He Asked Me to Die Again, So I Named My Price novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Signature
Yvette signs away her heart for Alaric's sister, sets one condition, and the conquest meter jumps the second she does.
The system asked its question while the surgeon was still holding out the pen.
"Yvette Hutchinson, do you agree to give your heart to his sister?"
The voice had no tone at all.
It sat at the back of her skull, where it had sat through six bodies.
"Reminder. You cannot truly die until your mission is complete."
Yvette looked at the consent form on Alaric Stoughton's desk and said nothing.
"However, a body without a heart is legally and medically dead. I will find you another one."
"The extraction itself will be a long and painful near-death."
"I know," she said out loud.
Four people looked at her.
The surgeon, the family lawyer, the old woman in the armchair, and the man behind the desk.
"You know what, dear?" the old woman asked gently.
"That it will hurt," Yvette said.
His grandmother nodded. "Then take your time. Nobody should sign this in a hurry."
She slid a box of tissues an inch across the side table toward Yvette's chair.
The study smelled of leather and ginger.
A pot of tea sat on the corner of the desk with a single cup beside it, honey already stirred in.
That was how she liked it, and in six lives she had never once told him.
Alaric did not look up from his papers. "Calla's numbers dropped again this morning," he said. "She has until Friday."
It was Tuesday.
On the desk behind his shoulder stood a silver frame, with Calla at twenty laughing so hard she covered her mouth.
For a year Yvette had worked in this house as Calla's paid companion.
Calla had knocked on her door at midnight with a pint of ice cream and two spoons.
She had stayed until two, teaching Yvette a card game that Yvette kept losing.
That was why Yvette had not said no yet.
It was not for him.
She turned and looked at the man who had asked.
Alaric was thirty-three, with a hard jaw and eyes that stayed on the page.
In every life he had asked her for a bigger favor than the last.
Now he had asked for her death.
He had done it through a lawyer and a surgeon, in a room with witnesses, so he would not have to say it himself.
She had died six times for him already.
"Yvette," the lawyer said carefully. "The hospital has the theatre booked for Thursday at six."
"Thank you," she said.
She took the pen from the surgeon. His hand was damp.
Dorothea Stoughton reached over and patted her wrist. "You are a good girl."
It was a warm thing to say, and Yvette was grateful for it.
Nobody else in the room had said anything kind.
In six deaths, he had never once said he was sorry.
After the first one, she had waited at his door for it.
He had adjusted his cuff and told her the car was ready.
Alaric's pen had stopped moving.
She wrote her name on the line, in blue ink that would be part of a medical file by morning.
Then she set the pen down.
"I have one condition," she said.
The surgeon looked at the lawyer.
"On Thursday," Yvette said, "Alaric drives me to the hospital himself. No driver. No car service."
The room waited for him to refuse.
For the first time that afternoon, Alaric raised his eyes from the desk.
They were dark blue, and they stayed on her for a long second.
Something moved in his face and was gone.
"Fine," he said.
That was all. He picked up the next document.
Yvette stood and thanked the surgeon.
She told Dorothea she would see herself out.
The corridor outside the study was cold.
The old house kept its halls cold on purpose, because Dorothea said heat made people careless.
Yvette leaned her back against the wall and looked at the floorboards.
Fine, she thought. Let it be as they wish.
She would go to the table on Thursday and feel every second of it.
She had felt it on a bridge, in a fire, and on a staircase.
She had felt it in a blood clot, on black ice, and in a fever in a house with no heat.
Then, as always, she would walk back into his life wearing a new face.
Behind the closed door, a chair scraped and a cup was set down hard.
She did not turn around.
"Conquest progress updated," the system said in her head.
Yvette went still.
For four years the number had not moved.
It had sat at twelve percent through six faces and six deaths, and every word she had said to him in between.
"Target response: sixty-two percent."
She stood in the cold hallway and read the number again.
He had barely looked at her, and he had not said one kind word.
He had only watched her sign.
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