The morning is soft, the kind of quiet that feels like it's listening.

  From the window, Greyhollow is a smudge of grey roofs and rising smoke. Normal life. Stories that are not a lie.

  In here, there's only one truth. The fire in my side. I put Nora's salve on it. A thin coat of numbness.

  When the door opens, I try not to jump.

  Belladonna enters.

  The stillness of the room seems to curdle, my presence a filth that stains it.

  She doesn't move for a long moment, just watches me. In her hand is a pale, drooping flower. A ghost of a thing.

  "I found this," she says, each word identical to the last. She walks toward the bed where I sit. "It's a ghost pipe. They only grow where a soul has unfinished business."

  She stops before me, close enough that I can see the fine hairs on her arm, the slight tremor in her hand as she offers the flower. "It made me think of her."

  A hot, wet knot of grief builds in my chest. It is Derrick's. Not one loss, but two.

  The first loss was for his daughter, Bella. A life that never drew breath. He and his wife had mourned her together.

  The second loss was for his wife, Donna. Her death created the daughter in front of me. He watched her die to bring Belladonna into the world.

  I reach out, my thick fingers clumsy as they close around the delicate stem. Our hands brush.

  I look at the wilting petals, then into Belladonna's waiting eyes.

  My mind reaches for the wife's name. Donna. The safe choice. But Derrick's grief is a stronger current.

  It pulls a different name from my throat. My voice is a whisper. A prayer. "Bella."

  Belladonna steps back.

  The small, sad smile on my face freezes.

  "My father," she says, her voice the clear, hard sound of ice cracking, "never called me that."

  The warmth, the grief, the daughter. All of it recedes, leaving only her eyes. Hard, glass-still, and looking right through me.

  "The day he named me Belladonna," she continues, "was a promise he made to two ghosts at once. He said to shorten my name was to choose one over the other."

  Her lips thin into a bloodless line. "He would not do it. He would never do it."

  She looks me up and down, from my face down to my hands, to the wilting flower I am crushing without realising it.

  "You did. Twice."

  The words land. The memory of her freezing under my touch yesterday ignites in my mind. A reaction to the one, careless name I had used. Bella.

  She knows. Gods, she knows.

  She turns and walks out of the room. Her retreat down the stairs is a series of small, final sounds. Then, silence.

  A thought, ugly and seductive, surfaces. Show her. Show her the brand.

  My hand flies to my tunic, fingers twitching, wanting to tear the fabric and expose the weeping, corrupted flesh. I could tell her everything. The brand. Nora's diagnosis. Play the victim. Turn her anger into pity.

  It would be so easy. A new performance. The tragic hero.

  But the image of her face, already so thin and worn by a lifetime of fear, stops my hand cold.

  What would that truth do to her?

  It would break her.

  My hand falls to my side. I knot it into a fist. I stand in the suffocating silence and let her go. Only when the final, distant click of the tavern door announces she is gone for good do I move.

  Not to beg. Not to explain. To follow.

  I trail her through the muddy streets. In an alley, a man in a white robe intercepts her. He is tall, clean, a stark contrast to the grit of Greyhollow.

  I keep to the shadows. They do not speak for long. He offers her a small, dark object. Her whole body is a question mark. She hesitates, then takes it, her hand closing around it.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  As the man turns away, my eyes catch the sigil on his sleeve. A black spider. The same as the seal on the letter in Derrick's office.

  The pieces slam together in my mind.

  The Resistance.

  Alistair died looking for them. Derrick failed to find them. But Belladonna has found them. They are real. The knot in my chest loosens.

  She will be safe. I choose to believe it. It is the only way I can walk toward my own end.

  The evening air is cold, but the square is suffocating, packed with the hot, fearful breath of the village. Torches spit and hiss, bathing everyone in a shifting, untrustworthy light. I find Nora's face in the crowd, a small, steady island in a sea of anxiety. Her eyes meet mine, and she gives a small nod.

  Elder Ursula takes the stage, and the air itself seems to thin. Her presence is a void that pulls all sound into it.

  "We are here," she begins, "because a promise has been broken."

  A restless shuffle passes through the crowd, the sound of shifting leather and wool. I see a mother pull her child closer, her hand covering his ears as if to protect him from the words to come.

  "The man chosen for the Flesh Tax is gone."

  Her stare finds me, pinning me. "Derrick has given us an excuse. A conveniently missing body."

  The crowd stirs, a low, ugly sound. People turn to look at me.

  In their eyes, I am no longer a leader. I am an empty space in the bag. A new name to be drawn.

  "Derrick."

  Her voice is a pressure, a cold point aimed right at my chest.

  "You stand before your people. Your story has holes. Fill them."

  I walk the path their stares carve through the crowd, every pair of eyes a hook catching in my skin. I stand before them, my skin an ill-fitting coat. I am certain they can see the hollow thing inside.

