The Grim (Ravens #3)

x. her tell-tale heart

A/N: Well I know most of y'all are probably in class rn, but I left school early today and I feel like uploading this chapter now. 

Monarchia ~~ Early March

Her name was now Vanessa Doe. Vanessa, because she had made the mistake of agreeing that Ness was short for such, and while it was short for something, it was not Vanessa. And Doe, for she had refused to give away her surname. Vanessa Doe. Two names that did not belong to her, words to describe a stranger. It was a strange feeling, she thought, to be defined by names that were not her own.

She still had her name. Her real name, the one she kept under lock and key and vowed to never speak aloud to another living soul. It lived in the palm of her hand, clenched up in her fist like a crumpled piece of paper she would never dare let go. A sheet folded so many times she hadn't read it in ages, but she knew just what it said, and that its contents were a secret only she could ever know.

Vanessa Doe. Just a week before, such a name meant absolutely nothing. Now it had accumulated meaning, caused the deaths of two terrified men, spoken in a hushed rumor that rippled through the city's busy market. Ness could hear them talking, but she never dared ask questions. She was not Vanessa Doe, yet she was the one who held the knife, who took the fatal blow. She was not Vanessa, and yet, she was. Vanessa meant nothing, and yet, it meant everything at once.

In the past week, she had been moved from the dingy old cell to a small room on the third floor of what stood as Monarchia's castle. There was no grandeur to the building physically, only an intimidating size that loomed over the city like a dark cloud. On the lower levels, the windows were small, suffocating anyone who dared stare for long, but they grew larger and larger as the stories progressed. At the penthouse throne room, the windows stretched from floor to ceiling, giving the royal couple a bird's eye view of the city, while standing high enough so that the people below could not see.

Ness' room itself was small, with dark yellow walls and wooden floorboards. The bed was large, far larger than any she'd seen since the plague three years before, but any bed at all was a rarity to her. She'd grown accustomed to sleeping on the floor, and was only ever lucky on the rare occasions she could find a cot or thin mattress. Bound to the the wall opposite the door hung a set of thick, metal chains. While they had not yet been used to against her, she understood the warning fully. For now, they trusted her, but they were still in control.

This was the first night where no guards were left standing outside her door, preventing her from wandering the city unsupervised. It was her reward, she realized, for she had now completed two clean kills for the king. He had promised that she would reap benefits for her obedience, and he seemed to stay true to his word. Yet even without physical guards, Ness knew that they were watching her. She rubbed her fingers over the new scars on her left arm where the stitches had just been removed. There was a faint bump where she could feel the tracker. They still knew just where she was, a mouse stuck in a scientist's cage. Besides, she still wasn't allowed to keep a weapon in her room, leaving her powerless. And while she'd almost immediately navigated her way around that rule, pulling out her hidden knife was solely for emergencies.

The room had once belonged to Brutus, she'd realized. He had slept in this very bed until the night he died; the night she killed him. She tried hard not to think about that, to forget, but every time she took a seat she felt the ghosts of all the innocent lives she'd stolen rise from the dust around her, blowing up the hairs on her arms and shooting shivers down her spine.

When she heard a knocking on the door, she dropped from the rusty pull-up bar in the right-hand corner. She was dressed in only a black sports bra and a pair of leggings, her dark hair tied into a loose ponytail. There was a time it reached her mid-back, but it now hung short, brushing just past her shoulders. She didn't even consider throwing on a top; she was more threatening without one. Her arms were toned, and her abs were strong, for she ate little and used her body well. Her back was covered in scars from long ago memories she tried to forget. The less clothes she wore, the more power she had. That much, she understood.