Chapter 88: No Mercy

There are three universal truths in life: death, taxes, and the absolute certainty that someone will ruin a perfectly good plan right before the finish line.

But if I were feeling generous—and Saints know I rarely am—I’d add a fourth: betrayal always arrives dressed like inevitability. It never struts, never announces itself with fireworks or fanfare. It merely strolls in, calm and casual, holding your trust in one hand and a knife in the other, asking if you’d like a smoke before it guts you.

So when the silence fell, thick and bruised with tension, I knew exactly what came next. My jaw locked itself shut. The tension wound through my body like a coiled wire—tight, sharp, and ready to snap. The tunnel smelled of soot, sweat, and treachery, the kind of air that stuck to your lungs like old regrets.

My hands clenched into fists, knuckles whitening under the strain, then unclenched with a tremble, only to clench again harder, nails digging crescents into my palms as, for one dangerous second, I imagined them closing around the Boss’s throat, just to feel something break.

Freya beat me to the punch. Her voice cut through the murk like a jagged blade dragged across stone, raw and grating. “You bastard!” she screamed, the words echoing thunderously through the tunnel’s vast expanse until even the torches themselves seemed to flinch in her presence.

Every head in the tunnel swiveled sharply. Yolmear’s army froze mid-step, boots halting on the gravel with a collective scrape.

The Boss didn’t flinch. Of course he didn’t. No, he just stood there, hands still tucked in his pockets like a man watching the weather ruin someone else’s picnic. His smile widened, lazy and terrible, stretching the scar that slithered along his lip. His good eye gleamed like a polished coin while the glass one reflected nothing at all—just blank, merciless light.

“Dear Freya,” he said softly, the name rolling off his tongue like curling smoke from a dying ember. “Still loud as ever. You always did have a talent for turning an ambush into a performance. How nostalgic.”

“Don’t you—” she started, her voice trembling so hard it nearly broke, “—don’t you dare talk to me like that!”

He tilted his head, studying her as though she were an amusing species of insect. “Why not? We go way back, you and I. You were practically family. Well—distant family. The kind that borrows money, steals your shoes, and burns the house down for warmth.”

Freya’s fists tightened until the veins on her forearms stood out like cords. Gods, I’d seen her angry before—furious, murderous, incandescent with rage—but this was different. This was pain. The kind of pain that doesn’t scream; the kind that bleeds quietly behind the fangs.

“Family?” she spat, her voice cracking sharply on the word like fragile glass under pressure. “You left me to die, you piece of shit! You ordered the retreat before I even made it back to the base!”

The Boss chuckled, low and lazy. “Ah, you’re still hung up on that, are you?” He lifted a finger to his chin in mock contemplation. “Remind me, what was it that happened again? My memory so often fails me these days.”

“—you told them to leave me!” she roared, cutting him off, her voice raw and ragged, tearing itself apart with the force of long-buried grief.

He sighed theatrically, as though bored of the subject. “And yet, here you are, alive and kicking, shouting at me in full stereo. You’re welcome, really. Abandonment builds character.”

Every muscle in Freya’s body trembled visibly, her frame shaking with the effort of restraint. Her molten eyes burned with a fury that could have melted steel, and still he just stood there, smirking like the devil who’d just found his favorite sinner.

I should’ve said something. I should’ve told her to stop before she shattered completely. But I was transfixed, caught in the orbit of their history—an old wound being reopened with surgical precision.

Freya lunged a step forward, but Dregan’s arm shot out, catching her shoulder in a grip like a vice. His voice was low and urgent when he spoke. “Don’t. Not now.”

“Let me go!” she snarled, but he held her firm.

The Boss clucked his tongue like a disappointed parent. “Yes, listen to your new babysitter. Smart man, that one. Knows when to pick his fights—and when to let someone else die first.”

The insult was surgical in its precision, deliberate even. I could see it in the Boss’s eyes then—his craving for chaos.

“Cut the act,” I snapped finally, stepping forward into the flickering light. “Let me get straight to the point…why?”

He looked at me, really looked, and that damn smile of his twisted into something uncomfortably genuine, almost affectionate in its mockery. “Ah, the cum-sniffing brat. Still as gaudy as ever I see.”

“Answer the damn question,” Freya interjected, “Why betray your own people? You used us—”

“Of course I did,” he said lightly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You think I survived this long by playing fair? You were pawns, my dear. Necessary sacrifices. Offerings to keep me standing when the Warden’s hounds came sniffing. And look, it worked splendidly!”

For a heartbeat, no one moved. The truth hung in the air, thick and noxious.

My eyes slid toward Brutus on instinct. He was silent—too silent. His shotgun hung heavy at his side, finger resting on the trigger guard but unmoving. The firelight caught his jawline, that grim set to his mouth. Something in me twisted.

“Brutus?” I said softly. He didn’t look at me.

Freya glanced at him with pleading eyes. “Brutus, say something,” she whispered. But he didn’t. Instead, slowly, almost tenderly, he began to lower the shotgun. “What are you doing?” She said, a slight tinge of urgency lacing her voice.

The Boss laughed—a deep, booming sound that filled the tunnel like a collapsing cathedral. I couldn’t help it. I needed to know.

“Why?” I heard myself asking once more, the word dragging out of me rough and uneven, like something torn from bone. “Why would you do this? We were so close. The plan—it was working. You could’ve made it out.”

