August catches him looking and raises an eyebrow. "Problem?"
"You might want a higher collar before Knox arrives."
August glances at the hallway mirror, sees the marks, and his expression does something complicated that lands on a flush creeping up from the collar in question. His hand drifts to his throat, fingers brushing the darkest bruise, and the look he gives Vale over his shoulder is equal parts accusing and, unless Vale is reading it wrong, which he doesn't think he is, quietly pleased.
"These are your fault," August points out.
"I don't recall you objecting."
The flush deepens. August turns back to the mirror, considers his reflection for a moment, and then walks past Vale to the kitchen table without changing his shirt.
Vale hands him his tea and doesn't bother hiding the satisfaction.
They settle at the table. The research is still spread across it: maps, notes, Cabal diagrams, the photographs from the library printed out and annotated in both their handwriting. Three days of combined work, layered over each other. Looking at it now, with the railway rift closed and only one site remaining in Voss's binding circle, the picture is simultaneously clearer and more urgent than ever.
"One open rift left," August says, wrapping his hands around his cup. "The one in the subway, the one we left because the blessing circle was fresh and the location was isolated."
"If Voss opens his final rift at the last site in the pattern, the binding circle completes and the vault wards fail." Vale taps the map. "But we closed three of his rifts. The binding circle is incomplete. He'll have to compensate, either reopen the closed sites or find a way to power through the gaps."
"He'll power through." August's voice is certain. "Reopening closed rifts takes time and energy he doesn't have. The corruption is eating him alive. He'll pour everything he has left into the final rift and brute-force the binding circle into completion." He traces the remaining sites on the map: the open subway rift, and the blank space where Voss's final rift has yet to be placed. "He's been planning this for years, Vale. He'll have contingencies for lost nodes. The question isn't whether he can complete the ritual with gaps, it's how much more power the final rift needs to carry to compensate."
"Which means the final rift will be massive."
"Beyond anything we've seen. And he'll be desperate. Dying. Burning the last of himself to get through that vault." August looks up from the map. "We need to be ready for that."
"We need more than readiness. We need the vault itself fortified against a breach." Vale sets down his cup. "Which means we need help we don't currently have."
A knock at the door.
August tenses, the reflex is still there even after everything, but it passes in a second. He knows who it is. They both do. Vale watches the way August consciously relaxes his shoulders, uncurls his fingers from his cup, and nods toward the door.
Vale opens it.
Knox is in the hallway, and he looks exactly like Knox always looks: immaculate. Grey Templar coat buckled pristine to his chin, blond ponytail draped over one shoulder without a hair out of place, mace gleaming at his belt, holy rings catching the dim hallway light. He looks as though he's about to pose for a recruitment broadsheet. He also looks as though he's been awake since before dawn managing a crisis on behalf of a partner who has been otherwise occupied, and the slight tightness around his eyes is the only thing that betrays it.
Knox's eyes find Vale first, assessing quickly in the way partners do:are you okay, is there trouble, what's changed since I saw you last.Whatever he reads in Vale's face makes something flicker across his expression. Surprise, maybe. Or recognition.
"Good morning," Knox says. "I come bearing intelligence and pastries." He holds up a paper bag. "The pastries are for August. The intelligence is for you, since you treat food with a disdain I've never understood."
"It's fuel," Vale says, stepping aside. "Not a pastime."
Knox enters the apartment with the easy, nonthreatening energy that makes him so effective at everything he does,though the effect is somewhat undermined by the fact that he's dressed for combat and armed to the teeth. He sets the pastries on the kitchen table, surveys the spread of research with raised eyebrows, and turns toward August, who has risen from his chair and is standing with his tea in both hands and an expression that's working hard to be neutral.
"August." Knox inclines his head with genuine warmth. "How are you feeling?"
"Better." August manages a thin smile. "Significantly better, actually."
"You look it. The color suits you." Knox's voice is kind, his posture open despite the coat and the mace, and then his gaze drifts down from August's face to his neck, a casual, inevitable movement, and lands on the bruises.
Knox stops.
His eyes rest there for exactly one and a half seconds. Long enough to catalogue. Short enough to pretend he hasn't. Then his gaze returns to August's face with an expression of studied, immaculate neutrality that is, to someone who has known Knox for four decades, absolutely screaming. It's the same expression he wears when he's defusing a diplomatic incident, and Vale suspects it's taking approximately the same amount of effort.
"Tea?" August offers, because he's either oblivious to what just happened or is handling it far better than Vale would have expected.
"Love some," Knox says evenly.
August turns to the kitchen. Knox turns to Vale.
