Show me how
Show me how you like it done
You're all mine
I'll make you feel like you're the one

~ "Do It For Me" - Rosenfeld

"Fuck," Silco says succinctly.

"Fuck," Sevika agrees.

They sit at left angles: Silco at the chair behind his desk, Sevika perched on the arm of his sofa.

The green-shot afternoon lays between them. It spreads across the bric-a-brac at his desk: the bowie knife, a matchbox, stacks of papers and dirty glassware. Beyond them, the full-length window of Silco's overheated office shows the cityscape. The sky is a dirty shade of chartreuse. Chartruuuuuuze, as Jinx likes to say. Black silhouettes of buildings are gutted as if under a sadist's blades. Others are encircled with cyclone fencing. The chem-barons have begun rebuilding the commercial hubs and the clocktower. Other spaces will soon follow.

Else they'll trip and fall on Silco's own blade.

Staring into the city, Silco glowers with one side of his face, subtle muscles. The scarred half throbs. His left eye smolders inside his skull.

He needs to talk Singed into upping his Shimmer dose. He needs to get through the pile of edicts on his desk. He needs to hit the war-room and devise a plan to eliminate the Firelights. He needs a suckjob, a shower, and six solid bells of sleep.

He needs to do a lot of things. Except he's too ablaze for fuck-all.

"So Medarda called it a request," Sevika says, brooding over a brightleaf cigarillo.

"Double-speak. She meant non-negotiable."

"The bitch has balls."

"Hm. She just hides them well."

Ordinarily, Silco would feel a minor-key amusement. Finding a decent opponent is nearly as satisfying as crushing them. But the rage radiating off him is enough to torch down Runeterra. His entire body seethes with it. He'd felt it before, in the early years after Vander drowned him. A blast of boundless hatred boiling up out of nowhere: teeth-clenching, stomach-scalding, fist-pounding.

This is different. This isn't his eye, or his life.

This is Jinx.

Sevika flicks ash into an empty glass on his desk. "So? What's the next move?"

"Regarding the Council?"

"Vi. How're you going to keep her in line?"

Silco says nothing.

"Are you even considering the deal?"

Silence.

Sevika lets out a strained exhale. "Sir?"

"Hm?"

"Unless you've got a bona fide ace up the sleeve, we can't pass up on this. I mean—Janna's tits! We've backed 'em into a corner! We could get full access to the Gates. The Hex gem in our pocket. Why risk it?"

Silco stares off into the distance. His thoughts revolve in the drenching heat like ice through whiskey. Actual whiskey wouldn't go amiss. After his elevenses, he usually pours a drink. But given the choice, he'd get absolutely blotto—and kick someone to death.

"Sir." Sevika clears her throat. "I have a few questions. About Jinx."

"Now's not the time."

"It's now, or never."

Behind the furling haze from the cigarillo, her scowl isn't provoking. It is perturbed.

Silco knows why. The scaly darkness inside him usually twists itself into Undercity dimensions: switchblades, sarcasm, subterfuges. Sevika is inured to it. But now that darkness is being stoked into a thousand jagged points of shadow. His body exudes malignancy like a maw overstuffed with teeth. Ready to devour everything.

He'll make them suffocate down between his jaws. He'll make them drown.

Make Vi drown—the way Vander did him.

Sevika's eyes pick up an odd gloss. "Don't do it, sir."

"Do what?"

"Don't risk everything. Our blood and sweat. Our freedom. Not for her."

"Vi, or Jinx?"

"Does it matter?"

"One freed Zaun. The other endangers it."

Sevika's temper finally erupts. "They're both a danger! Two rabid bitches who should've bit the bullet years ago!"

Silco says nothing. But his profile carves itself into pure blackness. It's a look that petrifies his crew in Pavlovian response. Sevika stiffens, and drops her gaze. He assumes that is the end of the discussion. But as the silence drags itself and Sevika stays rooted, he understands that she won't budge until something gives—or he does.

Silco settles back into his seat, his good eyelid drooping half-shut. "There better be no hashish in your system."

"Not since yesterday."

"What's the fare of choice today?"

"Shimmer."

"Not your style."

She slits a glare at him. "You've got us all running on fumes. I need the extra pep."

Shimmer. Such a versatile devil. It simulates the central nervous system, sharpens the mind and energizes the body. It trickles away the agony and leaves you both brimful and dead-empty, until you regain mastery—or lose yourself.

"Too much chemical courage," Silco warns, "and you'll be left with none."

"I don't need courage to be straight with you. Unless you expect me to retire the role?"

"I expect you to be professional."

