He glances up at the wall clock. Five thirty-seven.
“And that’s close e-fucking-nough for me.”
He stands up so fast his chair clatters to the ground.
And then he’s gone.
ELEVEN
GWENNA
After Kai hightailedit out of Holy Grounds, Morgan and I only linger another few minutes longer.
There isn’t much more to say, our coffee has long gone cold, and my whole skull is ringing with Kai’s revelation.
Moroslav. Moroslav started that fire.
Moroslav, who came to see me at Renfrew.
Whofoundme there, somehow.
Who could still…
That explains it.
The rescue mission.
The guard duty.
The round-the-clock shifts…
I stumble on the last step out of the Divinity School basement, realizing.
Callahan. Lanz. Kai.
They’ve all taken their shifts, working their appointed hours as the sun came up, as it bleakly circled over the frosty Caliburn campus, as it sank into the black trees again. Now, at six p.m., with everything around us dark and silver-edged at dusk…
…there’s just one of them left to go.
We finish the last of the stairs and push through the doors into the the whip-sharp cold and?—
—and there he is.
Kingston Pendragon stands, head slightly bowed against the wind, hands in his coat pockets, at the entrance to the Divinity School.
Waiting.
I haven’t really seen him, despite everything—not for long, anyway, not in a moment of relative calm—and now that I’m looking at him, he looks…
He looks exactly the same.
Serious. Intent. Resolved.
The only change I can see is the slight tinge of pink coloring the aristocratic cut of his cheekbones—the cold.
Seeing me—us—he nods.
“Hi,” he says. “Hello.”
