Page 41 of New World

That would be very disappointing, he mused.

He shook off his misgivings and crossed the threshold into Deek’s. The scent of alcohol, sweat, and dim-lit regret greeted him like an old friend. The air vibrated with the hum of low conversation, the clatter of server bots, the occasional bark of laughter. He scanned the room instinctively, his gaze flicking toward the booth at the far end where he had sat less than a week ago.

Empty.

His stomach dipped.

He didn’t pause, didn’t let the disappointment settle too deep. Instead, he rolled his shoulders back, forcing himself to move along the bar. Deek, ever the unbothered bastard, barely looked up as Dorane motioned for a drink. The server bot hummed over, setting a glass down with precise efficiency before Dorane even reached the table.

Jammer settled a few stools down, easily chatting with Deek about the repairs he had made since their last visit. Other patrons moved about the bar, drinking, laughing, playing out their usual routines.

Dorane slid into the seat with his back to the wall this time. He picked up the crystal glass. A fine thread of spiraling steam rose from the amber liquor, but he didn’t drink. His mind was elsewhere, scanning, waiting, bracing.

The world moved on, and for the first time in a long time, Dorane felt a flicker of something unsteady inside him. What if she didn’t come? What if she was already gone? He didn’t even know who she was—what she wanted, what she fought for. Only that she had killed for him. Twice that he knew of, maybe more.

That was enough to make him wonder—would he ever get the chance to ask why? He was so lost in his thoughts that he almost missed the shiver of awareness that ran down his spine. His fingers froze around his glass.

The world contracted, narrowing to a single point of awareness. She was here. He didn’t turn. He didn’t want to alert her, or worse, frighten her away.

He felt her the way a predator senses another in the dark—the whisper of fabric, the softest shift of footsteps, the presence of something just out of reach but watching. She moved with the grace of the moth-like creatures from Plateau, gliding out from the dim corridor behind him.

His fingers tightened around his glass as she slid into the seat across from him. Smooth. Effortless. As if they had done this a thousand times before.

He waited, allowing himself a moment to study her as if she were a piece of fine artwork.

A cloak. Goggles. A scarf covering the lower half of her face. All of it designed to conceal, to obscure, to blend in. But none of it could hide the stillness about her. The way she held herself—coiled, controlled, the same way he would in a room full of threats.

She didn’t fidget. She didn’t shift. She simply watched.

Dorane’s chest tightened. He wanted to rip the mask away. He had a feeling that if he tried, he’d be dead before his hand made it across the table.

The tension between them settled, low and charged. Not hostile. Not challenging. But dangerous all the same. A mutual awareness that was razor thin and balanced on the edge of knowing.

His lips curled into a relaxed smile as he leaned back, his voice low and lazy in Urvanian.

“Zarath vi liera vesh’ta, ka’len tor vash.” The last time a woman sat there, she tried to kill me, he commented, placing the tracking device on the table.

For the first time, she moved, a slow, deliberate shift of her weight. He had to remind himself to breathe as she tilted her head, the faintest shift—like the whisper of a blade sliding from its sheath, a sound almost too subtle to register but sharp enough to make his senses prickle. Then she spoke, and it felt as if Jammer had punched him in the stomach. Her voice was low, a husky whisper that felt warm and inviting. The sweet cadence flowed through him like the smooth, amber liquor in his glass, a slight burn warming his belly, a delicious feeling that left him wanting more.

“I’m sure it was an explosive encounter.”

The words took a half-second to register. The pun in her statement spoke volumes about her wit, but it was the second realization that caused him to sit forward.

His mind snapped the pieces together instantly—too fast, too sharp, certainty slicing him while a slow, sinking weight paralyzed his chest. She had spoken in the language of the Ancients.

Dorane’s expression was something dangerously close to wonder laced with wariness. His little shadow was no ordinary assassin.

She was one of them.

His pulse thumped heavily as she lifted her hands.

Slow. Unhurried. Deliberate.

The goggles slid up.

The scarf unraveled.

His breath caught.

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