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.”

“You make it sound easy.” Sawyer snorted. “Just keep trucking like I didn’t just drop a bomb on y’all’s heads.”

“Yeah, you did do that.” Elijah huffed. Then he grinned at her. “You can finally relieve my endless suffering. That would pass the time.”

“Pervert!” She laughed, grabbing a pillow and swinging it at him. “Goddamn. I told you that I’m the assassin that helped Axel rise to the power he had, and you still want to strip off all your clothes and fuck.”

“Yes,” Elijah growled playfully, grabbing the pillow from her and throwing it to the side. He tried to grab her, but she sublimated to the other side of her bed, grinning. When their eyes met again, he winked. “Plus, it got you to laugh.”

Sawyer stopped and went a little wide-eyed. It had.

“Sawyer, you will have moments of pain and regret. It seems you always have and always will. But just because we know, doesn’t mean you can’t still smile for a moment. You went through hell, and you came out on the other side. You… I refuse to believe or look at you as a bad person. You did what you needed to do, and you survived.” Elijah sighed, still smiling as he stood up.

“Come watch a movie with me,” he continued. “Have a drink. Settle. Tomorrow, you and Jasper can bitch at each other about your criminal history. The day after that, you and Zander can kick the shit out of each other. I’ll watch, that’s hot.” She snorted and rolled her eyes. “You and Vincent can be fucking weird over whatever sordid family history you seem to share. That’s the one I’m not willing to witness.”

“And Quinn?” She asked, following him to the door.

“Quinn doesn’t really care about what you did.” Elijah laughed. “He never has. You’ll be hard-pressed to convince him that killing another person is really all that bad. Survival of the fittest and everything. Stealing to him is nearly a foreign concept. It took us a long time to convince him that taking someone else’s property wasn’t acceptable, even if you could win the fight over it.”

“He is so fucking weird,” Sawyer mumbled, following Elijah down the narrow stairs.

“He’s Quinn. Yes, to us he’s strange. Sooner or later, he’ll start telling you more about himself. You’ll start to put the pieces together. It just takes time.” Elijah stopped them before leaving the small staircase. “All good things—knowing Quinn to having your freedom—take time. You just need to be willing to put the time in.”

“I can do that,” she replied, and he smiled at her. She reached around him to open the door and let them out, impatient with being stopped in the dark, little staircase. He didn’t help her, standing so she had to press against him to reach the handle. She looked up for a moment and realized something.

Nothing, not her past, not what happened in Atlanta a week before, could stop Elijah from wanting to slake his thirst. He raised at an eyebrow at her, and she narrowed her eyes on him.

“You going to open the door?” he asked in a husky whisper, and she felt a shiver run down her spine. Apparently, nothing could stop her from finding him sexy as sin, either.

“Are you going to stop trying to get in my pants?”

“No,” he growled softly, “because what fine pants they are. I think I might look good in them, honestly.”

She rolled her eyes, turned the handle, and shoved him out the door with enough force to make him stumble. He was laughing as she followed him down to the ground floor. She didn’t see anyone roaming around, so she assumed it was just her and Elijah for the evening.

“Have you eaten?” he asked. “Other than the meetings the last few days, I haven’t seen you. Are you eating?”

Sawyer frowned and thought about that. Then her stomach gave the most painful growl she had ever experienced.

“I guess I haven’t been.” She groaned, bending over in response to a weird pain. Elijah laughed at her, pulling open the fridge.

“I picked up a ton of Chinese for lunch,” he informed her, pulling out the takeout containers. “What are you feeling?”

“Fried rice, preferably pork or chicken.” She moved closer. He handed her a box, and they started warming up food.

They sat at the dining room table, and Sawyer began asking questions.

“What do I need to learn? While everyone heals, I might as well set myself to a task.” She took another bite of her pork fried rice with a smile. She was eating the fried rice with a spoon since she and chopsticks had never gotten along.

“Remember how we talked about making you a consultant? All of that, plus more. Everything from proper uniform, physical fitness requirements, our handbook. You’ll hate that one. The damn thing reads like a fucking dictionary. Only Jasper and Vincent know even half of what’s in it.” Elijah groaned. “Seriously, it blows. I’m positive Zander has never even opened it. I know Vincent helped me through half of the exams in training. You’ll need to take all of those as well.”

