She was pulled into a chest and sobbed, clinging to the body that pressed to her own. Finally, she pushed away and stumbled back into the table. She looked to see who had held her, and it was Vincent. Vincent. Seeing him brought another wave of tears that she could barely hold back.
“Go sit down,” she growled, pointing wildly, hoping it was towards his seat. Of all of the people who could have come to comfort her, he was the one who could completely break her.
“Sawyer-” he whispered.
“Go,” she snapped. “I’m not done yet.” She hoped those words were as forceful as she intended them to be. “After Henry… Axel didn’t come back. It was the only time since I had left with him at sixteen that he and I didn’t live together. He sent Colt to watch me. And after picking up the pieces of my broken heart, I started making my plans to get revenge. Yes. Revenge. And that blew up in my fucking face. You know the story from there,” she hissed. “You know the story of how Shadow died.”
“How many people have you killed?” Jasper asked.
“Nine,” she growled. “The assassin. Hits one through five. Liam’s father. Missy. Colt. Don’t expect me to remember the names of those who Axel told me to kill. I didn’t care then, and never committed them memory. I can remember every piece of each of those kills. I can see their eyes as they died, but fuck me, I’ve never been able to remember their goddamn names.”
“Alright, Sawyer,” Elijah stood up slowly. “Calm down.”
“I am calm.” She was breathing hard. Her body was overloaded with too much pain, too much regret and guilt.
“No, you aren’t,” he said as he leaned over the table and tapped the box. “Why don’t you tell us about the stuff in the box.”
“It my gear. Don’t touch it. Most of it’s enchanted, and some of it will kill anyone who doesn’t know how to properly use it.” She grabbed one side of the box and tipped it, spilling its content onto the table. Daggers, her kukri, a black, emotionless mask. Throwing daggers, and all manner of other sharp objects. “I left them here in Atlanta, thinking I could bury them with the rest of my past. Like the memory of Jasper and Zander.”
She let the silence stretch out before adding one more thing.
“This is why I didn’t go looking for you, Jasper,” she sighed. “This is why.”
“I understand,” he whispered.
“Sawyer,” Vincent murmured. “I have an important question for you.”
“Yes?” She looked to him. He never did go back to his seat, standing much too close to her. His mere presence and those fucking eyes brought back the pain. Why hadn’t she noticed before? Why hadn’t she realized he was a fucking Castello, at the very least? She’d grown soft in New York. He mumbled how he could ask it later.
New York. Now, that was a distant memory. She wanted to go back so badly, but that seemed like a far-off dream, now. A life Sawyer was never supposed to have and would never have again.
She finally collapsed into her seat, feeling drained.
She’d done it. She’d finally told her story in its entirety. She had stepped out of the dark, and now she had to deal with her new reality in the harsh light of truth.
She couldn’t even begin to process her feelings about it.
It was the longest hour of silence she’d ever experienced. No one moved or spoke. She couldn’t hear what was going on out in other areas of the bank, and she almost couldn’t believe that the world was still chugging along out there.
It was, though. Out there, the world turned, and people moved on with their lives with no idea what horrors could possibly meet them in the dark.
“I should tell you what all of this is,” Sawyer sighed, waving a weak hand towards the things she had dumped on the table.
“I think most of it is pretty obvious,” Elijah said, and Sawyer felt a wave of guilt at the complete lack of happiness he displayed. Elijah was always happy.
But she knew how hard it was to be happy when the conversation turned to dead children, abuse, and murder.
“The daggers all have strengthening enchantments, allowing them to cut through things they shouldn’t be able to,” she began, steeling herself. She took on a professional tone, shoving the old memories back into their box in her mind where she wouldn’t be overwhelmed by them.
“With a strong enough throw they can be embedded into things like… concrete,” Elijah whispered.
“Yeah,” she mumbled, picking one up and running a finger over the edge. “Not only did I cleanse them once a week to remove my own magical signature, I also had them enchanted to pick up less of my magic, so it wasn’t a pain to deal with.”
“And the mask?” Jasper pointed. She heard the shake in his voice and, when she looked at him, she saw how pale he was. She flicked a look at Zander. He was also pale and he held the tell-tale appearance of someone who had recently used life force to do magic. Absentmindedly, she touched her abdomen. She’d noticed the new scar. He had saved her life. She would need to… thank him for it eventually.
“The mask is special,” she whispered, reaching out to touch it. And it reacted to her, sending tingles into her fingers, asking for permission to have something from her. “It’s complicated.”
“It’s old,” Elijah whispered.
“Very, and complex in its use,” she sighed. “Now… isn’t the time for a show and tell on how it works.”
