Outside the shroud, Keegan didn’t move, but his attention pressed like heat through glass. I didn’t turn. If I looked, I’d go to him, and that would end the conversation, and I wasn’t done wanting a smaller blade to pick up.
“You sound tired,” I said. “Since when do you come to neutral ground for absolution?”
“I came for an audience,” he said. “The absolution is between me and…whatever I’ve got left.”
“What have you got left, Gideon?”
He smiled at the question, as if it were an old enemy that still drew blood.
“Enough to be inconvenient,” he said.
“So your plan is to throw it all at Stonewick?” My pulse rose as I stared into his darkened eyes. The curse running through Keegan and him had taken something out of both of them.
Snowflakes drifted between the shroud, gathered at the edges of the table like small listeners. The raven feather’s quill caught a current and twitched, then stilled.
I tapped the table edge once. “Why Luna?”
“Because she could hear me when the rest of the room turned its face,” he said. “Because she knows the difference between tying your own hands and letting someone else do it. Because she doesn’t confuse kindness with surrender. And because,” he added, almost like a confession, “she is the one you never would have suspected.”
My throat tightened in a way I refused to show him. “You’re very articulate today.”
“The Hollows flatten my worse instincts,” he said. “Savor it.”
I glanced toward the shroud. Outside, Stella had arranged the others in a diagonal line that made eavesdropping easier.
I moved a pace closer to Gideon and stopped when the Hollows tightened—not a threat, a reminder.
“So you’re saying that Shadowick isn’t your home,” I said. “And Stonewick isn’t mine to give. Why are you truly here? You’ve always had a self-serving purpose with your intentions.”
He sat very still. For the first time since I’d known him, he looked like a man who had found the place inside that did not perform. “Because the ground between the two is, for a moment, honest,” he said. “And because the thing tugging on that knot doesn’t care which side tears first.”
“What thing,” I asked, already hating the answer.
“The same shadow that sniffed your chimney and put its face to the Ward and learned the temperature of your breath,” he said.
“Not the priestess,” I said.
“No,” he said. “Older. Hungrier. Closer to the seam and too stupid to respect it.”
The hair along my arms prickled. “So you drag us here to ask for what?”
“Room,” he said. “To cut without the knot snapping back at me. To mend without it deciding the thread you used is the wrong color. To act without your wolf breaking himself on the part of the curse that doesn’t care how noble he is. Everything has been a lie. Malore thought he’d manipulated the ancient rites and turned the Hunger Path in the direction he pointed. Ithought it was the priestess controlling him to do so. I was wrong on both counts. The dark magic has built its own rules, and it is infiltrating villages all across the country. It’s not just Shadowick and Stonewick’s burden to bear.”
“And you suddenly want to be the savior?”
His eyes narrowed. “Not at all, but I’m owed something that is mine. That Stonewick took from me long ago, and if I don’t stop the darkness from spreading, I will never get it back.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing of concern to you.” His lie didn’t sit well. “Your noble and loyal Keegan will get himself into trouble if he tries to play hero.”
Keegan’s name flared behind my breastbone like a ward. “Don’t talk about him like you know him.”
“I know the curse,” he said. “It is indifferent to romance. It has eaten better men.“
“And worse,” I said.
“And worse,” he agreed.
