008— "EMPTY THREATS."

Her eyes didn't leave mine.

"There's a way to stop it. Your mother was a friend of mine."

The notepad slipped.

I caught it — barely — and the old woman's hand shot out immediately. Not touching me. 

Just one sharp look that said ‘calm down’ louder than any word could. 

Her eyes cut sideways. A quick sweep of the diner. Joe behind the counter pretending to wipe something.

I straightened my spine. Rearranged my face. 

I made myself look like a waitress taking an order and not a girl who had just been told she didn't have to die.

She slid the paper across the table without looking at it. So smooth I almost missed it.

"Call that number," she murmured. 

"Three days from now. Not before." She set her menu down and folded her hands like we'd discussed the weather. 

"I'll be waiting."

Then she stood. Left cash on the table and walked out.

I stood at the edge of her booth and stared at the door swinging shut behind her. 

I didn't move. Couldn't. 

My brain was doing something loud and disorganized.

“Who was that?”

“How did she know? How does she know about the mark? I've told nobody, shown nobody, I've been so careful, how does she—”

“She knew my mother. She said she knew my mother. Which means she knew my mother before Silvercrest or during or— and she knows I'm dying, how does she know I'm dying, what does she know that I don't—”

"Morrison."

I blinked.

My manager was three feet away looking at my face like it was doing something concerning. 

His eyes dropped to my hand, to the paper I was still holding, and I moved before I thought about it. 

"What was that?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said. "Table six needs a refill."

He looked at me one second too long.

I walked to table six.

My hands were shaking slightly. I gripped the coffee pot tighter and breathed and told myself to think in order. One thing at a time. She knew about the mark. She said there's a way.

There's a way to stop it.

Which meant I wasn't going to die in a twelve-by-twelve apartment in a border town under a name that wasn't mine.

Which meant I had time. Real, actual time. Enough to find everything Crew buried. Enough to pull it all into the light. Enough to watch him answer for every single thing he did to my family…

I refilled the coffee.

The customer said thank you.

I smiled at him. A real one. Not the customer service smile. Something that came from somewhere I'd forgotten I still had.

He looked slightly startled.

Fair enough.

Temi passed me on her way to the kitchen and stopped dead. "Wait! Are you smiling?"

"People smile, Temi."

"You specifically don't."

"New development," I said, and went to take another order.

I moved the paper to the small locked drawer in my nightstand the second I got home. 

Checked it was still there. Checked again. Lay on my mattress and stared at the ceiling and for the first time in three months the ceiling didn't feel like something pressing down on me.

Three days.

I could do three days.

I slept properly that night. All the way through until my alarm went off like a normal person. 

I lay there for a second in the pale morning light actually surprised that I wasn't on the floor.

I got up.

I stood in front of the mirror and actually looked. Not the quick terrified glance I'd been doing every morning since Silvercrest — checking the mark, looking away before it got worse. 

I actually looked at my own face.

I found my edge pencil at the bottom of my makeup bag. The earrings I hadn't worn since Toronto. The jacket I'd bought the week before the coronation when I still had a life to dress for.

By the time I was done I looked like someone who had decided to still be a person.

I looked at my reflection and thought about Kai Volkov's threat. 

“Leave Briar Falls or I'll kill you.” s

Something almost like a laugh moved through my chest.

“Come find me,”I picked up my bag, and left.

Anya saw me crossing the parking lot and stopped walking entirely.

In the middle of the lot. Staring.

"Who are you," she said when I reached her, "and where is Gaya?."

"She's taking a personal day."

"She doesn't take personal days. She takes three jobs and a persecution complex."

"Anya."

"You look—" She grabbed my arm, studying my face with focused concern. 

"Are you actually okay? Not the 'I'm fine' okay. Actually."

I looked at her. At her worried eyes and her protein bar and her missed calls that I never deserved.

"Better," I said honestly. "Come on."

She didn't look fully convinced but she fell into step beside me and that was enough.

Inside, Mari complimented my jacket before I'd even taken it off. 

Coach Petrov looked up from his clipboard, looked back down, then looked up again like he was doing a double take on his own vision.

I was lacing my skates on the bench, when the atmosphere shifted.

That charge. That specific pressure drop that meant something significant had entered the building. My hands stilled on my laces before my brain caught up.

I looked up slowly.

Kai stood in the upper viewing area. Arms crossed. Eyes already on me like he'd located me before he'd even stopped walking. Like I was something he tracked automatically and hated that he did.

I looked back at him.

His eyebrow moved slightly. The expression of someone filing away information they didn't expect.

I held his gaze for three full seconds.

Then I looked away and went back to my laces.

I was still smirking and I didn't bother hiding it because let him see. 

Let him see that his threats didn't keep me awake last night. Let him see that I showed up anyway — dressed, rested, present, and there was nothing he could do about it.

"Alright, listen up," Coach Petrov called, gathering us at the boards. He had his clipboard and his serious face and I was already paying attention when he said it. 

"Change of plan. We're scrimmaging against Volkov's team."

Anya's head turned to me so fast I heard it.

