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“Yes.” A dry sound. “I am also, rather to my surprise, relieved.”

He looked up.

“You will have questions,” said Roake.

“One.”

“Ask it.”

“Why did you not shoot him?”

His eyes flickered.

“In the warehouse. When he stood in front of me. You had a clear line. You had six silver bullets and a boy who was standing in the way.” I held his gaze. “You fired once. At me. You could have fired at him, and you did not.”

“He was a boy.”

“He was in the way.”

“He was a boy,” said Roake again, very quietly, “and he was looking at you the way Elena used to look at me.”

The room grew still.

“I have thought about it for sixteen days,” he said. “It is all I have to do. I lay on this bed, and I stared at the ceiling, and I saw his face. The way he put himself between you and the gun. As though it was the only thing he had ever done in his life that was not a mistake.” He pressed his lips together. “I have never seen a creature look at a monster that way. I did not know it could be done.”

“I am not a monster.”

“No.” He closed his eyes. “I know.”

We sat in silence for some time.

“May I tell you something?” I said.

“Please.”

“Marguerite Lacroix.”

He stiffened.

“You said she died in 2021. That someone else got there first.”

“Yes.”

“It was not an accident.” I laid my hands on the table. “She was a rogue. There are laws among my kind, Dr. Roake. Very old ones. The chief of them is that we do not take a life. She broke it. She killed eleven people in six years. Your wife was the ninth. The elders of the eastern houses found her, and judged her, and ended her. It took them two years. They were not fast enough. I am sorry.”

He said nothing.

“I did not know your wife. I did not know Marguerite. I learned this from Tamsin’s people last week, when Sabine and I went looking for what you were hunting.” I swallowed. “I tell you because I think you need to know that we did not forgive it. We did not look away. There is justice among us. It is slow, and it is imperfect, and it is not yours. But it exists.”

He was crying.

He did it silently, as before, without moving his face. The tears ran down and dripped onto the orange sleeve. I had seen a great deal of grief. I had never seen one so tidy.

“And the others?” he said, hoarsely. “The ones you say are innocent. How am I to know?”

“You are not.”

“Then how—”