaret wail. My fist drove straight into his stomach, burying into muscle, folding him like parchment. The sound that tore out of him wasn’t human—it was a hollow, broken wheeze, sharp enough to echo.
He gagged, blood spattering his lips. His eyes, wide for once, locked onto mine in a mixture of pain and disbelief. He buckled, dropping to his knees, Brutus and Freya still holding him fast as his body shuddered.
And gods help me—I wasn’t done.
"Here’s your encore, pretty boy," I hissed, lifting one boot high. And with all the pent-up rage I’d harbored since the start of this grueling fight, I kicked.
Straight across his face.
The impact cracked through the chamber like thunder. His head snapped sideways, body crumpling limp against the floor. Silence fell in his wake, thick and heavy, broken only by the drip of blood from his mouth onto the stone.
Malrick—kingpin, phantom, nightmare—had been beaten.
And I was standing over him, panting, shaking, grinning like a madman who couldn’t believe his own luck.