Page 42 of Crown of Ash

Sovereign was the first to enter, alone, which was itself a message. The Lords of Darkness didn't send a delegate when Drakov was on the table. They sent the man who'd carried that grudge personally for years. He took the chair on Marcus's left without being shown to it. His presence was like a storm cloud, dark and brooding, filling the room with an unspoken threat.

Cass arrived next, quiet like danger held very carefully, like a glass orb that could shatter at any moment. He took the seat directly across from the door. Marcus had learned a long time ago not to read anything into where Cass chose to sit. Cass, or Reaper as he was in this room, would be running his own calculations about the assembled and trying to outthink him would be too much trouble. He was on their side, that was enough for Marcus.

Andre came in with his captain's blessing and none of his department's, which put him in the strange position of representing an institution that didn't know it had a seat at this particular table full of… admitted… criminals. He caught Marcus's eye once, briefly, a private question flickering in his gaze that neither of them answered yet. Not here. Not with four other factions watching.

Marcus was still deciding whether to open with the Flint address or let Sovereign ask for it first when the door opened again and the temperature of the room changed.

"Well." Bell swept in like the room had been built for the express purpose of him walking into it, Sable a half-step behind, filling the doorway with the deadly bulk of himself. "Isn't this just the most charming little gathering of murderers I've had the pleasure of sitting down with in ages."

He was in a suit. That was the first thing Marcus took in, and then had to take in the rest of it separately, because none of it followed from the first look: black, tailored to the millimeter, and underneath it a corset laced in black and red over a shirt so heavy with lace it looked like it had escaped from a different century entirely. Victorian mourning wear reimagined by someone who'd never once mourned quietly. Sable, beside him, wore Savile Row like he'd been born in it, a wall of muscle poured into fabric that cost more than most of the room's monthly overhead, his eyes already doing the same sweep of exits Marcus's had done five minutes ago.

"Bell." Marcus stood, because some men you stood for regardless of what a war room's protocol technically called for. "Thank you for coming."

"Darlin', I wouldn't have missed this for the world." Bell took the seat Marcus hadn't offered yet, crossed one leg over the other, and looked around the table with the frank, unhurried appraisal of a man pricing out a room full of very expensive furniture. "Sovereign. Still terrifyingly large, I see." His eyes found Cass, warmed by half a degree. "And Reaper… you look like a man who's finally getting to do something about the bee in his bonnet. Good. Took you long enough."

"Bell," Cass said, his voice coming close to fond, which from Cass was practically a parade. Marcus had only really ever heard that tone from him when he was talking to his pretty boyfriend.

Bell's attention swung to Andre last, and lingered.

"And here's my favorite detective." He tilted his head, honey-gold eyes bright with something that wasn't quite mischief and wasn't quite tenderness either, some third thing that only Bell seemed able to hold at once. "You're looking well-loved, sugar. It suits you."

Andre, to his credit, only reddened slightly. "Bell."

"Mm." Bell's gaze slid sideways to Marcus and sharpened, the softness folding away as quick as it had appeared. "Now. Somebody tell me what we're about to go kill, and let's be quick about it. I've got a standing appointment with a man's spinal column back home, and he's been very patient."

Nobody at the table laughed, exactly. But the room's weight shifted anyway, the particular relief of five dangerous people realizing at the same moment that at least one of them was going to say the quiet part out loud.

Marcus reached for the folder in front of him.

"Let's start with Flint," he said.

"Flint," Marcus said again, his voice echoing in the dimly lit room. He opened the folder, the rustle of paper cutting through the tense silence. "Warehouse, still active as of last night. We don't know how many people are inside it. We know it's more than the ten we already got out."

Sovereign, a man of steel and shadows, responded with a voice as flat as a calm sea before a storm. "How solid is the address?" He was already moving past the emotion of it, the way he did with most things that would have slowed another man down.

Marcus met his gaze, his eyes steady and unflinching. "Solid enough that Zain got it out of a man who had every reason to lie and didn't." He didn't elaborate further than that. The air in the room grew heavier, but nobody at this table needed the details of how Zain got it, and nobody asked.

"Lakefront runs point on the ground," Marcus went on, his voice taking on a commanding tone. "Sovereign, I need bodies on the perimeter, nobody gets out the back while we're going in the front." He looked to Cass, his gaze sharp and focused. "I need your people on the inside stairwells before we breach."

"My people are already moving." Cass didn't look up from the folder he'd pulled toward himself, his fingers tracing over the details within. "Tell me when."

"Tomorrow night." Marcus looked to Bell last, on purpose. His gaze lingered on Bell for a moment longer than necessary. "Which brings me to Drakov himself."

"Finally." Bell uncrossed his legs and recrossed them the other way, a subtle shift in posture that was the only sign he'd been waiting for this part. "I assume you want more than tech this time. Phantom is the happiest little puppy that I let him play with your Ghost. We need to arrange more play dates for those two. They’re just too precious together." His smile was the same one would give gazing on said puppies as if he hadn’t been talking about actual grown ass men.

"I want your people ready to move the moment Drakov surfaces. He's going to know Flint cost him something the second it happens. Men like him don't sit still after a loss like that." Marcus's voice was firm, his words echoing with the weight of their mission.

"Sable and I can have six on the ground inside twenty minutes of a call." Bell's voice had lost every trace of its earlier lightness; whatever else he was, he was exactly as competent as his reputation when the subject turned serious. "You'll have your bodies, darlin'. Just say when."

Sovereign made a low sound of approval, a rumble that vibrated through the room. "Never thought I'd say this about a man wearing a corset to a war meeting, but I like how he works."

"Everybody does, eventually." Bell didn't even look at him, his gaze fixed on some distant point. "It's the corset that gets them first."

Marcus almost smiled. He caught himself before it showed, because there was still a piece of this meeting he hadn't gotten to, and it was sitting in his chest like a stone.

"There's one more thing," he said, his voice dropping lower. "Andre's been working this last week to cover our asses. I want it on record, in this room, that everyone here understands what that's cost him."

"Cost him?" Sovereign's mouth twitched, not quite a laugh. His words were laced with a bitter humor. "Whitfield, your man's been burying evidence on our behalf since before half this table knew his name. The Drummond Street thing alone should've ended his career twice over."