The Tribute's Inventory
The body she now inhabited had twenty-three distinct scars, fourteen healed fractures, and the pain tolerance of someone who had learned that screaming only made it worse.
Ghost spent the next hour conducting a systematic inventory.
She pressed her fingers against the carriage wall, feeling the rough wood grain while sorting through Anya Valerius's memories like an intelligence database. Eighteen years of life. Eighteen years of carefully orchestrated cruelty.
The files organized themselves with brutal efficiency.
Subject: Prince Theron Valerius. Primary abuser. Age twenty-six. Favored methods: public humiliation, food deprivation, "accidental" shoves down staircases. A memory surfaced—age seven, Anya dropping a book during a royal dinner. Theron's boot on her small hand. The crack of knucklebones. His laughter.
Ghost flexed those same fingers now. The bones had healed crooked.
Subject: King Aldric Valerius. Father in biology only. Sixty-three years old. Sin of omission. He looked away. Always looked away. Anya had learned early that seeking his protection only made Theron's next lesson harder.
Subject: Queen Morwenna Valerius. The enabler who called it "building character." Who praised Theron for "keeping the weak in their place." Who suggested Anya as tribute with a smile that never reached her eyes.
The memory of that suggestion burned with particular clarity.
"She should be honored," the Queen had said over breakfast, three weeks ago. "To serve the kingdom in such an... important capacity."
Theron had laughed into his wine. "Do you think the Shadow Warlord has a taste for damaged goods?"
Ghost's jaw tightened. The body responded to the memory with familiar shame. She crushed the emotion like an insect.
Anya Valerius had been chosen specifically to insult Lord Malakor. The message was clear: Here is our trash. Choke on it.
But the political calculation revealed something more useful—House Valerius's weakness.
They ruled Drakenholde in name only. The real power belonged to the monster they'd summoned centuries ago to fight their wars. Every whispered conversation in Anya's memories confirmed it. The Royal Family's ancient Blood-oath magic had faded to parlor tricks. They maintained their thrones through pageantry and a single, terrible bargain.
Feed the Devil. Keep him satisfied. Pray he never stops pretending they matter.
The carriage hit a deep rut.
Ghost used the impact to test her new body's limits. Pain receptors: functional. Response time: slow. The muscle atrophy was severe—this body hadn't been trained, barely even fed properly. But the bone structure was small and flexible. Good for infiltration work. The hands, despite their crooked healing, had surgeon-delicate fingers.
Tools, not weapons. Yet.
She pulled out the tarnished silver plate from the dinner service, angling it to catch the dim light filtering through the carriage window.
The reflection stared back with hollow eyes.
Pale skin stretched over sharp cheekbones. Dark hair that needed washing. Bruises in various stages of healing painted her arms yellow-green and purple-black. She looked exactly like what she was supposed to be—a victim. Disposable. Weak.
Ghost smiled at her reflection.
Perfect cover.
She cataloged the body's assets and liabilities with clinical precision. Small frame: advantage in confined spaces, disadvantage in direct combat. Flexibility: the joints had surprising range despite abuse. Vision: excellent. Hearing: acute. The voice was soft, untrained—useful for deception.
Through the carriage window, the landscape had changed.
Ghost pressed her face against the cold glass, observing everything with an operative's attention to detail. The farmlands had given way to forests of dead trees—blackened trunks twisted into shapes that suggested agony. No birds sang. The air itself seemed heavier here, thick with something her 21st-century mind wanted to call "supernatural dread" but her assassin's brain recognized as a weaponized environmental control system.
The guards rode in tight formation. Four men, steel swords at their hips, chain mail under crimson tabards marked with House Valerius's lion. No firearms—this world's technology level was pre-industrial. That changed combat calculations significantly.
She watched their discipline. Adequate but not exceptional. They checked their surroundings every thirty seconds but followed predictable patterns. The captain rode ahead, scanning left. The rear guard favored his right side, compensating for an old injury.
Exploitable.
Their voices carried on the wind.
"How long do you wager the little lamb lasts?" The rear guard's tone was casual, betting on death like men bet on dice games.
