「FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER」

G6 remained on the bed while Tina knelt before her and carefully cleaned the wound across her knuckles.

She barely noticed.

Her mind had gone somewhere else entirely.

Did I die?

The question repeated.

If she had, then how?

G6 reconstructed the apartment from memory.

Door. Windows. Security. Pisces leaving. Television. Beer.

There had been no sign of intrusion.

Did someone infiltrate the apartment?

That’s not making sense.

She would have noticed.

Pisces?

Her expression hardened.

Did Pisces betray me? Kill me?

She rejected the idea almost immediately.

Foolish.

GAO did not breed traitors casually, and Pisces had never given her reason to suspect him.

Then what?

She replayed the final hours again.

Completed hit. Apartment. Book. Beer. Counter. Two vials.

G6’s eyes narrowed.

One had contained her ordinary medication.

The other—

Her stomach dropped.

The stronger medication left over from her Milan injury.

Morphine.

The label appeared in her memory with humiliating clarity.

She had reached for the wrong vial, swallowed the pills, and immediately drank alcohol without checking, hesitating, or thinking.

Professional disgust struck so violently that fear disappeared beneath it.

G6 stood abruptly.

Tina startled backward.

“I fucking killed myself with my own inadequacy?”

The room went silent.

G6’s expression barely changed, but inside she was screaming—not from grief, but from embarrassment.

The great G6, Reaper of the Gemstone line, had not been killed by a rival assassin, caught in an elaborate trap, betrayed, tortured, or even shot.

She had apparently managed to eliminate herself through a mistake so basic that a trainee deserved to be beaten for making it.

Morphine and alcohol.

A combination she absolutely knew better than to treat carelessly.

G6 stared at nothing.

Too much inadequacy. I disgust myself.

Whether that was truly how she had died was impossible to prove from here, but at that moment it was the only explanation she possessed—and humiliating enough to make her want to die a second time.

❈.❈.❈

Later, G6 sat at the tea table in silence.

The balcony remained within view, and she deliberately stayed away from it.

Tina had suggested walking through the gardens, but G6 refused. Wandering through an unknown estate filled with unknown people while she had no clear understanding of exits, defenses, or threats was not a leisurely walk.

It was stupidity.

Information first. Movement later.

She reached for the ancient book.

For now, it was the only thing in this world she could directly connect to something she understood, even if she hated every page of it.

Had the real Reise been reading this? A novel within a novel? Is the author’s ghost fucking with me?

G6 stared at the cover.

“Fuck, alright.”

She opened it.

“I take it back. This book is not stupid.”

She waited.

“Fucking wake me up from this nightmare.”

The pages turned beneath her fingers.

Blank.

She stopped and turned another.

Still blank.

Another page revealed nothing.

The story she had read was gone.

G6 flipped backward, then forward again, but nothing appeared until ink suddenly began forming across the first page in fresh strokes directly before her eyes.

G6 stopped breathing.

“One rose wears borrowed red. Pluck it. Bury it.

The real one grew where gardens forget to look—between ribs, beneath floorboards, inside the pause before your next breath.

The fake rose bleeds to lure you.

The real rose already knows your name.”

—Witherby, Messenger of All Seers

G6 stared at the message twice before her expression flattened.

What the fuck is this riddle supposed to mean?

She read it again.

Fake. Real. Rose.

Why do I sense it’s trying to say I’m either fake or real?

A long silence passed.

“Ugh.”

She leaned back.

“Who cares.”

G6 touched the page.

The ink smudged beneath her finger. It was not wet, but somehow it moved.

Before she could make sense of it, a hot pulse throbbed behind her right ear. Her hand rose automatically as the sensation came again, burning and strangely familiar.

She grabbed a hand mirror and turned her head.

Behind Reise Worthon’s right ear was her tattoo: a chained rose no larger than her thumb, the mark of the Reaper.

Her promise.

Her curse.

G6 touched it carefully. The skin burned beneath her fingertip exactly as it once had before a hit, and her eyes narrowed.

A tether… perhaps, a brand.

She lowered the mirror and looked again at the open book before her.

The room was still unfamiliar, and the face reflected in the fractured glass still did not belong to her.

But the tattoo was hers.

Somehow, the book had followed her here too.

G6 leaned her head back and closed her eyes as exhaustion finally began settling deep into her bones.

So. The book and the tattoo are mine. Everything else is someone else’s problem.

Fine.

First, survive. Then figure this shit out.

With all this strangeness, she fell asleep.

❈.❈.❈

When G6 opened her eyes again, she was standing inside the same room, yet something about it was wrong.

Moonlight spilled through the balcony doors and washed the furniture in pale silver. The air felt heavier than before, strangely muffled by the stillness surrounding her.

A woman dressed in white stood beyond the balcony doors.

Reise.

G6 knew it without needing to see her face.

She seemed to be watching from somewhere that was neither fully inside the room nor entirely outside it, present only enough to witness what unfolded.

Reise stood at the balcony, staring down toward the garden.

Two figures were below.

The moment she saw them, something in her expression gave way. Her shoulders seemed to lose what little strength they had been holding, and a single tear slipped quietly down her cheek.

There was so much longing in that look that even G6 could feel the weight of it.

Reise remained there for several seconds before slowly stepping away from the balcony and returning to the room, where the darkness seemed to swallow her almost immediately.

Then something on the table caught the moonlight.

A small glass vial.

G6’s attention sharpened.

Reise picked it up.

Her hands were steady.

“This will be my last good night.”

She drank it without hesitation but full of pain.

G6 stared at her.

Then Reise turned and looked directly at her as if she could see her.

G6 went still.

That should have been impossible.

Reise smiled.

It was neither kind nor sad. It looked almost like recognition, as though she had been waiting for this moment and knew exactly who stood before her.

As though she were welcoming someone she had expected all along.

Something about that smile made G6’s instincts tighten.

It was too knowing.

Almost pleased.

As though Reise knew her.

—SNAP!

G6 woke with a gasp.

Her hand moved first, followed immediately by her eyes as they swept the room, door, window, and balcony.

No immediate threat.

Her breathing steadied as quickly as she could force it to.

The dream had ended.

Reise’s smile had not.

It remained fixed somewhere in the back of her mind, irritatingly clear.

G6 stared into the darkness.

Somehow, she felt mocked.

The confusion that had followed her since waking in this world slowly cooled, settling into something she understood far better.

Anger.

Her gaze shifted toward the fractured mirror.

Reise Worthon’s face stared back at her—rose-gold hair, grey eyes, and delicate features that still felt completely foreign.

But the expression belonged to G6: hard and unforgiving.

The tattoo behind her right ear pulsed once beneath her hair.

G6 touched the spot instinctively and remained silent for another moment before exhaling.

“Fine.”

Her voice was low and steady again.

“You want the Wicked Rose?”

Her eyes hardened.

“I’ll show you thorns.”

LOCKED IN.

—To Be Continued…—