Page 227 of Slashed Bonds

“She ended up dying with the child. In a hospital two towns over that my father bought a wing of afterward, because that’s what he does with grief. And…” A breath. “And three years have gone by. I couldn’t tell you how.”

I squeeze her hand again. Harder than I mean to. It’s the stability I need right now and she gives it back, her small fingers closing on mine like she’s the one holding me up and not the other way, and maybe she is.

“I zone out when it gets near her anniversary. I disappear. I know I do it. Killian and Nikolai know, and they let me, because the alternative is a version of me none of us like.” I smirk, tired, at the lights coming up in the town. “I can’t project the captain when my heart’s in a hole. Can’t stand in front of twenty kids and say we’ll handle it when the whole world’s standing in front of me saying no you won’t, we’ll do what we want, we did it to her and we did it to Teller and we did it to you.”

I look at her.

She’s not judging me. Not an ounce of it on her face. She’s listening the way she listens to a game plan, with the whole of her attention, filing it, and the filing is a kind of care I didn’t know I’d been starving for.

“I made a vow. On this stone. The first year.” The lights are everywhere now, in the valley. “That I’d be the kind of leader who proves it. That the ones this world’s tainted with its injustice, the ones it’s used and thrown off things, still have the strength to persevere. To prosper, in a place this cruel.” A pause. “Even if what prospering looks like for us doesn’t look like it does for anyone else. Even if it looks like a pit of snakes.”

I lift her hand.

Press my mouth to the back of it. Hold it there a second longer than a man should, with the frost in my knees and the whole burning valley below us.

“Thanks for finding me, Morrigan.”

“Always, Cassian.”

Two words.

No sorry for your loss. No it gets better. No speech with music under it, which is the only kind I’d ever learned to expect and the only kind I’ve never once wanted. We don’t need to trade words like a toll at a gate. I’m understanding that, on a ridge, with her hand at my mouth. It’s what I’ve always needed and never once asked for. Not the words. The silent thing under them. A person sitting down on the frost beside the worst day you have and staying until you’re ready to stand.

Supported. That’s the word. Not saved. I don’t need saving. I need someone in the room when the light goes out.

And everything else will move on. The valley, the lights, the clocks, the bracket on the kitchen wall with the line running toward a box. It’ll all keep going whether I’m standing here or not.

Like how it always has…and always will.

CHAPTER 34

Innocent Until Proven Guilty

~MORRIGAN~

“Innocent until proven guilty!”

I say it to the windshield with my arms crossed, because if I look to my left I’ll have to deal with the stare coming off the driver’s seat, and the stare has been coming off the driver’s seat for eleven minutes.

“Yeah. Fucking right.”

Killian mutters it. One hand on the wheel at twelve, the other on the gearshift like he’s considering putting us in reverse and taking me home.

“Talk about bullshit.”

I smirk.

At the street. At the mansion at the end of it with every window lit and a bass line coming through the glass of the car like weather. At the whole stupid wonderful fact that I’m sitting in a Mercedes in a black dress with my hair down, on a Friday night, going to a party.

A party. Me. With a man who looks like he’d rather be in a trench.

I asked him sweetly.

That was Viper’s instruction and I followed it, Wednesday night, on the second-floor landing with Nikolai in the shower and Cassian at the rink. I didn’t go to my knees. I thought about it. I stood in front of Killian with my hands behind my back and said there was a party Friday and I wanted to go and I wanted him to take me, and he’d looked at me for a long time with the reading face, the one that finds the load in a wall, and said why me.

Because Cassian would lock the door. Because Nikolai would put somebody through one. Because you’re the one who’d let me walk into the fire and stand close enough to pull me out.

I said, “Because I asked you.”