"I am, and you know it. I understand the difference between business and squaring a personal debt."

"Sometimes there is no difference." A half-smile dredged in warning. "Didn't I tell you so when you joined our cause?"

Sevika recites by rote. "'No matter how long it takes, always square a debt. It's not about revenge. It's about the equity of suffering. If they owe, they pay the cost. For better or worse.'"

"You've a sharp memory."

"Sharp enough to stop a mistake from repeating itself. I've had enough of that."

"You're my nursemaid now?"

For a moment Sevika's features contort in fury. Then she exhales, and collects herself. He's always had a talent for carelessly flung jabs. She is too habituated to let them break skin so easily.

"What I don't get," she says, "is why you're suddenly paying a forfeit. Especially when you've given no quarter since the Bridge fell. Your dream—our dream—is finally in hand. Now's the time to hit Topside hard. We've got the momentum! Why pull back?"

"Momentum is for times when there is nothing better to rely on."

"What else have we got?"

"Time."

"What?"

From an eerie statuary, Silco stirs to life. "Time, Sevika." He withdraws a cigar from his silver-backed case. "Something that was never afforded us. Not when we had to outrace Piltover every second just to stay in the same place. Now the tables have turned. We can choose the right moment to act."

"I don't get it."

Of bloody course.

Sevika deals in matter-of-factness, not abstraction. It makes her ideal for handling logistics. But there is no magic in mundanities. Moments like this, Silco misses the effortless connectivity between himself and Jinx. His girl is bright as a supernova. She always understands him—sometimes before the idea even coalesces out of the dark-matter in his mind.

Once, he remembers going into his office to review a set of numbers that hadn't added up. He'd found Jinx poured upside-down over his chair, feet propped up on the headrest, her skull dangling off the seat. She'd been squinting at a clipboard of double-entry bookkeeping. Without glancing at Silco, she'd suggested using algebra as an axiomatic model to reach his zero-term.

Silco had stared at her, a through-the-looking-glass shock in his chest. Who, he wondered, would this girl have been without trauma tangling her mind in a thousand wires? Without those wires tripping her up from reaching her full potential?

He'd told her—

What's it matter?

Jinx isn't in a state to discuss schemes anymore. And this? A scheme to stay squarely out of her crosshairs.

Silco extends his half-smoked cigar for Sevika to light. In the same beat, he breaks his thoughts down, like the pebbles he'd once showed her how to toss from her mining pan when swirling for ore.

"The Peace Treaty is a double-edged ploy," he says. "Beyond appearances, the Council have little strategic incentive to play ball with Zaun. They've too much stake in our resources. Their priority is preserving the old status quo. If we consider the Treaty, we are only counterpunching. It's no real deal. Simply Topside making us fight their kind of fight." The cigar's cherry glows; his words are expelled on smoke. "Fortunately, Zaun isn't helpless. With the right maneuvering, we can create the outcome we want."

"How?"

"Through Vi." He snares her eyes with his own, a radius of uncanny allurement. "You remember Piltover's first parley? What they demanded of us?"

Smoke leaks from Sevika's nostrils like dragonfire. Then the dragon slips away, leaving bitterness behind.

"Our weapons. Our trade. Our children."

It is fact; it isn't. Truth is in the bare bones, not the dross. The latter, Silco will carry to his grave.

The Hex gem. Shimmer. Jinx.

The three cornerstones to Zaun's success. Take them away; what's left? Another naked corpse disfigured by the Pilt's polluted waters. That's the fate Topside would've dealt Zaun. The fate they would've dealt Jinx.

Rage throbs like a livewire. He cannot let it go. Will never let it go.

"Who," he says, "told the Council about Jinx? Told Talis about the factory? Helped him lay waste to our Shimmer?" The answer condenses itself into one sharp syllable. "Her."

Sevika hardens into renewed hostility.

"Now she's seeking entry into the Lanes. Not as a Zaunite. As Piltover's agent." His good eye narrows. "Piltover's strategy is an old one. Retain control through inciting chaos. Last time Vi was belowground, she nearly undid our operation. The Council are banking on a repetition. A way to jeopardize Zaun's stability, so they can work the disturbance in their favor—against us."

"So you won't let her in?"

"I will."

"Then what? You'll manipulate Vi through Jinx?"

The cigar crumples between Silco's fingers like a cockroach.

"She," he hisses, "won't come near Jinx."

"The hell? You just said—"

"A bait and switch. Lure her in for one purpose, use her for another." He tosses the spoiled cigar in his ashtray, fingertips steepling together. "You know Violet's type. Punch first, then ask questions while punching. The difference is that she has a lot of weight behind her now. Piltover's weight, and their surety." His pitch darkens, gravel with an undertone of blood. "In Zaun, that's the equivalent of a target on her back."

