Page 193 of Dark Night of the Soul

“Would he?” Her mouth tightened. “Or would he have some other brilliant plan that none of us knew about?”

Because that was how he operated. Life as a chess match. Three moves ahead. And when he died, it took something with him she’d never get back.

She looked away again, gaze fixed on some dark point across the courtyard.

“He kept secrets from me,” she said. “To keep me safe. Like you. Even now.”

“What do you—”

“I mean the Quiet Watch,” she said. Calm voice. Controlled. “You never told me.”

“I never told anyone,” I said. For good reason. “No one knew. Not even Decker.”

I moved closer to where she sat in the chair. She didn’t move.

“It wasn’t about trust,” I said. “It was about keeping you off the board. Keeping them from realizing you were the center of it.”

“I want to go home, but—” She cut herself off. Pressed her lips together. Fighting the emotions she’d been fighting all day.

“I know you do,” I said. “It won’t feel the same when you walk through those gates. And I’m sorry for that.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“Part of it is.”

I’d made choices. They’d had consequences.

Her head snapped up, ready to argue… and then she didn’t. Because there weren’t words for it. I stepped around the chair and knelt in front of her until I was at her eye line, then took her hands in mine. They were cold—so cold it bit. How long had she been out here?

I rubbed my thumbs over her knuckles, slow and steady, like I could warm the anger out of her one breath at a time.

“It isn’t gone, you know. Just different. You’ll still be you.”

“But I’m not me anymore, either, am I?” she said, her voice tight. “I’m even hiding behind a box of hair dye.”

Oh, she was cataloguing everything then. And spiraling.

“I like the hair,” I said.

“Oh, shut up.”

But she didn’t mean it.

“Come on.” I tugged her hands, pulling her out of the chair.

She came willingly, then leaned into me like her body decided it didn’t have to hold itself together alone.

I wrapped an arm around her, the other still holding her hands between us. “You don’t have to carry all of it at once.”

She let out a breath that shook. “It feels like if I stop thinking, something else will happen.”

“It will,” I said. Honest. “That’s why we plan. That’s why Silas did what he did.”

Her forehead pressed lightly against my chest. “A fortress,” she murmured.

“A perimeter,” I corrected. “So you can sleep at night.” I tipped my head down to catch her eyes when she looked up. “You go home when you’re ready. We do it on our terms. And if you want any of it changed—guards, cameras, routines—you tell me. You tell Silas. It gets done.”

Her mouth tightened. “I hate that this is normal now.”