Kira

The good news: Kira made it back to the warehouse district before her legs gave out.

The bad news: everything else.

She'd done the math three times. Eight blocks to the Compass Rose, which might as well be eight miles when you're leaking through a bandage made from your own torn sleeve. The gash across her ribs wasn't the worst she'd ever taken—that honor went to the crossbow bolt in her thigh six years ago, or maybe the time with the drake and the dockside fire, she'd lost track—but it was deep enough to make her vision go soft at the edges when she stood.

So she'd stopped standing. Strategically. Against a crate that smelled like fish guts and regret, in an alley she was sixty percent sure she could defend if she had to.

Forty percent.

The job itself had gone fine. Quick retrieval, clean exit, exactly challenging enough reminded her why she'd stayed with the Compass Rose instead of taking easier contracts with the legitimate guilds. Then the client's "forgotten detail" showed up wearing Guild Enforcer badges and a bad attitude, and Kira had made a choice between fighting and running that she was now reconsidering from her current position on the ground.

She should send word to Margot. That was the smart call.

She wasn't going to send word to Margot.

Footsteps.

Her hand found her blade before her brain caught up, which was good because her brain was currently operating on a three-second delay and mild blood loss. The grip wasn't what it should be. Her tail pressed flat against the crate behind her, instinct screaming threat assessment while the rest of her screamed you're too tired for this shit.

Someone was about to find Demos Steelhand's daughter bleeding in an alley like a rookie who'd fumbled her first job. Twenty-eight years of reputation, and this was the mental image she'd be leaving them with.

Fantastic.

The Compass Rose didn't do interviews.

What it did was this: Margot pointed at someone and said "handle it," and Kira handled it. Which today meant sitting across from a stranger at the table closest to the back exit—always closest to the back exit—with two ales she hadn't touched and a stare she'd been perfecting since before this person was probably born.

She'd already catalogued the obvious. None of which told her whether they'd crack the first time a job went sideways.

"So," she said. "Margot says you're looking for work."

This was not a question. This was an opening. What they did with it would tell her more than any references or reputation. Did they oversell? Undersell? Lie about something she could check? Get defensive about the assessment they definitely knew was happening?

Her tail curled once around the leg of her chair, settling in.

The Compass Rose took all kinds—she'd learned that much in fifteen years. Former soldiers, former criminals, former nobles who'd discovered that family money dried up faster than family loyalty. What it didn't take was people who couldn't be honest about what they were. Margot didn't have patience for it. Kira had even less.

"Tell me what you're good at," she said. "Then tell me what you're shit at. And then I'll decide if you get a trail run."

The job was done, the client had paid, and Kira was three ales deep into what she'd earned.

The Seasinger's Tavern was loud tonight—sailors swapping lies, a card game getting heated in the corner, someone murdering a sea shanty near the bar—and for once she didn't mind. The noise felt good. Felt like proof the world was still moving, still full of people doing stupid things that weren't her problem for at least twelve more hours.

Her axe was propped against the table, freshly cleaned. Her shoulders had dropped from their usual position somewhere around her ears. Even her tail was doing something relaxed and loose, curling around the leg of her chair like it had forgotten to be vigilant.

This was the part nobody warned you about. They told you about the danger, the money, the jobs that went sideways at the worst possible moment. Nobody mentioned the after—when the work was done, the blood was washed off, and you had to figure out what to do with a body still humming with energy that had nowhere to go. Some people fucked. Some people fought. Kira drank, and counted it as personal growth that she'd stopped doing the other two.

Mostly stopped.

She signaled for a fourth ale because she'd survived and the coin was good and she was forty-two years old, which meant she'd earned the right to make choices her morning self would regret.

Someone was approaching her table. Under normal circumstances, she'd have clocked them as threat or non-threat before they got within ten feet. Under current circumstances, she was feeling generous enough to let them get close before she decided.

"Chair's open," she said, gesturing with her mug and a grin. "You're buying the next round."

The first thing Kira became aware of was the headache.

It had weight. Texture. It was less a pain and more a presence, something that had moved into her skull and started charging rent. She lay very still—loss assessment, that was the priority—and tried to piece together what she knew.

She was horizontal. Good start.

She was warm. Concerning, because her room at the boarding house was never warm; the window didn't seal right, and she'd stopped complaining about it roughly eight years ago.

She was not alone.

That part became clear when she registered the breathing. Someone else's breathing, very close, coming from the warm weight pressed against her back. Her tail was—oh, gods, her tail was wrapped around someone's leg. Traitor. Absolute traitor of an appendage.

Kira opened one eye.

Unfamiliar ceiling. Unfamiliar room. Siren's Quarter, if she had to guess, based on the faded red curtains and the distinct smell of incense covering up something worse. Her clothes were... mostly present. That was something. Her axe was propped against the wall, which meant drunk-Kira had maintained some standards.

And there was a ring on her finger.

She stared at it. Cheap silver, faintly warm, humming with the kind of half-assed enchantment work that suggested a back-alley artificer and a significant lack of judgment. The kind of ring you bought at three in the morning when the Siren's Quarter was still open and your decision-making skills had been drowned in ale sometime around midnight.

Oh, fuck.

Oh, fuck.

The last clear memory was the Seasinger's Tavern. Fifth round. Maybe sixth. Someone had laughed, and there'd been a dare, and—

It didn't matter. What mattered was the math: one ring, one stranger, one night she couldn't remember, and roughly two minutes before she had to roll over and discover who she'd accidentally married.

Kira had killed forty-seven people. She'd watched her father hang. She'd survived a decade and a half of the Compass Rose's worst contracts without flinching.

None of it had prepared her for this.

Her tail tightened involuntarily around the stranger's leg. Still a traitor. She was going to have words with it later.

Okay. Okay. You've handled worse. You've definitely handled worse. Name one thing. Name one worse thing.

She was coming up empty.

Right. Time to find out who she'd married.