Page 139 of Flames and Blood

Torbjorn speaks before Creed can go on.

“My clan sits two valleys south of where Renwick runs his trucks.” He looks around the table. “We’ve had unusual activity on our side of the ridge for months. I didn’t think much of it before today.” He looks down the table at Craven. “You go up against that compound, you’ll want to know the ground first. I know it.”

Odile turns to him. “How many roads?”

“Two in regular use. A third that only sees traffic when the other two flood, which is most winters,” he answers her. “You planning the approach?”

“I might be.” She holds his eyes a beat longer than the question needs. “Show me what you know. Tonight, if you’ve got the time.”

“I’ve got the time.”

“I think this is a matter that needs its own discussion,” says Viktor.

“And I think there’s someone at this table who has a lot to contribute to that discussion.” Bastien is looking at Creed.

Creed thinks before he answers Bastien. “My people were approached about that program,” he says eventually. “Renwick’s men came to us directly, with numbers and a candidate already chosen. We refused.” No performance in it at all. “I’ll fight for my clan’s survival with anything I have left. I won’t buy a woman to do it. There’s a line even I don’t cross.”

Nobody at the table knows quite what to do with a man like Creed saying a thing like that. I don’t either.

“Yet you didn’t think to end it right there?” Odile’s voice is dry. “Allowing something to continue makes you as guilty as if you were involved yourself.”

“That’s a matter of opinion, Comtesse de Rosemonde.”

Creed turns to me before Odile can form a rebuttal.

“You’re the one who killed him.”

“I am.”

“In a bedroom. In front of witnesses.” He looks at me, and there’s no anger anywhere in it. “I’m not here to avenge him. I’m here to collect what’s left of his line before it finishes dying in a cell. That’s all.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No.”

“Good,” he says. “I’d have thought less of the work if you did.”

Neither of us apologizes, because neither of us has anything to apologize for. That’s the end of it.

He turns to Viktor and Craven after that, and the three of them start in on what happens to Roland Vex. Nobody needs me for that part.

So I watch her instead.

She’s still in her chair with both hands around a cup that went cold an hour ago. She’s held on to it through the whole meeting. She sat at this table while nine people pulled her cousin apart in front of her, and she gave them his name. Not one person in this room has any idea what that took out of her.

I know what it took. I’ve been watching her stay strong since a loading bay in the dark that night at the quarry.

“Are you all right?” I ask, low enough that it’s meant for her and nobody else.

“Sure.” She doesn’t look up from the cup.

She’s not all right. Nothing in this woman’s life has been all right for over a year. And if I say one kind thing to her at this table, she’ll come apart in front of nine people who have spent all day making decisions about her.

So I don’t say the kind thing.

There is something I could do instead. If I take six steps down the length of this table, in front of every one of them, and put my hand on the back of her neck, she’d let me. I’m fairly sure she’d let me.