Chapter 28: Release

The eldest nodded once.

"Bring him."

The nurse pushed him up the center aisle.

The wheels squeaked on every third board.

Nobody spoke.

I came down the steps to meet him, because I was his surgeon before I was anything else to him tonight.

I put two fingers on his wrist.

His pulse was fast and thin.

"You didn't pop a stitch getting here," I said. "That's a miracle. You're going straight back after this."

"I know."

"I mean it."

"I know you do."

The nurse stopped the chair at the foot of the stage, below the Council table.

Jarrett looked up at the eldest.

Then he turned the chair himself, an inch at a time, until he was facing me.

His hands were shaking on the armrests.

"I said it once in front of witnesses," he said. "In your clinic, at one in the morning, while you were sewing up a kid's hand."

"I said it to get an alibi."

The whole hall heard him say it.

"So I'll say this in front of more."

He took a breath, and it hurt him.

"I, Jarrett Rutledge, release you, Geneva Coulter. I have no claim on you. I never earned one."

I'd thought it would feel like something.

A tear.

A hook pulled the other way.

It didn't.

It felt like a door I'd already walked out of, closing quietly behind me.

But behind me, at the foot of the steps, I felt Stellan's heart give one great slow knock against my ribs.

"I'm sorry," Jarrett said. "For the basement. For seven years. For telling you not to touch him while he was dying."

"I'm not asking you to forgive me."

"Good," I said. "I'm not going to tonight."

"I know."

He turned the chair again.

Toward the open windows, where the strays stood three deep in the dark.

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