Page 101 of The Silent War

Nothing. She settled.

I closed my eyes finally, not to sleep, but to let the room arrange itself behind my eyelids with the precision I need to make war without looking like one.

The phone warmed my cheek. My free hand slid under Bastion’s forearm when his twitched sounded too familiar. The whiskey had dragged him to the darkness.

Tomorrow he would ask what was happened. I would tell him everything in the smallest number of words necessary. He would go very quiet. The quiet that means he’s decided the shape of the violence, not that he’s doubting it.

We’d start by making sure breakfast arrives exactly when she sits up, because she forgets to eat, when she is worried and we will not let a man who wants obedience also oversee her hunger. We’d seed a text she never sees that pulls Alaric across town so she has an empty doorway when she leaves her room. We’d move three men. We’d wipe two numbers. We’d speak to one doctor. We’d send a jacket to her room because she always forgets a jacket and today the wind will hit the glass and we can’t control the wind.

Alaric’s voice had faded to a murmur I could barely catch. He said something that sounded likeshe’ll be easier by the weekend.The words didn’t land. I stopped listening to him. There was nothing else in his mouth that mattered. He’d already given me everything I needed.

Her breath filled the line. I counted three more cycles. Four. Five. Bastion exhaled.

I ended the connection.

The silence after was heavier. Just the room, and the man who is my mirror, and the thought of her, and a city that would try again at seven, and again at eight, and every hour after until we reminded it who it belonged to.

I set the phone face down. My hand didn’t shake anymore.

He thinks he’s been with her for weeks.

He’s about to learn—she’s been ours all along.

Chapter Thirty-One

BASTION

I woke wrong. The kind of wrong that means something moved in the night and I didn’t.

Luca was upright in the chair by the window. Shirt half-buttoned. Phone face-down like it offended him. He didn’t look at me. He looked at the city. That told me enough.

“Say it,” I rasped.

He didn’t. He stood, crossed the room, put a hand on the back of my shoulder and squeezed once—grounding me like I was the one that needed it. “He was in the hall.”

Heat hit the base of my skull. “Who.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “He thinks it does.”

I swung my legs off the bed. Smoke. I needed smoke. “Where.”

“Alexander’s tower. Outside her room.” His jaw ticked. “Talking.”

“Talking,” I repeated. Did he drug her. Did he touch her.

“He didn’t touch,” Luca added, he’d read the next question. “She slept through it.”

My fingers curled. The scars along my knuckles ached. My head went quiet. That was when things got dangerous. Iwalked to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth. I shaved. I pulled on black. Shirt, jacket, gun. Chain. Three rings.

Luca watched me. “We can do this clean.”

“I am clean,”

“Bastion.”

I met his eyes. The kind of look that said everything we didn’t name. I know. I hear you. I won’t put blood in her morning.

He gave one small nod. “I’ll move the pieces. You go look him in the face.”