“And I have to do all of this by…?” she trailed off, frowning at Elijah.

“Whenever.” Elijah chuckled with a shrug. “Most likely, you’ll learn nearly everything on the job. The WMC is mad at us. We found you, caught you, and fought for your freedom. They will put us to work sooner rather than later.”

“How mad?” Sawyer asked carefully. She didn’t like the sound of that. She didn’t like that the WMC was mad at them, and in turn, her.

“We threatened to take you and go rogue from the IMPO if they tried to back out of the deal you had originally made with them,” Elijah mumbled. Sawyer dropped her spoon.

“You did what?” she hissed. “Are you fucking crazy? Are all of you crazy?”

“They were considering executing you in the hospital,” Elijah whispered, sounding pained, and looking away from her. “None of us were okay with that.”

Sawyer swallowed a painful lump in her throat. Well, that was something. They had saved her life while she was asleep more than she had figured. First Zander had healed her, then they fought the IMPO to keep her.

“Fuck.” She sighed, leaning back. “I might not have needed to know that.”

“You did,” Vincent’s voice cut in. She looked over to the door and saw him. Hours earlier, she had been sitting at his desk, and he had asked an important question.

She’d given him the only answer she could think of.

“Good evening,” she mumbled, looking back to her food.

“Good evening,” he replied, sitting down and taking some of the fried rice from the dish in the center of the table. “I take it Elijah has been letting you in on some things?”

“Yeah, training and the time you guys are going to take off.” Sawyer didn’t look back up at him. In the days since the hospital, she and Vincent had spoken very little. They gave each other wide berths and definitely didn’t eat together.

“Good,” Vincent said, sounding like nothing had changed. She couldn’t get a read on his emotions and frowned. He was completely closed-off, by the sound of his voice. She looked up and continued to frown. His face showed nothing either.

Jasper had always tried to bury his feelings and failed. Sawyer thought her old friend should take a page from Vincent. The Italian was a master at it.

“Anything you want to add?” she asked, her frown deepening.

“Not really.” He took a bite of rice, using chopsticks. Of course, he could. “Anything you would like to ask or say?”

“Not really,” she mumbled, looking back down at her food.

“Fuck me,” Elijah muttered.

They ate in silence after that. Sawyer didn’t appreciate the calculating look Vincent was giving her—like he was trying to figure out a puzzle the entire time they ate. As Elijah went to throw away empty containers, she dropped her spoon on the table and glared at Vincent.

“What?” she hissed.

“I…” He didn’t finish, shaking his head.

“Say something,” she growled out, “or stop staring.”

“I’m just thinking about something.” He sighed. “Nothing important. Forgive me.”

By the small, haunted look that entered his eyes, she had a guess as to what he was thinking about. She took a chance.

“I know Axel was your brother… and Henry was your nephew. You can ask about him,” she said gently, switching to Italian to keep the entire statement private. “I have pictures if you want them.”

That made Vincent pale, and he shot up from the table. He left the room without a word, and Sawyer winced at a door slamming.

“What did you say?” Elijah inquired, reentering the dining room. “He’s not the storm-off kind of guy… most of the time.”

“That he can ask me about Henry,” Sawyer said softly. “That I can give him some photos.”

“Nice of you to offer.” Elijah sighed. “But… Vincent will need to come to terms with a nephew he didn’t know he had on his own schedule. He’ll ask for more when he’s ready.”

“I just wanted to let him know I can help.” Sawyer stared at the chair where Vincent had been sitting. She meant well, she really did. She could give Vincent some peace with it, something happy. He just needed to let her. But watching him run, she could only feel the guilt of failing Henry and the pain of knowing Vincent would never meet his nephew.

“And eventually, he’ll let you. Come on.” Elijah groaned, patting her shoulder. “Let’s go watch a movie. I’ll call Quinn in.”

She walked down to the entertainment room by herself while Elijah went to find Quinn. A movie, something normal. Something before secrets and bombs. Before Special Agent Jon Aguirre killed himself because he’d failed so spectacularly against Axel.

It felt like she’d stepped into an alternate reality, but at the same time, this was her life now.

Assassin turned IMPO agent. Assassin who was on the chopping block if she fucked up.

Yeah, something normal like a movie sounded nice. She could handle a movie. It was a hard thing to fuck up, honestly.

Thank the heavens for that.