Page 372 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

‘You know what Riley is now.’

‘I don’t understand it.’

‘OK, well, you don’t need to understand it, you just need to respect...’

‘The day I respect Riley Harker—’

‘His right to privacy!’

A spectacular eye-roll takes place instead of whatever tangent Lachlan was about to go off on. ‘I have no intention of violating his privacy. I get that something is weird about him. I was trying to say he should get checked out.’

‘Right, and how did you say it again?’

‘I said, you don’t smell right.’

Kade eats a little more.

Lachlan watches him.

After a while, he says, ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘If you want, I’ll ask Blaire to give him the book to look through. He mentioned it again last night. I suppose,’ he adds somewhat loftily, ‘he does want the best for you if he’s searching for a way to break the Death Knot and my page didn’t mention anything about it, so I’ll ask.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I want you free of him too.’

‘I know you do. What did you eat for breakfast?’

‘Raw steak.’

‘Raw?’

‘I had them get it to room temperature, but yeah.’

‘Ugh.’

‘You love it.’

‘I love you. Raw steak is gross.’

Lachlan grins wide.

His incisors gleam.

‘You like a little bit of gross.’

Kade fixes him with a wry smile and eats the best breakfast of his life.

✴

On the way up to the Watch, Lachlan goes by Medical to give his blood to Luca. Kade can’t delay any longer. He walks past the place where Lachlan first had him by the throat almost a week ago, where he dragged Kade inside to use him to get to the man he thought was the boss of Iron Star. Funny how much has changed in so little time.

Six days have transformed seven years.

Inside the Watch, Cole and Finn sit on opposite sides of the oval operations console at the centre of the room. Banks of screens surround them, carrying live surveillance from the Vine Mesh, encrypted communications, continuous threat scans and rotating schematics.