Chapter 505

IVORY

“He attacked me,” Killian said.

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“YOU EXIST,” I said. “That’s the whole problem! You exist and you came here and now Kael has put you through a gate wall and I had to stand there being-” I gestured at myself with both hands, indicating the specific version of myself that had been deployed at the gate, “-REASONABLE. Oh look at me, Kael, don’t do this, you’re better than this bullshit-” I stopped, aware that I was doing an impression of myself that was significantly less composed than the original. “What is wrong with you. Why are you here. Why-” I stopped again. “Actually, I know why. I know why and it’s because of your bloodline, which is EXACTLY the problem-”

“I am your mate,” Killian said, “which seems like it might warrant slightly more-

“You have GOT,” I said, “the absolute nerve to say that to my face right now. When you know what you did. When you know what happened.”

“I was a kid,” he said.

“SO WAS I,” I said. “So was Kael. So was Nina and Jordan and Elite and all of us. We were all kids. But you and your-” I stopped, because the sentence was going somewhere I’d promised myself it wasn’t going to go tonight, and the compound I’d just injected him with was wolfsbane adjacent and I needed him cooperative for the remaining treatment steps.

“Don’t talk about my mother,” Killian said, and his voice had changed. The quality of it going flat in the specific way of a person reaching the outer limit of what they’d decided to tolerate.

I pulled the needle before he finished the sentence.

The wolfsbane compound. The small one I kept in the secondary clinic’s emergency tray for exactly this kind of situation – not the dangerous concentration, the precision dose. I’d had it palmed since approximately thirty seconds after we’d arrived, in the specific way of someone who’d known this conversation was coming and had prepared accordingly.

He went back. The wolfsbane finding the nerve pathway with the accuracy of fifteen years of practice.

I punched him across the face.

This was not in the treatment protocol. I was aware of this. I was also not going to apologize for it because he’d slammed me into a wall and there were cracks in it and the cracks in walls were a specific kind of trigger for me at this particular point in my life given the recent history.

He landed against the secondary clinic’s examination cabinet.

I stood in the middle of the room breathing with the specific quality of someone who’d done something they knew they were going to have to account for and was not yet at the accounting stage.

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The door opened.

Kael came through first. He came through with the specific quality of someone who’d heard a sound and had processed the sound and had moved toward it before finishing the processing. Behind him: Nina. Jordan. And Aria, who’d come in last and was reading the room with the expanded awareness I’d been tracking develop in her for weeks.

Kael reached me in three steps.

His hands were on my arms, the specific checking quality of someone determining whether I was hurt – not asking, assessing, because with me asking produced the professional deflection and the check was more reliable.

“I’m fine.” I said.

“You’re-”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I lost my professional composure for approximately forty-five seconds. The composure has been relocated. I’m fine.”

Kael looked at Killian. Who was picking himself up from the examination cabinet with the manner of someone who’d received a punch from a healer and was recalibrating his assessment of healers generally.

“She had a needle,” Killian said.

“She usually has a needle,” Kael said. His voice had the flat quality again. He was looking at his half-brother with the specific expression of someone who’d left a situation and had come back to find it had developed without him.

“The wolfsbane dose was minimal,” I said. “Precision instrument. He’ll be fine in twenty minutes.”

“The punch,” Nina said, from the door, and her voice had the professional-neutral that meant she was deciding whether to document this.

“Was a professional judgment call,” I said.

“On what grounds,” Nina said.

“He slammed me into a wall,” I said. “There are cracks.” ()

Everyone looked at the secondary clinic’s examination room wall, where there were, in fact, small cracks in the plaster where I had made contact with it when he snarled at me for implying something at his whore of a mother before I had jabbed him with wolfsbane weakening his grip and then sucker punching him hard across the face that blood streamed down from his split lips.

“The clinic wall,” Aria said. “And the gate wall.” She paused. “It’s been a wall-heavy day for Shadowmere.”

Nobody said anything to that.

“We need to ask him questions,” Nina said, returning to the operational register. “If he’s been inside the

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network, he knows things we don’t know. Things that might clarify the hierarchy, the remaining active threats, the root situation.” She looked at Killian. “We’re going to interrogate him.”

–

“What are you investigating me for?” Killian said. The wolfsbane was already wearing off the precision dose was designed exactly for this, fast entry and fast exit. “You have Vela here. And Aleric. Haven’t you

interrogated them? It’s been a week.”

“We were busy,” Jordan said.

“With what?” Killian said. “A week is-”

“A break,” Jordan said. “We were on a break.”

Killian looked at Jordan.

Jordan was still wearing the fake mustache.