He laughed again, as if my words were a delightful encore to a dish he hadn’t realized he’d ordered.

“Escape?” he said finally, wiping at his good eye as if our concerns were nothing but a well-executed joke. “Oh, no. I never planned to escape,” he went on, turning now to gesture lazily at the wrecked train and the tunnel that stretched in front of him—an endless corridor of smoke and shadow. “This little performance of ours was designed to fail, one way or another. Here, in this pitiful tomb, or deeper still—in those cursed tunnels ahead.”

He lifted his finger and pointed into the black expanse, a void so thick it looked like the earth had opened its mouth to swallow the sky. “That,” he said softly, “isn’t salvation. It’s a grave dressed in mystery.”

His voice grew colder then, losing its theatrical charm. “Even if we somehow clawed our way out—if the gods themselves parted the walls for us—what then? The Velvet Chambers? You think I, of all people, could thrive there? That any of us could? The highbloods would have my head on a pike before sunset. No, no… this,” he spread his arms wide, encompassing the walls, the corpses, the chaos, “this is my kingdom. I built it from blood, ash, and the broken dreams of better men. Why trade an empire for a better leash?”

Every word dripped like molten gold, heavy, decadent, and blasphemous in all the ways that made sense.

And then his gaze found me again, pinning me like a specimen under glass. “You talk about freedom like a fool talks about love—loudly, desperately, and without a shred of understanding. You want to flee? To run into the same world that spat you into this one? Be my guest. But me…” He smiled again, slow and serpentine. “I plan to rule.”

The silence after that was unbearable, humming with all the things no one dared to say.

Then the Boss extended one hand, palm up, as if offering communion. “So,” he said softly, “here’s my generosity.”

He turned slightly—not toward me, but to the others. To Brutus, Dregan, Atticus, Freya, and the other men still gripping their weapons with white-knuckled confusion.

“Join me,” he purred, voice curling around the words like smoke. “Help rebuild what we’ve lost. Be part of something real, something eternal—under my absolute command. Or die here clinging to your foolish ideals like a child clutching a dead pet.”

His words hung in the air for a moment. No one moved. Not Dregan, not Atticus, not even Freya, who stood trembling beside me with her knuckles white and her breath coming sharp and uneven.

For once, there was no witty retort hovering on my tongue. Just this—this strange, fragile ache blooming in my chest like some cruel parody of warmth. Because, Saints above, they didn’t move. Not one of them stepped forward.

They chose to stay. To stand. Even now, in this pit of betrayal and fire.

And just as that fragile flicker of hope began to catch somewhere deep within me—just as I felt my throat start to loosen enough to breathe again—Brutus moved.

It wasn’t much at first. Just a twitch of his shoulder, a shift in his stance. Then a step. Then another. Heavy, deliberate, the sound of his boots grinding against the gravelled stone loud enough to echo. My pulse stuttered.

“Brutus?” Freya’s voice came as barely a whisper, but in that silence it cracked like thunder. He didn’t answer. Her hand reached out instinctively, fingers curling toward him as though she could pull him back by sheer will alone. “Brutus—no. Don’t.”

He kept walking.

“Brutus!” she shouted, louder now, more desperate. Her voice broke on his name.

Still, he didn’t look at her. His face was stone. His eyes—darkened and dull—had none of the usual fire, none of that quiet, dogged loyalty that had once made him seem unbreakable. Only something hollow now. Something resigned to the abyss.

Freya stumbled forward, her hand finding his sleeve in a desperate clutch, fingers clinging to the coarse fabric like a lifeline.

“Please,” she whispered, “Please…not again.”

For one heartbeat, Brutus looked as though he hesitated. Just one, the tiniest flicker of humanity passing over his rugged face like the ghost of a longforgotten memory.

And then he struck her.

The slap was sharp, vicious, and loud enough to ring off the walls. Her head snapped to the side, hair whipping in the air. She froze, her hand still raised in the space where his sleeve had been, her lip trembling but no sound coming out.

“Don’t touch me, you stupid bitch,” Brutus said flatly, his voice hollow and cold, stripped bare of anything human.

Freya stared at him as if the world itself had stopped spinning. Her breath hitched once, twice—then broke entirely.

Her shoulders began to shake, first in silence, then in small, pitiful tremors. Tears, hot and ragged, began spilling free, cutting clean paths through the grime staining her cheeks.

Freya—who’d faced beasts and blades without blinking—was now nothing but a trembling silhouette in the firelight, shattered at the feet of the man she’d once trusted to protect her.

The Boss’s laughter exploded through the tunnel like an avalanche. Great, booming peals of it that shook dust from the ceiling and sent the guards flinching as if the sound itself might cut them.

“Oh, magnificent!” he roared. “I almost forgot what loyalty looks like when it finally grows teeth!”

The echo of his words rolled, long and shuddering, until even the flames seemed to cower beneath it.

Brutus kept walking, each step heavier than the last, until he came to stand at the Boss’s side. The two of them—one a storm of chaos wrapped in silk, the other a tower of brute resolve—looked like two halves of the same monstrous coin.

Dregan’s cigar fell from his lips, hitting the ground with a tiny hiss. Atticus’s expression twisted into something feral, all calculation stripped away.

Freya didn’t move at all. She just stared, shoulders shaking, tears dripping onto the cold stone like the last offerings of a dying saint, mourning a faith that would never rise again.

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