Chapter 8: Finish It

Enoch came for me at two in the morning.

He knocked twice on the infirmary door, and I opened it with my heart in my throat.

His shirt was open at the collar and his knuckles were bloody.

He looked past me at Odile, who was asleep with her mouth open.

"The doctor I trust comes at dawn," he said. "She'll sit with her. You need to sleep."

"What did you finish?" I said.

He didn't flinch.

"The Table," he said. "Four families walked out. I've been at their doors since midnight, getting them to come back to the Truce."

"With your fists?"

"With my voice. The fists were Lucan's guard." He looked at his hands. "I'm not proud of it."

"I heard him through the door."

"Then you heard an order to make the Truce whole before the families split the city."

He held my eyes.

"Fenella, I'd tell you if it meant more."

It was a perfect answer.

It was so perfect that I almost believed it.

I had spent a life delivering sheets to hotels, and I knew when a bed had been made too tight.

"Walk me upstairs," I said.

We rode up in the brass lift in silence.

At the door of Suite 9 I turned to face him.

"I put the ledger somewhere safe," I said. "You don't need to know where."

"Good."

"Good?"

"If I don't know, I can't be made to say." His mouth tilted. "You're better at this than me."

That almost undid me.

I took his jacket, which I'd been holding since the infirmary, and hung it on the chair.

Then I took his hand and pulled him inside and shut the door.

"You're lying to me," I said, and I put my palms flat on his chest. "I don't know about what. I only know there's something."

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