"Three days," the captain replied. "That's the record. Remember the last tribute? Found her in the East Wing with her mind gone. Just rocking and weeping."
"I give this one two. Did you see her? She's half-dead already."
They laughed.
Ghost filed their voices away for future reference. Men who underestimated their cargo rarely survived the mission.
The cold intensified as they crossed into what must be Malakor's territory. Ghost felt it seep through the wooden walls like water through cloth—unnatural, invasive. The temperature drop was too sharp, too localized to be weather.
Magic. Had to be.
She processed that reality with the same pragmatism she'd once applied to learning a target used psychic bodyguards. Different tools, same principles. Every power had limits. Every defense had gaps.
The poison vial lay where she'd dropped it on the floor.
Ghost retrieved it carefully, examining the crystal in the dim light. Still a third full. Nightshade compound, concentrated enough to stop a heart in minutes. In her old life, she'd have called it amateur work—crude, traceable, obviously lethal.
Here, it was insurance.
She used her teeth to tear a strip from her already-ruined dress hem, wrapping the vial carefully before tucking it into the makeshift pocket she created in the fabric's inner seam. The stitching was terrible, but functional. If searched, a casual inspection would miss it.
Water from the leather canteen helped wash the remaining poison residue from her mouth and face. The metallic taste lingered, but the burning had stopped. Ghost used the damp cloth to clean the blood from her chin, her throat, her hands.
She needed to look presentable for the monster.
The thought triggered another cascade of Anya's memories—the day Prince Theron had announced her "honor" at court. She'd been kneeling, head bowed, when he'd placed his hand on her shoulder with mock tenderness.
"My dear sister," he'd said for the assembled nobles. "What greater gift could our house offer the Shadow Warlord than our most... humble daughter?"
The court had tittered. Everyone understood the insult.
Anya had thanked him. Voice shaking. Eyes down.
She'd wanted to scream.
Ghost crushed that memory too. Anya's wants were irrelevant now. Only the tactical situation mattered.
Primary Objective: Survive long enough to understand this world's power structures.
Secondary Objective: Identify and exploit weaknesses in Lord Malakor's operation.
Tertiary Objective: Determine if the magic system here followed rules that could be learned and used by someone with 21st-century scientific methodology.
The carriage jerked to a halt.
"Make yourself presentable for His Dark Lordship!" The captain's shout was accompanied by fists pounding on the wooden door. "We arrive in ten minutes!"
Ghost moved quickly.
She arranged her dress to hide the worst stains. Finger-combed her hair into something resembling order. Tested her expression in the silver plate—wide eyes, trembling lips, hunched shoulders. Anya Valerius, terrified tribute bride.
The performance was flawless.
Through the window, the Onyx Keep rose against the perpetual twilight sky like a black dagger thrust into the earth's throat. The fortress was massive, its walls constructed from stone so dark they seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Towers spiraled upward at angles that hurt to look at directly. Shadows pooled in the courtyards despite the pale sun overhead, moving against the wind's direction.
Wrong. All of it was wrong in ways that Ghost's modern mind struggled to categorize but her predator's instinct recognized immediately.
Apex territory. A power that had marked its hunting ground for centuries.
The carriage gates groaned open.
Ghost settled into her role completely—shoulders curved inward, breathing shallow and quick, fingers twisted together in her lap. Every microexpression calibrated to project fear and submission.
But behind her downcast eyes, her mind worked with surgical precision.
Lord Malakor thought he was receiving a sacrifice. The Royal Family thought they'd disposed of their embarrassment.
They were both wrong.
Ghost had spent fifteen years in a world of satellites, drones, and DNA analysis. She'd survived betrayal by the most sophisticated intelligence network on Earth. She'd killed targets protected by everything from Kevlar to psychic precognition.
A medieval warlord with shadow magic was just another contract.
Different tools. Same game.
As the Onyx Keep's shadow fell across her face, Ghost made a mental note—predators always think they're at the top of the food chain until something higher comes along.
The carriage door opened.
"Move," the guard ordered.
Ghost stepped out into the darkness, wearing Anya's fear like armor, already calculating her next seventeen moves.
The game had begun.
**