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“If we kill him, we prove the Order right. We make those with the old magic into the villains, the same as what happened before. That’s what caused the DAM Act and everything else that followed. You’re going to have to trust us. The last thing we want to happen is to turn him into some kind of martyr.”
She thought of the first time she’d seen Jack, when he was a middle-aged man at Schwab’s mansion, back in the twenties. That’s the future they needed for him. One where he wasn’t important or even respected.
“We don’t need to kill him, but we need to make sure he loses all credibility after tonight. He has to look like such a fool that no one will ever listen to him or take him seriously again.”
“I like him better dead,” Viola said with a pout.
“I’m not disagreeing,” Esta said. “But if Jack dies, it can’t be by our hand.”
“We must take his victory from him,” Jianyu said. “We must protect the Brink.”
“Not just the Brink,” Esta told them. “The Order as well.”
Viola cursed her displeasure, but Esta had already explained this to them. “If Jack succeeds, people will die tonight. Rich people—important people. Not the kind of people that let things go.”
“The Inner Circle,” Jianyu said. “We should begin there. He would destroy them all if he could.”
“The High Princept?” Harte wondered.
“Maybe,” she said, wishing they’d taken the time to learn more while they were in the future. “Ruby will try to stay close to him and signal us if there’s anything happening, and Viola will stay close to Ruby,” Esta said before Viola could interrupt.
Viola huffed her agreement. “Finally you talk some sense.”
“The most important thing is to keep the attack from happening, and if it does happen, we have to protect the Order. The fate of every Mageus in this country for another century depends on that.”
“So it has come to this,” Jianyu said. “Our only chance is to help the very people who would destroy us or risk being destroyed ourselves.”
Viola cursed. “First you want us to save the Brink, the terrible magic that can rip our very lives apart, and now we must save the men who would kill us where we stand? So much risk, and for what? If we succeed, everything will go back to how it was. The Brink will stand. The Order will survive. And those of us who have the old magic will be no better off.”
Esta hated that she was right. “We can still stop Jack,” she reminded Viola. “Harte and I saw what happened when he had power. I know this isn’t the situation we hoped for, but we can still change things. We can stop that other future from happening.”
“The Conclave isn’t the end,” Harte said. “We still have the sigils.”
“You mean if we don’t all end up dead,” Viola said darkly.
“That’s not going to happen,” Harte told them.
“It might. We don’t know what Nibsy has planned,” Viola argued.
“Thanks to Yonatan and some of the others, Nibsy will likely be too busy dealing with a minor uprising tonight to bother with us,” Jianyu said.
“They agreed?” Cela asked.
“You were right,” he told her. “They were more than willing to help.”
“What are you talking about?” Esta asked.
“It was Cela’s idea,” Jianyu said.
“I only suggested that maybe you all should include the others in this,” Cela told them.
Esta’s stomach sank. “It’s too dangerous.”
“They live with danger every day, Esta.” Cela shook her head. “I’ve spent enough time here listening to conversations and learning who these people are that I understand why they want to help. Nibsy Lorcan took everything from them, and they’re ready to take some of that back. They’ve never been cowards. Isn’t that why you saved them?” she asked Viola.
Viola was forced to admit that it was.
“The people living in this building, the ones you’ve been so good to protect, are the ones who didn’t break,” Cela reminded them. “They didn’t break then, and they won’t now.”
