The Mission

The shadow swallows me whole.

Cold. Dark. The space between, where nothing exists but the void and my will to move through it.

I've walked this path a hundred times. A thousand. The void knows me now, recognizes the shape of my soul as I pass through it. We have an understanding, the darkness and I. It takes nothing from me that I don't offer freely.

Unlike everything else in my life.

I step out into candlelight and the smell of woodsmoke.

The room materializes around me. Stone walls. A fire dying in the hearth. Maps spread across a table, weighted with cups and scattered quills. The trappings of a rebel commander. The bedroom of a dead man who doesn't know it yet.

He's awake.

Prince Gideon sits up in bed, and I have my blade at his throat before he can draw breath to shout.

"Don't." The word scrapes out of me, low and raw. "Don't move."

He doesn't move.

He also doesn't flinch.

I've killed men who flinched. Men who screamed, who begged, who tried to bargain with death as if it could be bought. The emperor's enemies all react the same way in the end, with the animal terror of prey that knows it's been caught.

This one just looks at me.

His attention settles on me in the candlelight. Warm, steady, focused. He should be terrified. He's not. He looks curious instead. Like I'm a puzzle he's trying to solve instead of the last thing he'll ever see.

"You came through the shadow." His voice is rough with sleep but steady. "The rumors are true, then. He has a void walker."

I press the blade harder. A thin line of blood wells up, black in the low light.

He doesn't react. Just watches me, steady and unafraid.

"What's your name, assassin?"

The question stops me cold.

No one has ever asked my name.

In twelve years of service to the emperor, of training and missions and death, not once has anyone asked. I'm the Shadow. The Void Walker. The emperor's silent knife. I'm a weapon. Weapons carry designations, not names.

But I do.

I chose it myself, years ago. In the dark hours when the collar's pain faded enough to let me think. When I could pretend, just for a moment, that I was more than what they made me.

The collar burns.

Hot metal searing into the flesh of my throat. A warning. A reminder. The mission is simple: kill the rebel prince, return to the palace, receive my next orders. No hesitation. No deviation. The collar knows when I'm not doing what I should be doing, and it punishes accordingly.

I should slit his throat. One quick motion. The mission ends, the burning stops.

But he asked my name.

"Why?" The word scrapes out of me. Not part of the script. Not what I'm supposed to say. "Why does it matter?"

"Because I'd like to know who killed me."

No bargaining. No pleading. Just a simple request.

The burning intensifies. White-hot now, spreading down my spine. My hand should be steady. It's not. The blade trembles against his skin.

Kill him.

The emperor's voice echoes in my skull. The lessons drilled in during years of training. The collar's magic reinforcing what was already beaten into me.

A weapon doesn't hesitate. A weapon follows orders or suffers until it learns.

I've learned. I've learned better than any of the others who came before me, the ones who broke too completely to be useful, the ones who broke wrong and had to be destroyed. I survived because I learned.

But I've also watched. And I've remembered.

The prince should be terrified. He should be making the face they all make, that twisted mask of someone who finally understands that death is real and it's here. Instead he's watching me with what looks uncomfortably like compassion. Like he sees the collar burning. Like he understands.

"You don't have to do this," he says.

The collar flares. Pain cascades through my nervous system. My vision whites out at the edges.

He's wrong. I do have to do this. There's no choice. There's never been a choice. I'm a tool in the emperor's hand, nothing more, and tools don't get to decide.

"The pain in your face," he continues. "It's not from me. Something's hurting you."

"Be quiet."

"That collar." His gaze drops to my throat. To the metal band that's been there since I was twelve. "My mother's journals described them. The emperor's binding instruments. Pain compliance."

"Stop talking."

"I won't fight back. If you're going to kill me, kill me. But at least tell me your name first. Let me die knowing who you are."

I should slash his throat mid-sentence. That would shut him up. That would end the mission, end the burning, let me slip back into the void and forget this ever happened.

My hand won't move.

The collar's punishment is excruciating now. Fire racing through every nerve. I've felt this before, when I was young and still stupid enough to think resistance was possible. I learned. I always learn.

But he asked my name.

And I've never told anyone.

The word rises in my throat like something living. Something that wants to exist despite everything they did to make me nothing.

"Zara."

The collar screams.