  I let my face go slack, wiping all expression from it.

  "Alistair came to me," I say, and the sound of his name in this throat is a physical pain. "He was terrified. Said he had learnt a truth about the Collectors he could not bear. He fled to Weepingstone."

  I let my voice trail off, letting the image of the cliffs take root. "He jumped. The ocean took him. I searched for hours. There was nothing."

  No one moves. No one breathes. Then, a person scoffs. It is the only permission the crowd needs.

  The low, ugly mutters begin.

  A lifetime spent behind a bar has taught this mind to handle the chaos, but that part of him is just a bundle of frayed nerves. To use his senses, I have to graft my own mind onto his. For a second, his exhaustion settles into my bones. Listening through him, I can isolate the sharp edge of Vera's suspicion. When I withdraw, an ache remains in my lower back, a ghost of the long hours he spent on his feet.

  "Convenient." The scar on Vera's cheek pulls tight, twisting her mouth. "No body. No witness. Just the word of a man who looks a stranger in his own skin."

  "You could have called for help!" another voice shouts. "We could have searched the cliffsides! My son could be—"

  "And your office!" a man near the front bellows, jabbing a finger at me. "I delivered your ale yesterday. It looked like a monster had been trapped in there! What kind of grief smashes furniture, Derrick?"

  The questions come like stones, one after another, each one finding its mark. I stand there, a human target, letting them hit.

  Nora steps forward, her small frame commanding an unlikely silence. "Alistair came to see me the other night," she says, her voice steady. "He was afraid, yes. But he was not broken. He carried himself like a man who had already accepted the cost. The man Derrick describes is not the man I met."

  Ward, the blacksmith, shoves his way to the front, his thick arms crossed over his chest. "Derrick's been a pillar of this community for years." His voice cuts through the chaos. "If he says this is what happened, by the gods, I believe him!"

  A few hesitant nods pass from one man to the next in the front of the crowd.

  "My daughter didn't get to jump!" Grace shrieks, spittle flying from her lips. Her face is blotchy and wet, her eyes narrowed to furious slits as she points a trembling finger at me. "The Collectors took her! She was brave! Why does this stranger get to be a coward when our own children have to be martyrs?"

  A single shout is answered by ten, then a hundred.

  Ursula raises her hands. "Enough!"

  A man shoves his neighbour.

  A woman claws at her own face.

  I open my mouth to speak, to make them listen, but a sudden, bone-aching wind rips through the square. The torches all bend in unison, their flames guttering, plunging the scene into a stark, strobing twilight. And in the quiet, we hear it. That single, gutting horn note. A sound like the world itself is moaning.

  Now, the real work begins.

  A woman in the front row sees them first. The man beside her goes rigid.

  They are here. Five of them, dark shapes moving with an unnatural smoothness, their silver masks catching the dying torchlight.

  The lead Collector stops, his voice a low sound like grinding stone.

  "We are here for the offering."

  Elder Ursula steps forward. Her body gives a small tremor, but her voice is frozen earth. "There has been a complication. The chosen one is gone."

  She glances at me, her expression revealing nothing. "He took his own life."

  The silver mask turns, and the empty space where eyes should be settles on me. The pressure of that scrutiny threatens to pull the warmth and the will from my chest.

  "Derrick, is this true?"

  I force myself to stand straighter, to ignore the fire in my side.

  "He is gone." My voice tears the quiet. "He chose his own end rather than submit to yours. I tried to stop him. I failed."

  The Collector glides closer. "The pact, Derrick. You understand the pact. A life is owed. The scales must be balanced."

  "I understand. But you cannot collect a debt from a man who has already paid with everything he had."

  "A disruption." The Collector's voice thins. "And disruptions have consequences."

  I take a step forward, placing my body between this creature and the villagers. Between it and Nora. Between it and Belladonna, wherever she is.

  "Then let the consequences be mine," I say, the words costing me the last of my air. "I was the last to see him. The failure was mine. I offer myself in his place."

  In the silence, I hear a torch hiss. A baby cries somewhere in the dark. The Collector does not move.

  Then, he nods.

  "The debt will be paid," his voice scrapes across the quiet square. "By you."

  As the other Collectors close in around me, I search the crowd one last time. I find Nora. In her eyes, I see it. Not pity. Something harder. She gives another small nod.

  Then I see her. Belladonna, pushing through the crowd, her face a pale blur. My heart, Derrick's heart, lurches. I feel my face arranging itself into the shape of sorrow. The lie is already forming on my tongue. The soft, useless words a father is supposed to say.

  She stops before me. Her eyes are not a daughter's. They are chips of obsidian.

  "Don't."

  The word stops the air in my lungs.

  "You are not my father."

  Her words are like the Collector's horn. A gutting note that announces an execution. Mine.

  They lead me away. I do not look back.