“No.” Viktor doesn’t raise his voice, and he doesn’t dress it up. “Your sister’s search is separate. I keep it that way on purpose. It doesn’t come into this room.”
“She’s the reason I did any of this.”
“I know she is. The answer is still no.”
“Viktor—”
“Grace.” He looks at her straight. “The more people who know about this, the faster it travels. That’s true in here the same as everywhere. What I’m doing for your sister works because almost nobody knows it’s happening. I’m not going to widen it. Vanya handles your sister’s case. I’ll share this with her, but what she does with it is up to her.”
She sits back. Her face pulls in and holds flat, and I’ve slept beside her long enough to know what’s underneath it. The one thing she wants most in the world, and she’s not given access.
I could give her more than Viktor’s giving her. Towers. A direction. A corridor with her sister’s blood moving down it. The words are right there, and I keep my mouth shut and my face empty, and it has never cost me more to do either.
The bear has been climbing this whole time. Her in the middle of the room. A framer maybe two doors down. Now her hurting, and me adding to it by sitting on what I know. He doesn’t like it.
Nadia looks up from the laptop. “One more thing that doesn’t fit. The dragon.” She turns to Viktor. “They sent a tracker dragon after her in broad daylight. Nobody spends a dragon on a courier they’re done with. Why did they want her back that badly?”
“It was there to kill me,” says Grace, before anyone can respond.
“If that dragon wanted to kill you, you would be dead,” says Nadia.
The room looks at Grace. Grace looks at me.
One second. Maybe two. I keep my eyes on Nadia and my mouth shut. Grace’s eyes hold on me a beat too long—the question right there behind them—then she looks away.
“Park it,” Viktor says, too fast. “We’re tying up loose ends, nothing more.”
Nadia lets it go. Grace doesn’t, not all the way. I watch her set the moment aside somewhere she can find it again, and I want to tell her the truth so badly it hurts. Viktor moves the room on to schedules: when Grace works, who’s in the building when she does, how her days will run. I hear about half of it.
The session ends the way these things end, with Viktor collecting his folder and everyone standing at once. Marek appears in the doorway for Grace. She goes to him without being told.
At the door she stops and looks back at me. Whatever that conversation did to her, it isn’t on her face now. What’s there is steadier. She got through her first day of it, and she knows she did.
“You did good today,” I tell her, because it’s true, and because it’s all I’m allowed to hand her in a room full of people.
“I know,” she says. The corner of her mouth moves. Then she’s gone down the corridor with Marek, and the small warmth of it stays after the door shuts.
The room empties around me. Jericho is the last out, and he pauses at the door like he might say something, then doesn’t. I stand alone with the dead screen and the empty chairs. The bear’s not happy.
I wanted her cleared. I got what I wanted.
I just wish I could feel better about it.
Chapter 32
Grace
Marek walks half a step behind me and one to the side, but I barely notice because I’m still turning the meeting over.
You were the one they’d blame when someone got close.
That’s what I was. Months of starving every drop down to nothing, checking each scrap twice so it couldn’t hurt anyone, hating myself anyway—and none of it was ever the point. They kept me the way you keep a spare part. Something to bolt the blame to later.
And the one door I wanted opened stayed shut.Your sister’s search is separate. It doesn’t come into this room.Viktor said it kindly, for Viktor, and it still hurt.
So my head is full. It should be the only thing I’m feeling.
It isn’t.