A smile of slow malice edges Sevika' mouth.

"You're looking for payback. Set her up, take her out."

"In time." He cracks his knuckles. "Whether she succeeds or fails in destabilizing our cause, the calculus is the same if we catch her first and go public. A diplomatic breach. A terror attack—false flag or real. Something to hold over Piltover's head." Softer, "But not before I hold it over her head."

"So: blackmail." Sevika's lips purse sourly. "Why bother? She's not worth the time."

"She absolutely is." In the smoky half-light, his left eye shines the color of bad blood. "Did you know she's completed her training at Topside's academy? They call their new division Peacekeepers. We both know better. She's a certified Enforcer."

"Well, shit."

"Piltover's finest. She has security access to the Council. Diplomatic convoys. Border checkpoints." A subdermal sneer. "Piltover is presently in a political tug-of-war with Noxus. Ambessa Medarda covets their Hex-tech. So do her enemies. It's a fertile ground to sow disorder—and wield the confusion to Zaun's advantage."

"Through Vi."

He nods. "I have a few jobs I want her to do. Three, in fact. Not the kind of jobs she'd do voluntarily. But that's where a little… pressure… proves worthwhile."

Sevika cracks a harsh laugh. "This I gotta see."

"You will."

"Yeah?"

"You'll be in charge of the direct dealings for this operation." The points of Silco's jagged teeth gleam. "Consider it payback for the trouble she's caused."

His words resurrect the stabbing of old anger. Sevika's nod sharpens.

Good.

Sevika is a reliable operator, with a long memory for grudges. And Vi is squarely on her shit-list.

Blood-grievances fester in the Undercity's close quarters. Silco would know. He'd reinvented himself to the marrow, out of victimhood and into viciousness, to fulfill a vendetta. And although he shrewdly collects others whose grudges align with his own, he also understands how to speak their language on a base level.

Most of his crew understand motivation in different terms. Ran works best with praise. Lock prefers downtime. Dustin craves discipline.

Sevika is trickier. Threats, no matter how serious, rarely sway her. Spur-of-the-moment surprises bring a suspicious glint to her eye. Days off are useless, because she remains vigilant over Zaun's territory. The only time her stoicism cracks is when Silco lets her take time off to visit Janna's Temple after Bloody Sunday, or indulge in a bacchanal at Babette's.

Hers is a different stripe of loyalty. Inborn; not bought.

But everyone has a price.

Six years, Silco has kept her on his string, and only their shared goal of Zaun stopped Sevika from feeling strung along—or strangling him. Six years, she's proven herself as his second-in-command: working long hours behind the scenes, handling his drudgework, and occasionally dragging him down to earth when Silco's penchant for theatrics goes haywire. Six years, in which Sevika has come to know nearly all his sides: the silver-tongued savant, the larger-than-life luminary, the cutthroat crimelord. She's learnt to handle all three sides.

Except one.

Silco-the-father.

Six years, and Sevika could never see Jinx as anything but a bandit for the theft of her arm. By nature, she is averse to wild cards. Jinx is a wild card incarnate, and impossible to discipline. She is also smart. Way too smart for Sevika, whose mental wiring overheated anytime Jinx sprung a quixotic mind-trap on her.

Still, Sevika had taken Silco's word as law. On his orders, she'd trained Jinx in hand-to-hand combat. On his orders, she'd indoctrinated her on the mission. On his orders, she'd cleaned up Jinx's messes. She'd been plenty angry—plenty of times. But she'd never begrudged him for playing favorites.

The Undercity is an atmosphere of strangling pressure. Everyone has a stress valve. For some, it is booze, drugs and rock and roll. For others, it is babies and domestic bliss.

For Silco, it is Jinx.

Sevika tolerated his peculiar doting, so long as it didn't interfere with their goal. Until three months ago. Vi's reappearance, Jinx's intensifying mania, Finn's hackneyed coup. Disaster upon disaster—enough to stretch even Sevika's loyalty to breakage. Matter-of-factness trumps abstraction, even if there is a nation at stake. Dreams aren't enough to warm you at night.

Were you tempted? Silco had asked.

They'd stood in the center of his office, the afternoon sunlight turning Finn's bloodstains into shadows across the carpet. Sevika's eyes had burned fierce. Seizing a fistful of Silco's coat, she'd crowded him back against the sofa, answering with bluntness and without words. Afterward, Silco had tipped his head back against the sweat-damp cushions, his thumb rubbing absently along the jut of Sevika's hipbone, and thought: Hmm.