I choke on pain so intense my legs buckle. The blade drops from fingers that no longer obey me. I'm on my knees on the cold stone floor, and the prince is out of bed, and I should be dead now. He should take his chance. Pick up my own weapon and end me while I can't defend myself.

That's what smart prey does. That's what I would do.

He kneels beside me instead.

"Zara." He says it like it matters. Like the name has weight and meaning. "My name is Gideon. You're safe here."

I laugh. It comes out wrong, broken and wet with the tears the collar's pain forces from me. "Safe. There's no safe. There's only..."

The collar pulses again. I curl in on myself, trying to ride out the wave. It doesn't help. Nothing helps. This is what happens when you fail. When you hesitate. When you remember you're human.

"Easy." His hand hovers near my shoulder, not touching. "The collar. It's punishing you for not killing me?"

I can't answer. Can't speak through the fire in my throat.

"I can help." His voice cuts through the pain. Steady. Certain. "I have people who study magic. The ancient kinds. If anyone can remove that collar, they can."

A trap. This is a trap.

Kindness is always a trap. I learned that too, in the early years. The guards who smiled were the most dangerous. The trainers who offered comfort were testing you. Any weakness shown was recorded, catalogued, used against you later.

But the collar is still burning, and I failed my mission, and the emperor will know. He always knows. When I return to the palace, I'll be punished in ways that make this pain seem gentle. And then I'll be sent out again, because I'm too useful to destroy and not broken enough to be discarded.

Unless I don't return.

The thought is foreign. Wrong. A weapon doesn't choose not to return. A weapon,

"You're not a weapon." Gideon says it like he heard my thoughts. "You're a person. Whatever he did to you, whatever they made you, you're still a person. You chose a name. You hesitated. Weapons don't do that."

"You don't know what I am."

"I know you didn't kill me."

The pain is fading. Slowly, like a tide retreating. The collar's magic is vicious but finite, it can only burn so hot for so long before it has to rest. I'll have minutes, maybe hours, before it starts again.

Minutes to decide what I am.

I look up at him. This prince I was sent to kill. The leader of the rebellion that's been a thorn in the emperor's side for three years. He should be my enemy. He should be dead.

He's offering me a hand instead.

"Why?" My voice is raw. "Why help me? I came here to murder you."

"You came here to follow orders. There's a difference." He doesn't withdraw the offered hand. Patient. Like he has all the time in the world. "I've spent three years fighting the empire. I've seen what they do to people like you. The void walkers they catch and break. The weapons they make out of children."

Children. I was twelve when they found me. When the shadow first swallowed me and I emerged somewhere else, terrified and alone. When the emperor's soldiers took me from my mother's arms.

I don't remember her face anymore. The training erased it, eventually. Erased everything except the void and the missions and the collar's constant weight.

"I can't help all of them," Gideon continues. "But I can help you. If you let me."

The collar throbs. A warning. Return. Return now. Complete the mission. Accept the punishment. Be what you are.

I could slip into the void and disappear. Return to the palace and take whatever comes. Go back to being nothing, wanting nothing, feeling nothing.

I look at the prince's outstretched hand.

And I make a choice.

"The collar will keep punishing me. Every time I don't do what he wants, every time I..." My throat closes around the words. "You can't stop it. Not quickly. Not without..."

"Then we'll find another way to handle the pain." His hand is still there. Still waiting. "One step at a time, Zara. That's all anyone can do."

One step.

I don't know how to take one step. I know how to follow orders. How to walk through shadows. How to kill. I don't know how to be a person with choices and consequences and hope.

But he asked my name.

And for the first time in twelve years, I told someone.

My hand shakes as I reach for his. The contact registers as something I have no training for. Not pain, not the collar's fire. Warmth. Human warmth. I cannot recall the last time someone touched me without violence.

I can't remember.

"Okay," I whisper. The word feels foreign in my mouth. A word that means agreement. That means choice. "Okay."

His fingers close around mine.

And somewhere in the distance, I feel the collar's magic stir. It knows I've failed. It knows I've betrayed my master. The punishment will come, later, harder, worse than anything before.

But for now, for this moment, I'm kneeling in a rebel prince's bedroom, holding his hand, and I'm not a weapon.

I'm Zara.

And I chose not to kill him.

Whatever the emperor does next, that remains mine.