Page 2 of Laundering Down the Legions
The world tilted sideways. I gripped the edge of the table.
"You're saying Ro is possessed or being controlled, and that's what we are seeing in the photograph?" My voice sounded like it was coming from somewhere down the hall. "The one who's been watching me since before I was born."
Grayson didn't nod. Didn't need to. The answer was in his face. Shoulders dropped, jaw tight, the look of a man who'd been dreading this conversation long enough that finally having it didn't bring any relief.
While he was still speaking, I caught movement in the corner of my eye. Kearan pushed off from the wall and walked into the kitchen without a word, without a glance in my direction. The kitchen was visible from the hallway through a half-open doorway, and I tracked him with my eyes as he moved through the space with that quiet efficiency, opening cabinets, pulling things out, his back to the room as he worked. The world was ending, and Kearan was making eggs. Honestly, respect.
Grayson didn't say anything else. The photograph sat on the table between us, Eloise's laughing face turned upward, caught in a moment she didn't know would become evidence.
The man beside her was half-hidden, his features obscured by shadow and angle, but I didn't need to see his face anymore. Or the thing with him.
Which one was responsible for everything? Who had actually intended my creation? Had my mother known Ro was possessed when she was with him? My mind spiraled with questions faster than I could process.
The silence was complete. No one moved. No one offered comfort or confirmation or the hundred other things people say when the world collapses. They just sat with it, all of them, carrying everything they'd known and when they'd known it and how long they'd kept it from me.
Kearan emerged from the kitchen. He crossed to the table and set a plate in front of me without comment. Steaming eggs scrambled soft the way I liked them, with flecks of green onion and a sprinkle of cheese melted just enough to be gooey but not brown. A thick slice of sourdough toast, buttered and cut diagonally. A small bowl of berries on the side, because he'd noticed, in some offhand moment I couldn't even remember, that I liked fruit.
I hadn't asked for any of it. Hadn't said a word about being hungry. Hadn't done anything except sit here while my understanding of my life dismantled itself piece by piece. Again.
He didn't look at me when he set it down. Didn't wait for thanks or acknowledgment. Just placed the plate with the same careful precision he applied to everything, then straightened and fixed me with that clinical, assessing gaze.
"At the first compound," he said, his voice cool and measured. "When Seph arrived. Did you eat anything?"
Not a question, the way he said it. More like a form being filled out.
"Yes," I said. "Right before Cerbie appeared and caused all that chaos."
He nodded once, filed the answer away without follow-up or commentary, and turned back toward the kitchen. Just like that. Clinical data gathered, mission accomplished, retreat executed. No comfort. No hand on my shoulder. Just the food I needed and a question that gave me something concrete to focus on besides the hole Grayson's words had blown through my chest.
No one at the table remarked on the plate. No one glanced at it. Seph studied her nails. Trux's jaw worked silently. Rhiot had gone very still, his usual fidgeting completely absent. Ryker, still standing by the door, had turned his face toward the wall, one hand braced against the doorframe like he needed the support.
None of them looked at the plate. Not one. That was the tell… they'd seen Kearan do this before. Clock something no one said out loud, drop exactly what was needed, retreat before it got weird. Old news. Just another day.
Which meant they'd been watching him do this for me for longer than I'd been paying attention.
I looked down at the food Kearan had placed in front of me. The eggs were still steaming. The toast smelled like butter, warm and solid. My throat closed anyway.
I picked up the fork he'd set beside the plate. Not a plastic spork from the Division cafeteria. An actual metal fork, the kind from the set he kept in his private cabinet. I pushed the eggs around without eating.
The theory assembled itself with the particular horror of things that make too much sense. Ro. Two signatures. A demon old enough to predate my birth, carrying something inside him that Grayson had never seen before. The echo of a man in the photograph with Eloise, his face deliberately turned from the camera because of some reason.
My father's enemy.
Or.
My father.
Shit.
What did that even make me? What did that make?—
The dagger warmed against my hip, responding to the spike of horror that hit me. I set the fork down very carefully, my hand trembling too badly to trust with metal.
No one spoke. None of them looking directly at me, like eye contact would make it real. Grayson's words sat between us, undeniable. Kearan's food steamed gently on the plate, untouched. Ryker's presence by the door ached like a bruise I couldn't stop pressing.
I sat very still at the center of it all, the theory turning over and over and finding no way out, and didn't say a word.
CHAPTER 2
