Page 159 of Incoronate
“We…may be able to arrange something.”
“Great. There’s just one condition, though.” I paused. “The truce comes with your head on a platter.”
He didn’t speak for a very long moment.
Then he laughed. Low and dry and hollow. The laugh of a man who’d already done the math and didn’t like the answer.
“And if I agree to that,” he asked, testing the waters, “what happens to the rest of my Council?”
“They walk.” The words came out before I’d even thought about it. “So long as they agree to the truce.”
“You give me your word.”
“I give you my word.”
Another long pause.
“My only ever objective,” he said, his voice strange now, the way an old man’s voice gets when he’s unwinding something he’s held tight for a long time, “was the safety of this world. The protection of innocents. The balance of powers. I have done things, terrible things, in the service of that goal. I’ve never apologized for any of them. I never will. Because I believed, Jemma, with my whole heart, that I was holding back something that would have unmade everything we’ve built. Something exactly like the army standing outside my building right now.”
“Save the speech, William.”
“I am telling you this,” he went on, ignoring me, “because I want you to understand. If giving you what you want means you call those things back to whatever pit you pulled them from, if it means this Order survives, if it means my comrades go home to their families tonight, then yes, Jemma. I agree.”
I set my glass down on the cart.
Well, shit. I hadn’t exactly expected that. I’d expected him to fight, to bargain, to stall, to call my bluff and dare me to do my worst. What I had not expected was for him to simply agree.
Which meant, of course, he wasn’t agreeing.
“Then I’ll see you in an hour,” I said, showing nothing in my voice.
“I’ll be in my office.” A beat. “Come alone.”
“Not a chance.”
“Fair enough,” he said and hung up.
I lowered the phone and set it down beside the empty glass.
The whole room was watching me. Trace from the window. Dominic from the bar cart, his glass paused halfway to his lips. The Roderick sisters arranged across the long sofa near the fireplace, three faces angled at me with various shades of incredulity.
“Tell me you didn’t just agree to walk into Temple,” said Annabelle flatly.
“I didn’t agree to anything. He did.”
“Same difference.”
“He’s lying,” said Trace, his voice low. “You know he’s lying.”
“Of course he’s lying.” I pushed off the bar cart. “He’s been lying since the day I met him.”
“Then why—”
“Because it doesn’t matter, Trace.” I crossed to him, holding his gaze. “He can lie all he wants. He can have a hundred contingencies stacked behind that office door. He can have Cinderdust strapped to every Sentinel in the building. None of it changes what’s going to happen tonight.”
Dominic’s mouth pulled at the corner. “Which is what?”
I held his gaze. “That he’s paying the fucking piper tonight. One way or the other.”
