"Inside," Stone says.
I watch RJ start back along the far wall. Same stride. No deviation. No recognition.
I let go of the chain link.
My hands are cold where the metal was.
I go inside.
Chapter fourteen
Alex
Dalton is waiting inside the door.
He looks at my face and doesn't ask. He just turns and says, "Come with me," and walks.
I follow him down the corridor and out the side exit and across the path toward the east wing. The cold hits. I pull the parka tighter and watch his back and feel the bond running steady between us.
"Gavin," I say.
"Done," he says. "For now."
"How did it go."
He's quiet for a moment. "He knows about the bond. Tomlinson reported what he heard." He doesn't slow down. "Emergency panel session. Tomorrow."
I absorb that.
"They're reviewing the transfer order," he says. "New information — the bond with me, the Frosthaven placement, all of it." He pauses. "Gavin thinks a full documented memory of the James case, witnessed and on record before the session, changes what the board is looking at."
"And you," I say. "What do you think."
He stops. Turns. Looks at me in the cold outside light.
"I think the board has a file with a question mark in it," he says. "And you have the answer. And tomorrow they're going to be in a room deciding what happens to you." A beat. "I think we give them the answer before they decide without it."
I look at him.
"Lumi's waiting," he says.
***
She's in a room I haven't been in before — small, interior, no windows. A table with two chairs and a lamp and a glass of water someone put there for me. She's already seated when we come in, hands loose on the table.
Dalton closes the door behind us and stays.
Lumi looks at him. Something passes between them — not a question, just the confirmation of something already decided.
"He stays," I say.
She nods.
I sit across from her. The lamp makes the room warmer than it is. Outside this room is the corridor and the administrative wing and tomorrow and all of it. In here there is just the table and the lamp and Lumi's hands loose on the surface and Dalton at the door behind me, the bond running its steady frequency at my back.
"You know what you remember," she says. Not a question.
"Yes," I say.
