Noxia Shade's Arc

Chapter 12 of 15

Noxia left the eighth gate with the vault's promise behind her and a whole night to survive before dawn. She could not go back to her rooms. Every rival in the network knew she had drawn the prize. She walked until she found an old stone cottage choked in ivy, its door scarred where a lock had once been pried out. A retired safe house. No one's anymore. Hers tonight. She checked the single room twice. On the back stoop she found a small black ferret with an orange stripe sniffing at a bowl of fresh water. The bowl was not hers. Someone had set it down, and recently. A rival had marked this ground and meant to come back. Noxia did not run. She poured the water out and rubbed her boot's inner sole along the doorframe at throat height. She wedged the door, then sat against the wall with an old patterned mask balanced on her knee — the painted face turned outward, eyeholes aimed at the entry. Anyone who shouldered through would meet the mask first and think her awake. She let her eyes close. She woke to gray light, alive. The bowl outside was gone. Boot prints circled the stoop and stopped at the doorframe, where her scent had turned someone back. Noxia stood, tucked the mask into her coat, and walked toward her first assignment with the night spent and nothing owed.