He looks at me.
“Hello, My Love,” he says.
“Hello, Hex,” I say.
We stand there for a moment.
From behind me, the sofa creaks. The sound of Felix standing up with great purpose.
“That,” says Felix, “is absolutely my cue to leave. I am so not being the third wheel again. Ever.”
I hear him grab his bag. I hear the particular swift, purposeful quality of Felix in motion, the sound of someone who has made a decision and is executing it immediately.
He shoulders past Hex in the doorway without breaking stride, four foot eleven of absolute certainty making a shadow prince step aside without question, and then he is gone down the hallway, footsteps quick and fading, and the front door closes behind him with a click that leaves everything very quiet.
Hex looks at the empty hallway. Then back at me.
I step back. He comes in.
I look at him. He looks at me. His eyes are very red and very steady and entirely certain.
Outside, Bristol carries on.
I close the front door.
Chapter 29
Handing Over the Crown Jewels
Theflatisveryquiet without Felix in it.
Different from the quiet of the days after Hex left. That quiet was wrong, an absence where presence should have been. This quiet is something else. The particular quality of a room that contains exactly the right people and nothing unnecessary.
I sit down at the kitchen table. Across from Hex. Across from the crown.
I look at the crown on my table. It sits there, taking up exactly as much room as a crown takes up, which is more than its physical size in every possible sense.
For a moment, neither of us says anything. I look at him properly in the kitchen light, the translucence at his edges, the ripped shirt, the hair slightly wrong, the eyes that are watching me with an expression that is exhausted and certain and entirely itself.
He’s sitting in his usual spot.
“You won,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
He is quiet for a moment, gathering himself, and then he tells me. Not everything, I don’t think I have the framework for everything, and I don’t think he has the energy, but enough. The fight was long and it was costly, and there were momentswhen it could have gone differently. Night and Dark were there. Others too, allegiances that had been quietly held in place for years, waiting for the right moment. Dis fought well. Honourably, even at the end. He had a code and he kept it, which meant that when it was over it was genuinely over, not a grudging surrender but an acknowledgment of a thing fairly done.
I think about sapphire-blue eyes and a tiny flicker of something that might have been curiosity. I think about Fiend, passed along like a political asset to that precise and ancient man. I think about Felix on the sofa, very calm, saying he has plans.
“And Dis,” I say carefully.
“Gone from the throne. Not destroyed.” He holds my gaze. “I gave him terms. He accepted them.” A pause. “He will not go back on his word.”
I think about the alley. The sapphire-blue eyes. The formal posture. The way he declined to fight Hex because it wouldn’t be fair.
“No,” I say. “I don’t think he will.”