Her expression was a whole conversation. “Are you okay. Do you need me to fake an injury. I will fake an injury right now. Say the word.”

I clicked my helmet into place.

"You good?" she asked carefully.

I looked at her. Then up at Kai in the viewing area. Then back at her face.

I smirked again.

"Watch me," I said, and skated out.

I don't remember the last time I played like that.

Like I was made for it. Like my body remembered what it was for and decided three months of grief and survival and rejection sickness wasn't going to take that away. 

Every edge was clean. I could read the ice, read the plays, read the gaps before they opened and I was already moving.

I got possession eight minutes in.

I saw him ahead of me. Kai, positioned perfectly, that controlled predatory stillness he carried everywhere, and I made a decision so fast it was almost automatic.

I went straight at him.

He moved to cut me off. I dropped my weight, changed direction mid-stride, left edge catching perfectly— the weak one— and went inside his guard before he'd finished adjusting.

I scored.

The sound my team made could probably be heard from the parking lot. 

I turned from the net and the celebration was immediate and loud. I pointed at nobody in particular. 

Then, I looked. I couldn't help it. I looked at his face.

Pure shock. There and gone in under a second, swallowed and replaced with cold fury. But I saw it.

I filed it.

I dribbled him again eleven minutes later and I heard someone in the stands actually gasp. The third time his jaw was so tight I was surprised he still had teeth.

We won.

Coach Petrov stood at center ice doing the slow head shake of a man revising his understanding of something. 

"First time," he said. "Eighteen months that team has been unbeaten." He looked at me directly. "First time."

My team lost their minds completely.

Anya grabbed me by both shoulders and shook me until my teeth rattled and I laughed. Actually laughed, loud and real and unguarded, and let her.

I looked around for Kai through the chaos.

Gone.

Didn't even stay to watch the aftermath. Just… gone.

I laughed again, quieter this time, just for myself.

“Empty threats,” I thought. “From an empty man.”

"Come to Murphy's," Anya said, still slightly breathless from celebrating. "Just for a bit. The whole team's going."

"I don't really…"

"Sloane." She looked at me. "You just beat Kai Volkov's unbeaten team almost single-handedly and you look like an actual human being today. Come have one drink. Please."

I opened my mouth.

"Please," she said again.

I sighed. "One drink."

The silence that followed was not a silence. It was eight people turning around at exactly the same moment to stare at me.

"Did she just say yes?" Mari said to nobody in particular.

"I think she said yes," someone confirmed.

"Has she ever said yes before?"

"Not once."

"Everyone act normal," Anya said loudly, "before she changes her mind."

Murphy's was warm and loud and smelled like cheap beer. 

I sat in the corner of the booth with my one drink and nursed it while chaos happened around me. Anya tried twice to get me to take a second. I declined twice. 

I knew what happened when I drank more than one. I became a person with no filter and even fewer good ideas. I needed all my ideas to be at least mediocre right now.

I was watching Priya attempt to explain the offside rule to a baffled bartender when 

Sarah leaned across the table with the specific energy of someone three drinks deep and about to say something they've been holding onto all evening.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Probably not," I said.

She asked anyway. "What did you do to Kai Volkov?"

I choked on my drink. Actual choking. Hand to my chest, eyes watering, completely undignified. "What?"

"He watches you," she said. "Like. Specifically you. I noticed at the scrimmage and I noticed again today."

"He watches everyone," I said when I could breathe again. "That's just his face."

"No," said Dami from the end of the table, who I had always found unnervingly perceptive even fully sober and was apparently worse with alcohol in her. 

"He looks at everyone else with nothing. Like we're furniture." She pointed her glass at me. "He looks at you with hatred. Real hatred. There's a difference."

The table went quiet in that specific way that meant everyone had been thinking it and nobody had wanted to say it first.

I opened my mouth.

Then, Priya made a noise that was nobody's friend and her bag became a casualty. The table exploded into the kind of chaos that ended evenings efficiently.

I looked at my drink.

“Hatred,” I thought. 

Good. We're on the same page.

I didn't examine why Dami's words were still sitting in my chest twenty minutes later when we were outside saying goodbyes. 

Anya hugged me and held on a second longer than usual. I let her because today had been good and I wasn't going to ruin it by being a closed fist about everything.

I got a taxi and rode home watching the town go dark outside the window. 

Thought about the paper in my drawer. Three days. Thought about tomorrow. Thought about Crew's face when everything he built finally came apart.

I was almost smiling when I turned into my alley.

Almost smiling when I reached my apartment door.

The door that was open.

Both locks undone. Chain hanging loose. Open by four inches like someone had just forgotten to close it except I never forgot, I always locked it, it was the last thing I did every single night…

I didn't think. My hand found the metal rod propped against the outside wall. I pushed the door with my foot and moved inside ready for whatever was on the other side.

My eyes snapped open as I saw who was there.

Kai?

He stood beside my bed.

In my apartment. Standing like he belonged there. Like he'd been there long enough to look comfortable about it.

And in his hand…

… was the paper from my locked drawer.