But what?
I sit on the cold steps a long time, and I don’t have an answer. But I know the answer isn’tgive them a little less than they want and hope it holds.
That option ran out today.
Chapter 5
Decker
It’s mid-afternoon when Viktor’s next meeting request arrives. He’s scheduled it after dark, and that alone tells me something. Aurora runs on the clock. Briefings at oh-seven, ops check at noon, debrief when the light is going. An evening meeting isn’t policy; it’s accommodating something. Someone important enough to schedule around, who keeps hours that aren’t ours.
I reach the main meeting room before anyone else so I can choose a seat. Long table, eighteen chairs already pulled out, screens dark along the wall. This is going to be a discussion then, not a presentation. I take the inside corner nearest the door. Viktor sees me do it as he walks in.
“You’ll have a better read from the far end,” he says.
“I’ll have a better exit from here.”
He doesn’t argue. He sets his folder at the head of the table and leaves it at that.
Caleb and Dorian come in together. Caleb has road dust on his sleeve. Dorian looks like a man who hasn’t slept through a night in a week and has decided not to discuss it.
“Anyone going to tell us what this is about?” Dorian says.
“You’ll know when we get started,” Viktor says.
Dorian looks at Caleb. Caleb pulls the folder Viktor left at his place and reads it, and Dorian sits back like a man used to getting his answers secondhand from his brother.
Lila and Talon come in behind them. Lila sets a folder down and doesn’t open it. Talon takes the chair to her right.
Torbjorn comes in and drops into the chair at the near end, looking like he has better places to be.
He looks at me for a moment. “This part of the job too?” he says.
“Maybe,” I say. Viktor’s called me in on pretty much everything that might involve sensitive information, hoping I’ll pick up a pattern. Which makes me wonder if he’s completely committed to the theory that the girl is our problem. She has absolutely no reason to enter this room. And I don’t know why that disappoints me.
Riven comes in ahead of Iris, reading the room the way I’m reading it. He sees me. He sees the empty seats and works out who they’re for. He pulls Iris’s chair out without looking at it, sits beside her, and his attention goes to the far door and stays there. I’ve crossed paths with Riven before; every time, he’s struck me as a man not to be trifled with.
The last to arrive on the coalition side comes through quietly enough that I hear the door before I see her—tall, pale, fair hair pulled back, with the bearing of someone who has sat through more meetings like this than anyone else in the room.
“Leora,” Viktor says. “Thank you for coming down.”
“You said Nocturne,” she says, taking the chair at the far end. “The fae don’t let the Court sit at a table without someonewatching. Old habit.” Her eyes move over the Aurora side, unhurried, and stop on me a half-beat longer than the rest. “You’ve added another bear since last time.”
“Decker,” Viktor says. “He consults for us.”
Leora Sky inclines her head at me and says nothing else, but I have the sense of having been weighed and shelved, which I don’t mind. It’s what I do to a room myself.
Then the far door opens.
Four of them. The woman who comes in first is somewhere near fifty by the look of her, though her features are so smooth, it’s impossible to tell; dark-haired, composed in the way of someone who has held authority long enough to wear it lightly. She takes the chair across from Viktor like she’s sat in it before. The other three settle along the right side of the table. Lean, pale, eyes that move with a quick intensity that makes my senses jangle.
Third from the end is a man I know.
Crowe. I’ve worked two jobs that touched him, both the kind of work nobody writes down. He’s Nightshade Guild…assassin. An operative, not a principal; the sort who turns up where he’s needed and leaves when he isn’t. What I’m only confirming now, in this light, at this hour, is what he is beneath the work. His chest isn’t keeping time the way a living man’s does. My bear notices before I do, and what it sends up isn’t a threat. Which doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.
Viktor says, “Ysabelle Faine, of the Nocturne Court.” He glances around at the rest of us as he makes the introduction. “We appreciate the Court making the journey,” he says to her.
“We didn’t make it lightly,” Faine says. “We don’t come to Aurora as a habit. I’d rather be honest about why we’re here than pretend it’s goodwill.”