“We’ll worry about it later,” Vincent said calmly. She eyed him carefully and saw the red eyes he sported, as if he were about to fall apart.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Take you home,” Zander croaked, standing up slowly. “You’re still in our custody.”
36
SAWYER
The next two days were the longest of her life. She was subjected to a thousand questions by them, and they wrote her answers word for word.
She didn’t understand what was going on.
And, in spite of it all, she just didn’t care.
She waited for Vincent in his office, having been told she needed to be there, but he wasn’t. She heard the door knob turn and glanced over her shoulder to see him.
They had been avoiding each other. For good reason. Sawyer wasn’t sure what to say to him, and she was certain he wasn’t sure what to say to her. The ghost of his nephew stood between them, his name always on her tongue when she saw Vincent. Did he want to know about Henry? Would he one day visit her in prison and ask her to tell stories about the sweet child, nothing like his father or his uncle?
“How are you?” she asked softly.
“Busy,” he replied, smoothly sitting down in his chair behind the ornate wooden desk. He placed a file on the desk. She nearly snorted. Him and his files. “Sawyer, you made a deal with the WMC over four years ago. If I told you that they would honor it, would you accept it? With some changes?”
“Depends on the changes,” she sighed, leaning back in her seat. Jesus. Virgin Mary. Zeus. Bastet. If there were any gods listening, Sawyer didn’t know whether to thank them or curse them.
“Here,” Vincent whispered, pushing the file closer to her. She reached out and took it. She flipped it open without preamble. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?” she asked without looking up to him. She read over the papers inside with care.
“How do you keep moving forward? After everything is said and done, how do you keep putting one foot in front of the other?”
She closed the file and looked up at him. The pain was obvious in his eyes now, and she turned away from him and toward the only window in the room. Outside, it was bright and sunny. One day she would appreciate that again, but that day was not today.
“I remind myself that I can’t change anything that’s already done,” she said in a hushed tone. “I can only change my future. Not my past.”
“That’s it?” he pressed, and she heard an edge of desperation in it.
“It will always haunt me,” she sighed, placing the fil
e back on the desk. “But that’s all it can do. Haunt me. And it will do so, without mercy, for the rest of my life, but I can continue on. Memories can’t kill me, and I can do whatever is in my power to never live through similar experiences. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
“What do you think?” Vincent nodded down to the file, dropping the topic with an abruptness that didn’t surprise Sawyer.
Five years completely at the World Magi Council’s disposal for whatever task they put forth at any point. Probationary IMPO agent. Guarded at all times. Reports directly to the Council. Any sort of screw ups would ruin it all.
If she accepted, she would be dragged out of the darkness. The world would know that Sawyer Matthews and Shadow were the same person and that she was very much alive. Her life of shadows would become one of hard work and sweat and, she hoped, a bit of redemption.
She looked back out the window. Maybe at the end of this new chapter of her life, she would learn to truly enjoy the sun again, and not just need it to warm her weary bones.
“I, Sawyer Matthews, hereby declare that I accept the terms set forth by the World Magi Council in regard to my freedom and the conditions of my pardon.”
A Heart of Shame
The Redemption Saga
Copyright © 2018 by Kristen Banet
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Created with Vellum
To those struggling on the journey:
Do not regret surviving the horrors of your darkest hour.
Do not feel shame for the things done to survive.
Do not let guilt halt your journey to the light.
Keep going.
You are not alone.
1
Sawyer
Sawyer didn’t go to dinner that night. The words she’d spoken, activating the enchantment of the contract, still echoed in her head.
I, Sawyer Matthews, hereby declare that I accept the terms set forth by the World Magi Council in regard to my freedom and the conditions of my pardon.
Wasn’t that some shit? A week ago, she was wondering if it would be prison or the grave for her. Now…
Now she went back to sitting on a bed they had given her. A room tucked up in the attic in a remodeled plantation house in Bumfuck Nowhere, Georgia.
In a sense, still free, but still very much a prisoner in a very large cage.
She swallowed and grabbed the box from the center of her bed, ignoring the sore ache in her abdomen and ribs. She’d been avoiding the box since the day in the bank, the day she had woken up at the hospital. She moved it around constantly, but she never addressed it, never opened it after she packed it all up to bring back to the house.
Now she had to. They would need a record of all her things for security purposes. They would need to know the exact number of daggers she had, how many throwing knives, stilettos, her kukri, all of it.
Her mask.
She dropped the box onto her desk and sighed heavily. This wasn’t all of it. She still had to bring down the throwing daggers and the cash.
“Fuck,” she mumbled, looking up to the rafters. It took her an instant to blink up to the top and grab what she needed. One small set of throwing knives and one bundle of cash, both in case of emergency. She didn’t go back down, though. She sat on one of the beams and just looked at her things.