He believes in loyalty. But loyalty without a mainstay is like a sleeve without a switchblade. To stay alive, you must maintain an edge.

How best to bind Sevika's loyalty to Zaun than by honoring her publicly as his second-in-command, but also privately entrusting her with his plan's nuts and bolts? The arrangement has three positives. One: Sevika retains a sense of self-worth. Two: she fights to safeguard it, in Silco's eyes and her own. Three: armed with her fealty, Silco prevents long-term costs to his power.

Whatever's necessary for the bottom line.

Guarding Jinx against Vi.

"What about after?" Sevika says.

"Hmm?"

"After Vi's done what you need. What then?"

Silco smooths a hand through his hair. His callused thumb drags through the pomade, then curves scythelike down his jawline. Wash his hands of the girl; wash her into the Pilt.

Sevika grunts, rearranging the cigarillo between her teeth. "I'm all for it. But—"

"What?"

A wary look. "What if Jinx gets to her first?"

"She won't."

"That didn't work out so well, last time."

"It worked out worse for Jinx."

"What do you mean?"

Silco's thoughts circle back to the night on the Bridge. Not during the war. Before. Jinx lying in a ring of charred Enforcer's bodies. Her skin blackened, her hair hiding her face, everything about her unnatural, or unmoving or wrong. Silco still recalls it sometimes, restless in bed, his mind stalking the walled-off corners of memory like a rat through a maze.

His Jinx—broken. Unmade.

Undone.

"Sir," Sevika says.

He holds up a hand.

"Silco."

His name: a loaded sign. Anywhere else, he'd make her regret speaking out of turn. Behind closed doors, it's different. His thoughts of Jinx are too distracting and he needs to shape those scattered shards back into sharpness.

Anything to postpone the answer to the question.

(Are you prepared to lose her?)

"Now isn't the time," he says.

"Don't bring it up, then drop it."

"There's still work needs doing."

No rest for the parent of a sick child, or the progenitor of a nation. Overnight, he's become both.

"What about—"

"Last time, Sevika."

A lethal tone for a loaded one. Because boundaries mean nothing when you grow up scaling walls. What stops trespass in its tracks is a blade.

Sevika takes one steadying drag, then stubs out her cigarillo. The smoke dissolves into the late-afternoon with a heaviness that matches the ashen sunlight, the floating dust granules, and her breathing. At the edges of her everyday façade, he glimpses the same strain he's locking down—but on a much deeper level.

He says, "You're dog-tired. Some things you've said, I'll let slide."

Sevika gives one of her clipped nods.

"We've had a hard few months. I won't deny that the next few will be harder. You're unflappable in firefights. Nothing gets past you. But for this task, I expect greater vigilance. Vi isn't a bullet; she's more unpredictable. You'll need to manage her accordingly. I trust your discretion in the matter."

"Count on it."

"Your performance thus far has been exemplary. You've handled crises that would put most men in bodybags. For that, you have my thanks."

Always, Silco is sparing with his praise. But he understands that a single well-timed remark cancels out a dozen sharp rebukes. Sevika needs that right now. The same way she's needed, since her youth, to belong to something larger. To be disposable for a cause if nothing at all.

Sevika's face loses some of its rigidity. "Thank you, sir."

He wants her obedience, not her gratitude. But to have one, you must tolerate the other. Cost; reward. The same reason he tolerates the choking days and sleepless nights. For Zaun's climb out of the war-torn wreckage and into rightness.

(Like you, Jinx.)

(I swear it.)

"Sir?"

"Hm?"

Sevika's expression downshifts. "Margot's throwing a shindig at Entresol tonight. Strictly low-key. Planning to join?"

"My plans tonight aren't taking me beyond my quarters."

Same as every night.

Once, Sevika might have griped. Now, her frown lacks ferocity. "Doesn't seem like you're getting much sleep."

"Should that be your concern?"

"It's all of Zaun's concern."

"You are becoming my nursemaid."

"Just multitasking." Her cheekbones are rouged hot but her voice runs steady. "Should be used to it. Plenty of bombshells to dodge lately."

"Go to Babette's. Let Miguel's bombshells do their trick."

"Not in the mood."

Silco crooks a single unscarred eyebrow. "You, or Miguel? Either would be news to me."

"Miguel. The war's left him… out of sorts."

"Out of service, you mean."

"His cock's gotten carpal tunnel."

"My condolences. What about Javeria?"

"Just had a runt scraped out of her."

"Harper?"

"Broken leg and busted ribs."

