Sera winced. “About that…”
Gideon froze. That odd brain sputter that happened sometimes, almost like his brain stopped working for several seconds.
Throwing a quick glance around, he took her by the shoulder. “This way.”
Sera tugged her arm free, thankfully with little resistance, but she did follow him up the stairs and into his office where he shut the door behind them. “Talk.”
Once inside Gideon’s office, she found traces of what she expected in his apartment. A cluttered assortment of disorder that likely only made sense to him. Papers stacked in random places. The surface of his desk invisible under the clutter. He stood near a tower of books, arms crossed.
“I…” She found the words stuck in her throat under his harsh glare. Suddenly he’d become ‘Captain Sanctimonious’ again and she considered if it was even worth his scolding to tell him what happened.
“What do you know about the explosion in Demon Row?”
“A good deal, actually.”
He rubbed his face in his hands. “Shit, Sera, please tell me you did not have something to do with it.”
She raised her hands, “It depends on what you mean by me having something to do with it.”
He clenched his teeth. “Did you blow up a fucking building, Sera?”
“Oh, then yes. That was me.”
“Fuck!” He turned around and set his hands on the desk. “How many casualties?”
“Only one as far as I know.”
He nodded. “That’s something. Was it North? Please tell me you didn’t kill the Winter Fae politician. I can’t exactly cover up the death of someone like that.”
Sera set her hand over her heart as his intent clicked. She did not think he had it in him to do something illegal, especially not for her. “You would cover up a murder for me? That’s very sweet of you.”
“Thatis what you focus on? Divine above, Sera, you blew up a building. I’ve got reports coming in from ten different patrol teams about fires and explosions and Wraith’s private army lighting up a city block. Then you waltz in here and tell me you’re in the middle of it? Then I’m the one who has to call my own ethics into question because I can’t sit around and let them hang my sister.”
She touched her throat. “I don’t want that either, but it was in self-defense I swear. I was trying to stop Cole from murdering more people. And he is the one that started the fires.”
“Cole Hawthorne?” Gideon asked, his tone less aggressive than a second ago.
“Yes.”
“The body?”
“There wasn’t much of one left.”
He ran a hand through his hair before sitting on the edge of his desk. “Not much of a body, I’m getting the strangest sense of déjà vu. What exactly happened?”
“Well. First, Cole set my old apartment on fire. Seth, Kieran, and I barely escaped. Cole was high on Divinity and Wraith’s forces weren’t able to stop him. So I orchestrated for one of the buildings to fall over. Onto him, it, um, landed on him.”
Gideon blinked. “The entire building?”
“Yes, you see I realized I could take out the support on the—”
He held up a hand. “Save the mechanical gibberish, I don’t get a word of it.”
She pursed her lips, but continued, “And after I caused the building to fall, I underestimated the spread of the fire and, well, a storeroom full of gunpowder caught fire and exploded.”
Gideon was almost smiling as he said, “So, if I’m understanding this, you crushed Cole under a building and then blew him up.”
“So to speak, yes.”
