The door clicked open. Emmet gave her one sweeping look and sighed. She kicked off her shoes in the doorway and sauntered into his living room, humming. It was good to be back on top. Good to be alive. Great to be working at LMC, really. She tossed her back onto the counter as Emmet shut the door.

  “Seven, you’ve got to stop showing up on my doorstep looking like that.”

  “Like what?” she asked, snagging an apple from his countertop. Luck above, she was starving.

  “Like death warmed over,” he said, trailing over to lean against the countertop. Seven had to admit he was handsome. Broad-shouldered and square-jawed, he had looks any courtier would have envied. How did he end up out here of all places, doing Moore’s cursed bidding? Perhaps it was just that she was in a good mood, or maybe she was just warming up to the man. Regardless, he was a pleasant sight.

  “Your face is the color of milk,” he went on, studying her. His eyes flicked to her arm. “And your arm looks like it was detached at some point.”

  Seven glanced at her arm, then winced at the mottled colors, a mix of purples, greens, and blossoming red that trailed up her forearm towards her elbow. It did ache if she allowed herself to think about it, but her mind was very far from her injuries. And besides that, it wasn’t broken—probably.

  “I think I ran out of juice,” she said, still chewing her apple. “I didn’t have enough to get me through yesterday.”

  “Enough…juice…you mean what I saw you do with my dice?”

  Seven nodded, unlatching her bag with one hand before plopping into one of Emmet’s countertop chairs. “I had another run-in with the guy from yesterday.”

  “Surely you had a chance to send him into next week.”

  She winced. “Sort of. Or I would have, anyway—but there was another miner with me, so I couldn’t really use it.”

  “So you…”

  “Caused a tunnel collapse.”

  Emmet’s gaze never wavered. “And you’re at my doorstep and not at mandatory compliance training because…?”

  Seven hesitated. She was feeling good, yes, but she wasn’t sure she was feeling that good. She liked Emmet. He seemed genuine, despite all of his caution. And, while he was sort of contractually obligated to work with her, his disdain for LMC seemed real—and his willingness to work with her. But how far would that go if she took advantage of his kindness?

  She had every right to ask him for a place to stay, of course—Moore, and by extension, her own family, likely paid for the fine townhome she now sat in—but there was an old part of Seven that hated living with anyone else. Hated the sense of expectation it created. Near homelessness was dangerous and unstable, perhaps, but it was free. There was no one to answer to but herself. Even now, threatened with the prospect again, she found it didn’t bother her as much as it should have.

  But she couldn’t tackle LMC’s conspiracy and unearth everything Rook was hiding while cold, wet, and hungry—and winter was coming fast in the mountains. She needed a place to stay, even if it might make things awkward between her and Emmet. So, she plunged into the request with all the subtlety of whatever had chased her in the mines.

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  “Because I had to sell my apartment to pay for the damages.”

  “Even the mattress,” Pocket added with a deep, dramatic sigh.

  It took Emmet several moments to recover, and by the time he did, she felt a little bad for dropping so much on him at once. Of course, it was sort of her thing. She had a long history of it. It was probably the main reason her family had been so ready to get rid of her.

  “I didn’t even know you could sell one of those LMC apartments,” he said, his eyes distant. “Did they have you…”

  “Debt restructuring,” she said, digging for a sheet of paper in her bag. She unfurled it and shoved it towards Emmet. She’d already read it several times, but the legalese of it didn’t really matter at this point. She supposed she should be bothered by it, but she’d made so much progress in the last few days that it was impossible to really be upset by it.

  “’Per section 14(b), your right of occupancy constitutes tangible equity. We’ve applied that equity toward your outstanding balance. You’re welcome to vacate by noon,’” Emmet read, then swore. He held up the paper, looking aghast. “You let them do this?”

  “What choice did I have?” she snapped, tossing the rest of the apple into the nearby bin. “You know what we signed.”

  That seemed to deflate Emmet entirely. “I do,” he said, folding the paper. “But I just thought—“

  Seven couldn’t help but choke out a laugh. “That they’d ask me for a background check and then avoid the crippling debt because of my lineage? I told you, there’s nothing left of that—no family ties, no money, nothing.”

  “Sure, but where—you know what, nevermind. Just please tell me you’ve got a plan.”

  Seven grinned at that. “Far too many of them, actually.”

  “You know, I’m beginning to hate that smile.”

  Seven pulled out the rest of her maps, her bracelets, her keycards—every last bit of treasure she’d managed to stuff into her bag before fleeing to the surface. She’d turned in her dull shards, but the woman at the counter had little interest in the rest of her bag after seeing her haul; even dull shards were worth something. Not enough to pay the damages of the tunnel collapse, perhaps, but something at least.

  “Treasure!” Pocket hummed, going gold with happiness. Seven leaned back in the chair until it almost toppled over and spread her arms wide.

  “Well?”

  Emmet’s stunned silence was answer enough. He ran a hand through his perfectly messy curls and let out a low whistle.

  “Thirteen take me, you work fast.”

  Pocket let out a muffled sort of chuckle from Seven’s bag. “That’s not the only thing that wants to take you if you know what I—hey!”

  Seven stuffed him further into the bag until only his muffled voice remained and tried to ignore the heat creeping into her cheeks. And to think I was stupid enough to think Pocket would listen, she thought, mentally noting never to tell the slime anything else of her nonexistent love life. “I was lucky,” she said hurriedly. “And I had a bit of help too.”

  She held up her palm, wiggled her fingers, and her dice flashed there. She wasn’t sure how it worked—only that she could sort of will it into existence to show others. “I found a dice in my pocket that didn’t drain and palmed it before my shift last night.”

  Emmet pulled out a nearby chair and sat down—hard.

  “You know,” he said, watching her with a strange look in his eyes. “I could never figure out why Moore was so keen to keep you as far away from all of this as possible. He probably reminded me twice in every letter he sent me to not answer any of your questions if you came snooping around.”

  Seven snorted at that, feeling at least a little smug. “Fat lot of good that did him.”

  Emmet had the good sense to look a little embarrassed, at least. “Well, you’re rather…convincing. And it’s not like Moore was going to bail me out of this.”

  “Exactly right,” Seven said, grinning.

  “Anyway, I can see why he was eager to keep you as far away from this as possible.” He opened and closed his mouth a few times, considering. “Seven, you palmed a dice? Do you even know what that does?”

  Also, if you'd like to read ahead, or sign up for free for news and updates, you can find my .

  NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s and publisher’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.