Silco's two-syllable hum holds a note of elegy. "How the mighty have fallen."

"The vicious cycle can turn into a profitable cycle."

He groks her meaning. "Have funds from my private account transferred for their care."

"With my prayers and your coinage, I'm sure they'll survive to screw the coins out of many a chem-baron."

He tips a rare half-smile at the wordplay. "The question is, will you survive?"

"Old hand at that game."

Sevika's eyes are lit with the tiniest glint of humor. If Silco touched his fingertips to her neck, he'd feel her galloping pulse.

Soft tells on such a hard-edged woman. A top-shelf killer who can turn any part of her body into a deadly object. He's seen her crush a man's skull between her kneecaps, and pull another's spine out with her bare hands. Yet she's always worn her stone-cold deadliness like her cloak. Slip it on, shrug it off. In contrast, the deadliness is Silco's natural state. The blackness bleeds so dark that it eclipses everything else.

Usually, Sevika keeps it at arm's length from herself. More rarely, she lets it cover her until the only thing left is the throb of her heart.

Everyone in the Undercity has a stress valve. Everyone pays the cost.

"Well then." The chair creaks as Silco sinks back. One long leg unfolds over the other. "You must find a way to kill your time."

"I can think of a few things."

"So can I." His tone slithers into something more foreboding than inviting. "Be quiet for five minutes. Do some multitasking with your mouth."

Sevika's jaw twitches, and her eyes pick up a hot glow. Not anger, but better. His second-in-command carries within herself an inbuilt reservoir of discipline. Provoking it to crack is a special treat.

Sturdy toys are always fun to pull apart.

"Come."

An order.

"Yes, sir."

Sevika sidles around his desk to stand against his leg. Tall as a skyscraper. Taller than him by a good few inches. Yet she flows to her knees like a ribboning of honey sliding to the floor. Sweet. In business, Silco deals in acquisition; in affairs, he fixates on the unraveling. Two sides of the same coin, and with the same modus operandi: cutting cruelty and wicked edges. Yet here, the alternative suits him fine.

His dragon. Scourge of the Lanes. A purring pussycat.

With Sevika kneeling, their faces are within kissing distance. They don't kiss. Silco keeps his eyes on her, the blue one half-dormered, the inky one an eerie glitter. The slouch of his body holds an entitled languor. His hands are the same, the left one sketching a thumb along the bruises purpling Sevika's Shimmer-veined cheekbone. The other lifts her chin with one fingertip.

Sevika smile is a sparking flick of her eyes and fractional curving of her mouth. She seems about to say something. But then she thinks better of it. Instead she unbuttons his trousers, her thumb and fingers ringing around his stiffening handful of flesh, and does other things with her mouth. Things that grind the encyclopedic arsenal in Silco's skull down to a single syllable—Fuck.

There's a saying in the Undercity: Wolves like tender meat. Silco is no exception. Ripe girls, ripped boys. Easy pickings to pick his teeth with. Half the Undercity already assumes he fucks Jinx. Yet the answer? No; never. Nobody assumes he fucks Sevika. Yet the answer? Yes; often. Sometimes vice versa.

Easy pickings have their place. But experience is the real thrill. A grown woman can be as pleasing as three teenagers—with a damn sight less whining afterward.

They operate on distance and discretion. Short bursts, on and off. Weeks where they'll be in each other's pockets, then weeks where they'll naturally rebound to brothels or casual hook-ups without discussion.

Theirs isn't an affair; It's an inversion of pleasure to its barest bones.

Cost and reward.

His fingers thread into Sevika's shorn hair. Silco coaxes her firmly through different rhythms until her playfulness falls away. Her strong hands fit themselves to his knees, blunt nails and metal calipers catching in the costly fabric of his trousers. By then he's found the groove he enjoys, and the strength of his own hand becomes iron as he bears down on the back of Sevika's neck, working himself into her wet throat steadily, then with a wicked snap-pike.

Sevika's breath goes muffled. Her hands dig into his thighs. She could demolish him without trying, and yet it is Silco who rules her here with the barest touch. His hips roll fluidly; she accommodates with the same inbuilt efficiency as when she cracks skulls at his command. Wet chin, swollen mouth, hollowed cheeks. Her dark eyes gleam up at him in the watery afternoon rays.

Heat races through Silco's extremities. Heat that reminds him he is alive.

And it's more than just the heat. It's the intensity, solidity, worship in her stare, where he is accustomed to duty or blunted dread from his whores. There is little thrill in conquering a whore. Less in breaking one.

Silco withdraws, abruptly, a trail of wet glistening along his flesh.

