Page 107 of Arrow

The words were so unexpected, I jerked, and a raw flicker of gratitude radiated out from my throat before I pressed it back down into the marrow, where no one else could see it. I slipped from his hand and climbed the spiral stairs, my heels echoing off the polished steps.

Frank stood motionless above the ballroom, hands draped over the red-velvet rail. My heels buckled on the polished floor, but I let them.

He waited, watching the party below, his shadow a solid line even in the fractured gold of the balcony. White dress shirt, tie knotted the way he’d always worn it for Sunday mass, hair sharp black, and a sprinkle of gray in his beard—the only evidence that time had touched him at all.

His eyes stayed locked on the crowd, not looking at me. I remembered him that way, always looking away for the disaster before it arrived.

He didn’t speak until my body slotted next to his, our elbows almost touching.

“I like the necklace,” he said.

“I thought you were dead, you asshole,” I said.

Frank smiled, the line of his mouth breaking sideways just enough to show one canine. “A state of mind more than a lasting condition.” Then, quieter, eyes flicking to me like the snap of a camera, he added, “I’m sorry I didn’t call, Principessa.”⁠*

“You should be.” I punched him playfully in the shoulder, then wrapped my arms around his neck.

He let the hug hover in the air, his chin perched on the edge of my skull, before pushing me off with a gentle squeeze to the outside of my arm.

“You look good. You’re strong,” he said, voice a little tight. “I was worried you’d get dull around the edges.”

“Arrow won’t let me get dull,” I replied, picking at the bloodred A on my chain. “I have to stay sharp, or he’ll get bored.”

Frank’s eyes narrowed at the crowd below. “He’d never get bored with you, kid. Not unless he died, and he’s not the type.”

My throat closed. I wanted to ask Frank if he was happy now, if this were the retirement plan he’d always wanted. Instead, I just stood there, watching the party below, the easy waltz of enemies pretending to want each other alive.

“You were always going to end up here,” Frank said. “With him. This engagement . . . it was never a question of if. It was always when.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but he cut me off.

“Not because of the dress you’re wearing or the games you’re playing. Not because of anything you did or didn’t do. This was written before you were born, Harlowe. Your family, his family—the debt, the blood, the power. It all pointed to this moment. To him.”

“It doesn’t seem like a place to rest.”

“Rest isn’t what you want.” He turned to face me fully. “You ever going to forgive me?”

“Not tonight.”

He nodded, eyes bright. “Good.”

The silence between us was thick, saturated with all the things I wanted to say, but never would. He looked at my neck, at the chain. His gaze lingered, cataloguing the violence, the lineage, the intent.

“Are you ready for the rest?” he asked.

“I’m ready for anything.” I turned to the crowd below. “Even boredom.”

A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “Then you’ll be fine. Arrow’s a good man, Harlowe. He was always going to be exactly this, for better or for worse.”

“For worse is the job description.” I bit my lip, feeling the new ache where I’d opened it on Arrow’s tongue. “You and Arrow, you’re working together now?”

Frank shrugged, eyes shuttling over the crowd for any fresh threat. “I work for whoever wants you safe. Doesn’t matter the name on my checks.”

He wouldn’t say more, but it was on his face. Arrow hadn’t bought Frank’s service, he’d bought his life, and eventually, his death. Frank knew the reaper would come for him eventually, but now it could be on his terms, not my father’s.

I looked over the edge, into the clot of Manhattan’s best and worst hearts beating in unison.

The crowd rippled with a sudden change in current. Some of the city’s apex predators had a scent, a pressure wave, and you felt it before you saw them.