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Chapter 91: Centre Stage, Again
Fecha de publicación:
2026-10-03 17:52:10
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THE SONGBIRDS CAGE Chapter 95: Vas Fall
KiryanI have killed men from closer than thirty feet.I want that understood. If I'd had a clear line, Vas would have been on the floor before he finished his sentence. But he had angled himself so the gun covered her, and the corridor was narrow, and Dario stood half a pace in front of me with blood running down his fingers. Anything I did put a bullet in the back of her skull, so I stood still, which is what I'm good at."One minute thirty," Vas said. "Tick, tick.""You'll die with us," Dario said hoarsely."Will I?" Vas tipped his head. "I know the door at the end of this cellar and the passage behind it. I helped build this place, Dario, and I'd be up the lane before the first brick fell.""Then why come down?" she said.She still hadn't turned. Her hands hovered over the keys and her voice was level and tired, almost curious, as if she were asking about the weather."Because I want the sequence," Vas said. "Stop playing. Type what I tell you and I'll let you all walk out.""You
THE SONGBIRDS CAGE Chapter 94: The Battle
DarioThe number on Vas's wrist said eleven minutes and four seconds, and my first thought was a stupid one. She's still holding her hands out.She was. She stood five feet from a man with a gun, a woman I'd have walked into fire for, with her palms open like she was waiting for someone to put something in them. I couldn't breathe, because I had never loved anything so much and had never wanted so badly to shake it by the shoulders."Elena," she said, calm enough to make my skin crawl. "How long to the cellar?""Ninety seconds, if the door's still open.""Marek." She didn't look at the shaved-headed kid. "You carried it down. Can you find it in the dark?"Marek swallowed. "Yes.""Then you're with us."Vas moved. I saw it half a second before it happened, the way you can feel a car about to skid. His left hand came up toward his belt, and the whole ballroom, all those frozen people, seemed to inhale.I hit him. I don't remember deciding to. One moment I was in the aisle and the next I
THE SONGBIRDS CAGE Chapter 93: Unmasked
WrenNobody screamed. Two hundred people sat very still, and I understood that most of them had been in rooms like this before.Men in dark suits stood at every door. I counted eleven, and then I counted the twelfth, up on the balcony rail with his hand inside his coat, and thought the roof had never been the only one I forgot."Everyone stay where you are," Vas said pleasantly. "This is a misunderstanding, and misunderstandings are easier to fix when people stay calm."My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my teeth. I had rehearsed this part, not the guns exactly but the moment after the mask comes off, when the man you've cornered decides what kind of animal he is. I had told myself I'd know what to do. I didn't, not yet, so I did the one thing I did know how to do and kept talking."You brought your own security into the Don's house," I said. "Into a summit held under truce. Do you understand what that means?""It means I'm careful.""It means you were planning something
THE SONGBIRDS CAGE Chapter 92: The Steps Ahead
WrenI kept singing in the dark.That was what I'd practised more than anything, more than the key change or the timing. Two hundred people were about to lose their composure, and the only thing that would hold them for the next ten seconds was a human voice that didn't flinch. So I sang the last line of the verse into the black, low and level, while chairs scraped and somebody swore and a glass hit the floor. Under all of it I heard Vas's chair go back fast, the way a man stands when his plan has just sprung a hole.Then the emergency lights came on, a dull amber, and the ballroom looked like the inside of a bruise."Please stay seated," I said into a microphone that shouldn't have been working. It worked because Talia had moved the stage feed to the backup circuit in the same second she killed the main one. "Nobody's hurt. This is mine."The room went quiet. I let them look at me, a woman alone on a stage in a plain blue dress, saying this is mine."Last night Vas showed you a corri
THE SONGBIRDS CAGE Chapter 91: Centre Stage, Again
Wren’sThey hung me out like laundry the night before, and the whole summit watched me flap.Vas did it politely, which is how he did everything. He stood up at the Don's long table with a wineglass in one hand and a tablet in the other, said he was sorry, truly sorry, but he thought the families deserved to know who had been singing for them all week. Then he turned the tablet around.The footage was grainy. It showed me in a service corridor, leaning close to a man who worked for Kiryan's oldest enemy, my lips moving while his hand passed me something small.Nobody shouted, and that was the worst of it. Rooms like that don't shout when they decide you're dead. They go quiet and start counting what you're worth.I looked at Dario first, maybe because his face always tells the truth before he can stop it. He had gone pale around the mouth, and his fingers were so tight on the stem of his glass that I thought it would snap. Then I looked at Kiryan, who gave me nothing at all. He can tu
THE SONGBIRDS CAGE Chapter 90: Chaos Begins
Wren’sAt ten thirty-eight, the terrace was the most beautiful place I'd ever been afraid of.They'd cleared the long stone shelf of everything but one table, white-clothed, running nearly its whole length, candles in glass, low arrangements of white roses. Below the wall the lake lay black and dead still. Behind me, through the open doors, the ballroom glowed gold, the waltz had slowed into something even softer, and thirty-odd guests had drifted out onto the flagstones with glasses in hand, wearing the pleasant faces of people waiting to be moved along.I sat at the Don's right hand, cane across my knees, back to the water. Eleven minutes earlier Vas had left his chair beside me with an apology about the Ambassador, and I hadn't seen him since. I hadn't seen Dario either. One row back, one seat in from the aisle, Kiryan sat like a man carved out of dark stone, his eyes finding mine every so often and moving away again, the way a hand checks a pocket to make sure something's still th
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