Sevika gasps for breath. He's got two fists in her short hair. Tightening, he drags her closer. Her scent radiates keenly in his nostrils: sandalwood, brightleaf smoke, sweat. Her moist-eyed stare holds a peculiar softness. Some people look sly when they are aroused; Sevika looks vulnerable.

Younger, she'd hated to be seen this way. The tough ones always do. It took Silco roughly a year to break her in. Swearing fealty to a cause means expunging all inhibition at its service.

He drags his thumb across Sevika's wet bottom lip.

"Shall I finish in your mouth, or shall we have a fuck?"

"You're asking me?"

"It's a special occasion."

Sevika's expression flickers from anticipation to a steady-eyed challenge.

"Kiss me first."

"Up here or down there?"

"Gentleman's choice."

"None to be found." He crooks a finger. "Get up."

She obeys smoothly.

"Strip."

Sevika, like the rest, learnt to undress in the pneumonic temperatures of the mining barracks. Speed was never left by the wayside. She doesn't fumble with buttons or belts. She shucks her poncho and undershirt in a single motion. Leans back with her hands on his desk, boots kicked off and hips twisting to strip the trousers down at the far end of long sturdy legs.

Silco doesn't lift a finger. He sits back in his throne and admires his well-used toy.

She's never been beautiful to him, but she's never needed to be. His motives for choosing Sevika involve her body as a bludgeon more than a bedwarmer, and he's never claimed otherwise.

Beauty is prosaic. Strength is not.

He likes that she is scarred and muscular, twisty veins like lightning on her calves and tendons rumbling like thunder on her biceps. Not perfectly shaven; there is a tentative fleece on her arms and legs and a thicker scrim between them. Yet for a woman with such little regard for femininity, she's still soft, the fretwork of her mechanical arm melding cold machinery with warm meat.

Silco stakes his claim everywhere. Sevika is no exception. In exchange for his life, he'd gifted her an arm. In doing so, he'd marked her like the rest of the Undercity: its streets, her skin, its screams, her scars. He never kisses them better. He's not a merciful man, and mercy has no place here.

Mercy has no place anywhere.

His cold hands warm themselves along the deep curve of her flanks down to her thighs. They fan open, his palms curving hook-knuckled over her kneecaps. Sevika's smile goes darkly flushed. Balancing back on her elbows, she watches the most powerful man in Zaun fit himself between her thighs. She'd asked for a kiss. What he gives her is decidedly sharper—his crooked teeth sinking into her pouting breasts, the concavity below her ribs, the juts of her hipbones. Sevika's eyelashes flutter, the dip in her gasps ragged with half-protest, half-pleasure. The bite-marks will darken into lovely contusions later.

Nothing done by halves—but he can be crueler and they both know it.

In the brothels, he has a reputation. Most of the boys and girls are torn up by his teeth before he ever gets his cock out. The bane of bawds everywhere—though none dare refuse him. If Zaun's kingpin whets his appetite with a taste of suffering, his coins more than compensate for the scars.

Scarring your own playthings? Par for the course.

Sevika's gasps become something else—a deep guttural cry when he drags her closer, ducking down to spread her open with his thumbs and cover her with his mouth. She tastes of rock-pool salt and smoky sweat. Her inner labia is a deep mauve frill streaked in dewy moisture, clit hard as a polished pebble. His tongue laps along its contours with a steady repetition that verges on unbearable.

He's patient in most circumstances. But the slow burn of foreplay isn't his style here. Sevika is more vocal when he cuts a shortcut to the same destination, hot shocks of suckling pressure and the near-rake of teeth. Her pitch rises, falls, rises again as tremors spread under her skin and her knees curl heedlessly inward, strong enough to dislodge a man's grip—unless he's worked in the mines since boyhood, and learnt to make the clamp of his widespread fingers unyielding as steel.

Silco keeps her legs apart and doesn't lift his head. Doesn't stop, until her entire body spasms, jerking upright and curling reflexively around him, her cries shuddering out of her until they become a crescendo of swearing filth.

Only then does she push him aside, sweat-streaked and heaving.

"No more. Bastard. Fuck."

"That's the idea."

Straightening, he knuckles the slick off his lips. Unfazed on the surface, but his eyes have picked up a gleaming sharpness. Sevika stares back with lewd interest. His prick juts from his peeled-back fastenings. The dark foreskin furls back over the head, blunt and wet-tipped. The shaft curves slantwise across his belly like a scythe.

Carelessly, Sevika takes him in hand. Her grip holds a matter-of-fact authority; the glitter of her eyes is greedy.