Her life was now firmly and irrevocably in this room, in this house. All of it. Not just the parts she could safely share, but every deep hidden piece.
She sublimated back down, reforming in front of her desk. She enjoyed using her magic again. After being disconnected from it for so long, she found herself using it for nearly everything. Closed door? She would phase through it. Needed to get to the basement? She would sublimate and go through the vents. Needed to get something from the other side of the room? Blink. Why not?
It was a waste, but she also needed to flex her magic a little. It had been cooped up for too long. Three weeks was a long time to be cut off.
“What now?” she murmured to herself. She dropped both items on the desk and grabbed a notepad. She could start recording all of this. That way, Elijah would only need to confirm what she had written. “I have too much shit,” she mumbled again as she sat down at the desk to get started.
It was mind-numbing and awful. For most of the blades, she didn’t have a problem. They were just pieces in her collection, ready to be called on if they were needed. Then she got to the ones she’d used. She could remember it all. Every slash of the knife. How the blood pooled on the floor or dirt. How the body fell. The time of day. The setting.
Some of these items, she never wanted to touch again.
The enchantments were also wearing off and nearly gone. They were still sharp, ready to rend flesh and slice through bone, but she would need to keep them sharpened if they had constant use. The enchantment that kept her magic from sticking to the object was completely gone.
A soft knock on her door had her looking up from the notepad. She didn’t respond yet, glancing quickly over what she had gotten done. She only had one or two pieces left. She’d made good progress, at least.
“Sawyer?” Elijah’s quiet, cautious voice called out to her, and she sighed.
“Come in,” she responded, turning in her chair to watch him enter.
She never did get a lock on the door. She didn’t think she would be able to now.
“Hey, little lady,” he said with a small smile. She didn’t return the smile. The last three days since she had woken up in the hospital, all her interactions with the guys had been strained, awkward, and confused. She wasn’t going to pretend everything was normal.
“Hi, Elijah,” she greeted him blandly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I was coming up here to grab everything,” he sighed, waving a hand toward her desk, “so I could record it and put it away with the rest of our weaponry. What are you doing?”
“I’m making a thorough list and inventory of it.” Sawyer groaned, looking back at the pile of weapons. “Trying to make your life a little easier… and so I could see just what I had left of it all.”
“Was there more at one point?” Elijah asked softly.
“I mentioned it once, but Axel still has a lot of my stuff hidden away, as well. I never looked for it or tried to get it back. I didn’t want to give myself away.” She tried to keep it nonchalant, like it wasn’t a big deal. But Elijah’s pained face meant she failed.
“Do you want to talk about that?” He moved closer to her as she stood up to put everything back in the box.
“Not really.”
She ignored him after that, finishing her inventory. Then she started to put everything back in the box. She knew when he came up next to her on her right side, but as her hands started to shake, she wasn’t anticipating what he would do next. She was stuck in memories that she didn’t want to be in. She needed this stuff out of her room, out of her life.
One large hand grabbed her right wrist gently and pulled it back. His left arm went over her shoulder, and he began to pull her away.
“It’s over,” he whispered. “I’ll take it. Thank you for making the list for me.”
He led her back to her bed and sat her down. He didn’t go back to her desk, though. He sat next to her, and they let the silence take over. He rubbed her back with his left hand, and she looked down at her hands.
“I’ve killed a lot of people, Elijah,” she mumbled.
“I know,” he sighed. “I know.”
“I don’t know why you all are doing this for me…” She swallowed a lump of emotion.
“Because we can,” he answered her. “Because in New York we met a woman who helped kids get out of the worst situations imaginable. Because here, we saw a woman who could still bring herself to smile… even if it never chased the shadows away.”
“I don’t know what to do now,” she said with a groan, covering her face.
The contract had been clear. She was the equivalent to a probationary IMPO agent. A trainee. She was under the team’s care for her entire sentence—until death, prison, or pardon. She would assist them on their cases until the WMC had something for her to do for them specifically. Whatever they could possibly want.
She knew what they wanted. She didn’t know how or when they would ask for it.
“We’re taking a bit of time off,” Elijah told her quietly, still rubbing her back. “Time for everyone to… adjust. Jasper and I are working on something for him, so he’s not stuck on the crutches. Zander is still burnt out and recovering. As for you, we’ll have a meeting in a day or two about exactly where to go from here.”
“So, I get another night or two of just sitting up here, confused,” Sawyer groaned. “Damn it.”
“It could be worse.” Elijah chuckled. “And you don’t have to sit up here. You can go for a run in the woods. You can hit the gym, if you’re feeling up to it. You can watch movies in the entertainment room. Shit, go get drunk down there. The only person imposing this solitude on you is you.”
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