"If that's the idea," she says, "then why isn't your cock making itself useful?"

"It needs kitting up."

"Hate those damn things."

"Of course." From his desk drawer, he retrieves the silver foil coin between a forefinger and thumb. "They cost money."

"They chafe."

"Not as much as a brat ripping you up from end to end."

"Cheaper to pick one up from a burning factory."

Silco's eyes snap to hers with a bitten-back malevolence. She's struck a nerve and they both know it. Her fingertips fondle him placatingly up and down. Fortunately, their moment isn't on the brink of abandonment. He's still hard.

Unfortunately, it's a different kind of hard.

"Turn around," he says.

"Silco—"

His answer is to rip the foil coin open. His glare grates like a blade over bone.

"Do it."

Sevika turns, eyeing him warily over her shoulder. Her back is a burnished surface of muscle and scars. The mechanical arm gleams as she braces herself against his desk.

"If you go three for three again, I swear to—ffffuck!"

Silco lines up their bodies—and slams into her, no warning and little nicety, the flaring head splitting her slickly open in a rough entry for the rest of him. The impact nearly lifts Sevika on her tiptoes. She shudders all over, her hands scrabbling for purchase on the desk. The matchbox is knocked over, sticks skittering. A glass topples to the floor.

In the next moment, Sevika growls and rolls back against him, "Shit. Don't stop. Harder—"

Silco's hand seizes her chin, three fingers cramming into her mouth. She chokes on a gasp. Pity there's no mirror ahead. It's always a treat to see how far each toy's mouth opens—jaws unhinging wetly and sounds slurring. Still, this position has its upsides. Control, with easy access. His other hand drops between Sevika's legs, thumb dragging across her clit. She cries out, muffled against his spit-wet fingers, and Silco hitches himself in deeper.

The way he rides into her is relentless, deep riveting jabs that go balls-deep. She feels good. Rough-hewn everywhere, but divinely soft inside. Better yet is the friction, his force met double by hers, grinding down that knot of straining rage inside him. The desk is solid enough that their most violent movements don't jar it.

It's survived a war. It will survive worse.

There's a saying in the Undercity. You have to give to get. He gives Sevika as much as she can handle, then ups the ante, enough to make her stop asking questions, stop talking, pummeling her hard and fast until there are no words, no sounds from her except exultant little grunts, each one so completely unlike this stoic sledgehammer of a woman, because right now she has his cock and she has the rest of him, no thoughts on his mind besides this.

Until the rasp of a struck matchstick.

"Wha—?"

Sevika cranes her neck sideways. The flat of Silco's hand comes down against her nape.

"Eyes ahead."

"What are you—shit."

A whiff of phosphorous hangs in the air. Sevika's skin prickles into gooseflesh and she stutters out a cry. Silco rolls the burning bead of the matchstick end over end on her skin, like a magician's sleight of hand. The glowing tip pinwheels down her spine to her tailbone, before stubbing itself out under the pad of his thumb. There is a sizzle of burnt flesh.

New marks for his oldest toy.

Sevika exhales a harsh Fuck that ebbs into a full-bodied clench of Oh Oh Oh and then a slurred chant in her family's native Vekauran. Her hair is trapped in sweat, the arch of her back sheened with it. She is no longer using the desk for leverage. The urgent rhythm of her hips peaks into a liquid rocking, then twitching aftershocks, her legs jellying out. A moment later Silco curses through gritted teeth, gripping her shoulders as he sinks deep into her, muscles tautening on the tail-end of climax.

They sag against the desk. Silco rests an elbow on the armature of Sevika's panting body. Inhale-exhales, before his breaths judder into a silent, empty laugh, like he's won a race with exhaustion. Then he straightens and steadies and sets his clothes to rights without a word.

"Son of a bitch," Sevika breathes.

Torquing, she regards her back. The burns glow bright along the ridges of her spine. No damage, but the marks will linger.

"Son of a bitch," she says again.

Silco cards a hand through his hair. "As I said, it's a special occasion."

Sevika glowers. But her cunt knows what's what, as they've both attested.

Silco sinks back into his chair. Fucking in its aftermath is like mining: all sweat and grind until the whistle blows and the mess is sopped up. The spent sheath is tossed trashward. His fingertips are swirled in a glass of leftover whiskey, then wiped off, before his handkerchief repeats the gesture in a more complex corkscrewing across his lips.

Humming a tune, Sevika drags herself to her feet, and back into her clothes. Devil's got the Blues. Some people glow after sex; she sings.

The window is a diffuse rectangle of light; everything in the office is flattened into silhouettes. The dimensions replicate those in Silco's mind. He rarely basks in the soft-taffy sweetness of afterglow. His go-to is a stiff drink and talking shop. Any justice, he can treat himself to an iced finger of single malt, then return to work.

(Or to you, Jinx.)

(Even if you never say a word.)

"Piltover will begin negotiations for the Peace Treaty by next week," he says. "I'll inform you of what preparations to make in the meantime."

Sevika nearly rolls her eyes. "Back to business the second your balls are empty."

"What else is there?"

"Still on the clock, huh?"

"What?"

"Nothing, sir."

Gingerly, Sevika resumes her perch on the sofa. Puts two cigarillos in her mouth, lights up, and offers Silco one. He accepts, savoring not the intimacy of the gesture but its expedience. There is no reason to talk while they smoke.

The weak sunlight burns between them. The cherries burn down the silence.

Finally, Sevika says, "One question."

"You've exhausted your quota."

"Just one, sir. Then I'll back off."

"Make it quick."

She falters, then forges on. "Was it planned?"

"Was what planned?"

"Jinx's change. Was it always in the works?"

Silco's expression hardens to blot out the last dregs of private satisfaction. Sevika's touched on the topic one too many times. Then again, he's allowed it. Perhaps he does need to talk. Have the truth out there, and be done with it.

His tone is a mockery of mildness. "You think I planned it?"

"Everyone does. It'd explain all the time you invested in her. Making her into a Shimmer soldier."

"I'd have gone about it differently."

"Meaning—what?"

"Means what it means."

Sevika shoves into her words a guttural emphasis. "What happened?"

"Grenade blast." There is no easing into it. The Undercity only speaks one language: dead ends. "She pulled the pin."

"For shits and giggles?"

"To eliminate the Firelight boy." Or herself. His mind empties itself of the sickening speculation. "She was saving the Hex gem. She did it for Zaun."

Sevika's expression spasms in denial. The flipside of old dislike. Then— "You took her to Singed?"

Silco nods.

"He must've taken her apart. Shit—no wonder she's a mess." She lapses into silence, then shakes it off. "You let him?"

"To save her." Silco's voice holds a flat savagery. Then, astonishing them both, he says, "I had no right to the choice."

Except what was the alternative?

He knows himself. A ruthless husk of a man, with no room left inside him for mercy. Not when besting the enemy meant transforming into the worst of himself, and putting everyone in his orbit to the depthless depravity of use.

Jinx was no exception.

He'd used her as an iconoclast uses a blank piece of paper: for its capacity to mirror his rage in a life twice-lived, once as suffering, next as success. He'd used her as a weaponsmith uses a pistol: for the artistry of its purpose, inside of which destruction becomes beauty. He'd used her as warlock uses a goddess summoned to battle: with a mad idolatry that consumed every shred of truth, because a war goddess has no care for morals, only for destruction at its purest.

Silco nearly shuts his eyes.

Now the paper is shredded. The pistol is dismantled. The goddess is struck an immortal blow.

Only the damaged child remains.

(My child.)

Silco thinks back on the evening of Talis' parley. Left high and dry, he'd sat marooned by Vander's statue afterward. Yet he'd thought not of Vander, but Jinx. He couldn't betray her for his lifelong vision. Not his precious girl. The one who'd always sit in his lap, whispering mischief in his ear. Doodling hearts on his papers; leaving curious little gifts on his pillow. Her closeness was the greatest nourishment he'd ever experienced in all his starved years. He should've understood, then, how simple it was. Beyond all his showmanship and subterfuge and sophistry.

At his core he was—just this. A father with a child. The most perfect child in the world.

(Are you prepared to lose her?)

His throat tightens. Ten fingerprints; a lifetime's suffocation.

Sevika says nothing. But there is a sick shudder in her jaw, as her eyes meet his. The shortest stare, darkly human, then dragged away, because there is nothing in Silco's own gaze for the humanity to hinge itself on. It is like staring into dead sea depths, a darkened landscape where life cannot draw breath.

"You couldn't know," she says at last.

"What?"

Her profile, in half-shadow, is uncharacteristically subdued. "You couldn't know what it'd cost."

"I did."

She stares at him.

The pallid sunlight of the Lanes spreads across his desk. Silco watches it creep along the notched handle of his knife. A memento of brotherhood gone down the drain. A reminder of debt and payment. The blade gleams beneath his caressing fingertip. One corner of his slashed lip quirks up, with no real humor.

"I knew the cost," he says.

(And if I pay half, Vi must pay the other.)

It's not a matter of revenge, but equity.

And suffering.

(I won't lose my child again.)